Death in the Andes (25 page)

“I like everything you do to me, baby.” The woman laughed, tugging gently at his mustache. “Want to dance?”

The commander sent her back to the dance floor with a good-humored little shove. And craned his head toward Carreño, who sat rigid in his chair.

“Women like it a little rough in bed, you prick, and you didn't even know it.” He made a gesture of disgust. “What really pisses me off is that I trusted a jerk who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. I ought to kill you, not for knocking off Hog but for being so damn stupid. Are you sorry, at least?”

“I'm sorry I offended you, my mother and I owe you so much,” the boy stammered. And mustering his courage, he added, “But forgive me, Godfather, I'm not sorry about Hog. I'd kill him again if he came back to life.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed the commander in surprise. “Do you hear what he's saying, Iscariote? Do you think he's turned into an even bigger asshole than he was when he came in? Do you hear how mad he is at poor Hog just because he slapped his whore around a little?”

“She wasn't his whore, just his girlfriend, Godfather,” Carreño interrupted in a pleading tone. “Please don't call her that. I beg you, she's my wife now. I mean, she will be soon. Mercedes and I are going to get married.”

The commander stared at him for a moment and finally burst out laughing.

“My soul came back to my body, Corporal,” said Tomasito. “That laugh meant he was beginning to forgive me even though I pissed him off so damn much.”

“Was he something more than a godfather, Tomasito?” asked Lituma. “Was he your father, by any chance?”

“I wondered about it too, lots of times, Corporal. I've asked myself that question since I was a kid. But I don't think so. My mother was a maid in my godfather's house for more than twenty years, in Sicuani, in Cuzco, in Lima. His mother was an invalid, and she dressed and bathed and fed her. Well, I don't know, maybe he is my father. My old lady would never tell me who got her pregnant.”

“Sure he is,” said Lituma. “After what you did to Hog, you didn't deserve his forgiveness. You could have gotten your godfather into real trouble, fucked him up with the drug dealers. If he forgave you, he must be your father. The only people you can forgive for things like that are your children.”

“Well, I offended him, but I did him a favor, too,” said Tomasito. “Because of me his service record improved, and they even pinned a medal on his chest. He became famous for getting rid of that dealer.”

“If you fell for her so hard, this Mercedes must be some piece of ass,” said the commander, still laughing a little. “Did you ever try her, Iscariote?”

“No, boss, no. But I don't think she's as great as Carreñito says. He's crazy about her, so he thinks she's perfect. She's a little brunette with nice legs, that's all.”

“Maybe you know a lot about food but not about women, Fats, so just eat your steak and shut up,” said Carreñito. “Don't listen to him, Godfather. Mercedes is the most beautiful woman in Peru. You understand, you must have been in love some time.”

“I don't fall in love, I just fuck, and that's why I'm a happy man,” declared the commander. “Killing for love in this day and age! Damn! They ought to exhibit you in a cage at the circus. Would you let me give her a try so I'll know if her ass was worth the shit you pulled?”

“I don't lend my wife to anybody, Godfather. Not even you, no matter how much I respect you.”

“Don't think you're forgiven just because I cracked a few jokes with you,” said the commander. “The little trick you played on Hog may cost me the beautiful pair of balls God gave me.”

“But you even got a medal for knocking off a dealer,” Carreño protested feebly. “You're a national hero in the war against drugs. Don't say I did you harm. Admit it was a favor, Godfather.”

“I've had to find the good in something bad, you shit,” replied the commander. “Whatever, you put me in a touchy situation, and it can cause me problems. If Hog's people want revenge, who will they go after? Who will they fuck with? A little jerk like you, or me? Will you be sorry at least if they send me to the graveyard?”

“I'd never forgive myself, Godfather. And I swear I'd go to the ends of the earth to hunt down anybody who hurt a hair on your head.”

“Shit, your feeling for me brings tears to my eyes,” said the commander, taking a drink of whiskey and clucking his tongue. And with no transition, and in a way that permitted no reply, he ordered: “Before you say another word, to help me decide what your penance will be, go get this Mercedes and bring her here. Right now. I want to see for myself if her ass is worth all the inconvenience.”

“Damn,” exclaimed Lituma. “I could see it coming, the tricky bastard.”

“I was scared to death, Corporal,” Tomasito confessed. “What would I do, what could I do if my godfather went too far with Mercedes?”

“Pull out your pistol and shoot him, too,” said the corporal.

“What could I do?” his adjutant repeated, tossing and turning on his cot in despair. “We needed him for everything. For Mercedes's voter's ID, for taking care of my situation. You understand, technically I was a deserter from the Civil Guard. It was a bitter pill for me, I can tell you.”

“Do you think I'm afraid of him?” Mercedes laughed.

“It's a sacrifice we have to make to get out of this, sweetheart. It'll be a bad half hour, that's all. He's calming down, he even started to kid around with me. Now he's curious and wants to meet you. I won't let him treat you with disrespect, I swear.”

“I can take care of myself, Carreñito,” said Mercedes, smoothing her hair, her skirt. “Not even commanders or generals treat me with disrespect. How do I look? Do I pass the test, my dear sir?”

“With top grades,” the commander said hoarsely. “I approve, I approve. I can see you know the score, kid. Good, I like broads with a little spirit.”

“So this means we call each other
tú
?” said Mercedes. “I thought I'd have to call you Godfather, like him. Well, all right, let's call each other
tú
, pussycat.”

“Granted, you have a nice face, nice body, nice legs,” said the commander. “But that's not enough to turn a boy into a killer. You must have something else that knocked my godson flat on his back. So tell me, what did you do to him?”

“The trouble is, I didn't do a thing,” said Mercedes. “I was more surprised than anybody when he went out of control. Didn't he tell you about it? First he shot him, then he told me he did it for me, that he was in love with me. I couldn't believe it, I still can't. Isn't that how it happened, Carreñito?”

“Yes, Godfather, that's exactly how it happened,” said the boy. “Mercedes wasn't to blame for anything. I got her into this mess. Are you going to help us? Will you get Mercedes a new voter's ID? We want to go to the States and make a new start.”

“You must have done something very special to the boy to make him this crazy about you,” said the commander, bringing his face close to Mercedes and taking her by the chin. “How'd you do it, kid, with a love potion?”

“I beg you not to be disrespectful to Mercedes,” said the boy. “Please, Godfather, I can't let you do that. Not even you.”

“Did your godfather know that Mercedes was the first woman you slept with?” asked Lituma.

“No, he didn't, nobody did,” his adjutant replied. “If anybody told him I would've beaten him to a pulp. Only you and Mercedes know, Corporal.”

“Thanks for your confidence, Tomasito.”

“But that wasn't the worst moment of the night. The worst was when my godfather danced with her. I could feel the anger rush to my head, like it was going to explode any second.”

“Calm down, calm down, don't be an asshole, Carreñito.” Iscariote patted his arm. “What difference does it make if he dances with her and squeezes her a little? He's making you pay, he's making you jealous. Basically he's already forgiven you, he's going to take care of your problems. It's all working out like I said it would in Huánuco. Don't think about anything else.”

“But I was thinking that he was holding her too tight and feeling her up.” Tomasito's indignant voice quivered in the dark. “I don't care what happens to me, he's going too far. I'm going to teach him a lesson.”

But just then the commander brought Mercedes back to the table, laughing for all he was worth.

“She can really dish it out, I have to congratulate you, boy,” he said, giving Tomás an amiable slap on the head. “I made her a damn good proposition, but she wouldn't take it.”

“I knew you were testing me again, that's why I turned you down, pussycat,” said Mercedes. “Besides, you're the last person in the world I'd cheat on Carreñito with. So, are you going to help us?”

“It's better to have a woman like you for a friend, not an enemy,” said the commander. “That's some dame you've taken on, boy.”

“And he helped us.” Tomasito sighed. “The next day Mercedes had a new ID. And that same night she took off.”

“You mean as soon as she got her papers she left you, Tomasito?”

“With the four thousand dollars I gave her,” his adjutant murmured very slowly. “They were hers. I had given them to her. She left me a note saying what she said so many times. That she wasn't the woman for me, that I'd get over it, the same old thing.”

“So that's how the damn thing ended,” said Lituma. “Shit, Tomasito.”

“Yes, Corporal,” said his adjutant. “That's how the damn thing ended.”

“His name is Paul, and he has a funny last name, Stirmsson or Stirmesson,” said Lituma. “But everybody calls him Red. He was one of the guys who made that incredible escape when the terrucos came into La Esperanza. He told me he knew you both. Do you remember that gringo?”

“A busybody, he wanted to know everything about everything.” Doña Adriana nodded, grimacing with dislike. “He always had a notebook, he was always writing. He hasn't been around here for a long time. So, he was one of the men hiding in the water tank?”

“He was a snoop, he studied us like we were plants or animals.” Dionisio spat. “He followed me all over the Andes. He didn't care about us, he only wanted to put us in his books. I can't believe that gringo bastard Red is still alive.”

“He was surprised to hear you were alive, too,” Lituma replied. “He thought the terrucos must've executed you by now for being antisocial types.”

They were talking at the door of the cantina, under a vertical white sun that reverberated on the tin roofs of the barracks that had remained standing. Groups of laborers were using planks, pulleys, ropes, picks, and shovels to remove some of the boulders brought down by the huayco, trying to open a road so they could bring out whatever machinery the avalanche had not flattened or made inoperative. Despite the activity in the shack that had been set up as an office to replace the one destroyed by the rockslide, Naccos seemed empty. Fewer than a third of the laborers remained in the village, and more were leaving; there, for example, on the trail up to the Huancayo road, Lituma could see three figures climbing in single file, with bundles on their backs. They walked quickly and in step, as if they did not feel the weight they were carrying.

“This time they've just resigned themselves to leaving,” he said, pointing at the three men. “No strikes, no protests.”

“They know it wouldn't do any good,” Dionisio said without a trace of emotion. “The huayco did the company a favor. They've been wanting to stop work for a long time. Now they have an excuse.”

“It's not an excuse,” said the corporal. “Don't you see how things are? How can they build a highway now that a mountain's fallen on Naccos? It's a miracle nobody died in a catastrophe like that.”

“That's what I've been trying to get into their hard heads,” grumbled Doña Adriana, with an ill-tempered gesture toward the men moving boulders. “We could all be dead, squashed like cockroaches. And instead of giving thanks for being safe, all these Indians do is complain.”

“Well, they escaped the huayco, but now they know they'll die a slow death from no work and starvation,” Dionisio murmured with a little laugh. “Or worse things. At least let them kick up a little fuss.”

“Do you believe the avalanche didn't kill us because that was what the apus of these mountains wanted?” the corporal asked, trying to look into Doña Adriana's eyes. “Am I supposed to give thanks to them, too, for still being alive?”

He expected Dionisio's wife to say something nasty about him being like a lunatic, always harping on the same thing, but this time the witch said nothing and did not turn toward him. She was frowning, absorbed, her gaze lost in the craggy peaks that surrounded the settlement.

“We talked about the apus with Red, over in La Esperanza,” the corporal went on after a moment. “He thinks the mountains have their spirits, Doña Adriana, just like you. The apus. Bloodthirsty spirits, or so it seems. If a scholar who knows as much as that gringo does says so, it must be true. Thank you for saving my life, señores apus of Junín.”

“You can't call them señores apus,” Dionisio corrected him. “Because apu means señor in Quechua. And repetition is an insult, Corporal, sir, as the song says.”

“You shouldn't say Corporal, sir, either,” replied Lituma. “Corporal, or sir, but the two of them together is just pulling my leg. Though you're always pulling somebody's leg.”

“I try to keep a sense of humor,” Dionisio acknowledged. “But the things that are going on make it hard not to become bitter like everybody else.”

And he began to whistle one of the melodies he danced to at night, when the whole cantina was drunk. With an aching heart, Lituma listened to the melancholy tune. It seemed to come from the beginning of time, to carry a challenge from another race, from a world buried in these huge mountains. He half closed his eyes, and in front of him he could see the docile little dancing figure of Pedrito Tinoco taking shape, faint in the white brilliance of the day.

“It makes me dizzy to climb all the way up to the post in this sun,” he said softly, taking off his cap and wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Can I sit with you awhile?”

Neither of them replied. Lituma sat on one corner of the bench occupied by Doña Adriana. Dionisio remained standing, smoking and leaning against the scarred wood of the cantina door. The shouts and exclamations of the laborers moving the rock reached them sporadically, sounding close or distant depending on the shifting direction of the wind.

“The company radio was finally working this morning, and I was able to send my report to headquarters in Huancayo,” the corporal remarked. “I hope they answer soon. I don't know what my adjutant and I can do here anymore except wait for them to kill us or disappear us, like they did the mute. What about you? What will you do now? Leave Naccos, too?”

“What else can we do?” said Dionisio. “Not even the Indians in the community want to live in Naccos anymore. Most of the young people have gone down to the coast or to Huancayo. Just a few old people are still here, and they're dying off.”

“Then only the apus will be left,” Lituma declared. “And the pishtacos and mukis. And they'll have to feast on each other's blood. Right, Doña Adriana? Don't make that face, it was a joke. I know you're in no mood for jokes. Neither am I. I'm talking about it because no matter how hard I try not to think about you know what, I can't help it. Those three men are poisoning my life.”

“Why do you care so much about those poor bastards?” Dionisio exhaled a mouthful of smoke. “So many people disappear or die every day, why do you only worry about them? What about the man they killed in La Esperanza? You just like mysteries, I already told you that once.”

“The disappearances aren't a mystery anymore,” the corporal asserted, turning again to look at Doña Adriana, but she would not return his glance this time, either. “The other night, thanks to Red, I finally got it straight. I swear, I wish I didn't know. Because what happened to them is the most stupid and perverse of all the stupid and perverse things that happen up here. And nobody's ever going to make me change my mind about you two being responsible. Especially you, Doña Adriana.”

But not even this got a reaction out of Dionisio's wife. She continued to frown, to look at the hills, as if she had not heard, or as if she had things on her mind too important for her to listen to such trifles.

“Have a smoke and forget those dumb ideas.” Dionisio handed him a pack of black-tobacco cigarettes. “Think about how you'll be leaving soon, maybe going back home, how your life will be easier than it was in Naccos.”

Lituma took a cigarette and put it in his mouth. The cantinero lit it with an old long-wick lighter whose flame warmed the corporal's mouth and nose. He inhaled deeply and exhaled energetically, watching the smoke spiral upward in the clean golden air of burning midday.

“If I get out of here alive, I'll have those three with me wherever I go,” he said. “Especially the little mute, who disappeared the night he came down here to buy beer. Understand?”

“Of course he understands, Corporal.” His adjutant laughed. “Some nice Cuzco beer, ice-cold, and on the double. You understood perfectly, didn't you, Pedrito?”

Pedrito Tinoco nodded several times with those rapid, identical bows that made Lituma think of a chicken pecking kernels of corn, took the bills the corporal handed him, bowed one last time, turned, and walked out of the post, disappearing into the moonless night.

“We shouldn't have sent him when it was so dark, so late,” said Lituma, exhaling smoke from his mouth and nose. “When it took so long, we should have gone down to see what had happened, why he didn't come back. But it started to rain and we got lazy. Tomasito and I started talking, and we lost track of time.”

In spite of the rain, the mute hurried down the slope as if he had the eyes of a fox or knew by heart where to step and where to jump. He clenched the bills tightly so he would not drop them. Pedrito was soaked when he reached the cantina door. He knocked several times, pushed it open, went in, and was greeted by a mass of shapes partially dissolved in clouds of smoke. He smelled a dizzying stink of sweat, alcohol, tobacco, urine, excrement, semen, and foul-smelling vomit. But it was not the odors or the tomb-like silence caused by his arrival that put him on the defensive, making him alert and suspicious of imminent danger, but the fear that his instincts sensed everywhere, a thick, quivering fear that troubled the eyes of all the laborers and seemed to fill the air, to drip from the walls, the bar, above all from the tense faces contorted into grimaces and expressions caused by more than drunkenness. No one moved. Everyone turned to look at him. Pedrito Tinoco was intimidated, and he bowed several times.

“There he is, he's the one you want, there's nobody better than him.” Doña Adriana's hoarse, spectral voice burst from behind the bar. “They sent him, they have sent him. It must be him. It is him. The mute, nobody better.”

“Of course they must have argued about it,” Lituma added. “Of course there must have been some who said ‘Right, let it be him,' and others who said ‘No, the poor half-wit, not him.' I guess there must have been one or two at least who weren't so drunk, who felt sorry for him. And all the while, instead of going down to see why he didn't come back, Tomasito and I went to sleep. Or talked about the woman who had left him. We were accomplices, too. Not the planners, not the instigators, like you two. But accomplices all the same, accomplices by omission, in a way.”

They were all very drunk; some were staggering, leaning against the walls or holding on to each other to keep from falling down. Their glazed, brilliant eyes pierced the clouds of smoke to examine Pedrito Tinoco. Confused at feeling himself the center of that collective attention, fearful because of the dark, nameless threat he could sense, he did not dare approach the bar. Until Dionisio came to him, took him by the arm, kissed him on the cheek, something that at first disconcerted the little mute and then made him giggle nervously, and put a glass of pisco in his hand.

“Your health, your health,” he urged him to drink. “Join the crowd, my friend.”

“He's innocent, he's pure, he's an outsider, he's been marked since Pampa Galeras,” Señora Adriana recited, prayed, intoned. “Sooner or later the terrucos would have executed him. If he's going to die anyway, it should be for something worthwhile. Aren't all of you worthwhile? Out cold, sleeping there in those barracks, dead tired after breaking your backs on the highway, isn't that worth it? Figure it out and decide.”

As the sharp warmth went down to his chest and tickled his stomach, Pedrito Tinoco began to realize that beneath the rubber-tire soles of his muddy sandals, his feet covered with scabs, the ground was softening, spinning. Like a top. Some time, some place, he had known how to make tops dance by winding a string around them and tossing them with a deft snap of his arm: spinning in air until their colors blurred, until they looked like motionless hummingbirds beating their wings in the air, a little ball flying to the sun, then falling. The sharp tip would land on the stone in the ditch, skip along the edge of the stall, come to rest on the stone bench of the house, wherever his eye had looked before his hand gave the order to the string. And it danced there a long time, jumping and humming, happy little top. Doña Adriana talked and heads nodded in agreement. Some of them elbowed their way through the crowd and approached the mute and touched him. They had not lost their fear, not at all. Pedrito Tinoco no longer felt as embarrassed as he had when he first arrived. He was still clenching the bills in his hand, and in sudden obscure flashes he would give a start, telling himself, ‘I have to go back.' But he did not know how to leave. Each time he took a sip of pisco the cantinero applauded him, patted him on the back, and, in an occasional outburst of enthusiasm, kissed him on the cheek.

“The kiss of Judas is what you gave him,” said Lituma. “And all the while I'm snoring or listening to Tomasito talk about his troubles with that girl of his. Dionisio, Doña Adriana, you were lucky. If I'd come down to the cantina and caught you red-handed, I don't know what would've happened to you, I swear.”

He spoke without anger, with fatalism and resignation. Doña Adriana was still lost in thought, uninterested in him, watching the laborers remove the debris. But Dionisio burst into laughter, opening his mouth wide. He had squatted down on his heels, and the wool scarf grotesquely exaggerated the size of his neck. He looked at Lituma in amusement, opening and closing his prominent eyes, which were less bloodshot than usual.

“You would've made a good storyteller,” he declared with great conviction. “I had a few in my troupe when I was young. We traveled from village to village, fair to fair. Dancers, musicians, acrobats, freaks, magicians, everything. Storytellers too. They had a lot of success, kids and grownups used to hang on every word and protest when the story was over. ‘More, more, please. “Another one, tell us another one.' With that imagination of yours you would've been one of my stars. Almost as good as Adriana, Corporal, sir.”

“He can't drink any more, he's groggy. He can't take another drop,” someone crooned.

“Force it down his throat, and if he vomits let him vomit,” a frightened voice pleaded. “He's not supposed to feel anything, he's supposed to forget who he is, where he comes from.”