Perhaps I would have listened if he had said, She will alter what it means to be in the world, she will go late to the outdoor market to buy mangos, she will peel them and cut them in slices, she will allow you to run the slices across her bare stomach and thighs and between her shoulder blades, the juice will become one of her many scents and flavors, and four weeks after giving birth to your child, she will be taken into the desert, will be raped, strangled, left for dead, will regain tortured delirious consciousness, walk the wrong direction, and die of heat stroke the following day.
And this will be your fault.
There is a shout that ends with
colorado!
I look up, but the word was meant for someone distant. Colorado, red or reddish brown, the word used to call to any Caucasian, and when I first came to Piura I confused it with colorido, brightly colored. There are few Caucasians here, and most are foreigners who turn many colors and are many colors at once; who start boll-white, and become pink when we go secretly, unethically, repulsively to the beach with the student we are dating. Some time later our arms are the color of weak tea, our neck and forehead are still pink, and the rest of our body remains boll-white.
Now I am used to people naming one another according to race: negro or negra, chino or china, indio or india. The majority here
—
mixed native and Spanish blood, short of stature and dark-skinned, straight dark hair and small dark eyes
—
are called cholo or chola. The Spaniards meant it as an insult, and threaded through the history I came to research is other history still happening, times and tenses washing over me.
In Spanish, tense and time are a single word, and in Piura it is the taxistas who call most often. They follow me down the street and shout Colorado! or Mister! They honk repeatedly, beg me to need them, and asking them to stop honking does not help. Screaming at them and pounding my fat fists on their hood does not help either.
There are hundreds of taxis here, perhaps thousands—many more than are needed for a city this size. To become a taxista one does not need a driver’s license or insurance; one needs only a car and a taxista sticker. The stickers are sold for thirty cents apiece in the same outdoor market where one goes to buy mangos and galvanized tubs and llama fetuses in big clear bottles.
That evening Pilar tried to sneak out for fresh mangos, a gift for me for later that night, but I was coming up the sidewalk, just back from work, pronunciation and meaning and use, bat and vat, seen and sin, bread and breath and breadth. I caught her as she stepped to the curb, and I held her, smelled the cypress of her, the sage.
I asked where she was going, and she smiled and told me. She said that I should go to Mariángel and gather her up, that she would be so happy to see me. I said that Mariángel was still far too small to be made happy by anything but the smell of milk. Pilar said that I was mistaken, that soon I would learn. Then she stopped the first taxi that passed by.
It was an old yellow Tico. I said that I had a surprise for her, said she should hurry back. She laughed, mouth open, lips bright, promised that she would. She told the driver where she wanted to go, and the two of them worked back and forth on the price. I watched the driver as he talked. He was a thin, dark, brown-eyed man, like so many here.
Pilar got in and the taxi slid away. Out of habit I glanced at the license plate. An hour later I had forgotten most of it, knew only that it began with P, ended with 22, and yellow Ticos are the most common cars in Piura.
The handkerchief, hands and eyes. Class in five minutes. I pick up my briefcase, push up off the bench, walk to the white building and along it. Snatches of lectures ending
—
the feathered cloaks of Paracas, Manco Cápac’s golden plough, Salaverry and the firing squad. Around the side of the building to a parking lot, the sun beating down into it. Distant trees are held shimmering in the heat. I pull a leaf from the nearest zapote. The leaf is perfect, broad, a bright dark glossy green.
Through the parking lot, the leaf shading my eyes, the trees steadying, resolving. A path leads out the far side, and up ahead it will split, deer pen to the left, Language Center to the right. Beyond both is the back edge of campus. The wall there is not yet finished, a stretch of fifty or sixty yards unprotected, and that is where the foxes enter, the scorpions and snakes and smaller lizards, and still the parameter is clear. Inside is the oasis with its canopy of trees, its lawns, its forty-four species of nesting birds, a triumph of money and hydraulics and gravity and distant aquifers. Outside are scattered stands of algarrobo, cacti, scrub and sand for miles.
The deer in the pen are crucial to many of Reynaldo’s experiments. Reynaldo, light-skinned, almost colorado; he walks beside me, teaches me the names of trees, no longer asks why I do not go back to California. He would go to California if he could. If the conditions were right, he says, he would travel to California and visit Disneyland. He would make love to a tall blonde woman on the beach. He would learn to speak English, would play basketball every Saturday, would teach chemistry at a university where the classrooms look onto the ocean and have ceiling fans that work at several speeds. He says this, and this is how I reply: What is the name of that tree, Reynaldo, the one over there? You told me once before, but I have forgotten.
Up the right fork, into my office, take a folder of handouts from my desk and leave the leaf in its place, up the stairs and into the classroom as the bell rings. Smell of chalk dust, smell of sweat. These are my Intermediate students. They ignore me or pretend to, continue their discussion of last night’s match between Cienciano and Alianza Lima. I set my briefcase beside the lectern, take silent roll as I wait for calm. Eighteen of twenty-four are present, neither good nor bad. Still they talk, marvel at the game’s final goal, and I concede the moment.
- Who scored it? I ask.
- Waldir Sáenz, says a student named Milton. Beautiful, he says.
I ask him to come to the board, to diagram the goal and label its parts in English. Milton takes the chalk. He shows chaos at midfield, a pass to Muchotrigo on the wing, a cross in to Sáenz and the shot, straight at the goalkeeper, the ball seeming to slip through the man’s body. Only the final label gives Milton trouble.
- Por la huacha, he says. Between the legs, and beautiful.
- Huacha, yes. In English we say nutmeg.
As good a warm-up as any. I put the word on the board, have the students drill it as if it will be of value. I describe the spice as well, and Milton asks for the historical connection. The students are focused now, stare at me, and I smile.
- I have no idea. But speaking of history.
The students moan. I nod, shrug, walk them through preparatory vocabulary. Next the text, Daniel Boone, skim and scan. Comprehension questions, and finally the writing assignment, a national hero and his or her flaws.
The students’ heads lower. I shuffle through the folder. For any time left over I have a crossword about vegetables. I lean on the lectern, stare at the back wall, and here is what will happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that:
I am walking home from work. The sky catches soft fire in the west, and the smells of jasmine and offal settle over the city. As I pass the park not far from my house, a taxi slows beside me. The driver honks and I do not look up: looking up only encourages them. He honks again, pulls closer to the sidewalk, says, Oye colorado, taxi?
I shake my head, but as the cab glides away I glance at the license plate. It begins with P and ends with 22. I freeze, then shout and wave. The old yellow Tico pulls over beneath a matacojudo tree. I step slowly toward it, look in through the window on the passenger’s side, and the driver’s face is almost familiar.
- It was you, wasn’t it? I say.
- Mister? he says.
And I believe I know that voice. I wipe my hands on the front of my shirt, put my handkerchief on the door handle, open the door and drag him through and out of his taxi. I slam him face-down against the hot hood. He twists and swings at me and misses, blood streaming from his nose, spattering my hands and face and clothes. I reach up, grab one low matacojudo, strike the man’s head but the fruit is overripe and breaks. I reach up again and rip a vine loose, garrote the taxista, the vine tighter and tighter, the man’s body at last still.
No other cars have passed, but my neighbors may well have heard or seen from their open windows. I let the body fall, walk to my house. I hear Casualidad and Mariángel in the kitchen, slip past them to my room, shower and dress.
Back to the kitchen, and Casualidad smiles, asks how I entered the house without her hearing. The elastic band of her eye patch is askew, a sharp diagonal across her forehead, holds a shock of black hair vertical above one ear. I tell her that I am tired of instant coffee, that from now on I will only drink real coffee, and send her to the supermarket. I kiss Mariángel, turn on cartoons for her to watch. Out in the back yard, I spray the bloodstained clothes with lighter fluid, burn them in my new galvanized tub, and bury the ashes in the flowerbed.
Then I remember the police lieutenant, his catalog of uncertainties. We have only part of a license plate. The taxi was a private car, like most taxis here, and there are thousands of possible matches throughout the country. No way to know where or even if it is registered. The plate could have been false or stolen, the car itself stolen. These cars are constantly resold. There are thousands of dark-skinned black-haired brown-eyed men in this city alone. My poor eyes do not always see the differences.
I walk back into the house, am washing my hands when the doorbell rings. My skin comes alive with sweat. Silence. Then a voice calls hello. Reynaldo, only Reynaldo.
He sits and watches as I help Mariángel with mashed yams. He looks in my eyes, and he knows. He asks anyway.
- What happened?
- I killed him.
- The taxi driver?
- I think so.
- You’re not sure?
- It is hard to be sure. I think so.
- Did anyone see you?
- I don’t know.
- I have friends in Bolivia.
- What would I do there?
- From there you could fly back to California.
- And there? What would I do?
- I don’t understand. If it was him, you are free.
- And if it wasn’t?
Reynaldo nods.
- And so?
- If no one comes, I’ll see you at work tomorrow.
- Would you like me to stay with you?
- No. Thank you, but no.
- All right, Reynaldo says. Until tomorrow.
- Until tomorrow.
He leaves, and is back twenty minutes later with the painting of the Sacred Heart from his aunt’s house. He hangs it on an empty nail and plugs the red light into a socket.
- This may help, he says.
I don’t answer. He shrugs, turns to go, turns back.
- Come by the laboratory tomorrow. I’ve planted a new tree beside the walkway. A lucuma, from the Tarma Valley in Junín.
I say that I will, watch as he walks out the door, and Milton is staring at me. I know what has happened. Some shudder or wince and Milton saw it, knows he was not meant to, is afraid. Once I twitched so hard as I broke the man’s neck that I pulled a muscle, and the whole class noticed, and the students discussed it for days.
I walk to Milton’s desk. He has misunderstood the assignment, has written about his mother. I praise his paragraph structure, explain the difference between moreover and however, have imagined the encounter in many ways
—
many places, many weapons, many angles of light. It is only recently that the fantasies have curled in on themselves in this way. Reynaldo has begun hinting that perhaps it is time to give up. An odd phrase, to give, and up. My wife has been dead for three hundred days. The police have ended their search, and I am emptying, yes, but I fight it and do not always fail.
OUT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY GATE, and the smells of jasmine and offal are settling over the city. The sky catches soft fire in the west and my thesis advisor looks up as I walk into his office. He swivels in his chair, leans back, says that he’s just had a call from Dr. Williamson. I say nothing. He asks me if he’s heard right, if I truly intend to switch topics and frameworks yet again. I nod. So! he says. All hail the new Todorov! Incas instead of Aztecs, Pizarro instead of Cortés…
I say nothing, and he nods. Then again, he says, given that the old Todorov is still alive and writing, I guess technically speaking we don’t need a new one just yet. Plus he had the codices to work with. You’ve got knotted string.
Again I say nothing. He has been generous with his time and hypotheses, particularly after I embraced his hermeneutics, and with luck at some point his anger will become frustration and then detachment. He chews his lower lip. Right, he says. Okay, he says, look: you’ve only been working the yanacona subaltern line for a few months, and naturally—
They cannot be considered subalterns, I say. He guffaws and says, What the hell kind of skeptic are you? Anything can be considered anything! And if you really are going to abandon the yanaconas, well and good, but why not return to the Chachapoya? You were already so far along, did well on the LASA panel, even landed that article in
The Americas.
I tell him that I have finally figured out what I want to do, which is precisely what I have said at each previous switch. He does not point this out. Instead he says that if I go through with it, the department won’t be able to give me any more funding, not even for the October trip I planned months ago. I say that I will fund it myself. Well okay! he says. And if it doesn’t work out, I’m sure you’ll make a terrific junior high teacher!
I wait for him to remember that my mother has been a junior high teacher for decades. Finally he does, shrugs, apologizes, says that sooner or later I’ll have to start finishing the things I begin. Then he tells me that the dean has my letter ready, and wishes me luck, however it turns out.