“At least you have memories of Mercedes to comfort you,” Lituma complained. “I didn’t bring any from Piura. Not a single girl in Piura or Talara misses me, not a single woman in the world for me to miss.”
They had the soup in silence, and then they were served breaded steak and rice, which they had not ordered. But they ate it all the same.
“Suddenly her eyes filled with tears, even though she was trying not to cry,” said Tomás. “She was trembling, and I knew it was because of what could happen to us. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t know how. The future looked black to me, too.”
“Skip that part and get to the bed,” Lituma pleaded.
“Dry your eyes,” said Carreño, handing her his handkerchief. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I swear it.”
Mercedes wiped away the tears and did not speak until they had finished eating. Their room was on the second floor, at the end of the hall, and the beds were separated by a wooden bench that served as a night table. The lightbulb dangled from a cord draped in cobwebs, and it barely lit the faded, uneven walls and the floorboards that creaked under their feet.
“The manager gave us two towels and a piece of soap,” Tomasito continued, relishing every detail. “She said that if we wanted to shower we should do it now because there was no water during the day.”
She walked out and Mercedes followed, with a towel over her shoulder. She came back a good while later, and the boy, who was lying on the bed as taut as a guitar string, gave a start when he heard her come into the room. She had the towel wrapped around her head like a turban, her dress was unbuttoned, and she was carrying her shoes.
“A great shower,” he heard her say. “The cool water revived me.”
He picked up the other towel and went to shower, too.
“What an asshole!” Lituma was indignant. “What the hell were you waiting for? Suppose she fell asleep?”
There was no shower head, but the water was strong and cool. Tomás soaped and rubbed his body and felt his weariness lifting. He dried himself, put on his shorts, and wrapped the towel around his waist. The light in the room was turned off. He left his clothes on the bureau, where Mercedes had folded hers, felt his way to the empty bed, and lay down under the spread. His eyes gradually grew accustomed to the dark. Uneasy and overwrought, he strained his ears, trying to hear her. She was breathing slowly, deeply. Was she asleep already? He thought he could smell her body, there, so close to him. Tomás was restless, and took a deep breath. Should he go to see his godfather, should he try to explain? “This is how you repay everything I’ve done for you, you piece of shit.” He would have to leave the country, somehow.
“I thought about everything and nothing, Corporal.” His adjutant’s voice trembled. “I felt like smoking but didn’t get up, so I wouldn’t wake her. It was so strange to be lying next to her. So strange to think, ‘If I stretch out my hand, I can touch her.’”
“Get on with it,” Lituma grumbled. “You have me on pins and needles, Tomasito.”
“Did you do it because you liked me?” Mercedes asked suddenly. “When you picked me up at the Tingo María airport, with the fat man? Did you notice me then?”
“I saw you before that,” Carreño whispered, feeling as if talking made his mouth hurt. “Last month, when you went to Pucallpa to spend the night with Hog.”
“You were his bodyguard in Pucallpa? That’s why I thought your face looked familiar when I saw you in Tingo María.”
“In fact, she didn’t remember that I had picked her up on the first trip, too,” said the adjutant. “That I was the one standing guard all night in Pucallpa, in that house between the river and the woods. Listening to him beat her. Listening to her beg.”
“If this doesn’t end with some fucking, I’m going to beat you,” Lituma warned.
“Sure, that’s why your face looked familiar, that’s it,” she went on. “So it wasn’t disgust and it wasn’t religion that made you go crazy. You’d already noticed me. It was because you liked me. You were jealous. Is that why you shot him, Carreñito?”
“I was blushing so hard my face burned, Corporal. ‘If she goes on talking like this, I’ll slap her mouth shut,’ I thought.”
“You fell in love with me,” Mercedes declared, half annoyed, half pitying. “Now I get it. When men fall in love, they’ll do anything. Women are colder.”
“You think you’re so much because you’ve been around, because you’re experienced,” the boy finally responded. “I don’t like it when you treat me like I was still in short pants.”
“That’s exactly what you are, Carreñito. A kid in short pants.” She laughed and then became serious. She continued talking, pronouncing her words carefully. “But if you liked me, if you fell in love with me, why haven’t you told me? Now that I’m with you, I mean.”
“She was absolutely right,” exclaimed Lituma. “Why didn’t you do anything? What were you waiting for, Tomasito?”
The sound of frantic barking on the street made her stop talking. They heard “Shut up, you shits” and a stone hitting something. The dogs calmed down. The boy, his entire body covered in perspiration, saw her stand up and walk around the bed. Seconds later, Mercedes’s hand was buried in his hair. She began to play with it, very gently.
“What are you saying?” Lituma’s voice choked.
“Why didn’t you go straight to my bed when you came back from the bathroom, Carreñito? Wasn’t that what you wanted?” Mercedes’s hand moved down from his hair to his face, stroked his cheeks, and came to rest on his chest. “It’s beating so hard! Boom boom boom. You’re so strange. Were you embarrassed? Do you have a problem with women?”
“Wh-wh-what?” Lituma repeated, sitting up in the darkness, peering at Tomasito.
“I’d never take advantage of you, I’d never hit you,” the boy stammered, seizing Mercedes’s hand, kissing it. “Besides…”
“You’re lying,” Lituma repeated, incredulous. “It can’t be, it can’t be.”
“I’ve never been with a woman,” the boy confessed at last. “You can laugh if you want.”
Mercedes didn’t laugh. Carreño felt her sit up and lift the spread, and he moved over to make a place for her. When he felt her body next to his, he embraced her.
“A virgin at twenty-three?” Lituma said. “My boy, I don’t know what you’re doing in the Civil Guard.”
As he kissed her hair, her neck, her ears, he heard her say very quietly: “I finally think I’m beginning to get it, Carreñito.”
4
Were they making any progress on that highway? Lituma had the impression it was moving backward instead. In the months he had been here, there had been three work stoppages, and in all of them the same process was repeated like a broken record. The project was going to be halted at the end of this week, or this month, the government had already given notice to the construction company, a union meeting was called, and the laborers took over the installations and equipment and demanded guarantees. Nothing happened for a period of time. The engineers left and the camp remained in the hands of the foremen and the paymaster, who socialized with the strikers and shared the communal meal prepared at dusk in the empty field surrounded by barracks. There was no violence, and the corporal and his adjutant never had to intervene. The work stoppages would end mysteriously, without defining the future of the highway. The company, or the ministerial representative sent to mediate the dispute, would agree not to fire anyone and to pay the workers for the days they had been on strike. Work was resumed in slow motion. But Lituma always thought that instead of picking up where they had left off, the laborers retraced their steps. Because of landslides on the hills where they were blasting, or because flooding after the rains had washed away the track and destroyed the roadbed, or for whatever reason, the corporal had the impression that they were still excavating, dynamiting, steamrolling, and laying down layers of gravel and tar in the same section they had been working on when he first came to Naccos.
He was on a rocky elevation at the foot of a snowfield, a kilometer and a half from the camp, and down below, in the clean dawn air, he could see the tin roofs of the barracks gleaming in the early-morning sun. “Near the mouth of the abandoned mine,” the man had told Tomasito. There it was, partially obscured by rotting beams that had once marked the entrance to the shaft but had collapsed, and by rocks and boulders that had rolled down from the peak and now blocked three-quarters of the opening.
What if this meeting was an ambush? A trick to separate him from Carreño? They’d attack them singly, disarm them, torture them first, then kill them. Lituma imagined his corpse riddled with bullets or hacked to pieces by machetes, wearing a sign scrawled in red paint: “This is how the dogs of the bourgeoisie die.” He took the Smith & Wesson .38 out of its holster and looked around: rocks, sky, a few very white clouds in the distance. Not even a damn bird in the air.
Last night the man had come up behind Tomasito while he was watching a soccer game between two teams of laborers, and, pretending to comment on the plays, had whispered: “Somebody has information about the guys who disappeared. He’ll give it to the corporal personally if there’s a reward.” Was there one?
“I don’t know,” Carreño said.
“Smile,” said the man. “Look at the ball and point, don’t make problems for me.”
“Okay,” said the guard. “I’ll ask the corporal.”
“Tomorrow at sunrise, at the abandoned mine. Tell him to go alone.” The man grinned, gesturing and making faces as if he had his eye on every kick. “Smile, point at the ball. Most important, forget all about me.”
Carreño had been very excited when he came to give him the news: “Finally we have something to go on, Corporal.”
“We’ll see, Tomasito. I hope you’re right. Do you have any idea who he is?”
“He looked like a laborer. I don’t think I’ve seen him before.” The corporal woke while it was still dark, and saw the sun come up on his way to the mine. He had been there a long time. His excitement had faded. If it wasn’t a trap, it might be some serrucho motherfucker’s idea of a joke at the expense of a man in uniform. To have him up here like a damn fool, holding his revolver and waiting for a ghost.
He heard a “Good morning” behind him.
He whirled around, the Smith & Wesson cocked, and saw Dionisio.
“Easy, easy.” The cantinero smiled and made reassuring gestures with his hands. “Put down that revolver, Corporal, sir, be careful it doesn’t go off.”
He was short and stocky, and the neck of his habitual blue sweater was pulled up to his chin. That fat, sooty face, those greenish teeth, that shock of gray hair, those narrow eyes burning with drunken fever, those hands like shovels: Lituma found it all unsettling. What was he doing here?
“It’s not a good idea to sneak up on me like that,” he grumbled. “You could’ve been shot.”
“We’re all on edge, what with everything that’s going on,” the cantinero murmured. He had a honeyed, servile way of talking, but this was belied by glazed eyes that were self-confident, even contemptuous. “Especially you cops. And with good reason, of course.”
Dionisio had always awakened an insurmountable distrust in Lituma, now more than ever. But he concealed it, walked over to the cantinero, and shook his hand.
“I’m waiting for somebody,” he said. “You’ll have to leave.”
“You’re waiting for me,” replied Dionisio, amused. “And here I am because I came.”
“You’re not the one who talked to Tomasito yesterday.”
“Forget about him, and forget my name and my face,” the cantinero said as he squatted on his heels. “You’d better sit, they can see us from down there. This is confidential.”
Lituma sat next to him, on a flat rock. “So, you have information for me about the missing men?”
“I’m risking my neck to have this meeting, Corporal, sir,” Dionisio said in a hushed voice.
“We all risk our necks, every day,” Lituma replied. A shadow appeared high above them. It soared without moving its wings, suspended in midair, moved by some gentle, invisible current; at that height, it could only be a condor. “Even the poor animals. Did you hear about that family in Huancapi? They even executed the dogs.”
“Last night there was a guy in the cantina who’d been there when the terrucos came.” Something in Dionisio’s tone sounded satisfied, even euphoric, to Lituma. “They held their people’s trial, like they always do. The lucky ones were whipped, the rest had their heads bashed in.”
“All we need now is for them to suck people’s blood and eat them raw.”
“It’ll come to that,” the cantinero declared, and Lituma saw that his eyes blazed with uneasiness. “A bird of evil omen,” he thought.
“Well, to get back to our problem here,” he said. “If you know what the hell is going on and can tell me about it, I’d be grateful. These disappearances. They’re driving me crazy. You can see I’m being frank with you. Was it Sendero? Did Sendero kill them? Or take them away? And don’t tell me how it was pishtacos or the spirits of the mountains, like Doña Adriana did, okay?”
The cantinero began to scratch at the ground with the twig he had been chewing a moment before, and did not look at him. Lituma had always seen him wearing that greasy blue sweater. And he had been struck by the gray streak in his hair. The mountain people almost never had gray hair. Even the really old ones, the tiny wizened Indians who looked like children or dwarfs, kept their black hair. They didn’t go bald or turn gray. Probably because of the climate. Or all the coca they chewed.
“Nobody works for nothing,” the cantinero whispered. “The information I have would destroy Naccos. A lot of heads would roll. I’m risking my neck if I tell you. Have you thought about some kind of compensation? You know what I’m saying.”
Lituma searched his pockets for cigarettes. He offered one to Dionisio and lit it for him.
“I won’t play games with you,” he admitted dryly. “If you’re expecting money, I don’t have a cent. Anybody can see how my adjutant and I live. Worse than the laborers, not to mention the foremen. And worse than you. I’d have to consult headquarters in Huancayo. They’ll take their time answering, if they even bother to answer. I’d have to send the message over the company radio, and the operator, which means all of Naccos, would find out. In the end, this is what they’ll tell me: ‘This guy who’s asking for a reward, cut off one of his balls and make him talk. If he doesn’t talk, cut off the other one. And if he still doesn’t talk, shove a bayonet up his ass.’”
Dionisio burst into laughter, twisting his flabby body and clapping his hands. Lituma laughed too, reluctantly. The winged shadow descended, swooped in a majestic curve over their heads, and began to fly away with a certain disdain. Yes, it was a condor. He knew that in some villages in Junín, at the fiesta for their patron saint, they would capture them alive and tie them to bulls so the birds could peck at the animals while the serruchos fought them. That must be something to see.
“You’re a decent Civil Guard,” Dionisio asserted. “Everybody in camp says so. You never abuse your authority. There aren’t too many like you. Take it from somebody who knows the sierra like the palm of his hand. I’ve traveled every inch of it.”
“You mean the laborers think I’m okay? How would it be if they didn’t?” Lituma said mockingly. “So far, I haven’t made a single friend in camp.”
“The proof is that you and your adjutant are still alive,” Dionisio declared as casually as if he were saying that water is liquid or that it’s dark at night. He paused, scratched the ground again with his twig, and added: “But those three, Pedrito, Demetrio, Casimiro, nobody had a good opinion of them. Did you know that Demetrio Chanca wasn’t his real name?”
“Then what was it?”
“Medardo Llantac.”
They fell silent, and as they smoked, Lituma felt the skin crawl all over his body. Dionisio knew everything. Now he’d learn
the truth, too. What had they done to them? It was bound to be something awful. And who did it? And why? The day advanced quickly, and a pleasant warmth replaced the coolness of dawn. The color of the hills seemed to intensify, and sunlight and snow made some of the peaks glisten. Down in the camp, in the translucent air, Lituma could see tiny figures moving about.
“I’d like to know what happened,” he said softly. “I’d be grateful if you could tell me. Everything, every single thing. It keeps me awake at night. Why did Demetrio Chanca stop calling himself Medardo Llantac?”
“He changed his name because he was running from the terrucos. And maybe from the cops. He came to Naccos because he didn’t think anybody would find him here. The laborers say he was a hard foreman to work for.”
“Then they’re the ones who killed him, why beat around the bush? Because all three are dead, aren’t they? Did the terrucos kill them? Are there a lot of Senderistas in camp?”
The cantinero’s head was lowered, and he kept scratching at the ground with his twig. Lituma could see the white streak running through dark, unkempt hair. He remembered the boozy celebration of the Patriotic Festival in the crowded cantina. Dionisio, drunk as a lord, his eyes malevolent, was urging the men to dance together: the same story every night. He went from group to group, hopping, dancing, drinking from all the glasses and bottles, pouring shots of pisco, sometimes imitating a bear. Suddenly he had lowered his trousers. Lituma could hear Doña Adriana’s laughter again, and the guffaws of the laborers, could see the cantinero’s fat, sweaty buttocks. He felt the same disgust he had experienced that night. What sickening things happened later, after he and Tomasito had gone? The white-streaked head nodded. The twig came up, drew a half circle in the air, and pointed at the entrance to the abandoned mine.
“The three bodies are in that mine shaft?”
Dionisio did not say yes or no. His plump hand returned to its former position, and with a certain impatience, the twig began scratching at the pebbles again.