The Moche Warrior (16 page)

“Ralph Woolsey, Rebecca MacCrimmon,” Tracey said, doing the introductions. “Ralph is our ceramicist, University of Southern California. Rebecca—”

“I know who Rebecca is.” Ralph laughed. Ralph too was rather tall, with a relaxed and easygoing manner, and a nice firm handshake. “Steve has talked about little else for the last two days except how he’s found this wonderful woman who is going to get us all organized. I can only say that if you can get us even remotely organized,” he added, his arm sweeping around the room, “you are a wizard indeed.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Tracey said. I looked about me. Actually, it seemed pretty orderly to me, in a chaotic sort of way. On the left there was Big Benji and assorted other bones. “That’s my domain,” Tracey said, following my glance. “I’m working on my doctoral thesis in paleoanthropology. I’m the bone person on the project. We’re learning some interesting things about the state of people’s health in Moche times from my friend Benji here. Look,” she said, grasping Benji’s skull and holding it up to my face. “Nice teeth! The other side of the room, as you can see,” she said, waving the skull in Ralph’s direction, “is Ralph’s.”

Ralph’s side of the room was covered in pottery shards, some soaking in large pans of water. A couple of pots were being carefully restored, broken piece by piece. About halfway along the wall was a photo setup with a camera on an arm over the table, and a computer, of the laptop variety. “How are you on computers, Rebecca?” Ralph asked. “We’re kind of hoping you can help us with the cataloguing of all this stuff.”

I took a quick look. It was the computer and software that I used in the shop. How long ago and far away that seemed. “Fine,” I replied, collecting myself after a moment or two of incipient homesickness. “This will be no problem.” Both of them looked rather delighted. They might not have been quite so thrilled had they known I was thinking how easy this made it for me to check up on their records in search of a flared Moche pot and a turquoise and gold ear ornament.

At the back of the room there was a pile of boxes, each marked with the year, the initials CV for, I assumed, Campina Vieja, and
Caja,
box in Spanish, and then a number. “What are these?” I asked.

“Boxes of catalogued artifacts taken from the site,”‘ Tracey replied. “We study them, catalogue and store them in these boxes. At the end of each season, they’re packed up and shipped to Lima to the INC, the
Institute Nacional de Cultura.
One requires a
credencial,
a permit, to do archaeology in Peru,” Tracey went on.
“Credenciales
are issued by the INC, and everything found on archaeological projects in Peru becomes INC property.”

She walked over to the pile of boxes. “Speaking of storage, how about
Caja ocho,
Box eight?” she said, holding the gun up carefully, then laying it in the box. “Will you two remember that? Remind me to tell Steve too,” she said, “and to take it out before we ship, of course. I doubt the INC would be too impressed by finding a very new gun in with the artifacts from our project! Now let’s see what we can do about getting you settled, Rebecca. Don’t tell Lucho about
Caja ocho,
Ralph,” she admonished as we left.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied, smiling at her. Ralph too, judging by the warmth of his smile, was an admirer of Tracey.

Tracey led the way to the kitchen and imposed on Ines to make us a cup of tea. Dinner was well under way by now, but Ines seemed to like Tracey and put the kettle on, and the two of them chattered away while it heated. Ines was still not speaking to me.

The kitchen looked reasonably complete. There was an acid-green refrigerator, propane according to Tracey, a range in cobalt blue, with a little propane stove as backup, a sink and all the usual accessories. I don’t know what I expected out here, but clearly it was something more primitive. Dinner, whatever it was, smelled delicious.

Armed with cups of tea, Tracey and I had a quick tour of the place, and then went upstairs. The Hacienda Garua was essentially a square, with a ground level courtyard, and rooms opening onto it on two floors, all of them off tiled hallways that were open to the courtyard and lined with beautiful wrought iron railings.

The rooms on the main floor were raised slightly, three steps, from the ground level, for some reason. Esthetics perhaps, or to protect them from floods, which were hard to imagine in such a desert climate, although not, according to Tracey and from what I’d heard from Steve, unprecedented. At the back, opposite the door, was the dining room and the kitchen. To the right was the lab and some storage space. To the left, at the back was a little sitting room, a library of sorts with a few worn but comfortable armchairs, lots of books, and a writing desk. The first room to the left of the main entrance was Lucho’s. His door featured a skull and crossbones on it and a warning not to enter. With the exception of the kitchen, which was tucked into a corner at the back of the hacienda, all rooms had not only doors, but windows that opened to the central courtyard, and it was possible to walk all the way around the square on either floor.

Stairs led from the ground floor to the second in the two back corners of the courtyard, at the opposite end from the entrance. The women’s rooms were situated on the second floor on the right-hand side as one came through the main door, the men’s to the left. My room, the blue room, was at the far end of the right-hand hall, joined to Tracey’s, the yellow room, by a shared bathroom. Hilda Schwengen’s room was the first on the right from the main door, and featured, according to Tracey, real windows, that is windows that opened to the outside at the front of the hacienda.

The counterpart of Dr. Schwengen’s on the men’s side was Steve Neal’s. Next to him
,
working toward the back, was Ralph’s, and then a room that was used by visiting scholars, and sometimes, Tracey told me, by one Ricardo Ramos, a Peruvian archaeologist who was, I gathered, a friend and colleague of Steve’s.

Hilda and Steve, I was told, had private bathrooms, the rest of us shared small bathrooms with toilet and sink. There were communal showers at the back of the second floor, the women’s on the right, the men’s on the left.

“The hacienda was built in the late 1800s,” Tracey said, in answer to my query. “It belonged to a wealthy family, who had, I’m told, the most amazing parties in the courtyard. But the water ran out, and the house had to be abandoned,” she said, “until about thirty years ago, when someone opened it for a short period of time as an inn. It was way too isolated to be successful, and the owner went bankrupt.”

“Who owns it now?” I asked.

“Carlos Montero,” she replied, making a face. “Awful man. An old lech. His father held the mortgage on the place, so he got it when the inn closed. You’ll meet Carlos soon enough, maybe too soon for your taste. He likes to hang around. But you’re a lucky girl. He’s gone to Trujillo and won’t be joining us this evening.”

As she spoke, I was unpacking Rebecca’s duffel bag, placing everything on the bed.

“You didn’t bring much,” Tracey said dubiously, eyeing my rather pathetic little heap of belongings.

What could I say? That I was on the lam, using someone else’s identity and someone else’s clothes? “I didn’t know I was coming until the last minute, so I didn’t have much time to pack,” I said lamely. “Even so,” I said, peering into the tiny cupboard, “there doesn’t seem to be any way to hang this stuff up.”

“Oops,” Tracey said. “That’s because I scoffed all the hangers. I brought more than enough clothes for both of us. I’ll lend you some of my stuff. I’ve got lots. Come on into my room and see.”

I smiled nicely, even though it was quite apparent to me that I had about twenty pounds on Tracey, and knew nothing would fit. But she was right about one thing: She’d brought lots of clothes, enough for an army really. Her room was crammed with clothes, shoes, photos, stuffed animals, and trinkets of all kinds.

“I really love my work,” she said, noticing me looking around. “But I hate being away from home, so I always pack lots of stuff, so I feel sort of as if I’m home. I miss my mom and my stepfather, my brother, my pals, my boyfriend Jamie,” she said, pointing to photos of each in turn. “I phone home once a week, and sometimes twice. I even miss my car,” she said, handing me a photo of the vehicle in question. Well, who wouldn’t? I thought. A Saab convertible. I too might miss such a car, should I ever make enough money to own one. Tracey was beautiful, smart, and apparently rich as well. But not spoiled somehow, I thought. “Here,” she said, tossing some clothes on her bed, “some hangers.”

Just then we heard Steve call from below, and went out onto the hallway. “Cocktails,” he yelled so all could hear, “now being served in the lounge.”

Hilda Schwengen was in the little lounge, sitting ramrod straight in a rather uncomfortable-looking chair, a halo of smoke winding sinuously around her head from the cigarette she held between long, elegant fingers. On the table beside her there was a very large drink, scotch, I thought, no water, no ice. She did not get up as I came in. In fact, she did not so much as lean forward when we were introduced. Instead, she extended her hand, palm turned down slightly, in such a way that for a moment I felt I was expected to lean over and kiss it. Perhaps, I thought, she believes her own publicity, about being a legend, the high priestess of Peruvian archaeology, as Steve had described her. She was tall, I thought, and very slim, with a long neck and aristocratic cheekbones. She was wearing an off-white linen shirt and pants with a silver metal belt. Her hair, silver-grey, was long and worn tied back loosely.

“Welcome to the Hacienda Garua and to our little project,” she said to me, her tone gracious, but her voice rubbed raw by the smoke of a million cigarettes. “I understand Lucho pulled a gun on you when you arrived,” she said. “I really must apologize on behalf of my staff. You must have been terrified.”

“It was certainly an exciting start to my work here,” I agreed. Everyone laughed, Steve appeared at my elbow, bottle of scotch in hand, and the party began. Everyone on the directors’ team squeezed into the little room and chatted away about the day, what they’d found, what they hadn’t. I got to meet Pablo Vela, the foreman, a nice young man, medium height and thin, with a beginning moustache that was quite fetching. He lived in town, he told me, but had dinner at the hacienda every evening to plan the next day. “Better food here than at home.” He laughed. In honor of my arrival, the students who lived and normally ate in town had been invited to dinner: Alana, Susie, Janet, and Robert, students from the University of Southern California, George, David, and Fred from Texas A&M. The only person missing was Lucho, who preferred to stand guard outside, preparing himself, apparently, for the rigors of the life of a freedom fighter. Against what or whom he was guarding us, no one said.

Although the tiny room was packed and the scotch flowed freely, cocktails at the hacienda were, that evening and others to follow, a rather subdued affair, more ritual than anything else. Everyone made a point of going over to talk to Hilda, deference in their manner, who always sat the same way in the same chair, cigarette in one hand, glass of scotch in the other. Everyone, I should say, except Tracey, who stayed as far away from the legend as she could in such a small space.

When Ines appeared at the door, we went in to dinner. And what a meal it was. First there was a spicy corn and sweet potato
sopa,
which Ines served from a large tureen on the sideboard, followed by large platters of corvina, a type of sea bass, I was told, in a walnut sauce, avocado slices smooth as silk, marinated vegetables, and sliced potatoes covered in a sauce I didn’t recognize but instantly fell in love with. All of us tucked into the food with real gusto, except for Hilda Schwengen, who pushed her food around her plate between gulps of scotch. Several times I saw her look down the table in the general direction of Tracey, who was talking in an animated fashion to Pablo and Steve. There was something in that glance that gave me pause. I couldn’t interpret it, but I knew it wasn’t friendly. Perhaps it was simple jealousy. Tracey was certainly someone who could arouse envy in almost anyone, were it not for the fact that she seemed to me to be genuinely friendly. But I’d just got here; maybe Hilda knew something I didn’t. Ralph too, I noticed, watched Tracey a great deal more than was necessary, confirming my earlier impression that he was more than a little besotted.

In any event, a few minutes into the meal, Hilda arose from her seat at the head of the table, almost all her food left on her plate, and excused herself. Hefting the half filled bottle of scotch off the side table, she left the dining room. I could hear her slow steps on the stairs and on the upper hall as she made her way to her room.

For a moment, no one said anything until Tracey broke the silence. “Ines,” she said, “please take a tray up to Dr. Schwengen, will you?”

“She doesn’t eat,” Ines replied.

“I know,” Tracey said quietly, “but take it up anyway.”

If Hilda didn’t eat, she was missing a good thing, I decided, as Ines’s food continued to flow from the kitchen. Then Tracey left the room, and I began to wonder what was really going on here, but she returned minutes later with her hands behind her back.

“I’ve been saving these for a special occasion,” she said, “and I think Rebecca’s arrival and her narrow escape from death at the hands of the ferocious freedom fighter Lucho must qualify. Ta dah!” she exclaimed, and produced from behind her back three very fine bottles of wine. Now, how could you dislike someone like that? I thought to myself, and judging by the chorus of cheers that greeted the gesture, we agreed on that. From then on the conversation and the noise level rose considerably. Everyone had an archaeological adventure to tell, each more exciting and more unbelievable than the last. Steve and Tracey told stories of helping the police with their investigations of crimes long hidden; Pablo told tales of townspeople angered by the archaeological digs taking place in their region, robbing them of their livelihood, the illegal traffic in artifacts. The students had funny stories about the primitive conditions under which they’d lived from time to time.