He hangs two curacas, tortures hundreds of natives for information, bids his dogs disembowel them. Four months are lost before he even reaches the Andes—heat, rain, insects, disease. Armor rusting. Food all but gone and at last up into the mountains and now a monstrous earthquake. Climbs and climbs. Nears the final pass as winter brings snow and high winds.
By the time he has made his way down the far side to the Royal Road, he has lost eighty-six Spaniards, almost all of the horses, hundreds of porters. He turns north for Quito, then learns that he is too late: Benalcázar has already conquered it. Alvarado stands, wavers, still seven years from death and Piura at last.
Karina carries her knapsack to a taxi. I carry mine to another. She walks to me, the rain heavy in her hair. She puts her arms around my neck, says she hopes that soon, and I squeeze her tightly to keep her from finishing the sentence.
A slow ride through the flooded streets. Mariángel wakes as I push in through our front door. She struggles against me, strikes me in the face with her fists. I set her down, and she clutches at my knees and shrieks. I lift and hold her, dance, but the shrieking does not stop. To the kitchen for milk. An hour of singing and swaying. Not an earthquake, perhaps, and now she sleeps.
Midnight, and I would eat, would undress and shower, am too tired, to bed and cannot sleep. For hours the rain falls. Not an earthquake at all but a volcano: Mount Cotopaxi erupting above them, vast clouds of ash sweeping down. Voices at times threaded through the storm. Bells and flutes, voices, bells and tambourines, bells.
The doorbell. Still rain but a sense of morning. Knocking and I go. The door deadbolted. I do not remember locking it this way but must have and Socorro. She says that I do not look well. She asks if Mariángel is sick, says that she surely is. I say that she is not and hope to be telling the truth and Socorro stares at me, will not blink.
I turn, shower, dress. Look at the clock. Just past six—no reason for Socorro already to be here and I would ask why but do not care and have not yet planned my classes for today. If I stay here Socorro will stare and stare. I put apples and cheese and half a loaf of bread in a plastic bag, kiss Mariángel softly enough not to wake her, take my umbrella from the closet and slip out of the house.
The corner, the Virgin, soft rain. I stand for a moment. The drain is clogged with debris and reeks. The sound of the rain and a new sound, metallic, a grinding. I turn. Coming up is an old yellow taxi. The driver rolls down his window, brings the taxi to a stop beside me, smiles and lifts his eyebrows.
- Mister? he says.
I shake my head, and he shrugs and pulls away. I think of his eyes. They were known eyes, I believe. I think about his hair and the shape of his face. I look and the car is a Tico and I read the receding license plate, read it again, the first part covered by something dark but it ends with 22.
The taxi passes beneath the matacojudo trees, the remaining fruit ready too for him and I start to walk, more quickly, more quickly still and then running. The rain heavier and I drop my umbrella, my lungs and legs ache and I run, he slows at the corner, stops, waits, the rain still harder and the license plate now clean, the leaf or mud or litter washed away, closer, close enough to see and yes and yes, P and 22.
I call out but too late and he is making the turn, disappears. I arrive at the corner, slip on the pavement and fall hard, my face sharp against the curb. Back to my feet and he is waiting at the stoplight and I run, children and dogs moving out of my path, the light turns and he slides into the intersection and I will lose him unless, and he will, he does, he pulls into the Texaco station and stops at the pump.
Blood streams from my nose and I run, watch his brake lights, hope they will darken, hope he will want a full tank, reach the stoplight red again and I run out into the road, cars swerve and screech and already he is gliding oh motherfucker pulling away from the pump, swinging around and back onto the Panamericana. I watch him go. Another car just misses me. It is a taxi as well, large and white and it slows, stops, backs toward me.
I enter and point. There is pain drilling in my head, my shoulder, my ankle. The other taxi reaches the river and turns along the malecón. We follow, and my nosebleed ceases. I ask the taxista to close in, tell him that I rode in the other taxi just moments ago, left an important book behind.
The driver nods, straightens his back and leans forward, accelerates. The rain has thinned. My shirt and pants are soaked with rain and sweat and blood. We parallel the river rising now again. A red light at Sánchez Cerro for both our taxi and his, but we slow too late for me to reach him. Green, a distance, and the current tears at what is left of the Old Bridge, the twisted beams, an ornate lamp sticking up from the surface.
Four more blocks, the Bolognesi Bridge, and here traffic sits thick. The other taxista is stopped several cars ahead, has his signal on, intends to cross the river. I pay, step out, push forward through the rain, and there is a policeman on the bridgehead. He holds up his hand to the cross-traffic, waves the cars on the malecón forward.
I begin to run and the old yellow taxi advances slowly and if there is any pause I will make it to his door, will open it and enter, will be only a passenger, will direct us out into the desert but there is no pause, the taxi swings onto the bridge and I stop, the light green at the far end of the bridge and I will not reach him in time. I jump through traffic to the curb and the white taxi nears again. He nods when he sees me, slows and there is a roar, a roar that fills my mind or the world, a scream and the policeman stumbles toward me, rolls and crawls and the bridge shudders, twists, an eruption of steel and cement and great white plumes of water and the bridge is gone.
Men and women stumble as they run. I am on the ground, do not remember falling. Blood pours again from my nose but there is no force now like that which lifts me. I walk onto the bridgehead. There are ten or twelve cars in the water. Within seconds they have disappeared beneath the surface.
A few of those who ran have returned. The policeman stands beside me, pulls off his boots and strips off his uniform, grabs my arm as though we are both to dive. I shake free, watch him fall flailing and right himself midair, watch him swim, strong firm strokes toward the river’s center.
And I look across at the far bank. An old yellow Tico is stopped by the side of the road. Its emergency lights flash on and off. Its driver stands at his edge. I kneel, work through the policeman’s clothes, find his holster, and it is empty.
TO THE CAFETERIA, COFFEE, A TABLE AND ITS TABLECLOTH, a week now and little clarity. I called the police to tell them what I saw and suspect. The officer thanked me and hung up. I called again two days later. The officer who answered this time sounded younger, believed that I was who I claimed to be, confirmed that Pilar’s case is again open. I asked if the evidence gathered had survived El Niño. He paused, then said that I would be contacted as appropriate given the circumstances and the manner in which they evolved.
The pacazo cannot be seen and mocks me from the nearest tree. I sip and wait. The rain ended that evening, has not returned. The coffee is no more pleasant than usual and no one joins me. Instead the other professors come bearing their trays and look at me, look away and sit elsewhere. Surely they know, see it on me like stains or the scabs on my face, maintain a minimum distance and thus also from that of which I am a part though perhaps this is not what is happening and perhaps also this is how it always was or nearly so, coffee at a table alone.
Karina and I see one another most days and it is as though something were suspended, particulate. A thousand Ecuadorian troops have been moved to the border. There was likely a Peruvian response but none has been reported and Fermín has come from Frías to visit his cousins in Catacaos. He spent yesterday afternoon with me and Mariángel, gave us the news: Casualidad strengthens each day. She is able to speak, and is eating well. She cannot yet walk but it will not be long.
Fermín asked if I had any work he might do. The tree is thick with leaves but none are falling, so we trimmed and weeded and watched the birds and geckos. I gave him two hundred soles for whatever might be needed, and wondered if he could tell just by looking.
I still have not seen Reynaldo, have not heard the news that is surely bad. I spoke this morning with Mireille and she could not tell me anything, called his aunt and she is no longer coherent: he was here and then was not and now is or possibly vice versa. I have ten minutes still until class starts. I walk out through the parking lot, left at the fork, the empty deer pen and now the lab.
Reynaldo will be back in a month or two, says a man I have never seen before. He hands me his card. It says he is a botanical chemist. I ask, and yes, he says, brought in from Arequipa on an emergency basis to teach my friend’s courses for the rest of the semester and can tell me nothing more. I thank him, shake his hand, walk or jog to the department secretary.
- He was here two days ago but had to go right back down to Lima, she says.
- I don’t understand.
- His sister is very sick. He asked for a leave of absence, but he’ll be back after the break.
She seems very sad. I thank her and make my way out. Reynaldo never mentioned a sibling to me. Perhaps his visa came through but his trip was planned for the break and I understand nothing and my last students are waiting. They look exhausted. I tell them that there are occasions when it is all right to be exhausted, when exhaustion is the only appropriate sensation. They do not even have the strength to agree or so it appears.
I put away my notes and ask if anyone has a story to tell. No one does. I ask if they would like to talk about imperialism and truth. This has often worked in the past but fails now. I say that in the future things will be clearer no matter how improbable that sounds. They nod exhaustedly. I say that today can be a free-writing day, any topic, any length, as long as their writing circles toward whatever matters most, and they nod again.
For ninety minutes I walk from desk to desk and answer occasional queries on tense and agreement. I murmur encouragingly at least once to each student. At the end I gather what they have written, and say that I will return the essays corrected on Friday, and we all know that this is a lie.
A young man sitting in back raises his hand. His name escapes me and I signal him while clearing my throat. He says that while he does not presume to speak for anyone else, he personally would prefer that just this once I not grade his writing at all, that today if only today his heart be known but not judged.
Under most other circumstances this would be a trick meant to hide a lack of preparation. I look around the room, ask if anyone else shares the proffered opinion. All do, and I agree but reserve the right to change my mind.
Out onto the path, its patches of deep darkness and lamplight interspersed. The Language Center, my office, my desk. The line at the photocopier is neither long nor short. I wait, and read Pachacuti Yamqui. Arantxa stops by, smiles at me from my doorway, appears on the verge of asking a question but then Günther arrives, kisses her on the cheek, throws his books in his locker and leads her out by the hand.
The machine is free, and still I wait. Puns and pedagogical advice drift to me from the lounge. I read, wait, read. Two professors wave as they walk by, and two more, and a group of six.
Silence. A moment more to be certain, and yes, they have all gone home. I turn out the lights, walk back to the photocopier, lift the lid and bring the original flyer from its envelope. Months since I have held it. Pilar. Her wet hair glistening black. Her eyebrows, her mouth, and movement outside the far door.
I do not remember intending to leave the door open. I wait, watch. There is no further movement, nothing but the glow of the nearest lamp. I add paper, goldenrod, stolen from the resource bank. The green button, the bar of light sliding up and back, the smell of ink.
Back through the dark. I set the copies on my desk, bring a pack of thin transparent folders from my bottom drawer, slide a flyer into each; there will likely be no more rain but I have thought that before, must not be wrong again and Pilar. That afternoon at Yacila. The old woman walking up out of the waves, the men on their hands and knees, my carelessness and the stingray and that pain. Pilar holds my leg in her lap. She puts her mouth to my calf. She draws the poison from me and again the flicker at the door: someone or something is passing back and forth, silent but known by the shadow cast.
I bring the knife from my briefcase, open the blade, crouch and move quickly along the wall, closer and closer. A quiet sound from outside, as if something pulled slowly through sand. Three quick breaths and I jump through the doorway but my foot catches on the threshold and I fall out into the soft yellow light, slide on the concrete, grab up my knife, push to my feet and spin.
There is nothing. No person, no animal, no movement. I check around the near corner, and again nothing. I have scraped my palms and torn a hole in the knee of my pants and am fortunate not to have stabbed myself. I walk back into the Language Center, close the door behind me, turn on the lights.
I set the knife down on my desk. One gold sheet after another into its plastic folder, and I will not cannot will not look at the picture. My shirt is dense with sweat, and the night smells of jasmine, and then a sound, a scratching, a clawing at the door. I lift the knife and run and fling the door open.
It is Armando, standing on the stoop, laughing. There is no smell of alcohol but he stands at a slant. He shakes his head and walks past me, lists slightly to the right, enters my office and I follow.
- You are a clown, he says. A cojudo and a clown.
- You came to tell me this?
- I didn’t come to tell you anything. I came to give you something. Something you do not deserve.