It was the great mistake of his life, as his conscience was to remind him every hour of every day until the final day of his life. What she wanted from him was not love, least of all love that was paid for, but a job, any kind of job, at any salary, in the River Company of the Caribbean. Florentino Ariza felt so ashamed of his own conduct that he took her to the head of Personnel, who gave her the lowest-level job in the General Section, which she performed with seriousness, modesty, and dedication for three years.
Ever since its founding, the R.C.C. had had its offices across from the river dock, and it had nothing in common with the port for ocean liners on the opposite side of the bay, or with the market pier on Las Animas Bay. The building was of wood, with a sloping tin roof, a single long balcony with columns at the front, and windows, covered with wire mesh, on all four sides through which one had complete views of the boats at the dock as if they were paintings hanging on the wall. When the German founders built it, they painted the tin roof red and the wooden walls a brilliant white, so that the building itself bore some resemblance to a riverboat. Later it was painted all blue, and at the time that Florentino Ariza began to work for the company it was a dusty shed of no definite color, and on the rusting roof there were patches of new tin plates over the original ones. Behind the building, in a gravel patio surrounded by chicken wire, stood two large warehouses of more recent construction, and at the back there was a closed sewer pipe, dirty and foul-smelling, where the refuse of a half a century of river navigation lay rotting: the debris of historic boats, from the early one with a single smokestack, christened by Simón Bolívar, to some so recent that they had electric fans in the cabins. Most of them had been dismantled for materials to be used in building other boats, but many were in such good condition that it seemed possible to give them a coat of paint and launch them without frightening away the iguanas or disturbing the foliage of the large yellow flowers that made them even more nostalgic.
The Administrative Section was on the upper floor of the building, in small but comfortable and well-appointed offices similar to the cabins on the boats, for they had been built not by civil architects but by naval engineers. At the end of the corridor, like any employee, Uncle Leo XII dispatched his business in an office similar to all the others, the one exception being that every morning he found a glass vase filled with sweet-smelling flowers on his desk. On the ground floor was the Passenger Section, with a waiting room that had rustic benches and a counter for selling tickets and handling baggage. Last of all was the confusing General Section, its name alone suggesting the vagueness of its functions, where problems that had not been solved elsewhere in the company went to die an ignominious death. There sat Leona Cassiani, lost behind a student’s desk surrounded by corn stacked for shipping and unresolved papers, on the day that Uncle Leo XII himself went to see what the devil he could think of to make the General Section good for something. After three hours of questions, theoretical assumptions, and concrete evidence, with all the employees in the middle of the room, he returned to his office tormented by the certainty that instead of a solution to so many problems, he had found just the opposite: new and different problems with no solution.
The next day, when Florentino Ariza came into his office, he found a memorandum from Leona Cassiani, with the request that he study it and then show it to his uncle if he thought it appropriate. She was the only one who had not said a word during the inspection the previous afternoon. She had remained silent in full awareness of the worth of her position as a charity employee, but in the memorandum she noted that she had said nothing not because of negligence but out of respect for the hierarchies in the section. It had an alarming simplicity. Uncle Leo XII had proposed a thorough reorganization, but Leona Cassiani did not agree, for the simple reason that in reality the General Section did not exist: it was the dumping ground for annoying but minor problems that the other sections wanted to get rid of. As a consequence, the solution was to eliminate the General Section and return the problems to the sections where they had originated, to be solved there.
Uncle Leo XII did not have the slightest idea who Leona Cassiani was, and he could not remember having seen anyone who could be Leona Cassiani at the meeting on the previous afternoon, but when he read the memorandum he called her to his office and talked with her behind closed doors for two hours. They spoke about everything, in accordance with the method he used to learn about people. The memorandum showed simple common sense, and her suggestion, in fact, would produce the desired result. But Uncle Leo XII was not interested in that: he was interested in her. What most attracted his attention was that her only education after elementary school had been in the School of Millinery. Moreover, she was learning English at home, using an accelerated method with no teacher, and for the past three months she had been taking evening classes in typing, a new kind of work with a wonderful future, as they used to say about the telegraph and before that the steam engine.
When she left the meeting, Uncle Leo XII had already begun to call her what he would always call her: my namesake Leona. He had decided to eliminate with the stroke of a pen the troublesome section and distribute the problems so that they could be solved by the people who had created them, in accordance with Leona Cassiani’s suggestion, and he had created a new position for her, which had no title or specific duties but in effect was his Personal Assistant. That afternoon, after the inglorious burial of the General Section, Uncle Leo XII asked Florentino Ariza where he had found Leona Cassiani, and he answered with the truth.
“Well, then, go back to the trolley and bring me every girl like her that you find,” his uncle said. “With two or three more, we’ll salvage your galleon.”
Florentino Ariza took this as one of Uncle Leo XII’s typical jokes, but the next day he found himself without the carriage that had been assigned to him six months earlier, and that was taken back now so that he could continue to look for hidden talent on the trolleys. Leona Cassiani, for her part, soon overcame her initial scruples, and she revealed what she had kept hidden with so much astuteness during her first three years. In three more years she had taken control of everything, and in the next four she stood on the threshold of the General Secretaryship, but she refused to cross it because it was only one step below Florentino Ariza. Until then she had taken orders from him, and she wanted to continue to do so, although the fact of the matter was that Florentino himself did not realize that he took orders from her. Indeed, he had done nothing more on the Board of Directors than follow her suggestions, which helped him to move up despite the traps set by his secret enemies.
Leona Cassiani had a diabolical talent for handling secrets, and she always knew how to be where she had to be at the right time. She was dynamic and quiet, with a wise sweetness. But when it was indispensable she would, with sorrow in her heart, give free rein to a character of solid iron. However, she never did that for herself. Her only objective was to clear the ladder at any cost, with blood if necessary, so that Florentino Ariza could move up to the position he had proposed for himself without calculating his own strength very well. She would have done this in any event, of course, because she had an indomitable will to power, but the truth was that she did it consciously, out of simple gratitude. Her determination was so great that Florentino Ariza himself lost his way in her schemes, and on one unfortunate occasion he attempted to block her, thinking that she was trying to do the same to him. Leona Cassiani put him in his place.
“Make no mistake,” she said to him. “I will withdraw from all this whenever you wish, but think it over carefully.”
Florentino Ariza, who in fact had never thought about it, thought about it then, as well as he could, and he surrendered his weapons. The truth is that in the midst of that sordid internecine battle in a company in perpetual crisis, in the midst of his disasters as a tireless falconer and the more and more uncertain dream of Fermina Daza, the impassive Florentino Ariza had not had a moment of inner peace as he confronted the fascinating spectac
le of that fierce black woman smeared with shit and love in the fever of battle. Many times he regretted in secret that she had not been in fact what he thought she was on the afternoon he met her, so that he could wipe his ass with his principles and make love to her even if it cost nuggets of shining gold. For Leona Cassiani was still the woman she had been that afternoon on the trolley, with the same clothes, worthy of an impetuous runaway slave, her mad turbans, her earrings and bracelets made of bone, her necklaces, her rings with fake stones on every finger: a lioness in the streets. The years had changed her appearance very little, and that little became her very well. She moved in splendid maturity, her feminine charms were even more exciting, and her ardent African body was becoming more compact. Florentino Ariza had made no propositions to her in ten years, a hard penance for his original error, and she had helped him in everything except that.
One night when he had worked late, something he did often after his mother’s death, Florentino Ariza was about to leave when he saw a light burning in Leona Cassiani’s office. He opened the door without knocking, and there she was: alone at her desk, absorbed, serious, with the new eyeglasses that gave her an academic air. Florentino Ariza realized with joyful fear that the two of them were alone in the building, the piers were deserted, the city asleep, the night eternal over the dark sea, and the horn mournful on the ship that would not dock for another hour. Florentino Ariza leaned both hands on his umbrella, just as he had done in Oil Lamp Alley when he barred her way, only now he did it to hide the trembling in his knees.
“Tell me something, lionlady of my soul,” he said. “When are we ever going to stop this?”
She took off her glasses without surprise, with absolute self-control, and dazzled him with her solar laugh. It was the first time she used the familiar form of address with him.
“Ay, Florentino Ariza,” she said, “I’ve been sitting here for ten years waiting for you to ask me that.”
It was too late: the opportunity had been there with her in the mule-drawn trolley, it had always been with her there on the chair where she was sitting, but now it was gone forever. The truth was that after all the dirty tricks she had done for him, after so much sordidness endured for him, she had moved on in life and was far beyond his twenty-year advantage in age: she had grown too old for him. She loved him so much that instead of deceiving him she preferred to continue loving him, although she had to let him know in a brutal manner.
“No,” she said to him. “I would feel as if I were going to bed with the son I never had.”
Florentino Ariza was left with the nagging suspicion that this was not her last word. He believed that when a woman says no, she is waiting to be urged before making her final decision, but with her he could not risk making the same mistake twice. He withdrew without protest, and even with a certain grace, which was not easy for him. From that night on, any cloud there might have been between them was dissipated without bitterness, and Florentino Ariza understood at last that it is possible to be a woman’s friend and not go to bed with her.
Leona Cassiani was the only human being to whom Florentino Ariza was tempted to reveal the secret of Fermina Daza. The few people who had known were beginning to forget for reasons over which they had no control. Three of them were, beyond the shadow of any doubt, in the grave: his mother, whose memory had been erased long before she died; Gala Placidia, who had died of old age in the service of one who had been like a daughter to her; and the unforgettable Escolástica Daza, the woman who had brought him the first love letter he had ever received in his life, hidden in her prayerbook, and who could not still be alive after so many years. Lorenzo Daza (no one knew if he was alive or dead) might have revealed the secret to Sister Franca de la Luz when he was trying to stop Fermina Daza’s expulsion, but it was unlikely that it had gone any further. That left the eleven telegraph operators in Hildebranda Sánchez’s province who had handled telegrams with their complete names and exact addresses, and Hildebranda Sánchez herself, and her court of indomitable cousins.
What Florentino Ariza did not know was that Dr. Juvenal Urbino should have been included on the list. Hildebranda Sánchez had revealed the secret to him during one of her many visits in the early years. But she did so in such a casual way and at such an inopportune moment that it did not go in one of Dr. Urbino’s ears and out the other, as she thought; it did not go in at all. Hildebranda had mentioned Florentino Ariza as one of the secret poets who, in her opinion, might win the Poetic Festival. Dr. Urbino could not remember who he was, and she told him—she did not need to, but there was no hint of malice in it—that he was Fermina Daza’s only sweetheart before she married. She told him, convinced that it had been something so innocent and ephemeral that in fact it was rather touching. Dr. Urbino replied without looking at her: “I did not know that fellow was a poet.” And then he wiped him from his memory, because among other things, his profession had accustomed him to the ethical management of forgetfulness.
Florentino Ariza observed that, with the exception of his mother, the keepers of the secret belonged to Fermina Daza’s world. In his, he was alone with the crushing weight of a burden that he had often needed to share, but until then there had been no one worthy of so much trust. Leona Cassiani was the only one, and all he needed was the opportunity and the means. This was what he was thinking on the hot summer afternoon when Dr. Juvenal Urbino climbed the steep stairs of the R.C.C., paused on each step in order to survive the three o’clock heat, appeared in Florentino Ariza’s office, panting and soaked with perspiration down to his trousers, and gasped with his last breath: “I believe a cyclone is coming.” Florentino Ariza had seen him there many times, asking for Uncle Leo XII, but never until now had it seemed so clear to him that this uninvited guest had something to do with his life.
This was during the time that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had overcome the pitfalls of his profession, and was going from door to door, almost like a beggar with his hat in his hand, asking for contributions to his artistic enterprises. Uncle Leo XII had always been one of his most faithful and generous contributors, but just at that moment he had begun his daily ten-minute siesta, sitting in the swivel chair at his desk. Florentino Ariza asked Dr. Juvenal Urbino to please wait in his office, which was next to Uncle Leo XII’s and, in a certain sense, served as his waiting room.
They had seen each other on various occasions, but they had never before been face to face as they were now, and once again Florentino Ariza experienced the nausea of feeling himself inferior. The ten minutes were an eternity, during which he stood up three times in the hope that his uncle had awakened early, and he drank an entire thermos of black coffee. Dr. Urbino refused to drink even a single cup. He said: “Coffee is poison.” And he continued to chat about one thing and another and did not even care if anyone was listening to him. Florentino Ariza could not bear his natural distinction, the fluidity and precision of his words, his faint scent of camphor, his personal charm, the easy and elegant manner in which he made his most frivolous sentences seem essential only because he had said them. Then, without warning, the Doctor changed the subject.
“Do you like music?”
He was taken by surprise. In reality, Florentino Ariza attended every concert and opera performed in the city, but he did not feel capable of engaging in a critical or well-informed discussion. He had a weakness for popular music, above all sentimental waltzes, whose similarity to the ones he had composed as an adolescent, or to his secret verses, could not be denied. He had only to hear them once, and then for nights on end there was no power in heaven or earth that could shake the melody out of his head. But that would not be a serious answer to a serious question put to him by a specialist.
“I like Gardel,” he said.
Dr. Urbino understood. “I see,” he said. “He is popular.” And he slipped into a recounting of his many new projects which, as always, had to be realized without official backing. He called to his attention the disheartening inferiority of the performances th
at could be heard here now, compared with the splendid ones of the previous century. That was true: he had spent a year selling subscriptions to bring the Cortot-Casals-Thibaud trio to the Dramatic Theater, and there was no one in the government who even knew who they were, while this very month there were no seats left for the Ramón Caralt company that performed detective dramas, for the Operetta and Zarzuela Company of Don Manolo de la Presa, for the Santanelas, ineffable mimics, illusionists, and artistes, who could change their clothes on stage in the wink of an eye, for Danyse D’Altaine, advertised as a former dancer with the Folies-Bergère, and even for the abominable Ursus, a Basque madman who took on a fighting bull all by himself. There was no reason to complain, however, if the Europeans themselves were once again setting the bad example of a barbaric war when we had begun to live in peace after nine civil wars in half a century, which, if the truth were told, were all one war: always the same war. What most attracted Florentino Ariza’s attention in that intriguing speech was the possibility of reviving the Poetic Festival, the most renowned and long-lasting of the enterprises that Dr. Juvenal Urbino had conceived in the past. He had to bite his tongue to keep from telling him that he had been an assiduous participant in the annual competition that had eventually interested famous poets, not only in the rest of the country but in other nations of the Caribbean as well.
Love in the Time of Cholera Page 23
