by Lyn Hamilton
On my first visit, shortly after my arrival in Lima, I had climbed the dark steps to a second-floor landing. There were two apartments, one on either side of the staircase. On the door to the right was a little nameplate, not Cervantes, and on the other, a black ribbon tied to the door knocker. I knocked, tentatively at first, then louder. No one answered, and there was no sound from within. I waited outside for a few minutes, watched closely by a Chinese woman in a little chifa, or Chinese restaurant, across the street.
On my second visit, I was greeted by the same silence and lack of an answer. This time I took a seat in the chifa across the road where I could watch the staircase, and ordered a beer. After a few minutes, the Chinese proprietor came over to my table. “Who are you looking for?” she asked. I told her I was looking for Señora Cervantes.
“That tart,” she said. “Señora Cervantes you call her. Very fancy. She’d like that. Thinks she’s better than the rest of us, always putting on airs. But around here she’s just Carla. Or sometimes just the tart.” She used the word fulana. Spanish has as many words for those who ply the world’s oldest profession as we do in English. “She’s in there,” she went on. “Won’t answer the door. Worried it will be the landlord. She can’t pay the rent, you know. Or her brother-in-law, who blames her for what happened. Her husband’s dead.”
“I heard,” I said. “Too bad.”
“Too bad for her, that’s for certain. Maybe not for him. For him, perhaps, a blessing. Left her with three kids. She’s sent them away, you know, to her sister in Trujillo. She shouldn’t have kids. No patience with them. Too much of a child herself. Took all their money, did that husband of hers, what there was of it, and went off somewhere far, Canada I think, and then up and died.”
Clearly my newfound friend didn't miss much, and didn't mind whom she told about it either.
“Why would he do that, I wonder,” I said.
She snorted. “Die, you mean? Or go to Canada? The only thing to wonder about is how he got enough money to go there in the first place, and why he didn’t go sooner. Found her with someone. His own brother. A fine man, Ramon Cervantes. He didn’t deserve that, I can tell you. A real tart, that one.”
Dear me, I thought, poor Lizard. But how does finding your wife in flagrante delicto with your brother get you to an auction in Toronto and a gory and premature death in my storage room?
The woman from the chifa had more to tell me. She paused only long enough to get me another beer, unasked for. Buying from her was, I gathered, how I was paying for this information.
“But it’s no use feeling sorry for Ramon, is there? No use feeling sorry for the dead. It’s his brother I feel sorry for now: Jorge. Consumed with guilt. Just consumed with it. Drinks like a fish at the bar down the street, then comes and stands under the window watching for her. I call her a tart, but he calls her a witch, a bruja. Claims she bewitched both him and his brother, made them do bad things. His wife has left him now. Taken his kids too. Him, I feel sorry for.
“There,” she said, pointing to a young man, obviously drunk and disheveled, passing in front of the chifa. “Jorge.” We watched him lurch by. She was right: He looked pathetic indeed. A few moments later, when Jorge could no longer be seen, she went on. “As for her, when she does come out, she’s not dressed like a widow, that I can tell you. Disgraceful. Lots of loud colors: Pink’s her favorite. If she’s shedding tears, it’s for herself, and not for him. She’ll do all right, of course. Men like to look after her. First her father doted on her, then Ramon, the poor man. Not good enough for her, was he? A good man with a steady government job would be enough for most of us, wouldn’t it?”
“She goes out these days, does she?” I asked in what I hoped was a disinterested tone. The woman didn’t answer. I ordered a cheese sandwich to go with the beer. It was the cheapest bribe on the menu.
“At night,” she said, setting the grilled cheese sandwich in front of me. “After the landlord closes up his office down the street and goes home to Montericco. Then she usually goes out. About eight or nine.”
And so it was that I was back in Callao at night. I was a little uneasy about being out alone in this part of town, but the chifa was still open, and I ordered a coffee and a crème caramel while I waited to see what would happen.
Around seven-thirty, my newfound Chinese friend nudged my arm and pointed to a rather rotund middle-aged man heading down the street. As he passed the Cervantes residence, I saw him look up for a moment or two at the darkened apartment. “The landlord,” she whispered. “Going home. Now watch the shutters carefully.” I did, and a few minutes later I could see that a dim light had been turned on inside. The chifa owner gave me a knowing look.
About three quarters of an hour later, I heard, rather than saw, someone on the stairs, and a young woman entered the street.
“The tart,” the Chinese woman hissed, tossing her head in the direction of the woman. I quickly paid the bill and followed the young woman.
As my informant had predicted, Carla Cervantes was not dressed for a funeral. Instead she was wearing a pink dress, sleeveless, with narrow straps and a neckline that swooped rather low. The dress was, in my opinion, a little unfashionable, and more than a little tight on her, although I’ll admit I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to look like her in that dress. I could not help but note that all the men in the street gaped at her as she went by, and not one of them took any notice whatsoever of me, despite the fact that I was the only gringa on that street at that moment, testament, indeed, to the allure of Señora Cervantes.
At the end of the street was a busy avenue, and after a moment or two, Carla flagged down a colectivo headed for Miraflores. I immediately hailed a cab and asked the driver, a young man in jeans and a T-shirt advertising a rock group I’d never heard of, possibly the one on the tape in the car, to follow that colectivo. He jumped on the accelerator in his enthusiasm for the project, and whipped into the traffic, horn blaring, bouncing both me and his audiotape collection from side to side in the backseat like dice in a box. From time to time, he would tum to grin at me and quite unnecessarily point out the colectivo only one or two car lengths ahead. I held on to the door handle for dear life.
The colectivo turned off a side road, took a couple of backstreets, then turned down a ramp that led to what Limenos call the Ditch, a sunken expressway that cuts diagonally across the face of the city. A few minutes later, the colectivo pulled off another ramp and then dropped Carla at the door to one of the swankier hotels in Miraflores, in itself one of the poshest parts of Lima. I followed her through the glass doors into the hotel bar to the left of the main door, and took a seat at a table three away, but with a clear view of Carla and the man she had obviously come to meet.
He was much older than she was, sixty perhaps to her late twenty-something. He was not Spanish. He looked European to me, in the way he dressed, although with a Spanish rock video blasting from a large screen at one end of the bar, I could not hear him speak, until he called over the waiter and ordered a martini for his lady friend. French, I decided. I ordered a glass of white wine, and tried to look as if I belonged there. Surveillance, I would have to say, is not something in which I have any expertise.
I do like to think, however, that after fifteen years in retail, I can read body language pretty well, and this particular conversation, although I could not hear it and did not dare move closer, was an interesting one. The man, dressed in a tan suede jacket over charcoal-grey slacks, a yellow shirt, and a rather stylish cravat, leaned well back in his chair at first, distancing himself from his companion and keeping his face in relative shadow. One hand rested on his knee; the other he kept well to his side, between his thigh and the arm of the chair. Throughout most of the conversation, which lasted almost an hour, his body language said that he was not very interested in what Carla had to say.
She, on the other hand, was trying very hard to be persuasive. I had the feeling she had a proposal to make to him, and that she did not
know him that well. First there was a lovely smile as she leaned toward him, then, when that appeared to have no impact, dainty tears and blowing of nose into a lace hanky. Still the man remained unmoved. Pouting was next, and then as a last resort she wriggled just enough to let one pink strap slide off her shoulder. The man leaned forward and smiled. It was not, I thought, a nice smile, rather one of victory, or perhaps anticipation.
Through all of this, I nursed my one little glass of white wine, and tried to look as if I were waiting for someone, glancing at my watch from time to time, and pretending to be a little impatient. The price of wine by the glass was so outrageous in this hotel that I had no intention of ordering another, no matter how long the two of them sat there. I ate every peanut from the little crystal bowl on the table, determined to eke out my time there and get my money’s worth. Being alone in a foreign country without the comforting presence of a credit card is an experience I would not wish to repeat.
Shortly after the shoulder strap incident, it was apparently time to leave. Carla’s companion signed the bill, thereby indicating he could afford to be a guest in this hotel. It was only then that I noticed that his right hand, which he used to hold the bill while he signed with his left, was missing the little and ring fingers.
They left the bar together. I didn’t really need to follow them any farther. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where they were headed. But I followed them just the same, at least as far as the elevator. As I went past their table, I tried to read the signature on the bill, before the waiter swept it away, but the light was too low and the signature appeared to me to be illegible. I could see the room number quite clearly, however: room 1236. I saw the two of them enter the elevator, then to confirm my suspicions, I watched the numbers over the door. It went directly to the twelfth floor. The widow Cervantes appeared to be dealing with her grief quite well.
I left the hotel and looked for a colectivo to take me back downtown, catching as I did so a brief glimpse of a man standing to the side of the entranceway, who slipped into the darkness when I looked his way. Although I couldn’t say with any certainty, I could have sworn it was Ramon’s brother, Jorge.
The question was, what now? In my impulsive and one might well say ill-advised journey to solve the nasty situation in which I found myself, I had only two clues: a name, that of Ramon Cervantes, whose widow was now upstairs behaving badly—one could only assume—with a man I’d never seen before, and whom I had no reason to suspect had anything whatsoever to do with all this; and a little piece of jewelry that was probably genuine Moche. I could continue to follow the name—that is, I could wait and see where, and with whom, the widow Cervantes went next; I could go and search out Jorge, to see what light he could shed on what had happened to his brother; or I could follow the artifact, take the job in Moche territory and see what I could find.
I chose to follow the artifact. As some would say, when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Personally, I prefer a line penned by the poet Robert Browning: Everyone soon or late comes round by Rome, he wrote. Rome, in this instance, was a little town in northern Peru called Campina Vieja.
The Priestess
Still the decapitator waits, tumi blade in one hand, the other still empty. And with him the Priestess, with hair of snakes, she who holds the golden cup that soon will contain the sacred liquid, the blood of sacrifice.
While they wait at the huaca, we prepare the Warrior’s shroud. Three woven cloths will cradle him. The golden helmet with its feathered plumes, the gold and silver back flaps, the gilded bells, are placed first.
The litter that will support him on his descent lies beneath him. He rests on a second headdress, a gold crescent crowned by flamingo feathers. In his right hand we place the golden scepter, symbol of his earthly power, in his left, the silver, smaller. A gold ingot rests on his right hand, a silver on his left.
On his face we place five gold masks, on his feet, silver sandals. Three pairs of ear flares accompany him: one pair the sacred white-tailed deer, the second golden spiders, the third a feline head that represents the creature that can cross the line between the two worlds marked by the double-headed serpent—the world of now, the world of the ancestors.
Three pectorals of shell beads, thousands of them, in cream and green, pink and white, we have placed on his chest, wristbands to match on his arms.
Next comes his necklace of peanut beads, as always gold on his right, silver his left, sun/moon, earth/sea duality; then a second necklace of gold spiders and a third of discs of gold and turquoise.
To cover him we place his banners, his standards, symbols of his earthly powers: rough cotton onto which we have sewn golden discs and his image, the image of the warrior god. Then the shroud is wrapped around him.
The offerings are all assembled; the guardians, those among us who will accompany him, have been chosen.
Soon the ceremony in the great plaza will begin.
8
Even as I pondered which path to take, all the players in this macabre little drama, as if moved by some invisible director’s hand, were, like me, being drawn to take their place upon the stage. Some were driven by desperation, others compelled by avarice and greed, still others by obsession, and there were those still blissfully unaware of the role others, more malevolent, had chosen for them. Like stock characters in a modem morality tale—the Hero, the Villain, the Temptress, the Witch, the Magician, the Fool—from the four comers of the globe, we assembled in Campina Vieja to play the roles assigned us.
It was a concept, I’ve since thought, that would have resonated with the Inca, who called their huge, yet short-lived empire, Tahuantinsuyo, Land of the Four Quarters. At the time of the first European contact with the Americas, Tahuantinsuyo was the largest nation on earth. At its center was the glittering city of Cuzco, the navel of the Inca universe, just as Campina Vieja was to become the heart of this drama.
From the northern quarter, if you count my point of origin, Chinchaysuyu for the Inca, came I, the Narrator perhaps, or worse yet, the Fool. For me, the journey from the comforting cocoon of Lima, possessing as it does that essence that all large cities share, was an exercise in shedding my old identity, along with preconceptions, as a snake sheds its skin. It was not so much that the journey was extraordinary, just one filled with quirky moments, that made it clear that Rebecca wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
The flight to Trujillo had been uneventful, unless you count playing bingo rather than watching a movie an event, and I found the Vulkano bus station without difficulty. A bus trip in that part of the country, apparently, is an exercise in participative democracy. Passengers preoccupied themselves with shouting instructions to the driver, telling him he was lingering too long at any given stop, or that he wasn’t driving to their particular specifications.
We were on the Panamericana Norte, the Pan-American highway, that hugs a narrow strip of desert crisscrossed by river valleys, most of them dry, between the sea on one side and the Andes on the other. From time to time we’d pass a little town, sometimes a small forest or some farmland, but by and large the land on either side of the highway was desert, very dry. Sometimes I could see tire tracks leading off the highway, in what appeared to be a straight line to nowhere. In the distance are the mountains, looming up out of the sand. As austere as it may sound, it was actually quite beautiful, the colors of the desert, the golds, browns, the burnt greens, cinnamons, and dusty rose, playing against the blue-green of the sea, and the hundreds of greys, greens, navy blues, and purples of the mountains.
And what of the other characters? the other quarters? From the south, Collasuyu, comes the Magician.
With the help of several vocal backseat drivers, the bus driver stopped regularly to disgorge passengers and pick up others, sometimes in little towns, more often than not at a marker—a little stand or a sign—at the side of the highway.
At one of these stops, a young couple loaded down with enormous backpacks got on
. They both looked about fifteen to me, but to be realistic I’d put them in their early twenties. Gringos. She wore jeans with holes at the knees; a halter top that revealed her suntanned middle and a hint of navel; lots of jewelry, most notably silver rings on every finger and a pair of long silver earrings that looked vaguely Navaho; and a halo of long wavy hair around a small face that gave her the appearance of a Titian Madonna. He had hair almost as long as hers, cutoff jeans, a T-shirt frayed at the shoulders where the sleeves had been removed, and a neat little row of tiny safety pins in one ear. On one arm he had a large tattoo with a skull and crossbones and a succinct suggestion that the Establishment—such an antiquated term—perform an anatomical impossibility on itself. As they passed my seat, I idly wondered if their parents, particularly hers, knew where they were and what they were doing. Advancing middle age can be tiresome.
Several moments after the bus started rolling again, the young man walked to the front of the bus and, turning to face the crowd, pulled out a deck of cards. He spoke no Spanish, and, with the exception of me, no one else on the bus spoke English, but he kept up a patter that would have made a showman proud, and soon had everyone’s attention as he demonstrated several card tricks. After that, he took a newspaper, asked in sign language for one of the men sitting in the front seats to check it out carefully, folded it into a cone shape, and then, pulling a bottle of water out of a bag he carried with him, poured the water into the cone. He then very quickly inverted the cone over the head of the nearest passenger, who ducked away, much to the amusement of the other passengers. No water came out of the cone. There was a smattering of applause. He grinned, and then, still talking, poured water out of the cone and back into the jar.