“Yes.”
“His head seems to have been farther away from the heat source, but not by accident. After burning him, the killer cut a cross on his forehead with a very large knife, perhaps a butcher's knife.”
“Very interesting …”
Chacaltana felt dizzy. He thought it was time to leave. He wanted to say good-bye with a professional, dignified gesture:
“One last question, Dr. Posadas. Where could a body be burned so severely? In a baker's oven … in a gas explosion?”
Posadas tossed his cigarette on the floor. He stepped on it and covered the body. Then he took out another chocolate. He bit into it before he replied:
“In hell, Señor Prosecutor.”
sometimes i talk to them. allways.
they remember me. and i remember them because i was won of them.
i still am.
but now they talk moor. they look for me. they ask me for things. they lick my ears with their hot tungues. they want to touch me. they hurt me.
its a signal.
its the moment. yes. its coming.
we will burn up time and the fire will make a new world.
a new time for them.
for us.
for everybody.
Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar left the hospital feeling out of sorts. He was pale. Terrorists, he thought. Only they were capable of something like this. They had come back. He did not know how to sound the alarm, or even if he should. He wiped away perspiration with the handkerchief his mother had given him. The dead man. His mother. He could not go to see her in this state. He had to calm down.
He walked aimlessly. In an automatic reaction, he returned to the Plaza de Armas. The image of the burned body flickered in his mind. He had to sit down and drink something. Yes. That would be the best thing. He walked toward his usual restaurant, El Huamanguino, to have a mate. He went in. In one corner, a television set was playing a black-and-white pirated copy of Titanic. A girl about twenty was behind the counter. He did not even see her. She was pretty. He sat down.
“What'll you have?”
“Where is Luis?”
She seemed offended by the question.
“Luis doesn't work here anymore. Now I'm here. But I'm not so terrible.”
The prosecutor understood he had made a faux pas. He tried to apologize, but just then not many words were coming out of his mouth.
“A mate, please,” was all he could manage.
She laughed. Her small white smile was timid.
“It's lunchtime,” she said. “The tables are for having lunch. You have to eat something.”
The prosecutor looked at the four other tables. The place was empty. He missed Luis.
“Then bring me a … an …”
“The trout's very good.”
“Trout. And a mate, please.”
The girl went into the kitchen. Her clothes were not flashy. She seemed simple in her jeans and Lobo sneakers, her hair pulled back in a braid. The prosecutor thought that perhaps, after all, the deceased was a case for the military courts. He did not want to interfere in the antiterrorist struggle. The military had organized it. They knew it best. He looked at his watch. He should not delay too long. His mother was waiting for him. It took the girl fifteen minutes to come out with a fried trout and two potato halves on a plate. In the other hand she carried the cup of mate. She served everything amiably, almost delicately. The prosecutor looked at the trout. Blackened, it seemed to observe him from the plate. He separated it down the middle. One of the sides seemed like a spreading wing, an arm. He let it go. He tried to drink a little mate. With his spoon he moved aside the coca leaves on the surface and raised the steaming cup to his lips. It burned him. He quickly put the cup down on the table. Suddenly, he was very hot. Behind him he heard a sweet laugh.
“You have to be patient,” the girl behind the counter said.
Patient.
“Everything is slower here, it's not like Lima,” she went on.
“I'm not from Lima. I'm Ayacuchan.”
She lowered her eyes and smiled again.
“If you say so …” she said.
“Don't you believe me?”
Her only answer was to restrain a little laugh. She did not look him in the eye. He saw her for the first time. She was slim and very refined in her embroidered blouse.
“Are you familiar with Lima?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“But it must be nice,” she added. “Big.”
The Associate District Prosecutor thought about Avenida Abancay, its buses vomiting smoke, its pickpockets. He thought about the houses without water in El Agustino, about the ocean, about the zoo, the Parque de las Leyendas and its consumptive elephant, about the bare gray hills, about a game he had seen between the Boys and the U. About a door closing.
About an empty pillow.
“It is big,” he replied.
“I'd like to go there,” she said. “I want to study nursing.”
“You would be a very good nurse.”
She laughed. So did he. Suddenly, he felt relieved. He looked at the trout again, which had not stopped looking at him.
“Didn't you like it?” she asked.
“It's not that. It's just that … I have to go. How much is it?”
“I can't charge you. You didn't eat anything.”
“But you worked.”
“Come back when you're hungry. The food is nice.”
He said good-bye to her with a smile that was also nice. He observed that it had been a long time since he had spoken to a stranger. In Ayacucho, the residents did not talk to one another, and they charged for everything. They were suspicious. On the other hand, the girl's pleasantness had made him notice how lonely he felt in this city where he had no friends even though he had been back for a year. People his own age whom he remembered from childhood had left or had died during the eighties, when they were in their twenties, a good age for the first and perhaps the worst time for the second. He walked up the street toward his house. He realized he was almost running. His house was old but in good condition, it was the same one he had lived in when he was a boy, and had been rebuilt after the disaster. He went in and hurried to the bedroom in the rear. He opened the door.
“Mamacita?”
Félix Chacaltana Saldívar walked to the chest of drawers where his mother kept her clothes and costume jewelry. He took out a skirt and blouse and laid them on the bed. It was a beautiful bed, small, with a canopy of carved wood.
“I should have come in this morning. I'm sorry. It's just that there was a homicide, Mamacita, I had to run to work.”
He brought the broom from the kitchen and quickly swept out the room. Then he sat on the bed, looking at the door.
“Do you remember Señora Eufrasia? She used to drink mate with you? She's sick, Mamacita. I sent her a Virgin so she'd get better. You pray too. I only pray a little.”
He felt sheltered in an old, warm mist. He caressed the cloth of the sheets.
“And pray for the man who died today, too. I will. That way the fear goes … I think the terrorists are coming back, Mamacita. It isn't certain, I don't want you to worry, but this is very strange.”
He stood and passed his hand along the clothing he had laid on the sheets. He smelled it. It had the scent of his mother, a scent kept for many years. He opened the window to air out the room. The afternoon sun shone directly on his mother's bed.
“I have to go now. I only … I only needed to come here for a while. I hope that doesn't annoy you … It doesn't annoy you, does it?”
He crossed himself and opened the door to go back to his office. He gave a last look inside. It hurt him to verify once again, as he had every day for the past year, that there was no one in the room.