Useful Fools, page 17
Back in Lima, a grubby pall hid the stars, all but a handful of them. If he stood in front of his house and looked up, he saw a few blurry specks. These stars were stabs of brilliance, billions of them.
The exhilaration he had felt in the truck returned. He wanted to dance. To feel this happy, twice in one day, seemed miraculous. He thought of Rosa, and a ravenous hunger swept through him. Ay, to feel her skin right now . . .
When the People’s War ended, he’d bring her here. He’d make love to her beneath a sky awash with starlight. He’d make it up to her, somehow. He’d explain it all.
He was thinking about Rosa, about her curves and her hair and the way her jeans clung to her skin, when a rustle on top of the boulder startled him. He zipped up his jeans and stepped back.
A villager wrapped in a poncho lay sleeping on the giant stone. Alonso grinned. This guy was supposed to be guarding the trail into Tambo Matacancha. Some sentinel.
Still, if a campesino could sleep on that slab of granite, he himself—an EGP recruit!—ought to be tough enough to sleep in a hut. Creeping back inside, he lay down as close to Rodolfo as he could. He curled his body next to his friend’s and they nestled together like spoons. Finally, not warm but warm enough, he slept.
“Hey, little girl, wake up!”
Alonso woke. Rodolfo’s face lay before his, eyebrows raised. Light poured through the doorway.
“Hola, mamita.” Alonso yawned, rolling away. “It was freezing last night.”
They stood up, stretching and scratching, and wandered out into the early morning. The sun was up, shining above a glacier-topped mountain. Alonso turned his face eastward and let tepid sunshine pour over his cheeks. The air still felt like an ice bath.
An old man carrying a wooden hoe shuffled past. Without looking at the boys, he trotted down the trail to a terraced brown field below the village.
In the doorway of the hut next to theirs, a woman sat beside a pile of carded wool, spinning it onto a drop spindle. She was bare-legged and barefoot, and wore what looked like a dozen graying petticoats under her skirt. She ignored the boys, staring at her gently rotating spindle. They watched, mesmerized by the growing spool of yarn.
“Buenos días, señora,” Rodolfo said tentatively.
“She probably doesn’t speak Spanish,” Alonso muttered.
“Señores!” A red-cheeked little girl ran toward them. She wore a bowler hat and layer upon layer of old clothes. Scarves and sweaters and blouses. At least three pairs of torn and grimy sweatpants. “Buenos días, comrades! The Political Commissar is waiting for you.” The little girl bobbed respectfully and led them over the grass.
The village was as quiet now as it had been at sunset. A ghost village. Were all the villages up here like this? Just a few old women, spinning wool in the doorways. Chickens kicking up the dust in a listless search for insects. A couple of filthy, matted sheep. The little girl shoved one out of their way and showed them into a hut.
In the corner, an open fire hissed, sending a haze of smoke toward a roof vent. The young woman who had greeted them in Spanish sat at a table, spooning soup to her mouth and staring at a notebook. As they entered, she stood with a shy smile. The little girl scurried over to a pot above the fire and began ladling soup into a bowl.
“Welcome, comrades.” The young woman shook hands with them, her dirt-etched fingers limp. The little girl brought them each a bowl of soup, then ducked her head with something like a curtsy and darted away. “Please sit, comrades,” the young woman said. “Simón and . . . Juan?”
“José,” Alonso corrected.
She looked down at her notebook, her finger sliding across the page. “You will be serving in the glorious People’s Guerrilla Army, carrying your lives in your fingertips, ready to hand them over in the service of the People, the Party, and the Revolution?”
Rodolfo replied firmly. “Our lives belong to the Party. Death is natural and comes to all.”
The young woman nodded. “I am Comrade Elena. I am Political Commissar of Tambo Matacancha.”
Alonso tried to think of something to say, something Senderista, but nothing came to him. A few cuyes squeaked behind a platform bed piled with sheepskins. Finally Comrade Elena looked up from her notes and flashed Rodolfo a brilliant smile. “Comrade Francisco and his men may return today,” she said. “You’ll be able to join them.”
Picking up the dented spoons the little girl had laid out, Alonso and Rodolfo began to eat. Alonso wrinkled his nose. This soup was as thin and tasteless as last night’s. Water, really, with a few scraps of potato, some strands of wilted herb and not even a hint of salt. Suddenly he remembered yesterday’s bread. He still had a few pieces of that flat, chewy bread from Huaraz in his pack, left over from the hike. “We have bread,” he told Comrade Elena. “I’ll go get it.”
Her eyes and mouth spread wide with delight.
She’s pretty when she smiles, Alonso thought. Big black eyes shaped like teardrops. Chapped cheeks glowing warm and ruddy over those flat cheekbones.
“Bread!” she exclaimed. “I haven’t had bread since . . .” She broke off and looked down, leafing through her notebook. “We never go into Chiquián to the market anymore,” she murmured. Finding what she was looking for, she ran a finger under a line of handwritten text. “‘The insa—The insur—’”She frowned at the notebook. “‘The insurrectional peasantry must starve the cities into submission,’” she read. “‘We are becoming self-sufficient, so we must not sell or buy anything. ’”She looked up, her expression sober.
“We didn’t buy the bread,” Alonso said uncertainly. “I mean, a comrade gave it to us in—”
“Just get the bread, José,” Rodolfo snapped.
Flushing, Alonso turned on his heel and went out.
The sun was higher now, so bright that the sky around it seemed pale and silvery. In the east, jagged peaks speared the horizon. To the west, the trail snaked down the mountain they had crossed the day before, then cut through Tambo Matacancha to the rock-strewn field where the old man was working with his hoe. As Alonso watched him poke at the soil, a dozen men emerged from a gully.
Young men, in felt hats and brown ponchos, striding over the rocks. Wiry and tough, like the gnarled, reddish queñal trees Alonso had seen in the valley yesterday. A few wore rifles slung from canvas belts, and most carried machetes. Two of them were dragging a third, who stumbled and cried out. The old man dropped his hoe and trotted toward them, pulling off his hat as he drew near.
Comrade Francisco, Alonso thought. It has to be.
Looking up, a bearded young man in a broad-brimmed hat caught sight of him. He barked a command and two of the men shot up the trail. Alonso didn’t resist when they grabbed him by the arms. They held him immobile as the rest of the platoon climbed to join them.
“Who are you?” the bearded man demanded. He had a pistol strapped to his side.
“José.” Alonso looked steadily into the hostile brown eyes. “I came with Simón. Hilario sent us.”
The expression of suspicion didn’t vary as the man fired more questions. “Where did you come from? When did you get here? Where is this Simón?”
“We came from Lima. We got here last night, just after sunset. And Simón is with Comrade Elena, having breakfast. Are you Comrade Francisco?”
“I’ll ask the questions,” the man snapped.
The two Senderistas dragging the third joined them. The wounded man was moaning, his pant leg stiff with mud and dried blood. Something sharp stuck through the fabric below his knee.
Alonso whistled, then looked up at the leader. “I know first-aid,” he said. “If we can get him inside—”
“There’s no need,” the leader retorted. “Get your comrade, and tell Comrade Elena to gather the people by the school.” He nodded at the men gripping Alonso’s arms, and they released him.
Alonso looked back at the wounded man. He slumped, arms draped across the shoulders of his two comrades. His face was caked with dust and sweat, and his eyes were half closed.
Alonso stared at the leg. That jagged thing sticking out was bone.
“Compound fracture,” he murmured. It was a miracle the man wasn’t in shock. Alonso turned to the leader. “He needs help now,” he insisted.
The leader’s expression hardened. “Do as I tell you.”
Alonso rocked slightly on his heels, staring at the horrific leg as the wounded man moaned again.
“Go!” the leader nearly shouted.
Shaking his head angrily, Alonso turned back to the village. He trotted to Comrade Elena’s hut.
“Come on,” he said, sticking his head through the doorway. “Comrade Francisco is here. He wants us all to meet by the school.”
Rodolfo and Elena stood up so quickly that they bumped the table and spilled their soup. Elena began calling to the villagers in Quechua. Campesinos emerged from huts and came trotting from the fields. They gathered before a small adobe building, a dozen or more old men and women with wrinkled faces and sunken cheeks. Elena’s eager little assistant raced toward them with a few old men shuffling in her wake.
The platoon was waiting for them, ranked in a semicircle in front of the school. Comrade Francisco stood beside the wounded man and the two guerillas who propped him up. A Senderista was hoisting a red flag onto a wooden pole. As the wind caught the flag and unfurled it, a hammer and sickle stood out against the brilliant blue sky.
Bobbing in a little half curtsy, Elena held out her hand. Comrade Francisco shook it and then turned to the villagers. His voice carried above the wind. “Comrades! The agents of the reaction are everywhere. They come with smiles and gifts, but they have only one goal: to serve the counterrevolution and keep the People forever oppressed in a situation of hunger, misery, and exploitation. They are doomed to fail! The victory of the People’s War is inevitable!”
Comrade Francisco paused. In the silence that followed Elena began to speak in Quechua. The old men and women looked at her, their rheumy eyes flickering with comprehension as she translated. When she finished, Comrade Francisco spoke again.
“I have called you here for a People’s Trial. Tambo Matacancha is the first in a shining chain of villages in the Liberated Zone of the Cordillera Huayhuash. Your loyalty to the Party is vital.” He paused, and once again Elena translated.
With a jerk of his head, Comrade Francisco gestured for the two Senderista soldiers to bring forward the wounded man. Alonso winced as they forced him to put weight on his injured leg.
“We captured this dog of imperialism on the trail from Tambo Matacancha. When he and his two companions saw us, they fled. Why would they flee if they were not spies of the reaction? The friends of the People have nothing to fear from us.” Comrade Francisco pointed at Alonso and Rodolfo. “Recruits into the People’s Guerilla Army. You see? They didn’t run from us.”
Alonso gazed back as Comrade Francisco nodded. Rocking slightly on his heels, he felt edgy. Distant, somehow. Like he was watching this scene from high up on the mountainside.
Francisco spoke again as Elena finished translating and the campesinos glanced at the two boys. “Only counterrevolutionaries abandon their comrades. When this dog fell into a ravine, the other two ran away.”
The wounded man’s eyes were open now. He listened closely as Comrade Francisco adopted a mocking tone. “He claims to be an aid worker. He says Tambo Matacancha was the first stop on his journey to bring a new livestock project into the Cordillera Huayhuash. He says he met here with leaders of this community.” Comrade Francisco’s voice rose to an angry shout. “He is lying! Tambo Matacancha is a liberated village. It supports the People’s War!”
As Elena spoke, the villagers stirred. Francisco’s eyes swept across their stolid faces like a searchlight sweeping a prison yard.
“We have brought him here for a People’s Trial. If he is an agent of the reaction, he must be squashed like an insect. It is for you to decide.”
Elena finished translating. A cool wind blew through Alonso’s hair and tugged at the campesinos’ ponchos. On the mountainside above them, a lamb bleated, answered by a ewe’s low, reassuring rumble. Nobody moved. The campesinos’ faces were dark beneath the brims of their hats. Uneasily, Alonso glanced at Rodolfo. He was staring at Francisco. Even the prisoner was motionless, collapsed over his captors’ shoulders.
A stir in the crowd broke the spell. Slowly the campesinos parted to let a very old man wearing a red poncho step forward. It was the ancient man who had emerged from the hut the night before. The King of the Dwarves. As he approached Comrade Francisco, a woman’s high wail broke the silence, a protesting screech that fell off as abruptly as it had arisen.
“Don Fermín . . . ,” Elena began. She bit her lip.
Don Fermín took off his hat and faced Comrade Francisco. “In the old order of oppression,” he quavered, in Quechua-accented Spanish, “it was my turn to serve my community as President.” With a gentle, backhanded wave, he gestured at Elena. “That was before we had the Party and a Political Commissar.” Elena looked down at the ground. “Now we have the Party to guide us. But when the three aid workers,” a gnarled finger pointed at the prisoner, “came over the mountain, I climbed to meet them. To speak for my community.”
Comrade Francisco glared at the hunched figure before him. “Alone?”
“Sí, señor.” Don Fermín nodded. “I was alone.”
A shadow of skepticism passed over the commander’s face. “When you met with these agents of the reaction, did you denounce them to the Commissar?”
“No, señor, I did not.” With his hat in one hand, Don Fermín spread his arms apologetically. “We talked about alpacas. They said that they would bring us purebred alpacas. Their wool is finer than our sheep’s wool. But I told them Tambo Matacancha is a liberated village. We don’t need alpacas because we no longer sell sweaters to the tourists in Huaraz.”
Francisco smiled slightly. Don Fermín’s unsteady voice grew stronger. “I don’t think you should kill this man. He is not a spy. He is an evangélico from one of those sects that don’t lie or steal. Send him away. Let him tell his people not to come back to Tambo Matacancha.”
Comrade Francisco nodded.
A few feet shuffled. A few sighs mingled with the wind. Alonso let out a quivering breath of relief. Maybe he could dress the man’s wound. Dr. Pablo had taught him first-aid.
I can do it, Alonso thought. I can splint his leg. He’ll make it up the mountain.
Comrade Francisco pulled his pistol from its holster and stepped toward Don Fermín. The barrel was black, a metal tube that glinted in the sunlight.
Startled, Alonso looked around. The prisoner was quivering, holding his shattered leg above the ground as if the slightest weight were unbearable. No one else moved. The villagers. Elena and Rodolfo. Everyone was staring at Comrade Francisco. No one looked at Don Fermín.
The old man closed his eyes. Comrade Francisco placed the barrel against his forehead and pressed it there.
Then, before anyone could speak, he pulled the trigger.
FIFTEEN
The blanket was coarse gray wool, and it tickled each time Rosa breathed. She yawned, staring up at a ceiling made of flattened cardboard boxes. GLORIA EVAPORATED MILK, she read. TROPICAL RICE. The kids lay around her, still asleep. Gustavo’s feet pressed into her back, and Livia’s head rested on the crook of her arm. Wedged between them, Rosa tried to stretch without moving. CRISTAL BEER.
The night before, she had piled the other bed with books and pans and shoved it in front of the broken door. She’d tossed her school uniform atop the pile and slept in one of Magda’s old T-shirts. Now she pulled her arm free and crept from the bed, crossing barefoot to the battered wooden dresser.
Tomás had kept all of Magda’s clothes, the sweaters and blouses, the skirts and jeans. Why, in this tiny shack, had he bothered? Was he was trying to keep a piece of Magda? Did he ever slip a hand into the drawer, just to touch clothes that had once touched his wife?
Rosa opened a drawer and pulled out Magda’s blue sweater. She could still see Magda wearing it. Could remember her smiling in the doorway of the Cesip.
That’s why he keeps it, Rosa thought. Something of Magda remained in the sweater. As Rosa put it on, she felt the sweater wrap around her like a hug.
The children’s heads lay close together, their bodies fanned like the spokes of a wheel. Rosa watched them breathing for a moment, then tugged the other bed from the door. Before they woke, she needed to find a market or a bodega. Somewhere she could buy a breakfast even Livia wouldn’t refuse. Another pound cake. Chocolate. Candy. Anything. But even more than that, she needed a phone.
She stepped outside and pulled the door shut.
The sun was already gleaming behind the clouds, but the street was deserted. No men heading off to work. No baker pedaling a three-wheeled cart. No water truck rumbling through. A bodega stood on the corner, but it was closed, battened down behind bars and a sliding metal door. From within the windowless shacks, Rosa could hear voices and a few radios. A brassy salsa tune. The sharp accents of the Radioprogramas announcers. The life had been sucked from the street and bottled up in the shacks.
A few blocks away, she found a dusty little open-air market, as empty as the street. Perplexed, she wandered among the stalls, lifting plastic sheets and peering into wooden trays. She found nothing except a dried old potato. Above her, a breeze toyed a red banner tied to a stall. The banner opened tentatively, uncurling and subsiding. Rosa saw two crisscrossed golden shapes sewn onto the red.
A hammer and sickle. Startled, Rosa took a step backward.
Pasted to one of the stalls, she saw another of those fliers she’d ignored the day before. Her eyes ran down the words. Paro armado. Armed strike. Anyone who went to work or shop would be executed. Ajusticiar. Executed with justice.
¡Viva el paro armado!
A soft footfall padded behind her, and as Rosa turned a hand clapped over her mouth. A blade, thin and sharp, pressed against her neck.
