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By Root 1062 0

ancestors, those Spanish conquistadors the brothers Bergua, natives of the mountain heights of Cuenca who came to Peru with Pizarro, not so much that tendency to indulge in excesses that led them to garrote hundreds of Incas (apiece) and to get a comparable number of vestals of El Cuzco pregnant, as their simon-pure Catholicism and their bold conviction that gentlemen of ancient lineage can live on their investments and on rapine, but not by the sweat of their brow. Since childhood, he had gone to Mass every day, taken Communion each Friday in homage to El Señor de Limpias, to whom he was fervently devoted, and he had flagellated himself or worn a hair shirt at least three days out of every month. His aversion to work, a base occupation fit only for Argentines, had always been so extreme that he even refused to make the rounds of his properties to collect the rents that were his means of livelihood, and once he had settled in Lima, he had never bothered to drop by the bank to collect the interest on the bonds in which he’d invested his money. Such duties, practical matters that females are capable of handling, had always devolved upon the diligent Margarita and, once the girl had grown up, on the ex-pianist as well.

Up until the tragedy that cruelly hastened the decline in the Berguas’ fortunes, a curse visited upon a family whose very name will be forgotten, Don Sebastián’s life in the capital had been that of a scrupulous Christian gentleman. He was in the habit of arising at a late hour of the morning, not out of laziness, but so as not to be obliged to eat his breakfast with the boarders—he did not hold humble folk in contempt yet he believed in the necessity of maintaining social and, above all, racial, distances—and eating a frugal repast, then going to Mass. Possessed of an inquiring mind permeable to history, he was in the habit of visiting different churches from one morning to the next—San Agustín, San Pedro, San Francisco, Santo Domingo—so that as he fulfilled his Christian duty to worship God he might at the same time delight his senses by contemplating the masterworks of colonial faith; moreover, these reminiscences of the past sculpted in stone transported his spirit to the days of the Conquest and the Colony—so much more colorful than the monotonous gray present—in which he would have preferred to live as a daring captain or a pious destroyer of idols. Steeped in his fantasies of the past, Don Sebastián would make his way back along the busy streets of the downtown area—rigid and reserved in his neat black suit, his shirt with gleaming, stiffly starched detachable collar and cuffs, and his turn-of-the-century patent-leather shoes—to the Pensión Colonial, where, comfortably settled in a rocking chair facing the balcony with its jalousies—so much in keeping with his nostalgia for the days of La Perrichola—he would spend the rest of the morning reading the newspapers half-aloud to himself (even the advertisements) so as to know what was going on in the world. Ever-faithful to the traditions of his forebears, after lunch—which he was obliged to share with the boarders, toward whom his manner was nonetheless unfailingly courteous—he observed the quintessentially Spanish rite of the siesta. On awakening, he once again donned his black suit, his starched shirt, his gray hat, and strolled down to the Tambo-Ayacucho Club, an institution on the Jirón Cailloma frequented by many friends and acquaintances from his lovely Andean homeland. Playing dominoes, stud poker, ombre, exchanging small talk about politics and sometimes—being as human as the next man—gossip about subjects not fit for the ears of young girls, he saw dusk descend and night fall. He then walked back at a leisurely pace to the Pensión Colonial, ate his soup and his pot-au-feu alone in his room, listened to one program or another on the radio, and went to sleep, at peace with his conscience and with God.

But all that was before. Today Don Sebastián never sets foot in the street, never changes his attire—which consists, day and night alike, of a brick-colored