Conversation in the Cathedral

by Mario Vargas Llosa

Lazy bum, Trifulcio thought, looking at Téllez’ shaved neck. What did he know about politics, what did he care about politics? He was asking questions just to ass-kiss. He took out a cigarette and in order to light it he had to lean on Urondo. He opened his eyes in surprise, what, are we there already? How could they be there, they’d just gone through Chala, Urondo.

  “It’s the kind of story where I don’t know where to begin, it was all lies,” Ludovico said. “It all came out backwards. Everybody tricked us. Even Don Cayo was tricked.”

  “You can say that again,” Ambrosio said. “If anybody caught it with that business in Arequipa, it was him. He lost his ministry and he had to leave Peru.”

  “Your boss must be happy over what’s happened, right?” Ludovico said.

  “Naturally. Don Fermín more than anyone else,” Ambrosio said. “He didn’t want to screw Odría as much as he did Don Cayo. He had to hide out for a few days, he thought they were going to arrest him.”

  The van entered Camaná around seven o’clock. It was beginning to get dark and there weren’t many people on the streets. The man who gave the orders drove them directly to a restaurant. They got out, stretched. Trifulcio felt cramps and chills. The man who gave the orders took the menu, ordered beer and said I’m going to do some checking. What’s the matter with you, Trifulcio thought, none of the others here is as tired as you are. Téllez, Urondo and Martínez the foreman were eating and cracking jokes. He wasn’t hungry, only thirsty. He drank down a glass of beer without taking a breath and thought of Tomasa and Chincha. Are we going to spend the night here? Téllez asked, and Urondo wondered if there was a whorehouse in Camaná. There must be, Martínez the foreman said, one thing there’s no shortage of anywhere are whorehouses and churches. Finally they asked him what’s wrong, Trifulcio. Nothing, I’ve got a touch of a cold. What you’ve got is you’re getting old, Urondo said. Trifulcio laughed but he hated him inside. While they were having dessert the man who gave the orders came back, in a bad mood: what kind of a mess was that, who could understand that mix-up.

  “No mess at all,” the Subprefect said. “Secretary Bermúdez explained it to me quite clearly on the telephone.”

  “A truck will be coming through with Senator Arévalo’s people, Subprefect,” Cayo Bermúdez said. “Take care of them, please give them anything they may need.”

  “But Mr. Lozano only asked Don Emilio for four or five,” the man who gave the orders said. “What truck is he talking about? Has the Minister gone crazy?”

  “Five people to break up a demonstration?” the Subprefect asked. “Somebody’s crazy, but not Mr. Bermúdez. He told me a truck, twenty or thirty people. I set up beds for forty just in case.”

  “I tried to talk to Don Emilio, but he’s not at the ranch anymore, he left for Lima,” the man who gave the orders said. “And with Mr. Lozano, but he’s not at Headquarters. God damn it.”

  “Don’t worry, the five of us are enough and more than enough.” Téllez laughed. “Have a beer, sir.”

  “Can’t you get some reinforcements?” asked the man who gave the orders.

  “No hope,” the Subprefect said. “The people of Camaná are a lazy bunch. The whole Restoration Party here is me.”

  “Well, let’s see how we can get out of this mess,” the man who gave the orders said. “No whorehouses, no drinking. Get some sleep. We’ve got to be fresh for tomorrow.”

  The Subprefect had set up lodgings for them at the police station and as soon as they got there Trifulcio flopped down on his cot and wrapped himself up in his blanket. Quiet and covered up, he felt better. Téllez, Urondo and Martínez the foreman had sneaked in a bottle and were passing it from bed to bed, chatting. He was listening to them: if they’d asked for a whole truckload the thing must be rough, Urondo was saying. Bah, Senator Arévalo told them an easy job, boys, and he hasn’t tricked us yet, Martínez the foreman said. Besides, if something went wrong, that’s what they had cops for, said Téllez. Sixty, sixty-five? Trifulcio was thinking, I wonder how old I am now.

  “It started going bad for me the minute we got on the plane here,” Ludovico said. “It was so rough that I got sick and puked all over Hipólito. I was a mess when I got to Arequipa. It took a few drinks of pisco to get me back in shape.”

  “When the newspapers wrote about what went on in the theater, that people were killed, good Lord, I thought,” Ambrosio said. “But your name wasn’t on the list of victims.”

  “They sent us to the slaughter knowing all about it,” Ludovico said. “When I hear the word theater, I begin to feel the punches. And the feeling of being strangled, Ambrosio, that terrible feeling of being strangled.”

  “They were able to raise a row like that,” Ambrosio said, “because the whole city rose up against the government, right, Ludovico?”

  “Yes,” Senator Landa said. “Grenades were thrown in the theater and people were killed. Bermúdez is all washed up, Fermín.”

  “If Lozano wanted a truck, why did he tell Don Emilio four or five are enough,” the man who gave the orders cursed for the tenth time. “And where are Lozano and Don Emilio, why is it impossible to get anyone on the phone?”

  They’d left Camaná while it was still dark, without any breakfast, and the man who gave the orders did nothing but grumble. You spent all night trying to phone and you’re dying from lack of sleep, Trifulcio thought. He hadn’t been able to sleep either. It got colder as the van climbed up into the mountains. Trifulcio nodded at times and listened to Téllez, Urondo and Martínez the foreman as they passed cigarettes around. You’ve grown old, he thought, you’re going to die one of these days. They arrived in Arequipa at ten o’clock. The man who gave the orders took them to a house where there was a sign with red letters: Restoration Party. The door was closed. Knocking, ringing the bell, nobody opened. On the narrow street people were going into shops, the sun didn’t warm anything, newsboys were hawking papers. The air was very clean, the sky looked very high. Finally a boy in bare feet came to open up, yawning. Why were party headquarters closed, the man who gave the orders scolded him, it was ten o’clock already. The boy looked at him with surprise: they were always closed, they only opened them on Thursday nights when Dr. Lama and the other gentlemen came. Why did they call Arequipa the white city, when none of the houses were white? Trifulcio was thinking. They went in. Desks with no papers on them, old chairs, pictures of Odría, posters, Long Live the Revolution of Restoration, Health, Education, Work, Odría Is the Nation. The man who gave the orders ran to the telephone: what happened, where were the people, why wasn’t there anyone to meet us. Téllez, Urondo and Martínez the foreman were hungry: could they go out and get some breakfast, sir? Be back in ten minutes, the man who gave the orders said. He gave them ten soles and they left in the van. They found a café with small tables and white cloths, they ordered coffee and sandwiches. Look, Urondo said, Everybody to the Municipal Theater Tonight, All with the Coalition, they’d done their little publicity job. Will I get mountain sickness? Trifulcio wondered. He was breathing and it was as if the air wasn’t entering his body.

  “Arequipa’s nice, clean,” Ludovico said. “Women on the street who aren’t too bad. Apple-cheeked, of course.”

  “What did Hipólito do to you?” Ambrosio asked. “He didn’t say anything to me. Just it was bad for us, brother, and he took off.”

  “He feels guilty because he acted like a fairy,” Ludovico said. “What a coward of a guy, Ambrosio.”

  “And to think I might have been there, Ludovico,” Ambrosio said. “It was lucky Don Fermín didn’t go.”

  “Do you know who we found as the big boss at the post in Arequipa?” Ludovico asked. “Molina.”

  “Chink Molina?” Ambrosio asked. “Wasn’t he in Chiclayo?”

  “Do you remember the way he used to put on with those of us who weren’t on the regular list?” Ludovico said. “He’s a different person now. He received us as if we were old buddies.”

  “Welcome, colleagues, come in,” M
olina said. “Did the others stay on the square flirting with the girls of Arequipa?”

  “What others?” Hipólito said. “Only Ludovico and I have come.”

  “What do you mean what others,” Molina said. “The twenty-five others Mr. Lozano promised me.”

  “Oh yes, I heard him say that people were probably coming from Puno and Cuzco,” Ludovico said. “Haven’t they got here?”

  “I just spoke to Cuzco, and Cabrejitos didn’t say anything about it,” Molina said. “I don’t understand. Besides, there’s not much time. The Coalition rally is at seven o’clock.”

  “The tricks, the lies, Ambrosio,” Ludovico said. “The confusion, the fairying around.”

  “I see now, it’s an ambush,” Don Fermín said. “Bermúdez has been waiting for the Coalition to grow and now he wants to pounce on them. But why did he pick Arequipa, Don Emilio?”

  “Because it would be good for publicity,” Don Emilio Arévalo said. “Odría’s revolution had its start in Arequipa, Fermín.”

  “He wants to show the country that Arequipa is an Odría town,” Senator Landa said. “The people of Arequipa stop the Coalition from holding a rally. The opposition looks ridiculous and the Restoration Party has a clear path in the ’56 elections.”

  “He’s going to send twenty-five plainclothes cops from Lima,” Don Emilio Arévalo said. “And he’s asked me for a truckload of peasants who are good in a fight,”

  “He’s prepared his bomb with great care,” Senator Landa said. “But this time it won’t be like Espina’s time. This time the bomb is going to blow up in his face.”

  “Molina tried to talk to Mr. Lozano and he’d disappeared,” Ludovico said. “And Don Cayo too. His secretary answered, he’s not here, not here.”

  “Send you reinforcements, Chink?” Cabrejitos said. “You must be dreaming. Nobody told me anything and even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. My people are up to their necks in work.”

  “Chink Molina was tearing his hair,” Ludovico said.

  “It’s good Senator Arévalo is sending us help,” Molina said. “Fifty, I think, and tough. With them, you and the people on the force we’ll do what we can.”

  “I’d like to try some of those stuffed chilis they have in Arequipa, Ludovico,” Hipólito said. “Since we’re here.”

  After breakfast, disobeying orders, they took a little walk through the city: narrow streets, a cold little sun, houses with grillwork and big entranceways, shining cobblestones, priests, churches. The gates to the Plaza de Armas looked like the walls of a fortress. Trifulcio was taking in air with his mouth open and Téllez was pointing at the walls: the Coalition people have sure done a lot of publicity work. They sat down on a bench in the square across from the gray façade of the cathedral, and a car passed with loudspeakers: Everybody to the Municipal Theater at Seven O’Clock, Everybody Come Hear the Opposition Leaders. Out of the car windows they were throwing fliers that the people picked up, looked at and threw away. The altitude, Trifulcio was thinking. They’d told him: your heart like a drum and you have trouble breathing. He felt as if he’d been running or fighting: pulse fast, temples throbbing, veins hard. Or maybe old age, Trifulcio thought. They couldn’t remember the way back and they had to ask. Restoration Party? people asked, is that something to eat? Some party Odría has, Martínez the foreman laughed, people don’t even know where it is. They got there and the man who gave the orders bawled them out: did they think they’d come here as tourists? There were two guys with him. One short with glasses and a small necktie, and the other half-breed-looking and hefty, in shirtsleeves, and the short one was arguing with the man who gave the orders: they’d promised him fifty and he’d sent five. They weren’t going to make a fool of him like that.

  “Call Lima, Dr. Lama, try to locate Don Emilio, or Lozano, or Mr. Bermúdez,” said the man who gave the orders. “I tried all night and I couldn’t. I don’t know, I understand it even less than you do. Mr. Lozano told Don Emilio five and here we are, doctor. Let them explain who’s right and who’s wrong.”

  “It’s not that we don’t have people, but that we need specialists, people with experience,” Dr. Lama said. “And besides, I’m protesting on principle. They lied to me.”

  “What difference does it make if they haven’t sent more, doctor?” the hefty half-breed said. “Let’s go to the market, we can round up three hundred and they’ll tear the theater apart just the same.”

  “Can you count on the people from the market?” the man who gave the orders asked. “I don’t have much faith in you, Ruperto.”

  “Absolutely,” Ruperto said. “I’ve had experience. We’ll draft the whole market and we’ll fall on the Municipal Theater like a landslide.”

  “Let’s go see Molina,” Dr. Lama said. “His people must have come.”

  “And at Headquarters we met Senator Arévalo’s famous bruisers,” Ludovico said. “The fifty turned out to be five.”

  “Somebody is pulling somebody’s leg here,” Molina said. “This isn’t possible, Prefect.”

  “I’ve been trying to talk to the Minister to get instructions,” the Prefect said. “But it seems that his secretary won’t let me through. He’s not in, he left, he still hasn’t arrived. Alcibíades, that fag.”

  “This isn’t a misunderstanding, it’s sabotage,” Dr. Lama said. “Are these your reinforcements, Molina? Two instead of twenty-five? Oh no, this is too much.”

  “Alcibíades is my man,” Don Emilio Arévalo said. “But the key is Lozano. He’s rather understanding and he hates Bermúdez. His palm, of course, will have to be crossed.”

  “Five poor devils and, to top it off, one of them an old man with mountain sickness,” Ludovico said. “Do you think those five and us are going to break up a rally? Not even if we were all Superman, Prefect, sir.”

  “He’ll get what he wants,” Don Fermín said. “I’ll talk to Lozano.”

  “We’ll have to use your people, Molina,” the Prefect said. “It wasn’t part of the plan, Mr. Bermúdez didn’t want people from here involved. But there’s no other way out.”

  “Not you, Fermín,” Senator Arévalo said. “You belong to the Coalition, officially an enemy of the government. I’m part of the government, Lozano trusts me more. I’ll take care of him.”

  “How many of your people can we count on, Molina?” Dr. Lama asked.

  “Around twenty, counting officers and men,” Molina said. “But they’re on the regular list and they won’t do it. They’ll want a guarantee against risks, extra pay.”

  “Promise them whatever they want, we’ve got to break up this rally any way we can,” Dr. Lama said. “I made a promise and I’m going to keep it, Molina.”

  “The truth is we’re all worrying for no good reason at all,” the Prefect said. “They won’t even fill up the theater. Nobody here knows the Coalition big shots.”

  “We know from experience that only curiosity-seekers will be going and that curiosity-seekers start running at the first sign of trouble,” Dr. Lama said. “But it’s a matter of principle. They’ve deceived us, Prefect.”

  “I’m going to keep on trying to get in touch with the Minister,” the Prefect said. “Maybe Mr. Bermúdez changed his mind and we have to let them hold the rally.”

  “Could you give a pill or something to one of my men?” the man who gave the orders asked. “The black fellow, doctor. He’s about to pass out from altitude sickness.”

  “But if you didn’t have the people, why did you go into the theater?” Ambrosio said. “It was crazy with so few, Ludovico.”

  “Because they told us a tall story and we swallowed it,” Ludovico said. “We believed it so much that we went off to eat some of the stuffed chilis that Hipólito wanted.”

  “Tiabaya, that’s where they make the best ones,” Molina said. “Wash them down with some good corn wine and come back around four to take them to the Restoration Party. That’s the assembly point.”

  “The reason?” Don Emilio Arévalo asked
. “You know only too well, Lozano. To bring down Bermúdez, naturally.”

  “More likely to give the Coalition a helping hand, senator,” Lozano said. “This time I can’t help you. I can’t do a thing like that to Don Cayo, you understand. He’s the Minister, my direct superior.”

  “Of course you can, Lozano,” Don Emilio Arévalo said. “You and I can. Everything depends on the two of us. The people don’t get to Arequipa, and Bermúdez’ plan goes up in smoke.”

  “What about afterwards, senator?” Lozano asked. “Don Cayo won’t ask you for an explanation. But he will me. I’m his subordinate.”

  “You think I’m working for the Coalition and that’s where you’re wrong, Lozano,” Don Emilio Arévalo said. “No, I’m working for the government. I’m a government man, an enemy of the Coalition. The government has problems because certain branches have gone rotten, and the worst one is Bermúdez. Do you understand me, Lozano? It’s a question of serving the President, not the Coalition.”

  “Does the President know about it?” Lozano asked. “In that case, everything is different, senator.”

  “Officially, the President can’t know about it,” Don Emilio Arévalo said. “That’s what we, the friends of the President, are here for, Lozano.”

  The corn wine made me worse, Trifulcio thought. His blood had stopped, ready to boil over. But he faked, stretching out his hand toward his enormous glass and smiling at Téllez, Urondo, Ruperto and Martínez the foreman: cheers. They were already a little high. The hefty half-breed was putting on a show of culture, in the house next door Bolívar had slept, the best corn wine in the world came from Yanahuara, and he laughed with satisfaction: in Lima they didn’t have things like that, did they? They’d explained to him that they came from Ica, but he didn’t understand. Trifulcio thought: if I’d taken two pills instead of one, the mountain sickness wouldn’t have come back. He was looking at the sooty walls, the women going back and forth between the stove and the table with the platters of chilis, and he took his pulse. It hadn’t stopped, his blood was still circulating, but very slowly. And it was boiling, that it was, there were the hot waves beating against his chest. If night would only come, if the work at the theater were only over, getting back to Ica right away. Isn’t it time to go to the market? Martínez the foreman asked. Ruperto looked at his watch: there was still time, it wasn’t four yet. Through the open doors of the bar Trifulcio could see the small square, the benches and the trees, children spinning tops, the white walls of the little church. It wasn’t the altitude, it was old age. A car with loudspeakers passed. Everybody to the Municipal Theater, Everybody with the Coalition, and Ruperto let out a fuck you: they’ll find out. Quiet, Arequipa boy, Téllez said, hold it for after. How’s your mountain sickness, grandpa? Ruperto asked. Much better, grandson, Trifulcio smiled. And he hated him.