The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa

outlaws plan something bad against me or my family to soften me up?”
    “Bring Señor Yanaqué a glass of water, Lituma,” Captain Silva ordered the sergeant with his usual sarcasm. “I don’t want you to have a fainting fit, because then we’ll be accused of violating the human rights of a respectable Piuran businessman.”
    This cop wasn’t joking, thought Felícito. Yes, he could have a heart attack and drop dead right here on this filthy floor covered with cigarette butts. A sad death in a police station, sick with frustration because some faceless, nameless sons of bitches were toying with him, drawing spiders. He recalled his father and was moved as he evoked his hard face: the lines like knife wounds, always serious, very dark, the bristly hair and toothless mouth of his progenitor. “What should I do, Father. I know, not let them walk all over me, not give them a cent of what I’ve earned honestly. But what other advice would you give if you were alive? Spend my time waiting for the next anonymous letter? This is making me a nervous wreck, Father.” Why had he always called him Father and never Papa? Not even in these secret dialogues with him did he dare to use the informal tú. Like his sons with him. Tiburcio and Miguel had never used tú with him. But they both did with their mother.
    “Do you feel better, Señor Yanaqué?”
    “Yes, thank you.” He took another sip from the glass of water the sergeant had brought him and stood up.
    “Let us know about any new developments right away,” the captain urged him as a way of saying goodbye. “Trust us. Your case is ours now, Señor Yanaqué.”
    The officer’s words sounded sarcastic to him. He left the station profoundly depressed. For the entire walk along Calle Arequipa to his house he moved slowly, close to the buildings. He had the disagreeable sensation that someone was following him, someone who liked to think he was demolishing Felícito bit by bit, plunging him into insecurity and uncertainty, a real cocksucker so sure that sooner or later he’d defeat him. “You’re wrong, motherfucker,” he murmured.
    At the house, Gertrudis was surprised he’d come home so early. She asked whether the Truckers’ Association of Piura board of directors, of which Felícito was a member, had canceled their Friday-night dinner at Club Grau. Did Gertrudis know about Mabel? How could she not know? But in these eight years she’d never given the slightest hint that she did: not one complaint, not one scene, not one innuendo, not one insinuation. How could she not have heard rumors or gossip that he had a girlfriend? Wasn’t Piura a pretty small world? Everybody knew everybody’s business, especially what they did in bed. Maybe she knew and preferred to hide it to avoid trouble and just get along. But sometimes Felícito told himself no: Given the quiet life his wife led—no relatives, only leaving the house to go to Mass or novenas or rosaries in the cathedral—it really was possible she didn’t know a thing.
    “I came home early because I don’t feel very well. I think I’m getting a cold.”
    “Then you didn’t eat. Do you want me to fix you something? I’ll do it, Saturnina’s gone home.”
    “No, I’m not hungry. I’ll watch television for a little while and go to bed. Anything new?”
    “I had a letter from my sister Armida, in Lima. It seems she’s getting married.”
    “Ah, that’s nice, we’ll have to send her a present.” Felícito didn’t even know Gertrudis had a sister in the capital. First he’d heard about it. He tried to remember. Could she be that little barefoot girl, very young, who ran around El Algarrobo boardinghouse where he met his wife? No, that kid was the daughter of a truck driver named Argimiro Trelles who’d lost his wife.
    Gertrudis agreed and went off to her room. Ever since Miguel and Tiburcio had left to live on their own, Felícito and his wife had separate rooms. He saw her shapeless bulk