Read Online Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa - Free Book Online Page B

child,” Ambrosio says. “She left me a little girl.”
    “Well, that’s why we started the revolution,” the Lieutenant said good-humoredly. “The chaos is all over now. With the army in charge everybody will toe the mark. You’ll see how things are going to get better under Odría.”
    “Really?” Bermúdez yawned. “People change here, Lieutenant, never things.”
    “Don’t you read the papers? Don’t you listen to the radio?” the Lieutenant insisted with a smile. “The cleanup has already started. Apristas, crooks, Communists, all in the lockup. There won’t be a single one of the vermin loose on the streets.”
    “What did you go to Pucallpa for?” Santiago asks.
    “Others will appear,” Bermúdez said harshly. “In order to clean the vermin up in Peru you’d have to drop a few bombs and wipe us off the map.”
    “To work, son,” Ambrosio says. “I mean, to look for work.”
    “Are you serious or joking?” the Lieutenant asked.
    “Did my old man know you were there?” Santiago asks.
    “I don’t like to joke,” Bermúdez said. “I always speak seriously.”
    The jeep was going through a valley, the air smelled of shellfish and in the distance bare, sandy hills could be seen. The sergeant was chewing on a cigar as he drove and the Lieutenant had his cap pulled down to his ears: come on, they’d have a couple of beers, black boy. They’d had a friendly conversation, yessir, he needs me, Ambrosio had thought, and, naturally, it had to do with Rosa. He’d got hold of a pickup truck, a farmhouse, and he’d convinced his friend the Uplander. And he wanted Ambrosio to help him too, in case there was trouble. What trouble could there be, tell me? Did the girl have a father and brothers maybe? No, just Túmula, trash. He enchanted to help him, except that. He wasn’t afraid of Túmula, Don Cayo, or of the people in the settlement, but what about your papa, Don Cayo? Because if the Vulture found out Don Cayo would only get his whipping, but what about him? He wasn’t going to find out, boy, he was going to Lima for three days and when he returned Rosa would be back at the settlement. Ambrosio had swallowed the story, yessir, he was tricked into helping him. Because it was one thing to kidnap a girl for one night, do your thing and turn her loose, and something else, yessir, to marry her, right? That devil of a Don Cayo had made fools out of him and the Uplander, yessir. All of them, except Rosa and except Túmula. In Chincha they said that the one who came off best was the milk woman’s daughter, who went from delivering milk on a donkey to being a lady and the Vulture’s daughter-in-law. Everybody else lost: Don Cayo, his parents, even Túmula, because she lost her daughter. Or maybe Rosa was a sharp chippy. Who would have said so, yessir, worth so little, and the little toad won the lottery and more. What did Ambrosio have to do, sir? Go to the square at nine o’clock, and he’d gone and waited and they picked him up, they drove around and when the people went to bed, they parked the truck by the house of Don Mauro Cruz, the deaf man. Don Cayo was to meet the girl there at ten o’clock. Of course she came, why shouldn’t she come. She appeared, Don Cayo went ahead and they stayed behind in the truck. He must have told her something or she must have guessed something, the fact is that all of a sudden Túmula’s daughter started to run and Don Cayo hollered catch her. So Ambrosio ran, caught her and threw her over his shoulder and brought her and sat her in the truck. That’s when he caught Rosa’s tricks, yessir, that’s when you could see her bringing them out. Not a shout, not a moan, just running around, little scratches, little punches. The easiest would have been to start hollering, people would have come out, half the settlement would have been on top of them, yessir, right? Who says she was scared to death, who says she’d lost her voice? She kicked and scratched while he