by Nagle, Pati
The train called another crossing, wailing like a sundered spirit, crossing with a jolt and shudder over points. At her side the two men wavered but did not move. When Concepçion turned in surprise one jerked into speech.
“Señora, he is only a, a peon, a third-class passenger, we thought—perhaps—for the honor of the Ferrocarril . . .” The torch wobbled. “We are not yet in the town. If he were lost. If he fell from the door. From a window.”
“No one may know him,” the other chimed in. “No one would think: the train. Nothing would involve the Internationale—”
Something fiery rose behind Concepçion’s eyes. The words were in her mouth before she thought. “This you call the honor of the Ferrocarril?”
Both of them flinched.
“Put that away.” The torch went hastily off. “Get a blanket. One of you stay here to keep—others out. If they leave the dining car before Guaqui, advise the major domo. The guard. Otherwise, at the station. The honor of the Ferrocarril demands that this be explained.”
∞
Eduoard would never have permitted it, Concepçion fumed, bundling her belongings for transfer to the Titicaca ferry. Not the merest peon would he see shuffled off like rubbish, with such a calamity unexamined, such a threat to others left untouched. Honor of the Ferrocarril, hah!
And why do we not disembark?
The Guaqui platform stretched left and right, stark in electric glare, desolate. New passengers boarded at the ferry-wharf, but station and engine crew should have been swarming to collect luggage, tend the locomotive, meet passengers pouring bee-like from the train itself.
You have done what you could, Concepçion argued, perching at the stateroom window with a book. Doubtless they signaled ahead, once senior officials heard. The porters will have been kept back, the train attendants stopping passengers on board. They will be waiting for the Guardia Civiles, a doctor, to examine the dead. Edouard had been a rapacious reader on his rare leaves, delighting in the exploits of the English detective, Sherlock Holmes. She knew all about murder procedures, in theory at least.
Two minutes later she put the book down. It can do no harm, she told herself, to look.
The first-class exit was indeed guarded, but Concepçion was going past. Lights glared from the second-class galley-car, daubing the platform beyond the open exit door. She heard the clash of voices from the connection-tube, even before she emerged upon a wall of backs.
“. . . should have been put overboard at the first!”
“And I tell you again, it is too late!”
“Imbeciles! Idiots! Had you acted with initiative—”
“Forget then—we must do something now!”
“Then do it! Get the thing away—a laundry basket, a wine-carrier—Get it off the train! Get the passengers out of here before worse comes—”
“Nom’ de Dios, what is going on?”
The new voice bellowed at Concepçion’s own back. A blast of Havana cigar smoke wreathed her ears, a bulky body shouldered past and clove like a bull into the press. By sheer instinct she pushed in its wake.
“Señor!” Consternation rang in the shout. “Señor el Jefe!”
“Señor el Jefe, it is nothing, a small problem, we will have it settled immediately—”
“Is that a body?”
The cigar shot out like a gun. From his other elbow-point, Concepçion recognised the luxuriant goatee, the broad face and even broader neck. Don Jose Menendez, the Ferrocarril President himself.
The man confronting him stammered, “A third-class passenger, a—”
“Get the blanket off.”
The rustle of wool was louder than wind in the hush.
Possibly to his credit, Don Jose did not flinch. He did draw hard on the cigar and expel a blast of smoke that almost worsted the stench.
“Cordon off the car. Start disembarkation elsewhere. You, you, you—where are the first-class stewards? Move those passengers now. The rest of you arrange the others. We have had a delay. You do not know what. You, you, get rid of this.”
He made to step back. Concepçion sidled past. Beyond the corpse the two men she had first met stood open-mouthed with fear and absolute bewilderment.
“But, but, Señor el Jefe—how?”
The cigar flapped. “Nom’ de Dios, use your wits!”
Concepçion’s voice came out louder than an alarm bell and entirely without her choice.
“Should the body not be left where it is—to show the Guardia Civiles?”
Every face in the crowd turned. Don Jose was so close she almost recoiled at his stare’s impact. She could see the bloodshot whites of his eyes, taste the smoke and cognac on his breath.
Then he swung his head and rapped at the men opposite him, “Take it away!”
Rage overran Concepçion so fast her voice bounced off the roof. “This man died by violence, by some unknown means! Investigations must be made!”
Don Jose turned his shoulder, all of a piece like a wagon swinging, and took a step away.
Concepçion lowered her voice. It hissed like a drawn dagger and she meant it as a blow. “Would Don Enrique have let this pass? On his Ferrocarril?”
Don Jose stopped. The silence shuddered with the stink of sweat and human panic, cigar smoke and the stench of untoward death.
Then Don Jose half-turned about. She saw the livid color in his face as he ground out, “Fetch the Guardia Civiles.”
∞
“Señora Gonzaga, you have hindered me.”
Concepçion shot upright in her bunk. Through the bulkhead beside her the steamer engines throbbed. The Internationale had reached Guaqui at eight, the Inca should have sailed by nine. Argument, waiting for the Guardia Civiles, had taken till eleven. Disbelief at their perfunctory examination, the spluttering and muttering and breast-crossing, then the hasty verdict that “the man died by misadventure. Remove the body. Do not hinder the Ferrocarril!” and the certainty of pesos sliding from Don Jose to ready Guardia palms had gagged Concepçion until the Inca finally sailed, around half past two.
Her porthole was closed. Though she did not think she had slept, the icy beginnings of dawn over miles of open water glimmered through the glass, silver-bleak. It could not wholly clear the cabin’s Stygian black.
But for first-class passengers the Inca sported a light-switch by the bunk.
The cabin burst into light. Something gave a furious hiss. Black flashed through Concepçion’s clearing vision, black velvet in an old-fashioned cutaway coat beneath a thin but pristine white stock. A small shape, but upright and elegant as a rapier. Tiny black goatee and moustache, back-slicked black hair, black brows high and crooked as a devil’s knife over deep-hooded black eyes.
Concepçion wrenched her gaze down. Never look at a brujo, her grandmother had said most often of all, eye to eye.
“Who are you?” She managed not to gasp. “What are you doing in here?”
“Put out the light.” Like the “z” in “Gonzaga,” the one in “luz” had the pure Castilian lisp.
“No! How did you get in here?”
Blackness advanced a soundless step. The fastidiously thin lips parted. Teeth shone in the gap, white, glistening. Two overlarge front teeth.
“You,” the drawling hiss repeated, “have hindered me.” A long-drawn, almost snoring breath. “You have exposed an—accident. Raised a commotion. Disturbed the Guard. This will cease.”
“Commotion? Accident?” Outrage fired Concepçion’s wits. “What do you mean, hinder you?”
The upper lip rose. Concepçion’s back hair rose too and her hand flew to the other first-class passenger’s recourse.
“One more step and I pull the alarm!”
Blackness froze. Another vicious hiss.
Concepçion clutched the bell-pull for dear life. The arrogance of the intruder’s bearing outdid Criollo bluster; every movement spoke birth, rank, privilege. Yet the skin was just too dark, the nose just too heavily arched, for a true Peninsular.
<
br /> “Who are you? What are you—” She amended the question. “What were you doing on the train?”
The lips curled in a sneer. Concepçion tweaked the bell-pull. There was another furious hiss.
“Baseborn putana. I travel to Arequipa.”
I must carry him safe to Arequipa.
Concepçion’s heart jumped in her chest. She blurted, “Why?”
The slender body seemed to coil. She could feel the glare. She fixed her own gaze grimly on the mouth, the two anomalously protuberant teeth.
“That is no concern of thine.” The “tua” dripped contempt. Then the stiffness became a sudden, lethal fluidity. “I came to warn thee.” Now it was a purr. “Not to cross my path again. That no longer matters. So now I tell thee: I go to Arequipa to feed.”
“To—what?”
“There is little choice on the Altiplano. Shepherds, herders, railway gangs. But Arequipa is a city. A choice of plenitude. Now thy—ferrocarril—has taught my—food—to travel, I shall travel too.”
Food, Concepçion’s brain repeated stupidly. Shepherds, herders . . .
Found it battening on his cattle, and persuaded himself ’tis a hudu—or a brujo in its own right!
Her free hand was driven against her breast, to stop the heart jumping clear out of her throat.
“You killed that man.”
The devil’s eyebrows tilted. The sneer was the devil’s own smile.
“You are a cannibal.”
The smile vanished. A feline hiss.
“Am I a pig, to gorge on flesh?”
Two huge holes in a man’s throat. Puncture wounds, pale, ragged, where the killer sucked.
“You . . .” Concepçion fought down shudders. “How did you get on the train?”
Affront mutated to a mocking half-bow. “My estimable Jesus, señora. My servant. My slave. Discovered on the Altiplano. Carrier of baggage, disposer of—arrangements. Eternally dependable.”
He came to me on the Altiplano, alone, solitary, unique.
“Though growing past his best, I fear.”
Concepçion’s backbone cringed. She could just whisper. “What will happen to him?”
A tiny shrug. A hand-wave, the turn of the wrist, the fingers’ droop, eloquent of hidalgos, princes, antique courtesy of a status Concepçion had never dreamed.
“He will be discarded. Eventually.”
Concepçion tried not to gulp.
“But thou—” The purr altered. “Thou art a woman, true; a mere castiza. But hast some qualities. Perhaps . . .”
She saw the velvet shoulders firm. Then her heart jerked at the rasping whisper. “Look at me.”
Concepçion shook her head furiously. She could not speak, but she gripped the cord and would not raise her eyes.
“Fool woman! Serve me, and become immortal!”
And was that what you promised Jesus?
Concepçion kept her face down and shook her head again.
A long-drawn hiss. “Dirt-bred mestiza . . .”
At that Concepçion’s head flew up despite herself. “Do not thou call me mestizo!”
The slender figure went taut as a drawn rapier. The whisper scorched. “Thou art the get of a Chilean roto and an Aymara slut. I am Don Sebastian de la Vega y Vargas, son of an Inca’s grandchild and a Conquistador.”
Concepçion gasped in utter disbelief for a split second too long. Blackness loomed suddenly to the roof above her, spread, and swooped. She saw the dead man on the galley floor and in sheer reflex her hand flew to the only recourse she had left.
“Madre de Dios, ayudame!”
Her fingers snatched the pure Potosi-silver crucifix that had been Edouard’s wedding gift.
∞
Concepçion sat shaking in the Inca’s first-class passenger saloon, ears still ringing to the crescendo of the intruder’s final shriek. The thud of the cabin door reverberated in her memory, and thought-shards ricocheted in her brain.
A Conquistador’s son. Routed by a crucifix. Jesus, my slave. On the Altiplano. I promise you will attain immortality. A feeder on humans. Old enough to seem immortal. Four hundred years old. On a train. Then in my cabin. The clothes. The teeth. The protuberant front teeth. My precious, precious bat. The Indian, in the corridor. Just another vampire bat . . . A brujo in its own right!
Madre de Dios, what is that thing?
And as Edouard had armed her for survival, Edouard offered the vital clue: Edouard smiling over a lurid book cover, exclaiming, “What a brujo, this Dracula!”
The shards collapsed into intelligible shapes. Dracula, the novelist’s legendary monster: a vampire. Blood-drinker, walker by night. Sleeper by day, enslaving human servants. Travelling in his coffin, going abroad in human form. Or as a bat.
A vampire bat.
Half-hysterical laughter clogged Concepçion’s throat. Ah, but here in South America, we have the reality. With the habits, the size, the teeth . . . oh, to see that haughty Conquistador’s descendant penned among the luggage, upside down in a cage!
Then comprehension drenched her, colder than Titicaca’s waves. He would not be in the cage. Jesus had released him. He had reached her cabin in the night. Had killed in the night. Now it was day. Somewhere, as bat or human, like Dracula, “Don Sebastian” had found another shelter for his sleep.
She never isolated the moment decision emerged from that understanding’s depth. It was simply there, setting her teeth, stiffening her back. The murdered man, Jesus, my daughters in Potosi, in Arequipa, all that unsuspecting population: they matter, yes. But that—creature—is using the Ferrocarril. Truly dishonoring the Ferrocarril. Don Enrique’s Ferrocarril, Edouard’s Ferrocarril.
She heard again the editorials and encomiums as Don Enrique’s projects dazzled Peru. Edouard, on leave but still ablaze too: “Querida, Don Enrique is beyond amazing. The Challape bridge! The Cacray zigzag! The Galera tunnel—a tunnel, at fifteen thousand feet! This Ferrocarril will upturn the world!”
And it killed them, some bitter second voice interposed. Edouard in a rock fall, Don Enrique in the national bankruptcy. Ten thousand others with them, on the Central Line alone. In its way, the Ferrocarril is a greater blood-sucker than Don Sebastian. Why should its honor be saved?
At last, the first voice replied.
Don Enrique, it said, was a Yanqui, a speculator, a money-maker, but he was a magnificent engineer. Only a magnificent engineer could master the Andes’ seaward face.
Edouard understood that, it went on. Edouard used, Edouard gave his life for that. Will you let old bitterness shame them both?
No, she said at last, answering both voices. I will not leave their work a means to that thing’s filthy ends.
She settled back in the gilt-edged chair. The Ferrocarril gave me a cause, she thought. Edouard has named the enemy. But only Grandmama knew how to handle a brujo.
∞
She allowed time for breakfast to be served and cleared away. Then she rang her stateroom bell, and asked the attendant the question on which her whole plan relied.
“Does the crew from La Paz stay with the Internationale all the way?”
When he nodded, she took the first, irretrievable step. “Señor, the two men who found the—body—before Guaqui. Will you ask them to attend me here?”
“Señores,” she said, when they arrived, “in the confusion, last night, I never heard your names.”
The taller one was Ramon Flores, the shorter Esteban Gamarra. She acknowledged their half-bows and said, “I request you in good faith, señores, to come within here. And close the door.”
They both hesitated. She held her head up as if at Mass. They took heart at such respectability.
“Señores,” she said, as they stood crowded by the bunk, “in the matter of the dead man on the train.” Their stances shot from nervous to alarmed attention. “I have found what killed him. It was a brujo.”
Before the consternation could burgeon she added a counterblow. “It is on this ship.”
<
br /> “I saw it,” she went on, when their outcry, irrepressible even for seasoned railway crew, had begun to abate. “Last night.”
And with their eyes and mouths gone even wider, she forestalled the obvious question. “It could not abide my crucifix.”
She watched the sequence of shocks level into a first tinge of relief. “Either the crucifix,” she amended, “or that it was silver. In either case, señores, we are not unarmed.”
She let the full significance of that “we” sink in. Then she said softly, “This creature has killed. And it has dishonored—abused—the Ferrocarril. I seek your help, in finding—in encountering—in removing it.” She held their eyes and let her own feelings into her voice. “Yes. I intend to remove it. I have, señores, a plan.”
The engines throbbed vaguely under them. Someone clattered past in the corridor. Their eyes told her they believed her: because they still thought her a bruja as well.
Then Ramon Flores tucked his chin down, and straightened the cap under his arm.
“Señora,” he sounded only moderately shaky. “Remove it . . . how?”
Concepçion released a breath that seemed to have strained her stay laces. “Señores,” she said, “do you both possess a crucifix?”
∞
Grandmama never said it would be easy, Concepçion fumed. Aloud she said, “Señores, no one could ask you to search a first-class cabin, naturally. And yes, something so small as a bat might be anywhere. Nevertheless, we must still find it. And before tonight.”
Both men shuddered. Both right hands clamped tightly round a crucifix, one silver, the other tied to a silver medal of St. Christopher.
“It was necessary to search. To eliminate what places we could.” But, she realized with relief, one other certain clue remained.
“Señores, the Indian. Jesus, the brujo’s slave. We must watch for him at Puno, when we disembark. The brujo may evade us. Jesus, we will see.”
Ramon Flores took the lead as usual. “And—then, señora?”
Concepçion’s brain ratcheted like a runaway windlass. “Then we find means to—dispose of it. But first we watch: I at the passengers’ gangway. Señor Flores, the luggage? And you, Señor Gamarra, if you watch the ticket-checkers?”