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Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa

Death in the Andes (30 page)

“You needed human blood, isn't that what you mean?”

“But it was a big lie, they cheated us,” the man said angrily. “Didn't we lose our jobs? And do you know what they're still saying?”

“What are they saying?”

“That we didn't give them all our recognition and that's why they were offended. According to those motherfuckers, we would've had to do even more things. Understand?”

“Sure I do,” whispered Lituma. “What could be more horrible than killing the albino, the foreman, the little mute, for some apus nobody ever saw, when nobody even knows if they exist?”

“Killing was the least of it,” shouted the man in his bed, and Lituma thought whoever was sleeping at the back of the barracks would wake up and tell them to shut up. Or sneak over and close the blaster's mouth for him. And because he'd heard what he'd heard, they'd take him to the abandoned mine and throw him down the shaft. “Aren't there killings everywhere? Killing is the least of it. Isn't killing just routine, like pissing or taking a shit? That isn't what fucked people up. Not just me, a lot of the ones who left already, too. It was the other thing.”

“The other thing?” Lituma felt cold.

“The taste in your mouth,” whispered the blaster, and his voice broke. “It won't go away, no matter how you rinse it out. I can taste it now. On my tongue, on my teeth. In my throat. I can even feel it in my belly. As if I'd just finished chewing.”

Lituma felt the cigarette burning his fingers, and he dropped it. He stamped out the sparks. He understood what the man was saying, and he did not want to know any more.

“So, that too, on top of everything else,” he murmured, and he sat with his mouth open, panting.

“It doesn't go away even when I sleep,” declared the blaster. “Only when I drink. That's why I drink so much. But it's no good for me, it's bad for my ulcers. I'm shitting blood again.”

Lituma tried to take another cigarette, but his hands shook so much he dropped the pack. He looked for it, groping around the damp floor covered with gravel and matchsticks.

“Everybody took communion. I didn't want to, but I took communion, too,” the laborer said in a rush. “That's what's fucking me up. The stuff I swallowed.”

Lituma finally found the pack. He took out two cigarettes, put them in his mouth, and then had to wait until his hand could hold a match and light them. He handed one to the man, not saying anything. He saw him take a drag, another foul-smelling mouthful of smoke blew in his face, he felt the itch in his nose.

“And now I'm even scared to go to sleep,” said the blaster. “I turned into a coward. I never was one before. But can anybody fight his dreams? If I don't drink, I have nightmares.”

“Do you see yourself eating your paisano? Is that what you dream?”

“I'm hardly ever in the dreams,” explained the blaster, with absolute docility. “Just them. Cutting off their balls, slicing them, eating them like some kind of delicacy.” He retched, and Lituma heard him hunch over. “But when I'm in the dream too, it's worse. Those two come and tear mine off with their hands and eat them right in front of me. I'd rather drink than dream that. But what about my ulcer? You tell me if this is any kind of life, damn it.”

Lituma stood up abruptly. “I hope you get over it, compadre,” he said, feeling dizzy. He had to lean against the bunk for a minute. “I hope you find work where you're going. I guess it won't be easy. I don't think it'll be easy for you to forget this, either. You know something?”

“What?”

“I'm sorry I tried so hard to find out what happened to them. I'd be better off just suspecting. I'll go now and let you sleep. Even if I have to spend the night outside so I won't bother Tomasito. I don't want to sleep next to you or near those guys snoring back there. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and see your face and have a normal conversation with you. Son of a bitch, I'm going to breathe a little air.”

He stumbled to the door of the barracks and walked out. He felt a blast of icy air, and despite his confusion, he could see the splendid half-moon and the stars shining in a cloudless sky, still shedding their clear light on the craggy peaks of the Andes.

Also by Mario Vargas Llosa

The Cubs and Other Stories

A Writer's Reality

The Time of the Hero

The Green House

Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

Conversation in the Cathedral

Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

The War of the End of the World

The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

The Perpetual Orgy

Who Killed Palomino Molero?

The Storyteller

In Praise of the Stepmother

A Fish in the Water

Making Waves

The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto

The Feast of the Goat

Letters to a Young Novelist

The Language of Passion

The Way to Paradise

The Bad Girl

DEATH IN THE ANDES
. Copyright © 1993 by Mario Vargas Llosa. English translation copyright © 1996 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vargas Llosa, Mario.

[Lituma en los Andes. English]

Death in the Andes / Mario Vargas Llosa ; translated by Edith Grossman.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-312-42725-2

1. Peru—Fiction. I. Grossman, Edith. II. Title.

PQ8498.32.A65 L5813   1996
863—dc20

95040883

Originally published in Spanish as
Lituma en los Andes

First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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