Death in the Andes (2 page)

“If you want to sleep a little, you can lean on me,” Albert suggested.

“I've never seen you so happy.” She smiled at him.

“I've dreamed about this for two years,” he agreed. “Saving my money, reading about the Incas, about Peru. Imagining all this.”

“And you haven't been disappointed.” His companion laughed. “Well, neither have I. I'm grateful to you for urging me to come. I think the Coramine Glucose is working. The altitude isn't bothering me as much, and it's easier to breathe.”

A moment later, Albert heard her yawn. He put his arm around her shoulders and leaned her head against him. In a little while, in spite of the jolting and bouncing of the bus,
la petite
Michèle was asleep. He knew he would not close his eyes. He was too full of excitement, too eager to retain everything in his memory and recall it later, to write it down in the journal he had scrawled in each night since boarding the train in the Cognac station, and then, later still, to talk about it in detail, with only an occasional exaggeration, to his
copains
. He would show slides to his students with the projector he would borrow from Michèle's father.
Le Pérou!
There it was: immense, mysterious, gray-green, poverty-stricken, wealthy, ancient, hermetic. Peru was this lunar landscape and the impassive, copper-colored faces of the women and men who surrounded them. Impenetrable, really. Very different from the faces they had seen in Lima, the whites, blacks, mestizos with whom they had managed, however badly, to communicate. But something impassable separated him from the serranos, the mountain people. He had made several attempts, in his poor Spanish, to engage his neighbors in conversation, with absolutely no success. “It isn't race that separates us, it's an entire culture,”
la petite
Michèle reminded him. These were the real descendants of the Incas, not the people in Lima; their ancestors had carried the gigantic stones up to the aeries of Machu Picchu, the sanctuary-fortress he and his friend would explore in three days' time.

Night had fallen, and in spite of his desire to stay awake, he felt himself succumbing to a sweet lightheadedness. “If I fall asleep, I'll get a crick in my neck,” he thought. They were in the third seat on the right, and as he sank into sleep, Albert heard the driver begin to whistle. Then it seemed as if he were swimming in cold water. Shooting stars fell in the immensity of the altiplano. He felt happy, although he regretted that, like a hairy mole on a pretty face, the spectacle was marred by the ache in his neck, his extreme discomfort at not being able to rest his head on something soft. Suddenly, someone shook him roughly.

“Are we in Andahuaylas already?” he asked in a daze.

“I don't know what's going on,”
la petite
Michèle whispered in his ear.

He rubbed his eyes and there were cylinders of light moving inside and outside the bus. He heard muffled voices, whispers, a shout that sounded like an insult, and he sensed confused movement everywhere. It was the dead of night, and a myriad of stars twinkled through the broken windowpane.

“I'll ask the driver what's happening.”

La petite
Michèle did not let him stand up.

“Who are they?” he heard her say. “I thought they were soldiers, but no, look, people are crying.”

Faces appeared fleetingly, then disappeared in the movement of the lanterns. There seemed to be a lot of them. They surrounded the bus and now, awake at last, his eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, Albert saw that several had their faces covered with knitted balaclavas that revealed no more than their eyes. And that glinting had to be weapons, what else could it be?

“The man at the embassy was right,” murmured the girl, trembling from head to foot. “We should have taken the plane, I don't know why I listened to you. You can guess who they are, can't you?”

Someone opened the bus door and a blast of cold air ruffled their hair. Two faceless silhouettes came in, and for a few seconds Albert was blinded by their lanterns. They gave an order he did not understand. They repeated it, more emphatically.

“Don't be afraid,” he whispered into
la petite
Michèle's ear. “It doesn't have anything to do with us, we're tourists.”

All the passengers had stood up and, hands on their heads, were beginning to climb out of the bus.

“Nothing will happen,” Albert repeated. “We're foreigners, I'll explain it to them. Come on, let's get out.”

They climbed down, lost in the press of passengers, and when they were outside, the icy wind cut their faces. They remained in the crowd, very close together, their arms entwined. They heard a few words, some whispers, and Albert could not make out what they were saying. But they were speaking Spanish, not Quechua.

“
Señor, porfavor?
” He pronounced the words syllable by syllable, speaking to the man wrapped in a poncho who stood next to him, and a thundering voice immediately roared: “Quiet!” Better not open his mouth. The time would come for him to explain who they were and why they were here.
La petite
Michèle clutched at his arm with both hands, and Albert could feel her nails through his heavy jacket. Someone's teeth were chattering: were they his?

Those who had stopped the bus barely spoke among themselves. They had surrounded the passengers, and there were a good number of them: twenty, thirty, maybe more. What did they want? In the shifting light of the lanterns, Albert and
la petite
Michèle could see women among their assailants. Some in balaclavas, others with their faces bare, some armed with guns, others carrying sticks and machetes. All of them young.

The darkness was shattered by another order that Albert did not understand either. Their traveling companions began to search their pockets and wallets and hand over identification papers. Albert and his friend took their passports from the packs they wore around their waists.
La petite
Michèle was trembling more and more violently, but to avoid provoking them he did not dare to comfort her, to reassure her that as soon as these people opened their passports and saw that they were French tourists, the danger would be over. Perhaps they would take their dollars. They weren't carrying much cash, fortunately. The traveler's checks were hidden in Albert's false waistband and with a little luck might not even be found.

Three of them began to walk among the lines of passengers, collecting documents. When they came to him, Albert handed the two passports to the female silhouette with a rifle over her shoulder, and said haltingly: “French tourists. We no speak Spanish, señorita.”

“Quiet!” she yelled as she snatched the passports out of his hand. It was the voice of a young girl, sharp with fury. “Shut up!”

Albert thought how calm and clean everything was up there, in that deep sky studded with stars, and how different it was from the menacing tension down here. His fear had evaporated. When all this was a memory, when he had told it dozens of times to his
copains
at the bistro and to his students at school in Cognac, he would ask
la petite
Michèle: “Was I right or not to choose the bus instead of the plane? We would have missed the best experience of our trip.”

They were guarded by half a dozen men with submachine guns, who constantly shone the lanterns into their eyes. The others had moved a few meters away and seemed to be conferring about something. Albert assumed they were examining the documents, subjecting them to careful scrutiny. Did they know how to read? When they saw that they were foreigners, French tourists without much money who carried knapsacks and traveled by bus, they would apologize. The cold went right through him. He embraced
la petite
Michèle and thought: “The man at the embassy was right. We should have taken the plane. When we can talk again, I'll ask you to forgive me.”

The minutes turned into hours. Several times he was sure he would faint with cold and fatigue. When the passengers began to sit on the ground, he and
la petite
Michèle imitated them, huddling very close. They were silent, pressing against each other, warming each other. After a long while their captors came back and, one by one, pulling them to their feet, peering into their faces, bringing their lanterns up to their eyes, shoving them, they returned the passengers to the bus. Dawn was breaking. A bluish band appeared over the rugged outline of the mountains.
La petite
Michèle was so still she seemed asleep. But her eyes were very wide. With an effort Albert got to his feet, hearing his bones creak, and he had to help
la petite
Michèle stand by supporting both her arms. He felt exhausted, he had muscle cramps, his head was heavy, and it occurred to him that she must be suffering again from the altitude sickness that had bothered her so much when they began the ascent into the Cordillera. Apparently, the nightmare was ending. The passengers had lined up single file and were climbing into the bus. When it was their turn, two boys in balaclavas at the door of the vehicle put rifles to their chests and, without saying a word, indicated that they should move to one side.

“Why?” asked Albert. “We are French tourists.”

One of them approached in a menacing way, put his face up to his, and bellowed: “Quiet! Shhh!”

“No speak Spanish!” screamed
la petite
Michèle. “Tourist! Tourist!”

They were surrounded, their arms were pinned down, and they were pushed away from the other passengers. And before they really understood what was happening, the motor of the bus began to gurgle and vibrate, its hulk to tremble, and they saw it drive away, rattling along that road lost in the Andean plateau.

“What have we done?” Michèle said in French. “What are they going to do to us?”

“They'll demand a ransom from the embassy,” he stammered.

“They haven't kept him here for any ransom.”
La petite
Michèle no longer seemed afraid: now she appeared angry and rebellious.

The other traveler who had been detained with them was short and plump. Albert recognized his hat and tiny mustache. He had been sitting in the first row, smoking endlessly and leaning forward from time to time to speak to the driver. He gestured and pleaded, shaking his head, moving his hands. They had encircled the man. They had forgotten about him and
la petite
Michèle.

“Do you see those stones?” she moaned. “Do you see, do you see?”

Daylight advanced rapidly across the plateau, and their bodies, their shapes, stood out clearly. They were young, they were adolescents, they were poor, and some of them were children. In addition to rifles, revolvers, machetes, and sticks, many of them held large stones in their hands. The little man in the hat fell to his knees and swore on a cross that he formed with two fingers, raising his face to the sky. Until the circle closed in on him, blocking him from view. They heard him scream, beg. Shoving each other, urging each other, imitating each other, the stones and hands rose and fell, rose and fell.

“We are French,” said
la petite
Michèle.

“Do not do that, señor,” shouted Albert. “We are French tourists, señor.”

True, they were almost children. But their faces were hardened and burned by the cold, like those roughened feet in the rubber-tire sandals that some of them wore, like those stones in the chapped hands that began to strike them.

“Shoot us,” shouted Albert in French, blind, his arms around
la petite
Michèle, his body between her and those ferocious arms. “We're young too, señor. Señor!”

“When I heard him start in to hit her, and she began whimpering, I got gooseflesh,” said the guard. “Like the last time, I thought, just like in Pucallpa. Just your luck, you poor bastard.”

Lituma could tell that reliving the scene agitated Tomás and made him angry. Had Carreño forgotten he was here, listening to him?

“The first time my godfather sent me to be Hog's bodyguard, I felt really proud,” the boy explained, trying to calm down. “Just think: I'd be close to a big boss, I'd travel with him to the jungle. But it was a tough night for me in Pucallpa. And it would be the same damn thing now in Tingo Marfa.”

“You had no idea that the world is a dirty place,” said Lituma. “Where have you been all your life, Tomasito?”

“I knew all about the world, but I didn't like that sadistic shit. I didn't, damn it. I didn't understand it. It made me mad, even scared. How could a man act worse than an animal? That was when I knew why they called him Hog.”

There was a sharp whistling sound, and the woman cried out. Over and over again, he hit her. Lituma closed his eyes and pictured her. Plump, full of curves, round breasts. The boss had her on her knees, stark naked, and the strap left purple streaks on her back.

“I don't know which one made me sicker, him or her. The things those women do for money, I thought.”