Pacazo (51 page)

Of course I walk back and forth to work now once again, checking the license plate of each car and other facets too are needed: we returned to the cinema last night, Karina and Mariángel and I. There were few mosquitoes and many fleas and the film we saw was
The Fifth Element
. I scanned all but ceaselessly and Karina pretended poorly not to notice.

Back toward Administration. It was claimed that Evil requires forty-eight hours to acclimate to conditions on Earth, and this is surely demonstrably false. There was a perfect being and for a moment she was naked and the cinema filled with camera flashes. There was blue bile and entrails but the curtain dropped before any credits were shown so I will never know the disemboweled diva’s true name.

As we left the cinema Karina asked what plans I had made for Cajamarca. I said that the trip would have to be postponed, that I wanted her to spend all nights at my house from then on and refrain from taking taxis. She agreed but paused first to let me know she was lying and it is time. Across the parking lot. Right at the fork and she kissed me, said that her sisters needed help with their homework, walked away.

Office, materials, classroom. My students chat. I stand at the lectern and wait. They continue. Something has been lost. I rap sharply on the lectern. Still they chat. I pull a handful of coins from my pocket, sling them into the corner. Now the students look at me, all but two in the very back. I climb onto the lectern, and attempt to keep my balance as it splinters beneath me.

I stand, and stanch my bleeding thumb with an eraser. I will try again with Karina tonight and at last my students are silent. I tell them that something has come up, and explain what a useful phrasal verb that is, to come, and up. They look at one another. I say that some things have gone wrong. They agree. I ask if they have done their homework, and they nod, and I tell them I hope they are not lying. In fact they are not and the lexical preparation goes well and I send them off into a text on relaxing vacations.

Reynaldo has not yet seen
The Fifth Element
and looked unwell the last time we spoke—his hair dyed still lighter, his extra weight full in all directions. He was hours from leaving for his final try at a tourist visa. I asked what documents he was taking to present to the consul. His breathing rasped and guttered beneath the words: in addition to the old letters, he had paperwork showing that he has founded an agricultural consultancy, but he is its only employee and as yet has no clients.

Discussion extension consolidation and I let the students go as early as would be permissible if I had asked. Reynaldo should be back tomorrow with the news. Materials, office. Then the walk home for lunch, and as I pass through the university gate there is a glint in the far low sky. It grows slowly larger, brighter, closer, is nothing but a passenger jet drifting toward the airport.

The only flight that arrives at this time of day is from Iquitos, and I know what the passengers have seen: as the plane rose from the jungle the clouds below were not cotton-like or oceanic, but Arizona covered in snow, buttes and mesas and bluffs, unlimnable desert plain, all of it perfectly white. Half an hour later the clouds were replaced by the Andes flown not over but through, the peaks to either side, the masses of snow and rock edged translucently. Another half an hour and the desert is perhaps still threaded with green, or perhaps scabrous again, sick with mange.

In through my front door to find Mariángel lying on the couch, her head in Socorro’s lap, Socorro working with tweezers deep in my daughter’s nose, working gently, massaging to either side, my daughter frightened but quiet and at last it comes out: a small dead cockroach. Socorro drops it in a wastepaper basket, says that lunch is almost ready. I sit down at the table unable to imagine being hungry and suddenly am.

Mariángel and I are finishing our crema volteada when the telephone rings. Socorro answers, nods, says that it is for me, has said it tensely. I look at her. She shrugs, sets the receiver on the table beside me. I wait, and finally take it up. It is Pilar’s mother. She says she is calling to thank me for not having interfered.

I say that I would never interfere, wonder what she means, and there is a short silence.

- Our trip went very smoothly, she says.

- Did it? I am very pleased.

- I was happy to see that you have been taking good care of the tomb.

Another silence, and two realizations, one mine and one hers, simultaneous: she saw Pilar’s tomb when they traveled up yesterday to lay flowers, and it was not that I chose not to interfere at the cemetery but that I forgot Pilar’s birthday altogether.

I call Socorro to take Mariángel to her room. The next few minutes are mainly screaming and static. I agree with everything Pilar’s mother says, even when it is not words coming out of the phone but rage made sound. Then her voice is muffled and there is further shrieking but not at me and now it is Pilar’s father on the line screaming, screaming, Pilar’s death, and these other murders, I have done nothing to resolve anything and he is right and as penance I keep listening, keep listening, keep listening until he slams down the telephone, and even after, listening, the silence until it ends.

I wash my face and hands. Re-bandaging my thumb feels like ritual. There are three hours before my next class. I can do nothing for Jenny but perhaps Ms. Alina saw something the night she was killed, perhaps a taxi waiting, perhaps a driver, and perhaps she has seen his face before.

My shoes, my briefcase. Out, and at the corner of the house the hairless dog lies curled in a scrim of shade. Along, and the Virgin in her case on the corner, and I turn toward the river. Five short blocks, walking slowly but never stopping, then south and south and south.

At last the old green house. The plastic chairs are empty and one has been overturned. I knock, hear nothing, knock again and there are noises inside. I wait, knock yet again. The door opens. This man is neither of the two I have seen before. He is chewing something, and I wait for him to finish, and finally he does.

- I am here about Jenny, I say. I am so sorry for what happened, so very sorry. But there are things I need to know. Is the owner here?

The man says nothing, and closes the door. I try the handle but it is locked. I knock again, and still again, louder and louder each time. I speak quietly, less so, and the door swings open sharply and I step forward and would speak but standing in front of me is Jenny herself.

- Mr. Segovia, therrim oiofortC but Arizos, gasother shriekiwas the tr. I ase, thataot. Ri I asefail and south and south.

I BRING MY BACKPACK DOWN FROM THE TOP OF THE CABINET. It is covered with dust thick as flannel. I take up a wet rag, scrub the surfaces, swab the inner compartments. Then a hand towel, and this trip, unnecessary in all senses until I arrived home from walking the bars: it was not Socorro waiting but Karina.

Socks now, shirts. I accused her of having seen me as I turned to leave La Carroza. The confusion in her answer was genuine or seemed so. Pants and a belt and I asked about the tall rich man. A friend, she said. Of course, I said. A friend who gives good advice, she said, and she accused me of following her to the bar and I told her the truth.

She was silent, looking at me. Finally she shrugged. She had come to my house, she said, because she knew that I had been lying when I promised to go to Cajamarca, and she had wanted to turn that lie into truth. I asked if that was still what she desired. She hesitated, nodded, nodded again, and it was clear that I would lose her if I did not go.

So: Varón Gabai, bandana, and I do not know how it is that Karina believes a three-day trip will clean my mind of the murders, or by what means she believes it will do so. Perhaps she is less than hopeful but can think of no better option. The last thing she said before we fell asleep still dressed and stinking of alcohol and cigarettes and sweat was that she looked forward to taking care of Mariángel while I was in the archives and could the tall rich man also be a friend of Armando’s?

The university today, unsteady, my examples splintering, cassettes uncued, the students astonished and angry at one point though I do not remember why and Mariángel walks in. She points at me, points at the window and laughs. She sits down in the middle of the floor, starts to hum, and in the afternoon Arantxa came, asked me to gather students for the final lecture of a visiting Slovenian anthropologist to whom no one wished to listen. Mariángel rolls back and forth from wall to wall. I told Arantxa that I sided with the students: potentially interesting but untidy thoughts expressed unintelligibly. She reminded me that she was giving me tomorrow off though I did not deserve it, and that I would therefore go gather.

Camera, tripod, collapsible lightbox. Half a dozen empty notebooks. Sunglasses, and for the first hour the man spoke on neurocognitive deficits in bonobos. Then for an hour he spoke on the opening bars of the second movement of Beethoven’s Third, beating them out against the lectern with what looked to be a soup spoon. Then for an hour he possibly related the two and I am surely forgetting as many things as I am remembering.

Hat, sunblock. To the best of my knowledge Reynaldo has not been seen since he left for Lima. I called his aunt, and she too did not know where he was. The rich man, friend or not, and Karina calls from the kitchen, asks about relative densities of oatmeal. I turn and Socorro is standing at my bedroom door. She is simply watching, does not offer to help me pack, believes that I am wrong to take Mariángel on overnight buses and is surely correct.

- They actually do know their names!

Karina has been talking for twenty minutes with great ebullience. I have at times been listening, and look at her now. I nod, encourage her to continue, wonder who she is talking about and why knowing their own names is so surprising.

- It was Mariángel’s favorite part of the day, she says.

She turns to my daughter, makes cattle noises, and of course: the cows from the documentary. Mariángel looks at me, and so I smile. Karina creates horns with her fingers, gores Mariángel, and Mariángel laughs and laughs.

- How was your time at the archive?

- Outstanding.

Abysmal. I had no business there. I read and reread and misread, hour after hour. I shot two rolls of documents I cannot imagine ever needing and this hotel is large and old and strange, half the hallways ending with false doors mounted on limestone walls.

Karina says she is very glad, suggests guinea pig for dinner. I am too hungry for so little meat but say nothing and we walk out into the night. Karina slips her arm through mine. Above us is a single cloud, its edges so bright that the moon must be hidden behind.

- Tomorrow morning we are going to see the hanging tombs, she says. In the afternoon I think I’ll take her for a hike up around the petroglyphs, and those rock formations that look different each time you see them.

- Cumbemayo, beautiful, yes.

- When was the last time you were there?

- With Pilar.

- That is not what I meant.

I wait, but no clarification is offered.

- It’s all right, Karina says.

But it is not and all I wish to do is sleep.

Another wasted day in the stacks but I stopped sooner and the sun is not yet down and we are walking: cobbled street, Mariángel on my shoulders, Karina holding my hand. They are both sunburned and tired and happy. A turn, and uphill to the Plaza de Armas. Karina and I both wheeze, light-headed in the thin air.

I set Mariángel on the ground and she walks carefully toward the fountain in the center. Karina sits on a bench, stares at the Cathedral, asks me who Amalia Puga was. I still do not know, and say so. She nods, says she is all but certain that Cajamarca has stores with utensils perfect for my mother’s collection. Yes, I say, utensils with flanges and gears. Karina says she will be happy to buy one if I can give her a better idea of what is needed.

I tell her that I cannot. She shrugs, says I can search on my own. The light grays. We wait. There are several hundred topics on which we should be able to converse without effort. Still we wait. Clouds have gathered and are thickening.

Around the fountain there is a ring of small plants covered with tiny gold flowers and Mariángel bends, pulls one out by the roots. She shows it to us and I nod. She bends again, pulls out another. I should tell her to stop. We sit and wait and stare. She pulls out a third. I will crush the joints of his fingers first.

- What’s wrong? says Karina.

- What?

- You flinched and made a face.

- Yes. I flinch at times, and every so often I make faces. It is nothing.

- I have never seen it before.

- Perhaps you have and do not remember.

- But why do you do it?

- If there was a reasonable answer to that question I would give it to you now.

Karina stands and walks to Mariángel. She kneels down, brushes the dirt from my daughter’s hands. She replants the flowers and our bus to Piura leaves tomorrow afternoon. An early breakfast then, and the Belén complex: while I work Karina will show Mariángel the medical museum, the four-breasted women carved into the facade across the street, the polychrome—

Mariángel reaches up and rubs at Karina’s eyes. Karina is crying, I see this now. Mariángel’s hands leave thin streaks of mud down Karina’s face and a sound comes, soft but rising, a sound I had thought I would not hear again for a time.

Twenty minutes more. The bus jolts across another pothole. The rains that began last night have not yet stopped. Mariángel screamed herself to sleep an hour ago, lies draped across my lap. I look at Karina. She stares out the mottled window.

- I’m sorry, I say.

- Yes, she says.

The rain grows harder, thrashes at the bus for a moment, relents. Karina continues not to look at me. I close my eyes. Quito still untaken. Alvarado commandeers ships in Nicaragua, sails south, lands on the coast of Ecuador and flows into the jungle: five hundred Spanish veterans and four thousand porters in chains.