The Fragmented Life of Don Jacobo Lerner

But what does Padre Dávalos know about what I feel for Jacobo? I wasn’t going to go and listen to him speak against the Jews. He hates the Jews because Marcos paid no attention whatever to him. When Marcos died Padre Dávalos almost did not want to bury him and he told Delia that at last she would be free from sin.

So he is going to say the same thing to me. He is going to be very happy that Jacobo is dying. I’m not going to give him that pleasure. I’d rather stay in bed all morning long. Jacobo is probably already dead, and I don’t know one way or the other. What a horrible dream I had last night! I saw Jacobo on a narrow road, I saw him climb rock after rock toward an abyss, I saw him throw himself down, but before he reached the bottom he vanished in the air. Then I saw him again surrounded by trees without leaves. And then again, suddenly, the landscape changed, and he was at the bottom of the sea, and a red sun was descending on his head. His face was as pale as a dead man’s. He looked at me from under the water, and his look was cold but also affectionate, sad but also happy. He began to make gestures, calling to me, and I started to walk away, backward, farther and farther, until I didn’t see him any more, until I reached a hallway full of niches, and in one of them, without a casket, was Jacobo’s naked body.

Delia is going to tell me that is a sure signal Jacobo is already dead.

Well, if he doesn’t want to see me, that’s his business. God knows I never meddled in his affairs. I didn’t even say anything about the whorehouse. I didn’t even care about that. I told Delia it was better than being a taxi driver. I don’t complain, and I don’t regret. I did everything I did with my eyes wide open, and I have never been ashamed of it.

Let my sister come and say something to me. Not only does she have no right, but my situation is a hundred times better than hers. What did she get from living with Marcos Geller? With her luck she found the only poor Jew in Lima. The only thing he did was fill her up with children and leave her in misery. Other Jews were getting rich like nothing, and poor Marcos was still driving his taxi.

With little better luck, how different my life with Jacobo would have been! I’m sure that when he saw Marcos so poor and so sick, with his children who weren’t even Jews, Jacobo got frightened. That was his problem. He was always frightened of everything. He was frightened of life. You really had to see him on the day that Marcos died! He screamed at Delia that he should be given a Jewish burial, and I practically had to drag him to the funeral. But when he saw that my sister wasn’t about to change her mind for anything in the world, he paid all the expenses because what mattered was to get him buried, and he had no alternative.

But he demanded that Marcos’ body be put in a niche. He said some strange thing about dead people not wanting to be inside the ground, and that he would be safer in a niche. Then I remembered what had happened to a friend of his in the village where his son lives; he told me no one knew where the body was, and surely it must be wandering on the highways without rest.

None of Marcos’ friends came to the funeral. Jacobo was the only one, and he spent the whole time with his head bent, as if he were crying. I have to admit he is the most tender man I’ve ever seen. He was the only one who helped us later. He didn’t have to do it.

But now if I go to confession, Padre Dávalos is going to speak against him and scold me because I have been living in sin all this time. What does he know about these things?

Father, I confess before Almighty God that I have sinned in word and deed…what? That I didn’t want to be a spinster for the rest of my life?

I never told him. It would have been a waste of time.

Every day Delia was on my back. At least ask him to set you up in a house, she used to say. But how could I do something so low? He never promised me anything. He didn’t say, if you do this I’ll do that.

I never meddled in his affairs, that has to be said. And I obeyed him in everything. Sometimes, in my dreams, I saw myself as his wife, surrounded by our children, going out to elegant places, dressed in luxurious clothes, like a lady, but…

Of course what Delia wanted was to get rid of me. The idiot didn’t realize that if Jacobo gave her money it was because I was living here. We never lacked for anything. No luxuries, that’s true. I never asked him for luxuries, nor would I have accepted them. That would have been selling my body.

What am I going to confess if I go? That I have sinned, period? Where have I sinned, Father? For the last four years I have been going to bed with an infidel. He is an infidel but he is good, Father. He is a fine man, Father. He is charitable. Mortal sin? God has punished him and he is going to die, Father? I beg you to take pity on him, Father. Can you give absolution to an infidel? The sins of the flesh are the worst sins, Father? You can’t do anything for him, Father? And me, Father, can you give me absolution? In what have I sinned, Father? I allowed Jacobo to take advantage of me? He didn’t want to marry me because I am not Jewish? I understand, Father, I had no claims.