Death in the Andes (28 page)

“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, ready 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.

“I'm not here as a Civil Guard but as an ordinary customer,” he said. “This camp's closed down, so let's not have any trouble. Let's have a drink instead.”

He raised his glass and the drunk docilely imitated him, solemnly raising his empty hand: “To your health, Corporal.”

“That woman with Tomasito now, I knew her when she was a kid,” said Lituma, his mouth slack. “She's even better now than she was in Piura. If Josefino or La Chunga could see her, they wouldn't believe how good-looking she is.”

“You're a pair of liars,” said the drunk, in a rage again, pounding the bar and bringing his face close to the cantinero in an antagonistic way. “I tell you right to your face. You can scare everybody else but you don't scare me.”

Dionisio took absolutely no offense. His expression, somewhere between excited and peaceable, did not change, but he stopped imitating a bear. In his hand he held the bottle of pisco with which he had periodically been filling Lituma's glass. He very calmly filled another glass and handed it to the drunk with a friendly gesture.

“What you need is something good to drink, compadre. Beer is for people who don't know what's good, who like to bloat and belch. Go on, try it, smell the grape.”