She shifted in her seat.
“I swear on my mother that it isn’t what you think,” she whimpered. “Let me explain, tell you at least how everything was.”
“What I couldn’t imagine was that the young man would be Miguel,” the trucker added in a hoarse voice. “Not to mention the spider letters, of course. But it’s over now, and the best thing is for me to leave. We’ve settled all the practical things and there’s nothing left hanging. I don’t want this to end with an argument. Here’s the key to the house.”
He placed it on the table in the living room next to the wooden llama and the Peruvian flag, and stood up. She still had her face buried in her hands, and she was crying.
“At least, let’s still be friends,” he heard her say.
“You know very well you and I can’t be friends,” he answered, not turning around to look at her. “Good luck, Mabel.”
He went to the door, opened it, went out, and closed it slowly behind him. The brightness of the sun made him blink. He walked through whirlwinds of dust, the noise of radios, the ragged children and mangy dogs, thinking he’d never again walk along this dusty street in Castilla and no doubt wouldn’t see Mabel again either. If they happened to run into each other on a street in the center of town, he’d pretend he hadn’t seen her and she’d do the same. They’d pass each other like two strangers. He thought too, without sadness or bitterness, that though he wasn’t a useless old man yet, he probably wouldn’t make love to a woman again. He wasn’t about to look for another girlfriend, or visit a brothel at night and go to bed with whores. And the idea of making love to Gertrudis after so many years didn’t even enter his mind. Maybe he’d have to jerk off occasionally, like a boy. Whatever the course of his future, one thing was certain: There wouldn’t be a place in it for pleasure or for love. He didn’t regret that, and he didn’t despair. That’s the way life was, and ever since he was a kid without shoes in Chulucanas and Yapatera, he’d learned to accept it just as it came.
Without his being aware of it, his steps had been leading him to his friend Adelaida’s shop filled with herbs, sewing articles, saints, Christs, and Virgins. There was the holy woman, short, thickset, barefoot, wearing the tunic of unbleached linen that hung down to her ankles, watching him from the door of her house with her enormous, piercing eyes.
“Hello, Felícito, long time no see,” she said in greeting, waving. “I was beginning to think you’d forgotten me.”
“Adelaida, you know very well you’re my best friend and I’ll never forget you.” He gave her his hand and patted her back affectionately. “I’ve had a lot of problems recently, you must know all about it. But here I am. Will you bring me a glass of that distilled water you have, it’s so clean and cool. I’m dying of thirst.”
“Come in, come in and sit down, Felícito. I’ll bring you a glass right this minute, sure I will.”
Compared to how hot it was outside, it was cool inside Adelaida’s shop, submerged in its customary half-light and stillness. Sitting in the rocker of woven straw, he contemplated the cobwebs, the shelves, the tables with boxes of nails, buttons, screws, seeds, stalks of herbs, needles, religious cards, rosaries, Virgins and Christs of plaster and wood in every size, large and small candles, while he waited for the holy woman’s return. Did Adelaida have any customers? As far as he could remember, all the times he’d come here, and he’d been here plenty of times, he’d never seen anyone buying anything. More than a shop, this place resembled a chapel. All that was missing was the altar. Every time he came here he had a feeling of peace that once, long ago, he used to have in churches when, during the early years of their marriage, Gertrudis would drag him to Mass on Sundays.
Adelaida handed him water from the distilling stone and he drank it with great pleasure.
“That’s some mess you got yourself into, Felícito,” said the holy woman, commiserating with a kind look. “Your girlfriend and your son hooked up to fleece you. My God, the ugly things you can see in this world. Just as well they put those two in jail.”
“All that’s over now, and do you know something, Adelaida? I don’t care anymore.” He shrugged and made a disdainful face. “That’s all behind me, and now I’ll start to forget about it. I don’t want it to poison my life. Now I’m going to put my heart and soul into moving Narihualá Transport ahead. On account of these scandals, I haven’t been paying attention to the company that puts food on my table. And if I don’t take care of it, it’ll be ruined.”
“That’s what I like, Felícito, the past dead and gone,” the holy woman said approvingly. “And now to work! You’ve always been a man who doesn’t give up, who keeps fighting till the end—”
“Do you know something, Adelaida?” Felícito interrupted her. “That inspiration you had the last time I came to see you, it came true. An extraordinary thing happened just like you said. I can’t tell you more about it right now, but as soon as I can, I will.”
“I don’t want you to tell me anything.” The fortune-teller became very serious and a shadow veiled her large eyes for an instant. “I’m not interested, Felícito. You know I don’t like it when those inspirations come to me. Sad to say, it always happens with you. It’s like you provoke them, hey waddya think.”
“I hope I don’t inspire any more, Adelaida,” Felícito said with a smile. “I don’t want any more surprises. From now on I want a peaceful, quiet life dedicated to my work.”
They were silent for a long time, listening to the noise from the street. The horns and motors of cars and trucks, the shouts of the peddlers, the voices and bustling of the passersby reached them, somehow softened by the tranquility of the place. Felícito thought that in spite of knowing Adelaida for so many years, she was still a great mystery to him. Did she have a family? Had she ever had a husband? Probably she’d come from an orphanage, one of those abandoned babies taken in and brought up on public charity, and then had always lived alone, like a mushroom, without parents, brothers and sisters, husband or children. He’d never heard Adelaida talk about any relatives, or even any friends. Maybe Felícito was the only person in Piura the fortune-teller could call a friend.
“Tell me something, Adelaida,” he asked. “Did you ever live in Huancabamba? Did you happen to grow up there?”
Instead of answering, the mulatta gave a loud laugh, her thick-lipped mouth opening wide, revealing her large, even teeth.
“I know why you asked me that, Felícito,” she exclaimed through her laughter. “Because of the witches of Las Huaringas, isn’t that right?”
“Don’t think that I believe you’re a witch or anything like it,” he assured her. “It’s just that you have, well, I don’t know what to call it, this faculty, this gift, whatever it is, for seeing the things that are going to happen, and it’s always amazed me. It’s incredible, hey waddya think. Every time you get an inspiration, things happen just the way you say. We’ve known each other for a lot of years, haven’t we? And whenever you’ve predicted something, it’s happened exactly the way you say. You’re not like everybody else, like simple mortals, you have something that nobody else has but you, Adelaida. If you wanted to, you could’ve been rich if you’d become a professional fortune-teller.”
While he spoke, she had become very serious.
“More than a gift, it’s a great burden that God put on my shoulders, Felícito,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve said it so many times. I don’t like it when those inspirations come to me all of a sudden. I don’t know where they come from, or why it happens only with certain people, like you. It’s a mystery to me too. For example, I never have inspirations about myself. I’ve never known what’s going to happen to me tomorrow or the next day. Well, to answer your question: Yes, I was in Huancabamba, just one time. Let me tell you something. It makes me very sad that people go all the way up there, spending what they have and what they don’t have, going into debt to get a cure from the masters, that’s what they’re called. They’re liars, most of them at least. The ones who use a guinea pig, the ones who bathe sick people in the icy lake water. Instead of curing them, sometimes they kill them with pneumonia—”