“Maybe he did survive,” said Pichincho, kneading his smallpox scars as if they itched. “Huarcaya went off his head after what happened with the terruca. Didn’t you hear that he used to brag about being a pishtaco? It was all he could talk about. He’d do his number here every night. Maybe he didn’t disappear, maybe it was just a wild hair that made him leave Naccos and not say goodbye.”
He spoke with so much insincerity that Lituma wanted to ask if he thought he and his adjutant were as fucking stupid as he was.
But it was Tomasito who said: “Made him leave without collecting his pay? That’s the best proof the albino didn’t leave because he wanted to: he didn’t collect for seven days’ work. Nobody makes a present of a week’s wages to the company.”
“Nobody who isn’t out of his mind,” Pichincho responded with absolutely no conviction, resigned to going on with the game. “Huarcaya had a screw loose ever since the terruca.”
“When you come right down to it, what difference does it make if he disappeared?” said a man who had not spoken before, a hunchback with hollow eyes and teeth stained green from chewing coca. “We’re all going to disappear when we die, aren’t we?”
“And sooner than you think after this motherfucking huayco,” a guttural voice exclaimed; Lituma could not tell which man had spoken.
Just then he saw the albino staggering toward the door. People stepped aside to let him pass, not looking at him, pretending that Casimiro Huarcaya was not there, that he did not exist.
Before he stepped through the door and was lost from view in the cold and dark, the albino challenged them one last time, his voice breaking with rage, or fatigue: “I’m going out to slit some throats. Whoosh! I’ll fry the meat in its own fat and then I’ll eat it. These are good nights for a throat-slitter. You can all drop dead, you shits!”
“Don’t complain; after all, the huayco didn’t kill anybody,” said Doña Adriana from the other end of the bar. “Nobody was even hurt. Not even the corporal, who got in the way of the stones. You should give thanks! You should be dancing for joy instead of complaining, instead of being ungrateful!”
He walked out and headed straight for the barracks, dimly lit by yellow lightbulbs that the company kept burning on Saturdays until eleven, one hour later than the rest of the week. But after a few steps Huarcaya tripped and fell heavily to the ground. He lay there for a while, cursing, groaning, making strenuous efforts to get up. Gradually he succeeded, first a foot, then the knee of the opposite leg, then both feet, then a great push with his hands until he was standing again. To avoid another fall, he moved like an ape, bending over and swinging his arms to keep his balance. Was he headed for the barracks? The little yellow lights flickered like fireflies, but he knew they weren’t because in the sierra, this high up in the Cordillera, there weren’t any fireflies, were there? It was the lights in the barracks, moving up and down, moving left and right, coming toward him, then moving back. Casimiro giggled and tried to brush them away. Seeing his clownish behavior, Lituma laughed, too, but he was sweating ice and shivering. Would Casimiro ever reach the barracks and the wooden bunk that was waiting for him with its straw mattress and blanket? He turned, walked forward, moved back, spun around, trying to stay on the path marked by those elusive lights that grew more crazed by the second. He was so exhausted he didn’t even have the strength to curse them. But suddenly he was inside the barracks, down on all fours, struggling to climb into his bunk. He finally succeeded, banging his face against the crossbar and feeling scratches on his forehead and arms. Huddling there, face down, with his eyes closed, he began to retch and tried to vomit, with no success. Then he attempted to cross himself and pray, but he was so tired he couldn’t lift his arm, and besides, he couldn’t remember the Our Father or Hail Mary. He lay in an acidic half sleep, trembling, belching, feeling a pain that moved through his belly and chest before tormenting him under the arms, on his neck, along his thighs. Did he know they would be coming for him soon?
“What good does it do us to survive if the huayco left us without work, mamay,” the hunchback said to Doña Adriana. “Can’t you see how it smashed the shovels, the tractors, the steamroller?”
“Is that any reason to dance for joy, Doña Adriana?” asked the porcupine. “Somebody better explain it to me, because I don’t get it.”
“Didn’t it leave us without a roof over our heads? Didn’t it bury a hundred meters that were ready for paving?” called another laborer from among the groups of men. “Now they have the excuse they wanted to stop the project. No more money! That’s it! Tighten your belts and to hell with you!”
“It could’ve been the apocalypse, so stop your sniveling,” replied Doña Adriana. “You could’ve lost your legs and hands and eyes, it could’ve broken every bone in your bodies, and you’d have to spend the rest of your lives crawling around like worms. And still these dirty ingrates are crying!”
“Ay, ay, ay, ay, Sing and don’t cryyyy,” Dionisio interrupted in a husky voice. “In other words, gentlemen, we should drown our sorrows and dance a nice little huayno in the Sapallanga style.”
He was in the center of the cantina, pushing first one man, then another, trying to form a line that would turn and turn again to the beat of the muliza on the radio. But Lituma could see that not even the drunkest patrons wanted to follow him. This time the alcohol, instead of helping them forget the sinister future, made it even darker. The cantinero’s hopping and crooning produced a slight vertigo in Lituma.
“Are you all right, Corporal?” Tomasito took his arm.
“The drink went to my head,” Lituma stammered. “I’ll feel better in a minute.”
The camp generator had been turned off, and dawn would be breaking in a few hours. But they carried lanterns and moved freely through a darkness cut by yellow cylinders. There were so many they barely fit into the narrow space, but they did not push or interfere with one another, or hurry, or appear to be afraid or angry, much less nervous or uncertain. They seemed serene and confident and, strangest of all, thought Lituma, there was no smell of alcohol in the cold air they brought in from outside. They moved with calm determination, they knew what they were doing, what they were going to do.
“Do you want me to help you puke?” asked Tomasito.
“Not yet,” answered the corporal. “But listen, if I start dancing like these perverts, grab me and don’t let me do it.”
The one who woke the albino did so by shaking his shoulder, with no ill will, even with a certain delicacy.
“Come on, Huarcaya, come on. It’s time to get up.”
“It’s still dark,” the albino protested in a faint voice. And, in his confusion, he added something that seemed very stupid to Lituma: “It’s Sunday, only the watchmen work today.”
No one laughed at him. They remained motionless and quiet, and in the immense silence it seemed to the corporal that they were all listening to the fierce pounding of his heart.
“Come on, Huarcaya,” ordered the porcupine? the pockmarked one? the hunchback? “Don’t be lazy, get up.”
In the darkness, hands reached out toward the bunk and helped the albino sit up, then get to his feet. He could barely stand; without so many arms holding him, he would have collapsed like a rag doll.
“I can’t even stand,” he complained. And with no trace of hatred, as if he didn’t really want to, as if it were a matter of principle, he tried again to curse them: “You shits!”
“It’s just the booze, Huarcaya,” someone consoled him in a kindly way.
“You feel like this because you’re not yourself anymore.”
“I can’t even walk, damn it,” the albino protested sadly. His voice was very different from what it had been when he boasted in the cantina that he was the throat-slitter. Now it was resigned, Lituma thought, the voice of a man who knows and accepts his fate.
“It’s just the booze,” repeated another, encouraging him. “Don’t worry, Huarcaya, we’ll help you.”
“I??
?m pretty high, too, Corporal,” declared Tomasito, not letting go of his arm. “Only you can’t tell with me, it all stays inside. Well, it’s no wonder, we must’ve had five piscos at least, don’t you think?”
“You see? I was right.” Lituma turned to look at him and saw his adjutant at a great distance even though he felt his hand holding tight to his arm. “These serruchos knew all about the albino, they made damn fools of us. I bet you they know where the body is, too.”
“I’m so high I won’t be able to think about you tonight,” said Tomás. “It’s not that I’m with anybody, it’s because the corporal had a huayco go right over him and it didn’t kill him. Just think, Mercedes baby! Just think what it would’ve been like to be all by myself at the Naccos post and not be able to talk about you. That’s why I got drunk, sweetheart.”
They held him by the arms and supported his weight, walking him to the door of the barracks, not mistreating him, not forcing him to hurry. The press of so many bodies in the narrow space made the double row of wooden bunks shift and creak. For an instant the cones of light from the lanterns illuminated their faces half hidden by shawls or hard hats or wool sweaters pulled up to their ears. Lituma recognized and forgot them.
“What kind of poison anisette did that motherfucker Dionisio give me?” the albino complained weakly, trying in vain to be angry. “What kind of potion did that witch Doña Adriana pour in my drink? They’re the ones who made me talk so crazy.”
No one said anything, but the ominous silence spoke volumes to Lituma. The corporal was panting, his tongue protruding. That’s what it was. The albino’s threats and crazy boasts didn’t come from him but from the filthy stuff he had been given to drink in the cantina, who knows with what plan in mind. That’s why he said those stupid things, that’s why he was so agitated. That’s why nobody paid attention when he challenged them. No wonder, no wonder: why would anybody take offense if they were the ones responsible for the condition he was in? They had already half killed Casimiro Huarcaya.
“It must be damn cold outside,” lamented Tomasito.
“No, it’s not so bad,” replied someone in the crowd. “I just went out to piss and it wasn’t too bad.”
“The drink keeps you warm so you don’t feel it, compadre.”
“With the booze you won’t feel cold or anything, Huarcaya.”
They held him, they led him, they supported him, passing him from hand to hand, and for a moment Lituma lost sight of him in the great patch of animated shadows waiting outside the barracks. They were moving and murmuring, but when the albino was among them, when they saw him, heard him, or guessed he was there, they grew silent and still, like at the door of the church, Lituma thought, when Christ, the Virgin, the patron saint appears, carried on the shoulders of the religious fraternity, and the procession begins. In the icy darkness of night, under millions of reverent stars, between the looming hills and the barracks, there now reigned the intense solemnity and expectant devotion of the Holy Week Masses that Lituma remembered from his childhood. As remote as TomaYs flushed face. He listened carefully, and he heard Casimiro Huarcaya, who had already been moved a considerable distance by the dense crowd: “I’m not anybody’s enemy, I don’t want to be anybody’s enemy. It was the poison Dionisio gave me! The potion his wife fixed for me! They made me say all that shit I said before.”
“We know, Huarcaya,” they reassured him, they patted him. “Don’t worry about it. Nobody’s your enemy, compadre.”
“We’re all grateful to you, brother,” said a voice, so soft it might have been a woman’s.
“Right, that’s right,” several of them repeated, and Lituma imagined dozens of heads nodding, silently conferring on the albino their recognition and affection. With no need for orders, knowing what each was to do, the mass of men began to move, and although no one spoke, or even whispered, the crowd could be heard advancing, compact, in step, stirred to the bone, tremulous, on the way to the hills. “The abandoned mine, the old Santa Rita,” thought Lituma. “That’s where they’re going.” He was listening to the sound of many feet treading on the stones, splashing in the puddles, the soft movement of bodies, the sound as they brushed against each other, and when he calculated that it had been a long while since he had heard the albino complain, he quietly asked the man next to him: “Is Casimiro Huarcaya dead yet?”
“Don’t try to talk.”
But the man on his left took pity on his ignorance and informed him, in a barely audible voice: “To be acceptable, he has to be alive when he gets down there.”
They were going to throw him down the water intake of the abandoned mine while he was still conscious. They would climb up there in a procession, silent, absorbed, overcome by emotion, holding him by the arms, picking him up each time he tripped, soothing him, encouraging him, letting him know they did not hate him, that they held him in esteem, that they were grateful for what he was going to do for them, and when they reached the great opening that their lanterns would illuminate, the place where the wind would be whistling, they would say goodbye and push him and hear him fall with a long shriek and land with a distant, dull thud, and they would imagine him broken on the rocks at the bottom of the shaft where he had gone to meet his destiny.
“He can’t hear, he doesn’t feel a thing,” someone said behind him, as if reading his mind. “Corporal Lituma is out cold.”
Timoteo Fajardo wasn’t really my husband, my only real husband was Dionisio. I never married Timoteo, we just lived together. My family wasn’t good to him, and the people in Quenka were even worse. Even though he freed us from the pishtaco Salcedo, nobody helped him persuade my father to give him permission to marry me. Instead, they turned him against Timoteo, they said: “How can you give your daughter to a dark-skinned big-nose? Everybody knows they’re rustlers.” That’s why we ran away and came to Naccos. As we were leaving, when we were in the clearing where you can see the village, we cursed them for being ungrateful. I never went back to Quenka and I never will.
I don’t deny anything and I don’t admit anything, and if I sit staring at the hills and pucker my lips, it’s not because questions make me uneasy. But because a lot of time has gone by. I’m not sure anymore if we were happy or unhappy. Probably happy in the early days, when I thought that boredom and routine were happiness. Timoteo found a job at the Santa Rita mine, and I cooked for him and washed his clothes and everybody took us for man and wife. Back then, there were a lot of women in Naccos, not like now. And when Dionisio came with his dancers and his wild girls, the women here went wild, too. Husbands and fathers whipped their backsides raw to keep them in line, but they ran after him just the same.
What was it about him? Why did they fall so hard for a fat drunk? Reputation, legend, mystery, joy, a prophetic gift, bottles of aromatic pisco from Ica, and a formidable prick. What more do you want? He was famous all over the sierra, no fair or fiesta or important wake in the villages of Junín, Ayacucho, Huancavelica, or Apurímac took place without him. I mean, without them. Because Dionisio traveled with a troupe of musicians and dancers from Huancaya and Jauja who wouldn’t leave him for anything. And with those wild girls who cooked during the day and at night went crazy and did outrageous things.
The fiesta didn’t begin until Dionisio’s company showed up at the entrance to the village, beating their drums, blowing their quenas, strumming their charangos, making the ground shake with their dancing. Even if they’d already set off the fireworks and the priest had said his prayers, there was no fiesta without Dionisio. They worked everywhere, they were always coming and going from one place to the other, even though they had a bad name. A bad name for what? For doing dirty things, for being the spawn of Satan. For burning churches, knocking the heads off saints and virgins, stealing babies. It was priests’ gossip more than anything else. They were jealous of Dionisio for being so popular, and their revenge was to slander him.
The first time I saw him, chills ran down my spine. He was right there, where the c
ompany office is now—it used to be the Naccos square—selling pisco from big clay jars that he brought in on muleback. He had set planks across two sawhorses and put up a sign: This is the cantina. “Don’t gulp down beer and cane liquor, boys. Learn how to drink!” he preached to the miners. “Just taste this fine grape pisco from Ica, it makes you forget your troubles, it brings out the happy man you have inside.” “Pay a visit to your animal!” It was the Patriotic Festival, and there were bands of musicians, costume contests, magicians, tijeras dancers. But I couldn’t enjoy any of the entertainments; even though I didn’t want to, my feet and head took me to him. He was younger then, but not too different from what he is now. A little fat, sort of flabby, pitch-black eyes, curly hair, and that way of walking, half skipping, half stumbling, that he still has. He waited on the customers and came out to dance and infected everybody with joy. “Now a muliza,” and they followed him, “The pasillo,” and they did what he said, “It’s time for the huaynito,” and they stamped the ground with their feet, “The trencito,” and they formed a long line behind him. He sang, he jumped, he skipped, he played the charango, blew on the quena, raised his glass, shouted, crashed the cymbals, banged the drum. For hours and hours, and he never got tired. Hours and hours, putting on the Jauja Carnival masks and taking them off, until all Naccos was a whirlwind of drunk, happy people. Nobody knew who was who anymore, where one person began and the other ended, who was man, who was animal, who was human, who was woman. When it was my turn to dance with him he squeezed me and put his hands all over me, made me feel his cock hard against my belly, put his tongue down my throat where it sizzled like something frying in a pan. That night Timoteo Fajardo kicked me till I bled and said: “You’d go with him if he asked, wouldn’t you, you whore?”