A discreet hero
A discreet hero (original title El héroe discreto ) is a novel by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa from 2013. Vargas Llosa links the stories of two old men whose perseverance is put to the test by temptation. A haulier refuses to extort protection money . A best man gets to feel the anger of the relatives after an improper marriage.
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Felícito Yanaqué is the 53-year-old owner of the bus and transport company Narihualá in Piura in northern Peru . Unhappily married, his love is for three things: his hand-built company, his young lover Mabel and his deceased father, who once raised him in the greatest misery and to whom he owes his hard-working and conscientious attitude to life. His father's legacy was the demand: “Never let anyone push you around, my son!” And so, when one day Felícito suddenly received a ransom note signed with a spider, he did not think for a second about paying the protection money.
Don Rigoberto, general manager of an insurance company in Lima , retired at the age of 62 in order to finally indulge his love for art and culture. Together with his wife Lucrecia and their 15-year-old son Alfonso, he is planning a trip to Europe, the destination of his cultural longings. But before that, he took on a friendship service for his former boss Ismael Carrera, who at the proud age of 81 married his barely half-age housekeeper Armida, and acted as his best man. While the newlyweds embark on an extensive honeymoon, Rigoberto is threatened by Ishmael's sons Miki and Schlaks, who fear for their inheritance, to withdraw their consent to the wedding. Rigoberto is not intimidated by the notorious twins, but he is embroiled in inevitable legal disputes that spoil his retirement plans.
After Felícito ignored the next ransom note, strangers set fire to his office. The blackmailed person then went public and announced in a newspaper advertisement that under no circumstances would he pay protection money. The complaint not only puts the police around Sergeant Lituma and Captain Silva under pressure, it turns the reluctant haulage contractor in Piura into a hero. But when Felícito's lover Mabel is kidnapped, he gives in and promises the protection money. The young woman who returned unharmed quickly becomes entangled in contradictions during interrogation and finally has to admit that she was involved in the blackmail. The ringleader is Felícito's own son Miguel, who hates his father and secretly sleeps with his lover. The media pounced on the case and the admiration for the haulier turned into a scandal.
Don Rigoberto is now worried about his son Fonchito, who reports of regular encounters with an older man named Edilberto Torres. If his parents assume first of all a pederast , then a fantasy of the adolescent, Rigoberto, under the influence of Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, in the end even fears that the apparitions are about the devil in person . Ishmael has now returned from his honeymoon, but before he can settle his affairs, he dies of a heart attack. Now his sons put the widow Armida under pressure, who fled Lima to her hometown Piura, where she found shelter with her sister, who of all people was Felícito's wife Gertrudis.
Felícito has now rearranged his life. He broke up with Mabel and renounced Miguel. Gertrudis confesses that this is not his son at all. As a minor, she was forced into prostitution by her mother. When she became pregnant, the two women put the banker Felícito on. After both spouses admit their cheating, they can reconcile for the first time. At Armida's invitation, they travel to Europe and meet Rigoberto at the airport, along with his wife and son, who is finally starting his long-awaited educational trip. Rigoberto remains tense because he doesn't want anyone to spoil the trip, which is supposed to be a highlight of his life. Alfonso gives him a moment of horror when he claims to have seen Edilberto Torres on board the plane. But then the boy laughs and admits his joke, and Rigoberto is reconciled with everything.
Recurring characters
Several characters from A Discreet Hero are already familiar from Vargas Llosa's earlier novels. The culturally interested insurance director Don Rigoberto, an alter ego of the author, appeared with his family in Praise of the Stepmother (1988) and The Secret Notes of Don Rigoberto (1997). Sergeant Lituma was the leader of the so-called "invincible" in The Green House in 1966 . He also appeared in the drama La Chunga (1986) and the novels Mayta's Story (1984), Who Killed Palomino Molero? (1986), at that time already at the side of Captain Silva, and Death in the Andes (1993).
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- Mario Vargas Llosa: El héroe discreto . Alfaguara, Madrid 2013, ISBN 978-84-204-1489-8 .
- Mario Vargas Llosa: a discreet hero . Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Brovot . Suhrkamp, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-518-42400-1 .
- Mario Vargas Llosa: a discreet hero . Abridged reading by Gert Heidenreich . The Hörverlag, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-8445-1303-5 .