Pacazo (15 page)

At halftime there are replays of Maestri bouncing shots off the goalposts. We shake our heads, and the camera cuts to the Plaza de Armas. The shamans there are spitting aguardiente on a picture of the Peruvian team to give the players new strength and virility. I ask if there is any difference between a shaman and a curandero. Everyone at the table agrees that there are many important differences, and no one is sure what they are.

In addition to shamans and curanderos there are warlocks, and until he was caught, Cáceres was called the Warlock of the Andes for his many unlikely escapes. The
Huáscar
is later refloated by Chile, made a trophy, a floating museum, a monument to their victory. My second turn comes as the spitting ends. I attempt to buy the round with a ten-sol bill, am told that for the one-sol mugs only one-sol coins are accepted. I explain to the bartender how perplexingly stupid this is. He says that I should speak to the bouncers. I do though it is pointless, and return to the bar. Beers bought with bills are five soles each and I hiss as I take them up.

The second half begins, Peru pushing hard down both wings. Our noise survives the second Chilean goal, Pedro Reyes on a counterattack, but is staggered by the third, eight minutes from time and Salas again, and beaten senseless by the fourth, again Salas. This is how the game ends and we are silent: another rout, another humiliation. A few Peruvian players are interviewed sadly, and one of the shamans, who apologizes to the country for not casting better spells. Unclear fighting begins and the big screen goes dark.

Armando asks if anyone wants another beer. No one does. He goes nonetheless. Chile’s next match is against Bolivia at home. If they win, and they should, it will not matter how Peru does against Paraguay. The air is thick with our bitter breath. I try to remember if there are any Chileans on the university staff, can think of none, and this is fortunate for us all.

The Javiers are no longer present, have apparently been gone for some time. Armando returns, his final beer already half empty. Günther shakes our hands, takes his leave. Reynaldo and I stand as well. He will not look at me. Then over his shoulder I see a face that is familiar. I step around my friend, peer, peer more closely.

The man has not yet seen me. His eyes, yes, and the shape of his face. His age is right, and the fullness of his mouth, his hair a bit long but that is meaningless and now I am to him, have him against the railing, lift him, his hands straining at the balusters but I have him off the ground, am set to throw but then I am wrenched off balance, beer hits me in the face and Reynaldo is pulling at my arm, shouting that he knows this man, this man owns a shoe store, has never driven a taxi and a chair thuds into my back. I turn and many people are screaming at me. I turn back and there is something of a cordon, Armando pushing me along it and down the stairs and out.

The streetlights are far too bright, strike like shrieks. Armando is gone and Reynaldo is with me, leading me by the elbow to his motorcycle. He straddles it, kicks and kicks. It will not start and there is more shouting, Armando’s voice, then Armando himself running toward us as the engine fires, the empty mug still in his hand.

It is fortunate that no one gives chase: with the three of us on it, the motorcycle hardly moves at all. A few blocks away we decide to walk instead. As we sober, Reynaldo lectures me on carefulness. I tell him that he is right. He also says that I should not return to Boby’s for several months, and this is easy to agree to. I say that it was odd, the number of people who came to the man’s defense given the inclination of crowds to instead watch and savor, that while it is certainly possible for a—

- You are the biggest cojudo I have ever met, says Reynaldo.

- Why?

- Most Chileans are as white as you are. You didn’t know that?

- Of course. Araucanos on horses, three hundred years, no surrender and the Spaniards finally slaughtered them all. If the Incas had—

- Right. And your accent is good but not perfectly Peruvian, and they were all very drunk, so they thought you were from Chile.

- That does not make much sense.

- When everyone is drunk, not much sense is needed.

We walk for a time, sweat, walk and sweat, come finally to Neuquén and Armando slows. For a moment I believe that he is going to ask again about beer or poetry, and I am not sure how to answer in either case. He points to an apartment above the restaurant, says that he lives there, shakes our hands and my back begins to ache.

Armando will likely later ask Reynaldo for whatever information interests him, and just now this thought irritates me though it certainly should not. Reynaldo tries the motorcycle, and after a moment it starts. He revs the engine to the extent possible, and looks at me.

- Are you sure it is not yet time to give up?

- Of course not.

- You’re going to end up killing someone who doesn’t deserve it.

I say that I am sorry about how the match turned out. He stares at me, at last shrugs, says that he will visit the shoe store man, pass along my apologies. I thank him. He says that if what happened causes me any trouble at the university, I should call him to testify that I was simply drunk and angry, that it was all a small misunderstanding. I promise that I will. He waves and rides off.

Home. Again tonight the streetlight outside my door shines too brightly. I open the door and there is no writhing but still, all that light. Back out onto the street and I take up a rock and on my very first throw there is a shower of sparks and the light goes dim, a sort of miracle.

Inside, and Casualidad is asleep on the sofa. I wake her, and she asks if Peru won. I tell her, and she nods, stands, rubs her face. I go to Mariángel’s room, to her crib, and as always even asleep she rolls away from the stench of beer and smoke and sweat. I go to my room, pull off my shirt, find the picture of Sarita Colonia in the pocket. I hang it from the corner of my headboard. Something must be done.

WE ARE ALL HERE, ALL OF US. The tombs are open and the bodies laid out as if in state. We wait. Then though there is no signal we all begin feeding, our faces soon wet with blood and bile, each of us tearing at the ribcage of the body we have chosen. The rule is that one can feed only on those one has lost but I am breaking the rule, have chosen a stranger, eat deeper in and pull back, my hair caked with gore, look at her face and something has changed, not a stranger but Pilar and I cannot stop eating, plunge back in, rip at her intestines, at the ragged fringe of skin around the hole in her abdomen, her blood black in the candlelight, and the others in their hundreds now crowd around me—the rest of the dead have been eaten. I try to fight them off but their great dark wings beat me down, and there is light and the sound of wind keening through a thousand wingtips.

I STAND BEFORE THE LANGUAGE CENTER PHOTOCOPIER. Three of my colleagues are in line behind me. It is almost seven in the evening and we should all be headed home, but these three never leave the office until they have finished preparing for the following day.

I load the copier with a ream of heavy paper in varied colors. I ask the machine for one hundred copies of my flyer, delete the number and ask for two hundred. There is a disheartened release of breath behind me, but I do not turn to see who made the noise. I press the green button. The bar of light slides slowly from one side to the other and quickly back.

The smell of ink densens the air around us. At eighty copies there is more sighing, and again at a hundred and forty. I wait, will my colleagues to criticize me for misappropriating resources, but they never do. As far as I know they have never even told Arantxa, or perhaps they have and she does not care, or does not care enough.

The bar of light slides across a final time. The machine quiets. I take up the flyers, bend for my briefcase and wince: the bruise across my back is not yet gone. I tuck the flyers away, lift the lid and remove the original. It is somewhat wrinkled, but the information it holds is still valid, and its photograph of Pilar—our first trip to the beach at Yacila—this photograph is perfect and holds her perfectly.

I should thank my colleagues for their patience but do not, walk straight out and down the path and across the parking lot. Long thin clouds, red and orange, the sky’s ribcage. Along the white building. The falling light makes the evening feel cooler than it is and there is movement in the branches that intertwine above me, a bending of twigs, a shifting of shadow in the leaves and I jump to one side.

It is only squirrels. They sprint down a trunk, up another, are gone. I step back onto the path, walk faster and faster and out. Past the mural, past the hotel. To the gas station entrance and here I begin: I load my new staple gun, take out a stack of flyers, staple a blue one to the closest telephone pole.

To the corner, and left along the Panamericana, five dust-sick blocks of it. At last the Fourth Bridge. Up onto the bridgehead for a quick look at the riverbed. Back south along the street, stapling again.

For months I used only tape but the flyers fell too quickly. Woody Woodpecker gave me this new idea. I have brought tape as well for windows and other hard or brittle surfaces, but working with this gun, the good jolt up my arm as each staple is driven in, it matters more to me than I would have suspected.

At first hanging flyers took hours. Then I learned the secret of not looking at the photograph any more. Even so it is the least fruitful aspect of the search, is in fact unfruitful or worse. The only telephone calls I have received were from persons hoping I would pay them in advance for information they alleged to possess. When I said that I would happily pay after verifying some portion of the information—half, ten percent, a single fact—they would hang up and not call back.

There was one exception to this, a young man who agreed to meet me in person. His information was deeply detailed and likewise fraudulent. His fingers have perhaps healed by now.

It is not impossible, however, or does not seem so, that someone might someday look at the photograph, might read the description, might recall having seen Pilar on that night in that taxi. This person might remember more of the license plate than I do, or remember the driver as someone they knew or know. And so I continue in concentric circles of decreasing size: walk and staple, walk and tape, yellow and orange and green and blue, pole window payphone wall.

Perhaps it does not make much difference but I am glad to be doing this at night. I like to think of people coming out of their houses early tomorrow morning, these flyers and their colors waiting. I reach up, tape one to a stop sign, and behind me someone speaks:

- Wait, he says.

I bring my arms down. This voice—it is the voice of the taxista. The precise timbre and tone, the slight nasality and slighter rasp.

- Look at me, he says.

I turn quickly and lunge and catch myself: the man is farther away than I had thought, is a fat policeman, is reaching for his pistol. I raise my hands, apologize, say that I am only putting up flyers. His hand stays at his belt. I point at the stop sign.

- Flyers for what?

- My wife. She was killed a year ago.

I hand him one. He reads it, nods. I wait for him to tell me the rules I already know, that I am not allowed to hang them on stop signs or telephone poles, may hang them only on private property, must first ask the owner for permission in each instance, and when he does I will step to him and from a distance of four or five inches I will speak of the rights of the bereaved, will ask why my wife’s case was abandoned, will tell him of the man who murdered her, of what it will be like to catch that man, of pliers, tinsnips, of sandpaper and salt.

Instead the policeman wishes me luck, turns and walks away. I staple a flyer to the tamarind in front of which he stood, and continue my walk: around, around, the circles ever smaller. Finally I tape my last copy to the window of a knickknack shop.

According to my reflection, my hair and beard are as long and unkempt as the day I arrived in Piura four years ago. My clothes sweat-drenched. The dust of the bus ride down from Guayaquil. Piura, its station and thieves; Arantxa hiring me, yes, but also asking for me to be cleaner. I did not mind this. I had no reason to mind. Eugenia gave me directions to a near guesthouse and on the way I bought cheap versions of appropriate clothing. I showered, and asked the owner where best to get my hair cut, my beard trimmed. He said that there were five salons on the Óvalo Grau, and that the hairdressers were all large butterflies, by which I later learned he meant homosexuals. He also said that I should avoid the centermost salon as its owner was toad-like, by which I later learned he meant devious.

I chose the southernmost salon. The one unoccupied hairdresser led me to a chair at the back. He draped the plastic apron across me and things went well for a time. He was working on a sideburn when the largest bee I had ever seen flew in and began circling near the ceiling.

The hairdresser did not seem to notice though the bee was the size of a walnut, hairy and shiny black. I shifted beneath the plastic and watched. The bee bumped around in the corner, perhaps confused by the mirrors that met there. The hairdresser left to look for some implement not ready to hand, and the bee dove for my face, entangled itself in my beard.

There were several moments of screaming and jumping and thrashing. Finally I got my arms free and swatted the bee squarely. It bounced off the ground and was airborne again but just barely, and then was gone, out the door, unseen by any of the hairdressers or other clients, all of whom were now staring at me.

I told them that everything was fine, that there had been a sheep caught in my beard, but it hadn’t stung me. They began to laugh. I told them the truth: that it had been a very large sheep. I held my fingers two inches apart to show them. It was not easy for the other clients to stay in their seats, they were laughing so hard. I smiled to show that I too found the situation humorous. I sat back down and waited for the hairdresser to continue.