Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  He’s taller, younger than Pancras. He takes a few steps toward them and Santiago finally sees his face: oh my God! He releases the chain and Rowdy starts to run and bark and he opens and closes his mouth: oh my God!

  “One sol for each animal, mister,” the half-breed says. “And besides, we have to take them to the dump to be burned. Only one sol, mister.”

  It wasn’t him, all Negroes look alike, it couldn’t be him. He thinks: why can’t it be him? The half-breed bends down, picks up the sack, yes, it was him, carries it to a corner of the yard, throws it among other bloody sacks, comes back swaying on his long legs and drying his forehead. It was him, it was him. Hey, buddy, Pancras nudges him, go get yourself some lunch.

  “You complain here, but when you go out in the truck to make pickups you have a great time,” the bald man grumbles. “This morning you picked up this gentleman’s dog, which was on a leash and with its mistress, you nitwits.”

  The half-breed shrugs his shoulders, it was him: they hadn’t gone out on the truck that morning, boss, they’d spent it with their clubs. He thinks: him. The voice, the body are his, but he looks thirty years older. The same thin lips, the same flat nose, the same kinky hair. But now, in addition, there are purple bags on his eyelids, wrinkles on his neck, a greenish-yellow crust on his horse teeth. He thinks: they used to be so white. What a change, what a ruin of a man. He’s thinner, dirtier, so much older, but that’s his big, slow walk, those are his spider legs. His big hands have a knotty bark on them now and there’s a rim of saliva around his mouth. They’ve come in from the yard, they’re in the office, Rowdy rubs against Santiago’s feet. He thinks: he doesn’t know who I am. He wasn’t going to tell him, he wasn’t going to talk to him. Who would ever recognize you, Zavalita, were you sixteen? eighteen? and now you’re an old man of thirty. The bald man puts a piece of carbon paper between two sheets, scrawls a few lines in a cramped and stingy hand. Leaning against the doorjamb, the half-breed licks his lips.

  “Just a little signature here, friend; and seriously, do us a small favor, write something in La Crónica asking them to raise our budget.” The bald man looks at the half-breed. “Weren’t you going to lunch?”

  “Could I have an advance?” He takes a step forward and explains in a natural way: “I’m low in funds, boss.”

  “Half a pound.” The bald man yawns. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  He accepts the banknote without looking at it and goes out with Santiago. A stream of trucks, buses and cars is crossing the Puente del Ejército, what kind of a face would he put on it? in the mist the earthen-colored hulks of the shacks of Fray Martín de Porres, would he start to run? seem to be part of a dream. He looks the half-breed in the eyes and the other one looks at him.

  “If you’d killed my dog I think I would have killed all of you,” and he tries to smile.

  No, Zavalita, he doesn’t recognize you. He listens attentively and his look is muddled, distant and respectful. Besides getting old, he’s most likely turned into a dumb animal too. He thinks: fucked up too.

  “Did they pick this woolly one up this morning?” An unexpected glow breaks out in his eyes for an instant. “It must have been black Céspedes, that guy doesn’t care about anything. He goes into backyards, breaks locks, anything just so he can earn his sol.”

  They’re at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to Alfonso Ugarte; Rowdy rolls on the ground and barks at the ash-gray sky.

  “Ambrosio?” He smiles, hesitates, smiles. “Aren’t you Ambrosio?”

  He doesn’t start to run, he doesn’t say anything. He looks with a dumbfounded and stupid expression and suddenly there’s a kind of vertigo in his eyes.

  “Don’t you remember me?” He hesitates, smiles, hesitates. “I’m Santiago, Don Fermín’s boy.”

  The big hands go up into the air, young Santiago, mister? they hang in the air as if trying to decide whether to strangle or embrace him, Don Fermín’s boy? His voice cracks with surprise or emotion and he blinks, blinded. Of course, man, didn’t he recognize him? Santiago, on the other hand, had recognized him the minute he saw him in the yard: what did he have to say? The big hands become active, I’ll be goddamned, they travel through the air again, how he’d grown, good Lord, they pat Santiago on the shoulders and back, and his eyes are laughing at last: I’m so happy, son.

  “I can’t believe you’ve grown into a man.” He feels him, looks at him, smiles at him. “I look at you and I can’t believe it, child. Of course I recognize you now. You look like your papa; a little bit of Señora Zoila too.”

  What about little Teté? and the big hands come and go, with feeling? with surprise? and Mr. Sparky? from Santiago’s arms to his shoulders to his back, and the eyes look tender and reminiscent as the voice tries hard to be natural. Weren’t coincidences strange? Who would have thought they’d ever meet again! And after such a long time, I’ll be goddamned.

  “This whole business has made me thirsty,” Santiago says. “Come on, let’s go have a drink. Do you know someplace around here?”

  “I know the place where I eat,” Ambrosio says. “La Catedral, a place for poor people, I don’t know if you’ll like it.”

  “As long as they have cold beer I’ll like it,” Santiago says. “Let’s go, Ambrosio.”

  It seemed impossible that little Santiago was drinking beer now, and Ambrosio smiles, his strong greenish-yellow teeth exposed to the air: time did fly, by golly. They go up the stairs, between the vacant lots on the first block of Alfonso Ugarte there’s a white Ford garage, and at the corner on the left, faded by the inexorable grayness, the warehouses of the Central Railroad appear. A truck loaded with crates hides the door of La Catedral. Inside, under the zinc roof, crowded on rough benches and around crude tables, a noisy voracious crowd. Two Chinese in shirtsleeves behind the bar watch the copper faces, the angular features that are chewing and drinking, and a frantic little man from the Andes in a shabby apron serves steaming bowls of soup, bottles, platters of rice. Plenty of feeling, plenty of kisses, plenty of love boom from a multicolored jukebox and in the back, behind the smoke, the noise, the solid smell of food and liquor, the dancing swarms of flies, there is a punctured wall—stones, shacks, a strip of river, the leaden sky—and an ample woman bathed in sweat manipulates pots and pans surrounded by the sputter of a grill. There’s an empty table beside the jukebox and among the scars on the wood one can make out a heart pierced by an arrow, a woman’s name: Saturnina.

  “I had lunch already, but you have something to eat,” Santiago says.

  “Two bottles of Cristal, good and cold,” Ambrosio shouts, cupping his hands to his mouth. “A bowl of fish soup, bread and stewed vegetables with rice.”

  You shouldn’t have come, you shouldn’t have spoken to him, Zavalita, you’re not fucked up, you’re crazy. He thinks: the nightmare will come back. It’ll be your fault, Zavalita, poor papa, poor old man.

  “Taxi drivers, workers from the small factories in the neighborhood.” Ambrosio points around them as if excusing himself. “They come all the way from the Avenida Argentina because the food is passable and, most important, cheap.”

  The Andean brings the beers, Santiago fills the glasses and they drink to your health, boy, to yours, Ambrosio, and there’s a compact, undecipherable smell that weakens, nauseates and wipes the head clean of memories.

  “What a stinking job you’ve got for yourself, Ambrosio. Have you been at the dog pound a long time?”

  “A month, son, and I got the job thanks to the rabies, because there hadn’t been any openings. It certainly is stinking, it squeezes you dry. The only relief is when you go out on the truck to make pickups.”

  It smells of sweat, chili and onions, urine and accumulated garbage and the music from the jukebox mingles with the collective voice, the growl of motors and horns, and it comes to one’s ears deformed and thick. Singed faces, prominent cheekbones, eyes made drowsy by routine or indolence wander among the tables, form clusters at the bar, block the ent
rance. Ambrosio accepts the cigarette that Santiago offers him, smokes, throws the butt on the floor and buries it under his foot. He slurps the soup noisily, nibbles on the pieces of fish, picks up the bones and sucks them, leaves them all shiny, listening or answering or asking a question, and he swallows pieces of bread, takes long swigs of beer and wipes the sweat off with his hand: time swallows a person up before he realizes it, child. He thinks: why don’t I leave? He thinks: I have to go and he orders more beer. He fills the glasses, clutches his and, while he talks, remembers, dreams, or thinks he watches the circle of foam sprinkled with craters, mouths that silently open up, vomiting golden bubbles and disappearing into the yellow liquid that his hand warms. He drinks without closing his eyes, belches, takes out cigarettes and lights them, leans over to pet Rowdy: the things that have happened, Jesus. He talks and Ambrosio talks, the pouches on his eyelids are bluish, the openings in his nose vibrate as if he’d been running, as if he were drowning, and after each sip he spits, looks nostalgically at the flies, listens, smiles, or grows sad or confused, and his eyes seem to grow furious sometimes or frightened or go away; sometimes he has a coughing spell. There are gray hairs in his kinky mat, on top of his overalls he wears a jacket that must have been blue once too and had buttons, and a shirt with a high collar that is wrapped around his neck like a rope. Santiago looks at his enormous shoes: muddy, twisted, fucked up by the weather. His voice comes to him in a stammer, fearful, is lost, cautious, imploring, returns, respectful or anxious or constrained, always defeated: not thirty, forty, a hundred, more. Not only had he fallen apart, grown old, become brutalized; he probably was tubercular as well. A thousand times more fucked up than Carlitos or you, Zavalita. He was leaving, he had to go and he orders more beer. You’re drunk, Zavalita, you were about to cry. Life doesn’t treat people well in this country, son, since he’d left their house he’d gone through a thousand movie adventures. Life hadn’t treated him well either, Ambrosio, and he orders more beer. Was he going to throw up? The smell of frying, feet and armpits swirls about, biting and enveloping, over the straight-haired or bushy heads, over the gummy crests and the flat necks with mange and brilliantine, the music on the jukebox grows quiet and revives, grows quiet and revives, and now, more intense and irrevocable than the sated faces and square mouths and dark beardless cheeks, the abject images of memory are also there: more beer. Wasn’t this country a can of worms, boy, wasn’t Peru a brain-twister? Could you believe it, Odríists and Apristas, who used to hate each other so much, all buddy-buddy now? What would his father have said about all this, boy? They talk and sometimes he listens timidly, respectfully to Ambrosio, who dares protest: he had to go, boy. He’s small and inoffensive there in the distance, behind the long table that’s a raft of bottles and his eyes are drunken and afraid. Rowdy barks once, barks a hundred times. An inner whirlwind, an effervescence in the heart of his heart, a feeling of suspended time and bad breath. Are they talking? The jukebox stops blasting, blasts again. The thick river of smells seems to break up into tributaries of tobacco, beer, human skin and the remains of meals that circulate warmly through the heavy air of La Catedral, and suddenly they’re absorbed by an invincible higher stench: neither you nor I was right, papa, it’s the smell of defeat, papa. People who come in, eat, laugh, roar, people who leave and the eternal pale profile of the Chinese at the bar. They speak, they grow silent, they drink, they smoke, and when the Andean appears, bending over the tabletop bristling with bottles, the other tables are empty and the jukebox and the crackling of the grill can no longer be heard, only Rowdy barking, Saturnina. The Andean counts on his darkened fingers and he sees Ambrosio’s urgent face coming toward him: did he feel bad, boy? A little headache, it would go away. You’re acting ridiculous, he thinks, I’ve had a lot to drink, Huxley, here’s Rowdy, safe and sound, I took so long because I ran into a friend. He thinks: love. He thinks: stop it, Zavalita, that’s enough. Ambrosio puts his hand into his pocket and Santiago puts out his arms: don’t be foolish, man, he was paying. He staggers and Ambrosio and the Andean support him: let me go, he could walk by himself, he felt all right. By God, boy, it was to be expected, he’d had a lot to drink. He goes forward step by step through the empty tables and the crippled chairs of La Catedral, staring at the chancrous floor: O.K., it’s all gone. His brain is clearing, the weakness in his legs is going away, his eyes are clearing up. But the images are still there. Getting tangled in his feet, Rowdy barks impatiently.

  “It’s good you had enough money, boy. Are you really feeling better?”

  “My stomach’s a little queasy, but I’m not drunk, the drinks didn’t do anything to me. My head’s spinning from thinking so much.”

  “It’s four o’clock, I don’t know what kind of story I can make up. I could lose my job, you don’t realize that. But thanks in any case. For the beer, for the lunch, for the conversation. I hope I can make it up to you someday, son.”

  They’re on the sidewalk. The Andean has just closed the big wooden door, the truck that hid the entrance has left, the mist wipes out the building fronts and in the steel-colored light of the afternoon, oppressive and identical, the stream of cars, trucks and buses flows over the Puente del Ejército. There’s no one nearby, the distant pedestrians are faceless silhouettes that slip along through smoky veils. We say good-bye and that’s it, he thinks, you’ll never see him again. He thinks: I never saw him, I never spoke to him, a shower, a nap and that’s it.

  “Do you really feel all right, son? Do you want me to go with you?”

  “The one who doesn’t feel well is you,” he says without moving his lips. “All afternoon, four hours of this, it’s made you feel bad.”

  “Don’t you believe it, I’ve got a good head for drinking,” Ambrosio says, and, for an instant, he laughs. He stands there with his mouth ajar, his hand petrified on his chin. He’s motionless, three feet from Santiago, his lapels turned up, and Rowdy, his ears stiff, his teeth showing, looks at Santiago, looks at Ambrosio, and scratches the ground, startled or restless or frightened. Inside La Catedral they’re dragging chairs and seem to be mopping the floor.

  “You know damned well what I’m talking about,” Santiago says. “Please don’t play dumb with me.”

  He doesn’t want to or he can’t understand, Zavalita: he hasn’t moved and in his eyes there’s still the same blind challenge, that terrible dark tenacity.

  “If you don’t want me to go with you, son,” he stammers and lowers his eyes, his voice, “do you want me to get you a taxi then?”

  “They need a janitor at La Crónica,” and he lowers his voice too. “It’s not as nasty a job as the one at the pound. I’ll see that they hire you without any papers. You’d be a lot better off. But please, stop playing dumb for a little while.”

  “All right, all right.” There’s a growing uneasiness in his eyes, it’s as if his voice were going to break up into shreds. “What’s the matter, boy, why do you act like this?”

  “I’ll give you my whole month’s pay,” and his voice suddenly becomes thick, but he doesn’t weep; he’s rigid, his eyes opened very wide. “Three thousand five hundred soles. Couldn’t you get along with that money?”

  He’s silent, he lowers his head and automatically, as if the silence had loosened an inflexible mechanism, Ambrosio’s body takes a step backward and he shrugs his shoulders and his hands come forward at the level of his stomach as if to defend himself or attack. Rowdy growls.

  “Have the drinks gone to your head?” he snorts, his voice upset. “What’s the matter, what is it you want?”

  “For you to stop playing dumb.” He closes his eyes and breathes in some air. “For us to talk frankly about the Muse, about my father. Did he order you? It doesn’t matter anymore, I just want to know. Was it my father?”

  His voice is cut off and Ambrosio takes another step backward and Santiago sees him crouched and tense, his eyes open wide with fear or rage: don’t leave, come here. He hasn’t become brutalized, you’re not a boob,
he thinks, come on, come on. Ambrosio wavers with his body, waves a fist, as if threatening or saying good-bye.

  “I’m leaving so that you won’t be sorry for what you’ve said,” he growls, his voice painful. “I don’t need work, I want you to know that I won’t take any favors from you, least of all your money. I want you to know that you don’t deserve the father you had, I want you to know that. You can go straight to shit hell, boy.”

  “All right, all right, I don’t care,” Santiago says. “Come on, don’t leave, come back.”

  There is a short growl by his feet, Rowdy is looking too: the small dark figure is going off clinging to the fences of the vacant lots, standing out against the gleaming windows of the Ford garage, sinking into the stairway by the bridge.

  “All right,” Santiago sobs, leaning over, petting the stiff little tail, the anxious snout. “We’re going now, Rowdy.”

  He straightens up, sobs again, takes out a handkerchief and wipes his eyes. For a few seconds he doesn’t move, his back against the door of La Catedral, getting the drizzle in his face full of tears once more. Rowdy rubs against his ankles, licks his shoes, whimpers softly, looking at him. He starts walking slowly, his hands in his pockets, toward the Plaza Dos de Mayo and Rowdy trots alongside. People are collapsed at the base of the monument and around them a dung heap of cigarette butts, peels and paper; on the corner people are storming the run-down buses that become lost in dust clouds as they head to the shantytowns; a policeman is arguing with a street vendor and the faces of both are hateful and discouraged and their voices seem to be curled by a hollow exasperation. He walks around the square, going into Colmena he hails a taxi: wouldn’t his dog dirty the seat? No, driver, he wouldn’t dirty it: Miraflores, the Calle Porta. He gets in, puts Rowdy on his lap, that bulge in his jacket. Play tennis, swim, lift weights, get mixed up, become alcoholic like Carlitos. He closes his eyes, leans his head against the back of the seat, his hand strokes the back, the ears, the cold nose, the trembling belly. You were saved from the pound, Rowdy, but no one’s ever going to get you out of the pound you’re in, Zavalita, tomorrow he’d visit Carlitos in the hospital and bring him a book, not Huxley. The taxi goes along through blind noisy streets, in the darkness he hears engines, whistles, fleeting voices. Too bad you didn’t take Norwin up on lunch, Zavalita. He thinks: he kills them with a club and you with editorials. He was better off than you, Zavalita. He’d paid more, he’d fucked himself up more. He thinks: poor papa. The taxi slows down and he opens his eyes: the Diagonal is there, caught in the headlights of the cab, oblique, silvery, boiling with cars, its lighted ads quivering already. The mist whitens the trees in the park, the church steeples drift off in the grayness, the tops of the ficus trees waver: stop here. He pays the fare and Rowdy starts to bark. He turns him loose, sees him go into the entrance to the elf houses like a rocket. Inside he hears the barking, straightens his jacket, his tie, hears Ana’s shout, imagines her face. He goes into the courtyard, the elf houses have their windows lighted, Ana’s silhouette as she hugs Rowdy and comes toward him, what took you so long, love, I was nervous, so frightened, love.