Death in the Andes (17 page)

“In Odense, not far from the district where I live, a sect of Satanists killed an old man by sticking him with pins, as an offering to Beelzebub.” Professor Stirmsson shrugged. “Of course they were animals. Can any ancient people pass the test? Which of them was not cruel and intolerant when judged from a contemporary perspective?”

Francisco López, who had gone out to see if everything was in order, came back, and with him an icy blast blew into the room where they sat talking around the table.

“Everything's quiet,” he said, taking off his poncho. “But the temperature's really fallen and it's beginning to hail. Touch wood, let's hope a huayco doesn't come down tonight as an added bonus.”

“Warm up with a little drink.” The dark-haired engineer filled his glass again. “That's all we need. First the terrorists, then a huayco.”

“I wonder,” murmured the blond engineer, completely lost in thought, talking to himself, “if what's going on in Peru isn't a resurrection of all that buried violence. As if it had been hidden somewhere, and suddenly, for some reason, it all surfaced again.”

“If you say another word about that ecologist, I'm going to sleep,” said Shorty in an effort to silence him. And, pointing at his friend, he explained to Lituma, who was looking at him in surprise: “He knew Señora d'Harcourt, the woman they killed last month in Huancavelica. He takes one drink and philosophizes about her. And there's a big difference between a miner and a philosopher, Bali.”

But the blond engineer did not respond. He was self-absorbed, his eyes shining with drink, a lock of hair falling over his forehead.

“I tell you the truth, if there's one death that's difficult to understand, it's Hortensia's.” The professor's face grew somber. “But, of course, we make a mistake when we try to understand these killings with our minds. They have no rational explanation.”

“She knew the risk she was taking,” said Bali, his eyes very wide. “And she went on. Like you, Red. You know the risk, too. If they had caught us last night, maybe Shorty and I could have negotiated with them. But they would have smashed your head in with stones, just like they did to Hortensia. And still you come back here. I take my hat off to you, my friend.”

“Well, you both come back here, too.” The professor returned the compliment.

“We earn our living from this mine,” said Shorty. “We used to, at any rate.”

“What is it about Peru that stirs such passion in certain foreigners?” said Bali in amazement. “We don't deserve it.”

“It's a country nobody can understand.” Red laughed. “And for people from clear, transparent countries like mine, nothing is more attractive than an indecipherable mystery.”

“I don't think I'll ever come back to La Esperanza,” Bali said, changing the subject. “I don't feel like playing the hero, least of all for a mine that's losing money. I swear, I was shitting with fear last night.”

“The Prof and I sensed it, up there in the tank,” said Shorty. “I mean, we smelled it.”

Bali laughed, the professor laughed, and López laughed, too. But Lituma remained very serious, barely listening to them, numb with profound uneasiness. Later, when they had finished the bottle of pisco, said good night, and gone to their rooms, the corporal stopped at the door of Professor Stirmsson's room, which was next to his.

“I'm still curious about one thing, Doctor.” He spoke respectfully, stumbling somewhat over his words. “Did you say that the Chancas and the Huancas sacrificed people when they were going to build a new road?”

The professor was bending over to take off his boots, and the acetylene lamp distorted his features, giving him a phantasmagoric appearance. It occurred to Lituma that a golden halo, like the ones in religious pictures, might suddenly appear around his white hair.

“They didn't do it out of cruelty, but because they were very devout,” he explained. “It was their way of showing respect for the spirits of the mountains, of the earth, whom they were going to disturb. They did it to avoid reprisals and to assure their own survival. So there would be no landslides, no huaycos, so that lightning wouldn't strike them dead and their ponds wouldn't flood. You have to understand their thinking. For them, there were no natural catastrophes. Everything was decided by a higher power that had to be won over with sacrifices.”

“I once heard Doña Adriana say exactly what you're saying, Doctor.”

“Give my regards to her and Dionisio,” said the Prof. “The last time we were together was at the Huancayo fair. Adriana was very attractive when she was young. Then she lost her looks, the way we all do. I see you're interested in history, Corporal.”

“A little,” Lituma agreed. “Sleep well, Doctor.”

They've been scared ever since they heard about the pishtaco invasion, heard that in the neighborhoods of Ayacucho the people have been organizing patrols to fight them. “We have to do the same thing,” they say. “We can't let the throat-slashers have their way in Naccos, too.” They want to light bonfires at night around the barracks so they can spot them as soon as they show up. They always attack where times are getting hard. It was the same story when things began to go bad in Naccos. Because this used to be a very prosperous mining town. That's why Timoteo and I came here when we ran away from Quenka.

I was young then, and the Naccos mine hadn't been abandoned yet; it was full of miners from all over the region, even from places as far away as Pampas, Acobamba, Izcuchaca, and Lircay. They were always opening new tunnels to mine the silver, the zinc. And the contractors had to go farther and farther away to find people to come to the mine. It was called the Santa Rita. They built barracks and put up tents all over the slopes; a lot of miners even slept in the hollows under the boulders, wrapped in their ponchos. Until one day the engineers said the high-quality ore had run out, all that was left was worthless junk.

When they started to let workers go and the Santa Rita began to give out and a lot of people left Naccos, that was when the strange things happened that nobody could explain. And the town was filled with the same kind of suspicion, the fear that the highway laborers are feeling now. A little fat man from Huasicancha who was a watchman at the warehouse began to lose weight and say he felt strange, like he had been emptied out inside and his body was nothing but skin and bones, a balloon you could burst with a pin, and he said his head was drained of ideas and memories. When he died a couple of weeks later, he was so shriveled and thin he looked like a sickly ten-year-old. He couldn't remember where he came from or what his name was, and when people came to visit him he was confused and would ask them in a feeble little voice if he was a man or an animal, because he wasn't even sure about that. Nobody told me this story, Timoteo and I saw it with our own eyes.

The watchman's name was Juan Apaza. It wasn't until they buried him at the bottom of the ravine that the Santa Rita miners and their families began to suspect that Apaza's mysterious sickness wasn't a sickness at all but that a pishtaco had crossed his path. Just like now, everybody in Naccos got very nervous. “Is there any remedy?” they said. “Is there anything we can do against the pishtacos?” They came to me because word got around that I knew which hills were male and which ones female and also which rocks gave birth. Sure there are remedies, of course there's something you can do. Be careful and take precautions. Put a pan of water at the entrance to the house so the magic powder the pishtaco throws at his victims has no effect—that works. A drop of urine on shirts and sweaters before you put them on—that helps. Wear something made of wool, and women should wear a sash and carry scissors, a sliver of soap, a clove of garlic or a little salt—that's good, too. They didn't do a thing, and that's why it all turned out the way it did. They didn't accept the truth; people now are starting to. Because there's too much proof for them not to believe. Isn't that right?

By the time they realized what was going on in Naccos, the pishtaco that killed Juan Apaza had dried out a few more victims. Back then, they used human fat in ointments, and mixed it in with the metal to make the bells ring true. Now, since the pishtaco invasion, a lot of people in Ayacucho are sure they send the fat out of the country, or to Lima, where there are factories that only run with grease from a man or a woman.

I knew that pishtaco at the Santa Rita. After he dried out Juan Apaza, he dried out Sebastián, Timoteo's friend. Everybody in Naccos followed his story, step by step, because he told the miners about it as soon as he started to feel strange. I mean, beginning with the night he was outside the village in the meadows, tending a herd of llamas, and suddenly he ran into a man he knew, one of the Santa Rita contractors. He was wrapped in a poncho, with his hat pulled over his ears, and he was leaning against a boulder and smoking. Sebastián recognized him right away. He'd seen him in the hamlets and communities in the region, talking to the campesinos, telling them they should go to work in Naccos and advancing them a few soles to convince them.

Sebastián went over to him to say hello, and the contractor offered him a cigarette. He was white, an outsider with a little cockroach-colored beard and light eyes; in Naccos they called him Stud because he was such a womanizer (he chased me a few times, but Timoteo never found out). They were smoking and talking about the bad luck that had come to the Santa Rita, about the ore running out, when all of a sudden Stud blew a puff of smoke in Sebastián's face, and it made him sneeze. Right then and there he felt dizzy and sleepy. Of course it wasn't cigarette smoke but the powder the pishtaco uses to confuse his victims so they won't know he's taking their fat. What kind of powder? Almost always a powder made from crushed llama or alpaca bones. When you inhale it you don't feel anything, you don't know what's going on. The pishtaco can cut out your insides and you won't even notice or feel any pain. That's what Stud did, and starting that night Sebastián began to lose weight, and he got smaller and forgot everything he knew. Just like Juan Apaza. And finally he died too.

That's what happened back when Naccos made its living from the Santa Rita mine, and that's what's happening now, when Naccos makes its living from the highway. Misfortune won't come from the terrucos who are executing so many people or taking them away to be in their militia. Or from the pishtacos that are wandering around. Sure, they always come when times are hard, the Ayacucho invasion proves that. There must be a few around here, in the caves in those hills, collecting their supply of human fat. They must need it down in Lima, or in the United States, to grease the new machines, the rockets they send to the moon. They say no gasoline or oil can make all those scientific inventions work like the fat of a serrano. That must be why they sent their throat-slitters, they have machetes with a curved blade that can stretch out like gum all the way to the victim's neck. They do harm too, nobody can say they don't.

But the worst misfortunes always come from the spirits who turn away their faces. The ones who ask for more than people can give. They're up there, stone with the stones, waiting until misfortune makes the laborers open their minds to them. But you like to get angry when I explain it to you. What's the point of asking if you cover your ears and don't want to understand? You should follow my husband's advice instead: keep drinking till you're drunk, when you're drunk everything becomes better than it really is, and then the terrucos disappear, and the pishtacos, and everything that makes you angry and scared.

“But why me?” Mercedes suddenly asked again.

“I'm sorry, Tomasito,” Lituma interrupted in the darkness. “That article in the Lima newspaper about people stealing children's eyes really got to me. I'm not up to hearing about your love life tonight. Let's talk about the eye-thieves instead. Or about Dionisio and the witch. I can't get them out of my head, either.”