by Roy Kesey
More barking. The conquistadors brought dogs with them, wolfhounds and mastiffs bred for war, and found other kinds of dogs already here. One native species is hairless and thin and rat-tailed. It is blotched pinkish and gray in the winter as if diseased, and dark brown or black in the summer. In Tallán it is called viringo, in Quechua ccala, in Spanish among other possibilities calato. All of these words mean naked. The Chavín and Moche and Wari and Chimú put its likeness on their jewelry and ceramics. The Huanca offered its meat to their gods. The Incas kept them as pets, believed in their magical ability to calm stomach pain.
Mariángel scratches her face, leaves a stripe of mud down one cheek. Curanderos still prescribe drinking the dogs’ blood fresh to calm asthma, applying its saliva to cuts and its urine to freckles, embracing its warm cadaver to cure typhoid and pneumonia, the powdered ash of its skull as cure for gangrene, its brains raw to repair stroke damage, and one such dog wanders past my house from time to time. It fights often and poorly. It bleeds at the mouth, limps from corner to corner, sleeps in the shade of the Virgin. When I first moved here I thought it was the ugliest dog in the world. In fact it is not even the ugliest dog on my block.
I go to my daughter, wipe the mud from her face. Then there is movement at the back door. Fermín is waiting just inside. I welcome him into the yard, ask why he didn’t come yesterday with Casualidad as usual, ask if perhaps he had a soccer match, and if so, did it go well? Fermín stares at the ground. There is no point but I repeat the question. Fermín murmurs unintelligibly, and from the street a fruit vendor sings Plátanos piña pepinos, hay limas pepinos papayas, hay plátanos de seda.
I return to my chair. Fermín takes up the rake, tears at the lawn’s skin of dead leaves, and Mariángel begins another set of terraces. She finishes well before he does, takes hold of his pantleg as he passes by, points to the hose. He smiles, tells her that he cannot water yet, that it is not time, that first all the leaves must be gathered and borne away. Mariángel pulls herself to her feet, points at the hose again. Fermín shakes his head but she will not have it, squeals, and finally I suggest a new sequence for today: water this one flowerbed, finish with the leaves, water the rest of the yard.
Fermín first hesitates to let me know that this seems wrong to him. Mariángel watches as he covers the terraces with water, claps when they collapse and Fermín laughs, says they were the best terraces he has ever seen. I listen for the fruit vendors. Instead I hear an ice cream cart, the bicycle horn worked ceaselessly and the dogs start up again.
Now the newspaper. Page by page and as always there is nothing of use. Then Mariángel is at the radio, reaching with her muddy hands and I stretch, too late, the radio on, salsa flaring from the speakers. I turn it off and wipe the mud from the console. I explain to Mariángel that Piura is already so much louder than a city its size should be.
She starts to cry. I pick her up and she pushes at my face, cries louder. I surrender though I know I should not, turn the radio back on, dance with her tight against my chest, take her by the wrists and swing her back and forth.
The next song is merengue. I bring her again in close, and we spin madly. Finally I am sweaty and she is tired and Fermín is done. The lawn is a leafless lake. He stands at the spigot, coils the hose sadly: watering is his favorite activity. I offer him a sandwich and some orange juice, and he nods without looking up, waits on the patio, eats and drinks in silence, murmurs what is most likely thanks.
I give him twenty soles and he smiles at the tree. Mariángel and I walk him to the front door, thank him, wave goodbye. Mariángel waves goodbye to me as well, and I watch as she toddles toward her bedroom. Hay pepinos hay piña, pepinos y piña y plátanos. I wait for the vendor to call out that he has mangos as well, but of course he does not. Mango season does not begin for another month.
I start the bathwater and go to Mariángel’s room but she is not there. Now I hear splashing outside. I run to the patio. She stands in the corner of the flooded lawn, the water above her ankles. She is holding a doll not quite her own size—a plastic Inca princess, golden-skinned, bald and naked, her hair and clothing lost to a stove burner weeks ago.
Mariángel ignores me when I call to her. She ignores me again when I curse and step toward her, throws the doll as I lift her. She screams all the way to the bathroom, quiets when she sees the water running, laughs as she plays with the small bright water rings, screams again when I lift her from the tub, and I finish drenched and bitching. Then I remember to sing, Chabuca Granda, softly. At last Mariángel calms. I set her in the crib, bring her bottle. I watch until she closes her eyes, and return to the patio.
The sun strikes the water, the glare hits me full in the face, but there is something near the far wall, something shining, a tiny figure. And of course—the doll somehow upright in the shallow water. But in the instant before I knew this, it was something else: Punchao.
The doorbell rings. Whoever it is will leave soon enough if I make no sound but Sundays are bad days for doorbells. Punchao, Quechua for daybreak, the sun’s first ray striking in through Andean peaks. Punchao, God of Day. Punchao, a gold statue, the form of a ten-year-old boy but the size of Mariángel.
Again the doorbell and perhaps it is the man who collects empty bottles. He comes most Sundays and is at times insistent. Pachacutec expands the empire, revives the sun cult, claims a dream or vision: a shining child, Punchao. The statue’s sandals and circlet also gold. Sits within a silver pavilion. From the pavilion extends a cloud of gold medallions. When the sun strikes the medallions, the reflections are so bright that the figure can barely be seen.
Statue and pavilion rest on a cloth of iridescent feathers, this cloth on a golden disc six feet across, and the statue’s chest is hinged. Inside the chest cavity is a gold chalice. Inside the chalice are the rough-ground hearts of past emperors and again the motherfucking doorbell.
I go, look out the peephole, see no one. This means it is either children or Hugo, a deaf midget who holds a piece of paper saying, “I have nothing to eat, and one sol would be fine, or ten soles if you wish.” I open the door half an inch. The stoop is empty and I walk back to the patio.
For one hundred and thirty years each Inca seeks the Punchao’s guidance, claims to hear it speak. It is carried on a litter for all ceremonies. It sleeps in the company of princesses. Spread out before its altar are gold and silver vessels filled daily with maize and meat and chicha de jora and one morning the conquistadors arrive at the gates of the Coricancha. They push the Inca priests aside. They walk through the temple to the central garden: silver cornstalks, and the corn ears solid gold. Beyond is another room, the altar tended by mamaconas and here the cloud of medallions, the silver pavilion, Punchao.
The Spaniards post guards but somehow the statue is slipped out past them, borne first toward Chachapoyas and then to Vilcabamba. This final Inca fortress so distant, so nearly inaccessible, and the Spaniards come all the same. In the end it is Hurtado de Arbieto leading two-hundred fifty mounted soldiers, two thousand native auxiliaries. Battle at Coyao-chaca, battle at Huayna Pucará. Túpac Amaru and his retinue chased down into the Amazon basin. His son captured. His brothers, daughters, and now the Punchao is taken. Túpac Amaru and his wife still uncaught. Deeper and deeper into the jungle, they run and run but his wife, and a dog barks once, again, quiets.
Others who have not yet come but surely will: those seeking donations to help street-children return to school; to help the French Alliance arrange more and better concerts; to help feed the men and women at the Centro de Reposo San Juan de Dios, a lunatic asylum up the street whose acronym for unclear reasons is CREMPT. Some who come sell bittersweet candy at twice its true price. Some only hold out their hands.
The medallions are cut off, and the statue is shipped to the king as a gift for the Pope. It might still exist, hidden in some Vatican storeroom or palace vault. Hay limas hay papayas, plátanos piña naranjas, hay limas pepinos y plátanos. I dream the vendor on his three-wheele
d cart, his water bottle in a dirty plastic bag suspended from the handlebars, the tarp stretched taut across the bamboo frame. The papayas here can grow to the size of watermelons. The sun now behind a cloud, the doll only a doll. My garden wall, smooth and white and fifteen feet tall, lined with broken glass and useless.
Behind the wall is a warehouse of some sort. It appears to be and perhaps is abandoned—it has been years since I’ve heard the sounds of storage. I suspect that the burglars come through or along it, climb ladders, lay empty rice sacks over the broken glass, vault across into my yard.
The cloud slips east. The shards of glass go bright with sunlight caught and colored. In truth the burglars do little damage: my few appliances were bought secondhand and cheap, there is a roving market where they can be recovered still more cheaply, and I do not keep much cash in the house. All the same it pleases me to think of them seeing me on the street, noting the color of my skin and imagining me rich, following me home and breaking in only to discover that Mariángel and I possess mainly books and plush toys.
Even if I wished to, I could not hate them as much as I hate the huaqeros. Like me the huaqeros read the desert as text, but they are searching for clues to a far simpler narrative. They come with shovels, iron rods, kerosene lamps. They dig into each dirt mound, prod at the sides of the tunnels. If they have read correctly the mound is a burial site and the rod slides cleanly into the cache. The archaeologists arrive days or months later. They preserve the scraps, study the fouled context, the fouling itself now part of history and how I would enjoy gathering the world’s huaqueros and beating them to death with a mattock, one by one.
At times there is little or nothing for them to sell. Farmhands search for fresh pasture near Laguna de los Cóndores, glance up at limestone cliffs, see a row of Chachapoya tombs. In a week Pilar will be murdered. They climb, secure themselves, draw their machetes and slash at the bundled remains. No precious metals, no gems. The farmhands shrug and climb back down. Later a museum will be built in Leymebamba to house the mutilated skeletons, textiles, quipus. I have not yet gone, hope to at some point, have not yet decided if I must.
At other times there is a great deal to be sold. Early 1987 outside Sipán, a slumping set of pyramids thought to be Chimú. A tunnel into the smallest pyramid advances down through two layers of guardians: one of canine skeletons, another of humans with their feet amputated to forestall abandon. The huaqeros hit a vein of ceramic pots once filled with food and drink for the dead. Then a first tomb, four skeletons covered with semiprecious jewelry.
Still deeper, and lateral tunnels branching. A layer of stonework, another of soil blended with cinnabar. Ernil Bernal, the lead huaqero, sees an unlikely textural variation in the tunnel wall. He prods at it, and the wall collapses, and he is buried in dirt, silver, gold.
His brother pulls him out. The others reinforce and extend, begin filling their sacks, are crazed by their sudden fortune. Night after night they return. But Sipán is too small for such a secret, and other rumors start as well—betrayal, kidnapping, murder. A week later the police raid the Bernal house and find a single sack of artifacts. The rest is gone, on its way to the private collections of rich men here and elsewhere.
Midnight. The police look through what they have found. They call an archaeologist, the director of a local museum. He has bronchitis, has not slept in three days. He tells them that whatever it is can wait until morning.
The officers say, No, no, we do not believe that it can. They describe the objects they hold and the archaeologist is out of bed and dressing. Arrives at the police station. Lifts the pieces, one and then another. Not Chimú but Moche, seventeen hundred years old, a discovery like none since the Conquest and impossible, the Spaniards and yanaconas so thorough in their scouring, impossible but here the pieces are.
Hay limas pepinos melones hay manzanas. I shift in my chair, my own breath loud from my chest. The police lead the archaeologist to the site and word has spread: huaqeros swarm the pyramids. The police have machine guns. The huaqeros run, stop, turn back. The archaeologist watches and knows there is no time for proper channels. He must simply start digging.
I have not yet finished my coursework, lack the proper background, watch my colleagues devour the discovery and the police raid the Bernal house a second time. Ernil runs, is gunned down, or so the story is told. Smell of sewage, of jasmine, keen of a hawk that circles too high to be seen. Half of Sipán is camped around the site. The villagers claim all artifacts as ancestral inheritance. They claim Bernal as martyred saint. They threaten to kill the archaeologist if he continues.
The archaeologist knows this calculus. He hires the loudest villagers as guards. In the main chamber he finds another body, and beneath it another chamber, a copper-banded coffin, the royal tomb. A gold death mask. A gold headdress. Pectorals and necklaces of scarlet chaquiras and gold.
The doorbell rings and I twist, cough, and already the plan is failing: more villagers each day. One morning they surge, are barely driven back by tear gas. The archaeologist walks to the edge of the dig, cuts a hole in the barb-wire fence. He calls one of the villagers forward. He grabs the man by the lapels, drags him in through the hole, tells him to go get his inheritance.
The man does not move. The hundreds lean in toward them. Smell of dust and heat and the archaeologist takes hold of him again, drags him to the very pit. Puts a shovel in the man’s hands. Dares him to dig.
The man drops the shovel, steps back. The hundreds fall quiet, but soon they will begin stoning the archaeologist and his team as they arrive each day. Limas naranjas pepinos papayas, plátanos limas pepinos and of course a new museum is worth little when one’s village has no school and the roads are mainly unpaved. Broken glass glints at the top of the wall. I hear a slight sound, something soft brushing against something softer. I wait. Nothing more comes, and it was my imagination or else the curtains moving in the breeze of a fan, and now a flash of color in the tree.
It is a putilla, lovely bird, tiny bright point of red. I see them often on campus, always in pairs. I wait for this one’s mate to come. Nothing moves. The putilla rests on a low branch. It looks at me, then flies away.
The closest city to Sipán is Chiclayo: the city where Pilar was born and raised. From Piura it is an easy bus ride south. Two years ago she took me to meet her family. Her three brothers all teach English at local institutes, and during lunch that first day we discussed methodology and technique, but there was an oddness to their talk, a straining after sentences.
Pilar and her mother left for Mass, and the rest of us went to the living room—the father and I in overstuffed chairs, the three brothers on the couch in descending order of height. There it was made clear that an interrogation was forthcoming, that all would be made known and judgment rendered, but there had been pisco sours before lunch, and beer with lunch, and now there was whiskey. Before the first question had been clearly phrased, all five of us were asleep.
We woke when the women returned. The oldest brother then said, I hope, John, that everything is perfectly clear between us. I assured him that it was and the next morning we went to Sipán. The father drove slowly in their ancient sedan. Pilar sat beside him, me beside her, the mother and brothers mountained in the back seat.
At first it was absurd. The mother gasped at each piece. The brothers pulled at my elbows. But the work: the paired necklaces of goldplated copper, one of joyful faces and one of faces caught in death; the high priest’s crown and its owl, the wings spread wide; the earspools, deer of turquoise with antlers and hooves of gold; and over and through it all the degollador, the executioner, his fangs, degollar, to rip out someone’s throat.
Back to the car, and to the dig. The archaeologist himself at work. I send my letter of introduction in with a guard and the archaeologist does not come but lends us an assistant. We all walk together. Pilar and her family suffused with good pride and the owl, yes, another Moche executioner. I have since seen a ceramic pot bearing scenes of h
uman sacrifice and the coming rain, the sacrifice causing the rain or else celebrating it, and the owl presiding, god of warriors, displaced later by condor and vulture but now in the night air before me and Jenny, her exclamation point, the owl and I open my eyes.
Silence. Broken glass, arrozeros, silence. Then plátanos piña pepinos, hay limas hay pepinos hay plátanos de seda. When the voice quiets I hear something from inside the house, not soft but sharp and flat, not curtains or my imagination so I go.
Mariángel is sitting on the floor beside a bookcase. It is not clear how she has gotten out of her crib without hurting herself, or why she has come here instead of seeking me. She is chewing on the corner of Basadre’s Perú: Problema y Posibilidad. Perhaps it is a matter of teething and this book is the perfect size.
The teethmarks would bother me more if the text had better weathered time. She yawns, was likely only feigning sleep before. I walk her back to her room, and lower the crib mattress to its final setting. I check her gums and see no swelling; I take her up, turn in slow circles and sing, Mercedes Sosa this time, “Si se calla el cantor.” When Mariángel appears wholly asleep I poke her to make sure, then lay her down, work the book out of her hands and a stuffed alpaca into them.
I gather the other books she has dislodged, put them back in place. Domingo Angulo, Rostworowski, Ginzburg, Pérez de Tudela and my father’s lie working: not a popular child, fatter and fatter each year but also stronger and stronger, not unagile, no longer afraid. I believe I did not lose another fight, and once or twice even sought them. My parents heard me tell other children of my ancestor the conquistador and said nothing. I think that at first they saw the lie as doing too much good and too little harm to correct, and surely my needs would wither.