Pacazo (42 page)

Anticuchos, grilled slabs of marinated cow heart, one of many things that should be but are not eaten everywhere, and now the zoo. There is a cage holding several monkeys that swing and jump and masturbate. There are squirrels, and a pen with tortoises. One of the tortoises stands in the corner of the pen, takes a first step toward the center.

Further in is the bird area, and a snake area adjoined, and what appears to be an area for old home appliances. The boas are immobile, and parrots peck at them through the wire walls. I look back, and the tortoise takes a second step.

In among the parrots and doves and chirocas is a bird I have never seen before. It is the shape of an ostrich though much shorter, with a few thin feathers stretching back from its skull. Those feathers bear something like eyes, and the eyes seem significant.

Karina lifts Mariángel and runs, and Mariángel spreads her arms, believes in flight. I walk to the restaurant as the tortoise takes a third step. The waiter has no idea, but says the old man who tends the appliance area might know.

The old man is fighting a stove, stops when I ask, says the bird is a pavo real. I translate or possibly transliterate: royal turkey. I had hoped for a better name. I walk back to the bird area, grab Karina when she and Mariángel run by. I point at the royal turkey, tell Karina what I have learned, and she nods.

- In English you say peacock.

- How on earth do you know that word?

- It is just one of the ones that I know.

- All right. But that bird is not a peacock.

- Yes it is.

- Peacocks have big colorful tails.

- The male. This is a female.

I disagree forcefully but not for any reason—I have never knowingly seen a female peacock. The tortoise has taken a fourth step. The old man has followed, asks if I would like to buy a secondhand blender. The smallest of the boas strikes at the largest parrot, a fat papagayo, gold-chested, blue wings and back, some slight sky-green in its tail. The blow bends but does not break the wire mesh.

The papagayo flies to a plastic perch, wipes its bill. Its pupils are round and black, its irises white or nonexistent. A raindrop, and another. I tell the old man that we will soon return to see his wares. Steady rain now, stronger and louder. I pick Mariángel up, take Karina’s hand and pull toward home.

I have my dictionaries, and Karina was and is correct. She smiles, takes my daughter from me, sings Juan Luis Guerra badly and lays Mariángel down to nap. Then she asks why the peacock was so important. I tell her that probably it was not. I ask why she chose Juan Luis Guerra, and she says that he is a result of happiness, that I would do well to relax just a bit, that she has something in mind.

I raise my eyebrows and she laughs, wags her finger. She goes to her purse, removes a small plastic bag, joins me on the patio. The smell from the bag is not to be mistaken, not when one is from northern California. She rolls one tight, lights it, holds the smoke in, offers the joint to me.

- No thank you. It puts me straight to sleep.

- Perhaps you do it wrong.

- In what possible sense?

She shrugs.

- You should try ayahuasca, she says.

- I have.

- And?

I tell her. She nods, falls asleep, and I sit beside her, watch her sleep, watch the rain in the almond tree, watch the low gray light caught in the broken glass on top of the wall.

THIS WILL BE MY FIFTH HOLY WEEK HERE. Last year I spent it walking in the desert: tracing, retracing. The year before, soccer and stabbings, yes, and I found little information of use on my trip to Arequipa but I remember the Maiden of Ampato, a thirteen-year-old Inca girl led to a peak twenty thousand feet high, dressed in ritual fineries, blessed and then executed, a sacrifice meant to calm a nearby volcano. She was bundled with further offerings and buried, encased in ice for five hundred years, and I stood before her there in the museum, put my hands to the glass, her thick braid still well woven, her lips drawn back from her teeth, her flesh still frozen, her hand clutching her side as if to calm that cold. I drank well that night, walked and walked. At dawn I stood at the Yanahuara overlook, watched the light spread into the sky above El Misti, and on the ground thick strings of firecrackers were laid like tracks. An effigy of Fujimori was strung up near the edge of the cliff, and everyone called it Judas and laughed. There were hours of speeches and processions. The firecrackers were lit and the square filled with noise and sparks and smoke. Dozens of drunks stumbled, and we all turned. Music was played and we watched the effigy explode, though burn was the word they used, quema, as if it were the night before his birthday when in fact they had stuffed him with gunpowder and lit the fuse of his necktie.

The year before that I spent Holy Week at Pilar’s family’s house in Chiclayo. The first day we went to the beach at Pimentel, and I ate I believe a single bad prawn. That night I asked her parents for her hand—a formality, they had promised, and it was as they said. The dysentery made itself known the next day, simultaneous vomiting and shitting blood for hours, fevers during which I would hear lines from songs I had never intended to remember. Through it all Pilar and her mother watched over me. And my first Holy Week was mainly research in Lima—the Archivo General was closed to the public, or should have been, but one of the guards was Armando’s grandmother’s godson. In the early mornings and late evenings I walked the streets, visited the Seven Churches for no reason I could name, bought a small crucifix of palm leaves and straw at each, and thousands walked with and against me, carried candles and flowers and boughs.

This year the holiday will be spent much closer at hand: Reynaldo wishes to celebrate the survival of his aunt’s summer house in Colán, has invited me and Mariángel and Karina and the Swiss hydrologist to spend our four free days with him there. Last night we all agreed to meet at my house today at nine. Mireille arrived at eight-forty, and Reynaldo in his aunt’s station wagon at ten, and now comes Karina, eleven twenty-six.

There are not many clouds. We stop at a gas station, at Cossto, are on the road by noon. Again the varied greens, again the Andes if slightly less clearly than before. Mireille is very tall even sitting down, and during the drive she speaks of Byron and a castle. The road is not whole but neither is it impassible if taken slowly.

The massive cross, the ancient church. Down through the bluffs, and still there is water in the fields to both sides. Parked along the road are trucks bearing rebar and concrete. Most of the houses destroyed by El Niño have been demolished and removed, their foundations as if scrubbed clean.

We come to Reynaldo’s aunt’s house, arrange groceries and sheets and playpen that will also serve as crib. Reynaldo leads us out onto the balcony to admire the breakwater he built. Mireille says that he is a hero, a Dutch boy with a swollen finger. Reynaldo laughs, begins a sentence about other types of swelling, chokes it off in time.

Karina and Mireille take possession of deck chairs, and I hold Mariángel on the railing. Above us are varieties of albatross. Some are all black; others have white throats or breasts or heads. Their wingspans are as vast as in all legends and their lines are as if drawn by children.

Someone shouts up from below, and it is Armando, sand-speckled and bright with sweat, jogging or something like it. We wave back, invite him to join us. He says that he can’t stop now, is staying at his sister’s house three blocks up, will come to see us this evening. More waving as he jogs off, and from the opposite direction comes a woman who calls that she has three flounders and an octopus for sale. Reynaldo buys it all and prepares the grill. The rest of us pour beer into tall glasses and gather as if we will be of help. Mireille wishes to teach Karina to snow ski, explains this wish at length. The albatrosses fly higher and higher, and there are gulls in the middle sky, and there is a low wedge of pelicans.

I give the word to Mariángel in English and then in Spanish, pelican, alcatraz, and until this instant I had never made the connection: the island prison in the bay. Karina sees that without her there will be no rice, and leaves for the kitchen. I have been to Alcatraz twice. The first time I was guided in to see the cells of Capone and Kelly and Stroud. I was shown the shrapnel scars in the concrete and the spoons used for escape, the placards regarding the Hopi and Modoc and Sioux, the sad poppies and nasturtiums. I was led into solitary confinement, and was astounded: the deep sudden dark, the strangled wait that would not end.

The second time I went, there were no guides. Instead there were portable tape recorders, and cassettes in all languages. There were lines on the floor telling me which direction to go and where to stop. One receives more information this way, and steps may be retraced, and there are innumerable chances to start again, to do it right, to understand, but still I prefer the old way. Guiding oneself is not easy, even with a cassette that speaks one’s language.

Lunch is now ready. Karina has prepared salad as well, and I pour more beer. Mireille speaks of schaf reblochon. Peru also has an island prison that has been closed for many years—El Frontón, just off the coast of Lima. In addition to the standard cells there were others. Siberia was a cement hole twelve feet deep. The Parada was a massive stone vise. The Lobera was a cell that faced the open sea, the waves filling the cell and receding, filling and receding.

I have never known wholly the story of its closure, ask, and Reynaldo and Karina look at one another. Karina begins and Reynaldo fills in certain gaps. Many of the prisoners were Shining Path, and they drilled and marched and one day captured three guards, took control of the Pabellón Azul. Marines came in gunboats and the first two through the wall were shot and killed. The marines attacked and pulled back and shelled, attacked and pulled back and shelled until the prisoners surrendered and released the two hostages still alive.

What happened next is unclear, says Karina. The marines were ordered to stand down, were replaced by another organization, something between secret police and special forces, answering only to President García. It was reported that all the other prisoners on the island had been killed in the course of the assault, but there are rumors: prisoners found wounded and executed there or elsewhere, or evacuated and hidden in other prisons. Most of the Pabellón Azul was still standing when the marines regained control of the island. None of it was standing two hours later when journalists and government officials arrived.

Frontón is also a sport, a sort of squash played with wooden paddles against a single wall, and there is likely no connection. The island is barren now, says Reynaldo—even the ruins were bulldozed. Mireille passes the flounder, and Karina interlocks our legs below the table.

After lunch we sleep as long as Mariángel’s nap allows, which today is nearly two hours. Then we walk, scuffing our feet studiously in the surf. The only other people on the beach are three boys. They are walking the same direction as us at nearly the same speed and hitting each other with driftwood.

Sand is something new for Mariángel and she wishes to stop constantly, to hunch down and observe, to taste. The water is blue and green in patches, the result of depths and shadows. As we reach the gullied cliffs, Reynaldo tells us that we will need to hurry back, that only an hour remains until high tide takes the beach.

It is hard to hurry, however. At one point Mariángel and I feel the need to corner a crab. The three boys are nearby, and they are throwing rocks at pelicans. I tell them to stop, and they throw again. I shout and they run to a nearby beach house and come back with their father. He walks up to me, stands too close, speaks too loudly about respect.

- I may never corner a crab, I say, but if I wished, I could place my hands on your hips and snap your pelvis.

- John, says Reynaldo.

- What? I could.

- Enough.

I smile at the man, turn and lead the others away. Reynaldo and Mireille quicken their pace, are soon well ahead. Karina takes not my hand but the skin on the back of my arm:

- What the hell was that?

- Happiness.

- That is not how a normal person is happy.

I do not argue, and the rest of the walk loosens slowly, and we are back just in time to beat the tide. Hours of moving shells and pebbles on the balcony. Early in the evening Armando joins us, and together we walk up to the cross to watch the sunset. It is the commonest pastime here. The others find places to sit at the edge of the bluffs. Mariángel and I make our way in and out of small gullies. There is a long thick scarf of cloud near the horizon. The cove curves out toward Paita. Bushes, clumps of grass, trees, all vivid green, even in this odd sloppy light.

I lift Mariángel and point at the vultures. There are perhaps twenty of them circling slowly upward. I have heard that they shit purposefully on their own legs to avoid overheating, that they defend themselves first and best with projectile vomit. It is not hard to believe these things when the vultures can be seen up close, but from a distance they are beautiful.

A cloud passes between us and the sun. Below us are all other things. San Lucas, now weakened by rain, plastic sheeting over holes in the roof. The houses nearest to it are not the beach homes of the rich but the true homes of fishermen: clusters of painted adobe and flat tin roofs. A square of taut algarrobos encloses the cemetery and its graves, and animals are heard: goats, a donkey, a dog.

The sun sets splendidly, of course. We watch for a time. There is a loud pop, and a waterfall of sparks from the hill to our right, and the town’s streetlights fade. Reynaldo says it is only that the transformer has blown again. The mosquitoes begin and Mariángel shouts and we walk back down into the black.

Late morning, a single fighter jet arcs silently through the upper sky, and Karina and I teach seaweed to Mariángel. The woman returns, and she has brought gooseneck barnacles; Reynaldo buys them for ceviche. Arantxa once told me that gooseneck barnacles are rare and vastly expensive in Spain. Here they are common, cheap, look like tiny penises and have no particular taste.