Dear Spider Extortionists,Although you've burned the offices of Narithuala Transportation port, a business I created with the honest effort of a lifetime, I'm publicly informing you that I will never pay the amount you demand to give me protection. I'd rather you kill me. You won't receive one cent from me, because I believe that honest, hardworking, decent people shouldn't be afraid of crooks and thieves like you but should face you with determination until you're sent to prison, which is where you belong.
Signed,
Felicito Yanaque (I don't have a maternal surname)
What courage it takes Felicito to write this letter, and further to publish it in the newspaper! He refuses to concede to the extortionists who try to scare him into giving them $500.00 per month for "protection". In fact, he takes them on with a vengeance, refusing to acquiesce even when his transportation business is burned down and his lover, Mabel, is kidnapped.
Why won't he give in to their demands? Because of his father. The memory of his father, who was the very pillar of strength in Felicito's eyes, will not permit him this betrayal.
"His father might have been poor but he was a great man because of his upstanding spirit, because he never harmed anyone, or broke the law, or felt rancor toward the woman who abandoned him, leaving him with a newborn to bring up. If all of that about sin and evil and the next life was true he had to be in heaven now. He didn't even have time to do any evil, he spent his life working like a dog in the worst-paying jobs. Felicito remembered seeing him drop with fatigue at night. But even so, he never let anyone walk all over him. According to him, that was the difference between a man who was worth something and a man who was worth only a rag. That had been the advice he gave him before he died in a bed with no mattress in the Hospital Obreco: "Never let anybody walk all over you, son."
Parallel to Felicito's story is the story of Don Ismael Carrera (boss of Rigoberto who is the manager of Don Carrera's insurance office). In stark contrast to the relationship with his now deceased father that Felicito holds dear, is the one that between Ismael and his twin sons. From their youth, these boys (Miki and Escobita) have done as they pleased which included carousing, lying, stealing and even rape. They become furious when their widowed father marries his housekeeper, Armida, as she is the one who will inherit his fortune, because all they want from their father is his money.
Perhaps more than anything, to me, this novel is about what it means to be a good father, to be an honorable son. We read of the sharp contrast between one son who holds his father's teaching so dear that he himself will not bend when threatened, and two other sons who are simply waiting for their father to die so that they can be rich. We read of yet a third son who sees nothing wrong with brutally mistreating the very man who raised him. What are we to make of this? It leads us to the meaning of the word hero.
Who is a hero? One who upholds his father. One who won't let himself be walked over. One who stands in the face of adversity with courage and strength and honor. My favorite kind of guy.
The Discreet Hero was originally published in 2014, and published in English translation by Edith Grossman in 2015. I read it for Richard and Stu 's Spanish Lit Month, and as my first introduction to Mario Vargas Llosa, I can say it was a brilliant one. He has given me so much to ponder about Peru, but even more importantly about the power of a discreet hero.
