The Neighborhood

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Juan Peineta had come to esteem Crecilda—and he thought she felt the same for him—especially when he learned that she had been involved in the world of show business for many years and that, like him, her career as a dancer had ended because of that demon in trousers, that Satan, Rolando Garro. Crecilda’s story made him sad because, like him, she was alone in the world. She’d had a son, but he’d left her years ago and she no longer had any contact with him at all; the boy had gone to find his fortune in the jungle, which made Crecilda very apprehensive, thinking that he probably was involved in something bad, maybe smuggling or, even worse, drug trafficking. But then, too, he also felt sad because of how disfigured her face was after she’d had that surgery to remove wrinkles. She had told him the story, and it really was very sad; a friend had a facelift with the surgeon Pichín Rebolledo, and looked much younger. Crecilda decided to do the same; she even took out a bank loan to pay in advance, as he required. And just look at how he had left her! So swollen and disfigured she could barely close her eyes, for he had tightened her eyelids. Her whole face, down to the beginning of her neck, had lost its color and acquired a bluish cast, like the face of someone with tuberculosis, or a corpse. “That surgeon and Rolando Garro are the tragedy of my life,” she would say mischievously. “And I didn’t fuck either one of them.” She wasn’t embittered or resentful, just the opposite: she maintained a lively spirit and knew how to fend off adversity without losing her coarse, vulgar sense of humor. It was one of the things about her that Juan Peineta liked best: Crecilda knew how to put on a brave face in hard times and defy misfortune with her delicious laughter.

  When the first shift for lunch was over, Crecilda came to find Juan and took him with her to the small locutory from which one could observe everything that happened in the place. They sat down to drink two cups of tea that she had already prepared, and as they chatted, Crecilda kept glancing at the huge dining room to see that everything was in order, that nothing and no one demanded her presence.

  “And what would happen if the good sisters discovered that you were once a music hall dancer and performer, Crecilda?”

  “Nothing would happen. The sisters are very good people,” she replied. “They know that’s all over and forgotten, and now in my old age I behave like a saint. I come to Mass and take Communion every Sunday. Don’t you see how I’m dressed? Don’t I look like a nun, too?”

  She did. She wore a tunic of rough cloth that covered her from her shoulders to her feet, encased in house slippers.

  “They ought to have meat on the menu sometime, Crecilda,” said Juan, enjoying his sugared tea. “I already know that scramble of vegetables all too well. Even now when my memory is a disaster, every day I forget something else.”

  “If you only knew: it’s a miracle they keep producing that lunch, Juanito.” She shrugged. “A real miracle. The donations become skimpier every day. And with all the talk about the crisis, even the poor sisters are half-dead with hunger with the little they eat. I wouldn’t be surprised if this dining room closed any day now.”

  “And what would happen to you then, Crecilda?”

  “I’d have to devote myself to begging, Juanito. Because I doubt very much that I’d find another job. The time for me to devote myself to a wayward life is past.”

  “Well, one possibility is that you marry me and come live at the Hotel Mogollón.”

  “I think I prefer begging to that proposal of marriage,” Crecilda said with a laugh, indicating a negative response with her hand. “Do you think the three of us would fit in that cave you live in?”

  “Three of us?” Juan was surprised.

  “Your cat,” she reminded him. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten him, too. His name’s Serafín, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Serafín. Do you know why I think he doesn’t follow me when I come here? He’s afraid the vagrants in the neighborhood will kidnap him and turn him into ‘cat stew.’”

  “They say it’s delicious when it’s well prepared,” Crecilda acknowledged. “But no matter what they say, I’d rather die than eat a cat. Listen, Juan, changing the subject, have you seen the latest issue of Exposed?”

  “As you can imagine, Crecilda, I haven’t bought and never will buy one of Señor Rolando Garro’s magazines.”

  “Neither have I, compadre,” she replied, laughing and again making a negative sign with her right hand. “But I read it sometimes when I see it hanging in the magazine kiosks. So you haven’t seen the latest scandal he’s uncovered. Photos of a millionaire in that awful orgy in Chosica. I never thought they’d publish photos like these. They even show him doing sixty-nine with some girl.”

  “Sixty-nine?” Juan Peineta said with a sigh. “You know, Crecilda, I never got to do that with my Atanasia. At least, I don’t remember our doing it. We were both a little puritanical, I think.”

  “A little stupid, you mean, Juanito,” Crecilda said with a laugh. “You don’t know what you missed.”

  “Yes, maybe you’re right. And who is the millionaire in the photos? From here, a Peruvian?”

  She nodded:

  “Yes, yes, his name is Enrique Cárdenas and he’s a miner, really rich, it seems. Photos that are really shocking, Juanito. I think this time that midget bastard Garrito has gone too far. And maybe now they’ll make him pay for all the bad he’s done.”

  “From your lips, Crecilda,” Juan Peineta said with a sigh. “I only hope that miner hires a killer to take care of him. They say there are very cheap Colombian assassins who’ve come to Peru because back in Colombia there’s no work for them. And apparently they’ll take care of anybody for just two or three thousand soles.”

  “I’d rather they threw him in jail, Juanito. What do we get if he dies? It’s better if he suffers, if he pays for all the bad he’s done with years in jail. Death isn’t enough for guys like him. But rotting for years and years in a cell, yes, that’s a real punishment.”

  “Yes, yes, they should torture him,” Juan Peineta laughed. “Pull out his nails, his eyes, cook him over a slow fire, the way the inquisitors did with heretics.”

  They were laughing as they imagined evil things happening to Rolando Garro, the man responsible for their respective misfortunes, until the second shift for lunch was over. Crecilda had to go to supervise the dishwashing and the cleanliness of the place. Juan Peineta said goodbye and thought that on his way back to the Hotel Mogollón he’d look for a kiosk where Exposed was on display, he wanted to see that millionaire naked and doing the famous sixty-nine that he and Atanasia, out of excessive piety, had never done. Or had they? He couldn’t remember. But yes, he did recall that Atanasia refused to suck him off, claiming that her confessor had said that doing those filthy things, even though they were married, was a mortal sin. And he, who loved her so much, had he been resigned? He wasn’t very certain. He tittered: “Juanito, you’ll die without ever knowing what a sixty-nine and a suck-off were like.” Bah, hadn’t he and Atanasia been happy without experiencing that kind of foolishness?

  He found the kiosk where Exposed was on display and it took him some time to approach the issue of the magazine hanging from a couple of hooks in the ceiling of the magazine kiosk. Two pages of the weekly were on view: the cover and the double spread in the middle. A handful of people had crowded around him, contemplating the scandalous photographs; some stood on tiptoe, trying to read the captions and the other information that the photos illustrated. Juan Peineta recognized the face of the great gentleman who appeared here naked, in every imaginable position, and how well accompanied! He couldn’t find the photo of the sixty-nine. It must be on one of the inside pages, what a shame. Juan Peineta told himself he would have to confess to having spent so much time looking at such filth. He reflected in astonishment that Crecilda probably was right. This time Rolando Garro had gone too far. That guy was important, one of Peru’s fat cats. Photographing him like that, in those positions, with those women, was too much. Garro would pay; this time he wouldn’t get his way
as easily as he had so often in the past. And he immediately began to plan the letter he would write as soon as he was back at the Hotel Mogollón.

  He resumed his walk, always taking small steps, unable to get the images in Exposed out of his head. It meant that those things were not only dreamed about, they were lived in reality, too. Well, by the fat cats, not by poor men. He’d never gone in for that kind of bizarre thing. Or had he, one night when he’d been drinking? He wasn’t sure about that, either. His forgetfulness created problems for him when it was time to confess. The priest became exasperated: “Now you don’t even remember your sins. Have you come here to mock me?” Perhaps he didn’t try those things because he was very happy making love in a nice, normal way with poor Atanasia. He remembered how his wife would tremble all over when they made love, and her eyes would grow wet.

  When he was only three blocks from the Hotel Mogollón, he discovered that Serafín had silently reappeared and was walking between his feet. “Hi, pal,” he said, happy to see him. “Well, today at least you escaped their kidnapping you and throwing you into a pot to make a ‘cat stew’ out of you. Don’t worry, while you’re with me nobody will touch a hair on your head, Serafín. Now, in the hotel, I’ll give you a little of the milk I’ve been keeping in the bottle. I hope it hasn’t gone sour.”

  In his room in the Hotel Mogollón, after sharpening his pencil, he wrote a letter to “Señor Rolando Garro, Editor of Exposed.” He reproached him for having violated the privacy of that degenerate miner who engaged in sexual depravities with prostitutes, and for having offended the honor and morality of his readers by publishing that obscene filth, which, if it fell into the hands of children and minors, could shock and pervert them. Undoubtedly there were laws he had violated with those scandalous photographs and he hoped the national public prosecutor would intervene in this matter and proceed to close the aforementioned magazine and fine and prosecute its twisted editor.

  He reread the letter, signed it, and, satisfied with himself, prepared to go to sleep. Early tomorrow—if he remembered—he would mail it.

  13

  An Absence

  Shorty prepared her frugal breakfast every morning—café con leche and brown corn bread—but today, she didn’t know why, she had the impulse to have it in a coffee shop in Five Corners located at the bus stop. After thirty or forty-five minutes of shaking and crowding, the bus carried her each morning down the very long Grau Avenue, the Zanjón, and Panamerican Avenue to Surquillo, in the vicinity of Exposed. They did not have corn bread in the coffee shop, so she ordered some kind of biscuit along with her café con leche and they brought her sweet bread. She was sorry she had gone there: the coffee shop was dirty and the walls were stained and the waiter who served her, a cripple with rheumy eyes, had black, very long nails.

  But the good weather improved her spirits. In spite of its being the middle of winter, there was a luminescence this morning in Lima that seemed to announce the sun. “The sky is celebrating our success too,” she said to herself. Because the issue of Exposed with the photographs of Engineer Enrique Cárdenas had been a rousing success, announcing on the first page, in a large headline in red and black letters above the spectacular image: “Naked Magnate Having a Snack!” Three successive reprints in a single day! The night before, a euphoric Rolando Garro had been negotiating a fourth with the printer even though it was barely a thousand more copies.

  What would happen now? she had asked her boss when the letter from Engineer Enrique Cárdenas’s lawyers had reached the magazine’s editorial office, denying, of course, that he was the man in those photos and accusing them of libel and slander. Apparently they had filed for an order of relief, asking for the sequestration of the issue, including the first copies.

  “What’s going to happen?” Rolando Garro asked himself, shrugging. And he answered his own question, giving one of his sarcastic little laughs: “Nothing, Shorty. Does anything ever happen when a scandal breaks in Lima? I wish something would, I wish a judge would close down Exposed. We’d put out a new weekly called Gotcha maybe, and sell as many copies as we did this week.”

  Shorty thought her boss’s calm was faked. Because this time the subject of the scandal wasn’t a model, a dancer, an actor, or one of those poor show-business types like that idiot Juan Peineta with his animosity toward Rolando Garro, who couldn’t do him or the magazine much harm no matter how they tried and who, like the ex-Joker, dedicated their lives to that useless plan. Engineer Enrique Cárdenas, an important entrepreneur, rich, powerful, wouldn’t just sit still after an issue in which he appeared naked among whorish tits and asses. He’d take his revenge, and if he persisted, he certainly could have the weekly closed down. Well, we’d soon see, she didn’t much like the idea of losing her job overnight. Rolando Garro seemed so sure of himself that probably, just as in the other exposés they’d done, there would be no consequences this time, either. Just think of how poor Ceferino Argüello’s photographs had ended up; instead of making them all-powerful, as Rolando believed, they would be just another scandal in Exposed.

  She paid for her meager breakfast and took the bus; it wasn’t too crowded, she even was able to find a seat. It took three quarters of an hour to reach the stop on the Panamericana, in Surquillo, a few blocks from Calle Dante. She was walking to her office when Ceferino Argüello, the weekly’s photographer, approached her. As always, his skeletal body was crammed into blue jeans and a dirty polo shirt, wrinkled and open at the neck. He looked more frightened than usual.

  “What is it, Ceferino? Why that face, who died this time?”

  “Can we get something to drink, Julieta?” The photographer, very upset, paid no attention to her question. “My treat.”

  “I have an appointment with the boss,” she said. “And I’m running late.”

  “Señor Garro isn’t in yet,” he insisted, pleading with her. “Just for a moment, Julieta. I’m begging you, please, as a colleague and an old friend. Don’t turn me down.”

  She agreed and they went to the little café near Exposed, Peruvian Delight, where the reporters on the magazine had coffee, and on the days they put the issue to bed, would eat a sandwich with an Inca Kola for lunch. They ordered two sodas.

  “What is it, Ceferino?” Shorty asked. “Go on, tell me your troubles. I imagine they don’t have anything to do with love.”

  Ceferino Argüello didn’t want to joke; he was very serious, and there was a great deal of fear in his dark eyes.

  “I’m shitting, I’m so scared, Julieta.” He spoke very quietly so that no one would hear him, and it was absurd, nobody could hear him because at that moment, they were the only customers in Peruvian Delight. “This is getting too big, don’t you think? Last night all the channels opened their news reports with photos of the magazine. This morning, radio and television stations pounded away at the same subject.”

  “What do you expect, you idiot, you’re finally becoming famous like the rest of us, thanks to this issue.” She mocked the photographer. “We haven’t had this much success with an exposé for a long time. Now, for sure, at the end of the month we’ll all get our full salary.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” Ceferino remonstrated with her. He paused, looked around, and continued in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. “That Cárdenas is very important, and if he decides to take his revenge he can fuck up our lives. Don’t forget that you signed that article too, Shorty.”

  “On the other hand, your name doesn’t appear anywhere, Ceferino, so take it easy,” she said, making an effort to get up. “Pay, and let’s get out of here. And please, don’t be such a big sissy. You’re scared of everything.”

  “Even though I’m not named in the article, I took those photos, Julieta,” he insisted; his anguished expression looked almost comic. “And I’m the only photographer listed on the masthead. I can get involved in a big mess. Señor Garro should have consulted me before doing what he did with my photographs.”

  “It must be your fault, Ce
ferino, you brought it on yourself,” Shorty attacked him. But she took pity on the terror she saw in his eyes and smiled at him: “Nobody will know you took them. So cut the bullshit and don’t think about it anymore.”

  “Swear you haven’t told anybody that I took them, Julieta. And that you never will.”

  “I’ll swear anything you want, Ceferino. Forget about it. Nobody’s going to find out, nothing’s going to happen to you. Don’t worry.”

  The photographer, his face constantly tormented, paid, and they left. Rolando Garro wasn’t at Exposed yet. While they waited for him, Shorty devoted herself to reviewing all the day’s papers. Caramba, what excitement! There were references to the scandal in every paper, without exception, from serious publications to the most insignificant dailies. Shorty laughed to herself: the engineer must be feeling like a puddle of spit right now. When she finished going through the papers it was eleven in the morning. Strange that Rolando Garro hadn’t showed up or called to give a reason for being late. She called his cell phone and it was turned off. Could he still be asleep? It was unusual, the boss never missed an appointment, even with his reporters, without giving a reason for being late. Shorty looked around; there was a strange silence in the editorial room; nobody was typing on a computer, nobody was talking. Estrellita Santibáñez looked at her desk as if hypnotized; old man Pepín Sotillos had the butt of his cigarette dangling from his lips as if he’d forgotten he was smoking. Lizbeth Carnero, distracted from her stars, bit her nails, not bothering to hide her uneasiness. Up at one of the Theatine windows, a turkey buzzard was sitting, seeming to observe them with his fierce stare as if they were strange beasts. Everyone was very serious, waiting, looking at her, not hiding their concern. Poor Ceferino Argüello looked as if he were about to mount a scaffold.