“The big guys again,” thought Lituma. Why did the colonel talk as if none of this mattered to him? Why had he come if that was the case?
“I have to know one thing, Lieutenant.” He paused, and Lituma thought he looked at him for an instant, as if only now he’d noticed him and had at the same time decided that he could go on talking in front of this nobody. “Did my daughter tell you I took advantage of her? Did she say that?”
Lituma watched Lieutenant Silva turn toward the colonel.
“She did suggest that . . .” he murmured, swallowing hard. “She wasn’t explicit, she didn’t actually say ‘took advantage.’ But she suggested that you . . . that she was a wife and not a daughter to you, Colonel.”
Lieutenant Silva was nonplussed and tongue-tied. Lituma had never seen him so confused. He was sorry for him, for Colonel Mindreau, for the kid, for the girl. He was so sorry for the whole world he felt like crying, damn it. He realized he was trembling. Josefino had defined him to a T, he was a sentimental asshole and would always be one.
“Did she also tell you that I would kiss her feet? That after taking advantage of her I would get down on my knees and beg her to forgive me?” Colonel Mindreau wasn’t really asking questions but confirming what he already seemed certain of.
Lieutenant Silva stuttered something Lituma couldn’t understand. It might have been “I think so.” Lituma wanted to run away. If only someone would come and interrupt this scene.
“Then I, mad with remorse, would hand her my revolver so she would kill me?” the colonel went on in a low voice. He was tired and seemed far away.
This time the lieutenant did not answer. There was a long pause. The colonel’s silhouette was rigid and the old pier rose and fell, buffeted by the waves.
“Are you all right?”
“The English word for it is ‘delusions,’ “ said the colonel firmly, as if speaking to no one in particular. “There is no word for it in Spanish. Because ‘delusions’ means illusions, fantasies, deception, and fraud. An illusion which is also a deception. A deceptive, fraudulent fantasy.” He breathed deeply, as if hyperventilating, and then put his hand to his mouth. “To take Alicia to New York, I sold my parents’ house. I spent my savings. I even mortgaged my pension. In the United States they cure every sickness there is, they work scientific miracles. Isn’t that what they say? Well, if that was true, then any sacrifice would be worthwhile. I wanted to save my daughter and myself as well.
“They didn’t cure her. But at least they discovered she had delusions. She’ll never be cured, because it’s something that never gets better. It just gets worse. It grows like a cancer, as long as the cause is there to stimulate it. The gringos explained it to me in their usual crude way. Her problem is you. You are the cause. She holds you responsible for the death of the mother she never knew. All the things she invents, these terrible things she makes up about you, the things she told the nuns at the Sacred Heart School in Lima, the things she told the nuns at the Lourdes School in Piura, that she told her aunts, and friends—that you beat her, that you’re stingy, that you torment her, that you tie her to the bed and whip her. All to avenge her mother’s death.
“But you haven’t seen anything yet. Get ready for something much worse. Because later, when she grows up, she’ll accuse you of having tried to kill her, of having raped her, of having had her raped. The most horrible things. And she won’t even realize she’s lying. Because she believes and lives her lies just as if they were the truth. Delusions. That’s what they call it in English. We have no word for it in Spanish.”
There was a long silence. The sea had become almost silent, too, just a low whisper. “I’m hearing a lot of words I’ve never heard before,” thought Lituma.
“That may well be the case,” he heard the lieutenant say in a severe and respectful tone. “But . . . the fantasy or madness of your daughter does not explain everything, if you don’t mind my saying so.” He paused, perhaps waiting for the colonel to say something or perhaps because he was searching for the right words. “I’m thinking about the way the boy was tortured.”
Lituma closed his eyes. There he was: roasting under the implacable sun in the flinty wasteland, tortured from head to foot, surrounded by indifferent, browsing goats. Hung, burned with cigarettes, a stick shoved up his ass. Poor kid.
“That’s another matter,” said the colonel. “But,” he corrected himself instantly, “you’re right, it doesn’t explain it.”
“You asked me a question and I answered it. Now allow me to ask you a question. Was there any reason to torture the kid like that? I ask because frankly I just don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. Oh, I guess I do understand. Now. At first I didn’t. He got drunk and got his men drunk. Liquor and a need for revenge turned him from a poor devil into a sadist. Need for revenge, a broken heart, tarnished honor. Those things exist even if a policeman doesn’t understand them, Lieutenant. He seemed to be only a poor devil, not a sadist. A single bullet between the eyes would have been enough. And a discreet grave. Those were my orders. The stupid bloodbath, naturally, was not my idea. Now not even all that matters. It happened the way it happened and everyone has to take responsibility for what he does. I’ve always done that.”
He gulped air again and panted. Lituma heard the lieutenant ask: “You were not there, then? Only Lieutenant Dufó and his men?
To Lituma it seemed that the colonel was hacking, as if he were about to spit. But he didn’t.
“That was my consolation prize for him, the bullet that would soothe his wounded pride,” he said coldly. “He surprised me. I didn’t think him capable of things like that. His men also surprised me. They were Molero’s buddies, after all. There is an element of bestiality in all of us. Educated or ignorant, all of us. I suppose there’s more among the lower classes, the cholos. Resentment, complexes of all kinds. Liquor and praise from their superior did the rest. There was no need to go that far, of course. I’m not sorry about anything, if that’s what you want to know. Have you ever heard of an airman who could kidnap and rape the daughter of a base commander and get away with it? But I would have done things more quickly and cleanly. A bullet in the back of the neck. End of story.”
“He’s just like his daughter,” thought Lituma. “Elusions, delusions, whatever it is.”
“Did Molero rape her, Colonel?” Once again, Lituma found that the lieutenant was asking the same questions he was thinking. “That he kidnapped her is a fact. Although it might be more accurate to say that they ran away together. They were in love and wanted to get married. The whole town of Amotape could testify to that. So where does the rape come in?”
Lituma again heard the colonel hacking. When he finally spoke, he was the same despotic, cutting man who’d spoken with them in his office: “The daughter of a base commander does not fall in love with a recruit,” he told them, annoyed at having to explain something so obvious. “Colonel Mindreau’s daughter does not fall in love with a guitar player from Castilla.”
“She gets it from him,” thought Lituma. From the father she supposedly hates so much, Alicia Mindreau inherits this mania for calling people cholos and treating them like dirt.
“I’m not making it up,” he heard Lieutenant Silva say softly. “It was Miss Alicia who told us. We didn’t have to ask her about it, Colonel. She said they loved each other and if the priest had been in Amotape they would have been married. A rape?”
“Haven’t I explained all that already?” Colonel Mindreau raised his voice for the first time. “Delusions, delusions. Lying fantasies. She wasn’t in love with him, she couldn’t fall in love with him. Can’t you see she was doing what she always does? Just what she did when she told you all those things. Just what she did when she went to the nuns at the Lourdes School to show them wounds she’d inflicted on herself, just so she could do me some harm. She was getting revenge, punishing me, making me pay for what hurt me the most, the death of her mother. As if”—he sighed and gasped for a
ir—”that death wasn’t cross enough for me to bear all my life. Can’t a policeman’s mind grasp all this?”
“No, motherfucker, it can’t,” thought Lituma. “It can’t.” Why make up rules like that? Why couldn’t Alicia Mindreau fall in love with that skinny kid who played the guitar so beautifully and sang with that tender, romantic voice? Why was it impossible for a little white girl to be in love with a little cholo? Why did the colonel see that love as a tortuous conspiracy against him?
“I also explained it to Palomino Molero,” he heard the colonel say, again in that impersonal tone that distanced him from them and from what he was saying. “Just as I’ve explained it to you. In more detail to him. More clearly. Without threats or orders. Not as a colonel to an airman, but as one man to another. Giving him a chance to act like a gentleman, to be what he wasn’t.”
He fell silent, and passed his hand rapidly over his mouth, as if it were a flyswatter. Lituma, half closing his eyes, could see them: the colonel, severe and neat, with his straight mustache and his cold eyes, and the kid, standing at attention, stuffed into his recruit’s uniform, probably brand-new and with shiny buttons, his hair freshly cut. The colonel, short and domineering, walking around his office as he spoke, the sound of propellers and motors in the background; and the airman, very pale, not daring to move a muscle, blink, open his mouth, even to breathe.
That child, even though she talks, laughs, and does what other girls do, is not like them. She’s fragile, a crystal, a flower, a defenseless dove (Lituma realized that the colonel was really saying: I could simply say to you that an airman is forbidden even to look at the daughter of the base commander; a boy from Castilla cannot aspire, even in his wildest dreams, to Alicia Mindreau. I want you to know this and to know as well that you must not go near her, look at her, even dream about her, or you’ll pay for your daring with your life) but instead of just forbidding him to see her, I explained it all to him, man to man. Believing that a guitar player from Castillo could still be a rational being, could think like a decent person. He told me he understood, that he had no idea Alicia was that way, that he would never look at her or speak to her again. And that night, the hypocritical cholo kidnapped her and took advantage of her. He thought he had me, the poor man. That’s it, I raped her. Now you’ll just have to resign yourself to our getting married. No, my boy, my daughter, this sick child, can do what she likes with me, can trick and disgrace me all she likes, and I have to carry this cross God has imposed on me. She can do that, and I . . . but not you, you poor fool.
He fell silent, took a deep breath, and gasped. Then again the silence, regularly interrupted by the regular fall of the waves. The pier had stopped bouncing up and down. And once again Lituma heard his chief ask the question that was on the tip of his own tongue: “And why Ricardo Dufó? Why could he be Alicia Mindreau’s boyfriend, her fiancé?”
“Ricardo Dufó is no beggar from Castilla. He’s an officer. A man from a good family. But above all because he’s got a weak character and a weak mind,” shot back the colonel, fed up that no one but he could see what was plain as daylight. “Because, through that poor devil Ricardo Dufó, I could go on taking care of her, protecting her. Just as I had sworn to her dying mother I would. God and Mercedes know I’ve kept my word, despite what it’s cost me.”
His voice broke and he coughed several times, trying to cover up an irrepressible anguish. Off in the distance, cats were howling and hissing in a frenzy: were they fighting or screwing? Everything in the world is confusing, damn it.
“But I haven’t come about this and I’m not going to continue talking about my family with you,” the colonel cut in sharply. He changed voices again, softening his tone: “I don’t want to waste your time, Lieutenant.”
“I don’t even exist for him,” thought Lituma. It was better that way. He felt safe knowing he’d been forgotten, abolished, by the colonel. There was an interminable pause in which the colonel seemed to be desperately fighting against his own loss of speech, trying to pronounce some rebellious and fugitive words.
“You’re not wasting my time, Colonel.”
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention this matter in your report,” he finally blurted out with difficulty.
“You mean about your daughter? About her hinting that you’d taken advantage of her?”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it in your report,” he repeated in a surer voice. He passed his hand over his mouth and added, “Not for my sake, but for hers. This would have been a banquet for the newspapers. I can just see the headlines, all that journalistic pus and poison raining down on us.” He coughed, gasped, and made an effort to seem calm before he murmured: “A minor has to be protected from scandal. At any price.”
“I have to inform you, Colonel,” Lituma heard the lieutenant say, “that I didn’t mention the matter because it was so vague, and also because it wasn’t relevant to Palomino Molero’s murder. But don’t think that’s the end of it. When the affair becomes public, if it does, everything will depend on what your daughter says. She’ll be harassed, pursued day and night by people trying to get her to make statements. And the dirtier and more scandalous they are, the more they’ll exploit them. You know it. If it’s as you say, if she suffers from hallucinations, delusions—is that what they’re called?—it would be better to put her in a sanatorium, or send her abroad. Pardon me for sticking my nose into your personal life.”
He stopped talking because the colonel’s shadow had made an impatient gesture.
“Since I didn’t know if I’d find you, I left you a note at the station, under the door,” he said, ending the conversation.
“Understood, Colonel.”
“Good night,” the colonel said in his cutting voice.
But he didn’t leave. Lituma watched him turn around, take a few steps toward the shore, stop, his face toward the sea, and stand stock-still. The beacon from the lighthouse momentarily revealed the short, imperious figure dressed in khaki. Lituma and Lieutenant Silva exchanged indecisive looks. Finally the lieutenant signaled that they should leave.
They walked away without saying a word, the sand muffling their footsteps. They left the colonel and wended their way through the boats toward Talara. When they reached the town, Lituma turned to look back at the beach. The colonel’s figure, a shadow lighter than the shadows around it, stood in the same spot. Out at sea, there were twinkling yellow lights scattered along the horizon. Which of those lanterns was hanging on Don Matías’s boat?
Talara was deserted. There were no lights shining in the small wooden houses. Lituma had many things to ask about and comment on, but he didn’t dare open his mouth, paralyzed as he was by an ambiguous sensation of confusion and sadness. Could what the colonel told them be the truth? Maybe it was. That’s why he’d thought the girl had seemed nutty; he wasn’t wrong. At times he watched Lieutenant Silva out of the corner of his eye: he had the guitar on his shoulder, as if it were a rifle or a hoe, and seemed pensive, distant. How could he see with those sunglasses on?
When the shot went off, Lituma jumped. At the same time, it was as if he’d been expecting it. It broke the silence, briefly and brutally, and made a dull echo. Now everything was quiet and mute again. He stood still and looked at the lieutenant. After stopping for a moment, he began walking once more.
“But, Lieutenant,” said Lituma, trotting to catch up, “didn’t you hear?”
The officer was walking even more quickly now.
“Hear what, Lituma?”
“The shot, Lieutenant. Over on the beach. Didn’t you hear it?”
“I heard a noise that might have been a thousand things, Lituma. A drunk farting, a whale burping. A thousand things. I have no proof that noise was a shot.”
Lituma’s heart pounded. He was sweating and his shirt clung to his back. He was walking next to the lieutenant, shocked, stumbling, not understanding a thing.
“Aren’t we going to see about him?” Lituma asked, sudde
nly feeling dizzy.
“To see what about him, Lituma?”
“To see if Colonel Mindreau killed himself, Lieutenant. Wasn’t that the shot we just heard?”
“We’ll find out soon enough, Lituma. Whether it was or not, we’ll find out soon enough. What’s your hurry? Wait until someone comes, some fisherman, a bum, someone’ll find him and tell us. If it’s true that gentleman killed himself, as you seem to think. Better yet, wait until we’re back at the station. It may be that the mystery that’s tormenting you will be cleared up there. Didn’t you hear the colonel say he’d left us a note?”
“So you think that note will be his testament, Lieutenant? That he came looking for us knowing that after he talked to us he was going to kill himself?”
“Damn but you’re slow, boy,” said the lieutenant, sighing. He patted Lituma on the arm to raise his spirits. “Well, you’re going to have to go through a lot, but soon you’ll understand how things work. See what I mean, Lituma?”
They said nothing more until they reached the station, a run-down little house with peeling paint. A cloud hid the moon, and the lieutenant had to light a match to find the lock, and he had to twist the key around a lot, as usual, before it yielded. Lighting another match, he searched the floor, beginning at the threshold and working his way in, until the match burned his fingers and he had to blow it out, cursing. Lituma ran to light the paraffin lamp, which he did so awkwardly it seemed to take an age. The little flame finally caught on: a red tongue with a blue center that flickered before blazing up.
The envelope had slipped between two floorboards, and Lituma watched the lieutenant hunker down and carefully pick it up as if it were a fragile and precious object. He already knew the motions the lieutenant would make and in fact did make: he pushed his cap back on his head, took off his sunglasses, and sat down on a corner of the desk with his legs spread wide. Then he very carefully tore open the envelope and used two fingers to pull out a small, almost transparent white paper. Lituma could make out the lines of even writing that covered the entire page. He brought over the lamp so his boss could read more easily. Filled with anxiety, he saw the lieutenant’s eyes move slowly from left to right and back again, and his face slowly twisted into an expression of disgust or perplexity, or perhaps both things.