“Amotape, what kind of a name is that?” asked Lieutenant Silva sarcastically. “Can it be true that it comes from that story about the priest and his maid? What do you think, Doña Lupe?”
Amotape is thirty miles south of Talara, surrounded by sun-parched rocks and scorching sand dunes. There are dry bushes, carob thickets, and here and there a eucalyptus tree-pale green patches that brighten the otherwise monotonous gray of the arid landscape. The trees bend over, stretch out and twist around to absorb whatever moisture might be in the air; in the distance they look like dancing witches. In their benevolent shade, herds of squalid goats are always nibbling the crunchy pods that fall off their branches; there are also some sleepy mules and a shepherd, usually a small boy or girl, sunburnt, with bright eyes.
“Do you think that old story about Amotape with the priest and his maid is the truth, Doña Lupe?”
The hamlet is a confusion of adobe huts and little corrals made from wooden stakes. It has a few aristocratic houses clustered around an old plaza with a wooden gazebo. There are almond trees, bougainvilleas, and a stone monument to Simón Rodriguez, Simón Bolivar’s teacher, who died in this solitary place. The citizens of Amotape, poor, dusty folks, live off their goats, their cotton fields, and the truck and bus drivers who detour between Talara and Sullana in order to drink some chicha, the local corn beer, or have a snack.
The name of the town, according to local legend, comes from colonial times, when Amotape, a rich town then, had a greedy parish priest who hated to feed visitors. His maid abetted him in this by warning him whenever she saw a traveler approaching. She would call out, “Amo, tape, tape la olla, que viene gente” (Master, cover, cover the pot, people are coming). Could it be true?
“Who knows,” murmured the woman at last. “Maybe yes, maybe no. God only knows.”
She was very thin with olive-colored parchment-like skin that sagged and hung from her cheekbones and upper arms. From the moment she saw them coming, she had a look of distrust on her face. “More distrust than people usually have on their faces when they spot us,” thought Lituma. She studied them with deep-sunk, frightened eyes, and occasionally rubbed her arms as if she’d felt a chill. When her eyes met theirs, she tried to smile, but it was so false it made her look like a cheap whore. “You’re scared shitless, lady,” thought Lituma. “You know something.” She’d looked at them like that as she served them fried and salted banana chips and stewed kid with rice. And she went on looking at them like that every time the lieutenant asked her to refill their gourds with chicha.
When would Lieutenant Silva start asking her questions? Lituma felt the corn beer going to his head. It was high noon and hot as hell. He and the lieutenant were the only customers. Looking out the door, they could see the slumped-over little Church of St. Nicholas, heroically resisting the passage of time. A few hundred yards beyond the dunes was the highway and the trucks going to Sullana or Talara. Lituma and the lieutenant had hitched a ride on a truck loaded with chickens. They’d been dropped off on the highway, and as they walked through the town they’d seen curious faces pop out of every shack in Amotape. The lieutenant asked which place was Doña Lupe’s, and the chorus of kids around them instantly pointed out the place where he and Lituma were now sipping chicha out of gourds.
Lituma sighed in relief. At least the woman existed, so the trip might not be a wild-goose chase. They’d had to ride on the back of the truck, deafened by the clucking, with the smell of chicken shit in their noses and with feathers flying in their mouths and ears. The unrelenting sun had given them a headache. When they went back to Talara, they’d have to walk all the way to the highway, stand there, and wait until some truck driver condescended to give them a lift.
“Afternoon, Doña Lupe,” Lieutenant Silva had said as they walked in. “We’ve come to see if your chicha, your banana chips, and your kid stew are as good as people say. We’ve heard a lot of good things about your place; I hope you don’t let us down.”
Judging by the way she looked at them, Doña Lupe hadn’t swallowed the lieutenant’s story. Especially, thought Lituma, when you consider how sour her chicha is and how tasteless this stew is. At first there were children crowding around them, but little by little they got bored and drifted out. Now the only ones left in the shack were three half-naked little girls sitting around the stove playing with some empty gourds. They must have been Doña Lupe’s daughters, though it was hard to see how a woman her age could have such young kids. Maybe she wasn’t as old as she looked. All their attempts to strike up a conversation with her failed. They’d talked about the weather, the drought, this year’s cotton crop, how Amotape got its name-and she’d answered every question the same way: yes, no, I don’t know, or just plain silence.
“I’m going to say something that’s going to surprise you, Lituma. You think Doña Adriana’s fat, right? Well, you’re wrong. What she is is plump, which is not the same as being fat.”
When was the lieutenant going to get started? How-would he do it? Lituma couldn’t sit still; his boss’s tricks constantly surprised him and aroused his admiration. It was clear that Lieutenant Silva was as eager as he was to untangle the mystery surrounding Palomino Molero’s death, and he’d seen how excited the lieutenant had become when he read the anonymous letter. Sniffing at the paper like a bloodhound sniffing a trail, he declared, “This isn’t bullshit. It’s a promising lead. We’ve got to go to Amotape.”
“Know the difference between a fat woman and a plump woman, Lituma? A fat woman is soft, covered with rolls, spongy. You poke her, and your hand sinks in as if she were made of cottage cheese. You think you’ve been fooled. A plump woman is hard, filled-out, she’s got what it takes and more. Everything in the right places. It’s all well distributed and well proportioned. You poke her and your finger bounces off. There’s always enough, more than enough, enough to take all you want and even to give some away.”
All the way to Amotape, as the desert sun bore its way through their caps, the lieutenant kept on talking about the anonymous note, speculating about Lieutenant Dufó, Colonel Mindreau, and his daughter. But from the moment they entered Doña Lupe’s shack, it was as if his interest in Palomino Molero had gone into eclipse. As they ate, he talked only about how Amotape got its name, or-of course -about Doña Adriana. And out loud to boot, totally unconcerned that Doña Lupe might hear his lascivious remarks.
“It’s the difference between fat and muscle, Lituma. A fat woman is pure lard. A plump woman is pure muscle. Tits that are pure muscle-that’s the best thing in the world! Even better than this stewed kid of Doña Lupe’s. Don’t laugh, Lituma, it’s the God’s honest truth. You don’t know about these things, but I do. A big, muscular ass, muscular thighs, shoulders, hips: isn’t that a lovely dish to set before a king? God almighty! That’s the way my baby back in Talara is, Lituma. Not fat, but plump. A woman who’s pure muscle, goddamn it. Just what I like.”
Lituma laughed because it was his duty to laugh, but Doña Lupe remained serious throughout the lieutenant’s discourse, scrutinizing the two of them. “She’s waiting,” thought Lituma, “probably as nervous as I am.” When would the lieutenant get going? He acted as if he had all the time in the world. And he just never gave up talking about the fat love of his life.
“You might well be wondering how it is that I know Doña Adrianita is plump and not fat. Does that mean I’ve touched her? Just here and there, Lituma, just here and there. Quick feels. It’s dumb, I know it. And you’re right to think it. But the fact is that I’ve seen her. There it is, now I’ve told you my biggest secret. I’ve seen her bathing in her slip over on that little beach behind Crab Point where all the Talara women go so the men won’t see them. Why do you think I disappear all the time at about five in the afternoon with my binoculars? I tell you I’m going to have coffee over at the Hotel Royal. Why do you think I climb up that point by that little beach? What else, Lituma? I go to see my honey bathing in her pink slip. When that slip gets wet, it’s as if she had nothing on at all, Lituma. God almighty! Get out the fire extinguisher, Doña Lupe, I’m on fire! Put out this blaze! Now that’s where you can see a plump body, Lituma. That hard ass, those hard tits, pure muscle from head to toe. Someday I’ll take you with me and show you. I’ll lend you my binoculars. Then you’ll really get cross-eyed. And you’ll see how right I am. That’s right, Lituma, I’m not jealous, at least of enlisted men. If you behave yourself, I’ll take you out to the point. You’ll be in heaven when you see that Amazon.”
It was as if he’d forgotten why they’d come to Amotape, goddamn it. But just when Lituma’s impatience had reached its limit, Lieutenant Silva suddenly fell silent. He took off his sunglasses-Lituma saw that his eyes were bright and incisive-cleaned them with his handkerchief, and put them on again.
He calmly lit a cigarette and began to speak in honeyed tones: “Excuse me, Doña Lupe. Come on over here a minute and sit down with us, will you? We have to have a little talk, okay?”
“What about?” Her teeth were chattering, and she was shaking so much it was as if she had malaria. Lituma realized that he, too, was trembling.
“About Palomino Molero, Doña Lupe, what else could it be? I wouldn’t talk with you about my sweetie over in Talara, my little chubby, right? Come on, sit right here.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” She sat down like a robot on the bench the lieutenant had pointed to. She seemed to have shriveled and gotten thinner than before. “I swear I don’t know who that is.”
“Of course you know who Palomino Molero is, Doña Lupe.” The lieutenant was no longer smiling and spoke in a cold, hard tone that caught even Lituma off-guard: “Okay, now we’re going to find out what happened.” Lieutenant Silva went on: “You remember him, Doña Lupe. The Air Force guy they killed over in Talara. The one they burned with cigarettes and then hung. The one who got a stick shoved up his backside. Palomino Molero, a skinny kid who sang boleros. He was here, right where we are now. Now do you remember?”
Lituma saw the woman open her eyes and her mouth, but she said nothing. She stood there like that, her eyes jumping out of her head. One of the little girls started to cry.
“I’ll be honest with you.” The lieutenant exhaled a mouthful of smoke and seemed distracted, watching the smoke disappear. Suddenly he went on, in a harsh voice: “If you don’t cooperate, if you don’t answer my questions, there’s going to be a fucking mess here the likes of which you’ve never seen. I’ll tell you right out, bad words and all, so you can see how serious it is. I don’t want to have to take you in, to bring you all the way to Talara and throw you in jail. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in jail for having withheld evidence and being an accomplice after the fact. I assure you that I don’t want any of that, Doña Lupe.”
The child continued to whimper, and Lituma put his finger on his lips to tell her to keep still. She stuck out her tongue and smiled.
“They’ll kill me.” She moaned, but she wasn’t crying. There was animal fear in her dry eyes. Lituma didn’t dare take a breath, because he imagined that if he moved or made a sound something bad would happen.
He saw that Lieutenant Silva very carefully undid his holster, took out his service revolver, and put it on the table, shoving the remains of the goat stew to one side. He patted the pistol as he spoke: “No one’s going to lay a hand on you, Doña Lupe. As long as you tell us the truth. I’ll defend you myself if it comes to that.”
The crazy braying of a donkey broke the silence of the world outside the shack. “They’re breeding her,” thought Lituma.
“They threatened me. They said, ‘If you talk, you’re dead,’ “ howled the woman, raising her arms over her head. She squeezed her face between her hands and twisted her entire body. Her teeth were chattering loudly. “It’s not my fault, what did I do, sir? I can’t die and leave my babies alone in the world. My husband was killed by a tractor, sir.”
The children playing in the dirt turned when they heard her scream, but after a few seconds they lost interest and went back to their games. The one who’d started to cry had crawled to the doorway of the cabin.
“They took out their guns too, so who should I believe them or you?” She tried to cry, made faces, rubbed her arms, but her eyes were still dry. She beat her breast and made the sign of the cross.
Lituma took a look outside. No, her screams had not brought out the neighbors. Through the doorway and even through some of the cracks in the walls, you could see the closed door of St. Nicholas Church as well as the deserted plaza. The children, who up to a minute ago had been kicking a rag ball around the wooden gazebo, were no longer there. “They’ve called them and hidden them. Their parents grabbed them by the neck and dragged them into the shacks so they wouldn’t see or hear what was going to happen here.” They all knew about Palomino Molero. They were all witnesses. Now for sure the mystery would be solved.
“Calm down, let’s go over this thing one piece at a time. We’re in no hurry.” But again the lieutenant’s tone contradicted his words: he didn’t want to calm her down but get her even more frightened. He was cold and threatening: “Nobody’s going to touch you. I swear on my honor. Providing you tell the truth. Providing you tell me everything you know.”
“I don’t know anything, nothing. I’m afraid, my God.” But anyone could see in her face, in her dejection, that she knew everything and that she had no strength left to deny it. “Help me, St. Nicholas.”
She crossed herself twice and kissed her crossed fingers.
“Start at the beginning. When and why did Palomino Molero come here? How long did you know him?”
“I didn’t know him. I’d never seen him before in my life.” Her voice rose and fell, as if she’d lost control of her throat. Her eyes were rolling in her head. “I wouldn’t have let him stay here if it hadn’t been for the girl. They were looking for the priest, Father Ezequiel. But he wasn’t here, almost never is, traveling around the way he does.”
“The girl?” Lituma blurted out. A glance from the lieutenant made him bite his tongue.
“The girl. She was the one. They begged me so much that I felt sorry for them. I didn’t even get any money out of it, sir, and God knows I need it. My husband was run over by a tractor, I told you, didn’t I? I swear by God in heaven and by St. Nicholas, our patron saint. The two of them didn’t have a cent. Just enough to pay for their dinner, that’s it. I gave them the bed for nothing. Because they were going to get married. I was sorry for them, they were so young, just kids, and they seemed so much in love, sir. How could I know what was going to happen? Oh, God, what did I do that you should give me such heartache?”
The lieutenant, blowing smoke rings and glaring at the woman through his sunglasses, waited for her to cross herself, squeeze her arms, and rub her face as if trying to erase it.
“I know you’re honest. I could see that the moment I walked through the door. Don’t worry about anything, just go on talking. How many days were the lovebirds here?”
Again the obscene braying pierced the morning air. Nearer this time. And Lituma also heard galloping hooves, that’s done her,” he deduced.
“Only two days. They were waiting for the priest, Father Ezequiel, but he was away. He always is. He says he goes to baptize children and marry people out on the haciendas in the mountains, that he goes to Ayabaca because he’s so devoted to the statue of Our Lord in Captivity there, but who knows. People say a thousand different things about all that traveling around. I told them not to wait, because Father Ezequiel might not be back for a week or ten days, who could tell. They were leaving the next day for San Jacinto. It was Sunday and I myself advised them to go there. On Sundays, a priest from Sullana goes to San Jacinto to say Mass. He could marry them in the hacienda chapel. That’s what they wanted most in the world, a priest to marry them. Here they were wasting their time waiting around. Go to San Jacinto, that’s what I told them.”
“But the lovebirds didn’t get to San Jacinto that Sunday.”
“No.” Doña Lupe was struck dumb and looked back and forth from Lituma to the lieutenant. She trembled and her teeth chattered.
“They didn’t get to San Jacinto that Sunday because…” Lieutenant Silva helped her along.
“Because someone came looking for them on Saturday afternoon,” the terrified woman whispered, her eyes jumping out of her head.
It still wasn’t dark. The sun was a ball of fire among the eucalyptus and carob trees; the tin roofs of some houses reflected the blazing sunset. She was bent over the stove cooking and stopped when she saw the car. It left the highway, turned toward Amotape, bounced, raised a dust cloud, and ground its way straight to the plaza. Doña Lupe watched every inch of the way as it approached. They, too, heard and saw it. But they paid it no attention until it skidded to a halt in front of the church. They were sitting there kissing. They were kissing all the time. Stop it, now, you’re setting a bad example for the children. Why don’t you talk or sing.
“Because he sang beautifully, didn’t he?” whispered the lieutenant, encouraging her to go on. “Mostly boleros, right?”
“Waltzes and tonderos, too.” She sighed so loud that Lituma jumped. “And even cumananas, you know, what they sing when two singers challenge each other. He did it really well, he was so funny.”
“The car rolled into Amotape and you saw it,” the lieutenant reminded her. “Did they run away? Did they hide?”
“She wanted him to run away and hide. She scared him, saying, Run away, honey, go away, run, run, don’t stay here, I don’t want them to…” “No, sweetheart, remember, you’re mine now. We’ve spent two nights together, you’re my wife. Now nobody can come between us. They’ll have to accept our love. I’m not leaving. I’ll wait for him, talk to him.”
“She was scared out of her wits, run, run, if they catch you, they’ll… I don’t know what, get out of here, I’ll keep them here, I don’t want them to kill you, darling.” She was so scared that Doña Lupe also got scared: “Who are they?” she asked the young couple, pointing at the dusty car, the silhouettes that got out and stood anonymously framed by the burning horizon. “Who’s coming? My God! What’s going to happen?”
“Who was coming, Doña Lupe?” asked the lieutenant blowing smoke rings.
“Who do you think it was? Who else could it be but your kind?”
Lieutenant Silva didn’t move a muscle. “You mean the Guardia Civil? Or do you mean the military police from the Talara Air Force Base? Is that it?”
“Your kind. Men in uniforms. Isn’t it all the same thing?”
“Actually it isn’t. But it doesn’t matter.”
At that moment, even though he missed not a one of Doña Lupe’s revelations, Lituma saw them. They were sitting right there, in the shade, holding hands, an instant before disaster struck. He’d bent his head covered with short, black curls over her shoulder and, caressing her ear with his lips, was singing to her: “Two souls joined by God in this world, two souls who loved each other, that’s what we were, you and I.” Moved by the tenderness and the beauty of his voice, she had tears in her eyes, and so she could hear him better, she shrugged her shoulders and crinkled up her loving face. There was no evidence of nastiness or arrogance in those adolescent features sweetened by love.
Lituma felt desolated by sadness as he imagined the vehicle of the uniformed men: first a roaring motor, then clouds of yellow dust. It traced a path around midday Amotape and after a few horrid moments stopped a few yards from the very doorless shack where they were now. “At least he must have been very happy during the two days he spent here.”
“Only two men?” Lituma was surprised to see the lieutenant so surprised. He avoided looking him in the eye, out of an obscure superstition.
“Only two,” repeated the woman, nervous and uncertain. She squinted toward the ceiling, as if trying to figure out where she’d made her mistake. “Nobody else. They got out and the jeep was empty. Yes, a jeep. There were only two of them, I’m sure. Why do you ask, sir?”
“No reason,” said the lieutenant, grinding his cigarette butt on the floor with his shoe. “I would have thought that at least a patrol would have come for them. But if you saw two, there were two and that’s that. Go on.”
Another bray interrupted Doña Lupe. It floated in the scorching midday atmosphere of Amotape, prolonged, full of high and low notes, deep, funny, seminal. As soon as they heard it, the children playing on the floor got up and ran or toddled out, splitting their sides with malicious laughter. “They’re going to find the mare and see how the donkey mounts her and makes her yell like that,” Lituma thought.
“Are you all right?” said the shadow of the older man, the shadow that did not have a pistol in its hand. “Did he hurt you? Are you all right?”
It had suddenly gotten dark. In the few seconds it had taken for the two men to walk the short distance from the jeep to the shack, the afternoon had turned to night.
“If you hurt him, I’ll kill myself,” said the girl, not shouting but challenging, her heels firmly planted on the ground, her fists tight, her chin shaking. “If you touch him, I’ll kill myself. But before I do, I’ll tell everything. Everyone will be ashamed and disgusted at you.”
Doña Lupe was shaking like a leaf. “What’s going on, sir? Who are you? What can I do for you? This is my own little place, I mind my own business. I’m just a poor woman.”
The shadow with the weapon, who flashed fire whenever he looked at the boy-the older one looked only at the girl -went up to Doña Lupe and put his pistol between her withered breasts. “We’re not here, we don’t even exist” he instructed her, drunk with hate and fury. “Open your mouth and you’re a dead bitch. I’ll blow your brains out. Understand?”
She went down on her knees, begging. She knew nothing, understood nothing. “What did I do, sir? Nothing, nothing. I took in two kids who asked for a room. For the love of God, think of your own mother, sir, don’t shoot, we don’t want any trouble or disgrace around here.”
“Did the younger man call the older one colonel?”
“I don’t know, sir,” she replied, trying to find her way through the interrogation. She was trying to guess what he wanted her to say. “Colonel? The younger addressing the older one? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t remember. I’m a poor, ignorant woman, sir. I don’t have anything to do with all this, it was all an accident. The one with the gun said that if I opened my mouth and told what I’m telling you, he’d come back and blow my brains out, then shoot me in the stomach, and then shoot me between the legs. What could I do, what was I going to do? I lost my husband, he was run over by a tractor. I’ve got six kids and I can just barely feed them. I had thirteen, and seven died. If I get killed, the other six will die. Is that fair?”
“The one with the gun, was he an officer? Did he have stripes on his shoulder or just a silver bar on his cap?”
Lituma began to believe in telepathy. His boss was asking the very questions he was thinking. He was panting, feeling dizzy.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t you stop torturing me? Don’t ask me questions I don’t understand. What are stripes? What are you talking about?”
Lituma heard her, but he was seeing the young couple again, clearly, despite the blue shadows that covered Amotape. Doña Lupe, on her knees in front of the frenetic, gesticulating young man, was whimpering right there on the doorstep; the old man’s staring eyes were bitterly, painfully, disdainfully on the girl, who defiantly protected the thin boy with her own body and kept him from stepping up to the men in uniform. Lituma was seeing how the arrival of the outsiders had taken the children, the old people, and even the dogs and goats of Amotape off the streets and buried them in their houses. Everyone was afraid of getting involved in this kind of trouble.
“You keep quiet, keep your mouth shut, who do you think you are, who gave you the right, what are you doing here anyway,” said the girl, protecting him, pushing him out, holding him back, stopping him from speaking. At the same time she kept on threatening the shadow of the older man: “I’ll kill myself and tell the world everything.”
“I love her with all my heart, I’m an honorable man, I’ll dedicate my life to loving her and making her happy.” No matter how he tried, the boy couldn’t get around the body of the girl who was shielding him, in order to come forward. The old man’s shadow never turned toward him but remained fixed on the girl, as if no one else existed in Amotape or the world for that matter. But the young man half turned the instant he heard the boy speak and lunged toward him, muttering curses and waving his pistol as if he were going to smash in the boy’s head. The girl grabbed him and tangled him up. Then the shadow of the older man gave a dry, definitive order: “At ease,” which the other obeyed instantly.
“All he said was At ease? Or did he say At ease, Dufó? Or maybe At ease, Lieutenant Dufó?”
This went beyond telepathy. The lieutenant asked the questions using the same words that came to Lituma. “I don’t know,” swore Doña Lupe. “I never heard any names. I only found out that his name was Palomino Molero when I saw the photos in the Piura newspaper. I recognized him right away. My heart broke, sir. That’s him, the kid who ran away with the girl and brought her to Amotape. But I never found out her name or the names of the men who came looking for them. And I don’t want to know, either. Don’t tell me if you know. I’m cooperating, okay? Don’t mention their names!”
“Don’t get upset, stop shouting, don’t say those things,” said the shadow of the old one. “Child, how can you think of threatening me? You’re going to kill yourself, you?”
“If you hurt him, if you touch a hair on his head.” In the sky, behind a bluish haze, the shadows grew darker. The stars had come out. Some candles began to flicker among the adobe walls, cast-iron gates, and bamboo fences of Amotape.
“Hurt him? I’m going to shake hands with him and say to him, from the bottom of my heart, ‘I forgive you,’” murmured the shadow of the old one. He actually did extend his arm toward him, although he was yet to look at him. Doña Lupe began to feel better. She saw they were shaking hands. The boy was so overcome with emotion he could barely speak.
“I swear to you, I’ll do anything, she’s the light of my life, the holiest thing, she…”
“Now you two have to shake hands as well,” ordered the older shadow. “No grudges. No rank here. Just two men, three men, arranging their affairs, the way real men always do things. Happy now, dear? Calmed down? That’s right, it’s all over now. Let’s get out of here.”
He quickly took his wallet out of his back pocket. Doña Lupe felt the sweat-moistened bank notes in her hand and heard a gentlemanly voice thanking her for all her trouble and advising her to forget the whole thing. Then she saw the shadow of the older man walk out of the shack toward the jeep. But the younger shadow poked its pistol in her chest again before leaving: “If you open your mouth, you know what will happen to you. Remember that.”
“And the kid and the girl got into the jeep like two little lambs, just like that? And they just drove off?” The lieutenant couldn’t believe it, judging by the expression on his face. Lituma didn’t believe it either.
“She didn’t want to, she didn’t trust them, and tried to stop him: Let’s stay right here. Don’t believe him, don’t believe him.”
“Come on now, let’s get going, my dear,” the voice of the older one encouraged them from the jeep. “He’s a deserter, don’t forget. He has to go back. This has to be taken care of immediately. This black mark has to be erased from his service record. He’s got to think of his future. Let’s get going.”
“Yes, dear, he’s right, he’s forgiven us, let’s do what he wants and get in. I believe what he says. He wouldn’t lie.”
“He wouldn’t lie.” Lituma felt a tear run down his cheek to his lips. It was salty, a drop of sea water. He kept on hearing Doña Lupe, her voice as deep as the ocean, interrupted from time to time by the lieutenant’s questions. He vaguely understood that she was no longer telling anything she hadn’t already said about the matter they had come to investigate. She cursed her bad luck, she wondered what would happen to her, she asked heaven what sin she’d committed that she should be tangled up in this horrible story. At times she sobbed. But nothing she said interested Lituma.
It was a kind of waking dream, again and again he saw the happy couple enjoying their premarital honeymoon in the humble streets of Amotape: he a half-breed cholo from Castilla; she a white girl of good family. There are no barriers to love, as the old waltz said. In this case the song was correct: love had broken through social and racial prejudices, as well as the economic abyss that separated the two lovers. The love they must have felt for each other had to have been intense, uncontrollable, to make them do what they did. “I’ve never felt a love like that, not even that time I fell in love with Meche, Josefmo’s girl.” No, he’d fallen in love a couple of times, but they were passing fancies that faded if the woman gave in or if she put up such a strong resistance that he finally got bored. But he’d never felt a love so powerful he’d risk his life for it, the kind the kid had felt, the kind that had made the girt stand up to the whole world. “Maybe I’m not the kind who gets to feel real love,” he thought. “Probably it’s because I’ve spent my life chasing whores with the Unstoppables, my heart’s turned whore, and now I can’t love a woman the way the kid did.”
“What am I going to do now, sir?” he heard Doña Lupe implore. “Give me some advice, at least.”
The lieutenant, already standing, asked how much he owed her for the chicha and the stewed kid. When the woman said it was on the house, he insisted. He wasn’t, he said, one of those parasitic cops who abused their power, he paid his own way, on or off duty.
“But at least tell me what I should do now.” She had her palms pressed together as if she were praying. “They’re going to kill me, the way they killed that poor kid. Don’t you see that? I don’t know where to go. I have no place to go. Didn’t I cooperate the way you asked? Tell me what I should do now.”
“Just stay quiet, Doña Lupe.” The lieutenant put the money for the meal next to the chicha gourd. “No one’s going to kill you. No one will even bother you. Just go on living your normal life and forget what you saw, what you heard, and what you told us. Take it easy, now.” He nicked the visor of his cap with his fingers, his usual way of saying goodbye. Lituma got up quickly and followed him out, forgetting to bid Doña Lupe farewell.
Walking out into the open air and receiving the vertical sun full blast without the protection of the woven mats and bamboo poles was like walking into hell. Within a few seconds, he felt his khaki shirt soaked and his head throbbing. Lieutenant Silva was stepping along smartly, while Lituma’s boots were sinking into the sand, making each step an effort. They walked up the winding main street of Amotape toward the open land and the highway.
As they walked along, Lituma glimpsed the clusters of human eyes behind the bamboo walls of the shacks, Doña Lupe’s curious, nervous neighbors. When he and the lieutenant arrived, they’d all hidden, because they were frightened of the police. As soon as they were out of sight, Lituma was sure they’d all run over to Doña Lupe’s cabin to ask what happened, what the cops had seen and said. Lituma and the lieutenant walked in silence, each deep in his own thoughts.
As they were passing the last houses, a mangy dog ran out to snarl at them. When they reached the sandy ground, darting lizards appeared and disappeared among the rocks. Lituma thought there were probably foxes as well as lizards. The kids had probably heard them howling during the two days they’d found refuge in Amotape. The foxes probably came in at night to prowl around the corrals where the goats and chickens were kept. Would the girl have been frightened when she heard the howling? Would she have hugged him close, trembling, seeking protection? Would he have calmed her down whispering sweet words into her ear? Or would they have been so in love that they would be oblivious, so absorbed in each other that they wouldn’t even hear the noises of the world? Had they made love for the first time in Amotape? Or had they done it among the sand dunes surrounding the Piura Air Force Base?
When they reached the edge of the highway, Lituma was soaked from head to foot, as if he’d jumped fully clothed into a stream. He saw that Lieutenant Silva’s green trousers and cream-colored shirt also had large dark patches and that his forehead was covered with beads of sweat. There wasn’t a vehicle of any kind in sight. The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of resignation: “We’ll have to be patient.” He took out a pack of Incas, offered a cigarette to Lituma, and lit one for himself. For a while they smoked in silence, baking in the heat, thinking, observing the mirage of lakes, fountains, and seas out in front of them on the endless sand. The first truck that passed going toward Talara didn’t stop, despite the frantic gestures both made with their hats.
“On my first tour of duty, in Abancay, when I’d just graduated from officer candidate school, I had a boss who wouldn’t stand for bullshit like that. A captain who, if anyone ever did something like that, you know what he did, Lituma? He’d take out his revolver and blow out the guy’s tires.” The lieutenant stared bitterly at the truck disappearing in the distance. “We called him Captain Cunthound because he was always after women. Wouldn’t you like to blow out that bastard’s tires?”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
The officer looked at him curiously.
“You can’t get all that stuff you heard out of your head, can you?”
Lituma nodded.
“I just can’t believe everything Doña Lupe told us. Or that it happened here in this miserable hole.”
The lieutenant tossed his cigarette butt to the other side of the road and mopped his forehead and neck with his already drenched handkerchief.
“Right. She told us a lot.”
“I never thought the story would turn out like this. Lieutenant. I’d imagined all kinds of things, but not this.”
“Does that mean that you know everything that happened to the kid, Lituma?”
“Well, more or less, Lieutenant. Don’t you?”
“Not yet. That’s another thing you’re going to have to learn. Nothing’s easy, Lituma. The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out either to be half truths or lies.”
“Okay, that may be, but in this case, aren’t things pretty much cut-and-dried?”
“As of now, even though you think I’m kidding, I’m not even completely convinced that it was Colonel Mindreau and Lieutenant Dufó who killed him.” There was no irony in his voice. “The only thing I’m sure of is that they were the two men who came here and took them away.”
“I’m going to tell you something. That’s not what got to me in all this. Know what it is? Now I know why the kid enlisted at the Talara base. So he could be near the girl he loved. Doesn’t it seem incredible that anyone would do something like that? That a boy exempt from the draft would come and join up for love, to be near the girl he loves?”
“And why does that surprise you so much?” said Lieutenant Silva, laughing.
“It’s certainly not what just anybody would do, not something you hear of every day.”
Lieutenant Silva began to flag down a vehicle approaching in the distance.
“Then you don’t know what love is. I’d join the Air Force, become a buck private in the Army, become a priest, a garbageman, and I’d even eat shit if I had to, just to be near my chubby, Lituma.”