The Neighborhood

  “Of course I won’t, Willy,” said Juan Peineta. “You don’t know how grateful I am that you alerted me. Of course I’d never tell them that you called to warn me. If they ask me, I’ll say I haven’t seen you for a long time.”

  “That’s it, that’s right,” said Willy the Ruletero. “And given how things are, it would be better if we stopped seeing each other for a little while. Don’t you think so?”

  “Of course,” said Juan, his face contorted by worry. “You’re absolutely right, brother.”

  18

  Engineer Cárdenas’s Longest Night

  When his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness in the room and the silent figures that filled it, he made out a chalk inscription in large letters on one of the badly painted walls, which said:

  And when he hoped for the good,

  Evil suddenly occurred;

  When he hoped for the light,

  Darkness came.

  Was it biblical? He was overwhelmed by terror but very aware that the place was saturated with a stink that made him dizzy—it smelled of many things, but especially excrement, sweat, and urine—and was teeming with men, some half-naked, some sitting on a rough cement bench, and others squatting or lying on the ground. No one spoke, but Quique sensed that from the shadows surrounding him, dozens of eyes were fixed on him, the most recent arrival in this cellar, jail, torture chamber, or whatever it was. He thought he was having an incomprehensible nightmare that couldn’t be happening to him, and although all of this was due to a monstrous confusion, there was no longer time for it to be cleared up. He would probably die or, even worse, spend the rest of his life in this prison. His eyes were filled with tears; he felt an enormous sadness and began to sink into demoralization. Then he noticed that one of those faceless figures, naked from the waist up, moved on the floor very close to his feet, heaved himself up, and putting his face very close to his, whispered: “Want me to suck you off? Five soles.” In the darkness he felt the man’s hand exploring his fly.

  “Let me go, let me go, what’s wrong with you!” he shouted, standing up and hitting away the man’s hand.

  There was a sudden agitation around him, bodies that moved and calmed down again almost instantly.

  “Worse for you, whitey,” said a voice at his side, soiled by foul breath. “If you don’t like being sucked, you must like sucking. Kneel down between my legs, open your mouth wide, and start to suck. It’s dead now but it’ll get hard in no time if you do it with love.”

  Stumbling among the bodies stretched out on the floor, he made his way to the door. He pounded on it with his fists, desperate, shouting: “Guard, guard!” He heard mocking laughter behind him. No one moved, and no guard came to help him.

  Then he felt next to him, very close, a large, strong body that with assurance held him around the waist and whispered in his ear: “Don’t be afraid, white boy, I’ll look out for you.” He felt the man’s thick breath burning his face.

  “I don’t have money,” he murmured. “They took my wallet at the station.”

  Curiously, the person who was holding him around the waist gave him a certain security and lessened the fear that overwhelmed him. “It doesn’t matter, you’ll pay me later, I trust you, white boy. I’ll give you credit.” Quique felt his legs trembling and was sure that if the man let him go, he’d collapse on the floor like a sack of potatoes. “Come, let’s sit over there,” the strong man said in his ear. Quique found himself being pushed slowly, and he moved forward in the darkness, feeling his feet brushing against bodies stretched on the floor, some snoring, others babbling incoherently. He kept repeating to himself like a mantra that this wasn’t happening, reproaching God for punishing him this way, wondering what could have happened in the world that he, a professional from a good family, respected and successful, was here, in a filthy police holding cell, among criminals, degenerates, and madmen. At times he bumped into the stone bench built into the wall; the strong man holding him gave a curt order to make a space so they could sit down. He must have been one of the bosses, because he was obeyed immediately. He made Quique sit down and sat beside him, very close, always holding him around the waist. Quique felt the man’s body against his and knew he was very strong. The awful fear that crushed him began to subside. “Good, thank you,” he murmured very softly. “Help me, please, with these guys. I’ll pay you later, whatever you want.”

  There was a pause and Quique felt that the strong man brought his face up to his—it seemed that his fetid breath came into his nose and mouth, making him dizzy—and said very quietly, in a whisper: “You were lucky, white boy, that I came forward. If those blacks over there get you and take you to their corner, they’ll pull down your trousers, put a little Vaseline in your asshole, and line up to fuck you for as long as they want. And that wouldn’t be the worst, because at least one of them has AIDS. But don’t worry, as long as I protect you, nobody’ll touch you. I’m the law here, white boy.”

  Quique’s heart skipped a beat when he noted that one of the strong man’s hands had moved away from his waist, but it wasn’t to make him more comfortable but to take his right hand and pull it to his fly. With horror he felt that it was open, and that his fingers were touching a penis as hard as rock. He made a movement to pull away, but the strong man stopped him brutally, flattening him against the wall, helped by his own weight. Now the tone of his voice had changed, it was threatening: “Jerk me off, white boy. I don’t want to hurt you, but if you don’t do what I say, I will. I’ll protect you, I promise. Now jerk me off, I’m horny.” Repulsed, frightened, trembling, Quique obeyed. Seconds later he felt the strong man ejaculate. He had his semen on his hand and surely on his trousers as well. At some point he had started to cry. The tears ran down his cheeks; he felt an awful shame and disgust with himself. “Forgive me, forgive me for being such a coward,” he thought and didn’t even know whose forgiveness he was asking for, because he no longer believed in God or anything else, maybe only the devil. Anything was better than what he was going through now, even their killing him, even killing himself.

  He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but he was too tense and frightened to let himself drift off. He tried to calm down. There was some confusion, a misunderstanding. He, Enrique Cárdenas, couldn’t be abused like the indecent fauna of pickpockets, pimps, bums, and faggots that crowded this pestilential place of degenerates and monsters. He was too well known and important to be mistreated this way. Marisa would have called Luciano and between them alerted all his influential friends, and not only in Peru, his mining partners, the institutions he belonged to, they would have awakened ministers, deputies, judges, the Doctor, President Fujimori, filed complaints and sought redress. That’s it, that’s right. There would be a great mobilization of people, night and day, becoming interested in his case, taking action. They’d come and get him out of here, begging his pardon. He would tell them it was all right. He forgave, he pardoned, he forgot. But in his heart and in his head he would never forgive the pigs who had made him suffer this great humiliation, made him live these revolting days and nights among repulsive people, who had offended, degraded, and mocked him, and made him suffer the worst fear and most terrible shame of his life. The hand into which the son of a bitch beside him had come was sticky—he seemed to have fallen asleep—and he didn’t dare take out his handkerchief and wipe away the dried semen in case the guy awoke and demanded something even worse than being masturbated. He felt an unchecked desire for revenge, to make Fujimori and the Doctor pay for this night of horror. Because it was them, of course it was, no one but them who’d had him imprisoned.

  And then he detected a ray of light at the only window in the room. Was day breaking? Between the bars, that whitish gray light cheered him, lessening his despair. His head was itching and he thought it must be crawling with lice from this hellhole. When he got out he’d have to shave his head and rub his skull with alcohol; he’d heard that this was how they deloused recruits in the barracks. Was it possible
this was happening to him? He felt all his muscles softening. “I’m not falling asleep,” he thought before he lost consciousness. “I’m passing out.” Asleep or passed out, he had nightmares that he couldn’t precisely remember afterward, only that all around him it was the dead of night, a world of darkness, his feet sinking into a gelatinous mud and invisible creatures biting his ankles, the way they did during that trip to the Amazon when he was a student, when gnats had pierced the leather of his boots and covered his ankles with bites. He smelled the odor of semen and retched but couldn’t vomit.

  When he opened his eyes, light was coming in through the grated window of the long room and he thought he was watching an impressionist movie, because the twenty or so men—old and young—crowded into the place were like human caricatures. Shaggy, covered with scars, with tattoos, some half-naked and barefoot, others in flip-flops, lying on the floor or huddled on the cement bench, sleeping openmouthed, one-eyed, toothless, short Indians who looked around in fear, husky black-Indian mixed breeds without shoes and in torn overalls. The strong man he had masturbated was no longer beside him. Which of these poor devils could he be? He noticed that nobody seemed to look at him or pay him any attention. His bones ached because of his uncomfortable position. He had an awful thirst and his tongue was like sandpaper rasping against his gums. He thought that with a cup of tea or coffee he would feel much better. Or if he could take a bath! What would happen to him now?

  In the police station they had taken not only his wallet and watch but his wedding ring, too. What time could it be? How many hours had he been in this hellhole? How much longer would he be here? He thought he wouldn’t spend another night in this den, exposed to the aberrations of these degenerates. At least for the first two days, while they were interrogating him, they had kept him by himself in a small room, with a chair. He would bang his head against the wall until he split it open and bled to death. He would put an end to this even if he had to commit suicide. And then he felt someone shaking his arm to wake him. He had fallen asleep or passed out again.

  He saw the face of an old man with a tangled beard who seemed to be chewing coca. He heard him say in a well-masticated Spanish: “They’re calling you, Don.” And he pointed at the door.

  It was very difficult for him to stand and even more difficult to start to walk, sidestepping the bodies on the floor that were in his way. The door was closed but as soon as he knocked on it with his knuckles, it opened with a metallic sound. He saw the face of a guard in a helmet and armed with a submachine gun.

  “Engineer Enrique Cárdenas?” the guard asked.

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Follow me with everything,” said the guard.

  “What do you mean ‘everything’?” he asked.

  “Your things.”

  “My things are what I’m wearing.”

  “Fine.”

  It was a great effort for him to climb the stairs that he didn’t remember coming down the night before, when they put him in the cell. He had to stop several times, climbing the ten or fifteen steps while leaning against the wall. At the top of the stairs was another door and then a corridor where he saw several guards smoking and talking. He felt a fatigue so great he couldn’t lift his feet but had to drag them. His heart was pounding and he felt dizzy. “I have to fight it, I can’t pass out again.”

  At last a door was opened and the strong light of a sunny day came in. Through the mist over his eyes he saw Marisa’s silhouette, so beautiful, and Luciano, as elegant as always, and he attempted to smile at them but his legs weakened and things went black. “He’s fainted,” he heard someone say. “Call the medic, hurry.”

  19

  Shorty and Power

  Shorty knew this could happen. But she never imagined it would happen like this, and especially with whom. Since making the accusation that her boss, Rolando Garro, the director of Exposed, had probably been killed by order of the miner Enrique Cárdenas, whose photographs in an orgy with prostitutes Garro had published in his magazine, she had been the center of the news: photos, interviews on the radio, in newspapers, and on television, and endless interrogations by the police, the prosecutor, and the examining magistrate. Thanks to her audacity and the huge publicity generated by her accusation, she now felt safe. She had repeated it endlessly in every interview: “If I’m hit by a car or a drunkard smashes my head against the pavement, you’ll know who is behind my death: the same person who paid the assassin who so cruelly murdered my boss, my teacher, and my friend, Rolando Garro.”

  Was her life really safe now with the publicity that surrounded her? For the moment, no doubt about it. Which did not prevent the fact that at night, when she got into bed in her little house on Teniente Arancibia Alleyway, in Five Corners, she suddenly had one of those attacks of terror that made her feel ice in her spine. How long would she remain safe thanks to the accusation? When she stopped appearing in the papers, the danger would start up again. Especially now that Engineer Enrique Cárdenas, after being held a few days for interrogation, had been freed provisionally by the judge, though with the order not to leave the country.

  This time the car came not at night but at dawn. There was already a crack of light at her small bedroom window when Shorty woke to the sound of a car braking on the street facing the alleyway where her house stood. A short time later she heard knocking at her door. There were three men, all in civilian clothes.

  “You have to come with us, Señorita Leguizamón,” said the oldest one, a pudgy mixed-breed with a gold tooth, wearing a scarf and a leather jacket; when he spoke he showed the red tip of his tongue, like a lizard.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “You’ll see,” the man replied with a smile that attempted to be reassuring. “Don’t worry. Someone important is expecting you. I suppose you’re too intelligent to turn down this invitation, aren’t you? If you’d like to wash and fix yourself up a little, there’s no problem. We’ll wait for you here.”

  She washed her face and brushed her teeth, and threw on some clothes. Coarse linen trousers, sandals, a blue blouse, and the handbag with her papers and pencil holders. An important visit? A trick, of course. On her cell phone she wrote: “Three men have come for me. I don’t know where they’re taking me. Reporters, my friends, pay attention, anything might happen to me.” She tried to control herself and hide the fear she felt. Something told her that this was one of those decisive moments that change a life or end it. Had she wagered correctly, making that accusation, or had she put a rope around her neck? Now you’ll find out, Shorty. “I’m not afraid of death,” she said to herself, trembling from head to foot. But she was afraid they’d make her suffer. Would they torture her? She remembered reading somewhere that the Doctor had ordered some military men who had conspired against Fujimori to be injected with the AIDS virus. She felt a few drops of piss stain her trousers.

  The car didn’t go toward the center of Lima; it turned at the Plaza Italia, drove down the Huanta Concourse to Grau Avenue, and then, to her surprise, took the Panamericana, toward the beaches. As soon as they had entered the Panamericana Sur Highway, one of the men between whom she was sitting took out a hood of unbleached linen and told her she had to cover her head. He helped her to put on the hood with the greatest delicacy. They didn’t handcuff her or tie her hands. The hood was padded, it didn’t scratch her face, it was a gentle sensation, almost a caress. She saw nothing but black. It seemed they were making a lot of turns; finally she heard voices and, after a long time, the car stopped. They helped her get out, and taking her by both arms, had her go up some steps and walk down what must have been a long hallway. She noted that they treated her with consideration, taking care that she didn’t trip or bump into anything. Finally she heard them open and close a door.

  “You can take that rag off your head now,” said a man’s voice.

  She did, and the person in front of her was exactly who she thought it was from his voice. Him, it was him. Her surprise was so great that
now Shorty’s knees trembled more than before. Was it really him? She clenched her teeth so that fear wouldn’t make them chatter. They were in a windowless room, the lights were on, there were several paintings in strident colors on the walls, chairs and sofas, end tables with miniature ornaments, a thick rug that muffled footsteps. Not very far away one could hear the murmur of a rough ocean. Was this his famous secret refuge at Arica Beach? Shorty was still astonished. It was him, no doubt about it, and he was observing her, intrigued, examining her openly, as if she weren’t a human being but an object or an animal. Those watery, slightly protruding gray eyes from which a glacial look emanated. She had seen him in hundreds of photographs, but now he looked different: older, rather short, hair beginning to thin, exposing parts of his skull, full cheeks, a mouth open in a grimace of boredom or displeasure, a body that showed signs of obesity in breasts and belly. So this was the lord and master of Peru. He wasn’t in uniform but wore civilian clothes, dark brown trousers, moccasins with no socks, and a slightly wrinkled yellow shirt printed with stars. He was holding a cup of coffee that he raised to his mouth from time to time, taking a sip, without halting the detailed ocular inspection he was subjecting her to.

  “Julieta Leguizamón,” he murmured suddenly in a thick voice, as if he were recovering from a cold or had just caught one. “The famous Shorty about whom Garro told me so much. All of it good, of course.”