Useful fools, p.16
Useful Fools, page 16
Brick and cement gave way to esteras as Rosa climbed, stepping carefully around heaps of garbage and excrement. She could feel Shark Eyes watching her. When she slowed to glance at an adobe wall pasted over with Senderista fliers, he did, too. The fliers announced tomorrow’s paro armado, the armed strike. Rosa didn’t bother to read them. Last year, Sendero had announced a citywide paro with great fanfare. No one in Lima had paid much attention.
At the top of the hill, where the road leveled out, a string of electrical towers loomed like spidery gods above the shacks. Rosa heard pattering footfalls and turned to find four young girls around her, black-haired and ruddy with excitement. “Gringuita, gringuita!”
“Gringa?” she retorted. “Me?”
“Sí, sí, gringuita. Don’t you have any candy?” A smudge-faced little girl in a torn T-shirt stuck out her hand.
“I’m not a gringa,” Rosa said indignantly. “I’m as Peruvian as you are!”
The oldest girl, bucktoothed and braided and wearing a gray school jumper, frowned. “But you’re not from here.”
Rosa glanced across the street. Shark Eyes had turned, was slipping into the shadows behind a row of shacks. Rosa smiled gratefully at the bucktoothed girl. “I’m looking for my god-brother. I brought him a toy car. His sister goes to Maria Auxiliadora School. Livia Carhuanca.”
“A skinny girl who never talks?” The bucktoothed girl spoke dismissively. “She’s in my class. I can show you where she lives.”
“Wait!” Squatting, the littlest girl pulled down her shorts. A stream of urine blotched the dust.
Watching her, Rosa felt a tug inside her chest. As if someone had very gently yanked open one of the chambers of her heart.
Magda used to boast about the Cesip’s latrine brigades. They had built a decent pit toilet for everyone in Salvador. Rosa remembered laughing: Latrine brigades! But Magda, it’s too funny.
“Come on,” the older girl urged. The little girl pulled up her shorts and scooted after them.
“Here’s our school.” They paused beside a gate, all scrap wood and rusty, exposed nails. “They’re in the afternoon session.”
Hundreds of voices poured from the gray cinderblock school. Teachers rapped out orders while children called the times tables. One voice rose above the rest, and Rosa smiled. Don’t leave us, brother, we love you so! It was the Vallejo poem, about the dying soldier. She had recited it, too, back in fourth grade.
“There.” The girl pointed at a windowless shack of esteras and flattened cardboard, with a splintered plywood door sagging off its hinges. “That’s Livia’s house.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Livia’s papá probably broke the door. He’s a drunk.” She paused, and all four girls gazed expectantly at Rosa.
But Rosa wanted them to go away, right now. She couldn’t face that splintered door with this happy little mob around her. “Thank you,” she said firmly. The girls glanced at each other. Rosa waited, unmoving.
Finally the older girl shrugged. “Well. Bye.”
“Bye, gringuita,” the little girls sang. Hand in hand, laughing, they made their way back up the street.
Barely breathing, Rosa approached the shack. She knocked, and the plywood slumped. The door’s hinges were torn from the frame, and all that held it up was an inside latch.
“Hello?” She stuck her head inside. “Alonso?” She groped for a light switch, but felt only the frayed, crisscross weave of esteras. Through the shadows, her eyes adjusting, she saw a dirt floor ankle-deep in shirts and blankets and towels. Pots and pans scattered everywhere. Underwear and toys tangled over a toppled dresser. The television like a dead cockroach on its back, screen shattered.
“Alonso?” Rosa slipped on a comic book. “Tomás?”
Magda’s kitchen table lay overturned. A mattress leaned against one wall. The other mattress had fallen to the floor, cotton bulging from a ragged gash.
Outside, at the back of the shack, Rosa found a few water barrels and the charred remains of a wooden box. Footsteps in the dust, and scuff marks. Trembling, she turned to face the room. At her feet lay an open notebook filled with Livia’s childish scrawl.
The familiar, useless tears begin to fall.
Magda had been whispering in her mind for months. But Rosa had ignored her. Done nothing. Cowered in Miraflores. And now they were gone.
She slapped at the tears, but they wouldn’t stop.
Something rustled at the edge of the shack, skittering behind that upended mattress.
A rat! Stumbling over books and pans, Rosa fled. She was outside, pulling the door shut, when a little voice squealed within. “Livia, let me go!”
For an instant Rosa stood paralyzed. Then, violently, she shoved the door. She stepped inside to see Diana launching herself like a tiny guided missile.
“Rosa!”
She was filthy. She’d grown taller. Her round face was red and smudged with tears, but it was Diana! Rosa knelt, arms outstretched, and Diana dived into them.
“Rosa, Livia wouldn’t let me go!” Another rustle sounded behind the mattress, and Gustavo crept out, sucking his thumb.
“Gustavo,” Rosa breathed. She wanted to swallow him whole with her eyes. “Shhh, Diana, it’s okay. Where’s Livia? Is she behind the mattress, too?”
Diana rubbed her wet cheeks against Rosa’s neck. “She won’t come out. She’s too scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“The police.”
“But why?”
With a long, wet sniff, Diana stopped crying. “Because they taked Papi,” she said in a small voice. “In the night.”
Not wanting to let go of Diana, feeling that if she did Magda’s family might melt into thin air, Rosa took the fat little hand in hers and led Diana to the mattress. Behind it huddled Livia, a wiry ball in grimy pajamas. Rosa pushed the mattress to the floor and crouched beside her. The child’s face was pressed against her knees, but on one temple Rosa saw an ugly, swollen bruise.
“Livia?” She touched the hunched shoulder. “Livia, it’s me. Rosa.” Livia flinched and Gustavo whimpered. When Rosa smiled, he tucked his chin into his chest, dodging Rosa’s smile as if it were a fist.
He was thinner and taller than she remembered, his black hair hanging in long tendrils over his ears. A little boy, not Magda’s baby anymore. He must be nearly three now. Rosa pulled the toy car from her backpack, but Gustavo refused to look at it.
Sighing, Rosa sat down on the mattress. Diana snuggled beside her. After a moment Gustavo snatched the car and sat down as well.
“Tell me what happened.”
Livia’s tight little body didn’t stir, but Diana replied. “The police breaked the door. We were asleep. They wanted Alonso.”
“Where is Alonso?”
“He went away.”
Rosa couldn’t believe it. Alonso would never leave his family. “Why?”
Diana tugged fretfully on a lock of hair. “Papi hit him too much,” she whispered. She slipped the hair into her mouth and began to suck.
“Is that why the police took your papi?”
Diana shook her head. “They came for Alonso.”
“But you said—” Rosa stopped herself. She put an arm around Diana, holding her voice as steady as possible. “I thought they took your papi.”
The dark little head nodded. “But they wanted Alonso. They thought he was in the mattress.” She pointed to the long rip in the other mattress. “Then they thought Papi burned him up in his box.” Diana’s forehead wrinkled anxiously. “But Rosa, Alonso wasn’t in his box when Papi burned it.”
“No, of course he wasn’t,” Rosa soothed. “But why’d they take your papi?”
“He called them bad words. They all started hitting him. . . .” Diana’s voice trailed off and Rosa braced herself for more tears. “They taked him away in a truck.” Miraculously, Diana sounded almost matter-of-fact. “Alonso is coming back on Wednesday. Papi said so.”
“Really?” The news brought Rosa a blaze of joy. “Livia, did you hear that? Alonso will be back tomorrow!” Impulsively, she reached for Livia, but Livia cringed away, and Rosa’s hand caressed air.
There had been a stray dog, once, in the park on the Malecón. Rosa had befriended it, tossing it bits of bread. But when she finally got close enough to touch it, the dog had shuddered violently and shot from the park as if fired from a cannon. Rosa never saw it again.
Santa María, Rosa thought. Livia could disappear like that. Not physically, but in some strange way Livia could leave and never come back. And Rosa didn’t have days to reach her the way she’d reached the dog. She had hours. Once darkness fell, it would be too dangerous to take the kids to the avenue to catch a micro.
“I’m hungry,” Diana said.
Rosa smiled. A simple demand, something she could actually handle. “I brought a surprise.”
While Diana and Gustavo wolfed down thick slices of pound cake, Rosa hauled the mattresses back onto the beds and picked up the clothes and books and pans. As she worked, she talked. She told the children about riding the bus here, about school. About how the sun was finally starting to come out and how summer would be here soon. Diana took a piece of cake to her sister, and after a moment Livia began stuffing yellow scraps into her mouth.
“Gustavo,” Rosa said, “my mamá is your madrina. Remember her? I bet she’d love to see you.”
Gustavo’s lower lip slid out in a pout.
“What a good idea,” Rosa went on. “We’ll go see my mamá!” She looked at Diana. “Okay?”
Diana shook her head, hard.
“It’s all right, Diana. You remember my mamá. She’s Gustavo’s madrina!” Rosa tried to sound firm. In charge. “Now come on. Livia, it’s time to go.”
Livia’s plate fell to the floor with a thump. Rosa saw a pin-wheel flurry of limbs, and Livia was back against the wall, arms folded around herself. Diana wailed, an eerie, despairing shriek. Gustavo stamped his feet and began to scream, his face turning purple.
Shocked, Rosa found herself bellowing. “NO!” she screamed. “STOP!”
Diana slid from her chair and darted across the shack. She scuttled like a beetle under the double bed.
“Diana, come out of there! Nobody’s going to hurt you!” Rosa tried to speak more gently. “We can’t stay, don’t you understand? Please come out, Diana.” She knelt to look beneath the bed. Diana scrambled across the dirt, out of reach.
“Papi said not to go outside!” Diana sobbed. “We have to wait for Alonso.”
“But your papi didn’t mean you couldn’t go out with me! We’ll leave a note. Diana, we can’t stay here tonight!”
Diana’s sobs rose to a howl.
Kneeling, Rosa begged. “Diana, please . . .”
With an angry shout, Gustavo ran around the bed and crept beside his sister.
Rosa sank to the floor, defeated, the dirt floor cool and damp beneath her cheek. Livia crouched, mute with fear. Gustavo and Diana sobbed, clenched together under the bed. How could she get them out of here? Magda would have known what to do, but she wasn’t Magda. She couldn’t think with so much screaming in her ears.
Get your papá, Rosa.
Papá could come and get them. She could call him at the university. He hated being called away from class, but when he got here, when he saw how they were, he’d understand. He could sedate them. He could get them out of here.
Rosa stood up. “Diana, stop crying. I won’t make you leave. But I need to call my father. Dr. Pablo needs to know I’m here with you, okay? I need a telephone, Diana.”
A few teary gasps, and then a long sniff. Finally Diana replied. “There’s no phones in San Juan.”
“That’s impossible,” Rosa said. “There’s always a phone somewhere. In a bodega, maybe?”
Silence beneath the bed, then the same little voice. “Alonso said there was no phones. That’s why he had to go away one day to call you.” The voice got even smaller. “Papi came home while he was out. He got so angry . . .” The voice broke off. Diana began crying again, as if her four-year-old heart had already been broken more times than it could bear.
Suddenly Rosa couldn’t stand it anymore.
She knelt again, peering under the bed at the little form huddled in the shadows. “Oh, Diana, Diana, listen to me.” Diana turned away, and Rosa slid under the bed beside her. “No more bad things will happen, Diana. I promise!” She put her arms around Diana and was startled by how violently that little body shook. Like the dog, she thought. Not you too, Diana. “No more bad things,” Rosa repeated. “I promise you.”
Oh, she was angry now. She had never felt such anger in her life. Such rage. She wanted a sword. She’d stand in that miserable doorway and cut to pieces the next Evil that tried to darken this shack.
Hugging Diana, she raised her voice. “Do you hear me, Livia? I will not let any more bad things happen!”
Livia didn’t reply, but Diana stopped crying. Gustavo slithered atop his sister, then slid over Rosa. He tucked himself under Rosa’s arm and plastered himself to her side. The three of them lay on the dirt, staring at the wooden slats that held the mattress.
No more bad things. A crazy promise.
Rosa closed her eyes and wondered how she could possibly keep it.
FOURTEEN
The sun had slipped behind a mountain when the boys finally saw the village. A cluster of thatch-roofed mud hovels surrounded by scrub grass and veins of exposed rock.
Alonso slid to a stop. “Welcome to Tambo Matacancha,” he croaked. A handful of sheep cropped at the patchy grass. Tendrils of smoke curled from a few huts. Otherwise, the village seemed deserted.
Then, from below them, a shout rang up the mountainside. A half-dozen dark shapes darted from the huts. They coalesced into a mass and charged up the hill toward the boys.
“What do you think?” Rodolfo asked nervously.
“They may not be expecting us. We need to tell them Hilario sent us.” Alonso rubbed his hands together. The setting sun was sucking the warmth from the air.
Ponchos flapping, the shapes flew up the trail. Within moments six men surrounded the boys. Short men with wiry arms and wrinkled faces. Ancient as dwarves, with calloused, horny toes and gnarled fingers grasping wooden staffs.
“Ow!” Alonso yelped as one of the men jabbed him. “Hilario sent us!” He grabbed at the staff. The man shouted at him in Quechua. A breathy stream of sounds.
“Hilario sent us!” Rodolfo repeated. But it did no good. Neither of them spoke Quechua. The men poked at them, shoving them down the trail and sending them stumbling over the stones.
Alonso could hear his own heart pounding, could hear Rodolfo panting by his side. Nobody spoke as they drew near the huts, squarish mud boxes with hairy straw roofs. A few old women watched from the doorways, and a scrawny dog the color of dust appeared from nowhere to begin snapping at Alonso’s heels. One of the old men kicked it away, and its startled yelp echoed off the mountainside. Finally they stopped outside a hut. One of the men called softly in Quechua, and from the darkness, a hunched little man emerged.
He looked a hundred years old. The King of the Dwarves, Alonso thought.
A young woman followed, her face indistinct as she stared over the old man’s shoulder. Inside the hut, a fire spat puffs of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Who are you?” The young woman spoke Spanish. Alonso wanted to cheer.
“Simón,” Rodolfo replied. “And Juan.”
“José,” Alonso corrected, jabbing Rodolfo with his elbow.
“José,” Rodolfo repeated. “Hilario sent us.”
The girl nodded, and both boys exhaled in relief. The old man murmured something and she listened, watching the boys. “Comrade Ezequiel and his wife will feed you,” she said. Her voice blended clipped Spanish consonants with rounded Quechua vowels. “And show you where to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.” With that, she and the old man turned and went back into the hut.
A hobbling old man showed the boys to an empty hut on the western edge of the village. Above the mountain they had just descended, the sky glowed pale lavender, but the village was already dark. They waited outside the hut, fidgeting in the cold until an old woman approached them with two bowls of soup. When they thanked her, she muttered something incomprehensible and trudged away.
The soup tasted like hot water. “You did that on purpose,” Alonso accused, gulping it down.
“Did what on purpose?”
“Called me Juan.”
Rodolfo started to laugh and went inside.
“You did, didn’t you?” Alonso followed, trying to see through the darkness.
“No, I didn’t.”
Alonso could hear him chuckling. “Very funny, comrade.” He looked for a door to close but there was none. In the corner, a few chickens clucked drowsily.
Rodolfo was still laughing as he pulled a blanket from his pack and rolled himself in it. “Goodnight, Comrade Copycat.” He gave a final squeaking guffaw. Within minutes, he was asleep.
Rodolfo could sleep anywhere, just like Diana. Get him horizontal and he was out.
Alonso wrapped himself in his blanket and lay down, listening enviously to Rodolfo’s steady breathing. The longer he lay there, the colder he felt. Who said Lima was cold in winter? Cold was a doorless adobe hut four thousand meters above sea level. Cold was lying on a dirt floor with a wool blanket around you. Alonso pulled his knees to his chest, trying to conserve heat in a tight little ball. Oh, great. Now he had to pee.
Muttering a string of curses, he ran through the doorway. The air seemed to freeze in his nostrils. He found an enormous boulder near the trailhead and stepped behind it, shivering and laughing at himself. Who would see him, anyway, in this half-deserted gathering of huts?
Tambo Matacancha, Ghost Village of the Cordillera Huayhuash.
He unzipped his jeans, eyes tearing with relief, and tipped his head back.
And blinked in awe.
A thousand stars. A million stars. More than that. A white splash of light across the sky. The Milky Way. So that’s what it meant. It really did look like milk, spilled over a velvety black tablecloth.
