I wait until she is on the verge of falling, grab her and set her down in the grass. It takes her a moment to gain her balance on that uneven ground. She makes her way over to Karina, lifts her sunglasses, kisses her eyes.
Karina wakes, smiles, sits up. She yawns and stands, takes Mariángel’s hand. The two of them circle one stone after another. Then Mariángel trips, spins, and Karina catches her almost in time, keeps her head from cracking against the rock but cannot quite prevent her from scraping her wrist.
Mariángel takes her time beginning to cry. Karina lifts her, rubs the scrape and chants the words reserved here for such occasions: Heal, heal, little frog-butt, if it doesn’t heal today it will heal tomorrow. You would not think such a chant would help but it often appears to, and Mariángel finishes crying, wishes to explore something beside the nearest stone.
Karina sets her on the ground and she hunches down. When she stands back up, she is holding a fistful of tiny lavender flowers, and brings them to me. I ask Karina if she knows what they are called. She shrugs, says Reynaldo would know, and Armando snorts.
He is still annoyed at having lost his job for drinking spiked coffee in class while Reynaldo kept his with a lie about family emergencies. I sympathize but do not take sides, and Reynaldo had returned to Piura three days before I went to the police station, but was too embarrassed to see me. A week later at last he came to visit. He gave me my passport, apologized, and I blamed El Niño for making everyone insane. I said that I was glad he had not gone the way of the armadillo, and when he asked about the splint I told him the truth.
The day Socorro called the police station was the day I realized that I could never know whether the man I attacked was innocent unless he came for me. If instead he was Reátegui’s colleague, then something dangerous and evil was poorly balanced overhead, and the slightest touch would send it spilling over me and everyone near me. That night I called Reynaldo, and immediately he came to help me think. By morning we had worked our way to a solution for us both: he would buy my house for less than it was worth but more than I could have gotten from anyone else on such short notice. The proceeds will support me in Jauja and then beyond. Owning it will help with any visa he might require, and renting it out will help pay his living expenses in the United States next year.
Mariángel brings more flowers, wipes her hands on the front of her dress, goes for still more, and Reynaldo was not my only visitor. Arantxa had fired me over the phone the day after the police station, for missing that last evening class with no warning, and for everything else—the films, the breaking of furniture, the story of a sea of blood though in fact it had never reached the rector’s ears. She sent my personal effects by courier. Perhaps two weeks ago she called again, said that she wished to see me and to talk. An hour later the doorbell rang. I told her the story I have told everyone but Reynaldo: a cleaver, a pineapple, my clumsiness. She knew that I was lying but did not press.
I asked, and she said that allowances had been made for my students, that their final exams had been shortened, that their speeches on contemporary American cinema had been surprisingly perceptive, that all of them had passed and few grudges were held. I gave her the essays I had never returned and showed her my favorite. It was about seaweed and love and said, “The sun takes the black rubber ribbons on the sand, and makes them into colored light.”
Arantxa nodded and took an envelope from her purse. Inside was a letter from the consul in Loja saying that my work visa was ready, that I need only go to Macará, present my passport and pay a given amount. I looked at Arantxa, wondered what it would be like to have that visa, to belong in that one limited sense. I asked if it made any difference that I no longer worked for the university. She said that Immigrations did not yet have that information, that I could go whenever I wished, that it would give me a year at least of peace. I nodded, and that was my best plan until the vendor was arrested.
Milk for Mariángel, mashed potatoes and steamed carrots from plastic tubs. I peel an apple, the skin rendered a single spiral as if so ordered by Oquendo, and Arantxa told me that she had resigned from the university, would soon be heading back to Spain. Nothing had happened, she said. It was simply time. She had recommended that Günther take over her post, as he was organized and focused, and the center would do well with him in charge. I agreed on all counts. She said that he was currently on vacation in Bremen but had sent me his best regards. I said that she was a marvelous administrator, and apologized for the trouble I had caused her.
She reached again into her purse, brought out something small and handed it to me. It was a piece of paper folded in complicated ways. She said that she could have made me happy. I told her that happiness was not a made thing.
That is one of the many respects in which you are wrong, she said. She leaned over then and kissed me on the mouth. Her taste was that of oranges, as if she were not from Bilbao but Seville. The folded note held her address, and Mariángel has circled back around. She is bored with tiny lavender flowers, looks up into the vivid blue, points. Another cloud has come, but she is pointing not quite at it, and now I see the hawk, hear its keen, and a van pulls into the turnout.
The bus driver stands, gestures, shouts as the driver of the van steps down. The driver of the van shouts back. More shouting, and the two men stride toward one another.
- And? says Karina.
- Soon, I hope.
- Unless they kill each other, says Armando.
The two men shake hands, and we resume waiting. Other visitors: Claudia and Concepción, Lady Diana, Juan Carlos and Fortunato, Domitila and three of the Jhons. They came as a single contingent, said I had been fired unfairly, were distraught when I said nothing had ever been fairer. They asked if I wished them to draw up a petition all the same. I thanked them, thanked them, thanked them.
Karina brings out a pad of paper and a pen, gives them to Mariángel, teaches her shapes, and Karina is no chilalo—her heart has no end of strength. She is also no putilla, no avocet or tern, is something else entirely. I have not told her what happened at the police station and do not plan to, wished and wish her to come no closer to any of that. I have encouraged her to believe that my brief catatonia was the result of losing my job. She knows that I am now hers as wholly as I am able should she so wish, that for her I have learned the names of the jungle mammals, and at last there was time for board games: we all played together, she and I, her aunt, her sisters and brother. This was four days ago. It was a good goodbye.
I walked then, Mariángel on my back, and on each block new buildings rose. Barefoot men climbed ladders of bamboo, carried cans of wet cement on their shoulders, never wavered, never fell, and the Piura River was a creek once again. New shanties had been built along the walls, and new crops sown. The metal detritus of the bridges was gone, and dozens of volunteers from the university were gathering trash in the causeway. I knew them all, waved from the bank, shouted my thanks.
The two men slide out from under the bus and push to their feet. We cheer, stand and stretch, begin to gather our things. The two men hunch over the toolbox, crawl back under the bus, and we sit down again.
The sun nears the far ridge, and the green man has not reappeared. Perhaps he never will—perhaps he has killed himself, or found the right color, the necessary color, and is free. The next goodbye was at Reynaldo’s aunt’s house. She has purchased a wheelchair and rarely leaves it though I am aware of no specific injury or illness.
The salad was served, tomato and onion and avocado, and the avocado was perfectly ripe. Reynaldo had already told me the best stories of his trip to the United States, now told safer ones, his university visits, the day his heart chose UCLA, and the main course was sea bass in crab sauce. I will very much miss the food of Piura, miss it already though I have been gone less than a day.
While the dishes were being cleared Reynaldo’s aunt sent him to help Casualidad find hand balm, asked me to wheel her to the garage, and begged me to steal his motorcycle. I explained why I could not. She said that I did not have to take it with me to Jauja, that I could sink it in the ocean instead. I promised to consider it, and we rolled back to the living room where she winked at me repeatedly.
Fermín seems several inches taller than before. Casualidad is thin but reasonably strong, is now the aunt’s full-time nurse. When she was done rubbing balm into the aunt’s hands, she came up very close to me, opened her mouth and tilted back her head to show me the miraculous hole in her palate. I could not help but look, at the hole and then at her opalescent eye: she no longer wears a patch. Her curandero had told her that given her success against the tumor, her vision was likely to return. She has seen nothing thus far except shadows, but has not given up hope.
Mariángel points again—the sun slipping behind the ridge. There are none of Colán’s reds and purples and ambers and already the temperature is dropping. We come closer together, Karina with one arm around me and one around Armando, Mariángel snug among us. Casualidad told me that Fermín’s father is not buried in the cemetery in Frías, is not buried anywhere as far as she knows, is still alive, simply left one day, simply never came back. She led us to the window and from there we could see Fermín weeding in the back yard. Casualidad asked for a moment more to play with Mariángel. Reynaldo and I went to the yard, and I knelt beside Fermín, and Reynaldo stood over us, enlightened us as to the names and medicinal properties of each plant, entreated us to weed faster.
A third goodbye, the green house, Jenny. She and Ms. Alina came together to the door to berate me for not following policy as regards reservations, but I had bouquets for them both, and I kissed their cheeks, thanked them and wished them well, left them bemused and again the men come from under the bus. We watch and wait. They appear to be very pleased or very angry. Then they call to the groups of passengers around them, call to those watching the river, call and wave us down.
Mariángel does not want to return to the carrier, screams and cries and strikes me. Then Armando stumbles and she laughs, forgets what she did not want, settles into place. Together we make our way through the gathering dark.
My finger begins to ache and a fourth goodbye, Catacaos, lunch with Socorro, her husband and daughters, Oscar the Prophet. Oscar prophesied that we would begin the meal with malarrabia and was perfectly correct. He made no prediction in regard to chicha de jora though we walked past a dozen picanterías with white flags at full mast.
That day was my thirty-fifth birthday, and I had told no one. There were gifts nonetheless, but not for me: the girls had all made things for Mariángel. There was a hairpin glued with tiny shells from Elsa, a painted picture frame from Ema, a huayruro bracelet from Eva, and a crayon drawing of a monkey from Marucha. As lunch was ending I told Oscar lies about Mariángel and his painting and a hammer. I asked him to lead us to his gallery, found a triptych of seaweed splayed on sand in three arrangements, and disappointed him by failing to haggle.
Onto the bus, and the driver’s assistant glares. He has not forgotten having to load our crib and playpen and unreasonable amount of luggage. Our seats once again, and as the farewells began I asked Oscar if he understood the Tallán bird god to be a god of vengeance. He said that perhaps I was thinking of a Mochica deity called Ai Apaec the Beheader. I said that I was not, that I had read of coastal islands where the decapitated skeletons of young women were found near altars built in Shi’s honor. He shrugged, said that Shi was in charge of many things, that he would try to find the list, that his favorite of her tasks was this: she watched over fishermen by night.
The motor fires, roars, and the driver laughs, shouts out the window at the van driver, who shouts back and waves. We pull onto the road. Mariángel and I have a seat to ourselves, with Karina and Armando behind us. I arrange my daughter as if she were to sleep, her head on my lap and her legs stretched out, and she fights to her feet, stands facing backwards, makes faces at Karina.
The road, the dark river, the railroad tracks now visible on the far side—three lines curving in parallel. The Mantaro is dead of poison where it leaves the mines of La Oroya, but is healthier here farther south or so I have heard, and CREMPT’s true name is Centro de Reposo para Enfermos Mentales para Piura y Tumbes. I still do not know how the matacojudo blossoms survived the rains, or how many stings it would take. Mireille has returned to Switzerland and the World Cup is long over, the dead buried and the wounded healing. Most Peruvians were saddened by Brazil’s loss in the final but recognized that France deserved the win unless the rumors were true and Ronaldo’s food poisoning was intentional.
- No! says Mariángel.
She is pointing at Karina, and this is one of our new games, abstruse orders given with real words. Her first word was at last clearly spoken during the Cup’s final match. She came to me midway through the first half, smelled of oregano, had been playing with the spices. She stood beside the sofa for a moment, turned away just as Zidane ripped his first header past Taffarel. I shouted Goal! and she echoed me in accent and volume and pitch.
Finally she tires, accepts her milk, lies down and I returned to the university only once. It was midnight. I crept in through the unwalled section at the back of campus, walked to the deer pen and they were grateful, it was evident, grateful for the grass I brought them.
The valley widens, goes shallow, lets in more of what light is left. A small yellow bird flits alongside my window, perhaps a finch, and Jauja, 1564, a yanacona betrays what would have been the Third Rebellion. It was meant to begin on Maundy Thursday, the Spaniards unarmed as they wound their way to the church in holy procession, flagellating one another toward sacred ecstasy, thousand of natives lining the streets as if only to watch and falling then upon the Spaniards: an extermination.