Yujra went for the kill, but not fast enough. Right as he was about to get clocked, the vagrant stuck the knife into one of Yujra’s buttocks. Yujra was so strong, he didn’t seem to notice the wound; stepping forward, he landed a right hook that floored the vagrant. Yujra bent over and continued to pound the guy mercilessly.
“That’s enough, pal!” the vagrant sputtered. “You’re still the champ.”
“I don’t want to see you here again,” Yujra snarled.
“Okay,” the vagrant moaned.
Yujra returned to the bar and started to patch up his wound. I was afraid the police would show up and ruin my night, but Yujra continued to work as if he’d only been bitten by a mosquito. I asked for a shot of moonshine and then approached the window. I glimpsed Doña Arminda weighing some gold nuggets. Her client, a guy with mud-colored skin and a straw sombrero, emotionlessly observed the operation.
The client departed, and Severo admitted an old man in shirtsleeves, apparently a gold runner from the humid forests who didn’t feel the chill in the world’s highest capital. It didn’t take long to weigh his treasure and close the deal. Once the old guy had left the premises, Arminda went about closing drawers, storing the scales, and scrambling the combination lock to her safe.
Next, they counted their money and put the gold away in bags. My time had come. I paid for my drink and slipped out of the dive. I’d forgotten to get something to conceal my face, so the first thing I did was buy a pair of panty hose in a little store on Ortega Way. To make sure I wouldn’t lose track of Arminda and her companion, I parked myself next to a fruit stand, cloaked in the semi-darkness.
Minutes later, they emerged brimming with self-assurance and smiling broadly. My idea was to arrive at the big house on Colón Street before they did, which is why I hurried to reach Tumusla. I hailed the first taxi headed downtown. It dropped me off at the intersection of Potosí and Ayacucho. I climbed the latter in long strides, heart racing, and nearly ran out of gas. I was getting too old for this. In the Plaza Murillo, I stopped on the steps of Congress and took a deep breath. Congressmen and senators of the Republic passed by me ethereally. I kept speed-walking until Ballivián Street, where an evening mass was being conducted at Our Lady of Carmen Church. I stepped into the small foyer and blended in with the arriving parishioners. I stopped behind a column that bisected the church doors. From there, it was easy to survey the scene. I didn’t have to wait long. Severo and Arminda emerged from Ballivián Street and headed down Colón. When they reached the entrance to the old house, they disappeared into the passage at the base of the building.
The shoemaker was getting ready to pound a sole. Since he was working with his back to the passageway, he had no idea who was coming and going. That worked in my favor. Severo didn’t take long to come out, sporting his smart-ass Indian smile. Just like the first time, he headed to the eatery for dinner. Doña Arminda was all alone in the apartment. I left the church, crossed the street, and tiptoed through the passage weightlessly, like a Russian ballerina. Unaware of my presence, the shoemaker hammered away with religious zeal. Upon reaching the patio, I stood in silence beside the fountain, closely observing Arminda’s apartment. A dim lightbulb illuminated the scene. I checked my watch: it was 8:30. The rich guy usually showed up at 9, so I had half an hour, which was more than enough time. The prevailing darkness favored my plans. I awkwardly pulled the panty hose over my head, obscuring my face but also blurring my vision. I climbed the stairs and took out my glass cutter. Just to make sure, I pushed the door handle, but as I had expected, it was locked. My only choice was to nick the glass with the cutter. I had seen it done countless times. I delicately cut a small square into one of the panes on the lower part of the window covering the upper half of the door. This done, I stuffed the cutter into my jacket and pushed gently against the glass with my right elbow. Nothing happened. I tried pushing harder . . . and the glass broke, crashing down noisily on the other side of the door and shattering into pieces against the ceramic-tiled floor.
The sound was loud enough to wake up a deaf person. I froze in place like an invisible savage in the Amazon jungle. If Arminda appeared, I didn’t know for sure what I would do, probably run like hell. Three endless minutes ticked by, but the gold queen wasn’t giv- ing any sign of life. I opened the door and silently closed it behind me, barely breathing. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. I realized I was in a kitchen that doubled as a laundry room. I started to walk down a hallway; to my left, I made out another door that led to a dining room, and to my right I saw a living room. At the end of the hallway there was a third door, from underneath which a sliver of light was emanating. Shivers of fear and anxiety raced through my body like electric eels. Still, I managed to muster my courage and continued toward the door under which the glow was coming. As soon as I opened it, I understood why Arminda hadn’t heard the crashing glass. I had stumbled upon a spacious bedroom with walls covered by loud wallpaper and a budget hotel–style double bed decorated with two small pink cushions.
Against one wall, an old wardrobe, a pair of chairs on which some garments rested, and a bureau atop which I glimpsed, to my amazement, two leather briefcases. Arminda hadn’t heard a thing because she was showering in the bathroom next to her bedroom. Praise the Lord!
The bathroom door had been left ajar, perhaps so she could keep an eye on the briefcases. I approached carefully, as if walking on egg shells, and tried to ascertain what was going on in the bathroom. A shower curtain covered the tub, and I could make out Doña Arminda’s sillhouette. The steam had turned the place into a sauna; it was difficult to see clearly. I made a ninety-degree turn and picked up the suitcases. One of them weighed a ton. I placed them on top of the bed, keeping the lead club handy, just in case.
One of the briefcases was flush with dollar bills and the other contained gold. I wasn’t interested in the gold, so I concentrated on the dollars. Tied in bundles, they lay there like paper diamonds. My eagle’s eye counted at least twenty thousand dollars worth. I picked up one bundle, which amounted to ten hundred-dollar bills. It was exactly what I needed. But the greed of man is comparable only to his desire for self-destruction, and begging the Holy Spirit for forgiveness I stuffed a few more bundles into my pockets. Give or take, it’s all the same, I thought, consoling myself. As I reveled in my discovery, I felt a puff of hot air come out of the bathroom. I figured that a gust of wind through an open window had collided with a small cloud of steam. What a surprise it was to see a human figure emerge from that mist, covered by an enormous towel. I immediately whipped out the lead club and got ready to whack Doña Arminda over the head. But I didn’t have time; the towel slipped off the body of the airy apparition. To my astonishment, I discovered a figure covered by an impressive amount of body hair. Its skin had mysteriously tanned to a dark brown hue. The body of Doña Arminda, feminine, rounded, and curvaceous, had, through the work of the Devil, turned into a solid and muscular figure. Her sensual white face had transformed into a rough, masculine mask.
A hoarse voice brought me back to my senses. “Who are you?”
I didn’t manage to respond. My throat went dry like that of a salt miner in the Atacama Desert. Through some strange process of transmutation, Doña Arminda had become Don Gustavo, Isabel’s uncle.
He threw the towel to the floor and ripped the panty hose off my face with a catlike swipe.
“Teacher boy!” he exclaimed. “Teacher boy trying to run off with my money.”
“Whaaaaaat!” Arminda yelled.
Don Gustavo grabbed me by the neck. Despite his age, he was much stronger than me. “What are you doing here?”
His dark frame was armed with a huge phallus.
“I need the money to pay for the American visa,” I confessed.
He looked at me as if he were Lazarus’s brother watching Lazarus sip tea after having had his eyelids shut forever. “Visa? What visa?”
“The American visa,” I repeated.
“You think I’m an
idiot? Put that money right back where it was!”
Instead of obeying him, I delivered a quick knee to his nuts, which looked like a pair of toasted figs. He let out a wolf’s howl.
“Whaaaaat!” Doña Arminda yelled a second time.
Don Gustavo sprang to his feet with the ferocity of a panther, but he was naked and wet, just like when he entered this world. He slipped and fell anew. I tried to flee, but I had a pair of cement blocks for legs. Don Gustavo stood up and threw a left hook that could have toppled a bronze statue. I raised the lead pipe and slammed it over his wet head. He absorbed the impact and stood there as if paralyzed, eyes wide open and a look of incredulity on his face. Evidently, he hadn’t expected the lead pipe. I made the most of his panic and attempted another escape. But the man was strong, so strong that in spite of the crushing blow, he still had it in him to grab me by the hair and hold on.
“You’re not getting away, teacher boy,” he snarled.
It was a good thing he had already lost half of his energy and couldn’t quite keep a grip on me. I tried to free myself from his hands, like a squirming mongoose. We staggered across the room in slow motion, like a pair of mimes in swampy waters. I got a whiff of his breath, a mix of whiskey and homecooking, and heard him cursing me. Reaching deep into my soul, I was able to distance myself. I delivered another resounding blow with the club, this time to the forehead. He let go of me and leaned against one of the armchairs. It was the moment I had been waiting for. I pounded him numerous times until he collapsed to the floor. He stared up at me with hatred and resig- nation. I stooped over and met his gaze. And right then, the pall of eternity spread over him.
I shook him several times and tried in vain to make out his heartbeat. There was nothing but silence. Don Gustavo was on his way to far-off galaxies, to the cradle of the Big Bang.
“Hand me a towel!” Doña Arminda cried.
I watched the blood gush down the gray flooring, as if in search of the open sea.
By a trick of fate, I had become a murderer. It was one more detail in my life, the most important since my birth, the most transcendental; more significant than that morning my son was born or the day Antonia left. To me, murder had always been a literary or cinematic flourish, something that existed merely in fiction. Now, I had blood on my hands. I understood that my entire past was irrelevant and that I would endure whatever befell me day by day, hour by hour, until, like Don Gustavo, I stopped breathing and entered a state of permanent anesthesia.
“Towwwwwwellllll!” Doña Arminda cried out again.
I imagined the shriek she would unleash in a few moments, upon discovering the cold body of her lover and business partner. I left in a mad dash, but I was still lucid. Now things were getting serious. In the patio, I came across a small child playing hide-and-go-seek with a friend. The shoemaker was busy fastening a rubber heel onto a canoe-shaped shoe. A half-breed lady from Potosí, one of those who subsist off selling lemons, had set up shop in the doorway to the house and was preparing some soup. Three witnesses, all on another planet.
Once out on the street, I hurried up Indaburo. My nerves were jumpy as hell. Not a soul to be found. I thought about taking a taxi, but the traffic was heavy and slow-moving. Better to go by foot and not freak out. My mood was surprisingly stable, and my nerves were beginning to calm down. At Plaza Jenaro Sanjinés, I watched people gathering to attend a show at the Municipal Theater. A free adaptation of Bertold Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan was showing. Brecht wouldn’t have approved of the murder, but Gustavo was bad news and expendable, just like the old lady Raskolnikov took out in Crime and Punishment.
I walked down Comercio. The people of La Paz, accustomed to the cold, were out for a stroll as if it were the French Riviera.
I passed by a fat panhandling street performer who was entertaining a crowd with jokes. A few hookers strutted around with about as much pizzazz as cows lined up at a country fair. Street vendors, young maids in search of a few pesos, newly uncloseted gays, and low-lying crooks all gathered in the Plaza Pérez Velasco. On the terrace in front of San Francisco Church, beside the raised sidewalk, I happened upon the eye of a storm.
I ditched the lead club and the glass cutter.
A group of obnoxious Christian rockers were making a racket in the middle of the plaza. Riffraff formed a circle around the band. My intention was to now head up Santa Cruz and get to the hotel as soon as possible to count the dollars that were burning holes in my pockets.
Cutting through the jamboree, I felt someone grab me by the arm. “You, sir, are the man I was looking for,” said the stranger.
A young fellow dressed in black, with a white shirt and reddish tie, was smiling before me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You, sir, have been chosen to pick a card to show these people that I am not pulling their leg.” He led me to a circle in which his traveling magician’s wares were on display. He turned to the audience and said, “I’ve never seen this man before. Isn’t that right, sir?”
“I’ve never seen him,” I stammered. I hadn’t yet come to my senses.
“He’s not lying. I just arrived from Arequipa. I don’t know anyone. I have no accomplices or friends; I’m no trickster.”
He thrust a stack of cards before me and told me to pick one. I pulled out a queen of hearts.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, moving away from me, “it’s up to me to figure out, through telepathy, what card he took. Sir, please look at the card in your hands.” He backed up a few yards, paused to think with his head bowed, and then announced: “A queen of hearts.”
The people applauded. The magician pulled out a shining gilt cigarette case, opened it, and offered me a smoke.
“I have great powers,” he said. “For example, I can tell you blindfolded what this man is hiding in his pockets.” He winked at me and smiled.
“Thanks,” I said, “but my girlfriend’s waiting for me at the merry-go-round.”
The crowd burst out in laughter. I seized the moment and slipped away. I raced up Santa Cruz Street. No doubt the know-it-all Peruvian magician’s ironic gaze was still following me. If that guy had guessed I was carrying thousands of dollars in my pockets, he probably knew I had also just knocked off Don Gustavo; typical amateur magician.
In the hotel lobby, I found Blanca accompanied by two girls from the Tropicana. She was dolled up in one of those dresses that black and Latina girls wear to nightclubs in the Bronx.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You look pale. You shouldn’t drink so much. What do you think of my dress? I bought it at a shop on Huyustus Street.”
“Great.”
She stroked my hair and stared at me lustfully. “I like you better when you’re pale.”
“I’m going to my room. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
She looked at herself in a compact mirror. “Antelo’s throwing a goodbye party,” she said.
“See you there,” I responded.
I asked for my key and went up to my room. I sat on the hard bed and placed the dollars on the bedspread; it was a good sum. I started counting: hundreds, fifties, and twenties. Fondling them, I added them up carefully. Two thousand three hundred and twenty dollars had been the price of my liberation and of Don Gustavo’s head. I think that in the game of life, we were now even. Trembling, I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes. The footage of the murder passed before my eyes in full color. I feared that the memory of the club shattering Don Gustavo’s skull would become an excruciating, never-ending nightmare.
I stayed there for a while fingering the bills, throwing them into the air and letting them fall into a heap on my chest. As if carrying a strange spell, they represented that same blood-soaked nightmare.
“Doctor Alvarez!”
It was Don Antonio. What did the old man want?
I opened the door and saw his scheming grandfather’s face. He tried to say
something, but his cough got the better of him and he stood there choking for an entire fifteen seconds. He stopped and said: “Antelo sent me. We’re having a party. He received notice of his appointment as Assistant Director of Customs for Santa Cruz, a gig that will make him a millionaire overnight. To celebrate, he bought bottles of fine pisco, wine, and beer. That soccer star is one lucky know-nothing.” “I’m coming,” I said. I put the dollars away under the mattress and took out three twenties for spending money.
A number of hotel guests were at the bash: Blanca, Gardenia, Videla, Don Antonio, Antelo, and a couple of hostesses from the Tropicana, the ones I had seen before in the hotel lobby.
Antelo was flying high. With his tacky green jacket and white pants, he was ready for the tropics. He had shaved and put on some cologne, and was now smiling smugly, like a sheik before his harem. “Alvarez, my friend,” he said. “I have everything I ever wanted. Now, I can ramble all I want and no one can make me stop. You should join me. Life is great down east; there are tons of beautiful girls. What do you say?”
“What would I do in Santa Cruz?”
“Customs can always use consultants; don’t pretend like you don’t know.”
“Thanks, Antelo, but I don’t even belong to your party.”
“So? You can join. What’s the big deal? Take the oath and we’ll give you a membership card. With the card, no one can touch you.”
“I got the money for the visa. My godfather, the barber, helped me out.”
“North America is a safer bet, but at your age moving there is no joke,” he said.
Gardenia was dressed like a man, in a leather jacket and jeans. Along with the hostesses, he was cracking jokes at the expense of the salesman, who was unable to wipe the sad Stan Laurel–like expression off his face.
Having had a few drinks too many, Blanca embraced me affectionately as soon as the radio started playing. “Dance,” she said. “Don’t look so scared. Nobody’s going to eat you.”
American Visa Page 17