Pacazo (44 page)

It is not that Pilar feared it, but that she hoped to save me from it. Also it angered her, and she enjoyed the sudden flush of her own anger less than most people I have known. In other moments what seemed to be anger came unprovoked and in fact was something else, a wildness, and Pilar laughed, pinned me down, magnificent. Karina is a spinning something, a knowing something, and she fits me differently: her edges are sharper, hip and wrist and jawline. Her arms are thinner, her smile slower, her eyes less easily read, and holding both women in my mind at one time like this is unjust, is a certain evil, is something for which a bill will at some point come due.

To the corner, the darkened stretch beneath the streetlight I broke, sudden movement toward me and I jump to my stoop and turn. A growl—the hairless dog. It waits, then limps away. In through my front door, Mariángel in Karina’s arms and I kiss them both, thank Karina, take Mariángel and she laughs and pokes my forehead.

- Gallum gallum? she says.

Karina kisses me again, tells me that she cannot stay tonight, that she stopped by only for the pleasure of welcoming me into my own home, that she will come find me as soon as she is able. I thank her again, ask if Socorro has already gone home, and hear Socorro clear her throat behind me. Karina smiles, waves, is gone.

I thank Socorro for her loyalty and consistency and care. She frowns. I tell her that there is no need to frown. She says that she does not need advice as regards her facial expressions, and she is right, and I say so. She nods, gathers her belongings, closes the door behind her.

- Gallum, says Mariángel.

- Precisely, I say.

She and I spent most of Tuesday and part of Wednesday visiting a series of doctors. They and their tests found nothing wrong with Mariángel’s hearing. She is physically capable of making all relevant sounds. Each facet of her intelligence was judged satisfactory. Be patient, the final doctor said, and she will form words that please you whenever she is ready to do so.

Brief singing, dancing with her light on my chest, but she is already tired, whines and cries, then sleeps. I continue to dance for a time, tango, ever more slowly. I dance my way to her crib, and lay her down.

To the living room, and I settle in with Howar-Malverde’s anthology on anthropological linguistics. There is little wrong with it but between essays and on occasion between paragraphs I am instead with Cabeza de Vaca, and the tribe says that Mala Cosa first came fifteen or sixteen years ago, wandered through the countryside, was small and bearded and hard to see clearly. A lit torch would appear in a doorway and he would charge in and take whomever he wished, slash them three times in the side and pull out their intestines, cut a bit off and toss it into the flames of the torch. Then he would slash three times at the victim’s arm, sever it at the elbow, reattach the limb and heal all wounds with a touch. And when the tribe was dancing again he would appear, sometimes as a man and sometimes as a woman, would lift their huts and fly into the air with them and come crashing down. He never ate anything he was offered, and when asked where he lived would point deep into the earth, and the Spaniards laugh at these stories, laugh until they are shown the scars on the people’s arms and sides.

A CLEARING BEHIND THE VILLAGE. A low fire. The shaman tellsme that as I drink I must have an intention in my mind, must ask to see or understand someone or something, anything or anyone, and he promises my request will be met. I ask to see God, just in case. Thick bitter liquid from a green glass bottle—the ayahuasca. Cane alcohol and rough black tobacco. I vomit several times and the jungle goes still, a wall of deep green, a deep wall of green.

Then movement. Figures extend from the wall, figures from Chancay tapestries, from Wari ceramics, geometric fish and birds and mammals and I know them, have known them and needed them. They move for minutes or hours. Later there is a young woman, perhaps a perfect young woman, of and not of the figures. She is not in love with me. She is not present long.

The figures dissolve into the wall and the wall resolves into jungle. I am wet with sweat and rain. Somewhere nearby the shaman is vomiting, singing, vomiting again and Reynaldo waves from a distance, turns and walks into the chemistry lab.

I do not know why he is here on a Saturday, and he is likely thinking the same of me. He has dyed his hair medium brown, nearly my color, says that Mireille loves it. He has gotten still larger though not yet as large as me, and at our sporadic English classes we are careful never to speak of happiness, but pat each other on the shoulder and smile.

Quickly into the auditorium. The staff meeting was scheduled to begin twelve minutes ago, and I appear to be the last to arrive. Arantxa smiles at me from the lectern. She waits for me to squeeze along the row to an empty seat. She waits for me to receive a copy of the agenda.

We have never had a printed agenda before. As far as I was aware today’s meeting was to have nothing to do with me, but its penultimate element will apparently consist of my explanation of the new class observation framework I developed last week. Informing me of this only now is surely Arantxa’s revenge: the observations as framed will result in more work for her than for anyone else.

I settle lower in my seat and apologize to the professors adjoining me. They shrug and smile. In the United States my bulk angered people. I did not blame them. They sought only fairness as understood by their lights, each person contained within an arithmetically averaged volume, allowances made for mild but not extreme deviation. It is not so hard to be fat here, where nothing is fair or expected to be. Karina says that this is changing, but so slowly that one could live one’s whole life and not notice.

Arantxa begins with an apology for having forced us to come in on a Saturday, proceeds to an exegesis of the complications that made it necessary, and from there to new rules for the photocopier. Until yesterday no rain had fallen in perhaps ten days. Then there were four hours of thunder and lightning, but the rain itself fell moderately, so instead of death by drowning we had only overworked pipes and therefore sewage in the streets. The thunder made Karina nervous but she hid it as best she could, and this morning on television was a different thing: flamingos in the Bay of Paracas. Karina and I held one another and watched them stand and stalk and preen, and we loved them, because coming down from the highland lakes to the coast is what they do each year when the rainy season ends.

It is said that the Peruvian flag was inspired by flamingos. This seems possible: white down the breast and red on both wings. A meteorologist stood on a bluff above the bay, and spoke directly into the camera. He promised us that the ocean is sufficiently cold, that the Humboldt Current is sufficiently restored, that in spite of yesterday’s rain El Niño is dying or dead. Then my mother called to say that Aunt Claire had fallen, had broken her hip, that their trip to Peru would have to be postponed for several months if not more.

- Point Three, says Arantxa, is staplers!

It is possible that my aunt truly has broken her hip, and if so she has saved my mother the trouble of thinking up some less likely excuse. I told my mother how sorry I was, and said that Mariángel and I would travel to Fallash next Christmas if not sooner. Most of the insect species that came with the rains, the latigazos and water beetles and cucambas, they have gone back to wherever they normally live, but mosquitoes are still profuse. Also there are still many toads. Mariángel remains fascinated by them, loves to pet and stomp on them though I beg her to do neither.

Repairs are being made in most places: men patching roadways, rebuilding sidewalks, hammering frames for new drains. Also the matacojudos are falling. I am careful never to pass directly beneath the trees, and how is it that the rains did not kill the blossoms? Are they that much more resilient than algarrobo blossoms, that much stronger or luckier?

- Which brings me to our most recent resource bank acquisitions, says Arantxa.

There is a town south of Piura called Jequetepeque. The river there shares its name, and the valley as well. The region is thick with Moche sites, some quite rich—a headdress made from a single embossed sheet of gold, a sea deity, eight tentacles extending from a face that is half human, half feline, extraordinary piece, stolen by huaqeros from a site called La Mina but years later Scotland Yard recovered it and perhaps there is still hope.

Also at La Mina a cave, wall paintings, polychrome, the blue of great interest though just now I do not remember why and Reynaldo once told me that there is a bacteria that eats highways. It was true. He showed me the newspaper clippings, and the new Viceroy sends two messengers to the citadel at Vilcabamba. It is all that is left of the Inca empire. Cayo Topa and Don Martín are received by Sayri Túpac, the new Inca, a nine-year-old boy. Gasca has sent wine and silk and preserves. Sayri Túpac reciprocates—parrots and ocelots, flutes and cumbi cloth, gold and silver. Don Martín, Martinillo, interpreter for Pizarro throughout the Conquest, the only native to receive a share of Atahualpa’s ransom in Cajamarca, the first to receive an encomienda, to marry a Spanish woman, to be granted a knighthood and coat of arms and Arantxa says my name, beckons, smiles in a way that does not at all seem vengeful.

Squeezing out and along, down to the lectern. When Don Martín returns from Vilcabamba, Gasca will confiscate his encomienda; Don Martín will sail to Spain to protest, will die waiting for resolution. Arantxa turns on the overhead projector and hands me a folder. Inside are numbered transparencies. I hold one to the light. It is a perfected version of the first page of the framework proposal I sent her, and there has never been a better administrator.

The professors nod as I describe the past observational failures they all know well: peer-based, student-based, me-based, assessor-from-Lima-based. They nod again and persistently as I move from transparency to transparency, analysis to parameter to aim. Pre-planning, I say. Strengths and weaknesses, I say. Self-evaluation, I say, and this, I have come to believe, is the key.

When I am done I step to the side. Arantxa concludes the meeting, smiles at the scattered applause, leads me to her office. She seats me in front of her desk. She leans across toward me, her blouse agape, and lays her hand on my forearm.

- That was exactly what I’d hoped for, she says. You came through beautifully.

To come. Through. Odd, but there are odder things.

- I think you are ready for greater responsibility, she says. Of course it would be accompanied by greater remuneration. And did you see the sky after the rain?

The clouds stretched feathered and were lit in all possible ways: lavender and rose, purple, orange, even strips of green. Perhaps the green was a reflection of some kind.

- No, I say, I’m afraid I did not.

I lean away. Arantxa’s chin gnarls.

- Who is it? she asks.

- What?

- The woman, who is she?

Her phone rings. She closes her eyes. I nod and stand and leave.

Mariángel and I sit perfectly still in the loveseat on the patio. This morning it is the choquecos who have come to fight in the almond tree: small and fasciated, white and black. Their call is a sharp loud hack and they move in groups of nine. Mariángel forgets how still we must remain, reaches for her doll, the birds fly away and Karina loves me backwards in a sense. For her, eye color is meaningless and bulk is of great importance. She wishes always to be uppermost. There is no difficulty in understanding this.

She says that the photos of Pilar on my walls do not bother her, has thus freed me to take them down as I see fit, and she has, I suspect, other men. This is what I understand by moments when she is called to the phone and says nothing upon returning, by moments when I ask if she wants, and before I can finish the sentence she says she won’t be able. I have been careful not to force her to choose.

She will be arriving soon and together we will go to Catacaos. She is tired, she says, of being hated by Socorro, and believes that treating Socorro and her family to a Sunday lunch will be beneficial. I have no idea whether or not to agree, but Fermín has not come to water in several weeks, and when recently I asked about Casualidad, Socorro answered inaudibly, and perhaps this also can be addressed.

I have just finished fighting sunblock onto Mariángel’s cheeks when the doorbell rings. Long kisses hello and then out, and a mototaxi from the corner. The ten-minute combi ride southwest lasts twenty-five. There are dozens of white egrets hunting in the fields to either side of the road, and Mariángel likes them all.

The combi leaves us at the Plaza de Armas. There Fermín is waiting on a bench beneath tamarinds. Sitting beside him is a man with many thick shell necklaces, and curly black hair down his back.

Fermín nods when we say hello. His sadness is terrifying and there is no need to ask about Casualidad: it must only be a matter of days. The man with the hair and necklaces is friendly, and does not seem insane even when he says that he is Oscar the Prophet. He predicts that I will have ceviche for lunch. I say that I would prefer cabrito, and he nods.

- If I were any good, Catacaos would not be so poor and muddy, he says.

I agree, and ask which restaurant is his favorite, and if he would like to join us. He suggests La Gansita, then says that he has art to make, but that he will join us for chicha afterwards. I smile and shake his hand and there are two types of drink by this name. If the chicha to which he refers were chicha morada, the purple juice made from boiled corn and lemons and sugar, I would happily drink with him, but Oscar means chicha de jora, the drink of the Incas, hours and days of corn soaked and boiled and strained repeatedly and then chewed by very old women and spat out and left in clay bowls to ferment in its stew of saliva.

I have heard that the chewing and spitting have long since been replaced by grating boards and sugar, and that the taste has not changed at all. Fermín leads us to Socorro’s house. The dirt street is narrow but the house is whitewashed and clean. Socorro introduces us to her daughters: Elsa, Ema, Eva and Marucha. She watches as Karina asks them questions involving braids. I ask her if La Gansita is a worthy place for a special lunch, and she says she suspects that it is.