Death in the Andes

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “The lucky thing is that the engineers were able to hide,” he explained, sipping his coffee. “Along with a friend of theirs, a gringo who’s visiting the mine. They climbed into the water tanks. If the terrucos had found them, they’d be six feet under by now. Engineers, administrators, executives: they never get off. And foreigners sure as hell don’t.”

  “Don’t forget the police,” said Lituma in a hollow voice.

  Francisco López made a joke: “I didn’t want to be the one to say it. I didn’t want to be the one to scare you. They never do anything to the workers, though, unless they think they’re scabs.”

  He spoke with absolute naturalness, as if these things were normal, as if it had always been this way. Son of a bitch, maybe he was right.

  “With everything that’s going on, they’re talking about closing La Esperanza,” López added, blowing on his coffee and taking another sip. “The engineers don’t want to go there anymore. And paying the revolutionary quota pushes costs up too high.”

  “If you’re paying the quota, why the assault?” asked Lituma.

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” Francisco López said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  He continued to blow on his coffee and sip from the cup, as if this conversation, too, were the most normal thing in the world.

  His straw-colored hair and light, limpid eyes had been a nightmare for Casimiro Huarcaya in his childhood. Because in the small Andean village of Yauli where he was born, everyone was dark, and especially because his parents and brothers and sisters all had black hair, dark skin, dark eyes. Where had this albino in the Huarcaya family come from? The jokes at his expense, made by his classmates at the little state school, forced Casimiro into frequent fights, for despite his good nature he would go blind with rage every time they suggested, for the sake of watching him get angry, that his father was not his father but some outsider passing through Yauli, or even the devil himself, because, as everybody in the Andes knows, when the devil comes to work his evil on earth he sometimes takes the shape of a limping gringo stranger.

  And the question Casimiro could never get out of his mind was whether his own father, the potter Apolinario Huarcaya, had his suspicions, too, regarding his origins. He was sure he had been the cause of arguments between his parents, and Apolinario, who was kind to his other children, not only gave him the hardest jobs to do but whipped him if he made the slightest mistake.

  Yet, in spite of teasing at school and difficult relationships at home, Casimiro matured with no serious complexes. He was strong, clever with his hands, alert, and he loved life. Ever since he was a boy, he had dreamed of growing up fast and leaving Yauli for a big city like Huancayo, Pampas, or Ayacucho, where his blond hair and light eyes would not attract so much attention.

  Shortly before his fifteenth birthday, he ran away from his village with an itinerant peddler whom he had helped with loading, unloading, and selling his merchandise at the market whenever he came to Yauli. Don Pericles Chalhuanca had a small truck as old as Methuselah, which had been patched and repatched a thousand times. In it he made the rounds of all the Indian communities and campesino villages in the central part of the Andes, selling city goods—patent medicines, tools, clothing, pots and pans, shoes—and buying cheese, ullucos, beans, fruit, or weavings and pottery, which he then took to the cities. Don Pericles was a skilled mechanic as well as a peddler, and at his side Casimiro memorized the secrets of the truck and learned to repair it whenever it broke down—at least several times a trip—on the terrible sierra roads.

  He was completely happy with Don Pericles. The old man dazzled him with tales of his adventurous life as an unrepentant rooster in other men’s henhouses—the women he had seduced, made pregnant, and abandoned in countless districts, hamlets, and settlements in the departments of Apurímac, Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Cuzco, and Cerro de Pasco, where, he boasted, “I’ve sown plenty of bastards, my own flesh and blood.” On their travels he pointed out some of them to Casimiro with a sly wink. Many greeted the trader respectfully, kissing his hand and calling him godfather.

  But what the boy liked best was their outdoor life, with no schedules or predetermined routes, at the mercy of harsh or kind weather, fairs, fiestas for patron saints, the orders they received, the indispositions of the little truck: these were the factors that decided their daily fate, their itinerary, how many nights they spent in each place. Don Pericles had a permanent home, one without wheels, in the Pampas countryside, which he shared with a married niece and her children. When they were there, Casimiro slept in the house as if he were part of the family. But most of the time he lived in the back of the truck, under the heavy canvas and surrounded by merchandise, where he had built a shelter of cowhides. If it rained, he slept in the cab or underneath the vehicle.

  The business was not especially profitable, at least not for Pericles and Casimiro, because all their earnings were swallowed up by the truck, which always needed replacement parts or new treads for the tires, but it did provide them with a living. In the years he spent with Don Pericles, Casimiro came to know the central region of the Andes like the palm of his hand, all its hamlets, communities, fairs, ravines and valleys, as well as the secrets of the trade: where to buy the best corn and sell needles and thread, where people waited for lamps and percale as if they were manna from heaven, and which ribbons, barrettes, necklaces, and bracelets the girls found irresistibly attractive.

  At first Don Pericles treated him like an apprentice, then a son, and finally a partner. As he aged and the boy grew into a man, the burden of work shifted to his shoulders until, after some years, Casimiro did all the driving and decided what they would buy and sell, and Don Pericles became merely the titular head of the partnership.

  Luckily, they were in Pampas when the old man suffered the stroke that left him paralyzed and unable to speak, for this meant they could take him to the hospital and save his life. But Don Pericles could not go back on the road, and Casimiro was obliged to travel alone. He did so for some time, in the immortal truck, until one day he had to quit because Don Pericles’s niece and her children demanded unheard-of sums of money from him for the right to continue to use the vehicle. And so he returned it to them, and although he visited Don Pericles regularly until the old man died, bringing a little present whenever he happened to be in Pampas, from then on he was lord and master of his own business. The young man was strong and resilient, hardworking and cheerful, and he had friends all over the sierra. He could spend his nights drinking and dancing at the village fiestas, responding with clever jokes to drunken taunts about his yellow hair, and be open for business at the market the next morning before any other merchant. He had replaced the truck with a thirdhand van that he bought from a Huancayo farmer, to whom he paid monthly installments with strict punctuality.

  Once, when he was selling buckles and earrings in a tiny hamlet in Andahuaylas, he caught sight of a girl who seemed to be waiting to talk to him alone. She was young, her hair hung in braids, and she had the haughty, timid face of a small animal. It seemed to him he had seen her before. Then, when he had no more customers, the girl approached Casimiro, who was sitting on the tailgate of the van. “I know,” he said, laughing. “You want one of those barrettes and you don’t have any money.”

  She shook her head in confusion. “You made me, you know, pregnant, Papay,” she whispered in Quechua, lowering her eyes. “Don’t you even remember me?”

  Casimiro had a foggy recollection: was this the girl who had climbed into the van at the fiesta for the Archangel Gabriel? He’d had a good deal of chicha to drink that day, and he was not sure if hers was the blurred face in his memory.

  “And who says it was me?” he asked angrily. “How many other men did you go with during the fiesta? Do you think I’m that easy to catch? That you can saddle me with a kid who could be anybody’s?”

  He could not go on shouting at her, because the girl ran off. Casimiro remembered that Don Pericles had advised, in a situ
ation like this, to get behind the wheel and drive away. But a few hours later, when he closed up shop, he began to look for the girl. He felt troubled, and he wanted to make peace with her.

  He found her along the road, just outside the settlement, on a path lined with willows and prickly pears, and noisy with the croaking of frogs. She was going back to her village, deeply offended. Huarcaya finally placated her, convinced her to get into the van, and drove her to the outskirts of the community where she lived. He did his best to comfort the girl, gave her some money, and told her to see one of those midwives who also perform abortions. She nodded, tears in her eyes. Her name was Asunta, and when he asked her age she said eighteen, but he thought she was younger.

  He passed that way again a month later, asked for the girl, and found her house. She lived with her parents and a swarm of brothers and sisters, who were suspicious and gruff with him. Her father, who owned his own plot of land in the community, had been in charge of the fiesta. He understood Spanish, although he replied to Casimiro’s questions in Quechua. Asunta had not found anyone who would give her one of those concoctions, but she told Huarcaya not to worry. Her godparents lived in a neighboring village, and they had told her to go ahead and have the baby and she could live with them if she was thrown out of her house. She seemed resigned to what was happening. When he said goodbye, Casimiro gave her a pair of low-heeled shoes and a flowered shawl, and she thanked him by kissing his hand.

  The next time he passed through the village, Asunta no longer lived at home, and her family refused to talk to him about her. Her father was even more surly than he had been on the first visit and told him straight out not to come back. No one could or would say where her godparents lived. Casimiro told himself that he had done everything in his power for the girl, that he should not lose any more sleep over her. If he happened to run into Asunta again, he would help her.

  But his life was never the same again. The roads, the mountains, the villages where he had spent so many years traveling, first with Don Pericles and then on his own, without ever feeling he faced any risk greater than having a blowout or being stranded on the bad roads—suddenly these places became increasingly violent. Casimiro began to see electric towers that had been dynamited and bridges that were blown up, roads blocked by boulders and tree trunks, threatening graffiti and red flags on the hillsides. And armed groups, to whom he invariably had to give some of what he was carrying: clothing, provisions, knives, machetes. And patrols of soldiers and the anti-insurgency forces called sinchis also began to appear along the roads, examining his papers and looting his van just as the rebels did. In the villages they complained of abuses, thefts, killings, and in certain regions a true exodus began. Families, entire communities, abandoned their lands, houses, and animals, and headed for the cities along the coast.

  Soon his business barely provided enough for him to survive, until one day he realized he was losing money. Why did he go on traveling, buying and selling? Perhaps because he had gotten it into his head that this was the way to find Asunta. The idea had changed from a challenge and a diversion into an obsession. He asked for her so often, wherever he went, that people thought he had gone crazy and found it amusing to give him false clues or tell him lies.

  He returned to her village twice, trying to learn from her family where she was. The first time, her father hurled stones and insults at him. But one of Asunta’s sisters came out to the road and said the girl’s godparents lived in Andahuaylas and were named Gallirgos. But no one in Andahuaylas knew anything about a family by that name. The second time he went to Asunta’s house, her father had died, and her mother and all her brothers and sisters had gone to lea with other families of comuneros. There had been a massacre in the region, and they were frightened.

  Why did he look for Asunta with so much perseverance? He asked himself the question and could not find the answer. Was it because of his possible son or daughter, who would be about three years old now? As if it were a ritual, he continued to ask for her wherever he went, though he really did not have much hope of finding her and knew he would receive only negative replies. She must have gone to Lima, like so many other girls from the sierra. And was probably working as a maid, or doing manual labor, or had married and given his child some brothers and sisters.

  A good deal of time had passed, and Casimiro Huarcaya was thinking less and less about Asunta, when he drove into Arcca, south of Ayacucho, on a night when the whole village was intoxicated—it was the start of the fiesta. As he left the café where he had eaten, he found himself surrounded by a hostile crowd of men and women who insulted him, pointed at his hair, and called him nacaq and pishtaco. They were so drunk there was no point in trying to reason with them, to explain that not every man unlucky enough to have light hair wandered the world looking for human victims so he could steal their fat, and Casimiro decided to get into his van. But they would not allow him to leave. They were fearful and angry, and they urged each other on.

  They pulled him from the van and began to beat him, not listening to his explanations. When he thought he would never escape, he heard shots. He saw armed men and women, and the hostile circle around him broke. From the ground where he had fallen, stunned by the blows he had received, Casimiro heard the voices of his saviors telling the mob from whose hands they had rescued him that there was no such thing as pishtacos, that those were superstitions, obscurantist beliefs foisted on the people by their enemies.

  Then he recognized Asunta. No question about it. Despite the dim light and the confusion in his mind, he did not have a moment’s doubt. It was Asunta. She did not wear braids now but had her hair cut short, like a man’s. And instead of her wide skirt she was dressed in jeans and sneakers. And held a rifle in her hands. She had recognized him too, apparently. She did not respond when he waved and smiled at her. She was explaining to the other armed men and women around him that the albino, Casimiro Huarcaya, had raped her five years before, taking advantage of the fiesta in another village. And left her pregnant. And when she told him, he had treated her worse than a prostitute. And later, like a man throwing a bone to a dog, he condescended to give her some money for an abortion. It was Asunta, but it wasn’t Asunta. At least, it was difficult for Casimiro to see the timid girl who had kissed his hand in this cold, somber, didactic woman who spoke in public of intimate matters as if she were talking about someone else.

  He tried to tell her that he had been looking for her all this while. He tried to ask her what had happened to the baby, and if it had been born albino like him. But his voice failed him. The men and women spoke for a long time, exchanged comments in Spanish and Quechua, asked him questions he could not answer. When he saw that they had come to a decision about him, he was overcome by a sense of unreality. So there she was, the woman he had spent so many years searching for. She approached him, her rifle aimed at his head. And Casimiro was sure her hand would not tremble when she fired.

  “Civil Guard, a Civil Guard,” said Mercedes. “It never entered my mind that you were one of those traffic cops.”

  “I know that with me you’ve come down in the world,” replied the boy. “But don’t worry, I’ll get ahead with a woman like you at my side.”

  “If I ever saw you in a Civil Guard uniform, I’d die of embarrassment,” she said.

  “Why did she have such a low opinion of us?” Lituma grumbled.

  “What else?” Tomasito sighed. “Because we make such lousy money.”

  They had left Huánuco at six, an hour behind schedule, and were occupying the single seat next to the driver of the old Dodge. Four other passengers were crowded in back, among them a woman who moaned “Oh, Jesus” at every pothole. The driver wore a cap pulled down over his ears and a scarf covering his mouth, so that his face was almost completely hidden. He played the radio as loud as possible, and when Carreño and Mercedes talked into each other’s ear the others could not hear what they were saying. As the vehicle climbed higher into the Cordillera, the reception grew
worse, and whistles and humming drowned out the music.

  “Squeezed together like that, you had a good chance to feel her up,” Lituma observed.

  “You’re talking so you’ll have an excuse to kiss me on the neck,” she said, her mouth against his ear.

  “Does it bother you?” he whispered, slowly brushing his lips around her earlobe.

  “Necking like that in cars is fantastic,” declared Lituma.

  “You’re tickling me,” she said. “The driver must think I’m some kind of idiot who can’t do anything but laugh.”

  “It’s just that you don’t take love seriously.” Carreño continued to kiss her.

  “Promise me you’ll never put on a cop’s uniform again,” said Mercedes. “At least while we’re together.”

  “I’ll promise you anything you want,” the boy said, carried away by love.

  “You see,” Lituma said, sighing. “You did put it on again, and up here you can’t even take it off. You’ll die with your boots on, Tomasito. Did you ever see that movie?”

  Carreño had his arm around her shoulders, and when the Dodge gave a jolt he tried to soften the impact on Mercedes with his body. Night fell rapidly, and the weather turned cold. They put on the alpaca sweaters they had bought in Huánuco, but one of the car windows was broken and icy air filtered in through the crack. Finally, when there was nothing but static, the driver turned off the radio.

  “It’s not that I think anything’s going to happen,” he said, raising his voice behind the scarf. “But it’s my duty to warn you. There’ve been a lot of assaults on this route lately.”

  None of the passengers said anything, but the atmosphere in the vehicle thickened like curdling milk. Carreño felt Mercedes stiffen.

  “And we’ll both probably go to our graves wearing the uniform, Tomasito. Don’t you get tired sometimes of waiting for them? Don’t you think sometimes: ‘Just let them come, just let this damn war of nerves be over once and for all’?”