He was much older than she was, sixty perhaps to her late twenty-something. He was not Spanish. He looked European to me, in the way he dressed, although with a Spanish rock video blasting from a large screen at one end of the bar, I could not hear him speak, until he called over the waiter and ordered a martini for his lady friend. French, I decided. I ordered a glass of white wine, and tried to look as if I belonged there. Surveillance, I would have to say, is not something in which I have any expertise.
I do like to think, however, that after fifteen years in retail, I can read body language pretty well, and this particular conversation, although I could not hear it and did not dare move closer, was an interesting one. The man, dressed in a tan suede jacket over charcoal-grey slacks, a yellow shirt, and a rather stylish cravat, leaned well back in his chair at first, distancing himself from his companion and keeping his face in relative shadow. One hand rested on his knee; the other he kept well to his side, between his thigh and the arm of the chair. Throughout most of the conversation, which lasted almost an hour, his body language said that he was not very interested in what Carla had to say.
She, on the other hand, was trying very hard to be persuasive. I had the feeling she had a proposal to make to him, and that she did not know him that well. First there was a lovely smile as she leaned toward him, then, when that appeared to have no impact, dainty tears and blowing of nose into a lace hanky. Still the man remained unmoved. Pouting was next, and then as a last resort she wriggled just enough to let one pink strap slide off her shoulder. The man leaned forward and smiled. It was not, I thought, a nice smile, rather one of victory, or perhaps anticipation.
Through all of this, I nursed my one little glass of white wine, and tried to look as if I were waiting for someone, glancing at my watch from time to time, and pretending to be a little impatient. The price of wine by the glass was so outrageous in this hotel that I had no intention of ordering another, no matter how long the two of them sat there. I ate every peanut from the little crystal bowl on the table, determined to eke out my time there and get my money’s worth. Being alone in a foreign country without the comforting presence of a credit card is an experience I would not wish to repeat.
Shortly after the shoulder strap incident, it was apparently time to leave. Carla’s companion signed the bill, thereby indicating he could afford to be a guest in this hotel. It was only then that I noticed that his right hand, which he used to hold the bill while he signed with his left, was missing the little and ring fingers.
They left the bar together. I didn’t really need to follow them any farther. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where they were headed. But I followed them just the same, at least as far as the elevator. As I went past their table, I tried to read the signature on the bill, before the waiter swept it away, but the light was too low and the signature appeared to me to be illegible. I could see the room number quite clearly, however: room 1236. I saw the two of them enter the elevator, then to confirm my suspicions, I watched the numbers over the door. It went directly to the twelfth floor. The widow Cervantes appeared to be dealing with her grief quite well.
I left the hotel and looked for a colectivo to take me back downtown, catching as I did so a brief glimpse of a man standing to the side of the entrance-way, who slipped into the darkness when I looked his way. Although I couldn’t say with any certainty, I could have sworn it was Ramon’s brother, Jorge.
The question was, what now? In my impulsive and one might well say ill-advised journey to solve the nasty situation in which I found myself, I had only two clues: a name, that of Ramon Cervantes, whose widow was now upstairs behaving badly—one could only assume—with a man I’d never seen before, and whom I had no reason to suspect had anything whatsoever to do with all this; and a little piece of jewelry that was probably genuine Moche. I could continue to follow the name—that is, I could wait and see where, and with whom, the widow Cervantes went next; I could go and search out Jorge, to see what light he could shed on what had happened to his brother; or I could follow the artifact, take the job in Moche territory and see what I could find.
I chose to follow the artifact. As some would say, when you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. Personally, I prefer a line penned by the poet Robert Browning: Everyone soon or late comes round by Rome, he wrote. Rome, in this instance, was a little town in northern Peru called Campina Vieja.
The Priestess
Still the decapitator waits, tumi blade in one hand, the other still empty. And with him the Priestess, with hair of snakes, she who holds the golden cup that soon will contain the sacred liquid, the blood of sacrifice.
While they wait at the huaca, we prepare the Warrior’s shroud. Three woven cloths will cradle him. The golden helmet with its feathered plumes, the gold and silver back flaps, the gilded bells, are placed first.
The litter that will support him on his descent lies beneath him. He rests on a second headdress, a gold crescent crowned by flamingo feathers. In his right hand we place the golden scepter, symbol of his earthly power, in his left, the silver, smaller. A gold ingot rests on his right hand, a silver on his left.
On his face we place five gold masks, on his feet, silver sandals. Three pairs of ear flares accompany him: one pair the sacred white-tailed deer, the second golden spiders, the third a feline head that represents the creature that can cross the line between the two worlds marked by the double-headed serpent—the world of now, the world of the ancestors.
Three pectorals of shell beads, thousands of them, in cream and green, pink and white, we have placed on his chest, wristbands to match on his arms.
Next comes his necklace of peanut beads, as always gold on his right, silver his left, sun/moon, earth/sea duality; then a second necklace of gold spiders and a third of discs of gold and turquoise.
To cover him we place his banners, his standards, symbols of his earthly powers: rough cotton onto which we have sewn golden discs and his image, the image of the warrior god. Then the shroud is wrapped around him.
The offerings are all assembled; the guardians, those among us who will accompany him, have been chosen.
Soon the ceremony in the great plaza will begin.
8
Even as I pondered which path to take, all the players in this macabre little drama, as if moved by some invisible director’s hand, were, like me, being drawn to take their place upon the stage. Some were driven by desperation, others compelled by avarice and greed, still others by obsession, and there were those still blissfully unaware of the role others, more malevolent, had chosen for them. Like stock characters in a modern morality tale—the Hero, the Villain, the Temptress, the Witch, the Magician, the Fool—from the four corners of the globe, we assembled in Campina Vieja to play the roles assigned us.