Blood Lake (42 page)

Now, I've got a twenty-minute lecture all prepared on the oppressive and misogynistic effects of Caucasian-based standards of beauty within postcolonial patriarchally structured societies, but I shorten it to, “
Sí, patroncitu
.”

“Maybe you wanna come back to the barracks with us to make
chichirimicui
?”

More Quichua. You figure it out.

I'm conjuring up multiple scenarios, rejecting the ones that are most likely to leave a trail of dead bodies. Stan's fishing frantically in his pockets, probably hoping to distract them with more bribery, when a stern voice cuts in:

“Sergeant.”

A captain. Calmly smoking a cigarette.

I'm covering the bottom half of my face with my poncho. Fortunately, this is in character.

“Keep moving,” he utters, and turns away as they throw the scarf back at me.

My God. A good cop.

Meanwhile, my seat has been taken and neither of us can insist that we sit together, so I have to stand in the aisle all the way to Cuenca. No chivalry for an Indian. Even a “tall, pretty” one.

I'm only five-foot-seven. What they mean is, I'm tall for a
mestiza
.

And all my sisters are beautiful.

But my legs are so tired by the time we get to Cuenca that I don't yield fast enough as a
señor
in a suit passes me on the narrow sidewalk.

“Dirty Indian,” he snips.

“
Mana pi chayachun, patroncito
,” I say, meekly shuffling out of the way, even though I just told him to fuck off in Quichua.

Stan wants to find a hotel together, but I tell him if we check in looking like a
gringo
and a
chola cuencana
, the religious police will be breaking down the door within an hour.

“It's a quiet town, huh?” he says.

“Quiet? After 10:00
P.M.
, you could play chess in the middle of the streets and not get interrupted until the king's down to his last three pawns.”

We have to settle for a quick kiss in a dark doorway. Damn, it feels good to be hugged by a man who cares enough to keep a date with a fugitive.

It makes me feel like a teenager again. And just as horny.

Friday morning I buy a stack of newspapers and skim through them, searching for information I could get in a minute if my sources were intact. Still nothing about a rural sergeant being assaulted, but Putamayo has a feature article in today's
El Despacho
playing up Governor Canino's charges that the “janitor” who killed Padre Samuel Campos had ties to Hectorthe-School-Teacher Gatillo's Socialist Unity Party that are going to be fully investigated. Page three again. Pretty
prominent placement for a guy who never seems to be where anyone says he is.

In other news, President Pajizo announced the end of fuel subsidies, blaming it on a “shortage of dollars” (Hmm, I wonder where they have
them
warehoused).

General Vélez said he will support whichever candidate offers his imprisoned commandos amnesty—and anyone who remembers that he was the rebellious general Pajizo tried to bomb out of the Manta Air Force Base without referring to the chart gets an A.

The police announce they are doubling the number of interprovincial road blocks because “subversion is on the rise,” which is an interesting mixed metaphor in its own right.

And the two leading candidates, Governor Segundo Canino and Senator Ricardo Faltorra, are both planning to come to Cuenca for back-to-back rallies.

Things are heating up.

I stop off at the Hotel Gran Colombia and ask if
señor
Pena got the message I left for him. But it's a different clerk, who tells me, “There's no one here by that name.”

I show him the photo.

“What does this look like, a police station? Get out of here before I call the cops,” he snips.

Lucky for him I've learned to control my tendency to respond to idiocy with extreme violence.

Then it's on to Stan's hotel room, where I make a two-minute call to Guayaquil so I can talk to Antonia. It takes a minute and a half to complete the connection, so I only have about thirty seconds.

“Are you okay, honey?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Yes?”

“Well, no, not really. It's getting kind of boring here. But that's okay. You do what you've got to do.”

“Umm … I wish it weren't like this. We have to catch up and spend a lot of time together when I get back, okay?”

“Yeah, Mom. Sure. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Emptiness …

Till Stan says, “Hey—remember me?”

It starts slowly.

Soon it's a flurry of arms and kisses.

We're all adults here. I don't have to spell it out, do I?

It's only been a couple of weeks but it feels like so-o-o-o much longer. Stan and I spend a few delicious hours pretending to be a carefree couple, with me acting as his tour guide. I take him around and show him some of the relics from my stormier student days—stone walls, monuments, even a statue of Jesus with bullet holes in it. I show him the pile of stones that used to be the Incan ruler Huayna Capac's palace, and he gets a compromising shot of me giving head to a camera tripod. We're rounding a corner when I recoil as if I've stepped on a rattlesnake.

There he is, six feet off the ground and ten feet high, an icon with a third eye shining behind his head like a flaming sun.

“What?” Stan asks.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Who are those guys?” he says, looking at the mural.

“Revolutionary heroes.”

“Sure, I recognize Che, but who are the other two guys?”

“Sandino and Carihuahua.”

“Who's he?”

“An Ecuadorian revolutionary.”

“Well, yeah, but who was he?”

“Just some guy, all right?”

He knows that's not a satisfactory response, but he lets it alone for now. I take him to the hatmaker's cooperative so he can watch old women with leathery hands weave a few strands of pliant straw shipped up from the coast into the finest “Panama hats” that sell for $175 and up in Manhattan.
The gray-haired weaver will be lucky if she gets five bucks for it. We admire the eye-dazzling scarves, shawls, and ponchos sold by the proudhearted Otovaleño Indians who are not ashamed to stand there and speak Quichua in front of the
señores
.

I'd like to take Stan up to the volcanic steam baths just outside of town, but I don't dare. That's right, Cuenca is
also
built atop a zone of volcanic activity. So I drag him to the food market so we can buy the ingredients for an authentic Ecuadorian
almuerzo
and feed the whole crew at my cousin Lucho's place. But so many stalls are empty this late in the day, we have to supplement what little we find with some canned goods from a tiny, overpriced supermarket.

Back in Marianita's kitchen, I suddenly remember— too late—how the tomato paste cans spurt when you open them in the mountains. I'm trying to explain to Stan that the considerable drop in air pressure between the coast, where they're canned, and the
sierra
, is responsible, but the sight of Stan wiping the thick red goop off his face is just too ridiculous for me to bear. Marianita takes over and orchestrates a cornucopian meal with such verve you'd think she just awoke from an evil witch's spell.

Afterwards, while we're all sitting around with full stomachs and happy hearts, Lucho fills my American boyfriend in on some of the local lore. I translate as Lucho tells him about Atahualpa, the last Inca ruler of the northern kingdom, who declared to his nation that someday he would return to lead them, because his father, Inti, the sun god, would breathe life back into his mummified body, as long as it was spared from the Inquisitional flames.

“He converted to Christianity to avoid being burned at the stake,” says Lucho.

“So they garroted him instead,” I say.

“And you know, a lot of them are still waiting for him to return from the dust.”

“Is the whole town sleeping?” he asks.

“There's nothing else to do this late on a Friday night.”

“Nothing?”

Stan sweeps me off my feet and throws me onto the bed, a maneuver that was meant for springier beds than this.

“
Ouch
. What time is the next earthquake?” I ask, recovering from the jolt.

“In about twenty minutes,” says Stan. “Gee, my underwear's fitting me tight all of a sudden. I don't understand it.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. You better help me take them off.”

“I'll get my crowbar.”

Familiarity breeds daring.

Maybe it's the altitude. The equatorial lines of force pulling at me. Or perhaps it's the smell of danger. I reveal some tricks in bed that you could sell tickets to. If that's your idea of a turn-on.

Darkness. He's moving around. Bumping into things.
Thud!

“What the—?”
Zing!

Oh, no.

“My God,” he says. “I've been sleeping with a woman who carries a switchblade.”

“Technically, it's a stiletto.”

He turns on the desk lamp, starts picking up my stuff. “What is this thing?” A black pouch with long leather straps. “It looks like a
tfilin
.”

“What's a
tfilin
?”

“It's something that pious Jews wrap around their arms when they pray.”

“Show me.”

“Well, this pouch should be holding a parchment with four passages from the Bible written on it. One goes around the head, and the other goes around the arm, like this—” He puts the sling's pouch around his left bicep and wraps the leather straps around his arm seven times, then around his
middle finger three times. “Because God commands us to ‘bind them as a sign upon thy hand,' and let them be a symbol before your eyes.”

“I've got to learn more about Judaism.”

“What do
you
put in it?”

“Rocks.”

“And I've got to learn more about your special brand of Catholicism.”