Death in the Andes Read online

  “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. Plum
p, 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.”

  “Well, you were there for money too, weren’t you? Guarding Hog while he got off beating up the hooker.”

  “Don’t call her that, Corporal,” Tomás protested. “Not even if she was one.”

  “It’s just a word, Tomasito,” Lituma said in apology.

  The boy spat furiously at the night insects. It was late, and hot, and the trees murmured all around him. There was no moon, and the oily lights of Tingo María could barely be seen between the woods and the hills. The house was on the outskirts of the city, about a hundred meters from the highway to Aguatía and Pucallpa, and sounds and voices could be heard clearly through its thin walls. There was another sharp crack, and the woman cried out again.

  “No more, Daddy,” her muffled voice pleaded. “Don’t hit me anymore.”

  It seemed to Carreño that the man was laughing, the same lecherous snigger he had heard the last time, in Pucallpa.

  “A boss’s laugh, the laugh of the man in charge who can do whatever he wants, the guy who’ll fuck anything that moves and has plenty of soles and plenty of dollars,” he explained, with an old rancor, to the corporal.

  Lituma imagined the sadist’s slanted little eyes: bulging inside their pouches of fat, burning with lust each time the woman moaned. He didn’t find things like that exciting, but apparently some men did. Of course, he wasn’t as shocked by them as his adjutant was. What could you do? This fucking life was a bitch. Weren’t the terrucos killing people left and right and saying it was for the revolution? They got a kick out of blood, too.

  “Finish it, Hog, you motherfucker, I thought,” Tomás continued. “Get off, get done, go to sleep. But he went on and on.”

  “That’s enough now, Daddy. No more,” the woman pleaded from time to time.

  The boy was perspiring and had trouble breathing. A truck roared down the highway, and for a moment its yellowish lights illuminated the dead leaves and tree trunks, the stones and mud in the ditch at the side of the road. When it was dark again, the little glowing lights returned. Tomás had never seen fireflies before, and he thought of them as tiny flying lanterns. If only Fats Iscariote were with him. Talking and joking, listening to him describe the great meals he had eaten, passing the time, he wouldn’t hear what he was hearing, wouldn’t imagine what he was imagining.

  “And now I’m going to ram this tool all the way up to your eyeballs,” the man purred, insane with joy. “And make you scream like your mother did when she gave birth to you.”

  Lituma thought he could hear Hog’s slow little snicker, the laugh of a man on whom life has smiled, a man who always gets what he wants. He could imagine him with no problem, but not her; she was a shape without a face, a silhouette that never quite solidified.

  “If Iscariote had been with me, talking to me, I would have forgotten about what was going on in the house,” said Tomás. “But Fats was watching the road, and I knew that nothing would make him leave his post, that he’d be there all night dreaming about food.”

  The woman cried out again, and this time she did not stop weeping. Could those muffled sounds be kicks?

  “For the love of God,” she begged.

  “And then I realized I was holding the revolver in my hand,” said the boy, lowering his voice as if someone might hear him. “I had taken it out of the holster and was playing with it, fiddling with the trigger, spinning the barrel. Without even knowing it, Corporal, I swear.”

  Lituma turned on his side to look at him. In the cot next to his, Tomasito’s barely visible profile was softened by the faint light of the stars and moon shining through the window.

  “What were you going to do, you poor bastard?”

  He had climbed the wooden steps on tiptoe and very quietly pushed at the front door until he felt resistance from the bar. It was as if his hands and feet were no longer controlled by his head. “No more, Daddy,” the woman begged monotonously. Blows fell from time to time, and now the boy could hear Hog’s heavy breathing. There was no bolt on the door. He just leaned against it and it began to give way: the creaking was lost in the sound of blows and pleading. When it opened wide with a sharp cracking sound, the wailing and beating stopped and somebody cursed. In the semidarkness Tomás saw the naked man turn around, swearing. A small lantern hung from a nail in the wall, making crazed shadows. The man was enveloped in mosquito netting, pawing at it, trying to get free, and Tomás looked into the woman’s frightened eyes.

  “Don’t hit her anymore, señor,” he implored. “I won’t permit it.”

  “You said a dumb thing like that to him?” Lituma mocked. “And to top it off, you called him señor?”

  “I don’t think he heard me,” said the boy. “Maybe nothing came out of my mouth, maybe I was talking to myself.”

  The man found what he was looking for, and in a half-sitting position, still wrapped in mosquito netting and held back by the woman, he took aim, growling curses as if to encourage himself. It seemed to Tomás that shots were fired before he squeezed the trigger, but no, it was his gun that fired first. He heard the man howl at the same time that he saw him fall backward, dropping the pistol, cringing. The boy took two steps toward the bed. Half of Hog’s body had slipped off the far side. His legs were still crossed on top of the sheet. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t the one who was screaming, it was the woman.

  “Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” she shrieked in terror, covering her face, twisting around, shielding her body with her arms and legs.

  “What are you saying, Tomasito?” Lituma was stunned. “Do you mean you shot him?”

  “Shut up!” the boy commanded. Now he could breathe. The tumult in his chest had quieted. The man’s legs slid to the floor, dragging down part of the mosquito netting. He heard him groan very quietly.

  “You mean you killed him?” Lituma insisted. He leaned on one elbow, still trying to see his adjutant’s face in the darkness.

  “But aren’t you one of the bodyguards?” The woman stared at him, blinking, uncomprehending. Now there was utter confusion in her eyes as well as animal fear. “Why’d you do it?”

  She was trying to cover herself, crouching over, raising a bloodstained blanket. She showed it to him, accusing him.

  “I couldn’t take it anymore,” Tomasito said. “I couldn’t stand him hitting you and enjoying it like that. He almost killed you.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Lituma exclaimed, bursting into laughter.

  “What? What did you say?” The woman was recovering from the shock, and her voice was firmer. Tomás saw her scramble off the bed, saw her stumble, saw her silhouette redden for a moment as she passed beneath the light, saw her, in control of herself now and full of energy, begin to pull on clothes she picked up from the floor, talking all the while: “That’s why you shot him? Because he was hitting me? Since when is that any of your business? Just tell me that. Who do you think you are? Who asked you to take care of me? Just tell me that.”

  Before he could answer, Tomás heard Iscariote running and calling in a bewildered voice: “Carreño? Carreñito?” The stairs shook as he pounded up them, and the door opened wide. There he was, shaped like a barrel, filling up the doorway. He looked at him, looked at the woman, at the rumpled bed, at the blanket, at the fallen mosquito netting. He was holding a revolver in his hand, shifting heavily from one foot to the other.

  “I don’t know,” murmured the boy, struggling against the mineral substance his tongue had become. The partially obscured body was moving on the wooden floor. But not groaning anymore.

  “You whore, what’s going on?” Fats Iscariote was panting, his eyes bulging like a grasshopper’s. “What happened, Carreñito?”

  The woman had finished dressing and was slipping on her shoes, moving first one leg, then the other. As if it were
a dream, Tomás recognized the flowered white dress she had worn that afternoon when he saw her get off the Lima plane in the Tingo María airport, where he and Iscariote had gone to meet her and take her back to Hog.

  “Ask him what happened.” Her eyes flashed and she moved her hand, pointing at the man on the floor, at him, at the man again.

  “She was so angry I thought she was going to come at me and scratch my eyes out,” said the boy. His voice had sweetened.

  “You killed the boss, Carreño?” The fat man was dumbfounded. “You killed him?”

  “Yes, yes,” screamed the woman, beside herself. “And now what’s going to happen to us?”

  “Damn,” Fats Iscariote said over and over again, like a robot. He didn’t stop blinking.

  “I don’t think he’s dead,” stammered the boy. “I saw him move.”

  “But why, Carreñito?” The fat man leaned over to look at the body. He straightened up immediately and stepped back in dismay. “What did he do to you? Why?”

  “He was hitting her. He was going to kill her. Just for fun. I got mad, Fats, I really lost it. I couldn’t take all that shit.”

  Iscariote’s moon face turned toward him, and he scrutinized him, craning his neck as if he wanted to smell him too, even lick him. He opened his mouth but said nothing. He looked at the woman, he looked at Tomás, and sweated and panted.

  “And that’s why you killed him?” he finally said, shaking his curly head back and forth as mindlessly as one of the giant heads at Carnival.

  “That’s why! That’s why!” the woman cried hysterically. “And now what’s going to happen to us, damn it!”

  “You killed him for having a little fun with his whore?” Fats Iscariote’s eyes shifted back and forth in their sockets as if they were made of quicksilver. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done, you poor bastard?”

  “I don’t know what came over me. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. I’ll explain it to my godfather, Fats.”