Pacazo (29 page)

The road gets steeper and worse, tightens in switchbacks, and the van strains at the pitch. Creeks are crossed. Sleeping is not easy, but I am occasionally briefly triumphant.

I wake yet again, and now there are egg-shaped rocks three stories high to both sides of the road. Gatherings of houses have been built around them, and the road weaves tighter. Banana trees, cypress and palms, swollen ceibos and their wooly fruit. A river below, and small fields of sugar cane. I had forgotten it could grow at such altitudes.

Early afternoon, a last set of switchbacks, and a town in the lap of the mountains: Frías. There are peaks to all sides but no higher level ground. The plaza is plain, almost treeless.

The town hall is blue, its upper balcony crowded and trembling. The adjacent church is wholly white. The van stops between them, and the other passengers walk quickly away, leaving me to my slow squeezing out.

The driver confirms what Socorro told me, that there is no way back to Chulucanas except in these same vans, and none will be leaving until tomorrow morning. I show him Casualidad’s address. He points up the widest street—small cypresses to the left and right, and the roadway strewn with manure.

The street steepens as I walk. Low adobe houses, their mud plaster smoothed and painted. I ask again at a small shop, am told to turn right at the corner. I do, and thirty yards ahead there is a group of people, and even from here I can hear the moans and sobbing.

I walk halfway to the group, then stop. I check the address. I count the number of houses between me and them and yes: I have arrived too late, and Casualidad is gone, and the world is unbearably wrong.

I set down my knapsack, pull out the jacket and tie I brought against the possibility of this moment. Four tries to get the tie tied. I walk and stop again. Those gathered are all men, all stumbling, and there are many unlabeled bottles empty and slumped in the mud. The men wear field-stained ponchos, field-torn pants, sandals. They stare at my clothes. The tie in particular feels like a poor decision.

Casualidad’s house has a weathered pink door with a small iron ring in its center. A length of old twine hangs from the ring. Now the door opens. A figure appears. It is Casualidad.

She waves to me. I stand and stare. She beckons. I step back. She beckons again, and I take a seat in the middle of the road. I rest my eyes for a moment.

Now Fermín is standing beside me, is thanking me for coming, is calling to the men. Two of the drunkest come. They try to pull me to my feet, are unsuccessful. I tell them that I am pleased to be precisely where I am, and Casualidad walks toward me. No one else seems to notice her. When she is four or five feet away, she stops and whispers:

- Would you like some coffee?

I attempt to answer, fail.

- You don’t feel well. Would you prefer tea? There is also Sprite, and Fanta, not here but at the store.

I look at the mumbling mourners.

- A hundred years, says Casualidad.

- What?

- Our neighbor. Doña Silvana. She lived to be a hundred years old.

I stand, and we smile at each other for a moment. Casualidad is thin and pale and looks not well but better than the last time I saw her. A very old couple joins us, the man leaning lightly on the woman’s arm. Casualidad introduces me to them: her parents. Both are short and kind. Their living room is a single step down from the street, and I duck to avoid the doorjamb.

The living room is cold, obliquely dark and pleasant. The walls are a foot thick at their thinnest, set for siege. There is only one chair, and Casualidad’s father carries it over to me. It is barely sufficiently strong.

Two square windows look out onto the street, show passersby from the waist down, and the sills are full of empty bottles. In one corner are an oil lamp and a lantern, neither lit. Casualidad and her parents seat themselves on one of the low wooden benches that line all walls.

Fermín is sent to the store, returns with Fanta, and Casualidad’s mother serves me. There is a rosary pegged to a wall, and beside it a roll of toilet paper hung on a nail. A small picture of the Virgin, an unmade bed, a gray blanket hiding an unidentifiable mass. The interior doorways lack doors, and through one there are other rooms that cannot be well discerned, and through the other is the kitchen, roofless.

I tell Casualidad that according to Hollywood, Martians hate small birds even more than she does. She appears to find this neither troubling nor amusing. I ask her about the Huaringas, the curandero, his bottles and herbs, the flowering and shouting, the underpants. She says that they were fine.

Her father asks me if the Fanta is cold enough, and I say that it is the perfect temperature. This makes him very happy. Casualidad’s mother gesticulates in circles for a moment, points at two maroon ponchos that hang by the front door. Between them is a plastic bag full of nails, and above is a lasso. I make noises to indicate that I agree with whatever she means.

Casualidad asks about Mariángel, and I say that she is well: walking well, applauding well. She smiles. She moves the blanket-covered mass slowly to one side, lies down, closes her eyes. I look to the kitchen, see cooking pots suspended, stacks of mud bricks, a sleeping cat. Occasional chickens walk into the living room and are kicked back.

The overhead beams are skinned but rough, forking in places. I am asked to describe the trip from Piura, and do so uninterestingly. The ceiling above the beams is bamboo poles and then clay shingles, each layer seen partially. The packed dirt of the floor is nearly even.

When he sees that I am done observing, Casualidad’s father says that we should all go to Doña Silvana’s house. He looks at Casualidad where she sleeps. I intimate and then suggest and then say and then insist that it would be better if instead I went and arranged for my hotel room, but it seems that I have been named a guest of honor by the drunk men outside and there is no escape.

Doña Silvana’s house is much the same as that of Casualidad’s parents, though here the doorways are covered partially by empty grain sacks slit and hung. There are several chairs, and one small table. In the middle of the room is a pair of sawhorses, and on the sawhorses is a coffin, and in the coffin is Doña Silvana.

Her blouse is embroidered blue, green, red at the cuffs and breast. She is very thin, and her skin looks lightly oiled. Of course her eyes are closed but they do not always appear to be. Guttering candles burn at each corner of the coffin, and what would it take to live a hundred years?

Something is explained to me about a son who works in the jungle near Jaén and has not arrived. People walk in and out. There is a toddler in fur-lined overalls who wanders top-heavily, grabs at the white handles of the coffin, is pulled away. I ask Casualidad’s father about the fur. Rabbit, he says, and I nod with more enthusiasm than is appropriate.

In the kitchen there are bunched plantains and short stacked lengths of cane. The living room benches are covered with knit cloth. There is also a bright painting with shapes evoking landscape. It hangs by its corner, rhomboid. And the flowers: roses, carnations, irises in the coffin, random arrangements leaning against the far wall, and Doña Silvana’s daughter asks if I am ready for lunch.

The daughter is surely seventy years old. I thank her and say that there is no need for her or anyone to go to such trouble. She says that the food has already been prepared, that all guests must eat, that everyone but me has already eaten. I thank her again, tell her that I am still feeling a bit rough from the trip, say that under no circumstances would I be capable of eating anything of any kind, and she nods and brings me a fork.

There is a large crucifix resting on Doña Silvana’s chest, which makes it hard for me to breathe. The whole of the coffin is covered with nearly transparent netting, though there do not seem to be any insects present. I hold the fork like a weapon.

Old women circle for a time, and when they are done my lunch is ready on the table which now sits two feet from the corpse of Doña Silvana. I am encouraged to sit down. On the plate is boiled white rice, a flank steak, chifles. The toddler brings me a quarter of a glass of lemonade.

The edges of the coffin are scrolled like bits of banister. At its foot are three letters, SPR, most likely Doña Silvana’s initials but perhaps something else. The lid leans in the corner, and beside it is a box filled with candle stubs burned down too far to serve. I chew my food carefully, turn each particle to mush, and smile.

Men missing teeth come in. I am hugged an inordinate number of times. The men sit on the benches, lie down, sleep. Children enter on tiptoe, pull at the petals of the flowers, stare briefly at Doña Silvana in precisely the way I stare at books written in languages I do not speak or plan to learn.

After an hour I am made to understand that I may leave. Fermín follows me out and I give him an envelope. The money inside will not buy comfort for Casualidad but might rent something close. Fermín thanks me, says that Doña Silvana’s burial will be tomorrow morning. I agree that it will, and say that I hope it goes well.

We stop by his grandparents’ house, and Casualidad still sleeps. There is nothing for me to do until she wakes. I tell Fermín that I will see him soon, and walk down to the plaza. The town’s two hotels stand side by side adjacent to the church. One is open and the other is not. The room I eventually choose has three beds. Two have mattresses filled with damp straw, and I nap what is meant to be briefly in the swaybacked third.

When I wake it is dark and getting cold. I return along empty streets to Casualidad’s house, and inside there is no sound, no movement, no light. I walk back to the plaza, find a restaurant, eat a breaded chicken fillet and drink five beers. The television program the waiters and I watch is professional wrestling from the United States. The overdubbed translation is flawless but unnecessary: good and evil however feigned are clearer here than anywhere else on earth.

I watch carefully, as if scanning the rabid crowd were useful. Then there is someone standing very close beside me, and I turn to look. The man does not pull away. He appears intent on studying my pores. It is not the first time I have been observed in this way, and always in towns of this size. He is very drunk, wears a muddy poncho, is perhaps from the group of mourners though I do not recognize his face, and now he sweeps his poncho back to show a machete in a scabbard on his belt.

- I know you, he says.

- I doubt that, I say.

- You work for the C.I.A.

- As a matter of fact I do not.

He pulls out the chair opposite me, sits heavily, and on the screen an immense man in blue breaks a chair across the back of an equally immense man in gray.

- Yes, the drunk man says. We’re going to have to go.

- Go where?

- The police station.

- Why would we go there?

- Because you are lying. And I am a bounty hunter.

His elbow slips off the table and he slumps, rights himself violently, pulls out his machete and holds it up to me. I look around. Only two of the waiters are watching us, and neither looks likely to intervene.

- What do you think about this? the man says.

- It is a very nice machete. Please put it away.

- To the police station. Right now.

- I would be happy to go with you to the police station, or perhaps instead to buy you something to drink. First, however, I will need to see your identification.

- Fine. Perfect. I am very proud to show it to you.

He stands, sets the machete on the table, searches his pockets. It is a very slow, very thorough search. With each pocket proved empty he grows slightly sadder. Finally he finds a scrap of paper. He looks at it, stands at attention, holds it out for me to read.

It is an ATM receipt from last June, a Chiclayo branch of the Banco de Crédito. I read it aloud to him, and he nods, tucks it away. We stare at each other for a moment. He sways, says that he forbids me to move, that he will be back immediately.

He sheathes his machete, walks to the door, stands staring at the night, and then stumbles down the stairs. I look at the waiters. They are watching the wrestling again. The immense man in gray throws the immense man in blue out of the ring, lets his head fall back and roars. I call for the bill, pay, and when the waiter brings my change, he says that I was lucky. I tell him he has no idea. He nods, looks over my shoulder, turns abruptly away.

Of course the drunk man is back. He walks over to me, stands very close, stares up into my face.

- I know you, he says. You work for the C.I.A.

- As a matter of fact I do. And I could not be more pleased about the ways in which our two great countries have cooperated and collaborated in recent years.

I call to the waiter for a pair of beers. The drunk man smiles. We drink to both cooperation and collaboration. I tell him how good it is to have made his acquaintance, and say that I will be right back. I walk to my hotel, and rain beats the roof all night long.

My last waking is later than it should be. I dress, take up my knapsack, stand for a time in the plaza. The roads are wet and bright with sun. It is not clear to me how I am to speak to Casualidad without being obliged to attend the burial, and before I have reached an answer, Fermín arrives on a short thin horse. Walking behind him are his grandparents. They smile and ask what I am doing in the plaza when the burial is scheduled to begin at any moment. Did I have trouble finding the house? They take me by the arms, and are remarkably strong.

I explain that I wish only to speak briefly with their daughter, that if I stay for the burial I will miss the van that must take me back home. But no but no, they say. For a guest of honor to miss the burial would cause the greatest of possible offenses. Also, the vans will not be leaving for some time, as the drivers are all from Frías, all knew Doña Silvana, will all be at the burial as well.

The drunk men are still gathered outside the house, and some are awake. Inside, the candle-stub box is overflowing. We sit and wait for an hour. Then the true wailing begins, forty long and Biblical minutes, screams rising each time a nephew attempts to nail down the lid, falling off slightly each time he desists.