Who Slashed Celanire's Throat? (24 page)

But he had betrayed her.

One evening at La Wiracocha he had just sat down with his drinking companions when a waitress brought him his glass. He was about to down it without another thought when he changed his mind and looked up. He got the impression he had been kicked full in the chest. Reeling from the shock, his teeth chattering, he stood up, gasping for breath, and stammered in his poor Spanish, “For Christ's sake, where did you come from?”

The girl quietly explained she was a
china-chola
from Urubamba, come to seek her fortune in the capital. She couldn't have been more than sixteen. Petite, slender, yet well built, with pretty curves exactly where they should be. A shiny black skin. Slit eyes. Her hair, a stream of silk. Since he had left Guadeloupe, Yang Ting had given up womanizing. Artemisa, the mulatto woman, had done more than half the work in seducing him. Suddenly his member vigorously reminded him of its presence. Burning with the desire of a sixteen-year-old, he dashed over to the owner, who was casually keeping an eye on the rum guzzlers from the bar.

“Jesus, is she yours?”

Jesus shrugged his shoulders.

“Who? Amparo? She's not my type!”

All these years of solitude had changed Yang Ting's character. He was no longer what he used to be. His own desire scared him. He dared not approach Amparo, struck by her staggering resemblance to Tonine—minus her gentleness and vulnerability, of course. This girl looked as though she had guts, knew what she wanted and what she was doing. He watched her pirouette across the noisy, smoke-filled room, carrying her tray on her shoulder, wipe the tables with one sweep of her cloth, laugh, joke, and firmly extricate herself from the groping hands of the rum guzzlers. Occasionally he got the impression she turned toward him with a little half smile and encouraged him. Then he got hold of himself. What could an old bag of bones like himself be possibly imagining?

Around two in the morning, he got up and left. He had never seen such a night. Black as the ass of a Kongo slave. Up above, a wretched little crescent of a moon illuminated next to nothing. He slogged through the dark to his neighborhood
callejón
. When he reached home, a scream that made his blood run cold sobered him up on the spot and made him dash inside with all the energy he could muster. Kung Fui, usually nailed to his bed in a perpetual stupor, lost in his dreams, was lying on the floor, as dead as he possibly could be. There was no sign of a wound. His features had been contorted in terror that only some terrible aggressor could have caused. Yang Ting grabbed a machete. But however hard he searched the four corners of the house, tore outside, and paced up and down the neighboring streets, nothing moved in the funereal darkness.

Yang Ting wept bitterly.

Kung Fui may have become a mindless, apathetic, and blind deadweight, but he represented Yang Ting's last link with the land of his past, his deepest, inner self. It was his entire childhood, his youth, his dreams, and his hopes that were about to be buried. He had admired him, worshipped him, served him like a slave, and never been able to refuse him anything. Not a thing.

One night, a few months after arriving in Bélisaire, Kung Fui had hammered on the door of the room he shared with Tonine and dragged him to his quarters. What a sight! The musty room stank of urine and excrement. Pisket, lying half unconscious on the filthy bed, was losing her blood in great gobs. A miscarriage! Fearful of indiscreet gossip, Kung Fui had called neither doctor nor midwife and was stifling his sister's moans with a pillow. In the dawn's early hours she finally ejected her fetus. Then for some unknown reason she stopped bleeding. Kung Fui looked as though he would go crazy. He wept, stammered, and fumed. All his grand plans had been shattered. An individual like Madeska would not let them off lightly. Kung Fui would have to reimburse him his money, which meant slipping back on the dog collar of misery. Unless…unless…Suddenly an idea germinated in his highly imaginative mind, and he looked up. Unless they chanced upon a surrogate belly! Since Yang Ting looked puzzled, hoping he hadn't heard right, Kung Fui went on to explain: a belly for sale, for God's sake! So many girls forced into an unwanted pregnancy would be only too willing to get rid of their bun in the oven on the cheap. So the two accomplices began scouring the bordellos of Grande-Anse but came up empty-handed, plagued by bad luck. And Madeska was beginning to suspect something! It was then that Kung Fui pleaded with him. Tonine was going to give birth in a month or two, wasn't that so? They would tell Madeska some story or other. Who can predict exactly when a woman gives birth? Yang Ting, knowing that Tonine would never accept such a scheme, laid down his terms. They wouldn't tell her anything. They would make her believe the baby had died soon after it was born. And the deal was made!

Madeska, the diviner, divined nothing. Likewise, the hell-hound of a midwife he dispatched for the occasion. When she arrived, Yang Ting claimed the premature birth had taken them by surprise and that the baby, a girl, had popped out on her own to see the world for herself. They handed the infant over to her, wrapped in a rag, and the dirty trick was done. Tonine took it quite differently, however. She did not believe a single deceitful word of the tale they were spouting and realized straightaway they had handed her baby over to Madeska as a substitute for Pisket's. Beside herself with anger, she threatened to go to the police. After so many years her screams still echoed in his head—“Assassins! Scoundrels! Thugs!” He had called her a nutcase, punched her, then abruptly showered her with kisses.

At three in the morning the remains of Kung Fui began to give off a foul stench. From a waxy yellow his pockmarked, swollen face changed to gray while thick sooty streaks streamed over the sheets. At noon, unable to bear it any longer, Yang Ting went to look for some wood to make a coffin. The few
zambos
he managed to muster recoiled from the stench. Soon he was all alone assembling and nailing the planks. But the afternoon heat made the stench unbearable. It was as if the coffin were porous and the smell of decay seeped out through a thousand invisible cracks. Yang Ting gave up the idea of a wake. At four in the afternoon he decided to get it over with and asked his
arrieros
to carry his companion to the graveyard. No flowers or wreaths, please. The funeral cortege was composed of half a dozen veiled women clothed in black, mouthing prayers, who never miss an opportunity to woo death.

Shortly after having buried Kung Fui, Yang Ting, who had never had trouble sleeping, found it impossible to get his sleep back. He began to have the same grisly dream. Kung Fui wrenched him awake with a hand as cold as death's. Gripped by an eerie anguish, Yang Ting followed him across a barren landscape dotted with meteorites, lit meagerly by a sliver of a moon. At the end of their journey a wide-open coffin was waiting for them. He went up behind Kung Fui and looked inside. On a bed of unspeakable filth strewn with rotting livers, gizzards, and intestines lay a baby, a little girl, with her throat slashed.

Until then Yang Ting hadn't given a thought to the infant he had surrendered to the mischief maker's knife. His very own child? Unlike Tonine, he had never wanted her and consequently felt no responsibility whatsoever toward her. Suddenly he sensed he had committed two crimes—one against Tonine, whose motherhood had been stolen, the other against the innocent victim, who had not asked to come into this world and who had been martyrized as soon as she opened her eyes. Incapable of falling asleep in the blackness of the night, he argued with himself, spent hours endeavoring to justify his behavior, as if he were facing a tribunal. Okay, he had acted wrongly. Yet his act, however dark it had been, had ended happily. The police had picked up his little girl, and then Dr. Pinceau had rescued and adopted her. At the present time she couldn't be lacking for anything. She was surely enjoying a better life than she would have with impoverished parents like Tonine and himself. But however hard he repeated this argument to himself over and over again, he finally realized he was atoning for his dual crime with a life of failure and solitude. The money it had procured him was cursed, and he would never stand to gain from it.

As a result, he was now a regular visitor to La Wiracocha, downing more and more glasses of
chicha
to chase away the bitter taste of his life. As a rule, when he arrived, the tavern was still deserted except for a few blacks gambling illegally. He would sit down in a corner and systematically get drunk. One afternoon when Amparo set down the
chicha
in front of him, her expression was unmistakable. Despite his decrepitude, the young girl had taken a liking to him.

People in Lima still talk about it to this day. If you go in for a drink at Juanito's in Barranca or at the Brisas del Titicaca near the Plaza Bolognesi, they'll tell you about it, adding numerous unverifiable details. They will tell you a storm was raging the evening Amparo left with Yang Ting. Frightened by the wind, which had already uprooted the centuries-old mahogany trees in the plazas, the inhabitants of Lima's poor neighborhoods never gave up nailing down their doors and windows. They will tell you that the waves of the ocean swept away the homeless sleeping on the sidewalks and flooded the second floors of the houses along the
malecón
. They will tell you the heavens opened and poured gallons of water over the streets and pavements.

The regulars had always been suspicious of Amparo, who had suddenly turned up out of the blue at La Wiracocha. In answer to their questions, she said she came from far away, from Urubamba, which explained why nobody had heard of her family. But her sly looks and cheeky smile did not go down well, and nobody appreciated her sharp tongue, especially from a waitress. Soon all the men boasted they had slept with her, whereas in fact nobody had.

That evening thirty pairs of eyes saw her untie her apron and walk out arm in arm with Yang Ting around ten o'clock. Behind their backs, tongues began to wag. Some of the regulars wondered whether Yang Ting had heard of the incident in the valley of Canete, when over a thousand Chinese had been massacred in a single day because one of them had dared lay hands on a
zamba
. Others had no scruples making offensive comparisons between the sexual performance of the Chinese and the blacks, who were more hot-blooded, more virile. And others recalled that the Chinese were nasty pieces of work, making up whole battalions in the Chilean army.

At dawn Yang Ting's
arrieros,
who had come to pick up their instructions for the day, were surprised to find the doors and windows of their boss's house smashed in. The modest dwelling sitting under its cluster of trees could not possibly hide any treasure likely to attract
bandoleros
. With machetes handy, they cautiously walked around the house before going in. Yang Ting's bedroom was a vision out of hell. It was as if a furious battle had been waged. The walls and floor were smeared red with blood. The blankets and bedsheets were in shreds. Yang Ting's body was naked, covered with bite marks, deep gashes, scratches, and bruises. But the horror was capped by the sight of his male member, which had been ripped off and stuffed into his half-open mouth like a cigar. The regulars from La Wiracocha crowded into the police station to make their statements, and the police ran around looking for Amparo, who was probably the last person to see Yang Ting alive. To their amazement nobody with this name lived at the address she had given—Jirón Paruro 394. Although they repeated her description over and over again to the men, women, and even the children, none of the
callejón'
s inhabitants had ever seen the likes of her. They looked for her in vain throughout the city of Lima, going through the labyrinth of its shacks with a fine-toothed comb. A court summons was then issued the length and breadth of Peru, and the police in Chiquian, Pisco, Ica, Ayacucho, and Cuzco were put on high alert. After a year they reluctantly closed the matter. She must have slipped into Chile or Bolivia, whose borders with Peru were wide open. In order to recuperate the cost of burying Yang Ting, even though he had been thrown like a dog into a common grave, the municipality of Lima helped themselves to his house. They did it up very cheaply and rented it out to some Chinese railroad employees who cleared out in fright after only one week. Every midnight a terrible racket broke out in the two bedrooms—moans, screams, groans, and the sounds of a struggle. The next tenants did not stay longer for the same reasons. Neither did the next. Soon the rumor spread, and nobody wanted to live there. The house finally fell into ruin, and it came to be known in the neighborhood as the Casa de Los Espiritus, the House of the Spirits. During the daytime people
quickened their step along its sidewalk. At night they made a wide detour by the Calle Las Dallias to avoid it.

In our countries, where imagination reigns supreme, popular curiosity is not satisfied with a mystery. Everything has to have an explanation, preferably supernatural. Mama Justa, a black woman from the region of Ica on the south coast known for the clairvoyance of its seers, soon furnished one. After having drunk a cup of worm-grass tea, which sharpens the vision, she fell asleep and had a dream in which she saw Yang Ting as a young man on his island, unrecognizable with a full head of hair and a perfect set of teeth. The life of shame he had led there was revealed to her, and when she awoke, the whole matter became crystal clear. She then told his story to anyone who cared to listen. The young Yang Ting had committed a crime against two women—a terrible, unspeakable crime, worse than a robbery or a murder, which has a motive and never fails to have extenuating circumstances; one of those crimes which nobody can forgive, not even the most generous-hearted. He thought he was safe in Peru, where he had been hiding for fifteen years, turning into an old bag of bones. But that was an illusion! You can run and hide wherever you like; the earth is not big enough, God's justice has eyes like a hawk, you can never escape your sins.