Death in the Andes (22 page)

“It's yours, sweetheart, whether you stay with me or not, it's yours. I'm giving it to you. You keep it, hide it from me if you want to. So you can feel safe until I talk to my godfather, so you don't feel like the ground's opening up in front of you. So you're not tied down and can leave whenever you want. Don't cry anymore, please.”

“You did that, Tomasito? You gave her all your dollars?”

“On the condition she wouldn't cry anymore, Corporal,” said the boy.

“That's even worse than killing Hog because he hit her, you prick!” Lituma jumped up from his cot.

“A huayco rolled over you and here you are, alive and kicking.” The cantinero patted Lituma on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Corporal!”

Dionisio was the only one who seemed to be in good spirits in the funereal atmosphere of the cantina. It was crowded, but the laborers had the faces of condemned men. They were in small groups, holding their glasses, smoking endlessly, buzzing like wasps. Uncertainty distorted their features, and Lituma could see in their eyes the animal fear that gnawed inside them. After the devastation of the avalanche, nothing could save them from losing their jobs now. Son of a bitch, the serruchos had good reason for being so gloomy.

“I was given a new lease on life up there,” the corporal acknowledged. “But I don't recommend the experience to anyone. I can still hear the awful noise those motherfucking boulders made coming down all around me.”

“What about it, boys, a toast to the corporal,” Dionisio proposed, raising his glass. “Our thanks to the apus of Naccos for saving a lawman's life!”

“On top of everything else, that faggot is making fun of me,” thought the corporal. But he raised his glass and thanked him with a half smile, and nodded to the laborers who had raised theirs. Tomás Carreño, who had gone outside to urinate, came back in, rubbing his hands.

“What happened to you never happened to anybody else,” he exclaimed, with the same expression of joy and astonishment he had shown while listening to the corporal tell him about his adventure. “They ought to put it in the papers.”

“That's a fact,” said a laborer with a pockmarked face. “Nothing like that's happened around here since Casimiro Huarcaya. A huayco rolls over you and you walk away!”

“Casimiro Huarcaya the albino?” asked Lituma. “The one who disappeared? The one who said he was a pishtaco?”

The albino came in late, when everybody in the cantina was already good and drunk, the way they always got on Saturday night. He was, too; his eyes were red and agitated beneath the pale lashes that made everyone so uneasy. Drunk and ready to fight, he announced his arrival at the door in his usual way: “Here he is, here comes the throat-slitter, the nacaq, the pishtaco! And if you don't believe me, damn it, just look at this.” He took a small knife from his back pocket and displayed it, raising his right foot and bursting into reassuring laughter. Then, grimacing like a clown, he staggered to the bar, where Doña Adriana and her husband were busy serving their patrons, and leaned his elbows on the counter. He banged on the wood and demanded a glass of the strong stuff. At that moment Lituma knew what was going to happen to him.

“Who else would I be talking about?” the pockmarked man nodded. “Didn't you know the terrucos executed him and then he was resurrected, like Jesus Christ?”

“I didn't know anything, I'm the last person around here to find things out.” Lituma sighed. “They executed him and he came back to life?”

“Well, Pichincho's exaggerating,” a small, dark man, his hair like a porcupine's quills, stepped forward. “I think it was a fake execution. If it wasn't, how could he be shot and then wake up without a scratch?”

“It looks to me like now you all know Casimiro Huarcaya's life story by heart,” said Carreño. “So why'd you tell the corporal and me you didn't know anything about the albino when he disappeared?”

“That's something I'd like to hear, too,” Lituma said in a soft voice.

There was a charged silence, and all around them the sharp-angled faces with their flat noses, thick swollen lips, and narrow, suspicious eyes took refuge behind the stellar impenetrability that made the corporal feel like a Martian in Naccos. Until, after a moment, the serrano with the pockmarked face displayed a row of large white teeth in a huge smile: “It's just that we didn't know the corporal back then.”

There were some approving murmurs, and the cantinero hurried to serve the albino, looking at him with the brittle, mocking smile that never left him. His face was puffier than usual, and through the cigarette smoke, his fat cheeks had a rosy glow beneath the stubble of his beard. He looked bigger and softer than at other times, and his limbs, his shoulders, his bones, seemed disconnected from their sockets. But he was very strong. Lituma had seen him pick up drunks and throw them out the door; not because they were looking for trouble, but because they had started to cry. Dionisio allowed the ones who turned belligerent with drink and wanted to fight to stay in the cantina, and even encouraged the other men to exchange blows with them, as if these drunken disputes amused him no end. The albino sipped at his glass, and Lituma, burning with apprehension, waited tensely for him to speak again. He did, facing the small gathering of men wrapped in their shawls and sweaters: “Isn't there a smoke for the throat-slitter? Tight-fisted bastards!”

No one turned to look at him, no one paid attention to him, and his face twisted as if he were overcome by a violent stomach cramp or a sudden attack of rage. His hair, eyebrows, and lashes were very light, but the most disconcerting thing about this brawny man was his white body hair and the white stubble on his face. He wore overalls and a hooded oilskin jacket that was open and displayed the white growth in the middle of his chest.

“Here you go, Casimiro.” The cantinero handed him a cigarette. “The music's going to start again soon and then you can dance.”

“That's good,” said Lituma. “That means you're finally going to treat me like a serrano instead of a vulture up on the barrens. That deserves a drink. Take down a nice bottle for my friends, Dionisio: the drinks are on me.”

There were grunted thanks, and while Dionisio opened the bottle and Doña Adriana handed out glasses to those who didn't have them, the corporal and his adjutant mingled with the other patrons. They had all crowded up to the bar in a tight knot, as if they were watching the end of a dice game with fistfuls of bills at stake.

“Are you saying the terrucos shot Huarcaya and he wasn't even hurt?” asked Lituma. “Tell me what happened.”

“He used to talk about it when he was paying a visit to his animal, you know, when the booze went to his head,” said the man with porcupine hair. “He went all over the sierra looking for a girl who'd had his baby. And one night he came to a village in the province of La Mar, where they almost lynched him because they thought he was a pishtaco. The terrucos attacked just then and saved him. And who do you think the terruco leader was? The girl he'd been looking for!”

“What do you mean, they saved him?” Carreño intervened. “Didn't you say they executed him?”

“Be quiet,” ordered Lituma. “Don't interrupt.”

“They saved him from the villagers who wanted to lynch him for being a pishtaco, but then the terrucos held one of their people's trials and sentenced him to death,” said the porcupine, concluding the story. “The girl was in charge of the execution. And just like that, she put a bullet in him.”

“I'll be damned,” Lituma said. “How'd he get to Naccos after he was killed?”

The albino did not reply and spent some time trying to light the cigarette, but he was so drunk his hand could not bring the match flame up to the right place. Lituma could see an indefinable expression on Dionisio's glowing yet sooty face; it was the sarcastic, delighted look of a man who knows what is going to happen, who looks forward to it, enjoying it in advance. He knew what was going to happen, too, and he shuddered. But the other patrons did not appear to be aware of anything; some sat on the crates, but most remained standing, gathered in groups of two or three, holding bottles of beer, pisco, or anisette, or passing them around. The radio, high above the bar, blared through frequent static, playing the alternating tropical and Andean songs that Radio Junín always broadcast on Saturday night. As if his pride had been wounded by their lack of response, the albino challenged them again, turning his back on the cantinero and looking at the crowd with the eyes of a fish just pulled from the water:

“Did you hear that I'm the throat-slitter? The pishtaco, what they call a nacaq in Ayacucho. This is how I slice up my victims.”

He made more passes in the air with his knife and repeated the clown grimaces, as if begging them to notice him, celebrate him, laugh at him, applaud him. Nobody seemed to notice his presence this time, either. But Lituma knew. All their senses were focused on Casimiro Huarcaya.

“At least, that's what he said happened, isn't it?” asked the pockmarked one, and several laborers nodded. “The terruca executed him, stood a meter away from him and fired her rifle. And Huarcaya died.”

“He felt like he died, Pichincho,” the porcupine corrected him. “He really just passed out. Sure, from fear. And when he came to, there was no bullet wound, just bruises where the people who thought he was a pishtaco had kicked him. The terruca only wanted to scare him.”

“Huarcaya said he saw the bullet shoot out of the rifle and come right for his head,” the pockmarked one insisted. “She killed him and he came back to life.”

“I'll be damned,” Lituma repeated, surreptitiously checking the reactions of various laborers in the crowd. “He survived one execution and came to Naccos so he could disappear. Do you think he survived that, too?”

They continued drinking their shots of pisco or anisette, passing the bottle, the glass of beer with a brief toast: “Here's to you, brother.” They smoked, talked, hummed to the music on the radio. One who was drunker than the rest put his arms around an invisible girl, closed his eyes, and took a few clumsy dance steps, moving counter to his shadow on the wall. As always, Dionisio, in the state of exhilaration that came over him at night, encouraged them: “Go on, dance, have a good time, what's the difference if there's no women, everybody looks the same in the dark.” They acted as if Casimiro Huarcaya weren't here, the hypocrites. But Lituma knew very well that no matter how they pretended, every one of the laborers was watching the albino out of the corner of his eye.

“I'm the one who comes out from under the bridges, from behind the rocks. I'm the one who lives in caves. I'm just like the one Doña Adriana killed, that's who I am,” he thundered. “I appear on the road and blow magic dust in your face. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, Doña Adriana? Go on, kill me too, if you can, the way you and big-nose killed Salcedo. They killed me once, but not even the terrucos could finish me off. Damn it, I'm immortal!”

He hunched over a second time, and his pale face contorted as if his gut had suddenly cramped again, but a moment later he recovered, straightened up, and brought his glass greedily to his lips. Not realizing it was empty, he went on sipping and licking it with delight. Until it slipped from his fingers and rolled off the counter to the floor. Then Casimiro Huarcaya stood quiet, sulking, his hands to his face, peering obsessively with bulging eyes at the cracks, inscriptions, stains, cigarette burns on the wood of the bar. “Don't leave now, whatever you do,” whispered Lituma, knowing the albino could not hear him. “Don't even think about leaving the cantina now. Wait till the others have gone, wait till they're so drunk they forget all about you.” But as he offered this advice, he could hear Dionisio's viperish laugh. He looked around for him, and in fact, though he seemed to be watching the groups of men who filled the cantina, urging them with gestures to dance, his great fat face was laughing, his mouth stretched wide. Lituma knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was mocking his efforts to change what was bound to happen.

“Maybe he did survive,” said Pichincho, kneading his smallpox scars as if they itched. “Huarcaya went off his head after what happened with the terruca. Didn't you hear that he used to brag about being a pishtaco? It was all he could talk about. He'd do his number here every night. Maybe he didn't disappear, maybe it was just a wild hair that made him leave Naccos and not say goodbye.”

He spoke with so much insincerity that Lituma wanted to ask if he thought he and his adjutant were as fucking stupid as he was.

But it was Tomasito who said: “Made him leave without collecting his pay? That's the best proof the albino didn't leave because he wanted to: he didn't collect for seven days' work. Nobody makes a present of a week's wages to the company.”

“Nobody who isn't out of his mind,” Pichincho responded with absolutely no conviction, resigned to going on with the game. “Huarcaya had a screw loose ever since the terruca.”

“When you come right down to it, what difference does it make if he disappeared?” said a man who had not spoken before, a hunchback with hollow eyes and teeth stained green from chewing coca. “We're all going to disappear when we die, aren't we?”

“And sooner than you think after this motherfucking huayco,” a guttural voice exclaimed; Lituma could not tell which man had spoken.

Just then he saw the albino staggering toward the door. People stepped aside to let him pass, not looking at him, pretending that Casimiro Huarcaya was not there, that he did not exist.

Before he stepped through the door and was lost from view in the cold and dark, the albino challenged them one last time, his voice breaking with rage, or fatigue: “I'm going out to slit some throats. Whoosh! I'll fry the meat in its own fat and then I'll eat it. These are good nights for a throat-slitter. You can all drop dead, you shits!”

“Don't complain; after all, the huayco didn't kill anybody,” said Doña Adriana from the other end of the bar. “Nobody was even hurt. Not even the corporal, who got in the way of the stones. You should give thanks! You should be dancing for joy instead of complaining, instead of being ungrateful!”

He walked out and headed straight for the barracks, dimly lit by yellow lightbulbs that the company kept burning on Saturdays until eleven, one hour later than the rest of the week. But after a few steps Huarcaya tripped and fell heavily to the ground. He lay there for a while, cursing, groaning, making strenuous efforts to get up. Gradually he succeeded, first a foot, then the knee of the opposite leg, then both feet, then a great push with his hands until he was standing again. To avoid another fall, he moved like an ape, bending over and swinging his arms to keep his balance. Was he headed for the barracks? The little yellow lights flickered like fireflies, but he knew they weren't because in the sierra, this high up in the Cordillera, there weren't any fireflies, were there? It was the lights in the barracks, moving up and down, moving left and right, coming toward him, then moving back. Casimiro giggled and tried to brush them away. Seeing his clownish behavior, Lituma laughed, too, but he was sweating ice and shivering. Would Casimiro ever reach the barracks and the wooden bunk that was waiting for him with its straw mattress and blanket? He turned, walked forward, moved back, spun around, trying to stay on the path marked by those elusive lights that grew more crazed by the second. He was so exhausted he didn't even have the strength to curse them. But suddenly he was inside the barracks, down on all fours, struggling to climb into his bunk. He finally succeeded, banging his face against the crossbar and feeling scratches on his forehead and arms. Huddling there, face down, with his eyes closed, he began to retch and tried to vomit, with no success. Then he attempted to cross himself and pray, but he was so tired he couldn't lift his arm, and besides, he couldn't remember the Our Father or Hail Mary. He lay in an acidic half sleep, trembling, belching, feeling a pain that moved through his belly and chest before tormenting him under the arms, on his neck, along his thighs. Did he know they would be coming for him soon?