by Roy Kesey
Mariángel starts to cry when the singing ends, does not stop when it recommences, and there is general agreement that I should be dropped off first. As we pull in past the Virgin, Karina proposes a group trip to Cajamarca for next weekend. The others all have plans. It is too far away for a weekend trip but I promise her that yes we will go, and she smiles, says she will make arrangements, says she has ideas.
I bounce Mariángel up and down, create a sort of Doppler effect within her wails, and remind Karina that it will be my turn to plan. She shrugs, looks at me, and I wait, and wait, finally realize, ask if she would like to come over for a bit. She climbs down, takes up her knapsack. I look at Arantxa, who is staring out the windshield and does not look back.
Karina’s annoyance fades in the course of her shower, disappears when I offer her a t-shirt to serve as pajamas and it reaches her knees. I give Mariángel a quick bath, and she falls asleep halfway through her yams. Karina too is asleep in her chair, her head down on the table. I rouse them as little as possible, only enough to get them into bed. I turn on the fans and turn off the lights, lie down beside Karina and secure the netting around us.
I trace a pacazo across Karina’s back, ask her to name the species, and already she is back asleep. I trace the department of Junín, and invent outlines for the province and district and city limits of Jauja. Let us say that the will is real, is that of Juan de Segovia, was copied truly by the notary who took it down in the small register he happened to have at hand. Relations, relations: say the notary moves from job to job, carries his registers with him, is obligated to hand all protocols over to the Crown but for whatever reason the small register is never sent. Then the notary dies. Son also a notary, now owns the small register. Son dies. Grandson a priest, carries the register from one parish assignation to another. Final post is Jauja. Small register ownerless when he dies, bound with other orphans into the next available large register to keep them from being lost for good.
All right, perhaps just barely possible. But the contents! Segovia’s share of the largest ransom in history, his entire fortune to an Inca woman and their children: unprecedented, spectacularly improbable for the epoch. The original will lost, and how? Destroyed or hidden by someone who thought the money wasted? Who wanted it for himself? Who wanted it to go to the Crown, as it eventually did?
Less and less plausible the more it is considered and I edge into and out of sleep. A moment later hours have passed and I am awake to the sound of news. It is an uncomfortable thing. Blue light shivers obliquely on the walls. I have been brought from a dream where there were white beetles the size of dinner plates flying faster and faster, shattering against tile walls and there were others in the dream but I don’t remember whom or what they were doing, don’t remember having turned the television on, and perhaps Karina did at some point. I would ask but she is sleeping, one hand curled under her chin.
The sky has only begun to lighten. The newscaster’s voice insists. I have another hour at least before Mariángel wakes, but will not be able to sleep through the sounds of this man. I stand and walk and stop.
Another young woman has been raped, murdered, tossed into the desert. Isabel Teresa Otero Manrique, says the newscaster. She was found last night, a hundred yards from the road leading west to Paita. There is footage of her bruised and naked body as the police draw the tarp across.
She was last seen getting into a taxi yesterday evening, says the onsite reporter, though no one knows where she was headed. Eyewitnesses have been interviewed, and their stories conflict: one says the taxi was yellow and one says it was orange. Then another image fills the screen, a snapshot of the young woman at a party of some sort, her undiluted happiness, her hair long and black and straight and it is oh god it is Jenny, Jenny with black hair, Jenny before she dyed her hair blonde and she looks so very much and how am I seeing this only now impossible and oh very much like Pilar.
There is a sound, and I step to the television, turn it off. Karina asks me why I am awake. I say that I wanted juice, and ask if she turned the television on at some point. She looks at me as if she has not understood the question. She asks me what I was watching and I tell her the only possible truth:
- Nothing. It was nothing. The news. Nothing at all.
She rubs her eyes. I tell her to go back to bed and she nods again, asks me to bring her something to drink as well, turns and goes. In the refrigerator I find mango juice. I take her a glass, set it on the nightstand. I turn the television back on but the news has changed, something about Malaysia. There is nothing on the other channels and I walk, living room to dining room to living room to dining room, out into the back yard, the almond tree, around and around. Pilar and then Jenny: it is someone who knows and hates me, wishes to punish me, wishes to render me insane. I think place by place, Daly City Fallash Berkeley Irvine Piura. Around and around and surely I am disliked by many people but this makes no sense. Around. Around, around, stopping. Pilar then Jenny then Karina, and I run into the house up the hallway to my room and Karina is there in my bed, asleep.
I wait, listen to her breathing. I shut and lock the window, make sure the front door is locked, close and lock the rest of the doors and windows. The house, stifling, and the young woman killed last month, who was she?
Back out, around, back in. Nothing. To Mariángel’s room and she is sleeping and to my room and Karina is sleeping and something is missing: the headboard, Sarita Colonia, gone.
I look under the bed, and there is nothing. I run my hand between the wall and the side of the bed, and nothing. I place my palm flat on Karina’s chest softly enough not to wake her. The clock says six a.m.
To the telephone. Marucha answers, does not sound tired, says that her mother is getting dressed to come to my house. I say that I know, that I need to speak with her nonetheless.
- Yes? says Socorro.
- The picture of Sarita Colonia. Where is it?
- What?
- It was on my bed. Hanging from my headboard. A plastic card with Sarita Colonia’s face. It is important and now it is gone.
Silence. Then a sigh, or something rubbing against something else.
- It was under the bed, she says. It was covered with dirt and dust. And there were teeth-marks, as though—
- What did you do with it?
- I’m sorry. I threw it out.
- When?
- Last week. Wednesday? Maybe Tuesday.
I thank her, hang up, go to the trashcan out by the lavadero. If it was Wednesday, the picture might still be here. The can is close to overflowing. I breathe through my mouth and root through rotten fruit, dead geckos, used toilet paper.
Nothing. I stand back, breathe deeply. I carry the can to the center of the yard. I empty it, spread the trash evenly across the grass and work the lawn as if it were a grid, imaginary square to imaginary square.
Still nothing. I start through the trash again, diagonally this time. Then Mariángel cries from her crib. I wait. The crying does not end. I begin gathering, refilling the can. A new picture is only a matter of returning to the market and this is all only superstition, preposterous thing, mummified father carried into the jungle but the old prayer comes to me entire, known somehow by heart.
39.
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 lyin
g 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.
He hangs two curacas, tortures hundreds of natives for information, bids his dogs disembowel them. Four months are lost before he even reaches the Andes—heat, rain, insects, disease. Armor rusting. Food all but gone and at last up into the mountains and now a monstrous earthquake. Climbs and climbs. Nears the final pass as winter brings snow and high winds.
By the time he has made his way down the far side to the Royal Road, he has lost eighty-six Spaniards, almost all of the horses, hundreds of porters. He turns north for Quito, then learns that he is too late: Benalcázar has already conquered it. Alvarado stands, wavers, still seven years from death and Piura at last.
Karina carries her knapsack to a taxi. I carry mine to another. She walks to me, the rain heavy in her hair. She puts her arms around my neck, says she hopes that soon, and I squeeze her tightly to keep her from finishing the sentence.
A slow ride through the flooded streets. Mariángel wakes as I push in through our front door. She struggles against me, strikes me in the face with her fists. I set her down, and she clutches at my knees and shrieks. I lift and hold her, dance, but the shrieking does not stop. To the kitchen for milk. An hour of singing and swaying. Not an earthquake, perhaps, and now she sleeps.
Midnight, and I would eat, would undress and shower, am too tired, to bed and cannot sleep. For hours the rain fall
s. Not an earthquake at all but a volcano: Mount Cotopaxi erupting above them, vast clouds of ash sweeping down. Voices at times threaded through the storm. Bells and flutes, voices, bells and tambourines, bells.
The doorbell. Still rain but a sense of morning. Knocking and I go. The door deadbolted. I do not remember locking it this way but must have and Socorro. She says that I do not look well. She asks if Mariángel is sick, says that she surely is. I say that she is not and hope to be telling the truth and Socorro stares at me, will not blink.
I turn, shower, dress. Look at the clock. Just past six—no reason for Socorro already to be here and I would ask why but do not care and have not yet planned my classes for today. If I stay here Socorro will stare and stare. I put apples and cheese and half a loaf of bread in a plastic bag, kiss Mariángel softly enough not to wake her, take my umbrella from the closet and slip out of the house.
The corner, the Virgin, soft rain. I stand for a moment. The drain is clogged with debris and reeks. The sound of the rain and a new sound, metallic, a grinding. I turn. Coming up is an old yellow taxi. The driver rolls down his window, brings the taxi to a stop beside me, smiles and lifts his eyebrows.
- Mister? he says.
I shake my head, and he shrugs and pulls away. I think of his eyes. They were known eyes, I believe. I think about his hair and the shape of his face. I look and the car is a Tico and I read the receding license plate, read it again, the first part covered by something dark but it ends with 22.
The taxi passes beneath the matacojudo trees, the remaining fruit ready too for him and I start to walk, more quickly, more quickly still and then running. The rain heavier and I drop my umbrella, my lungs and legs ache and I run, he slows at the corner, stops, waits, the rain still harder and the license plate now clean, the leaf or mud or litter washed away, closer, close enough to see and yes and yes, P and 22.
I call out but too late and he is making the turn, disappears. I arrive at the corner, slip on the pavement and fall hard, my face sharp against the curb. Back to my feet and he is waiting at the stoplight and I run, children and dogs moving out of my path, the light turns and he slides into the intersection and I will lose him unless, and he will, he does, he pulls into the Texaco station and stops at the pump.