Pacazo

by Roy Kesey

  The boys come from where they stood beneath a ceibo. The darkness is incomplete as there is a slab of moon. Together we walk, and I know the number of the tomb but am suddenly unsure of the route. Around a corner and up. Dogs begin to bark and I stop, but they are outside the wall. I ask Ciro in which direction the chapel lies. He points, and Iván corrects him. They argue for a moment, at last come to consensus. Thirty yards farther along, fifty, another corner and halfway along and yes, shoulder-high, yes.

  I set down the toolbag, tell Ciro to hold the flashlight steady, ask Iván for the hammer and chisel. He brings them from where they were hidden. I strike once at the edge of the frontal stone, and the boys make noises in their throats.

  I turn to look at them. They do not look well. I wait, and finally Ciro asks if the woman is still inside.

  - Of course.

  - Dead? says Iván.

  - Look, I say. We have no new clues, and this is the one place old clues might be found. You heard what I said at last night’s meeting. The police were not given enough time to inspect this woman’s body. They might well have missed something we cannot do without.

  The boys say nothing. I ask if they have a better idea. Iván says he wants to go home.

  - But I need your help, I say. How about this: we are huaqueros, the three of us, and this is the Chachapoya tomb we must rob, high on a limestone cliff.

  They look at me.

  - All right, I say, not Chachapoya. Have you heard of the Lord of Sipán?

  Both boys nod.

  - Excellent, I say. And this structure is his pyramid. I am Ernil Bernal and you are my helpers and this niche is a tomb full of gold that will soon be ours.

  - No it isn’t, says Ciro. It’s just a woman that’s dead.

  I consider, and say that in truth I need them most as scouts, as lookouts, as soldiers unafraid to stand guard. They are glad to hear this. I make them pledge to alert me immediately if they hear or see anyone coming, and send them to the nearest corners.

  I cover the chisel head with a patch of bark and even so make far too much noise. Ten minutes, twenty. The cement is of poor quality and slowly the stone comes loose. I ease it out and down, and there is a first scent of rot.

  The end of the coffin, the burnished wood now dull, and Ciro is beside me whispering that men are coming. I ask how many. He says three, possibly four.

  How many are truly needed to guard the dead? He says that he does not know, and I had not meant to ask the question aloud. I tell him that he must be very careful, must run slowly enough to be seen but quickly enough not to be caught, must squeeze out through the front gates just as the men reach for him, must circle back to the south wall, find a way up and over, wait at the ceibo. I ask if he understands. He nods, smiles, says that running is something he is good at.

  We wait, wait, and I send him off. There are shouts and bobbing flashlights. I hiss to Iván, tell him to stay close in case I need him to run as well. Then I return to my work. The coffin is wedged tightly into the niche. I chip at the sides and top but cannot get it to move in any direction.

  I rest for a moment, lift my chisel again, my hammer, strike at the corners of the coffin itself. It is not an expensive model, and the wood splinters easily. The smell strengthens. I work across the top and down the right side. The smell has become a stench but then a breeze rises, bears it away, brings me the scent of cypress.

  I strike again and again but now mango, now sage. Her marinera dress and her tears each year and I strike. Máncora, and she nurses Mariángel, the blurred world and I strike again and again and stop, pachamanca and how she laughed and I gather it, gather it all, push it back in, deeper down, strike and stop again because there are footsteps.

  I wipe my face. The men are only thirty or forty feet away. I whisper to Iván that his mission is at hand and he must not fail: be seen but not caught, slip out through the bars just in time. He sweats and nods and sprints. The men hesitate, then chase as they must. I hear Iván squeal and struggle, the tearing of cloth and more running and I strike again, again, again.

  The end of the coffin is open. The breeze has died and the stench is strong but I am stronger. I reach in, have a thought of rats and pull back. I listen. There is no sound. My hands trace the smooth soles of her shoes, the knotted weave of her stockings.

  Daniela Rocío Espinoza Farfán, I am very, very sorry.

  I take hold of her ankles, and they are so thin; I pull, but her body is stuck to the bottom of the coffin. I pull again, and nothing. I pull much harder and something rips, scrapes, and she comes out to the waist.

  Her shoes look as though once they were white. Perhaps I am not strong enough. I pull again and the body comes out and I stumble, kneel, I am holding her rigid and light in my arms, her dress is torn and I retch but do not drop her, am careful not to look, not yet.

  I lay her down, work her into a canvas sack. The sack is too short and I tie it closed around her knees. I wedge the stone back into place, gather bits of concrete and throw them as far as I am able. I put my tools into the bag and shoulder it, check to see that nothing has been forgotten, kneel again and lift her.

  I breathe through my mouth, and carrying her is not hard, along and around and along and to the ceibo. I set down my tools, carry the body up the ladder, balance her on top of the wall. The two boys are crouching in the shadow of the station wagon. They wave when they see me, and all is as it should be.

  We load the body and tools into the back, roll down all the windows, drive slowly through the dense dark night. I park at the mouth of the alley, roll the windows back up and lock all of the doors. I lift the body, and carry it to the courtyard.

  Iván stands to my right and Ciro to my left. Most of the other Resolvers are already back from their search. They are gathered around the outside table, appear to have found nothing, turn as we approach. When they see what I am carrying they stand and curse me and shout into the house.

  I set the body down on the table, ask for more light to be brought. The others surround us. Segismundo arrives last, has trouble speaking at first, says that Satan has taken hold of me. I do not argue, and ask him to help with the rope. Instead he turns and walks back into the house, and one by one the others follow, until only the five boys are left.

  I hand my flashlight to Ciro, ask Iván to see if there are any candles in the kitchen. He goes, is back a moment later with a mesh bag full of white votives and a box of matches. I encircle the body with candles, light them all. If I am lucky they will burn long enough.

  The boys stand in a small tight group beside me. I ask if they are sure they want to see what is to come. There is silence for a moment. Iván says he will not touch the body but wants to watch. The others nod. I untie the rope and remove the canvas sack and the boys run away, all but Ciro.

  Again the stench. Her mouth and eyes are gaping, her cheeks drawn, her hair dull, her skin dark and dry. I remove her shoes and set them aside. She is wearing a long-sleeved dress, pale green and now soiled, stuck tightly to her body and stiff with dried fluid. I take out my knife and cut the dress into pieces. Even so it is not easy to remove, and in places the skin comes off as well.

  Her bra and her underwear, her stockings: I slash and peel and tear. I do not know what to look for, and look all the same. The only jewelry is a medallion on a chain around her neck, some saint or other, badly failed. Her skin everywhere rough to the touch. Ciro stands close to me and holds to the hem of my shirt.

  There does not seem to be anything to see except a few small cuts on her arms and legs, one at her throat and another on her stomach. I comb through her hair with my fingers, prod her shriveled breasts. Her legs are spread slightly and I look and detest myself but must look again and do.

  I check her hands and feet and there is nothing. I try to lift one arm and it will not move; I try with greater force and her skin rips open, a new wound, the purpled tissue underneath and I lower her arm quickly. I glance at Ciro, and he has seen. I ask for his assistanc
e in rolling the body over. He shakes his head, but helps me move the candles away, then back into place.

  There are flecks of blood dried black in her hair. The back of her skull has been repaired with painted plaster. On one shoulder blade are four cuts, the waxing crescent moons of fingernails dug into flesh.

  It seems that no animals have been at her, not here and not in the desert, no dogs, no insects, and this is so fortunate, so unfair. I cover the body with the canvas bag and look through her clothes. Ciro lets go, steps away. Nothing in the bra or underwear or stockings. Nothing on the front of the dress, but on a piece of the back I find a hair. It is much shorter and straighter than the woman’s own, is probably meaningless, most likely from whomever bathed and prepared her body for the tomb. I place it in my wallet all the same, and send Ciro for my toolbag.

  I tape the underclothes onto the body, drape the dress over her and tape it in place as well. I put her shoes on, work her into the bag, wrap the rope around and call that the thing is done. The Resolvers come slowly, ask if I found anything. A hair, I say. And also some cuts that look to be from fingernails.

  The men look down. I had hoped to show them more. Segismundo says I should not come here anymore. I nod, and ask Iván and Ciro if they are ready to help me put the body back. Segismundo forbids them to have anything more to do with me. I look at the old man, and know that he is right. I lift Daniela Rocío Espinoza Farfán once again, and turn away.

  44.

  THREE NIGHTS, BARS AND STREETS AND BRIDGES and the bird god ruffled her feathers as I came in today at dawn. I tighten my tie, kiss Mariángel. Now back out. Turning, and past the park. The matacojudo trees have emptied and there is wind at times though never chill.

  I slow, turn again. Cabeza de Vaca said something and I cannot remember and the Second Rebellion fails. Along the avenue. Manco escapes into the jungle but his wife is captured, Cura Ocllo, and she rolls in her own excrement to keep the Spaniards from raping her.

  The Panamericana, gas station and hotel, and standing at the university gates is a police officer. He smiles at me as I approach. I have never seen him before and there is a rumor, Manco willing to parley. Pizarro sends two Christian natives as envoys, a black attendant, a pony as a gift. The officer frowns. Manco kills them all, even the pony. I stop and the officer comes toward me and Pizarro himself rapes Cura Ocllo. Then he has his secretary rape her. He ties her to a stake, and his Cañari cohorts beat her, fill her body with arrows.

  The officer takes hold of my elbow gently, the way a friend might. Pizarro puts her ravaged corpse in a basket, floats her down the Yucay River so that Manco will find her, and the officer asks to see my identity card. I say that I am a foreigner. He asks to see my foreign resident card. I tell him it has not yet come through. He asks to see my passport, and I say that I misplaced it three weeks ago, that for three weeks I have been planning to go this very day to the police station to report its loss.

  The officer smiles again but now there are footsteps, now there is a voice: Dr. Guardiola, asking if he can be of service. The officer tells Dr. Guardiola that his assistance will not be required. Dr. Guardiola claps me on the shoulder, says that he will nonetheless be pleased to accompany us until all things have been clarified.

  The officer shrugs, lets go of my elbow, tells me that foreigners are required to carry identification. I say that I have never met one who did. He asks me if that matters. Before I can answer he says that I should not have waited so long to report the loss of my passport, should not have waited even a single day, and I agree, I agree, I agree. I ask if arrangements might be made, and the officer nods.

  - What need is there for arrangements, says Dr. Guardiola, if everything is clear?

  The officer looks at Dr. Guardiola, then back at me. Finally he shrugs, says that he will give me twenty-four hours to report the loss, that otherwise further problems will result. The three of us shake hands and the officer walks away.

  Dr. Guardiola pulls me in through the gates, says that I should never pay bribes, that bribes only make things worse. I thank him for his help, and say that I agree if only in principle. I walk him to his office on the far side of campus, thank him again, and he asks if I can join him for a prayer retreat this weekend.

  I ask if he saw the footage of Somalis eaten by hyenas. He says that he did. I say that God is at very best a ten-year-old boy standing over an anthill with a magnifying glass.

  Dr. Guardiola shakes his head, says that he is very sorry. I say that it is not his fault, turn and walk and the police officer, why didn’t he ask for my name, my address, my telephone number?

  One answer only: he already knew who I was. Perhaps the Resolvers have come to trouble, and the boys gave him my address. Perhaps Reynaldo has been caught with my passport and the police are looking to take advantage. It does not matter much either way, will be settled this afternoon at the station, and now there is far movement, people at the deer pen, a covered truck. I go to see. The fencing has been repaired, and the chemist who replaced Reynaldo nods and smiles at the four deer that dash down a railed gangplank into the pen, shouts as a fifth bounds over the rail and is gone.

  - Where did the deer come from? I ask.

  The chemist stares at me, remembers.

  - From the deer people, he says.

  I nod, and he begins shouting again.

  Two classes come, go, to my office and Arantxa is waiting. I smile as if I had asked her to meet me. She asks if I have a moment, and sits down in the only chair beside my own.

  I put away my materials and coursebooks and tell her that after lunch I must go to the police station to report the loss of my passport, that I will be back as soon as possible, that I do not know what time that will be. She opens her mouth and closes it and rubs her eyes. I go to my filing cabinet, begin gathering the documents I will need, and she was surely about to ask how and when my passport was lost, then realized she didn’t care.

  - You haven’t contributed anything to the resource bank in over a month, she says. You haven’t finished the observation forms. Final exams are next week and your students are so worried that they have come to ask for extra grammar tutoring.

  I close the file cabinet, tuck the folders into my briefcase, look at her and she looks back.

  - Something is wrong, she says, and I wish you would tell me what it is.

  - Nothing is wrong. What could be wrong? I am just very tired.

  - Do you need help with Mariángel?

  - That’s not it. I’m not sleeping well, nothing more.

  She doesn’t believe me. Perhaps she never has in regard to anything. She is breathtakingly sad, says that if I wish to continue teaching here I will need to reconsider my behavior, stands and goes.

  The walk down the path, across the parking lot, I have been this tired before and Karina will be waiting: we eat lunch together daily. Yesterday after dessert she helped me to hang flyers. We speak little but smile a great deal and it is working or appears to be.

  Out through the gate. There are no mototaxis waiting. I lean back against the wall, and the police officer from this morning stands suddenly before me. He is not smiling. He takes my elbow again.

  - Come, he says, and leads me toward a squad car parked up the street.

  - Of course, I say, but first I am going home for lunch.

  His grip on my elbow tightens and his pace does not slow. We reach the car, and he opens the passenger door, points inside.

  - If you don’t mind, I say, I would at least like to see my daughter briefly. She—

  - Stop talking, and get in the fucking car.

  As we pull away, I remove the folders from my briefcase, shuffle my papers until the edges are perfectly aligned. I say that I hope this will not take long. The officer does not answer.

  Along and along and then slowing, into the market. The stalls to either side, their blue tarp roofs and loaded counters, their plastic goods and video cassettes and shoes. Old women selling charcoal. A locksmith’s cart.
No mangos anywhere the wrong season of course but somewhere inside perhaps grapefruit and tangerines. Perhaps pomegranates. Perhaps peaches.

  Out onto Sánchez Cerro and the long white wall: the police station is only one part of a compound that takes up the whole block. To the entrance, past it and around to the parking lot gate. There we wait. The guards bear machine guns. The gate opens and we enter. This is not a part of the station I have seen before. We park, and the officer leads me in through a side door, around to a very small room with one chair, tells me to wait there for a moment, tells me to make myself at home.

  I open my briefcase again, take out the folders again, look at the paperwork pointlessly. I try the door handle. I put the folders away, lean back. There is a smell to this station: mildew and ink, polyester and steel, sweat. Months since I have smelled it, more than months, a year at least, and Pilar. The forms filled in late the night she went missing. The waiting, the slow hot stream of waiting with Mariángel on my chest. Thin sleep ruptured at each siren, the officers’ insistence that I leave and my constant refusal. Two days unmoving. At some point Pilar’s parents had come from Chiclayo, brought us things to eat and drink, were careful to take Mariángel from me only at moments in which my hands went weak. When Mariángel and I went home, they stayed with us. Ministering, I believe, is the word for what they did.

  More days of waiting, and viciously the news. Pilar’s body, broken and torn and the dogs, my rage and the fight. The casket, closed. I lack documents I will need, I am sure of it, and the door swings open. It is the officer who drove me here.

  - A small change, he says. You will first go and report your lost passport. He says that it is perfect in a way.

  - Who says what is perfect?

  - I will be near you all of the time. When you are done, you will come back to this room, and I will follow.

  I nod, stand, walk out into the hallway. The officer points to a door at its far end. Out through it, the officer close behind me, and now we are standing in the station’s central lobby. Nothing has changed: it is still straight lines and bad light. He takes me across to an office near the entrance and disappears.