The Discreet Hero (14 page)

“The motherfucker’s name was Josefino Rojas and he was the son of Carlos Rojas, the bargeman who used to carry cattle from the ranches to the slaughterhouse on the river during the flood months,” said Lituma. “I met him when I was very young, still wet behind the ears. We had our little gang. We liked binges, guitars, beers, and broads. Somebody nicknamed us ‘the Unconquerables,’ or maybe we did it ourselves. We wrote our anthem.”

And in a low, rasping voice, Lituma sang, in tune and happily:

We’re the Unconquerables,

for us working has no class:

only guzzling!

only gambling!

only girls fucked up the ass!

The captain congratulated him, bursting into laughter and applauding. “Nice, Lituma. I mean, at least when you were young you paid attention.”

“There were three of us Unconquerables at first,” the sergeant continued nostalgically, lost in his memories. “My cousins, the León brothers—José and Mono—and yours truly. Three guys from Mangachería. I don’t know how Josefino hooked up with us. He wasn’t from Mangachería, he came from Gallinacera, near the old market and slaughterhouse. I don’t know why we let him in the group. Back then there was a terrible rivalry between the two neighborhoods. Fistfights and knife fights. A war that made a lot of blood flow in Piura, I can tell you.”

“Come on, you’re talking about the prehistory of this city,” said the captain. “I know where Mangachería was, in the north, from Avenida Sánchez Cerro down, near the old San Teodoro cemetery. But Gallinacera?”

“Right there, close to the Plaza de Armas, beside the river, toward the south,” Lituma said, pointing. “It was called Gallinacera because of all the
gallinazos
, the turkey buzzards the slaughterhouse attracted when they were killing cattle. We Mangaches were Sanchezcerristas and the Gallinazos were Apristas. The motherfucker Josefino was a Gallinazo and told us that when he was a kid he’d been a butcher’s apprentice.”

“So you were gang members.”

“Just street kids, Captain. We made mischief, nothing very serious. It never got past fistfights. But then Josefino became a pimp. He’d seduce girls and put them to work as whores in the Green House. That was the name of the brothel as you left Catacaos, when Castilla wasn’t named Castilla yet but was still Tacalá. Did you know that whorehouse? It was really fancy.”

“No, but I’ve heard a lot about the famous Green House. A legend in Piura. But getting back to the pimp. Was he the one who drew the spiders?”

“The same, Captain. I think they were spiders, but maybe my memory’s playing tricks on me. I’m not really sure.”

“And may I ask why you hate this pimp so much, Lituma?”

“Lots of reasons.” The sergeant’s heavy face darkened and his eyes grew red with anger; he’d begun to rub his double chin very quickly. “Mainly for what he did to me when I was in jail. You know the story, they ran me in for playing Russian roulette with a local landowner. In the Green House, to be exact. A white guy, a drunk whose last name was Seminario and who blew his brains out during the game. Taking advantage of the fact that I was in jail, Josefino stole my girl. He started her whoring for him in the Green House. Her name was Bonifacia. I brought her here from Alto Marañón, in Santa María de Nieva, in Amazonia. When she started in the life, they called her ‘Selvática,’ Jungle Girl.”

“Ah, well, you had plenty of reason to hate him,” the captain admitted, shaking his head. “So you have quite a past, Lituma. Nobody would think so seeing you now, so tame. As if you’d never killed a fly in your life. Really, I can’t imagine you playing Russian roulette. I played only once, with a buddy of mine one night when we were drinking. My balls still freeze up when I think about it. And this Josefino, may I ask why you didn’t kill him?”

“Not for lack of wanting, but I had no desire to go back to the slammer,” the sergeant explained briefly. “But I did give him a beating—he must still be aching from it. I’m talking at least twenty years ago, Captain.”

“Are you sure the pimp spent all his time drawing spiders?”

“I don’t know whether they were spiders,” Lituma corrected him again. “But he definitely was drawing all the time. On napkins, on any piece of paper he had in front of him. It was his mania. Maybe it has nothing to do with what we’re looking for.”

“Think and try to remember, Lituma. Concentrate, close your eyes, look back. Spiders like the ones on the letters sent to Felícito Yanaqué?”

“My memory’s not that good, Captain,” Lituma apologized. “I’m talking about something that happened years ago, I told you—maybe twenty, maybe more. I don’t know why I made that connection. We should probably forget it.”

“Do you know what happened to Josefino the pimp?” the captain insisted. His expression was grave and he didn’t take his eyes off the sergeant.

“I never saw him again, or my cousins, the other two Unconquerables. Since I was readmitted to the force, I’ve been in the mountains, the jungle, in Lima. Going all around Peru, you might say. I came back to Piura just a little while ago. That’s why I said my idea was probably silly. I’m not sure they were spiders. He definitely was drawing something. He did it all the time and the Unconquerables made fun of him.”

“If Josefino the pimp is alive, I’d like to meet him,” said the chief, hitting the table lightly. “Find out, Lituma. I don’t know why, but it smells right to me. Maybe we’ve bitten into a nice piece of meat. Tender and juicy. I feel it in my spit, my blood, my balls. I’m never wrong about these things. I’m beginning to see light at the end of this tunnel. Good for you, Lituma.”

The captain was so happy that the sergeant regretted telling him about his hunch. Was he sure that back when they were all Unconquerables, Josefino never stopped drawing? Now he wasn’t so certain. That night, when his shift was over and, as usual, he walked up Avenida Grau to the boardinghouse where he lived in the Buenos Aires district near the Grau Barracks, he struggled with his memory, trying to be certain it wasn’t a false one. No, no it wasn’t, though now he wasn’t as convinced as he had been. Images of his years as a kid on the dusty streets of Mangachería returned in waves: He, Mono, and José would go to the sandy tracts of land just outside the city to set traps for iguanas at the foot of the carob trees, hunt birds with slings they made themselves, or hide in the thickets and sand dunes to spy on the women who washed their clothes in the river near the culvert, in water up to their waists. Sometimes, because of the water, their breasts would show through their clothes and the boys’ eyes and crotches would burn with excitement. How did Josefino get into the group? He no longer could remember how, when, or why. In any case, the Gallinazo joined them when they weren’t little kids anymore. Because by then they were going to the chicha bars and spending the few soles they earned doing occasional jobs—like selling bets on horse races—on gambling, carousing, and drunken binges. Maybe they weren’t spiders, but they were definitely drawings, and Josefino made them all the time—he remembered that very clearly—while he was talking, or singing, or beginning to brood about his evil deeds, isolating himself from the others. It wasn’t a false memory, but maybe what he drew were frogs, snakes, pricks. Lituma was assailed by doubts. Suddenly they were the crosses and circles of tic-tac-toe, or caricatures of the people they saw in La Chunga’s bar, one of their haunts. La Chunga, that slut! Did the bar still exist? Impossible. If she were alive, she’d be so old by now that she wouldn’t be physically able to run it. Though who knows. She was a tough woman who wasn’t afraid of anybody and could hold her own in confrontations with drunks. Once she even challenged Josefino when he tried to act smart with her.

The Unconquerables! La Chunga! Damn, how time flew. The León brothers, Josefino, and Bonifacia were probably dead and buried by now, nothing left of them but memory. How sad.

He was walking almost in darkness, because after you passed the Club Grau and entered the residential neighborhood of Buenos Aires, the streetlights were farther apart and dimmer. He walked slowly, tripping over the cracks in the asphalt, past houses that once had gardens and two stories and over time had become lower and poorer. As he approached his boardinghouse the buildings turned into huts, rough constructions with adobe walls, posts of carob wood, and corrugated metal roofs on streets without sidewalks and hardly any automobile traffic.

When he returned to Piura after serving for many years in Lima and in the mountains, he moved into a room on the military base, where police as well as soldiers could live. But he didn’t like that much intimacy with his associates on the force. It was like still being in the service, seeing the same people and talking about the same things. That’s why, after six months, he moved to the house of the Calancha family, who had five rooms for boarders. It was extremely modest and Lituma’s bedroom was tiny, but he paid very little and felt more independent there. The Calanchas were watching television when he came in. The husband had been a teacher and his wife a municipal employee. They’d been retired for some time. Board included only breakfast, but if the tenant desired, the Calanchas could order in lunch and dinner from a nearby restaurant whose stews were pretty substantial. The sergeant asked if they happened to remember a little bar near the old stadium, run by a fairly masculine woman who was named, or called, La Chunga. They looked at him uneasily, shaking their heads no.

That night he lay awake for a long time and didn’t feel very well. Damn, he never should have mentioned Josefino to Captain Silva. Now he was almost certain the pimp hadn’t been drawing spiders but something else. Rummaging around in his past wasn’t a good idea. It made him sad to remember his youth, to think about how old he was—close to fifty now—how solitary his life was, the misfortunes that had battered him, that idiotic Russian roulette with Seminario, his years in prison, what happened to Bonifacia, which left a bitter taste in his mouth each time he thought about it.

He slept at last, but badly, and had nightmares that left him with a memory of calamitous, terrifying images when he woke. He washed, had breakfast, and was out before seven, on his way to the spot where his memory guessed La Chunga’s bar had been. It wasn’t easy to orient himself. In his memory, this had been the outskirts of the city, just a few huts of clay and wild reeds built on the sandy tracts. Now there were streets, cement, houses made of reputable materials, streetlights, sidewalks, cars, schools, gas stations, shops. So many changes! The old neighborhood was now a part of the city and bore no resemblance to his memories. His attempts to speak to residents—he asked only older people—led nowhere. Nobody remembered either the bar or La Chunga; a lot of people in the area weren’t even Piuran but had moved here from the mountains. He had the unpleasant sensation that his memory was lying to him; none of the things he remembered had existed, they were phantoms and always had been phantoms, pure products of his imagination. Thinking about that frightened him.

At midmorning he called a halt to the search and returned to the center of Piura. It was hot, and before going back to the police station, he had a soda at the corner. The streets were filled with noise, cars, buses, students in uniform. Lottery-ticket sellers and trinket vendors hocking their wares, sweaty people all in a hurry, crowding the sidewalks. And then his memory retrieved the name and number of the street where his cousins, the León brothers, had lived: Calle Morropón 17. In the very heart of Mangachería. Half closing his eyes, he saw the faded façade of the one-story house, grillwork on the windows, pots of wax flowers, the chicha bar over which a white flag on a reed fluttered, a sign that cold chicha was served there.

He took a mototaxi to Avenida Sánchez Cerro and, feeling the drops of sweat streaming down his face and wetting his back, he walked into the ancient labyrinth of streets, alleys, crescents, dead ends, empty lots that had been Mangachería, a neighborhood, people said, that got its name because in colonial times it had been populated by slaves brought over from Madagascar. This had all changed too—in its form, people, texture, and color. The dirt streets were paved in asphalt, the houses were made of brick and cement, there were some office buildings, street lighting, not a single chicha bar or burro left in the streets, only stray dogs. Chaos had turned into order and straight, parallel streets. Nothing here resembled his Mangache memories now. The neighborhood had been made respectable and become colorless, impersonal. But Calle Morropón still existed, and so did number 17. Except that instead of his cousins’ little house he found a large auto repair shop, with a sign that read:
WE SELL REPLACEMENT PARTS FOR ALL MAKES OF CARS, VANS, TRUCKS, AND BUSES
. He went inside, and in the huge, dim place that smelled of oil he saw dismantled car bodies and engines, heard the sound of welding, observed three or four workers in blue overalls leaning over their machines. A radio played music from the jungle, “La Contamanina.” He walked into an office where a fan was humming. A very young woman sat in front of a computer.

“Good afternoon,” said Lituma, removing his kepi.

“Can I help you?” She was looking at him with the slight uneasiness with which people usually regarded the police.

“I’m looking for a family that used to live here,” Lituma explained, indicating the premises. “When this wasn’t a repair shop but a house. Their name was León.”

“As far as I know, this has always been a repair shop,” said the girl.

“You’re very young, you can’t remember,” Lituma replied. “But maybe the owner knows something.”

“You can wait for him if you’d like.” The girl indicated a chair. And then, suddenly, her face lit up. “Oh, I’m so dumb. Of course! The owner’s name is León, Don José León, to be precise. He probably can help you.”

Lituma dropped into the chair, his heart pounding. Don José León. Damn. It was him, his cousin José. It had to be the Unconquerable. Who else could it be?

He was on pins and needles as he waited. The minutes seemed endless. When the Unconquerable José León finally appeared in the shop—though he was now a stout, big-bellied man with streaks of gray in his thinning hair, dressed like a white man in a jacket, business shirt, and shoes shined as bright as glass—Lituma recognized him immediately. He stood, filled with emotion, and held out his arms. José, surprised, didn’t recognize him and brought his face very close to examine him.