Who Killed Palomino Molero? (7 page)

“The girl?” Lituma blurted out. A glance from the lieutenant made him bite his tongue.

“The girl. She was the one. They begged me so much that I felt sorry for them. I didn’t even get any money out of it, sir, and God knows I need it. My husband was run over by a tractor, I told you, didn’t I? I swear by God in heaven and by St. Nicholas, our patron saint. The two of them didn’t have a cent. Just enough to pay for their dinner, that’s it. I gave them the bed for nothing. Because they were going to get married. I was sorry for them, they were so young, just kids, and they seemed so much in love, sir. How could I know what was going to happen? Oh, God, what did I do that you should give me such heartache?”

The lieutenant, blowing smoke rings and glaring at the woman through his sunglasses, waited for her to cross herself, squeeze her arms, and rub her face as if trying to erase it.

“I know you’re honest. I could see that the moment I walked through the door. Don’t worry about anything, just go on talking. How many days were the lovebirds here?”

Again the obscene braying pierced the morning air. Nearer this time. And Lituma also heard galloping hooves, that’s done her,” he deduced.

“Only two days. They were waiting for the priest, Father Ezequiel, but he was away. He always is. He says he goes to baptize children and marry people out on the haciendas in the mountains, that he goes to Ayabaca because he’s so devoted to the statue of Our Lord in Captivity there, but who knows. People say a thousand different things about all that traveling around. I told them not to wait, because Father Ezequiel might not be back for a week or ten days, who could tell. They were leaving the next day for San Jacinto. It was Sunday and I myself advised them to go there. On Sundays, a priest from Sullana goes to San Jacinto to say Mass. He could marry them in the hacienda chapel. That’s what they wanted most in the world, a priest to marry them. Here they were wasting their time waiting around. Go to San Jacinto, that’s what I told them.”

“But the lovebirds didn’t get to San Jacinto that Sunday.”

“No.” Doña Lupe was struck dumb and looked back and forth from Lituma to the lieutenant. She trembled and her teeth chattered.

“They didn’t get to San Jacinto that Sunday because . . .” Lieutenant Silva helped her along.

“Because someone came looking for them on Saturday afternoon,” the terrified woman whispered, her eyes jumping out of her head.

It still wasn’t dark. The sun was a ball of fire among the eucalyptus and carob trees; the tin roofs of some houses reflected the blazing sunset. She was bent over the stove cooking and stopped when she saw the car. It left the highway, turned toward Amotape, bounced, raised a dust cloud, and ground its way straight to the plaza. Doña Lupe watched every inch of the way as it approached. They, too, heard and saw it. But they paid it no attention until it skidded to a halt in front of the church. They were sitting there kissing. They were kissing all the time. Stop it, now, you’re setting a bad example for the children. Why don’t you talk or sing.

“Because he sang beautifully, didn’t he?” whispered the lieutenant, encouraging her to go on. “Mostly boleros, right?”

“Waltzes and
tonderos,
too.” She sighed so loud that Lituma jumped. “And even
cumananas,
you know, what they sing when two singers challenge each other. He did it really well, he was so funny.”

“The car rolled into Amotape and you saw it,” the lieutenant reminded her. “Did they run away? Did they hide?”

“She wanted him to run away and hide. She scared him, saying, Run away, honey, go away, run, run, don’t stay here, I don’t want them to . . .” “No, sweetheart, remember, you’re mine now. We’ve spent two nights together, you’re my wife. Now nobody can come between us. They’ll have to accept our love. I’m not leaving. I’ll wait for him, talk to him.”

“She was scared out of her wits, run, run, if they catch you, they’ll . . . I don’t know what, get out of here, I’ll keep them here, I don’t want them to kill you, darling.” She was so scared that Doña Lupe also got scared: “Who are they?” she asked the young couple, pointing at the dusty car, the silhouettes that got out and stood anonymously framed by the burning horizon. “Who’s coming? My God! What’s going to happen?”

“Who was coming, Doña Lupe?” asked the lieutenant blowing smoke rings.

“Who do you think it was? Who else could it be but your kind?”

Lieutenant Silva didn’t move a muscle. “You mean the Guardia Civil? Or do you mean the military police from the Talara Air Force Base? Is that it?”

“Your kind. Men in uniforms. Isn’t it all the same thing?”

“Actually it isn’t. But it doesn’t matter.”

At that moment, even though he missed not a one of Doña Lupe’s revelations, Lituma saw them. They were sitting right there, in the shade, holding hands, an instant before disaster struck. He’d bent his head covered with short, black curls over her shoulder and, caressing her ear with his lips, was singing to her: “Two souls joined by God in this world, two souls who loved each other, that’s what we were, you and I.” Moved by the tenderness and the beauty of his voice, she had tears in her eyes, and so she could hear him better, she shrugged her shoulders and crinkled up her loving face. There was no evidence of nastiness or arrogance in those adolescent features sweetened by love.

Lituma felt desolated by sadness as he imagined the vehicle of the uniformed men: first a roaring motor, then clouds of yellow dust. It traced a path around midday Amotape and after a few horrid moments stopped a few yards from the very doorless shack where they were now. “At least he must have been very happy during the two days he spent here.”

“Only two men?” Lituma was surprised to see the lieutenant so surprised. He avoided looking him in the eye, out of an obscure superstition.

“Only two,” repeated the woman, nervous and uncertain. She squinted toward the ceiling, as if trying to figure out where she’d made her mistake. “Nobody else. They got out and the jeep was empty. Yes, a jeep. There were only two of them, I’m sure. Why do you ask, sir?”

“No reason,” said the lieutenant, grinding his cigarette butt on the floor with his shoe. “I would have thought that at least a patrol would have come for them. But if you saw two, there were two and that’s that. Go on.”

Another bray interrupted Doña Lupe. It floated in the scorching midday atmosphere of Amotape, prolonged, full of high and low notes, deep, funny, seminal. As soon as they heard it, the children playing on the floor got up and ran or toddled out, splitting their sides with malicious laughter. “They’re going to find the mare and see how the donkey mounts her and makes her yell like that,” Lituma thought.

“Are you all right?” said the shadow of the older man, the shadow that did not have a pistol in its hand. “Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”

It had suddenly gotten dark. In the few seconds it had taken for the two men to walk the short distance from the jeep to the shack, the afternoon had turned to night.

“If you hurt him, I’ll kill myself,” said the girl, not shouting but challenging, her heels firmly planted on the ground, her fists tight, her chin shaking. “If you touch him, I’ll kill myself. But before I do, I’ll tell everything. Everyone will be ashamed and disgusted at you.”

Doña Lupe was shaking like a leaf. “What’s going on, sir? Who are you? What can I do for you? This is my own little place, I mind my own business. I’m just a poor woman.”

The shadow with the weapon, who flashed fire whenever he looked at the boy—the older one looked only at the girl —went up to Doña Lupe and put his pistol between her withered breasts. “We’re not here, we don’t even exist” he instructed her, drunk with hate and fury. “Open your mouth and you’re a dead bitch. I’ll blow your brains out. Understand?”

She went down on her knees, begging. She knew nothing, understood nothing. “What did I do, sir? Nothing, nothing. I took in two kids who asked for a room. For the love of God, think of your own mother, sir, don’t shoot, we don’t want any trouble or disgrace around here.”

“Did the younger man call the older one colonel?”

“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, trying to find her way through the interrogation. She was trying to guess what he wanted her to say. “Colonel? The younger addressing the older one? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t remember. I’m a poor, ignorant woman, sir. I don’t have anything to do with all this, it was all an accident. The one with the gun said that if I opened my mouth and told what I’m telling you, he’d come back and blow my brains out, then shoot me in the stomach, and then shoot me between the legs. What could I do, what was I going to do? I lost my husband, he was run over by a tractor. I’ve got six kids and I can just barely feed them. I had thirteen, and seven died. If I get killed, the other six will die. Is that fair?”

“The one with the gun, was he an officer? Did he have stripes on his shoulder or just a silver bar on his cap?”

Lituma began to believe in telepathy. His boss was asking the very questions he was thinking. He was panting, feeling dizzy.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t you stop torturing me? Don’t ask me questions I don’t understand. What are stripes? What are you talking about?”

Lituma heard her, but he was seeing the young couple again, clearly, despite the blue shadows that covered Amotape. Doña Lupe, on her knees in front of the frenetic, gesticulating young man, was whimpering right there on the doorstep; the old man’s staring eyes were bitterly, painfully, disdainfully on the girl, who defiantly protected the thin boy with her own body and kept him from stepping up to the men in uniform. Lituma was seeing how the arrival of the outsiders had taken the children, the old people, and even the dogs and goats of Amotape off the streets and buried them in their houses. Everyone was afraid of getting involved in this kind of trouble.

“You keep quiet, keep your mouth shut, who do you think you are, who gave you the right, what are you doing here anyway,” said the girl, protecting him, pushing him out, holding him back, stopping him from speaking. At the same time she kept on threatening the shadow of the older man: “I’ll kill myself and tell the world everything.”

“I love her with all my heart, I’m an honorable man, I’ll dedicate my life to loving her and making her happy.” No matter how he tried, the boy couldn’t get around the body of the girl who was shielding him, in order to come forward. The old man’s shadow never turned toward him but remained fixed on the girl, as if no one else existed in Amotape or the world for that matter. But the young man half turned the instant he heard the boy speak and lunged toward him, muttering curses and waving his pistol as if he were going to smash in the boy’s head. The girl grabbed him and tangled him up. Then the shadow of the older man gave a dry, definitive order: “At ease,” which the other obeyed instantly.

“All he said was
At ease?
Or did he say
At ease, Dufó?
Or maybe
At ease, Lieutenant Dufó?”

This went beyond telepathy. The lieutenant asked the questions using the same words that came to Lituma. “I don’t know,” swore Doña Lupe. “I never heard any names. I only found out that his name was Palomino Molero when I saw the photos in the Piura newspaper. I recognized him right away. My heart broke, sir. That’s him, the kid who ran away with the girl and brought her to Amotape. But I never found out her name or the names of the men who came looking for them. And I don’t want to know, either. Don’t tell me if you know. I’m cooperating, okay? Don’t mention their names!”

“Don’t get upset, stop shouting, don’t say those things,” said the shadow of the old one. “Child, how can you think of threatening me? You’re going to kill yourself, you?”

“If you hurt him, if you touch a hair on his head.” In the sky, behind a bluish haze, the shadows grew darker. The stars had come out. Some candles began to flicker among the adobe walls, cast-iron gates, and bamboo fences of Amotape.

“Hurt him? I’m going to shake hands with him and say to him, from the bottom of my heart, ‘I forgive you,’” murmured the shadow of the old one. He actually did extend his arm toward him, although he was yet to look at him. Doña Lupe began to feel better. She saw they were shaking hands. The boy was so overcome with emotion he could barely speak.

“I swear to you, I’ll do anything, she’s the light of my life, the holiest thing, she . . .”

“Now you two have to shake hands as well,” ordered the older shadow. “No grudges. No rank here. Just two men, three men, arranging their affairs, the way real men always do things. Happy now, dear? Calmed down? That’s right, it’s all over now. Let’s get out of here.”

He quickly took his wallet out of his back pocket. Doña Lupe felt the sweat-moistened bank notes in her hand and heard a gentlemanly voice thanking her for all her trouble and advising her to forget the whole thing. Then she saw the shadow of the older man walk out of the shack toward the jeep. But the younger shadow poked its pistol in her chest again before leaving: “If you open your mouth, you know what will happen to you. Remember that.”

“And the kid and the girl got into the jeep like two little lambs, just like that? And they just drove off?” The lieutenant couldn’t believe it, judging by the expression on his face. Lituma didn’t believe it either.

“She didn’t want to, she didn’t trust them, and tried to stop him: Let’s stay right here. Don’t believe him, don’t believe him.”

“Come on now, let’s get going, my dear,” the voice of the older one encouraged them from the jeep. “He’s a deserter, don’t forget. He has to go back. This has to be taken care of immediately. This black mark has to be erased from his service record. He’s got to think of his future. Let’s get going.”

“Yes, dear, he’s right, he’s forgiven us, let’s do what he wants and get in. I believe what he says. He wouldn’t lie.”

“He wouldn’t lie.” Lituma felt a tear run down his cheek to his lips. It was salty, a drop of sea water. He kept on hearing Doña Lupe, her voice as deep as the ocean, interrupted from time to time by the lieutenant’s questions. He vaguely understood that she was no longer telling anything she hadn’t already said about the matter they had come to investigate. She cursed her bad luck, she wondered what would happen to her, she asked heaven what sin she’d committed that she should be tangled up in this horrible story. At times she sobbed. But nothing she said interested Lituma.