Pacazo (22 page)

When the worksheets were full and corrected, we had discussions, in pairs and small groups and large groups, wherein I facilitated and did not intrude, or intruded only rarely, as rarely as possible, sufficiently seldom to have avoided reprimand in the event that anyone was watching, and they, the students, attempted to formulate and defend educated opinions as to the two most important qualities for a parent to have. There was consensus in favor of patience and wealth. We then debated discipline and feeding techniques. I asked them to draw up daily baby schedules, and when they were done I assured them that all such schedules are pointless.

Next to the fish are the trays of shrimp and prawns and lobster, of baby squid and adult squid, of giant squid cut in rondelles so big, so very deep and wide that they are hard to believe, even when as a joke one fits one over one’s head. The person who made the joke was a student from the university. He was banned for life from the Cossto premises, his eyes still widened in wonder.

Midway through my Intermediate class I noticed the students ignoring me and conspiring, and my anger rose up, was undercut by their singing: “Happy Birthday” for Mariángel yet again. It was the same words and music as ever but something in the timbre of the loudest voice reminded me of the time that “Happy Verbena” was sung instead. A verbena is an amateur talent show organized by a given university department with the purpose of mocking that department’s professorial and administrative staff and as many other people as possible. The entity that sang was the Language Center Choir, a nonexistent thing, and they sang beautifully, a single verse. I was the conductor, and my baton was chalk, and my hair was mussed. That was my second verbena, and my second-to-last.

There is also chicken here, and pork and lamb and kid goat, and a good deal of beef though the cuts are not as fine as one might desire. The pasta and legume aisles are well stocked, and according to the newspapers rice will soon be abundant and nearly free as so many farmers planted it when their cotton crops failed in the heat of April.

My last verbena was two years ago, Communications, a month before Pilar’s graduation, and her classmates had at me. The first skit was a fake television news report about a fat foreign archaeologist who had been sentenced to life in prison for attempting to steal a priceless artifact. A photograph flashed onto the big screen: Pilar and I very nearly holding hands. We in the crowd, we laughed, some of us less than others, as the anchor went into deeper and deeper detail regarding precisely how fat and foreign the archaeologist was. For the second skit, the fattest male student in the department dressed as a conquistador—fake beard, cardboard armor, plastic sword—and the second fattest wore mock-aclla vestments, balloon breasts and a wig of smooth black hair that hung almost to his waist. The virgin priestess spoke Spanish with a Chiclayan accent, the conquistador with an American one. He ran fish-eyed and foamed at the mouth, chased and cornered her, gathered her onto his shoulder and staggered off stage.

Pilar looked at me to see how I would take this and other jokes. It was her gaze that kept me from taking the stage, from grabbing the microphone, from shouting, There is no equivalence and it is only this, their hooks in me, their fanged hooks,
their motherfucking fangs.

Which no one would have understood, and not only her gaze, as she had agreed to teach there the following spring, introductory courses until she finished her Master’s and also there is fruit: melons, limes and pineapples and bananas, oranges and lucumas, papayas. And carambolas. And mameys and tamarinds and guavas, and three species of passion fruit, and there are cherimoyas, a dark green fruit shaped like a hand grenade and so sweet that it seems unlikely to be natural at all.

My Upper Intermediate class centered on ten-minute essays. Only a single student referred to El Niño as The Boy Phenomenon. The day was thus successful in spite of its many diaper changings and juice-based interruptions.

Waiting in my office was a package sent from Chiclayo: a birthday gift for Mariángel from Pilar’s parents. The gift was three beautiful and dangerous cloth dolls. They came wearing felt hats, bright clothes, shiny bead jewelry; they came bearing wooden bowls full of corn and peas and lentils. Mariángel loved them but the jewelry and bowls and hats can be and were immediately choked upon. I set the dolls on top of the filing cabinet there in my office. Mariángel shrieked and hated me. I stuffed them into my briefcase, and when we are home I will sneak them onto her room’s highest shelf, and push them back against the wall where she is unlikely to see or notice them and they might wait beautifully for years.

The dolls came with a letter addressed to Mariángel only, and the thank-you card will be signed by her only as well, and Mariángel and I, we observe and grab and chew and throw, aisle after aisle, mamey to ojo de uva and back again and at last are done. Today’s interstices were spent trying and failing to find a replacement for Casualidad, and am I ever disappointed at Cossto? Only from time to time. Peanut butter is not a common commodity. There are few breakfast cereals and fewer cheeses. These are my supermarket disappointments, these and the fact that the sweaty women at the cash registers sometimes wipe their brows with the bills of my change before holding them out to me and it happens again now, this very moment.

I stare at the woman, and do not reach for the bills, and my searching has lately been tepid. This is not to be forgiven. I stare at the stock boys, at my fellow customers, consider climbing up for a better look at the organist, but how to reach him? Where are the stairs? And Mariángel and I are very hungry so instead we gather our bags, walk out into feverish honking, choose a taxi, and this weekend, yes, once again the search.

The ride is splendid and involves mainly tickling, but once home I see that I forgot to buy spaghetti. I check the cupboards. Of course there is none. I boil carrots and strain them, pour Mariángel’s milk and unspillable juice. I heat the tomato sauce and splash it across rice left over from some lunch days ago. Mariángel finds it delicious. I push mine around my plate, draw in it, maps of ancient cities. Mariángel finishes her juice and smacks her lips and laughs.

Another dozen telephone calls before work, and the best option thus far is an arthritic-sounding woman who can begin tomorrow afternoon. I pack the requisite supplies for a second day with Mariángel on my chest. Then the doorbell rings. It is Casualidad. She is smiling and appears calm.

I ask how she is feeling. She says that she is fine. I ask if she remembers what happened at Mariángel’s party. She says that of course she does, that she is so sorry about the cake, that she is still very embarrassed about forgetting that it was Mariángel’s birthday, not mine. I ask what her doctor said, and she says that he told her to buy a llama fetus.

- You went to a curandero?

- Yes.

- And did you actually buy the llama?

- Just a fetus. They sell them at the market.

- I know that. I know they do.

- In big glass jars.

- Why didn’t you go to the hospital?

- Because the hospital doctors know nothing.

This is when I begin to shout. It is possible that not all of the things I shout are coherent. As I often tell my students, it is far more difficult than one might suspect to use imprecations and vulgarities correctly in a language other than one’s own. When I am done she is crying, and so is Mariángel, and so am I. I call Arantxa and say that an emergency has arisen, that I need the morning off. I can hear her shrug down the phone line, I am sure of it.

We get a taxi, Casualidad and Mariángel and I, and go to the public hospital. The walls there have not recently been painted. The equipment has not recently been manufactured. The nurses have not recently been born.

Three hours in the waiting room with several dozen other people, all of them coughing in our direction. Finally the doctor. He examines Casualidad for thirty seconds: pulse respiration temperature. Then for thirty seconds he listens to her remembering out loud how things happened, and when.

- This behavior, he says, it sounds like the result of stress.

I nod and Casualidad stares at the floor.

- Everyone is very stressed, he continues. It is El Niño, I believe. El Niño makes everyone crazy.

- It isn’t even here yet, I say.

- It doesn’t have to be here to make you crazy. You only have to think of it. Have you been thinking of El Niño, Pilar?

Sweat surges from my face and hands, I lift, and then slump back—of course, Casualidad’s real name. She looks at me, back at him, nods and I stare at the floor.

- So this is definitely a case of stress, he says. Relax more when you can, take aspirin for headaches, remember to remove your shoes at night, and come back to see me if the problem persists.

The air grows daily hotter and more humid. My students ask to be excused, one student after another, and if I let them go they do not return. The reason for these departures, and for the staff meeting that will start any moment now, is the University Olympiad.

We are all here, English and German and French and Italian professors, our complete contingent. From her place at the auditorium lectern Arantxa looks proudly at me, as if I am the optimal solution to all current problems. Then she looks the same way at the next person down the row of chairs, and the next, and the next.

She begins with a brief history for the benefit of recent hires, and it appears that the aspirin or llama fetus is working: I dropped by my house at four unexpected moments yesterday afternoon and six thus far today, and Casualidad was acting normally in each case. I no longer allow her to move heavy objects or clean strenuously, and insist that she spend Mariángel’s naps not dusting or ironing or washing but likewise napping. Perhaps this will be enough.

- What I’m saying, says Arantxa, is that by joining our strengths, we will also be covering for one another’s potential weaknesses.

There is a murmur in the room: sincere but guarded consent. The true Winter Olympiad soon to be conducted in Nagano is, like winter itself, all but meaningless in Piura. Here there is no ice except in drinks, no snow except on television. There are also no ice rinks anywhere in Peru, and no ski resorts, though there is one mountain down which one might ski, one run per day after first spending five hours ascending by jeep and then by horse or mule and then on foot.

- That’s exactly it! says Arantxa. That’s exactly the right spirit!

The University Olympiad: one team from each of the eight undergraduate programs, and the medal race is always won by Engineering or Business. The Language Center draws students from all departments, but because it was founded by Engineering, we may join their teams if we wish, and at times even if we do not. Points are given for participation regardless of whether one places, and we are most often asked firmly to compete in unpopular sports such as pole vault. We generally agree to do so, generally vault to the best of our abilities.

- So when students bring us notes signed by their Sports Delegate, says Arantxa, we as professors need to understand those notes not as attempts to skip class, but as statements of unity and solidarity. No matter what the student is needed for, whether it be chopping confetti or writing new cheers or practicing discus, university policy is to take that need seriously, to accept the note and register the absence as Excused.

I raise my hand, ask if we are required to be pleasant while doing so.

- Encouraged! says Arantxa. But not required.

She says that while the actual Olympiad doesn’t start until next week, sign-ups for the various events have already begun. She says that we are to let her know in person if there is a given sport we wish to play, and that on Monday she will be contacting those of us who have for whatever reason not yet signed up for anything. Then she says that Engineering has already elected its queen, and names the student in question. A certain hubbub ensues as those around me agree that this student gives us a good chance against Business this year.

- The department has also chosen the theme for its float, Arantxa says. The theme is Viaducts!

The silence that follows this announcement thickens briefly. We all become embarrassed on her behalf. Then she smiles and pulls from behind the lectern a beautifully drawn poster of the float as imagined by the dean. Good Christ but Arantxa is an excellent administrator.

She begins asking for volunteers for various roles, has little trouble filling them. Allegorical car: that is how one says float in Spanish. Students dressed and face-painted in their respective department’s color will walk alongside their float the entire way from the university to the coliseum, and points will be allotted according to each float’s aesthetic qualities, to the quantity of waving and smiling and beauty produced by each queen, to the exuberance of each department’s cheers. Once the coliseum is reached and filled, still more points will be allotted as the result of dance squads, indoor fireworks, banners of varying sizes.

- The parade is always the most interesting part! says Arantxa.

The parade is not always the least interesting part. My second year here, the Law float was vaguely Athenian. There were large amounts of red crepe paper and balloons, and the queen in her red evening gown stood in the bed of the truck among students in red togas. There were loose stone columns made of styrofoam, and torches held aloft. The students holding the torches slipped and slid as the truck lurched along the route. The queen was a very attractive young woman and continued to smile and wave even as she was borne off on the shoulders of her pep squad while behind her the float was consumed in flames.

Torches are no longer permitted and the flourescent lights stutter and glow across the full tan arcs of the tops of Arantxa’s breasts, just visible given her not immodest blouse. Then there is silence. Arantxa is staring at me, has obviously seen me look. She shakes her head.

- Anyone else? she says.

The silence recommences.