Pacazo (20 page)

San Teodoro is not Piura’s only cemetery but it is its largest and oldest by some measure. Past a chifa and a primary school, past the enthusiastic nuns and sad but willing schizophrenics playing volleyball on the dirt strip in front of CREMPT, past houses that must once have been very fine. At the cemetery gates there are vendors selling candles and shrouds and cardboard images of saints, and others selling flowers of all sizes and colors, flowers from the mountains and jungle, roses and orchids and sunflowers and dozensof species whose names Reynaldo has never told me. There are also people selling pastries and cotton candy, ice cream and snow cones, soft drinks and beer and many varieties of emoliente, a sort of tea made with roots and vines and spices. One kind of emoliente is said to cure liver ailments, and there are others for the kidneys and bowels and heart. Each has its own distinct taste, and they are all equally repulsive.

The cemetery is vast and inside there is nothing like the oaks in Fallash, no grass-covered plots like my father’s. Instead of grass there is sand, and most of the dead are buried not in plots of any kind but in niches set in great structures of whitewashed cement. The structures reach ten and twelve stories high, and each niche has a ledge where flowers and candles may be set. At this time of year there are also great lengths of extension cord, so that electric lights may take the place of candles for any who so wish.

Past the small chapel and through the few hundred old graves set in the ground, each with its headstone, many with photographs behind glass. Standing before the nearest whitewashed structure there are a dozen young men with bamboo ladders. For a small fee they will take their ladders to the loved one’s niche, will place flowers and candles or lights in whatever pattern is desired.

Pilar’s tomb is on the lowest level, just off the ground. It is cleaner than the tombs to either side, is dusted daily, a service I have hired. Mariángel and I sit for a while beside her. The ground is not comfortable, but tonight we will bring blankets. I watch the young men and their ladders, check their faces, smile. I place my hand on the large smooth cameo that bears Pilar’s picture, and close my eyes.

Then we go back to the flower vendors and I ask for three of each species. The vendors laugh when I say this, laugh and nod and say, Very well. When they are done with their gathering I have more flowers than can be carried in one trip, so I pay two small boys to help me. They are too young for ladder-work, and they laugh and joke as they stumble under their loads, but not a single flower falls. When we arrive they ask how I want the flowers arranged, and I tell them that arrangement is not their concern. They are happy to hear this, thank me when I pay them, run back to the vendors.

I choose one flower at a time and Mariángel lays each as she pleases. There is a certain nonlinear logic to her decisions. The mound rises until it has covered the front of the niche, and I redistribute only those that block my view of the picture. It is what we can do for now.

When we return tonight there will be fewer flowers, as some will have been taken by those who lacked the means or inclination to buy them. This is not the problem it might seem to be, not today. There will be fewer flowers, and still enough.

Back home for lunch, and Casualidad is still asleep on the couch. Her hands twitch and her breathing is shallow and quick. Something, sweat or tears or something else, has gathered in her eye patch, dripped down her cheek and dried dark.

I wake her, tell her that she needs to see a doctor, that I will take her, that I will pay. She shakes her head. I repeat the same sentences in different orders at different volumes. Finally she agrees, and goes to get her purse and change into her street clothes.

Fifteen minutes later she has not yet returned. I find her standing in Mariángel’s room staring at the floor. I ask if she is ready, and she says that she is but not for the hospital, that instead she will go home early if it is all right with me, that nothing is needed but rest.

She seems steady on her feet. Her breathing comes more easily and she does not look quite as pale. I tell her we will accompany her home. She nods, walks past me and out the front door, is gone by the time I have gathered Mariángel and run to catch her.

We check the closest side streets and do not find her. We stop back by the house to call Fermín, and he promises to call me if she is not home in half an hour. Then Mariángel and I follow the smell of grilled sausages to Neuquén, order lunch and lean back. Armando is not there, and the guachimán does not know where he has gone. I suspect he would not tell me if he knew.

Back home, and Mariángel helps me stir the ingredients for the two cakes we will need. We dance and babble as they bake. In the end one is large and one is not and neither is symmetrical. While they cool we go to the patio. She stands at the edge, squints into the sun, pleased at the things she sees.

Still she has not truly spoken, but she has lost much of her dislike of falling, walks unsteadily in pursuit of most movement: the leaves and flowers swaying, the birds that land, occasional butterflies. She walks toward the birds, and her presence does not seem to bother them. They will not let her touch them, but wait until she is inches away and reaching before flitting up to the wall. They do not screech at her the way they screech at me.

After dinner we frost the cakes as best we are able. When it is dark I dress us both and we return to Club Grau for the finals. The night feels loosely hinged though the noise is no different than before. Twitchy and sad, I watch a round of tondero and a round of marinera. The lights flicker overhead, and the announcer’s microphone fades in and out.

I swing Mariángel around to my back and push down the steps, begging the pardon of those whom I bump, ignoring their stares. At the bottom I stop to look at the crowd. There is an oddness in my head as I glance from one face to another. It is a moment before I realize I am searching not for the taxista but for the chilalo and there is a rigid ache now low in my chest. I stop, bend, hope to catch my breath. The mothers in the front row pull away and I feel something slip, Mariángel falling out of the baby carrier, tumbling forward over my shoulder, I catch her in the air and she laughs, thinks it is wonderful, this tumbling, this falling.

There is no question: I must read the manual, must learn the meaning of all the straps, must be more careful in all senses. Another taxi, and back at the house I lay Mariángel down to sleep. I load my backpack with blankets and pillows, with sandwiches and bananas, with juice in cartons, with diapers and plastic bags. I fill a thermos with milk and another with warm oatmeal. I put the smaller of the two cakes into a cardboard box and it is time.

Again I walk, Mariángel in her old sling and asleep on my chest. I check the license plate of each passing taxi, of the dozens parked outside the cemetery gates. Then I buy sixty slim white candles. Joined together four at a time they will not be put out by the wind. If I am lucky they will last the whole night.

Inside the cemetery is something of a solemn circus. The whitewashed structures are lit with electric bulbs. There are clusters of candles, and flowers have been woven into wreaths and hung. The chapel is filled with people, and I check every face. Each Mass said for the dead will play into the following one, a swath that will not end until sunrise.

Couples walk arm in arm, calling to old friends, quietly and with great affection. Along the sides of the structures there are people seated on the ground. They are mostly very old. They pray, pass bottles back and forth, rarely speak.

In places also there are other infants; they cry from time to time, and are quieted. Their older brothers and sisters cannot be made to stay still at the niches, and have sorted themselves by age. The youngest run shrieking from one place to another, gathering melted wax into large gray balls that later will be used for games, the rules invented and argued and hewn mid-play. Other children, slightly older, gather in circles to wish they were elsewhere. Still others, still older, have already met their boyfriends and girlfriends, are gathered in pairs to kiss deeply in the long and flickering shadows.

I spread our blankets on the ground. Fewer flowers are missing than I had thought. Mariángel wakes, and I prop her up on the pillows so that she will be able to see everything. She immediately goes back to sleep.

I nod to those at the niches on either side, and wave to friends from the university as they walk by. Pilar’s parents and brothers have not come from Chiclayo, or have not yet arrived. Given what happened after her body was found, I do not know which would surprise me more, to see them here tonight, or not to.

Suddenly Reynaldo stands before me. I smile, stand, dust myself off. We shake hands, and he tells me that he is here for his parents and grandparents and two uncles. I nod. There is a moment of quiet. I ask if he will be attending Mariángel’s party tomorrow, and he does not pause before saying that he will.

A Peruvian who pauses before saying Yes is in fact saying No. This took me two years to learn, was a source of much frustration, but does no harm once everyone involved knows the code. Reynaldo pats me on the shoulder, and I must look sadder than I feel, because he says this:

- The first one is the hardest. The rest are not so easy either. But they are easier. A little.

I say that there is nothing about which to worry. He nods. The candles burn slowly down. He rubs his eyes and gestures at those around us, the old men and women drunk or asleep.

- This must be very strange for you.

- Everything in the world is strange.

- Did you hear about the party at Boby’s?

- No. Should I try to guess?

- Yes, but you will fail.

- Perhaps you should just tell me.

- Máximo Yerlequé, the engineering student? He went as the phoenix. Weeks ago he told me how the costume would work, as he always does, to make me suffer. His wings were of many colors, and inside them he put fireworks of some kind that would explode and burn away the feathers. Beneath that he had another suit, the color of ashes. And below that was still another layer, the same as the first but even brighter.

- And you?

- I went as an alien from
Men in Black
. It was among the best I have ever done. Beautiful leather work. You should have seen it.

- Which alien? The giant cockroach?

- No. That was the most remarkable alien, yes?hat tI am not sufficiently tall. So I went as another—a sort of large armadillo. How do you say armadillo in English?

- Ar-ma-dill-o.

- Ah. Very similar. Do you remember this creature?

- No.

- From the beginning of the movie. The one that pretends to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico. It has the immigrant’s head on a stick, and when it attacks, Mr. Tommy Lee Jones shoots it with his special gun, and the creature explodes. There was a blue substance all over the border guard.

- I remember now. The armadillo.

- It was a marvelous costume. The eye-stalks of different lengths, they were superb.

- Was it good enough to—

- Not in a fair contest. But the phoenix never made it to the stage.

- I don’t understand.

- The fireworks went off too quickly and were too strong. They burned through the suit of ashes and into the new plumage. Máximo is still in the hospital.

- Is he going to live?

- Probably, but the scarring will last for all his life.

- And so you won!

- Yes. At the semester break in July I will fly to New York, and then take a bus to California. There are buses, yes?hAnd you should come with me. We could start again, together.

- Start what again?

- At last the conditions are right. I will not be coming back.

- Is there a chance that at some point you will say something that I am capable of understanding?

- It is time for me to do my doctorate. With your help I am going to find a university in California that will give me a fellowship.

- Ah, I say. An excellent plan. But—

- There will be women, and basketball. You really should come along.

- Yes and yes and no. The larger point: you do not have a great deal of time. Your application will be due in a month, perhaps two. In that time you will need to obtain copies of your transcripts, have them translated and legalized. You will need others to write letters of recommendation for you, and you must write a statement of purpose. There is your university application to complete, and another for the department itself. Is your English good enough for the TOEFL score they require? Do you have the—

- Are you trying to discourage me?

- Of course not. I—

- Am I not smart enough for your universities?

Now two economics professors walk by, stop to say hello. When they are gone I try again, but Reynaldo no longer wants to talk. We watch the unsteady light. Without smiling he says goodnight and walks away.

I watch him go. I sit back down, settle into my space. I hold my thoughts steady for a time. Finally I tire. Pilar’s family came immediately to Piura when she disappeared. In those first days they were good to Mariángel and me. Then the goatherds found Pilar and the police brought her broken body to us and horrific things were said.

And it was not just those moments. The next day, beginning calmer: they wanted her buried in Chiclayo. I said that she would be buried here. Voices rising, they asked and then demanded to be allowed to take and raise Mariángel. I told them to fuck themselves. Voices louder and louder and blood on my walls by the end, some of it mine but mostly that of Pilar’s brothers.

Since that day I have not seen or talked to anyone in her family. Her oldest brother calls every few weeks to ask Casualidad about Mariángel’s health and happiness, but if I happen to answer the phone he hangs up without speaking. And six months ago her parents came to Piura, went to the house while I was at work, spent an hour with Mariángel, Casualidad calling and calling to tell me bt tI was out of the office and not in class and no one could find me.