WHEN SÍMULA TOLD EFRÉN GARCÍA ARDILES that Arturo Borrero Lamas was on his deathbed, he was briefly uncertain what to do. But then he made a decision. He told Marta’s former maidservant to ask his onetime friend for permission to pay him a visit. To his surprise, Arturo agreed. He even set a day and time: Saturday at five in the afternoon. Efrén remembered this was the same day Borrero Lamas’s friends used to gather in his home long ago to play a card game, rocambor, now unknown elsewhere in the world. Only a few years had passed, and yet how Guatemala had changed. And his life, too. How might Arturo be?
He was worse than imagined. He lay in bed in what was now like a makeshift hospital room, with tablets and salves strewn all over and a round-the-clock nurse who discreetly left the room as soon as he’d entered. The curtains were pulled and the room sunk in shadows—the light bothered the sick man. There was a stench of medicine and illness that reminded Efrén of the profession he had abandoned. The old servants, Patrocinio and Juana, were still there. Arturo was gaunt and bony, his voice and the gaze in his sunken eyes suffused with weariness. He spoke in a low tone with long pauses, barely moving his lips, as if overwhelmed by the effort.
They didn’t shake hands, but Efrén did clap him a few times on the shoulder, asking him:
“How are you doing?”
“You know perfectly well that I’m dying,” Arturo responded dryly. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have had you over. But at the hour of his death, a Christian must leave his malice behind. So please, sit down. I’m happy to see you, Efrén.”
“I am, too, Arturo. How are you?” he asked again.
His former friend lay beneath a blanket and a counterpane. Was he having chills? Efrén himself was hot. There were old paintings on the walls, and behind the bed hung a cross with Christ in his agony. The invalid’s bloodless face spoke of long days without exposure to the sun.
“I don’t know if you know this, Arturo, but I’m no longer practicing medicine. They threw me out of San Juan de Dios General and little by little every other door closed to me. With Castillo Armas in power, I had to close my office, I didn’t have any patients left. Now I’m giving classes at a private school. Biology, chemistry, physics. Believe it or not, I’ve found I like teaching.”
“You must be going hungry,” the invalid whispered. “Being a teacher in Guatemala means living like a beggar, or not much better.”
“It’s not so bad,” Efrén said with a shrug. “I make less than I did as a doctor, obviously. But when my mother died, I sold the house. With my savings, I make it to the end of the month.”
“So in the end, we’re both more or less fucked,” Arturo grunted. “We didn’t even make it to sixty. What a couple of failures!”
To hear him, Efrén had to crouch and lean in toward the sick man’s bed. After a long pause, he finally dared to say:
“Aren’t you going to ask me about your grandson, Arturo?”
“I don’t have any grandson,” he responded. “I can’t rightly ask you about someone who doesn’t exist.”
“He’s eleven now, and raucous as a squirrel,” Efrén said, as if he hadn’t heard. “Sweet, curious, cheerful. Símula nicknamed him Trencito. He gets good grades and he plays all the sports, even if he’s not much good at them. He’s happy. I’ve really grown to care about him. I’m doing double duty, of course, mother and father. I tell him stories, sometimes from memory, sometimes out of books. He’s a hell of a reader, despite his age. Give him a book, and he’ll sit there fascinated, his eyes as big as saucers. He asks me lots of questions, sometimes I don’t even know the answers. If there’s anyone he resembles, it’s you.”
Símula came in to bring Efrén a lemonade. She asked Arturo if he needed anything, and he shook his head. She no longer worked there since Miss Guatemala left, but she came by once in a while to lend a hand to Patrocinio and Juana and to see Arturo, especially after they diagnosed him with cancer. I’m going to make Trencito’s meal, she whispered in Efrén’s ear before leaving the room. He hadn’t cared much for the nickname at first, but there was no getting the maid to call the boy by his name, and in the end, he’d got used to it.
“Cancer of the pancreas,” the sick man blurted out with a jolt. “The worst kind. They found it very late, when it had already metastasized. The pain is awful, but they keep me sedated most of the time. My friend Father Ulloa, the Jesuit—I guess you remember him—won’t allow me to help things along. He says it would be suicide, he wants me to hold out till the end. I tell him that’s pure sadism on the Church’s part. He talks to me about God and the infinite mysteries of Christian doctrine. Until now I’ve respected his opinion, but I don’t know that I’ll go on obeying much longer. What do you think?”
“I don’t believe in God anymore, Arturo.”
“So you’ve turned atheist then. First communist, then atheist. There’s clearly nothing to be done with you, Efrén.”
“Agnostic, not atheist. That’s what I am nowadays: perplexed. I don’t believe, I don’t not believe. Confused, maybe that’s the better word. I’ll tell you another thing: remember how, when we were boys, we used to anguish over the thought of death, of whatever it was that came afterward? I’ve changed in that regard, too. Maybe it seems like a lie to you, but I don’t care anymore whether or not there’s life in the next world.”
“You killed me before cancer could, Efrén.” He had sat up slightly to interrupt him, and was looking him straight in the eyes. “But I don’t hold it against you. You know when I stopped? When I found out Martita had become Castillo Armas’s lover. That was even worse than learning you’d gotten her pregnant.”
Efrén didn’t know what to say. Arturo was leaning his head on the pillow again with his eyes closed. He was paler now. The walls of the old colonial house must have been made of thick stone, because not a single sound from the street penetrated them.
“Yes, far, far worse,” the sick man continued, eyes still shut, drawing a deep breath. “A daughter of mine whoring herself to a pathetic little colonel barely worthy of the name. A bastard even, you believe that?”
Efrén still didn’t utter a word. He was shocked: he’d never imagined Arturo would touch on this subject, let alone so openly.
“There are rumors, even, that she had some kind of role in Castillo Armas’s assassination.” Borrero Lamas seemed at a loss for words, but then, slowly, he relaxed. “Tell me the truth, Efrén, for the sake of our old friendship. This is something that’s been tormenting me ever since talk of it began. Do you think it’s possible? That she was caught up in the killing?”
“I don’t know, Arturo.” Efrén was uncomfortable. He had wondered the same thing often, and the thought of it tormented him on certain nights like a bad dream. “It’s hard for me to believe, just as it is for everyone we know. But I have the sense that the Marta you and I remember isn’t the same as the one who came later. There are all kinds of conjectures about the murder, some of them frankly absurd. Just as with so much else in Guatemala’s history, it’s likely we’ll never know the answer. You know what conclusion I’ve come to with all that’s happened to me, Arturo, with all that’s happened in this country? That a human being is something contemptible indeed. It seems that deep down, a monster dwells in each of us. As if it were just waiting for the right moment to emerge into the light and wreak chaos. Of course, it’s hard for me to imagine Marta caught up in something so terrible. Given her situation, the fact that many people despised her and hoped to get on Odilia’s good side, all that could be the invention of backbiters. Or a way of distracting attention from those who are truly guilty. But I don’t know. Forgive me, I just can’t give you an answer.”
There was a long pause. An insect had begun buzzing through the room, a wasp, appearing and disappearing beneath the light shed by the lamp.
“You know what?” Efrén asked. “There’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you. The way we used to play rocambor every Saturday in this very house—how did that start? Nobody remembers that game, no one plays it anymore.”
“My father used to play it with his friends, and I was always a man who respected tradition,” Arturo replied. “That used to be lovely. But all good things come to an end, or so it seems. Even rocambor. Now you tell me something. Are you still in thrall to your crazy political ideas? Are you still a communist? I know Castillo Armas had you imprisoned. And that you were a pariah when you came out.”
“You’re wrong, I never was a communist,” Efrén said. “I don’t know where that absurd idea came from, but it ruined my life. Not that I care much anymore. My ideas haven’t changed much. The truth is, I was hopeful with Arévalo and particularly with Árbenz. But you know how all that turned out. More killings and exiles. The U.S.A. put an end to whatever optimism I had, and now we’re back with the same thing we’ve always had: one dictatorship after another. You think it’s a good thing, having General Ydígoras Fuentes for president?”
“Sickness has turned me into a fatalist,” he responded, dodging the question. “What’s certain is America will go on making the decisions for us. But maybe the alternative would be worse. I mean, if Moscow ran our lives instead of Washington. Whenever we get to run free, we do even worse. It would seem the lesser evil would have been for us all to remain slaves.”
He laughed for an instant, a cavernous laugh.
“So for you, it’s better to be a slave than a leftist. You haven’t changed a bit, either, Arturo,” Efrén said, shrugging. “In your heart, you believe, like lots of other Guatemalans, that we’ve gotten what we deserve with Ydígoras Fuentes. A murderer and a thief. You’re not really a fatalist, despite what you say. It’s just that you’re still committed to making the bad choice.”
“If you want me to tell you the truth, Efrén, I couldn’t give less of a damn about politics,” Arturo said. “I was just trying to provoke you. I used to get a kick out of that in the old days, remember? Riling you up, so you’d launch into one of those ideology lessons you used to like to give on Saturday afternoons.”
He seemed to be smiling again, but he stopped talking, and the subsequent silence went on a long time. Efrén sipped his lemonade. Had he been right to come? This house made him sad, it reminded him of the beginning of the end. This would be the last time he saw Arturo. You couldn’t say they had patched things up. Their political ideas remained irreconcilable. And the saga of Miss Guatemala was still there in the background and would always come between them. He went to stand up and say goodbye, and as he did, he heard Arturo’s voice again:
“I’ve left this house to charity. Father Ulloa will manage it. I also set up a trust to pay for the running of it. It will go to abandoned children, single mothers, old people out on the street, that sort of thing. The Chichicastenango estate, which is just a source of painful memories to me, I’m handing over to some Catholic sisters. I’ve arranged things so that once I die, they’ll take Marta in at the finest residence in Guatemala. They’ll care for her to the end. If she ever does die, I mean. Because up to now, she’s managed to bury all of us.”
Who was Arturo talking about? Ah, Marta senior. Efrén remembered Miss Guatemala’s mother, who was still alive, if out of her mind, and knew nothing about what was currently going on. Better for her, he thought.
“With all these donations, I’m sure you’ll go straight to heaven, Arturo,” Efrén joked.
“I hope so,” Arturo replied, playing along before turning sorrowful. “The problem is, even I’m not so sure heaven exists, Efrén.”
Efrén made no reply. He thought for a second about Father Ulloa, the man who had married him and Martita. He looked at his watch. It was nearly time for little Efrén’s dinner. Today, Símula would be preparing it, and she would want to stay there to watch him eat, telling him stories about his grandfather and his mother, subjects otherwise never touched on. Trencito was a lively boy, and inquisitive. A young, normal, healthy boy, with Marta’s same mysterious big blue eyes. He had no memory of his mother, since she left when he was only five. What would happen to him in the future? Arturo could have left him something, a little fund so he could study and have a career. He wouldn’t inherit a cent from Efrén, who spent every cent he made. That was what preoccupied him most these days. Living long enough to see his son’s future assured; educating him and preparing him to get ahead. He didn’t have close relatives who could care for his boy if he had an accident or fell mortally ill as Arturo had. There was nothing to be done: he would have to survive and make it to old age. He remembered that, when they were young, he and Arturo represented great hopes for the respective families. You two will both go far, his mother used to prophesy. You were wrong, Mother. We didn’t get anywhere. Arturo will die bitter and frustrated and I will never again raise my head and this country will never allow me to raise it. He reconsidered and told himself these thoughts were ridiculous and would only work to paralyze him. It was better to shake them off. To go eat with Trencito. To talk awhile with Símula, if she was still around.
He got up and left on tiptoe to keep from waking Arturo, who had fallen asleep. Patrocinio and Juana accompanied him to the door, and he hugged them both.