Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter: A Novel

  He finally came across him on the corner opposite the national slaughterhouse and cold-storage plant, standing under a lamppost. He was rubbing his hands together furiously and his face had disappeared behind a spectral scarf that left only his eyes visible. On catching sight of him, Shorty gave a start and raised his hand to his gun belt. Then, recognizing him, he clicked his heels.

  “You scared me, sergeant,” he said, laughing. “Seeing you at a distance, looming up out of the dark like that, I took you for a ghost.”

  “A ghost, my ass,” Lituma said, shaking hands. “You thought I was a thug.”

  “No such luck. There aren’t any thugs abroad, what with this cold,” Shorty said, rubbing his hands together again. “The only madmen out tonight in weather like this are you and me. And those critters.”

  He pointed to the roof of the slaughterhouse, and the sergeant, squinting, managed to make out a half-dozen turkey buzzards, huddled up with their beaks tucked underneath their wings, sitting in a straight line on the peak of the roof. How hungry they must be, he thought. Even though they’re freezing, they’re sitting there smelling death. Shorty Soldevilla signed his report in the dim light of the streetlamp, with the chewed stub of a pencil that kept slipping out of his fingers. There was nothing to report: no accidents, no crimes, no drunken brawls.

  “A quiet night, sergeant,” he said, as he walked a few blocks with him to the Avenida Manco Cápac. “I hope it stays that way till my relief takes over. After that, the world can come to an end as far as I’m concerned.”

  He laughed as though he’d just said something very funny, and Sergeant Lituma thought: The mentality of certain guards beggars belief. As though he’d guessed what the sergeant was thinking, Shorty Soldevilla added, in a grave tone of voice: “Because I’m not like you are, sergeant. I don’t like this whole bit. The only reason I wear the uniform is that it keeps food in my belly.”

  “If it were up to me, you wouldn’t be wearing it,” the sergeant muttered. “The only ones I’d allow to stay in the corps would be the ones that believed in it a hundred percent.”

  “That would just about empty out the Guardia Civil,” Shorty retorted.

  “It’s better to be alone than in bad company,” said the sergeant, laughing.

  Shorty laughed, too. They were walking along in the dark, through the vacant lot around the Guadalupe Commission Merchants’ depot, where the street urchins kept shooting out the bulbs of the lampposts with their slingshots. The sound of the sea could be heard in the distance, and from time to time the engine of a taxi going down the Avenida Argentina.

  “You’d like all of us to be heroes,” Shorty burst out all of a sudden. “To give our hearts and our souls and our lives to defend all these shits.” He pointed toward El Callao, Lima, the world in general. “And do you think the bastards are grateful? Haven’t you heard the things they yell after us in the streets? Is there anybody who respects us? People have nothing but contempt for us, sergeant.”

  “This is where we part company,” Lituma said, as they reached the Avenida Manco Cápac. “Don’t leave your sector. And don’t let things get you down so. You can’t wait to leave the corps, but the day they hand you your discharge, you’re going to suffer like a dog. That’s how it was with Tits Antezana. He used to come round to the commissariat to see us and his eyes would fill with tears. ‘I’ve lost my family,’ he used to say.”

  From behind his back, he heard Shorty’s voice mutter: “A family without any women—what kind of a family is that?”

  Maybe Shorty was right, Sergeant Lituma thought, as he walked down the deserted avenue in the middle of the night. It was true: people didn’t like the police, and never gave them a second thought, unless they were afraid of something all of a sudden. But so what? He didn’t knock himself out so that people would like him or respect him. I couldn’t care less about people, he thought. Why was it, then, that he didn’t have the same attitude toward the Guardia Civil as his buddies, just doing his job without killing himself, making the best of things, goofing off at every opportunity or pocketing a bribe, a few dirty coins here and there, if there weren’t any of his higher-ups around to see? Why, Lituma? He thought: Because you like being in the Guardia Civil. Because you like your work—the way other people like soccer or horse racing. The idea came to him that the next time some soccer nut asked him: “What team do you root for, Lituma, the Sports Boys or Chalaco?” he’d answer: “I root for the Guardia Civil.” He laughed in the fog, the mist, the dark, pleased with his little joke, and at that point he heard the noise. He gave a start, raised his hand to his gun belt, and stopped dead in his tracks. He’d been so taken by surprise by the noise that he’d almost been frightened. But only almost, he thought, because you didn’t feel afraid and you never will, you don’t even know what fear is, Lituma. On his left was the vacant lot, and on his right, the dock of the first of the warehouses in the port district. It had come from there: a very loud noise, crates and drums falling down and bringing others crashing down with them. But now everything was quiet again, and the only sound was the slapping of the waves in the distance and the wind whistling as it hit the tin roofs and caught in the barbed-wire fences of the port terminal. A cat that was chasing a rat and knocked over a crate, which knocked over another one, and then everything came tumbling down, he thought. He thought of the poor cat, crushed to death along with the rat, beneath a mountain of boxes and barrels. He was now in Corny Román’s sector. But of course Corny wasn’t anywhere around; Lituma knew very well that he was at the other end of his patrol area, in the Happy Land, or the Blue Star, or in one of the many other cheap bars and sailors’ brothels at the opposite end of the avenue, lining that little narrow street that the foul-mouthed residents of El Callao called Chancre Street. He’d be down there at one of the battered bar counters, downing a free beer he’d sponged off the proprietress. And as he walked down the avenue toward these dens of iniquity, Lituma imagined the frightened look on Román’s face if he were suddenly to appear behind him: “So you’re drinking on duty, are you, Corny? You’re through.”

  He’d gone about two hundred yards when suddenly he stopped short. He turned and looked back: there, in the shadow, with one of its walls dimly lighted by the feeble glow of a streetlamp miraculously spared from the urchins’ slingshots, lay the warehouse, silent now. It wasn’t a cat, he thought, it wasn’t a rat. It was a thief. His heart began to pound and he could feel his forehead and the palms of his hands break out in a cold sweat. It was a thief, a thief. He stood there motionless for a few seconds, though he already knew he’d go back there. He was sure: he’d had presentiments like this before. He drew his pistol from its holster, released the safety catch, and gripped his flashlight in his left hand. He strode back in the direction of the warehouse, with his heart in his mouth. Yes, no doubt about it, it was a thief. On reaching the building, he stopped again, panting. What if it wasn’t just one thief, but several? Wouldn’t it be better to hunt up Shorty, Corny before he went inside? He shook his head: he didn’t need anybody, he could handle the situation by himself. If there were several of them, so much the worse for them and so much the better for him. He put his ear to the wall and listened: complete silence. The only sound to be heard, somewhere off in the distance, was the lapping of the waves and an occasional car going by. A thief, my ass, he thought. You’re imagining things, Lituma. It was a cat, a rat. He was no longer cold; he felt warm and tired. He walked around the outside of the warehouse, looking for the door. When he found it, he could see by the light of his flashlight that the lock hadn’t been broken open. He was about to leave, telling himself, What a fool you are, Lituma, your nose isn’t as sharp as it used to be, when, with a last mechanical sweep of his flashlight, he discovered in its yellow beam the hole in the wall a few yards from the door. They’d done a crude job of breaking in, simply chopping an opening in the wooden wall with an ax, or kicking a few planks in. The hole was just big enough for a man to crawl through on all fours. br />
  He felt his heart pounding wildly, madly, now. He turned his flashlight off, made sure the safety catch of his pistol was off, looked round about him: nothing but pitch-black shadows and, in the distance, like match flames, the streetlights of the Avenida Huáscar. He took a deep breath and roared, in as loud a voice as he could muster: “Have your men surround this warehouse, corporal. If anybody tries to escape, fire at will. Get a move on, all of you!”

  And to make the whole thing more believable, he began running back and forth, stamping his feet loudly. Then he glued his face to the wall of the warehouse and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Hey, you in there! The jig is up: you’ve had it. You’re surrounded. Come on out the way you came in, one at a time. We’ll give you just thirty seconds!”

  He heard the echo of his shouts fade away in the darkness, and then nothing but the sound of the sea and a few dogs barking. He counted off the seconds: not thirty but sixty. He thought: You’re making an ass of yourself, Lituma.

  He felt a mounting wave of anger, and shouted: “Keep your eyes open, boys. At the first false move, mow ’em all down, corporal!”

  And screwing up his courage, agile despite his years and his heavy greatcoat, he got down on all fours and crawled through the opening. Once inside, he got quickly to his feet, ran on tiptoe to one side, and leaned his back against the wall. He couldn’t see a thing, but didn’t want to turn his flashlight on. He couldn’t hear a sound, but again he was absolutely certain. There was somebody there, hiding in the dark as he was, listening and trying to see. He thought he could make out the sound of someone breathing, a panting noise. He had his finger on the trigger, holding the pistol at chest height. He counted to three and turned the flashlight on. The cry that followed came as such a surprise that in his fear the flashlight slipped out of his hand and rolled to the floor, revealing big bulky shapes that appeared to be bales of cotton, barrels, planks, and (fleeting, totally unexpected, beggaring belief) the figure of the black, hunched over and stark-naked, trying to cover his face with his hands, yet at the same time peeking through his fingers with panic-stricken eyes, staring at the flashlight as though the one danger confronting him was light.

  “Stay right where you are or I’ll shoot! Freeze, sambo, or you’re a dead man!” Lituma roared, in such a loud voice it made his throat hurt, as he crouched down and fumbled about for the flashlight. And then, with savage satisfaction: “You’ve had it, sambo! You fucked up, sambo!”

  He was yelling so hard he felt dizzy. He’d recovered the flashlight and the beam of light swept about, searching for the black. He hadn’t escaped, he was still right there, and Lituma stared at him in open-eyed amazement, unable to believe what he was seeing. It wasn’t his imagination, it wasn’t a dream. He was really stark-naked, as naked as the day he was born: no shoes, no underpants, no shirt, no nothing. And he didn’t seem to be embarrassed or even realize that he was naked, since he made no move to cover his privates, swinging gaily back and forth in the beam of the flashlight. He simply crouched there, his face half hidden behind his fingers, not moving, hypnotized by the little round beam of light.

  “Hands on top of your head, sambo,” the sergeant ordered, without stepping any closer to him. “Just cool it if you don’t want to get pumped full of lead. You’re under arrest for breaking into private property and for going around with your nuts dangling in the air.”

  And at the same time—his ears alert for the least little sound that would reveal the presence of an accomplice in the pitch-black darkness of the warehouse—the sergeant said to himself: This guy’s not a thief. He’s a madman. Not only because he was bare-ass naked in the middle of winter, but because of the cry he’d given on being discovered. Not the cry of a normal man, the sergeant thought. It had been a really strange sound, something between a howl, a bray, a burst of laughter, and a bark. A sound that didn’t seem to have come only from his throat, but from his belly, his heart, his soul as well.

  “Hands on your head, I said, damn it,” the sergeant bellowed, taking a step toward the man. The latter didn’t obey, didn’t move a muscle. He was very dark and so thin that in the dim light Lituma could make out the ridges of his ribs distending the black skin and his pipestem legs, but he had a huge belly that drooped down over his pubis, and Lituma was immediately reminded of the skeletonlike children of the slums with bellies swollen with parasites. The black just stood there, not moving, hiding his face, and the sergeant took two more steps toward him, watching him closely, certain that at any moment he’d start running. Madmen don’t respect revolvers, he thought, and took two more steps. He was now only a few feet away from the black, and it was at that moment that he first caught sight of the scars crisscrossing his shoulders, his arms, his back. Good Christ! Lituma thought. Were they from some sort of sickness? Injuries, or burns?

  He spoke in a quiet voice so as not to frighten him. “Let’s keep it nice and cool and easy, sambo. Hands on your head, walking over to the hole you came in through. If you behave yourself, I’ll give you some coffee at the commissariat. You must be half frozen to death, running around bare-naked like that in weather like this.”

  He was about to take one step more toward the black when all of a sudden the man moved his hands away from his face—Lituma stood there dumfounded on seeing, beneath the mass of kinky matted hair, those terror-stricken eyes, those horrible scars, that enormous thick-lipped mouth with a single, long, filed tooth sticking out of it—and gave that same hybrid, incomprehensible, inhuman cry once again, looked all about, anxious, skittish, nervous, like an animal searching for a way to escape, and finally chose precisely the one he shouldn’t have, the path the sergeant’s body was blocking. Because he didn’t try to knock him over but to run straight through him. The move was so unexpected that Lituma couldn’t stop him and felt him crash into him. The sergeant had steady nerves: his finger didn’t squeeze the trigger; he didn’t fire a single shot. As his body collided with the sergeant’s, the black snorted like an animal, and then Lituma gave him a shove and saw him fall to the floor like a rag doll. To keep him quiet, he kicked him a few times.

  “Stand up,” he ordered. “You’re not only a madman, but a stupid idiot as well. And how you stink!”

  He had an indefinable smell, of tar, acetone, cat piss. He’d rolled over onto his back and lay there looking up at Lituma with terror in his eyes.

  “Where in the world can you have come from?” the sergeant muttered. He brought his flashlight a little closer and in utter bewilderment examined for a moment that incredible face crisscrossed with rectilinear incisions, a network of little fine slashes running across his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, his chin, and down into the folds of his neck. How had a guy with a mug like that, with his nuts dangling in the air, been able to walk through the streets of El Callao without anybody notifying the police?

  “Stand up, I said, or else I’ll really work you over,” Lituma said. “Madman or not, I’ve had enough of you.”

  The guy didn’t budge. He’d begun making noises with his mouth, an indecipherable mutter, a purr, a murmur, a sound that seemed to have more to do with birds, insects, or wild beasts than with human speech. And he kept staring at the flashlight in utter terror.

  “Get up, don’t be afraid,” the sergeant said, reaching down with one hand and grabbing the black by the arm. The sambo made no move to resist, but at the same time not the slightest effort to get to his feet. How thin you are, Lituma thought, amused almost at the meowing, gurgling, babbling sound that poured out of the man’s mouth in a steady stream. And how afraid of me you are. He jerked him to his feet and couldn’t believe how little the man weighed; he had no sooner given him a slight push in the direction of the opening in the wall when he felt him stumble and fall to the floor. But this time he got up all by himself, with great effort, hanging on to a barrel of oil for support.

  “Are you sick?” the sergeant asked. “You’re hardly able to walk, sambo. Where in hell can a jaybird like you have come from,
anyway?”

  He dragged him over to the opening, made him crouch down and crawl through it in front of him to the street. The sambo went on making noises, not letting up for a second, as though he had a piece of iron in his mouth and was trying to spit it out. Yes, the sergeant thought, he’s a madman. The drizzle had stopped, but now a strong wind was sweeping down the streets, howling round about them as Lituma, giving the sambo little pushes and shoves to hurry him up, headed toward the commissariat. Even bundled up as he was in his thick greatcoat, he could feel the cold.

  “You must be frozen, old boy,” Lituma said. “Bare-ass naked in this weather, at this hour. If you don’t catch pneumonia, it’ll be a miracle.”

  The black’s teeth were chattering and he was walking along with his arms crossed over his chest, rubbing his sides with his huge bony hands, as though it were his ribs that felt the cold most. He was still snorting or roaring or croaking, but to himself now, and obeying docilely whenever the sergeant motioned to him to turn. As they threaded their way through the streets, they met neither cars nor dogs nor drunks. As they reached the commissariat—the light from its windows, with its oily glow, made Lituma as happy as a shipwreck victim sighting the beach—the booming bell in the tower of the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen de la Legua was just striking two.

  On seeing the sergeant appear with the naked black, handsome young Lieutenant Jaime Concha didn’t drop his Uncle Donald comic book—his fourth one that night, not to mention the three Supermans and the two Mandrakes he’d read as well—but his mouth opened so wide in surprise that he nearly dislocated his jaw. Guards Camacho and Arévalo, who were having themselves a little game of Chinese checkers, also stared in wide-eyed amazement.

  “Where in the world did you get this scarecrow?” the lieutenant finally asked.

  “Is it a man, an animal, or a thing?” Apple Dumpling Arévalo said, getting to his feet and sniffing at the black. The latter hadn’t uttered a sound since setting foot inside the commissariat but simply stood there, moving his head in all directions with a terrified look on his face, as though he were seeing electric lights, typewriters, civil guards for the first time in his life. But on seeing Arévalo approaching him, he again let out his hair-raising howl—Lituma noted that Lieutenant Concha was so taken aback he almost fell to the floor, chair and all, and that Snotnose Camacho tipped over the Chinese-checker board—and tried to go back outside. The sergeant held him back with one hand and gave him a little shake. “Quiet, sambo, don’t panic on me.”