“Is it just the two of you here?” Mercedes asked, gesturing toward the post.
Lituma nodded, exhaling.
“And we’re leaving soon, thank God and the huayco. We couldn’t have stood it much longer.” He took another deep drag on the cigarette. “The post is closing. The camp, too. They’ve already started moving out whatever’s left. There won’t be a Naccos anymore. Wasn’t there something in the Lima newspapers about the huayco? It destroyed machinery, buried a steamroller, ruined six months’ work. Luckily, nobody was killed. Tomás will tell you all about it, he watched the rockslide from here. These are our last few days in Naccos. I got caught in the huayco farther up the mountain and it almost pulled me down in its sled.”
But Mercedes had only one thought in mind. “If he’s dreaming about me, he can’t hate me so much for what I did.”
“No, Tomasito really loves you. I’ve never known anybody who was in love the way he is with you. I swear.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“He implied it,” the corporal answered prudently. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was still very serious, her gray-green eyes examining the hillside from one end to the other. “The wonderful things Tomasito must have seen in those eyes, looking at them up close,” he thought.
“I really love him, too,” Mercedes whispered, not looking at Lituma. “But he doesn’t know it yet. I came to tell him.”
“You’ll make him happier than he’s ever been in his life. What Tomasito feels for you is more than love. I swear, it’s like an obsession.”
“He’s the only decent man I ever met,” Mercedes murmured. “You’re sure he’s coming back, aren’t you?”
They were both silent, watching the bottom of the hill, waiting for Tomás. It was growing dark down below, and they would not see him until he had climbed halfway up the slope. It was beginning to turn cold, too. Lituma saw Mercedes button her coat, raising the collar and huddling into it. What luck his adjutant had, an ordinary Civil Guard and some phenomenal woman went to the trouble of coming all the way to this damn hole to tell him she loved him. So, you’re sorry you left him. Did she have the four thousand dollars with her? You’re going to faint with joy, Tomasito.
“You were very brave to come on your own from the road, right through the middle of the barrens,” the corporal said. “The trail isn’t marked, you could’ve gotten lost.”
“I did get lost.” She laughed. “Some Indians helped me. They didn’t speak Spanish and we had to use sign language. Naccos! Naccos! They looked at me like I came from another planet, until they caught on.”
“You could’ve run into real trouble.” Lituma tossed the cigarette down the hill. “Didn’t anybody tell you the terrucos are in this zone?”
“I was lucky,” she acknowledged. And added, with no transition: “It’s funny you recognized my Piuran accent. I thought I’d lost it. I left Piura a long time ago, when I was still a kid.”
“You can never lose that Piuran lilt,” said Lituma. “It’s the prettiest accent I know. Especially in women.”
“Could I wash up a little and fix my hair? I don’t want Carreño to see me looking like this.”
Lituma was about to say, “You look terrific,” but he restrained himself, feeling intimidated.
“Sure, how stupid, I didn’t even think of it,” he said, getting to his feet. “We have a basin, water, soap, and a little mirror. Don’t expect a bathroom, everything’s very primitive here.”
He led her inside the shack, and his pride was slightly wounded when he saw the disillusionment, sorrow, or disgust with which Mercedes examined the two rumpled cots, the suitcases that served as seats, the washing-up corner: a chipped basin on a barrel full of water, with a small mirror hanging from the wardrobe that held the rifles. He filled the basin with clean water, handed her a new bar of soap, and went to find a dry towel on the line outside. When he left, he closed the door behind him so she would feel more comfortable. He returned to the spot where he had been talking to Mercedes. A few minutes later, the figure of his adjutant emerged from the darkness that was moving up the hillside. He held his rifle in his hand, leaning forward as he climbed the hill in long strides. What a surprise you have waiting for you, boy. This will be the happiest day of your life. When he was just a few steps away, he saw that the guard was smiling at him, holding up a piece of paper. “The message from Huancayo,” he thought as he stood up. Instructions from headquarters. And good news, judging from Tomasito’s face.
“I bet you can’t guess where they’re sending you, Corporal. I mean, Sergeant.”
“What? I’ve been promoted?”
The boy handed him the sheet with the construction company letterhead at the top.
“Unless somebody’s pulling a dirty trick. They’re sending you to Santa María de Nieva as head of the post. Congratulations, Sergeant!”
There was not enough light to read the radiogram, and Lituma barely cast a glance at the black scratching on a white background.
“Santa María de Nieva? Where’s that?”
“In the jungle, near the Upper Marañón.” The boy laughed. “But the funniest thing is where they’re sending me. Go on, take a guess, you’ll die of envy.”
He seemed very happy, and Lituma felt a combination of jealousy and fondness for him.
“Don’t tell me it’s Piura, don’t tell me they’re sending you to my hometown.”
“That’s right, to the Castilla district commissary. My godfather kept his word, he got me out of here even sooner than he said.”
“It’s your lucky day, Tomasito.” Lituma patted him on the back. “Today you won the lottery, your luck changed today. I’ll put you in touch with my friends, the Invincibles. Just don’t let those bandits corrupt you.”
“What’s that noise?” said the guard in surprise, pointing at the post. “Who’s in there?”
“Believe it or not, we have a visitor,” Lituma said. “Someone you know, I think. Go take a look, Tomasito. Don’t worry about me. I’m going down to the camp to have a few farewell anisettes with Dionisio and the witch. And you know what? I’m really going to tie one on. So I don’t think I’ll be back tonight. I’ll sleep wherever I get tired, in the cantina or in the barracks. With all the booze I plan to drink, any place will feel like a bed of roses. See you tomorrow. Go on, say hello to your visitor, Tomasito.”
“What a surprise, Corporal, sir,” said Dionisio when he saw him come in. “Haven’t you left Naccos yet?”
“I stayed so I could say goodbye to you and Doña Adriana,” Lituma joked. “Is there anything to eat?”
“Soda crackers and mortadella,” replied the cantinero. “But there’s plenty to drink, at wholesale prices. I’m liquidating my stock.”
“Great,” said Lituma. “I’m going to be here the whole night and drink myself blind.”
“Well, well.” Dionisio smiled from behind the bar with surprise and satisfaction, piercing him with his glazed eyes. “The other night I saw you a little tight, but that was after the scare the huayco gave you. Now you’ve come to get drunk on purpose. It’s never too late to start living.”
He filled a glass with pisco and put it on the bar, along with a small tin plate of stale crackers and slices of mortadella.
Señora Adriana had come to the bar and, leaning her elbows on the counter, stared openly at the corporal with her usual brazen coldness. There were only three other patrons in the small, half-empty room, drinking beer out of the same bottle; they stood and talked, leaning against the back wall. Lituma murmured “Cheers,” raised the glass to his lips, and drank it down in one swallow. The tongue of fire licking at his belly made him shudder.
“Good pisco, isn’t it?” Dionisio boasted, quickly filling the glass again. “Smell it, smell its bouquet. Pure grape, Corporal, sir!”
Lituma inhaled. And, in fact, in its burning aroma he could detect a kind of base of fresh clusters of grapes that had just been cut and brought to the press, read
y to be trampled by the expert feet of the lean winemakers.
“I’ll always remember this hole,” murmured Lituma, talking to himself. “Even in the jungle I’ll be picturing what happened here in the dead of night, when everybody was falling-down drunk.”
“Are you starting in again on the missing men?” Doña Adriana interrupted with a gesture of annoyance. “Don’t be a pain, Corporal. Most of the laborers have gone. And with the huayco, and the company shutting down, whoever’s left in Naccos has other things to think about. Nobody remembers them. You forget, too, and enjoy yourself for once in your life.”
“It’s no fun to drink alone, Doña Adriana,” said the corporal. “Won’t you two join me?”
“What do you think?” answered Dionisio.
He poured another glass of pisco and toasted the corporal.
“You always showed up with a face as dark as night,” declared Señora Adriana. “And took off as soon as you got here, like a soul with the devil after him.”
“A person would think you were afraid of us,” continued Dionisio, patting him on the shoulder.
“I was,” Lituma acknowledged. “I still am. Because you’re mysterious and I don’t understand you. I like people to be transparent. By the way, Doña Adriana, why didn’t you ever tell me those stories about pishtacos you tell everybody else?”
“If you came to the cantina more, you would’ve heard them. You don’t know what you missed, being so standoffish!” And the woman burst into laughter.
“I don’t get angry because I know you say things about us but don’t mean to offend.” Dionisio shrugged. “A little music, let’s get some life in this graveyard.”
“Graveyard’s the right word.” Lituma nodded. “Naccos! Son of a bitch, every time I hear the name my hair’s going to stand on end. Excuse my language, señora.”
“You can say whatever you want if that livens you up a little,” the cantinero’s wife said, accepting his apology. “As long as people are happy, I can stand anything.”
She gave another bold laugh, but it was drowned out by a burst of music on Radio Junín. Lituma sat looking at Doña Adriana. In spite of her witch’s hair and rumpled clothes, at times he could see something like a trace of past beauty. Maybe it was true, maybe she had been a looker when she was young. But never anything like Mercedes, never like the Piuran who was taking his adjutant to paradise right this minute. Was she Meche or not? Those mischievous eyes flashing gray-green, they had to be Meche’s. You could understand Tomasito’s falling head over heels in love with a woman like her.
“Where’s Guard Carreño?” asked Señora Adriana.
“Having the time of his life,” he replied. “His girlfriend came to see him, all the way from Lima, and I gave them the post for their honeymoon.”
“She came to Naccos by herself? She must be a pretty tough woman,” remarked Doña Adriana.
“And you’re dying of envy, Corporal, sir,” said Dionisio.
“Sure,” Lituma acknowledged. “Because on top of everything else, she’s a beauty queen.”
The cantinero filled their glasses and poured a drink for his wife. One of the three men drinking beer began to sing in a husky voice, following the words of the huayno that was playing on the radio: “Oh, my dove, my pretty little dove…”
“A Piuran.” Lituma felt a pleasant inner warmth, and now everything seemed less serious and important than before. “A worthy representative of Piuran womanhood. You’re damn lucky they’re sending you to the Castilla district, Tomasito! Cheers, everybody!”
He took a drink and saw Dionisio and Señora Adriana wetting their lips, too. They seemed pleased and intrigued at his getting drunk, something he had never done in all his months in Naccos. Because, as the cantinero said, the night of the huayco didn’t count.
“How many people are left in camp?”
“Just the watchmen for the machinery. And a few who are too stubborn to leave,” said Dionisio.
“And you?”
“What’s there for us to do here if everybody’s leaving?” said the cantinero. “I’m an old man but I was born with itchy feet, and I can work anywhere.”
“People drink everywhere, so you can always make a living.”
“And if they don’t know how to drink, we’ll teach them,” said Doña Adriana.
“Maybe I’ll get a bear and train him and go back to the fairs and do my act.” Dionisio began to hop and growl. “When I was young I had one that read cards and swept and picked up pretty girls’ skirts.”
“I hope you don’t run into the terrucos on your travels, that’s all.”
“The same to you, Corporal, sir.”
“Can we dance, lady?”
One of the three men had come over and, swaying slightly, took hold of Doña Adriana’s hand, which was resting on the bar. Without a word, she began to dance with him. The other two men had come to the bar as well and were clapping in time to the huayno.
“So, you two will leave and take your secrets with you.” Lituma tried to look into Dionisio’s eyes. “In a little while, when we’re good and tight, will you tell me what happened to them?”
“It wouldn’t mean anything.” Dionisio was still imitating a heavy dancing bear. “The drink would make you forget everything afterward. Take a lesson from our friends here and cheer up. Your health, Corporal, sir!”
He raised his glass encouragingly, and Lituma drank with him. It was hard to cheer up with everything that was going on. But although the serruchos’ drinking had always seemed melancholy and taciturn to him, the corporal envied the cantinero, his wife, the three laborers drinking beer. As soon as they had a few, they forgot their troubles. He turned to watch the couple dancing. They were barely moving, and the man was so drunk he didn’t even bother to follow the music. Glass in hand, Lituma moved closer to the other two.
“You stayed behind to close down the camp,” he began. “Are you watchmen?”
“I’m a mechanic, they’re blasters,” said the older one, a small man whose disproportionately large face had wrinkles like scars. “We leave tomorrow to look for work in Huancayo. This is our goodbye to Naccos.”
“Even when it was full of people, the camp was like limbo,” Lituma said. “Now that it’s empty, and with all the boulders from the huayco and the barracks smashed in, it’s really depressing, isn’t it?”
He heard a stony little laugh and a half-whispered comment from the younger man, who wore an iridescent electric-blue shirt under his gray sweater, but then Lituma became distracted because the man dancing with Doña Adriana was angry about something.
“Why are you pulling away from me like that, lady?” he protested in a nasal voice, trying to press his body against hers. “Are you going to tell me now you don’t like to feel it? What’s the matter with you, lady?”
He was of average height, with a prominent nose and restless, sunken eyes that burned like coals from alcohol or emotion. Over his faded overalls he wore one of those alpaca sweaters women from the Indian communities knit and take down to sell at the fairs, and over that, a jacket that was too tight. He seemed imprisoned in his clothing.
“You take it easy and keep your hands to yourself or I won’t dance,” Señora Adriana finally said with no anger, pushing him back a little and watching Lituma out of the corner of her eye. “Dancing is one thing, but what you want is something else again, you old goat.”
She laughed, and the men drinking beer laughed, too. Lituma heard Dionisio’s hoarse guffaw at the bar. But the man who was dancing had no desire to laugh. He stood, swaying, and turned toward the cantinero, his face blazing with rage.
“Go on, Dionisio,” he shouted, and Lituma saw greenish foam in his contorted mouth, as if he were chewing coca. “Tell her to dance! Ask her why she doesn’t want to dance with me!”
“She does want to dance, but what you want is to feel her up.” Dionisio laughed again, still moving his hands and feet as if he were a bear. “They’re two different things, or don’
t you know that?”
Doña Adriana had gone back to the bar and was standing behind it, next to her husband. From there, with her elbows on the counter and her head resting on her hands, she observed the discussion with a frozen half smile, as if it had nothing to do with her.
Abruptly, the man seemed to lose interest in his own anger. He staggered to his companions, who held him up to keep him from falling. They handed him the beer. He took a long drink from the bottle. Lituma could see his eyes flashing, and when he swallowed, his Adam’s apple moved up and down in his throat like a small caged animal. The corporal went to lean on the bar, too, facing the cantinero and his wife. “I’m drunk,” he thought. But this was a joyless, heartless intoxication, very different from drinking in Piura with his brothers, the Invincibles, in La Chunga’s little bar. And at that moment he was certain she was Meche. “It’s her, it’s her.” The same girl Josefino had seduced, the one he had pawned so he could go on with the game, the one they had never seen again. Son of a bitch, a lot of water under the bridge since then. He was so involved in his memories he did not know just when the man who had gone too far with Doña Adriana came to stand next to him. He looked furious. He faced Dionisio in a boxer’s stance.
“And why can’t I feel her up when I dance with her?” he said, slamming his hand on the counter. “Why is that? Go on, explain that to me, Dionisio.”
“Because the law is here,” replied the cantinero, pointing at Lituma. “And when the law’s around, you have to behave.”
He was trying to joke, but Lituma could detect, as always when Dionisio spoke, something mocking and malicious behind his words. The cantinero looked back and forth, at him and the drunk, in amusement.
“Law or no law, cut the bullshit,” the drunk exclaimed, not even bothering to glance at Lituma. “We’re all equal here, and if anybody thinks he’s a big shot, to hell with him. Don’t you always say that drink makes us equal? So that’s that.”
Dionisio looked at Lituma, as if to say: “Now what are you going to do? This concerns you more than me.” Doña Adriana was also waiting for his reaction. Lituma could feel the eyes of the other two men fixed on him.