Red April (26 page)

Now not even images of fire and blows passed through the mind of Prosecutor Chacaltana. There was only a great void, a hungry darkness, the maw of nothingness closing over his head. He needed to talk. He needed to tell everything that had happened to him in the past month and a half. He needed to cry like a baby. He began to tell it all, urged on by the young woman's caresses. When the first light of dawn sifted through the small window in the room, he had finished his story. Edith's lap was warm and dry. Seconds later, as if a great weight had been lifted from him, he was asleep.

He woke at eight in the morning. He had not slept very long. And he could not sleep any more. He did not even think he could move. After the initial shock of not knowing where he was, he looked around Edith's small apartment. He was in the bed. His jacket and the holster were hanging from the only chair, and under that were his shoes, one beside the other, as orderly and unwrinkled as the other things Edith had touched. She was there too, standing across from him, taking off her undershirt and bottoms. She had gotten a dishpan of water from somewhere and was carefully washing her underarms and crotch, her neck and feet, in the still tenuous morning light.

“Good morning,” said the prosecutor.

When she heard him, she did her best to cover her body. Her right arm crossed her chest and her left hand covered her sex.

“Turn around,” she replied. “I have no place else to go in here.”

The prosecutor did not turn around. He smiled at her. She returned the smile. She had turned red.

“Turn around,” she insisted.

Sluggishly, the prosecutor turned around. He remained in that position for a few seconds until he turned back to her, not so sluggishly now. She covered herself again.

“If you don't behave, you won't come back. Remember you're my cousin.”

The prosecutor thought of the previous night. His head was teeming with fragments of his encounter with Father Quiroz in the basement, his arrival at Edith's house, the young woman's tender lap. He wanted to touch her. Take refuge in her.

“Come here,” he said. It sounded like an order.

“I have to go to work and I'm already late. My boss will be there because we're expecting a crowd. Don't move from here. Doña Dora is furious. She scolded me for twenty minutes when I went down for water.”

“Come here,” he repeated.

She wrapped a towel around her body and approached him. She touched his forehead and let him bring her hand slowly to his lips. He kissed her palm and the back of her hand. He put her hand gently into his mouth and sucked each one of her fingers.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Thank you for helping me,” he said. “I'll never forget it.”

She leaned over to kiss him. He took her by the waist and pulled her to the bed. She refused, first with her body and then with her voice, but then she let herself sink down.

“I have to go,” she reminded him, laughing.

He lay on top of her body and put his tongue in her mouth. He
no longer felt like a little boy needing protection. On the contrary, he wanted to recover his adulthood. Show her that he could also be a protective man, a man. He kissed her neck, her shoulders, the back of her neck, where a few short black hairs escaped, like long down. She responded with kisses on his forehead and cheeks. She tried to move him to one side. He resisted.

“Don't go to work,” he said.

She laughed.

“Don't go.”

He wondered if they had discovered the body yet. Then he removed the thought from his mind. He needed something else, something besides so much death. He needed something with life. He was breathing heavily. Her mouth was partially open. He bit her lips.

“Ow!” Edith groaned. “Does your mama know you do those things?”

“She doesn't see us here.”

“She's always with you. That's the problem.”

The prosecutor became perturbed. He did not think this was the right context for talking about his mother. He replied:

“She likes you very much.” It seemed to him a delicate moment, one of those moments when important things are said. “She would not object if … if I married you.”

The color rose in Edith's cheeks. She seemed surprised.

“She?”

He smiled but did not receive a smile in return. This disconcerted him, it disconcerted him not to receive from people what he had planned. Smiles are repaid with smiles, that must be written down somewhere as a norm. She caressed his forehead and said words he did not expect.

“Listen, Félix … I love you very much but … the truth is … to marry you … I'd need for her not to be here.”

“What?”

“I understand your feelings. But I couldn't go to live in a house
that belongs to another woman. Least of all one … who isn't really there.”

“She is there,” said the prosecutor. “Do you believe that only things you can see are there?”

She lowered her eyes.

“No, of course not. I'm going to get dressed.”

She stood. He tried to hold her back but failed. Something in the air had broken, and the prosecutor tried to put the pieces back together.

“Listen … You have to understand … I love you but … my mother … just now …”

He knew there were words caught in his throat, trying to get out, but it was not clear to him how to pull them free, he would have liked to scoop them out with a spoon. He had always been good with words, but he seemed incapable of summoning the exact ones to talk about what mattered to him most. And the worst thing was that right now he did not have the time of a functionary at his desk or a poet facing a sheet of paper. The words he needed should have burst directly from his heart, but his heart was dry.

She picked up her clothes from the chair. The prosecutor felt he would never again see her undressed.

“It's not a problem,” she said. “I understand.”

It was as if she had spoken from the other side of the world. From the tip of a glacier. He went over to her. He tried to embrace her but she eluded him. He held her tight and kissed her shoulders. He felt a great need to control her, to not let her go, and he felt that no words could restrain her. He removed the towel from her body with a single movement and lowered his head to her chest and belly, kissing her constantly. She tried to push him away by the shoulders.

“That's enough …,” she whispered.

But he did not let her go. He held her around the legs and lowered his mouth to her sex until he felt her pubic hairs brushing his
tongue. Her vulva tasted of soap and of her. He felt a tug on his hair. He raised his head. She was looking at him in a fury.

“Let me go,” she said dryly. “I'm going to …”

Normally the prosecutor would have let her go and apologized for his behavior. He would have said he had not intended any disrespect. But without knowing why, his reaction surprised even him. He lowered his head again and held her more tightly around the legs. He sucked. This time she shouted:

“Let me alone!”

And she shook him by his hair. He pulled Edith's hands away from his head. They came away filled with black hairs that jutted out between her fingers. He brought her hands down to the bed and climbed on her again to trap her between his body and the mattress. The bed creaked and rocked back and forth. Now Edith's eyes reflected fear. Inexplicably, that excited him even more. Trembling, Edith tried to free herself from his embrace. He squeezed her neck with one hand while he unzipped his fly with the other. He saw the red marks his paws had left on the young woman's wrists before she scratched his face and put her finger in his eye. Then he became violent. He slapped her on the bed and lowered his trousers as he got into position. He saw his own aged penis contrasting with Edith's fresh, clean flesh. His round stomach fell on her flat belly. He thrust forward. She closed her eyes and clenched her teeth. He thrust again, over and over again, shaking her as the bed creaked, feeling how her small body grew more and more diminutive as it trembled beneath his body, wrinkled but strong, still strong, stronger than ever.

When he finished, he rolled off her and lay to one side. He was perspiring. His head was spinning with memories of the previous night and what he had just done. She did not move. It was difficult to tell if the drops rolling down her face were perspiration or tears. He felt a strange pleasure when he asked himself the question in silence. She trembled. She felt raw, torn apart.

“Yesterday I shot a man,” he said. “I don't know who he was
or if I hit him. But I might have killed someone. I felt it was a kind of test, a kind of training for something. I felt that something was changing in me.”

All the people I talk to die.

“Get out,” she responded, first in a whisper, then in a howl. “Get out! Son of the devil!”

It sounded innocent as an insult. But Prosecutor Chacaltana knew what it meant.
Supaypawawa
. Son of the devil. It was a direct translation of the worst thing you can say to a person in Quechua. He knew he really would have to get out. His crotch was wet but she would not let him wash. She was wet too, and a thin line of blood trickled between her legs. The prosecutor did not want to ask her if she was a virgin. He wanted to think she was.

As he was closing Edith's door, he saw her sobbing on the bed. He began to walk down the stairs as he put on his jacket and made certain the holster for the pistol was carefully closed. At the door he passed the neighbor from the previous night. He greeted her by name, Doña Dora. When he walked out to the street, it seemed to him the city was filled with light, much more than had come into Edith's small room. He walked toward police headquarters. He had decided to turn himself in.

He moved forward slowly, as if he had cement in his shoes, along the streets where the town was preparing for the procession of the Holy Sepulcher. He felt dizzy. He thought he would go into the captain's office, hand over his weapon, and recount step by step everything that had happened last night. It would almost be a relief if they did not believe him. It would almost be a relief to be arrested and be able to forget. If the captain insisted, he would even tell him what he had done to Edith. He felt too tired to try to run away or even to think where he could run to.

Before he reached police headquarters, he passed by his house. There were no guards at the door. He thought perhaps they had entered to search it during the night. He opened the door and
walked in. Everything was just as he had left it: his room, his mother's room. He picked up the smiling photograph of his mother in Sacsayhuamán. He kissed it.

“You can see, Mamacita, I haven't managed to do anything to make you proud of me. I hope I won't disappoint you too much.”

He continued talking to her as he cleaned himself up. He thought he might be allowed some of her photos in a cell. He cleaned his private parts with special care. They smelled of Edith. He tried not to cry. He tried not to cry any more. He went out again. As he approached the Plaza Mayor, he passed more and more police rushing past him, carrying their orders from one side of the city to the other. He was waiting for the moment when one of them would aim at his chest and order him to drop his weapon. He was hoping they would save him the trouble of confessing to something he had not done, that they had already connected him to the crime scene, and that the couple from last night had identified him beyond any doubt. He lamented that there had not been more light on the street. He regretted not having continued firing the gun until the police had arrived. He passed some soldiers too. He felt as if he had impunity. He knew what it meant to walk among his pursuers without anyone turning around to look at him, like a ghost. He wanted to shout that he was a murderer, that he had already killed four people, that perhaps he had just committed rape, of that he could not be sure because of legal regulations. Legal regulations. He could not control his laughter. He began to laugh right in the middle of the square. He wanted to dance but thought of his mother. She would not have liked seeing him like this. He controlled himself but continued to laugh as he approached police headquarters. He thought about Pacheco. He would be happy to see him. Certainly he would give himself all the credit, he would say he had captured him after a long pursuit filled with bullets and patrol cars. He laughed again, louder and louder.

At the door to headquarters, the guard seemed to be asleep as
he leaned on his rifle. The prosecutor stopped to admire the flag with the national seal hanging over the entrance. He turned to see the city bustling with preparations for the procession. It seemed that centuries passed before he took the last step to reception.

The usual sergeant was at his desk. It amused the prosecutor to think he would have to wait hours to turn himself in, that they would keep their murderer sitting beside the door for a good long time before allowing him to confess. The sergeant stood when he saw him walk in. The prosecutor waited for his words. He knew what they would be. He smiled again. He felt the weight of the weapon at his side. He had become used to the pistol. The sergeant saluted, his hand at his cap:

“Captain Pacheco is expecting you, Señor Prosecutor.”

They knew. They knew everything. He felt as if he were floating to Pacheco's office. He wondered if he should hold out his hands for the cuffs. Pacheco was sitting with papers in front of him, and he too stood when he saw him come in.

“Chacaltana! Where the hell have you been? I've been looking for you all morning.”

Chacaltana tried to impose some order in his mind before explaining where the hell he had been. But the captain continued:

“They killed Father Quiroz. Damn, Chacaltana, you have to see him. They really fucked him up.”

“They” killed? Not “you” killed? Chacaltana had been so ready to confess that now he did not know what to say. He had even begun to convince himself that he was guilty.

“How … ?”

“They found him at dawn. The neighbors reported shots. But he wasn't shot to death. It seems the killer wanted to announce what he had done. The only thing the motherfucker didn't do was set off fireworks.”

And the couple? And people who saw him leaving the house?