Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (10 page)

“Hands on top of your head, sambo,” the sergeant ordered, without stepping any closer to him. “Just cool it if you don’t want to get pumped full of lead. You’re under arrest for breaking into private property and for going around with your nuts dangling in the air.”

And at the same time—his ears alert for the least little sound that would reveal the presence of an accomplice in the pitch-black darkness of the warehouse—the sergeant said to himself: This guy’s not a thief. He’s a madman. Not only because he was bare-ass naked in the middle of winter, but because of the cry he’d given on being discovered. Not the cry of a normal man, the sergeant thought. It had been a really strange sound, something between a howl, a bray, a burst of laughter, and a bark. A sound that didn’t seem to have come only from his throat, but from his belly, his heart, his soul as well.

“Hands on your head, I said, damn it,” the sergeant bellowed, taking a step toward the man. The latter didn’t obey, didn’t move a muscle. He was very dark and so thin that in the dim light Lituma could make out the ridges of his ribs distending the black skin and his pipestem legs, but he had a huge belly that drooped down over his pubis, and Lituma was immediately reminded of the skeletonlike children of the slums with bellies swollen with parasites. The black just stood there, not moving, hiding his face, and the sergeant took two more steps toward him, watching him closely, certain that at any moment he’d start running. Madmen don’t respect revolvers, he thought, and took two more steps. He was now only a few feet away from the black, and it was at that moment that he first caught sight of the scars crisscrossing his shoulders, his arms, his back. Good Christ! Lituma thought. Were they from some sort of sickness? Injuries, or burns?

He spoke in a quiet voice so as not to frighten him. “Let’s keep it nice and cool and easy, sambo. Hands on your head, walking over to the hole you came in through. If you behave yourself, I’ll give you some coffee at the commissariat. You must be half frozen to death, running around bare-naked like that in weather like this.”

He was about to take one step more toward the black when all of a sudden the man moved his hands away from his face—Lituma stood there dumfounded on seeing, beneath the mass of kinky matted hair, those terror-stricken eyes, those horrible scars, that enormous thick-lipped mouth with a single, long, filed tooth sticking out of it—and gave that same hybrid, incomprehensible, inhuman cry once again, looked all about, anxious, skittish, nervous, like an animal searching for a way to escape, and finally chose precisely the one he shouldn’t have, the path the sergeant’s body was blocking. Because he didn’t try to knock him over but to run straight through him. The move was so unexpected that Lituma couldn’t stop him and felt him crash into him. The sergeant had steady nerves: his finger didn’t squeeze the trigger; he didn’t fire a single shot. As his body collided with the sergeant’s, the black snorted like an animal, and then Lituma gave him a shove and saw him fall to the floor like a rag doll. To keep him quiet, he kicked him a few times.

“Stand up,” he ordered. “You’re not only a madman, but a stupid idiot as well. And how you stink!”

He had an indefinable smell, of tar, acetone, cat piss. He’d rolled over onto his back and lay there looking up at Lituma with terror in his eyes.

“Where in the world can you have come from?” the sergeant muttered. He brought his flashlight a little closer and in utter bewilderment examined for a moment that incredible face crisscrossed with rectilinear incisions, a network of little fine slashes running across his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his chin, and down into the folds of his neck. How had a guy with a mug like that, with his nuts dangling in the air, been able to walk through the streets of El Callao without anybody notifying the police?

“Stand up, I said, or else I’ll really work you over,” Lituma said. “Madman or not, I’ve had enough of you.”

The guy didn’t budge. He’d begun making noises with his mouth, an indecipherable mutter, a purr, a murmur, a sound that seemed to have more to do with birds, insects, or wild beasts than with human speech. And he kept staring at the flashlight in utter terror.

“Get up, don’t be afraid,” the sergeant said, reaching down with one hand and grabbing the black by the arm. The sambo made no move to resist, but at the same time not the slightest effort to get to his feet. How thin you are, Lituma thought, amused almost at the meowing, gurgling, babbling sound that poured out of the man’s mouth in a steady stream. And how afraid of me you are. He jerked him to his feet and couldn’t believe how little the man weighed; he had no sooner given him a slight push in the direction of the opening in the wall when he felt him stumble and fall to the floor. But this time he got up all by himself, with great effort, hanging on to a barrel of oil for support.

“Are you sick?” the sergeant asked. “You’re hardly able to walk, sambo. Where in hell can a jaybird like you have come from, anyway?”

He dragged him over to the opening, made him crouch down and crawl through it in front of him to the street. The sambo went on making noises, not letting up for a second, as though he had a piece of iron in his mouth and was trying to spit it out. Yes, the sergeant thought, he’s a madman. The drizzle had stopped, but now a strong wind was sweeping down the streets, howling round about them as Lituma, giving the sambo little pushes and shoves to hurry him up, headed toward the commissariat. Even bundled up as he was in his thick greatcoat, he could feel the cold.

“You must be frozen, old boy,” Lituma said. “Bare-ass naked in this weather, at this hour. If you don’t catch pneumonia, it’ll be a miracle.”

The black’s teeth were chattering and he was walking along with his arms crossed over his chest, rubbing his sides with his huge bony hands, as though it were his ribs that felt the cold most. He was still snorting or roaring or croaking, but to himself now, and obeying docilely whenever the sergeant motioned to him to turn. As they threaded their way through the streets, they met neither cars nor dogs nor drunks. As they reached the commissariat—the light from its windows, with its oily glow, made Lituma as happy as a shipwreck victim sighting the beach—the booming bell in the tower of the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen de la Legua was just striking two.

On seeing the sergeant appear with the naked black, handsome young Lieutenant Jaime Concha didn’t drop his Uncle Donald comic book—his fourth one that night, not to mention the three Supermans and the two Mandrakes he’d read as well—but his mouth opened so wide in surprise that he nearly dislocated his jaw. Guards Camacho and Arévalo, who were having themselves a little game of Chinese checkers, also stared in wide-eyed amazement.

“Where in the world did you get
this
scarecrow?” the lieutenant finally asked.

“Is it a man, an animal, or a thing?” Apple Dumpling Arévalo said, getting to his feet and sniffing at the black. The latter hadn’t uttered a sound since setting foot inside the commissariat but simply stood there, moving his head in all directions with a terrified look on his face, as though he were seeing electric lights, typewriters, civil guards for the first time in his life. But on seeing Arévalo approaching him, he again let out his hair-raising howl—Lituma noted that Lieutenant Concha was so taken aback he almost fell to the floor, chair and all, and that Snotnose Camacho tipped over the Chinese-checker board—and tried to go back outside. The sergeant held him back with one hand and gave him a little shake. “Quiet, sambo, don’t panic on me.”

“I found him in the new warehouse down at the harbor terminal, lieutenant,” he said. “He got in by kicking a hole in the wall. Should I make out an arrest report for robbery, for breaking and entering, for indecent exposure, or for all three?”

The black had hunched over again as the lieutenant, Camacho, and Arévalo scrutinized him from head to foot.

“Those aren’t smallpox scars, lieutenant,” Apple Dumpling said, pointing to the slash marks on his face and body. “They were made with a knife, incredible as that may seem.”

“He’s the skinniest man I’ve ever seen in my life,” Snotnose said, looking at the naked black’s bones. “And the ugliest. Good lord, what kinky hair! And what enormous hands!”

“We’re curious,” the lieutenant said. “Tell us your life story, black boy.”

Sergeant Lituma had taken off his kepi and unbuttoned his greatcoat. Sitting at the typewriter, he was beginning to write up his report. He shouted over: “He doesn’t know how to talk, lieutenant. He just makes noises you can’t understand.”

“Are you one of those guys who pretends to be nuts?” the lieutenant went on, more curious than ever. “We’re too old to fall for a trick like that, you know. Tell us who you are, where you come from, who your mama was.”

“Or else we’ll teach you to talk all over again with a few good punches in the snout,” Apple Dumpling added. “To sing like a canary, Little Black Sambo.”

“But if those are really knife scars, they must have cut him a good thousand times,” Snotnose said in amazement, taking another good look at the tiny slash marks crisscrossing the black’s face. “How is it possible for a man to get himself marked up like that?”

“He’s freezing to death,” Apple Dumpling said. “His teeth are chattering like maracas.”

“You mean his molars,” Snotnose corrected him, examining the man from very close up, as though he were an ant. “Can’t you see that he’s only got one front tooth, this elephant tusk here? Man, what a hideous-looking character: straight out of a nightmare.”

“I think he’s got bats in his belfry,” Lituma said, without looking up from the typewriter. “Nobody in his right mind would go around like that in this cold, isn’t that so, lieutenant?”

And at that moment the commotion made him look up: suddenly electrified by something, the black had pushed the lieutenant aside and darted like an arrow between Camacho and Arévalo. Not toward the street, however, but toward the Chinese-checkers table, and Lituma saw him grab up a half-eaten sandwich, stuff it into his mouth, and swallow it in a single ravenous, bestial gulp. As Arévalo and Camacho went for him and began cuffing him over the head, the black was downing the remains of the other sandwich on the table with the same ravenous haste.

“Don’t hit him you guys,” the sergeant said. “Be charitable—offer him some coffee instead.”

“This isn’t a welfare institution,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t know what the devil I’m going to do with this character.” He stood there looking at the black, who after wolfing down the sandwiches had taken his lumps from Snotnose and Apple Dumpling without batting an eye and was now lying quietly on the floor, panting softly. The lieutenant finally took pity on him and growled: “All right, then. Give him a little coffee and put him in the detention cell.”

Snotnose handed him half a cup of coffee from the thermos. The black drank slowly, closing his eyes, and when he’d finished licked the aluminum cup, searching for the last few drops in the bottom, till it shone. Then he went along with them, quietly and peacefully, as they led him to the cell.

Lituma reread his report: attempted robbery, breaking and entering, indecent exposure. Lieutenant Jaime Concha had come back to his desk, and as his eyes wandered about the room, he suddenly said to Lituma with a happy smile, pointing to the pile of multicolored magazines: “Aha! Now I know who it is he reminds me of! The blacks in the Tarzan stories, the ones in Africa.”

Camacho and Arévalo had gone back to their Chinese checkers, and Lituma put his kepi back on and buttoned up his greatcoat. As he was going out the door, he heard the shrill cries of the pickpocket, who had just woken up and was protesting against his new cellmate: “Help! Save me! He’s going to rape me!”

“Shut your trap or we’ll be the ones who’ll rape you,” the lieutenant threatened. “Let me read my comic books in peace.”

From the street, Lituma could see that the black had stretched out on the floor, indifferent to the outcries from the pickpocket, a very thin Chinese who was scared to death. Imagine waking up and finding yourself face to face with a bogeyman like that, Lituma thought and laughed to himself, his massive bulk again turned to the wind, the drizzle, the darkness. With his hands in his pockets, the collar of his greatcoat turned up, his head lowered, he continued unhurriedly on his rounds. He went first to Chancre Street, where he found Corny Román leaning on the counter of the Happy Land, laughing at the jokes of Mourning Dove, the old fairy with dyed hair and false teeth tending bar there. He noted in his report that patrolman Román “gave signs of having drunk alcoholic beverages while on duty,” even though he knew full well that Lieutenant Concha, a man extremely tolerant of his own weaknesses and those of others, would look the other way. He left the port district then and strode up the Avenida Sáenz Peña, deader than a cemetery at this hour of the night. He had a terrible time finding Humberto Quispe, whose patrol area was the market district. The stalls were closed and there were fewer bums than usual sleeping curled up on sacks or newspapers underneath stairways and trucks. After several useless searches from one end of the area to the other, blowing the recognition signal countless times on his whistle, he finally located Quispe on the corner of Colón and Cochrane, helping a taxi driver whose skull had been cracked open by two thugs who had then robbed him. They took him to the public hospital to get his head sewed up and then went to have a bowl of fish-head soup at the first stall in the market to open up, that of Señora Gualberta, a fishwife. A cruising patrol car picked Lituma up on Sáenz Peña and gave him a lift to the fortress of Real Felipe, where Little Hands Rodríguez, the youngest Guardia Civil assigned to the Fourth Commissariat, was on patrol duty at the foot of the walls. He surprised him playing hopscotch, all by himself, in the darkness.

He was hopping gravely and intently from square to square, on one foot, on two, and on seeing the sergeant he immediately stood at attention. “Exercise helps keep you warm,” he said to him, pointing to the squares marked off in chalk on the sidewalk. “Didn’t you ever play hopscotch when you were a kid, sergeant?”