Pacazo (35 page)

- If you hit me again, I say, I will push you from the vehicle and drive back and forth over your body.

- Absolutely terrible, he says. The worst I’ve ever seen.

- Sorry to disappoint you.

- You should come to my house and practice with my aunt. She is free on Tuesdays. Also on Thursdays. Also on every other day.

He laughs, and we drive. Water thickens the windows. The woman stands in the bed of the truck, leans forward into the wall of wind and rain, and a different smile, complete.

We enter Piura and the woman stretches to Reynaldo’s window, directs him toward the river. She has us turn one block short of the malecón and head up Calle Lima. She says the next house is hers, and jumps before we have stopped.

She runs, knocks, turns and waves. An old and worried-looking woman opens the door. I try to see past her and fail. The woman turns again, mouths her thanks, enters.

- On Valentine’s Day! says Reynaldo.

I say nothing.

- You should have asked for her name, he says.

- I am not in a position to be asking for anything.

- But I think that you are, he says. I believe and think that you are.

Home, I thank Socorro, swing Mariángel in violent circles and she vomits mashed banana. This does not appear to bother her. I clean both of us as well as I can, and carry her to my room. She walks in rough ellipses, takes my wallet from the nightstand and throws it across the room, turns to see if I am pleased.

I say that her velocity is adequate, that we will need to work on her aim. We briefly discuss objects and their places. I set her on my bed, stare for a moment at my headboard. It is entirely bare.

I pick up my wallet and set it on my desk. Then I lie down flat on the floor to look under my bed. Mariángel slides to the ground, lies beside me, understands this as some kind of game and there against the far wall, dust-covered and surely damp, is the image of Sarita Colonia.

I pull the bed away from the wall, bring up the picture, clean its plastic cover with my shirttail. The image appears unhurt. Mariángel reaches for the string, and I hold it up and away, try to consider. Mariángel grabs at the fat of my neck. I hang Sarita again from the headboard, take up Mariángel, and how we dance.

GRAY HALFLIGHT, OUTSIDE AND IN. I correct the last Elementary quiz, and it is all but perfect: nineteen weather words out of twenty and the spelling consistently close. I record the grade, and slip the stack of quizzes into its envelope. I slide the envelope between the coursebook and the workbook so as not to forget and have nothing pressing for the rest of the day.

I wipe the sweat from my forehead, face, forearms. The electricity is less on than off both here and at home, and thus for most of each day lights and computers and fans are remembered luxuries. Up from my desk, stretching, out of my darkening office and onto the landing. There I lean against the railing and stare.

The rain returned a week ago, has not ceased since. Scattered around the Language Center are puddles in places previously considered high ground, and ponds where before there were puddles. This looks as though it should be worrisome, but the Engineering department is half the university, and its professors seem unconcerned.

Fermín came early this morning to collect Casualidad’s salary. He did not look at me as he took the envelope, did not stay to water or weed. The almond tree is budding, and the blooms will have no chance, and our insect collection now fills two shelves.

The cockroaches have grown immense, and faster in the air. When I am fortunate and smack one to the ground, new ants, medium-sized, black and with visible pincers, are waiting below to dismember and run with it in pieces to their holes. Wasps have built small mud houses in each of my bookshelves. Elsewhere are dragonflies as if from the jungle, and spiders that jump surprising distances. Also there are new water-beetles three inches long, brown becoming black, long hind legs with protuberances of a sort. When the puddles drain they survive on land, and they fly, despite their great bulk they fly, and bully the crickets beneath the streetlights.

The streets too have somehow worsened. Yesterday a car disappeared. I did not believe it when told by my students but then it was on the news: a hole larger than the car had formed in the roadway, had filled with water, and the surface of the water reflected perfectly. The man and his infant son escaped, the newsreader said, were helped out through windows by passersby.

Other children have discovered in the rain and ruined roads a source of income. They carry large rocks from the riverbanks, pile these rocks at the corners of major intersections, charge fifty céntimos to place the rocks as stepping stones for anyone who wishes to cross the street without going knee-deep in rainwater and sewage. Then come cars, and again the children charge, fifty céntimos to remove the rocks recently emplaced.

It is far too early to go home, but there are other options. Back into my office for my coat and umbrella and rubber boots. I try the lights, and they come on, go off, return. Out now, up the path and to the deer pen.

The deer are uninterested in the rotting pods I toss toward them, uninterested in my fistfuls of grass, uninterested in anything but lying still beneath the algarrobos and harder things happen elsewhere, have happened and are happening, in the mountains and farther up the coast. There are stories of landslides erasing parts of villages, of hillside cemeteries newly opened by rain, of men who charge a great deal to carry goods and persons on their backs across rivers beneath what is left of bridges, and the men and their loads are sometimes taken by the current. All this, and what has happened in still farther places: hurricanes in Mexico, drought and famine in Indonesia, marooned villagers attacked by hyenas come to dispute what high ground remains in Somalia.

I congratulate myself often on having stocked up, rice and candles in sufficient quantities to survive through April at least. I gather zapote leaves, and again the deer are uninterested, and in the evenings when there is electricity Mariángel and I watch the geckos. There are many more now than before, in part because Socorro is slower and less fanatical than Casualidad, and in part because of the insect surplus.

As before, the gnats and mosquitoes and moths flit around the naked bulbs, and the geckos edge closer, their movement too slow to be seen. Then they are close enough, and their movement is too quick to be seen as the rain-loosened paint gives away and they drop from the ceiling to the floor. Sometimes they land well and scurry off. Sometimes they land badly and twitch until I step on their heads. Sometimes, after I have stepped on their heads, they continue to twitch; sometimes they go still. I toss the bodies out onto the front lawn, and in the morning they are gone, eaten by the hairless dog or something worse.

I accuse the deer individually of shiftlessness and sloth, walk back to my office, and there is a new leak in my ceiling, a beaded line of water that half-circles the base of the light fixture and drips loudly onto my desk. I move all threatened paperwork to a shelf in the foyer. Then I run to Eugenia, come back with a plastic flowerpot.

Arantxa is waiting at my office door. She smells of chorizo and whiskey. We say polite hellos. I set the pot to catch the drips, and she hands me a notice. It is from the Postal Service. A package has arrived for me from Shreveport. Arantxa pats my shoulder and wishes me luck.

As she does so the light above us fails. We both look up. Blue strings of electricity arc beautifully to either side. There is a sharp white flash, and when we look again the ceiling is on fire.

Arantxa jumps to the extinguisher and I take up the phone and already the fire is out. The office stinks of melted plastic but at last we know how it is that rain starts fires. Our colleagues come from the Teachers Room, hear the story, put their arms around our shoulders and treat us as gladiators triumphant. Arantxa and I congratulate one another on not having panicked. She calls the housekeeping staff. It will be hours before my office is habitable. I wave the postal notice back and forth, tell Arantxa I will see her tomorrow, gather papers and walk for the gate.

I am grateful to my aunt for the package regardless of what it might contain, and do not hold her responsible for potential complications. I take a taxi to the post office, step quickly through the rain. The stairs leading to the basement office are steeper than they have any reason to be.

The line is long, and there is half an inch of water on the floor. A very short man has a broom and a bucket and makes no headway: additional water seeps through the walls continually. I take my place. I shuffle with the others and sweat. I listen as the clerk at the counter calls tracking numbers to the clerk in the back room. I stand, shuffle, sweat and the counter clerk smiles when he sees me in line. It is not a beneficent smile.

A thick man comes slowly down the stairs, hesitates behind me, walks directly to the counter and holds out his notice. It is the same as my notice. I go, stand very close beside him, stare at the side of his face.

- What? he says.

I smile. He shakes his head, looks at the clerk, holds his notice out a little farther. Those in line make ambiguous noises behind us.

- You need to stand farther away, says the thick man.

I lean slightly closer in. I ask the man if he can smell the smoke. The counter clerk clears his throat, tells the thick man to take his place in line.

We three turn to look at the line, and at the security guard standing at the bottom of the stairs. The guard looks down at the water, swishes one foot back and forth. The thick man holds his notice out again, says Please. He does not mean it as a request. The clerk shakes his head, and I return to my spot. The thick man stays at the counter and is ignored.

Stand, sweat, shuffle, sweat, stand. At last it is my turn, and the thick man glares at the countertop, and the clerk stares not quite into my eyes. I give him the notice. He calls the tracking number to the other clerk and returns to his staring.

The other clerk brings the package, sets it damply on the counter. It is small and bears my address in my aunt’s handwriting. The counter clerk looks at the customs form pasted to the top, reads it out loud, nods.

- We will open the package, he says, to assess the true value.

- The true value, yes. This is not my first time here. I am aware of your procedures.

He slits through the tape and opens the flaps.

- Four bottles, he says, of the very best repellent.

- It is of average quality, I believe.

He opens one of the bottles, sniffs, and his eyes water over. He closes the bottle and sets it back in place. He wipes his eyes, roots through the rest of the package. He consults a plasticized chart and works his calculator for a time.

- The taxes and fees come to a total of thirty-two dollars. You may also pay in soles.

- Sir, the entire value is only—

- The entire value as listed on the customs sheet, yes. But these bottles are new merchandise and there is no purchase receipt. If this is not in fact your first time here, if you are in fact aware of our procedures, then you know that in certain cases we require a purchase receipt to corroborate the stated value.

- What I know is that in this and all cases you and your—

- Sir, you may pay the thirty-two dollars and take your repellent home, or you may keep your thirty-two dollars and leave the repellent here. It is as you wish.

I glance back, and the crowd tenses. I look at the thick man beside me, and he leans forward and laughs. I allow my head to droop, and the crowd sighs in disappointment or pity as I hand over a fifty-dollar bill.

It is not uncommon, here, to come across counterfeit bills, and in general it makes no difference as long as the quality is high. The clerk notices nothing, hands me my change. I walk up and out, stop a taxi, and the back label of each bottle reads, “Do not apply on or near plastic, leather, or painted surfaces.”

Perhaps it will be strong enough, and this amount should last me until autumn. Home, Mariángel, Socorro. A long shower and fresh clothes. Dinner and geckos and dancing. The repellent came with a letter from Aunt Claire, nine pages of Shreveport news. I read it aloud to Mariángel and by the middle of the elegy to a recently deceased Methodist pastor that occupies pages four through seven she is asleep.

David Leroy Dykes, Jr.: my aunt writes out his entire name in each instance and I am unsure why. He was a good and decent man or so it appears from her description but any more will put me to sleep as well so I switch to the essays gathered in homage to Rostworoski and perhaps at some point a new topic will present itself. I spend time with Soldi on fragments from Mejía Xesspe, and with Meggers on pre-Conquest populations in the Amazon. Then I settle into a short piece by Pease on the writing of Inca history by early Spanish chroniclers. It is nearly wholly familiar but the arrangement is deft: little work of any use until Cieza de León and Juan Díez de Betanzos in the 1550s, and all of it pre-formed by the chroniclers’ need for contextual verisimilitude, their descriptions given credence only insofar as they selfdaoor. A vend with Meggthrotes uninteresteaelfdaoosofnufloorenceofnrdss=al