The Gringa

by Andrew Altschul

  “My friend, you are a writer, yes or no?” When I didn’t answer, he reached for my shoulder. I hated him then. “A story must move forward. One action followed by the next. Good or bad, wise or foolish—someone must decide.

  “I have lived longer than you,” he said, “and I can tell you there is nothing noble about suffering. Those who cannot avoid it take no pride in it. Those who can avoid it are fools not to.”

  * * *

  —

  I left the office in a state of giddy irritation, blinking in the light as I walked through the center of San Isidro, past high-end boutiques and sober French restaurants, a lingerie shop across from an eighteenth-century chapel. At a streetcorner, I sensed someone approaching—a beggar, an old woman in dusty skirts, but a policeman’s quick whistle intervened and she turned aside. How was any of it possible, I thought? Had any of it—the war, Dr. Rausch, Leonora—really happened? I could not reconcile that fastidious clinic with the stories I’d been told, the impossible juxtaposition of gentility and barbarism everywhere I looked. How could such things live side by side?

  “I want you to come to Lima,” I told Lucrecia. “Can you take a few days off?”

  “Lima? Why?” She’d never been to the capital, unlike many of her friends. When people talked about Lima, Lu looked uncertain and vaguely horrified, like a student driver who gets handed the keys to an eighteen-wheeler.

  “I miss you, Lulu,” I said. And it was true. I missed her small ears and her agreeability, the comfort of her body at night. I missed the feeling of being in a taxi with her at dawn, the old buildings sliding past, the sugary new light. “I want you to go to a better doctor. I want you to feel better,” I said, adding, “I’ll pay for everything.”

  “When you come back, I feel better.”

  “Lu, you have to take care of yourself. I’m worried about you.” I could hear her wavering and I pressed harder. “We could have a little vacation. I’ll take you to a nice restaurant. You can see the ocean for the first time.”

  She was quiet a moment. “But Andres, is Inti Raymi soon.” Her family would celebrate the New Year with days of feasts in their neighborhood, far from the tourist revelry. Her uncle Teófilo was coming from his village near Andahuaylas, she said. Teo had been a rondero during the war. He’d helped defend his village. “My father says you can come to our house to meet him. You can talk with Teo about the terroristas.”

  “You told your father about me?” I said.

  “Amor,” she said.

  I stopped on a corner. Across the street, a modern building soared into the haze, dark glass skin warping the low shapes that surrounded it. “I’ve talked to so many people,” I said. “I just have to write it, don’t you see? I have to finish the story, so everything can be like it was before. Te quiero, Lulu,” I said. “You know that?”

  She was silent a moment. “Sí, Andres,” she said.

  I could hear cars honking, men’s voices arguing. “So you’ll come?”

  Another pause. My heart soared. “I have to think,” she said, her voice fading with doubt, as if I were a stranger who’d called with a ludicrous proposition. I suppose I was.

  * * *

  —

  It was Yesenia who showed me the way, if unwittingly. She called again, teasing me for avoiding her. “Maybe after so much time in Babilonia, you are afraid of Lima woman? Don’t be afraid, Andres! Only I want to make a friend of the famous writer.”

  She invited me to an art gallery in Barranco, where a friend of hers had a show. Why not? I thought. My days had grown purposeless, clogged with fruitless effort. As Jack’s deadline loomed I veered between despair and a lunatic conviction that inspiration was around the corner, taking aim at me. Either way, it was out of my control. Why not have a little fun before the curtain fell?

  The gallery was a long, narrow space with wood floors and exposed girders. A wall of windows looked out on a deep ravine that ran to the ocean, crossed by a quaint footbridge on which tourists bunched up to take pictures. I sipped white wine while Yesenia held my arm and chattered to her friends in Spanish too fast and slangy for me to follow. They laughed en masse, expressed mild interest in me—less in my being a writer than in my living in Babilonia which, like Yesenia, they seemed to regard as both shrewd and faintly lascivious.

  While Yesenia and her friends gossiped, I wandered amid the sculptures—narrow, tormented shapes, vaguely human, ripped off from Giacometti except for colorful paper strips that sheltered the figures or wrapped them like shrouds: snatches of advertisements for perfume, cruise ships, luxury cars. It was an obvious, vulgar gesture, and I quickly grew bored. What did any of this matter? In 1991, a car bomb had destroyed a police station a few blocks from this gallery. The next year, DINCOTE captured three Philosophers in a nearby hostel. I looked around at the lousy art, the tourists swarming the bridge below. Was this what anyone had fought for?

  Eventually Yesenia came to fetch me, dragging me to the sidewalk where her friends were flagging taxis and checking their phones. “Larcomar! Larcomar!” they shouted to one another. “See you at Larcomar!”

  “What’s Larcomar?” I said, as our cab zoomed through a long, palm-lined curve.

  She rolled her eyes and pulled me closer. She was flushed and gaptoothed, jarringly pretty. “Andres, you are like a primitive!”

  Even after months in glittering Lima, I was unprepared for Larcomar, which spread bright and broken across the cliffs of Miraflores. It came in and out of sight as the taxi traced the curving shoreline, a riot of color, crawling like a wasps’ next. We waited at the top of long, curved escalators for the others to arrive and sound washed up at us: gusts of conversation, the ocean’s roar, shrieking children, trashy pop songs; below was a frantic pit surrounded by window displays, video screens—the churning stomach of an electronic monster. I was mesmerized, incredulous—as if the malls of my childhood, with their crass trinkets and sickening food courts, had been reborn as this strobing, hypertrophic maze, every face smeared with delight.

  As we descended to the first of many levels—Banana Republic, Gucci, Dunkin Donuts, screens flashing with new cars, celebrities, local tourist attractions—Yesenia swept an arm, as if to embrace all the noise and commerce, and beyond it the ocean with its ribbon of sunset. Paragliders traversed the marbled pink sky, tiny silhouettes in transit to another world. “You see, Andres? My city is beautiful!”

  She marched us to T.G.I. Friday’s and waved a pale, bangled arm until a hostess found a table large enough to accommodate our party. I felt empty, somehow terrified. While the others gorged themselves on hamburgers, barbecued ribs, flagons of imported beer, buckets of fries, I watched the room of young professionals in their pressed pants and button-down shirts who chatted on cell phones, clinked glasses, laughed and shouted from table to table and snapped their fingers for service. Above the bar, a TV flashed news from abroad: John McCain, the New York Stock Exchange, South Waziristan, Roger Federer. No one was watching. A friend of Yesenia’s got up to talk on his phone, pacing blindly before the kitchen door; when a waiter came through holding an overloaded tray, they nearly collided and he shot the waiter a malevolent glare. I set down my fork.

  “You don’t like the food?” someone asked.

  “I already ate,” I said.

  Across the room, a wall of tall windows looked out on the chaos. From where we sat you could see part of the two levels above; and beyond, high-rises presided over the malecón, a puzzle of lit windows looking down at us. Somewhere not far from here, the rumor went, Leo’s parents had bought a small apartment for her to live in. No one knew exactly where. But as I drained my glass I imagined it was in one of those very buildings, that somehow she could see us even now. When a group of servers swarmed a nearby table to sing “Happy Birthday,” in English, I pushed back my chair.

  “Where are you going, mi amor?” Yesenia said, blinking sweetly.

&
nbsp; “Back to Damien’s. I have to start writing.”

  “Tomorrow!” she said. She reached for my hand, to the amusement of her friends. She was a little tipsy, smiling at her own forwardness. “Why you are always so serious? Look at this. The people, the ocean. Stay with me, Andres. Look at my city. You don’t think is beautiful?”

  Everyone was watching us. I made a big show of lifting her hand to my lips and she blushed. As I made for the exit I took a last look at the room, the garish scenery, the bloated faces. What I saw wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t even Peru.

  * * *

  —

  “No way,” Jack said, when I called him two days later. “No freakin’ way, dude.”

  “Just listen—”

  “Are you nuts? Did you catch some tropical brain-wasting shit?”

  “Listen to me. It makes sense, don’t you see? Everything I’ve been trying to figure out. This is the problem, why I’ve been so blocked—the house, the guns, everything she said…it’s the missing piece. Don’t you see?”

  I was babbling. I closed the computer and turned away so as not to disturb people around me. A light wind was picking up. Seagulls sidled nervously along a brass railing and out over the ocean pelicans fell from the sky as if shot.

  “Let me get this straight,” Jack said. “I sent you to Lima like two months ago to write about Leonora Gelb—the real Leonora Gelb—and this terrorism shit. I flew you first class! I’m sitting here waiting, while you read, like, philosophy books. I’ve got a business to run! And now you call me with this crazy-ass theory. What did you think I was gonna say?”

  “It’s more like a month and a half.”

  “You’ve lost it, dude. I’m going to pretend this conversation never happened—”

  “Just listen,” I said. “Can you do that?”

  At a nearby table, two Japanese women surrounded by shopping bags watched me cautiously. I tried to light a cigarette, but the wind was too strong. After two days at Larcomar I’d become a fixture, moving between Friday’s, Starbucks, and a cantina called Sol de Havana where the bartenders had handlebar mustaches and the waitresses wore hats full of plastic fruit. The security guards all recognized me, muttering into their wrists when I changed tables or went to the restroom, but I ignored them, as I ignored the many calls that came in—Yesenia, Lucrecia, two this afternoon from Damien. I subsisted on lattés, croissants, and rubbery enchiladas, buffeted by the tides of shoppers and gawkers and after-work drinkers that surged and ebbed down the escalators. But I was making progress, banging at my laptop for hours without pause, all of it finally coming out, every bit of it: Leonora’s story as it had never been told before.

  “All this time there was something I didn’t get, some piece of it,” I said. “What they said she did, or planned—it was too far from my experience. I had no way in…” I hunched over and worked the cigarette lighter until it caught. “Hemingway said a story’s like an iceberg—nine-tenths of it you can’t see—”

  “Dude—”

  “This is what’s under the water, Jack. It’s so much more interesting than the facts! Everyone already knows the facts. They can look them up. We’re going to tell them what they don’t know. That’s what’s interesting here. That’s the art.”

  I sucked hard on the cigarette, watched the wind whip the smoke into nothing. I was keyed up, brimful with the story. For the first time in weeks, or years, I felt a sense of purpose. It was all I could do not to hang up and get back to work.

  “I don’t give a fuck about Hemingway,” Jack said. “I don’t give a fuck about art. I hired you to write a story. A true story—”

  “But that story makes no sense!” I said. “A girl just turns around and decides to invade Congress? To assassinate people? It’s not even her country! No way, Jack,” I said, sliding the computer into my bag. “It’s bullshit. I won’t write bullshit.” A guard was coming toward me and I walked the other way. The main courtyard was packed with people lined up for the latest Mission: Impossible movie. “Give me two more days,” I said, shouldering through. “Then you’ll see for yourself. I just have to write about the raid, her capture. Then you can decide.”

  There was a long pause. “Sorry, dude. There’s no time. Honestly? I was interested in this for like ten minutes, but it passed a couple months ago.”

  “Jack, wait—”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get a kill fee. Send your expenses to HR. Listen,” he said, “thanks for trying. Really. Give me a shout if you want to do a column sometime.”

  I stepped onto the escalator, clutching the handrail as Larcomar fell away. It was late afternoon, a sunset the color of clouded tea reflected in hundreds of windows above the malecón. I needed to get home, to lock myself in the guest room and finish the story. When Jack saw what I’d made, he’d reconsider, I felt sure. He’d have to admit it was more interesting, more believable—a better story. If not, I’d figure something else out. All my research, all the time I’d asked of strangers, their generosity—I could not repay them with nothing, though nothing was what they now expected of me. The wind dropped, a light spatter of rain began to fall. I’d find a way, I thought, rising into that many-eyed gaze.

  * * *

  —

  When I got back to the apartment, Carlito confronted me in the living room. “Where have you been? Damien was calling you.”

  “I was working.”

  “Working,” he repeated, not bothering to hide his contempt. Damien stood in the door of the guest bedroom, his back to me. For a second I had the crazy idea they were moving out, that they’d decided the only way to get away from me was to leave. But when he turned, I was shocked to see that he’d been crying. I could just make out Stephanie sitting at the edge of the bed, tightening the straps on her backpack.

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Steph? Are you alright?”

  Her face was blank. “You’ll have the bed to yourself again.”

  I tried to think of something to say. Had she somehow heard something? Had she talked to Jack? I cursed myself for not coming home earlier, for not explaining it to her myself. I owed her that much. I sat next to her and put a tentative hand on her back.

  “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you. It’s just, I finally knew how to get started, you know? But I want your feedback. I know you’re busy. I know you’ve got things to deal with back in Babilonia, but…well, can it wait? Just a couple of days?

  “I haven’t told you this, but you’ve really helped me. To understand things. To see the big picture.” The thought of her leaving alarmed me, her half of the bed empty; unweighted by her belongings the room might float off like a soap bubble until it popped. “The truth is I wanted to write something you’d approve of.”

  She hadn’t looked at me this whole time, though little by little her back stiffened to my touch. Now she spoke quietly. “There was a riot. In a prison in Kandahar.”

  I could hear the tea kettle whistling outside the door, the hush of the others listening. “A riot? What prison?”

  She shook her head. “They didn’t tell me the name. My brother’s team…” She let out a breath. “They cut his throat. They killed him.”

  We sat without speaking, her shoulders rising and falling against my hand. Once, twice, I rubbed her back, but this motion was absurd, offensive in its pointlessness. She endured it only because she didn’t have the energy to ask me to stop. I remember staring at her hair, tousled and dull in the dim room, and waiting to feel pain, to overflow with grief, like Damien. But part of me just wanted to get back to my story.

  “Andres?”

  “Yes?”

  “My flight leaves in two hours.”

  “Okay.”

  She finally looked up, her eyes dull and beyond patience. “Could you go to the other room and let me change?”

  As I pulled the door shut, my eyes fell on the photo
taped to the wall, the desperate scrawl: WHO AM I?

  In the living room, that same face stared back from the TV: the wild hair and raw eyes, the feral mouth, white spit at the corners. I was trapped, beset by her image on all sides. Damien sat hunched on the couch, head in his hands, Carlito next to him with arms flung across the cushions in indignation. As I tried to think of what to say that could explain my unforgivable presence, the picture changed, the words En Vivo flashed on the screen. An older woman stood on the steps of the Supreme Court, speaking into a bank of microphones.

  “All Peruvians join with me in celebrating justice,” she said, reading from a piece of paper. “Peru today is a fair and modern country, where the rule of law protects everyone without bias. David and I want to thank our legal team, and the many people in the government who have given their time and energy…”

  It was the first time I’d seen Maxine Gelb up close, live, not fossilized in old newsprint. She was small and narrow, with deep frown lines and a thin, sharp nose. High cheekbones and pixie-cut gray hair made her look whittled by exhaustion, polished by her long martyrdom. Only her eyes—bright and accusatory, painfully knowing—resembled her daughter’s.

  “We are pleased that Peru has decided to look forward, not backward—” she turned briefly to cover a cough and someone started to shout, a man’s voice, cracking with fury. The camera turned to look for him in the crowd. When other voices joined in, the lawyer pulled Maxine away from the microphones and back toward the building. There were more shouts—and then a series of fast, loud pops, smoke. The camera swung wildly, knocked askew by fleeing bodies, ducked heads. Finally it steadied, zooming in on a small cloud rising from the pavement: firecrackers.

  I found myself standing behind the couch, kneading the cushions. I wasn’t getting enough air. Carlito and Damien were looking at me as if I’d had something to do with it. I thought they were probably right.