Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (9 page)

In the El Callao night,
damp and dark as a wolf’s mouth, Sergeant Lituma turned up the collar of his greatcoat, rubbed his hands together, and prepared to do his duty. He was a man in the prime of life, his fifties, whom the entire Civil Guard respected; he had served in commissariats in the roughest districts without complaining, and his body still bore scars of the battles he had waged against crime. The prisons of Peru were full of malefactors whom he had clapped in handcuffs. He had been cited as an exemplary model in orders of the day, praised in official speeches, and twice decorated: but these honors had not altered his modesty, no less great than his courage and his honesty. He had been working out of the Fourth Commissariat of El Callao for a year now, and for the past three months he had been assigned the toughest duty that can fall to the lot of a sergeant in the port district: night patrol.

The distant bells of the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen de la Legua struck midnight, and punctual as always, Sergeant Lituma—broad forehead, aquiline nose, penetrating gaze, the very soul of rectitude and goodness—began his rounds, leaving behind him the old wooden headquarters building of the Fourth Commissariat, a blaze of light amid the darkness. He imagined the scene inside in his mind’s eye: Lieutenant Jaime Concha would be reading Donald Duck, officers Snotnose Camacho and Apple Dumpling Arévalo would be sugaring their freshly made coffee, and the only prisoner of the day—a pickpocket caught in flagrante in the Chucuito—La Parada bus and brought to the commissariat, with bruises from head to foot, by half a dozen irate passengers—would be curled up in a ball, sleeping on the floor of his cell.

He began his rounds in the Puerto Nuevo district, where the guard on duty was Shorty Soldevilla, a young man from Túmbez who sang
tonderos
in an inspired voice. Puerto Nuevo was the terror of the guards and detectives of El Callao, because in its labyrinth of shanties made of wood, galvanized iron, corrugated tin, bricks, only an infinitesimal proportion of the inhabitants earned their living as dockers or fishermen. The majority were bums, thieves, drunks, pickpockets, pimps, and queers (not to mention the countless whores), who went at each other with knives on the slightest provocation and sometimes shot each other. This district, without water or sewers, without electricity or paved streets, had more than once run red with the blood of officers of the law. But things were exceptionally quiet that night. As he made his way along the meanders of the neighborhood in search of Shorty, stumbling over invisible stones, wrinkling up his nose at the stench of excrement and rotten garbage rising to his nostrils, Sergeant Lituma thought: The cold has sent the night birds to bed early. For it was mid-August, the dead of winter, and a heavy fog that blurred and distorted everything, along with a steady drizzle that saturated the air, had turned this night into a dreary and inhospitable one. Where could Shorty Soldevilla be? Chilled to the bone or scared of the thugs, that chicken from Túmbez might very well have gone off to one of the bars along the Avenida Huáscar to get warm and have himself a drink. No, he wouldn’t dare, Sergeant Lituma thought. He knows that I’m making my rounds and if I find he’s abandoned his post his goose is cooked.

He finally came across him on the corner opposite the national slaughterhouse and cold-storage plant, standing under a lamppost. He was rubbing his hands together furiously and his face had disappeared behind a spectral scarf that left only his eyes visible. On catching sight of him, Shorty gave a start and raised his hand to his gun belt. Then, recognizing him, he clicked his heels.

“You scared me, sergeant,” he said, laughing. “Seeing you at a distance, looming up out of the dark like that, I took you for a ghost.”

“A ghost, my ass,” Lituma said, shaking hands. “You thought I was a thug.”

“No such luck. There aren’t any thugs abroad, what with this cold,” Shorty said, rubbing his hands together again. “The only madmen out tonight in weather like this are you and me. And those critters.”

He pointed to the roof of the slaughterhouse, and the sergeant, squinting, managed to make out a half-dozen turkey buzzards, huddled up with their beaks tucked underneath their wings, sitting in a straight line on the peak of the roof. How hungry they must be, he thought. Even though they’re freezing, they’re sitting there smelling death. Shorty Soldevilla signed his report in the dim light of the streetlamp, with the chewed stub of a pencil that kept slipping out of his fingers. There was nothing to report: no accidents, no crimes, no drunken brawls.

“A quiet night, sergeant,” he said, as he walked a few blocks with him to the Avenida Manco Cápac. “I hope it stays that way till my relief takes over. After that, the world can come to an end as far as I’m concerned.”

He laughed as though he’d just said something very funny, and Sergeant Lituma thought: The mentality of certain guards beggars belief. As though he’d guessed what the sergeant was thinking, Shorty Soldevilla added, in a grave tone of voice: “Because I’m not like you are, sergeant. I don’t like this whole bit. The only reason I wear the uniform is that it keeps food in my belly.”

“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be wearing it,” the sergeant muttered. “The only ones I’d allow to stay in the corps would be the ones that believed in it a hundred percent.”

“That would just about empty out the Guardia Civil,” Shorty retorted.

“It’s better to be alone than in bad company,” said the sergeant, laughing.

Shorty laughed, too. They were walking along in the dark, through the vacant lot around the Guadalupe Commission Merchants’ depot, where the street urchins kept shooting out the bulbs of the lampposts with their slingshots. The sound of the sea could be heard in the distance, and from time to time the engine of a taxi going down the Avenida Argentina.

“You’d like all of us to be heroes,” Shorty burst out all of a sudden. “To give our hearts and our souls and our lives to defend all these shits.” He pointed toward El Callao, Lima, the world in general. “And do you think the bastards are grateful? Haven’t you heard the things they yell after us in the streets? Is there anybody who respects us? People have nothing but contempt for us, sergeant.”

“This is where we part company,” Lituma said, as they reached the Avenida Manco Cápac. “Don’t leave your sector. And don’t let things get you down so. You can’t wait to leave the corps, but the day they hand you your discharge, you’re going to suffer like a dog. That’s how it was with Tits Antezana. He used to come round to the commissariat to see us and his eyes would fill with tears. ‘I’ve lost my family,’ he used to say.”

From behind his back, he heard Shorty’s voice mutter: “A family without any women—what kind of a family is that?”

Maybe Shorty was right, Sergeant Lituma thought, as he walked down the deserted avenue in the middle of the night. It was true: people didn’t like the police, and never gave them a second thought, unless they were afraid of something all of a sudden. But so what? He didn’t knock himself out so that people would like him or respect him. I couldn’t care less about people, he thought. Why was it, then, that he didn’t have the same attitude toward the Guardia Civil as his buddies, just doing his job without killing himself, making the best of things, goofing off at every opportunity or pocketing a bribe, a few dirty coins here and there, if there weren’t any of his higher-ups around to see? Why, Lituma? He thought: Because you like being in the Guardia Civil. Because you like your work—the way other people like soccer or horse racing. The idea came to him that the next time some soccer nut asked him: “What team do you root for, Lituma, the Sports Boys or Chalaco?” he’d answer: “I root for the Guardia Civil.” He laughed in the fog, the mist, the dark, pleased with his little joke, and at that point he heard the noise. He gave a start, raised his hand to his gun belt, and stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been so taken by surprise by the noise that he’d almost been frightened. But only
almost
, he thought, because you didn’t feel afraid and you never will, you don’t even know what fear is, Lituma. On his left was the vacant lot, and on his right, the dock of the first of the warehouses in the port district. It had come from there: a very loud noise, crates and drums falling down and bringing others crashing down with them. But now everything was quiet again, and the only sound was the slapping of the waves in the distance and the wind whistling as it hit the tin roofs and caught in the barbed-wire fences of the port terminal. A cat that was chasing a rat and knocked over a crate, which knocked over another one, and then everything came tumbling down, he thought. He thought of the poor cat, crushed to death along with the rat, beneath a mountain of boxes and barrels. He was now in Corny Román’s sector. But of course Corny wasn’t anywhere around; Lituma knew very well that he was at the other end of his patrol area, in the Happy Land, or the Blue Star, or in one of the many other cheap bars and sailors’ brothels at the opposite end of the avenue, lining that little narrow street that the foul-mouthed residents of El Callao called Chancre Street. He’d be down there at one of the battered bar counters, downing a free beer he’d sponged off the proprietress. And as he walked down the avenue toward these dens of iniquity, Lituma imagined the frightened look on Román’s face if he were suddenly to appear behind him: “So you’re drinking on duty, are you, Corny? You’re through.”

He’d gone about two hundred yards when suddenly he stopped short. He turned and looked back: there, in the shadow, with one of its walls dimly lighted by the feeble glow of a streetlamp miraculously spared from the urchins’ slingshots, lay the warehouse, silent now. It wasn’t a cat, he thought, it wasn’t a rat. It was a thief. His heart began to pound and he could feel his forehead and the palms of his hands break out in a cold sweat. It was a thief, a thief. He stood there motionless for a few seconds, though he already knew he’d go back there. He was sure: he’d had presentiments like this before. He drew his pistol from its holster, released the safety catch, and gripped his flashlight in his left hand. He strode back in the direction of the warehouse, with his heart in his mouth. Yes, no doubt about it, it was a thief. On reaching the building, he stopped again, panting. What if it wasn’t just one thief, but several? Wouldn’t it be better to hunt up Shorty, Corny before he went inside? He shook his head: he didn’t need anybody, he could handle the situation by himself. If there were several of them, so much the worse for them and so much the better for him. He put his ear to the wall and listened: complete silence. The only sound to be heard, somewhere off in the distance, was the lapping of the waves and an occasional car going by. A thief, my ass, he thought. You’re imagining things, Lituma. It was a cat, a rat. He was no longer cold; he felt warm and tired. He walked around the outside of the warehouse, looking for the door. When he found it, he could see by the light of his flashlight that the lock hadn’t been broken open. He was about to leave, telling himself, What a fool you are, Lituma, your nose isn’t as sharp as it used to be, when, with a last mechanical sweep of his flashlight, he discovered in its yellow beam the hole in the wall a few yards from the door. They’d done a crude job of breaking in, simply chopping an opening in the wooden wall with an ax, or kicking a few planks in. The hole was just big enough for a man to crawl through on all fours.

He felt his heart pounding wildly, madly, now. He turned his flashlight off, made sure the safety catch of his pistol was off, looked round about him: nothing but pitch-black shadows and, in the distance, like match flames, the streetlights of the Avenida Huáscar. He took a deep breath and roared, in as loud a voice as he could muster: “Have your men surround this warehouse, corporal. If anybody tries to escape, fire at will. Get a move on, all of you!”

And to make the whole thing more believable, he began running back and forth, stamping his feet loudly. Then he glued his face to the wall of the warehouse and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Hey, you in there! The jig is up: you’ve had it. You’re surrounded. Come on out the way you came in, one at a time. We’ll give you just thirty seconds!”

He heard the echo of his shouts fade away in the darkness, and then nothing but the sound of the sea and a few dogs barking. He counted off the seconds: not thirty but sixty. He thought: You’re making an ass of yourself, Lituma.

He felt a mounting wave of anger, and shouted: “Keep your eyes open, boys. At the first false move, mow ’em all down, corporal!”

And screwing up his courage, agile despite his years and his heavy greatcoat, he got down on all fours and crawled through the opening. Once inside, he got quickly to his feet, ran on tiptoe to one side, and leaned his back against the wall. He couldn’t see a thing, but didn’t want to turn his flashlight on. He couldn’t hear a sound, but again he was absolutely certain. There was somebody there, hiding in the dark as he was, listening and trying to see. He thought he could make out the sound of someone breathing, a panting noise. He had his finger on the trigger, holding the pistol at chest height. He counted to three and turned the flashlight on. The cry that followed came as such a surprise that in his fear the flashlight slipped out of his hand and rolled to the floor, revealing big bulky shapes that appeared to be bales of cotton, barrels, planks, and (fleeting, totally unexpected, beggaring belief) the figure of the black, hunched over and stark-naked, trying to cover his face with his hands, yet at the same time peeking through his fingers with panic-stricken eyes, staring at the flashlight as though the one danger confronting him was light.

“Stay right where you are or I’ll shoot! Freeze, sambo, or you’re a dead man!” Lituma roared, in such a loud voice it made his throat hurt, as he crouched down and fumbled about for the flashlight. And then, with savage satisfaction: “You’ve had it, sambo! You fucked up, sambo!”

He was yelling so hard he felt dizzy. He’d recovered the flashlight and the beam of light swept about, searching for the black. He hadn’t escaped, he was still right there, and Lituma stared at him in open-eyed amazement, unable to believe what he was seeing. It wasn’t his imagination, it wasn’t a dream. He was really stark-naked, as naked as the day he was born: no shoes, no underpants, no shirt, no nothing. And he didn’t seem to be embarrassed or even realize that he was naked, since he made no move to cover his privates, swinging gaily back and forth in the beam of the flashlight. He simply crouched there, his face half hidden behind his fingers, not moving, hypnotized by the little round beam of light.