Mabel agreed, with a mournful smile. Pulling herself together, she continued. Lituma thought her account was coherent and fluent, though at times she was shaken by whiplashes of fear and had to be quiet for a few seconds, trembling, turning pale, her teeth chattering. Was she reliving the moments of the nightmare, the tremendous fear she must have felt day and night for an entire week while she was held by the gang? But then, she resumed her story again, interrupted occasionally by Captain Silva (“What refined manners,” thought Lituma, surprised), who would ask for more details.
The kidnapping had taken place seven days earlier, after a concert by a Marist choir in the Church of San Francisco on Calle Lima, which Mabel attended with her friend Flora Díaz, who owned a clothing store on Calle Junín called Creaciones Florita. They’d been friends for a long time and sometimes went out together to the movies, to have lunch, and to go shopping. Friday afternoons they usually went to the Church of San Francisco, where the independence of Piura had been proclaimed, since it presented music programs, concerts, choirs, dance, and professional groups. That Friday the Marist choir sang religious hymns, many of them in Latin, or that’s what it sounded like. Flora and Mabel were bored and left before the program was over. They said goodbye at the entrance to the Puente Colgante and Mabel walked back to her house since it was so close. She didn’t notice anything unusual during her walk, no pedestrian or car following her, nothing at all. Just stray dogs, swarms of kids getting into trouble, people enjoying the cool air and chatting in chairs and rockers they’d brought out to the doorways of houses, the bars, shops, and restaurants already full of customers and their jukeboxes playing different pieces of music at top volume, which mixed and filled the air with a deafening noise. (“Was there a moon?” asked Captain Silva, and for a moment Mabel was disconcerted: “Was there? I’m sorry, I don’t remember.”)
Her street was deserted, she thought she remembered. She barely noticed the male figure half leaning against the poinciana. She had the key in her hand, and if he’d tried to approach her she’d have become alarmed, called for help, started to run. But she didn’t notice him making the slightest movement. She put the key in the lock and had to force it slightly—“Felícito must have told you it always sticks a little”—when she sensed somebody approaching. She didn’t have time to react. She felt a blanket thrown over her head and several arms grabbing her, all at the same time. (“How many arms?” “Four, six, who knows?”) They lifted her up and covered her mouth to stifle her screams. It seemed to her that everything happened in a second, there was an earthquake and she was in the middle of it. In spite of her tremendous panic she tried to kick and move her arms, until she felt them throwing her into a van, a car, or a truck and immobilizing her, securing her feet, hands, and head. Then she heard the words that still resounded in her ears: “Nice and quiet if you want to keep on living.” She felt them pass something cold across her face, maybe a knife, maybe the butt or barrel of a revolver. The vehicle took off, shaking and bouncing her against the floor. She curled up and was silent, thinking: “I’m going to die.” She didn’t even have the strength to pray. Without complaining or resisting, she let them blindfold her, put a hood over her head, and tie her hands. She didn’t see their faces because they did everything in the dark, probably while they were driving on the highway. There were no electric lights and it was pitch-black outside. Then it must have been cloudy, with no moon. They kept driving for a time that seemed to her like hours, centuries, but might have only been a few minutes. With her face covered, her hands tied, and her fear, she lost all sense of time. From then on she could never tell what day it was, if it was night, if people were watching her or had left her alone in the room. The floor where she lay was very hard. Sometimes she felt insects walking along her legs, maybe those horrible cockroaches she detested more than spiders and rats. Holding her by the arms, they made her get out of the van, grope her way in the darkness, stumbling; they pushed her into a house where a radio was playing Peruvian music, made her go down some stairs. After putting her on the floor on a rush mat, they left. She lay in the dark, trembling. Now she could pray. She pleaded with the Virgin and all the saints she could think of, Santa Rosa de Lima and the Captive Lord of Ayabaca of course, to help her. Not to let her die like this, to end her torture.
During the seven days she was held captive she didn’t have a single conversation with her kidnappers. They never took her out of that room. She never saw the light again because they never removed her blindfold. There was a container or bucket where she could take care of her needs, in the dark, twice a day. Somebody took it away and brought it back clean, never saying a word to her. Twice a day, the same person or somebody else, always mute, brought her a plate of rice and vegetables and some soup, a lukewarm soda or a small bottle of mineral water. They removed the hood and untied her hands so she could eat, but they never took off the blindfold. Each time Mabel begged them, implored them to tell her what they were going to do with her, why they had abducted her, the same strong, commanding voice always replied: “Be quiet! You’re risking your life by asking questions.” She wasn’t allowed to bathe, or even wash herself. That’s why the first thing she did when she was free was take a long shower and scrub herself with the sponge until she had welts. And then get rid of all the clothes, even the shoes, that she’d been wearing for those horrible seven days. She would make up a parcel and give it to the poor of San Juan de Dios.
This morning, without warning, several of them, to judge by their footsteps, had come into her room-prison. Without a word, they lifted her, made her walk, climb some steps, and lie down again in a vehicle that must have been the same van, car, or truck they’d used to kidnap her. They kept driving and driving for a very long time, and the shaking bruised all the bones in her body until the vehicle finally stopped. They untied her hands and ordered: “Count to a hundred before you take off the blindfold. If you take it off before then, we’ll shoot you.” When she removed the blindfold, she discovered that they’d left her in the middle of the sandy tract, near La Legua. She’d walked for more than an hour before reaching the first houses in Castilla, where she caught a taxi that took her home.
As Mabel recounted her odyssey, Lituma continued to pay careful attention to her story but couldn’t ignore Don Felícito’s demonstrations of affection to his mistress. There was something childish, adolescent, angelic in the way the trucker smoothed her forehead with his hand, looking at her with a religious devotion, murmuring, “Poor thing, poor thing, my love.” At times the way he fawned over her made Lituma uncomfortable — it seemed exaggerated and a little ridiculous at the trucker’s age. “He must be thirty years older than she is,” he thought. “This girl could be his daughter.” The old guy was head over heels in love. Was Mabelita one of the fiery ones or was she cold? Fiery, no doubt about it.
“I told her she should go away from here for a while,” Felícito Yanaqué said to the policemen. “To Chiclayo, Trujillo, Lima, anywhere. Until this case is closed. I don’t want anything to happen to her again. Don’t you think that’s a good idea, Captain?”
The officer shrugged. “I don’t think anything will happen to her if she stays here,” he said, mulling it over. “The bandits know she’s protected now and wouldn’t be crazy enough to come near her, knowing the chance they’d be taking. I’m very grateful for your statement, señora. It will be very useful to us, I assure you. Would you mind my asking you just a few more questions?”
“She’s very tired,” Don Felícito protested. “Why don’t you leave her alone for now, Captain? Question her tomorrow, or the day after. I want to take her to the doctor and have her spend the day in the hospital so she can have a complete checkup.”