Red April E-Book

Santiago Roncagliolo

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2011 Red April evokes Holy Week during a cruel, bloody, and terrifying time in Peru's history, shocking for its corrosive mix of assassination, bribery, intrigue, torture, and enforced disappearance - a war between grim, ideologically driven terrorism and morally bankrupt government counterinsurgence. Mother-haunted, wife-abandoned, literature-loving, quietly eccentric Felix Chacaltana Saldivar is a hapless, by-the-book, unambitious prosecutor living in Lima. Until now he has lived a life in which nothing exceptionally good or bad has ever happened to him. But, inexplicably, he has been put in charge of a bizarre and horrible murder investigation. As it unfolds by propulsive twists and turns - full of paradoxes and surprises - Saldivar is compelled to confront what happens to a man and society when death becomes the only certainty. Remarkable for its self-assured and nimble clarity of style, Red April is at once riveting and profound.

Leseprobe

RED APRIL

Santiago Roncagliolo is the youngest ever winner of the Alfaguara Prize, awarded to him in 2006 for Red April. He was born in Lima, Peru, and currently lives in Barcelona.

Edith Grossman is the award-winning translator of such master-works as Cervantes’s Don Quixote and García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.

Copyright

Originally published in Spain in 2006 as Abril rojo by Alfaguara, a division of Santillana Ediciones Generales, S. L., Madrid.

First published in English translation in the United States in 2009 by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

First published in hardback and export and airside trade paperback in Great Britain in 2010 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright © Santiago Roncagliolo, 2006

Translation copyright © Edith Grossman, 2009

The moral right of Santiago Roncagliolo to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

The moral right of Edith Grossman to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

First eBook Edition: January 2010

ISBN: 978-1-848-87792-4

Contents

Cover

RED APRIL

Copyright

THURSDAY, MARCH 9

SUNDAY, MARCH 12 / TUESDAY, MARCH 21

THURSDAY, APRIL 6 / SUNDAY, APRIL 9

MONDAY, APRIL 10 / FRIDAY, APRIL 14

SATURDAY, APRIL 15 / WEDNESDAY, APRIL 19

THURSDAY, APRIL 20

FRIDAY, APRIL 21

SATURDAY, APRIL 22 / SUNDAY, APRIL 23

WEDNESDAY, MAY 3

Author’s Note

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

THURSDAY, MARCH 9

On Wednesday, the eighth day of March, 2000, as he passed through the area surrounding his domicile in the locality of Quinua, Justino Mayta Carazo (31) discovered a body.

According to his testimony to the duly constituted authorities, the deponent had spent three days at the celebration of Carnival in the aforementioned district, where he had participated in the dancing of his village. As a result of this contingency, he affirms he does not remember where he was on the previous night or on the two preceding nights, at which time he reports having consumed large quantities of alcoholic beverages. This account could not be confirmed by any of the 1,576 residents of the municipality, who attest to having also been in the aforementioned alcoholic state for the past seventy-two hours on account of the aforementioned celebration.

During the early-morning hours of the eighth day of March, the abovementioned Justino Mayta Carazo (31) states that he was on the main square of the municipality with Manuelcha Pachas Ispijuy (28) and Deolindo Páucar Quispe (32), who have been unable to corroborate this. Then, according to the testimony of the deponent, he remembered his employment obligations at the Mi Perú grocery store, where he fulfills the duties of a sales clerk. He stood and began walking to the above referenced establishment, but when he was halfway there he experienced the inconvenience of being victimized by a sudden attack of exhaustion and decided to return to his domicile to enjoy a well-deserved rest.

Before he reached his door, the attack intensified, and the abovementioned subject entered the domicile of his neighbor Nemesio Limanta Huamán (41) to rest before resuming his traversal of the remaining fifteen meters to the door of his own domicile. According to his testimony, upon entering the property, he noticed nothing suspicious and encountered no person, and he went across the courtyard directly to the hayloft, where he lay down. He states that he spent the next six hours there alone. Nemesio Limanta Huamán (41) has refuted his version, affirming that at twelve o’clock he surprised the young woman Teófila Centeno de Páucar (23) leaving the hayloft, the aforesaid young woman being the wife of Deolindo Páucar Quispe (32) and endowed, according to witnesses, with sizable haunches and a lively carnal appetite, which has to all intents and purposes been denied not only by her spouse but by the above referenced deponent Justino Mayta Carazo (31).

One hour later, at 1300 hours, as he stretched his arms upon awakening, the deponent states that he touched a hard, rigid object partially obscured in the hay. In the belief that it might be a strongbox belonging to the owner of the property, the deponent decided to proceed to its exhumation. The Office of the Associate District Prosecutor lost no time in reprimanding the deponent on account of his manifestly evil intentions, to which Justino Mayta Carazo (31) responded with demonstrations of genuine repentance, declaring that he would immediately confess to Father Julián González Casquignán (65), pastor of the aforesaid municipality.

At approximately 1310 hours, the abovementioned deponent decided that the object was too large to be a box and resembled instead a burned, black, sticky tree trunk. He proceeded to move away the last stalks of straw that concealed it, discovering an irregular surface perforated by various holes. He found, according to his statement, that one of those holes constituted a mouth filled with black teeth, and that on the length of the body there still remained shreds of the cloth of a shirt, also calcinated and fused with the skin and ashes of a body deformed by fire.

At approximately 1315 hours the screams of terror of Justino Mayta Carazo (31) awoke the other 1,575 residents of the municipality.

In witness whereof, this document is signed, on the ninth day of March, 2000, in the province of Huamanga,

Félix Chacaltana Saldívar

Associate District Prosecutor

Prosecutor Chacaltana wrote the final period with a grimace of doubt on his lips. He read the page again, erased a tilde, and added a comma in black ink. Now it was fine. A good report. He had followed all the prescribed procedures, chosen his verbs with precision, and had not fallen into the unrestrained use of adjectives customary in legal texts. He avoided words with ñ—because his Olivetti 75 had lost its ñ—but he knew enough words so he did not need it. He had a large vocabulary and could replace one term with another. He repeated to himself with satisfaction that in his lawyer’s heart, a poet struggled to emerge.

He removed the pages from the typewriter, kept the carbon paper for future documents, and placed each copy of the document in its respective envelope: one for the files, one for the criminal court, one for the case record, and one for the command of the military region. He still had to attach the forensic report. Before going to police headquarters, he wrote once again—as he did every morning—his supply requisition for a new typewriter, two pencils, and a ream of carbon paper. He had already submitted thirty-six requisitions and kept the signed receipts for all of them. He did not want to become aggressive, but if the supplies did not arrive soon, he could initiate an administrative procedure to demand them more forcefully.

After delivering his requisition personally and making sure the receipt was signed, he went out to the Plaza de Armas. The loudspeakers placed at the four corners of the square were broadcasting the life and works of eminent Ayacuchans as part of the campaign of the Ministry of the Presidency to breathe patriotic values into the province: Don Benigno Huaranga Céspedes, a distinguished Ayacuchan physician, had studied at the National University of San Marcos and dedicated his life to the science of medicine, a field in which he reaped diverse tributes and various honors. Don Pascual Espinoza Chamochumbi, an outstanding Huantan attorney, distinguished himself by his vocation for helping the province, to which he bequeathed a bust of the Liberator Bolívar. For Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, those lives solemnly declaimed on the Plaza de Armas were models to be followed, exemplars of the capacity of his people to move forward despite poverty. He wondered if someday, on the basis of his tireless labor in the cause of justice, his name would deserve to be repeated by those loudspeakers.

He approached the newspaper cart and asked for El Comercio. The vendor said that today’s edition hadn’t arrived in Ayacucho yet, but he did have yesterday’s. Chacaltana bought it. Nothing can change much from one day to the next, he thought, all days are basically the same. Then he continued on his way to police headquarters.

As he walked, the corpse in Quinua produced a vague mixture of pride and disquiet in him. It was his first murder in the year he had been back in Ayacucho. It was a sign of progress. Until now, any death had gone directly to Military Justice, for reasons of security. The Office of the Prosecutor received only drunken fights or domestic abuse, at the most some rape, frequently of a wife by her husband.

Prosecutor Chacaltana saw in this a problem in the classification of crimes and, as a matter of fact, had forwarded to the criminal court in Huamanga a brief in that regard, to which he had not yet received a response. According to him, such practices within a legal marriage could not be called rapes. Husbands do not rape their wives: they fulfill conjugal duties. But Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, who understood human weakness, normally drew up a document of reconciliation to bring together the parties, and had the husband pledge to fulfill his virile duty without causing lesions of any kind. The prosecutor thought of his ex-wife Cecilia. She had never complained, at least not about that. The prosecutor had treated her with respect; he had barely touched her. She would have been astonished to see the importance of the case of the corpse. She would have admired him, for once.

In the reception area at police headquarters, a solitary sergeant was reading a sports paper. Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar walked forward with resounding steps and cleared his throat.

“I am looking for Captain Pacheco.”

The sergeant raised bored eyes. He was chewing on a match-stick.

“Captain Pacheco?”

“Affirmative. We have a proceeding of the greatest importance.”

The prosecutor identified himself. The sergeant seemed uncomfortable. He looked to one side. The prosecutor thought he saw someone, the shadow of someone. Perhaps he was mistaken. The sergeant wrote down the prosecutor’s name and left reception, carrying the paper. The prosecutor heard his voice and another in the room to the side, without being able to make out what they were saying. In any event, he tried not to hear. That would have constituted a violation of institutional communications. The sergeant returned eight minutes later.

“Well, the fact is … today’s Thursday, Señor Prosecutor. On Thursdays the captain only comes in the afternoon … if he comes … because he has various proceedings to take care of too …”

“But procedure demands that we go together to pick up the report on the recent homicide … and we agreed that …”

“… and tomorrow’s complicated too, Señor Prosecutor, because they’ve called for a parade on Sunday and we have to prepare all the preparations.”

The prosecutor tried to offer a conclusive argument:

“… The fact is … the deceased cannot wait …”

“He’s not waiting for anything anymore, Señor Prosecutor. But don’t worry, I’m going to communicate to the captain that you appeared in person at our office with regard to the corresponding homicide.”

Without knowing exactly how, the Associate District Prosecutor was allowing himself to be led to the door by the subordinate’s words. He tried to respond, but it was too late to speak. He was on the street. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped away perspiration. He did not know exactly what to do, if he should forget procedure or wait for the captain. But Monday was too long to wait. They were going to demand a punctual report from him. He would go alone. And submit a complaint to the General Administration of Police, with a copy to the Office of the Provincial Prosecutor.

He thought again of the corpse, and that reminded him of his mother. He had not gone to see her. He would have to stop by his house on the way back from the hospital, to see if she was all right. He crossed the city in fifteen minutes, went into the Military Hospital, and looked for the burn unit or the morgue. He felt disoriented among the crippled, the beaten, the suffering. He decided to ask a nurse who, with an attitude of competent authority, had just dispatched two old men.

“Dr. Faustino Posadas, please?”

The nurse looked at him with contempt. Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar wondered if it would be necessary to show his official documents. The nurse entered an office and came out five minutes later.

“The doctor has gone out. Have a seat and wait for him.”

“I … I just came for a paper. I need a forensic report.”

“Generally I don’t know anything about that. But have a seat, please.”

“I am the Associate Dist …”

It was useless. The nurse had gone out to restrain a woman who was screaming in pain. She was not hurt. She was simply screaming in pain. The prosecutor sat down between an ancient woman weeping in Quechua and a policeman with a bleeding cut on his hand. He opened his paper. The headline announced the government’s fraudulent scheme for the elections in April. He began to read with annoyance, thinking that these kinds of suspicions ought to be brought to the Ministry of Justice for the appropriate decision before being published in the press and causing unfortunate misunderstandings.

As he scanned the page, it seemed that the recruit at the entrance was observing him. No. Not now. He had looked away. Perhaps he had not even looked at him. He continued reading. Every six minutes, more or less, a nurse would emerge from a door and call one of the people in the waiting room, an armless man or a child with polio who would leave his place with groans of pain and sighs of relief. On the third page, the prosecutor felt that the police officer beside him was trying to read over his shoulder. When he turned, the policeman was absorbed in looking at his wound. Chacaltana closed the paper and put it in his lap, drumming with his fingers on the paper to while away the time.

Dr. Posadas did not come. The prosecutor wanted to say something to the nurse but did not know what to say. He looked up. Across from him a young woman was sobbing. Her face was bruised and red, and one eye was swollen shut. She rested her battered face on her mother’s shoulder. She looked unmarried.

Chacaltana wondered what to do about unmarried rape victims in the legal system. At first he had asked that rapists be imprisoned, according to the law. But the injured parties protested: if the attacker went to jail, the victim would not be able to marry him and restore her lost honor. This imposed the need, then, to reform the penal code. Satisfied with his reasoning, the prosecutor decided to send the criminal tribunal in Huamanga another brief in this regard, attaching a communication pressing for a response at the earliest opportunity. A harsh voice with a northern accent pulled him out of his reflections:

“Prosecutor Chacaltana?”

A short man wearing glasses, badly shaven and with greasy hair, stood beside him eating chocolate. His medical jacket was stained with mustard, creole sauce, and something brown, but he kept his shoulders clean and white to conceal the dandruff that fell from his head like snow.

“I’m Faustino Posadas, the forensic pathologist.”

He held out a chocolate-smeared hand, which the prosecutor shook. Then he led him down a dark corridor filled with suffering. Some people approached, moaning, pleading for help, but the doctor pointed them to the first waiting room with the nurse, please, I only see dead people.

“I haven’t seen you before,” said the doctor as they walked into a different pavilion, with another waiting room. “Are you from Lima?”

“I come from Ayacucho but lived in Lima since I was a boy. I was transferred here a year ago.”

The pathologist laughed.

“From Lima to Ayacucho? You must have behaved very badly, Señor Chacaltana …” Then he cleared his throat. “If … you’ll permit me to say so.”

The Associate District Prosecutor had never misbehaved. He had done nothing bad, he had done nothing good, he had never done anything not stipulated in the statutes of his institution.

“I requested the transfer. My mother is here, and I had not been back in twenty years. But now that there is no terrorism, everything is quiet, isn’t it?”

The pathologist stopped in front of a door across from a room filled with women in labor in the obstetrics wing. He transferred the chocolate to his other hand and took a key out of his pocket.

“Quiet, of course.”

He opened the door and they went in. Posadas turned on the white neon lights, which blinked for a while before they went on. One of the bulbs continued to flicker intermittently. In the office was a table covered with a sheet. And beneath the sheet was a shape. Chacaltana gave a start. He prayed it was nothing but a table.

“I … only came to receive the relevant docu …”

“The certificate, yes.”

Dr. Posadas closed the door and walked to a desk. He began to rummage through papers.

“I thought it would be here … Just a moment, please …”

He continued rummaging. Chacaltana could not take his eyes off the sheet. The doctor noticed and asked:

“Have you seen it?”

“No! I … took the statement of the officers in charge.”

“The police? They didn’t even see it.”

“What?”

“They told the owner of the place to put the body in a bag before they went in. I don’t know what they could have said.”

“Ah.”

Posadas stopped rummaging through his papers for a moment. He turned to the prosecutor.

“You should see it.”

Chacaltana thought the proceedings were taking too long.

“I only need the rep …”

But the doctor walked to the table and lifted the veil. The burned body looked at them. It had clenched teeth but little else in that black mass was recognizable as being of human origin. It did not smell like a dead body. It smelled like kerosene lamps. The light flickered.

“They didn’t leave us much to work with, huh?” Posadas smiled.

Chacaltana thought again about going to see his mother. He tried to recover his concentration. He wiped away perspiration. It was not the same perspiration as before. It was cold.

“Why is it kept in obstetrics?”

“Lack of space. Besides, it doesn’t matter. The morgue doesn’t have a refrigerator anymore. It broke down in the blackouts.”

“The blackouts ended years ago.”

“Not in our morgue.”

Posadas went back to the papers on his desk. Chacaltana walked around the table, trying to look elsewhere. The burning was irregular. Although the face still had certain characteristics of a face, the two legs had become a single dark extension. Toward the top of the remaining side were some twisted protuberances, like branches of a fossilized bush. Chacaltana felt a wave of nausea but tried to disguise something so unprofessional. Posadas stared at him with slanted, suspicious little eyes, like the eyes of a rat.

“Are you going to carry out the investigation? What about the military cops?”

“The gentlemen of the armed forces,” the prosecutor corrected, “have no reason to intervene. This case does not fall under military jurisdiction.”

Posadas seemed surprised to hear it. He said dryly:

“All cases fall under military jurisdiction.”

There was something challenging in Posadas’s tone. Chacaltana attempted to assert his authority.

“We still need to verify the facts in the case. Technically, this may even turn out to be an accident …”

“An accident?”

He gave a dry laugh that made him cough and looked at the corpse as if to share the joke with him. He tossed the chocolate wrapper on the floor and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to the prosecutor, who refused with a gesture. The pathologist lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke with another cough, and said in a serious tone:

“A male apparently between forty and fifty years old. White— at least, whitish. Two days ago he was taller.”

The Associate District Prosecutor felt obliged to display professional distance. He felt cold. Tremulously he said:

“Any … clue as to the identity of the deceased?”

“There are no physical marks or personal effects left. If he was carrying his national ID, it must be in there.”

Chacaltana observed the body that seemed to dissolve as he looked at it. A black paste saturated his memory.

“Why do you discount an accident?”

Posadas seemed to be waiting for the question with indulgent pride, like a teacher with the dunce of the class. He left his desk, took up a position beside the table, and began to explain as he pointed at various parts of the body:

“First, he was doused with kerosene and set on fire. There are remains of fuel all over the body …”

“He might have perished in a fire. Someone was afraid to report it and hid the body. The campesinos tend to fear that the police …”

“But that wasn’t enough,” Posadas continued, apparently not hearing him. “He was burned even more.”

He allowed the silence to heighten the dramatic effect of his words. His rat’s eyes were waiting for Chacaltana’s question:

“What do you mean more?”

“No one is left like this just because he’s been set on fire, Señor Prosecutor. Tissues resist. Many people survive even total burns by fuel. Automobile accidents, forest fires … But this …”

He inhaled smoke and exhaled it over the table, at the height of the black face. The man lying there seemed to be smoking. The light flickered. The doctor concluded:

“I’ve never seen anybody so burned. I’ve never seen anything so burned.”

He went back to his papers without covering the deceased. The report he was looking for was under a lamp. He handed it to the prosecutor. It had chocolate smears at one corner of the page. Chacaltana glanced at it rapidly and verified that it did not have three copies, but he thought he could make them himself, it would not be a serious breach. He waved good-bye. He wanted to get out of there quickly.

“There’s something else,” the pathologist stopped him. “Do you see this? These stubs like claws on the side? Those are fingers. They twist like that because of the heat. They’re only on one side. In fact, if you observe carefully, the body looks unbalanced. At first glance it’s difficult to see on a body in this condition, but the man was missing an arm.”

“A one-armed man.”

Chacaltana put the paper in his briefcase and closed it.

“No. He wasn’t one-armed. At least not until Tuesday. There are traces of blood around the shoulder.”

“He was injured, perhaps?”

“Señor Prosecutor, his right arm was removed. They tore it out by the roots or cut it off with an ax, or maybe a saw. They went through bone and flesh from one side to the other. That isn’t easy to do. It’s as if a dragon attacked him.”

It was true. The part corresponding to the shoulder seemed sunken, as if there were no longer an articulation there, as if there were no longer anything to articulate. Chacaltana asked himself how they could have done it. Then he preferred not to ask himself more questions. The light flickered again. The prosecutor broke the silence:

“Well, I suppose all this is recorded in the report …”

“Everything. Including the matter of the forehead. Have you seen his forehead?”

Chacaltana tried to ask a question in order not to see the forehead. He tried to think of a subject. The physician did not take his eyes off him. Finally, he lied:

“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.

As he returned to the office he felt calmer, unburdened. His mother’s room relaxed him. He spent hours there. Occasionally, often at night, he would recall some new detail, a photograph, an altarpiece that had decorated his mamacita’s room in his childhood. He would hurry to look for it in the market and order it if there was no copy exactly like the one in his memory. Little by little, the room had become a three-dimensional portrait of his nostalgia.

When he reached his desk, he found an envelope containing an invitation to the institutional parade on Sunday. He made a note of it in his date book, wrote an account of the complaint for the police, and made copies of the forensic report for each envelope. The chocolate smudges were well hidden on the photocopies. They looked like ink. Then he wrote a request for information to the Ministry of Energy and Mines asking what source could have produced sufficient heat to burn the body. And another request to the municipality of Quinua asking that they send him copies in quadruplicate of missing persons reports dated subsequent to January 1 of the current year.