Death in the Andes

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  She nodded. And leaned her head forward slightly to look into his eyes. She spoke in a kind of murmur, in Spanish that was fluent but had a strong mountain accent.

  “I went to leave him the message and he came in person to my house,” she said. “He was very worried. I thought he was going to tell me that something bad had happened to you, that they had killed you. He says you should get in touch with him right away.”

  “I’ve been calling him a few times a day, and his home phone is always busy.”

  “He doesn’t want you to call him at home. You should try his office, before ten, and say it’s the Chinaman.”

  “That made me feel better,” said the boy. “If he went to see my mother, if he wanted me to call him, he couldn’t be that angry with me. But it took me ten more days to get in touch with him. That upset Mercedes, but not me. Because it meant I could go on enjoying our honeymoon. Even with all the worry and the scares we had, I’ll never be that happy again, Corporal.”

  When they said goodbye to his mother and returned to the pensión in Barrios Altos, Mercedes plagued Carreño with questions:

  “How can your mother take all this without even batting an eye? She’s not surprised that you’re hiding out, that you’re with me, that they ransacked your room. Do things like this always happen to you?”

  “She knows that life in Peru has its dangers, honey. She may not look very strong, but she’s made of iron. She went through hell just to feed me. In Sicuani, in Cuzco, in Lima.”

  Carreño was happy to have his money back, and laughed at Mercedes for putting her savings in the bank.

  “This country is too dangerous to trust the banks; the best safe is your mattress. You saw what happened, that guy on La Victoria almost left you flat broke. But I’m glad he tore your voter’s ID because now you have to depend on me. And to celebrate I’ll take you dancing. Will you do some of the steps for me that you did in the show at the Vacilón?”

  “How can you think about having a good time with everything that’s happening to us!” Mercedes protested in horror. “You’re an irresponsible half-wit.”

  “I’m just a man in love, sweetheart, and I’m dying to dance with you, cheek to cheek.”

  Mercedes finally gave in, and they went to Memory Lane, on the Paseo de la República. Nobody would see their faces there. It was a dark, romantic place where they played old Gardel tangos and the boleros of Leo Marini, Agustín Lara, and Los Panchos. Tomás and Mercedes drank Cuba libres, and the rum quickly went to Carreño’s head. He chattered endlessly about the life they would lead in Miami. He would set up an armored-car business, he would be rich, they would get married and have children. He held Mercedes very close while they danced, and kissed her neck and face passionately.

  “As long as you’re with me, nothing will happen to you, word of honor. Wait till I talk to my godfather, wait till Iscariote gets back. Life will start to smile on us. It’s already smiling on me, thanks to you.”

  “Memory Lane is a nice name.” Lituma sighed. “Listening to you makes me nostalgic, Tomasito. A dark place, a few drinks, some romantic music, a nice loving broad dancing real close. Do those things still exist?”

  “It was a beautiful night, Corporal, for as long as we were in the club,” said the boy. “And she kissed me, too, on her own. ‘She’s falling in love with me,’ I thought, and I was full of hope.”

  “You got me excited with all that kissing and smooching, Carreñito,” Mercedes said into his ear, nibbling his lobe. “Let’s go to bed, come on, it was crazy for us to be out where everybody can see us.”

  When they left the club at about three in the morning, they were both tight. But the effects of the Cuba libres disappeared immediately when they saw fire trucks, a police car, and a crowd of people at the corner not far from Señora Alicia’s pensión. The neighbors had rushed to the street when they heard the explosion.

  “They got out of a van and just put the bomb in front of a wooden house about twenty meters from Aunt Alicia’s pensión,” the adjutant explained. “That was the third bad thing that happened to us. Another coincidence, Corporal?”

  “Tomasito, I can’t believe anything you’re saying. I don’t buy all this about a bomb. Don’t screw around with me: if the dealers wanted to kill you, they would’ve killed you.”

  The explosion shattered the windows in many nearby houses and set fire to the trash in a vacant lot. Señora Alicia, wrapped in a blanket, was in the crowd. She pretended not to know Carreño and Mercedes as they mingled with the onlookers. They waited in the entryway to a block of houses until it grew light. They came back when the patrol cars and fire trucks had gone. Aunt Alicia hurried them inside. Nothing had happened to her house and she did not seem frightened; it did not occur to her that the bomb had anything to do with Carreño. She supposed, as the other neighbors did, that it was an attempt on the life of an official at the Prefecture who lived on the street. The van had stopped in front of his house, and Aunt Alicia, sitting at her window for a breath of fresh air, saw it and could even hear them whispering inside. It drove to the corner, and the men got out and placed the bomb. They were so careless they put it outside a vacant house. Or maybe it wasn’t carelessness, maybe they didn’t mean to kill anybody but just wanted to send a message to that guy at the Prefecture.

  “Mercedes didn’t believe the story about the official for a minute,” said Tomasito. “She swore the thing was meant for us. She held up the best she could in front of Aunt Alicia, and then when we were alone she went to pieces.”

  “Who else was the bomb for but you and me? Forget all that shit about some official at the Prefecture. We’re the ones hiding out, aren’t we? And now they caught up with us. And let us know it. And while they’re trying to kill us, we’re out dancing at Memory Lane. Are you happy now, you damn fool?”

  Her voice broke, and she was trembling and wringing her hands so hard that the boy forced them apart, afraid she would do herself harm. He could not calm her. She cried and repeated hysterically that she didn’t want them to kill her; she berated him or huddled on the bed, sobbing and tossing from side to side, giving in to despair.

  “I thought she would die, that she’d have an attack or something, she was so scared,” said Tomasito. “Nothing scares me, but seeing her like that really threw me. I couldn’t do a damn thing, I didn’t know what to say to make her stop crying. I had run out of promises. I couldn’t think of anything else to swear to, Corporal.”

  “What did you do?” Lituma asked.

  He went to the tile he had loosened to hide the packet of dollars and, sitting on the edge of the bed, forced Mercedes to take the bills while he kissed her, smoothed her hair, dried her brow with his lips, and said:

  “It’s yours, sweetheart, whether you stay with me or not, it’s yours. I’m giving it to you. You keep it, hide it from me if you want to. So you can feel safe until I talk to my godfather, so you don’t feel like the ground’s opening up in front of you. So you’re not tied down and can leave whenever you want. Don’t cry anymore, please.”

  “You did that, Tomasito? You gave her all your dollars?”

  “On the condition she wouldn’t cry anymore, Corporal,” said the boy.

  “That’s even worse than killing Hog because he hit her, you prick!” Lituma jumped up from his cot.

  8

  “A huayco rolled over you and here you are, alive and kicking.” The cantinero patted Lituma on the shoulder. “Congratulations, Corporal!”

  Dionisio was the only one who seemed to be in good spirits in the funereal atmosphere of the cantina. It was crowded, but the laborers had the faces of condemned men. They were in small groups, holding their glasses, smoking endlessly, buzzing like wasps. Uncertainty distorted their features, and Lituma could see in their eyes the animal fear that gnawed inside them. After the devastation of the avalanche, nothing could save them from losing their jobs now. Son of a bitch, the serruchos had good reason for being so gloomy.

  “I was g
iven a new lease on life up there,” the corporal acknowledged. “But I don’t recommend the experience to anyone. I can still hear the awful noise those motherfucking boulders made coming down all around me.”

  “What about it, boys, a toast to the corporal,” Dionisio proposed, raising his glass. “Our thanks to the apus of Naccos for saving a lawman’s life!”

  “On top of everything else, that faggot is making fun of me,” thought the corporal. But he raised his glass and thanked him with a half smile, and nodded to the laborers who had raised theirs. Tomás Carreño, who had gone outside to urinate, came back in, rubbing his hands.

  “What happened to you never happened to anybody else,” he exclaimed, with the same expression of joy and astonishment he had shown while listening to the corporal tell him about his adventure. “They ought to put it in the papers.”

  “That’s a fact,” said a laborer with a pockmarked face. “Nothing like that’s happened around here since Casimiro Huarcaya. A huayco rolls over you and you walk away!”

  “Casimiro Huarcaya the albino?” asked Lituma. “The one who disappeared? The one who said he was a pishtaco?”

  The albino came in late, when everybody in the cantina was already good and drunk, the way they always got on Saturday night. He was, too; his eyes were red and agitated beneath the pale lashes that made everyone so uneasy. Drunk and ready to fight, he announced his arrival at the door in his usual way: “Here he is, here comes the throat-slitter, the nacaq, the pishtaco! And if you don’t believe me, damn it, just look at this.” He took a small knife from his back pocket and displayed it, raising his right foot and bursting into reassuring laughter. Then, grimacing like a clown, he staggered to the bar, where Doña Adriana and her husband were busy serving their patrons, and leaned his elbows on the counter. He banged on the wood and demanded a glass of the strong stuff. At that moment Lituma knew what was going to happen to him.

  “Who else would I be talking about?” the pockmarked man nodded. “Didn’t you know the terrucos executed him and then he was resurrected, like Jesus Christ?”

  “I didn’t know anything, I’m the last person around here to find things out.” Lituma sighed. “They executed him and he came back to life?”

  “Well, Pichincho’s exaggerating,” a small, dark man, his hair like a porcupine’s quills, stepped forward. “I think it was a fake execution. If it wasn’t, how could he be shot and then wake up without a scratch?”

  “It looks to me like now you all know Casimiro Huarcaya’s life story by heart,” said Carreño. “So why’d you tell the corporal and me you didn’t know anything about the albino when he disappeared?”

  “That’s something I’d like to hear, too,” Lituma said in a soft voice.

  There was a charged silence, and all around them the sharp-angled faces with their flat noses, thick swollen lips, and narrow, suspicious eyes took refuge behind the stellar impenetrability that made the corporal feel like a Martian in Naccos. Until, after a moment, the serrano with the pockmarked face displayed a row of large white teeth in a huge smile: “It’s just that we didn’t know the corporal back then.”

  There were some approving murmurs, and the cantinero hurried to serve the albino, looking at him with the brittle, mocking smile that never left him. His face was puffier than usual, and through the cigarette smoke, his fat cheeks had a rosy glow beneath the stubble of his beard. He looked bigger and softer than at other times, and his limbs, his shoulders, his bones, seemed disconnected from their sockets. But he was very strong. Lituma had seen him pick up drunks and throw them out the door; not because they were looking for trouble, but because they had started to cry. Dionisio allowed the ones who turned belligerent with drink and wanted to fight to stay in the cantina, and even encouraged the other men to exchange blows with them, as if these drunken disputes amused him no end. The albino sipped at his glass, and Lituma, burning with apprehension, waited tensely for him to speak again. He did, facing the small gathering of men wrapped in their shawls and sweaters: “Isn’t there a smoke for the throat-slitter? Tight-fisted bastards!”

  No one turned to look at him, no one paid attention to him, and his face twisted as if he were overcome by a violent stomach cramp or a sudden attack of rage. His hair, eyebrows, and lashes were very light, but the most disconcerting thing about this brawny man was his white body hair and the white stubble on his face. He wore overalls and a hooded oilskin jacket that was open and displayed the white growth in the middle of his chest.

  “Here you go, Casimiro.” The cantinero handed him a cigarette. “The music’s going to start again soon and then you can dance.”

  “That’s good,” said Lituma. “That means you’re finally going to treat me like a serrano instead of a vulture up on the barrens. That deserves a drink. Take down a nice bottle for my friends, Dionisio: the drinks are on me.”

  There were grunted thanks, and while Dionisio opened the bottle and Doña Adriana handed out glasses to those who didn’t have them, the corporal and his adjutant mingled with the other patrons. They had all crowded up to the bar in a tight knot, as if they were watching the end of a dice game with fistfuls of bills at stake.

  “Are you saying the terrucos shot Huarcaya and he wasn’t even hurt?” asked Lituma. “Tell me what happened.”

  “He used to talk about it when he was paying a visit to his animal, you know, when the booze went to his head,” said the man with porcupine hair. “He went all over the sierra looking for a girl who’d had his baby. And one night he came to a village in the province of La Mar, where they almost lynched him because they thought he was a pishtaco. The terrucos attacked just then and saved him. And who do you think the terruco leader was? The girl he’d been looking for!”

  “What do you mean, they saved him?” Carreño intervened. “Didn’t you say they executed him?”

  “Be quiet,” ordered Lituma. “Don’t interrupt.”

  “They saved him from the villagers who wanted to lynch him for being a pishtaco, but then the terrucos held one of their people’s trials and sentenced him to death,” said the porcupine, concluding the story. “The girl was in charge of the execution. And just like that, she put a bullet in him.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Lituma said. “How’d he get to Naccos after he was killed?”

  The albino did not reply and spent some time trying to light the cigarette, but he was so drunk his hand could not bring the match flame up to the right place. Lituma could see an indefinable expression on Dionisio’s glowing yet sooty face; it was the sarcastic, delighted look of a man who knows what is going to happen, who looks forward to it, enjoying it in advance. He knew what was going to happen, too, and he shuddered. But the other patrons did not appear to be aware of anything; some sat on the crates, but most remained standing, gathered in groups of two or three, holding bottles of beer, pisco, or anisette, or passing them around. The radio, high above the bar, blared through frequent static, playing the alternating tropical and Andean songs that Radio Junín always broadcast on Saturday night. As if his pride had been wounded by their lack of response, the albino challenged them again, turning his back on the cantinero and looking at the crowd with the eyes of a fish just pulled from the water:

  “Did you hear that I’m the throat-slitter? The pishtaco, what they call a nacaq in Ayacucho. This is how I slice up my victims.”

  He made more passes in the air with his knife and repeated the clown grimaces, as if begging them to notice him, celebrate him, laugh at him, applaud him. Nobody seemed to notice his presence this time, either. But Lituma knew. All their senses were focused on Casimiro Huarcaya.

  “At least, that’s what he said happened, isn’t it?” asked the pockmarked one, and several laborers nodded. “The terruca executed him, stood a meter away from him and fired her rifle. And Huarcaya died.”

  “He felt like he died, Pichincho,” the porcupine corrected him. “He really just passed out. Sure, from fear. And when he came to, there was no bullet wound, just b
ruises where the people who thought he was a pishtaco had kicked him. The terruca only wanted to scare him.”

  “Huarcaya said he saw the bullet shoot out of the rifle and come right for his head,” the pockmarked one insisted. “She killed him and he came back to life.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Lituma repeated, surreptitiously checking the reactions of various laborers in the crowd. “He survived one execution and came to Naccos so he could disappear. Do you think he survived that, too?”

  They continued drinking their shots of pisco or anisette, passing the bottle, the glass of beer with a brief toast: “Here’s to you, brother.” They smoked, talked, hummed to the music on the radio. One who was drunker than the rest put his arms around an invisible girl, closed his eyes, and took a few clumsy dance steps, moving counter to his shadow on the wall. As always, Dionisio, in the state of exhilaration that came over him at night, encouraged them: “Go on, dance, have a good time, what’s the difference if there’s no women, everybody looks the same in the dark.” They acted as if Casimiro Huarcaya weren’t here, the hypocrites. But Lituma knew very well that no matter how they pretended, every one of the laborers was watching the albino out of the corner of his eye.

  “I’m the one who comes out from under the bridges, from behind the rocks. I’m the one who lives in caves. I’m just like the one Doña Adriana killed, that’s who I am,” he thundered. “I appear on the road and blow magic dust in your face. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Doña Adriana? Go on, kill me too, if you can, the way you and big-nose killed Salcedo. They killed me once, but not even the terrucos could finish me off. Damn it, I’m immortal!”

  He hunched over a second time, and his pale face contorted as if his gut had suddenly cramped again, but a moment later he recovered, straightened up, and brought his glass greedily to his lips. Not realizing it was empty, he went on sipping and licking it with delight. Until it slipped from his fingers and rolled off the counter to the floor. Then Casimiro Huarcaya stood quiet, sulking, his hands to his face, peering obsessively with bulging eyes at the cracks, inscriptions, stains, cigarette burns on the wood of the bar. “Don’t leave now, whatever you do,” whispered Lituma, knowing the albino could not hear him. “Don’t even think about leaving the cantina now. Wait till the others have gone, wait till they’re so drunk they forget all about you.” But as he offered this advice, he could hear Dionisio’s viperish laugh. He looked around for him, and in fact, though he seemed to be watching the groups of men who filled the cantina, urging them with gestures to dance, his great fat face was laughing, his mouth stretched wide. Lituma knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was mocking his efforts to change what was bound to happen.