Red April (3 page)

“What'll you have?”

“Where is Luis?”

She seemed offended by the question.

“Luis doesn't work here anymore. Now I'm here. But I'm not so terrible.”

The prosecutor understood he had made a faux pas. He tried to apologize, but just then not many words were coming out of his mouth.

“A
mate
, please,” was all he could manage.

She laughed. Her small white smile was timid.

“It's lunchtime,” she said. “The tables are for having lunch. You have to eat something.”

The prosecutor looked at the four other tables. The place was empty. He missed Luis.

“Then bring me a … an …”

“The trout's very good.”

“Trout. And a
mate
, please.”

The girl went into the kitchen. Her clothes were not flashy. She seemed simple in her jeans and Lobo sneakers, her hair pulled back in a braid. The prosecutor thought that perhaps, after all, the deceased was a case for the military courts. He did not want to interfere in the antiterrorist struggle. The military had organized it. They knew it best. He looked at his watch. He should not delay too long. His mother was waiting for him. It took the girl fifteen minutes to come out with a fried trout and two potato halves on a plate. In the other hand she carried the cup of
mate
. She served everything amiably, almost delicately. The prosecutor looked at the trout. Blackened, it seemed to observe him from the plate. He separated it down the middle. One of the sides seemed like a spreading wing, an arm. He let it go. He tried to drink a little
mate
. With his spoon he moved aside the coca leaves on the surface and raised the steaming cup to his lips. It burned him. He quickly put the cup down on the table. Suddenly, he was very hot. Behind him he heard a sweet laugh.

“You have to be patient,” the girl behind the counter said.

Patient.

“Everything is slower here, it's not like Lima,” she went on.

“I'm not from Lima. I'm Ayacuchan.”

She lowered her eyes and smiled again.

“If you say so …” she said.

“Don't you believe me?”

Her only answer was to restrain a little laugh. She did not look
him in the eye. He saw her for the first time. She was slim and very refined in her embroidered blouse.

“Are you familiar with Lima?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“But it must be nice,” she added. “Big.”

The Associate District Prosecutor thought about Avenida Abancay, its buses vomiting smoke, its pickpockets. He thought about the houses without water in El Agustino, about the ocean, about the zoo, the Parque de las Leyendas and its consumptive elephant, about the bare gray hills, about a game he had seen between the Boys and the U. About a door closing.

About an empty pillow.

“It is big,” he replied.

“I'd like to go there,” she said. “I want to study nursing.”

“You would be a very good nurse.”

She laughed. So did he. Suddenly, he felt relieved. He looked at the trout again, which had not stopped looking at him.

“Didn't you like it?” she asked.

“It's not that. It's just that … I have to go. How much is it?”

“I can't charge you. You didn't eat anything.”

“But you worked.”

“Come back when you're hungry. The food is nice.”

He said good-bye to her with a smile that was also nice. He observed that it had been a long time since he had spoken to a stranger. In Ayacucho, the residents did not talk to one another, and they charged for everything. They were suspicious. On the other hand, the girl's pleasantness had made him notice how lonely he felt in this city where he had no friends even though he had been back for a year. People his own age whom he remembered from childhood had left or had died during the eighties, when they were in their twenties, a good age for the first and perhaps the worst time for the second. He walked up the street toward his house. He realized he was almost running. His house was old but in good condition, it was the same one he had lived
in when he was a boy, and had been rebuilt after the disaster. He went in and hurried to the bedroom in the rear. He opened the door.

“Mamacita?”

Félix Chacaltana Saldívar walked to the chest of drawers where his mother kept her clothes and costume jewelry. He took out a skirt and blouse and laid them on the bed. It was a beautiful bed, small, with a canopy of carved wood.

“I should have come in this morning. I'm sorry. It's just that there was a homicide, Mamacita, I had to run to work.”

He brought the broom from the kitchen and quickly swept out the room. Then he sat on the bed, looking at the door.

“Do you remember Señora Eufrasia? She used to drink
mate
with you? She's sick, Mamacita. I sent her a Virgin so she'd get better. You pray too. I only pray a little.”

He felt sheltered in an old, warm mist. He caressed the cloth of the sheets.

“And pray for the man who died today, too. I will. That way the fear goes … I think the terrorists are coming back, Mamacita. It isn't certain, I don't want you to worry, but this is very strange.”

He stood and passed his hand along the clothing he had laid on the sheets. He smelled it. It had the scent of his mother, a scent kept for many years. He opened the window to air out the room. The afternoon sun shone directly on his mother's bed.

“I have to go now. I only … I only needed to come here for a while. I hope that doesn't annoy you … It doesn't annoy you, does it?”

He crossed himself and opened the door to go back to his office. He gave a last look inside. It hurt him to verify once again, as he had every day for the past year, that there was no one in the room.

As he returned to the office he felt calmer, unburdened. His mother's room relaxed him. He spent hours there. Occasionally, often at night, he would recall some new detail, a photograph, an
altarpiece that had decorated his mamacita's room in his childhood. He would hurry to look for it in the market and order it if there was no copy exactly like the one in his memory. Little by little, the room had become a three-dimensional portrait of his nostalgia.

When he reached his desk, he found an envelope containing an invitation to the institutional parade on Sunday. He made a note of it in his date book, wrote an account of the complaint for the police, and made copies of the forensic report for each envelope. The chocolate smudges were well hidden on the photocopies. They looked like ink. Then he wrote a request for information to the Ministry of Energy and Mines asking what source could have produced sufficient heat to burn the body. And another request to the municipality of Quinua asking that they send him copies in quadruplicate of missing persons reports dated subsequent to January 1 of the current year.

He spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of other pending matters, such as the complaint of a citizen against his neighbor, whom he accused in his statement of being a faggot. The prosecutor composed a reply to the report stating that homosexuality in any of its variants does not constitute a misdemeanor, infraction, or serious crime since it is not duly specified as such in the penal code. However, he added, if the individual engaged in relations with a human or judicial person without verifying that it was a concomitant voluntary act by the aforesaid person, he might commit a crime against honor as specified under the classification of violation.

He asked himself how to sanction the violation of one man by another. He realized he could not marry them because there was no relevant procedure to do so. Perhaps the situation deserved another brief.

The institutional parade at Lent had been established by decree in 1994 at the request of the archbishop. It began with the several branches of the armed forces passing before the dais in the Plaza de Armas and saluting the competent authorities of the state, the Church, and the military high command. After the hussars and the rangers, and always to the music of the National Police Band, various schools and institutions paraded past while an official introduced them over the loudspeakers:

“The María Parado de Bellido School: established by ministerial resolution 000578904 and governed by municipal statute 887654333, for two years this school has been training young Ayacuchan seamstresses and serving the interests of national handicrafts. The Daniel Alcides Carrión Institute: created by ministerial resolution …”

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar liked parades, the sonorous passing by of national symbols. The uniforms made him feel secure and proud, the young students allowed him to trust in the future, the cassocks guaranteed respect for traditions. He enjoyed hearing the National Anthem and the March of the Flag under the brilliance of trumpets and military braid. He sat proudly in the officials' box, dressed in his best black suit, his good tie, and a handkerchief in his pocket. The year before, after his arrival, he had participated by reciting a poem by José Santos Chocano, and the crowd had applauded loudly the seriousness of his recitation and the solemnity of his diction.

He did not like as much what came afterward, when the parade
ended and the functionaries gathered for a fraternal celebration in the municipal ballroom. The year before, he had been invited to the celebration because of his poem. This year, perhaps it was a mistake. Although he felt proud to be considered one of the high-ranking officials, he never really knew what to say on those occasions. The competent authorities circulated around him, holding glasses of rosé, without ever stopping beside him. Many of the mid-and low-ranking functionaries spoke to him for a while but looked elsewhere, searching for someone more important with whom to converse. It was easier to communicate with them in writing.

As the celebration progressed and the alcohol made the rounds, the subject became limited to enumerating the women each man desired and the details of a hypothetical sexual encounter. For the moment, Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar did not want to desire any woman. He tended to respond to these catalogues by nodding and wondering when he could say something, a word at least, trying to think of some woman who had attracted his attention. As a consequence, he normally preferred not to be present, to stay home tending to his mother's room or reading to himself the poems of José Santos Chocano. He liked small places, where no one heard his voice. But now he had a reason to go. He had to speak to Captain Pacheco, who had not yet responded to his inquiries. A case as important as this one ought to move to the highest levels as quickly as possible.

As he reached the ballroom, he met Judge Briceño, a short, nervous man with the little eyes and teeth of a guinea pig. They greeted each other. The judge asked:

“And how are things going in the Office of the Prosecutor? Are you getting used to Huamanga?”

“Well, as it happens, right now I am pursuing a case of the utmost importance …”

“I want to buy a car, Chacaltana. Even if it's a Tico. But a judge has to have a car. Don't you agree? I mean, am I right?”

“Absolutely. The case I am pursuing has to do with a recently deceased individual who …”

“A Tico or a Datsun? Because some 1990 Datsuns have come in that have hardly been driven …”

The judge discoursed on the topic for ten minutes, until Chacaltana caught sight of Captain Pacheco near the national pavilion in the ballroom, chatting with an official wearing a sky-blue tie and an officer in uniform. Judge Briceño noticed where he was looking.

“I see that you're aiming high,” he said in a complicitous tone.

“Excuse me?”

“Commander Carrión,” the judge indicated. The prosecutor understood that he was referring to the military man in the group.

“Of course, I have sent him some reports,” he replied.

“Oh, yes? Why? Are you looking for a promotion?”

“What? No, no.” And then he had second thoughts. “Well, one always wishes to serve with more efficiency …”

“Of course, efficiency. That's fine. He's the one who decides here.”

The prosecutor had heard that lie several times but was certain that moving up in the ranks of the Ministry of Justice was independent of any pressure or interference. He tried to say so in response but could not really find the words to formulate a reply.

“Of course,” he agreed at last, involuntarily.

The judge talked about two other car models until he spotted someone more important and left the prosecutor alone. Then the prosecutor approached Pacheco's group and greeted him with martial courtesy. No one introduced him or stopped talking. The prosecutor raised his voice slightly to address Captain Pacheco:

“Excuse me, Captain, hello … I stopped by your office this week with regard to the unfortunate homicide that …”

Pacheco was talking about the advantages of FAL rifles over a limited impact weapon. He seemed annoyed by the interruption.

“Yes, yes, I haven't been able to get back to you, I've been so busy. I'll send you a report soon, Chacaltana.”

“I have already written a report, but I need yours to collate the forms.”

The army officer laughed. The functionary seemed uneasy. The police officer did not want to change the subject. He repeated: