When Mountains Walked, page 22
She walked steadily, not looking back, resolved not even to think of whatever might be following. At the road’s bend, the split boulder looked big as the moon, crashed onto the ground.
…
A crowd had gathered. The bus was still parked where it had stopped, askew and blocking most of the road, its headlights shining into the door of the tienda. The bus was empty, and in a small flash of inadequacy Maggie realized she might not recognize its driver or any passengers in this crowd and poor light.
Dozens of people stood on the packed earth outside the store. No one spoke above a murmur, but everybody was talking. At the edge of the crowd was Vicente, conferring with a friend, heads together, both of them glancing, rather furtively, in and out of the circle of their conversation. She smiled and began working her way toward them to ask what was going on, but Vicente discreetly shook his head, barely a tremor, just in time for Maggie to change direction, staging a mistaken recognition of a woman ten feet to Vicente’s right.
The woman pushed her lips toward the store, indicating that whatever had happened was inside. El Doctor Calzón? In there, the woman said. Like a zombie, Maggie turned away and let herself be pulled toward the heart of the drama.
No one stopped her. Men and women were bunched around the door, peering in, yet leaving a corridor for the headlight beams. First she walked right up the middle and stood trying to see in, until a couple of men pulled her aside to remove her shadow. A woman shifted to let her by. She slunk in and stood against the wall, her spine pressed against the sharp edge of a shelf.
A man lay on his back on the floor, his face in shadow. A blanket covered his body. He was thin and his shoe bottoms pointed toward the door. The leather was white with scuffing, and there was a worn knothole at the ball of his right sole.
Maggie’s husband was crouching next to this man, holding his hand. Carson’s beard was long and sad; his fine bangs fell past his forehead.
Before they had gotten involved, but after they’d noticed each other, she’d watched him take another woman’s pulse at an academic party. He’d been flirting with a lecturer’s Venezuelan wife about her new exercise program. I can tell you, Carson had said, whether it is working. He’d taken her wrist, seeming to listen so carefully to the woman’s body that he could have heard her heart, not just beating but speaking all its secrets. The lecturer’s wife had felt this. She’d been suspended inside Carson’s concentration for a full half minute, until he raised his head and announced that her heart was beating slowly, less than once per second, and that slow was good. Then they both had laughed. Maggie, stricken with jealousy, had wanted to offer her own wrist, ask Carson to touch her with that same deliberation, fingers bruising her thinnest skin. She’d wanted her blood to drum against him from the inside. But back then, Larry had been watching.
Nor had Carson ever taken Maggie’s pulse, though he’d allowed her, plenty of times, to measure his, for the sake of training. His heart beat exactly sixty times per minute.
Tonight he was not counting beats. He was merely holding this man’s hand, looking into his face, Carson’s body curled and reflective, as if absorbing the other’s pain into himself.
She walked up and stood next to him. “Hey, love,” said Carson, falsely casual.
She crouched beside him, touched his thigh with her fingertips. “What’s going on? Anything I can do?”
“No. Shht, quiet.” The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes were deeper than usual.
She followed his attention to the man on the floor. Both legs were squirming, feet fluttering like a minnow’s fins. His cheeks were shiny with sweat or grease, and he was muttering vehemently, occasionally saying a bad word. Puta, carajo. As Maggie got closer, she saw his face and knew him. Nasir Dabdoub, the storekeeper. His eyes rolled around, resting on one face after another.
Carson’s jaw hung slightly open in fatigue or fear.
“Should we take him to the hospital?” Maggie said.
“You’re joking.”
“There’s the bus outside,” she said. “We could turn it around.”
“He’d be gone before the bridge.”
Maggie absorbed this information. Gone meant dead. “People will see we tried.” What a thing to say in front of everyone, even though she knew they wouldn’t understand a word.
“They know he’s dying. Right now the guy is calm. If we move him, he’ll suffer worse.”
“There’s really nothing we can do?”
“Nope. They must have pierced his liver. And you, how are you?” Carson turned his head and looked at her at last.
How am I, she wondered. “Fine. I gave your water to a lab.” Although grateful to him for asking, she stared back at him hoping to elicit some deeper softness or recognition. “And you?” she asked.
“I sat alone until they came to get me.” Now he leaned across and whispered into her ear. “These wounds are really strange.” He pulled up the blanket and Maggie hunkered aside so the light could fall on their patient. Several round bruises in the soft, pale belly flesh, the size of the smallest coin. Nasir’s belly had a line of hairs that would no longer be of any use to anyone, even as decoration. “Six stab wounds. They used a long weapon like a needle.”
She bent down and saw that the bruises were actually holes, black at the center. Nasir’s thin flanks were turning bluish under his skin’s pale yellow.
Carson indicated the length of the needle, half his forearm. “It’s the bandits’ specialty. From the coast, if I heard correctly. No blood spills outside, but death from internal hemorrhage.” He pulled down Nasir’s shirt again and gently replaced the blanket.
“Señora,” the wounded man said, squirming. His arms and legs hadn’t stopped moving. “Me duele, Señora.” It hurts me.
Maggie was surprised that Nasir had seen her.
“No se preocupe.” Don’t worry. She had no right to say this. She laid one hand across his sweating forehead, but her palm must not have been comforting, or else Nasir just couldn’t keep his head still. He rolled it from side to side and Maggie quickly took her hand off again. He didn’t stop shaking his head now, like a child in a tantrum of refusal.
A froth the color of strawberry ice cream came up between his lips. Pulmonary, she wanted to say to Carson, but didn’t because the walls of the room had begun to press together. Everything shrank to a small, flat, round area. Men’s and women’s faces receded around the edges. “Just a second.” She swooped for the door, got halfway through, pressed her forehead against the dirty painted cement of its jamb. Her mouth filled with liquid of which she allowed a little to drop out. Saliva was remarkably elastic, she thought, as the drops turned into a stream that extended past her chest before it broke off. Please let me not vomit, she thought. She tried looking up at the sky, but the stars seemed to vibrate in position. How nice air was! Like champagne. Cool, with a little moisture and the smells of things that grew by the river. Across from the store was a stone retaining wall. From its top grew the forty-foot papaya tree that Nasir had told her sprouted from a rind he threw away five years ago.
A few deep breaths. She felt better, until Nasir’s liver-colored dog started sniffing around the little spot she’d drooled upon the ground. The crowd shouted “Fuera!” A rock the size of a bun hit the dog’s ribs. A meaty thud. The dog cringed, whirled, and trotted rapidly away, holding itself in a crouched position.
“Está bien?” The people in the yard asked her, or maybe they meant Nasir. Same verb.
“No’sé,” she said, I don’t know.
A woman offered an opinion. There were murmurs of assent.
Vicente appeared, walking out of the crowd. He put one hand on her shoulder and spoke in English. “Nasir, he dies. Go inside, okay?”
“Okay.”
They went inside, Vicente behind Maggie. He pushed without touching her, blocking her retreat, as he had pushed Luz María—three days ago?—into the clinic. Maggie could feel a bouncy, physical aura coming out of his chest.
Someone had knocked over a large sack of dried macaroni which crunched underfoot. Nasir’s store was just as full of goods as ever. Doña Albita would have to take over the business. Would she sell all of it piece by piece, then leave? Or would she stay in Piedras? When a person died, a whirlwind suddenly stopped and millions of objects fell to the ground. Maggie thought of her grandmother. If and when Julia managed to ship Althea off to some Shady Hill or Green Meadow, she was also capable of inviting a charity to drop by with a moving van.
I want to leave here, Maggie thought with urgency.
Carson was still kneeling by Nasir, but his eyes looked for Maggie now. He registered Vicente standing beside her with a faint look of questioning or displeasure, the supercilious twitch at the left corner of his mouth that reminded Maggie a little of her father, Calvin. Nasir’s eyes were closed but his lips and tongue were savoring the pink gummy froth. Eating himself, Maggie thought with repulsion. Carson got to his feet as the two of them approached, and Vicente stepped back quickly into the shadow, as if he preferred Carson to strike Maggie instead of him. Yet from there he greeted Carson, offering his hand. “Buenas noches.”
“Who’s this?” Carson said in a peremptory tone.
“Vicente Quispe Cruz,” Maggie said. “He brought Lady Maggy.”
“Ah,” said Carson, “you are the papá of Lady Maggy.”
Vicente didn’t correct the imputation of fatherhood, Maggie noticed, he just nodded and shook Carson’s hand. But he wouldn’t have anyway, not now. The sight of Nasir’s sweating face made her mind feel like raw egg thrown against a wall, sliding down.
She said, “Can’t we put him on the bus? Really, are we sure? We can’t just let him die here! Let’s take him to the clinic at least.” Belatedly she recalled there was nothing left at the clinic to save anybody with.
Carson said, “Please don’t get hysterical.”
She stamped her foot. “I’m not! If we can’t do anything, then maybe we should leave. He’s not our relative. I’ve never watched a person die before.”
“Calm down. We ain’t going nowhere.” Carson squatted down again at Nasir’s shoulder.
She smoothed her T-shirt, squatted next to Carson with one hand on his thigh for balance. Vicente stood dark and stiff above them, like a best man.
Be with him, Maggie told herself. Think how he must feel. Nasir started uttering awful, strangling groans. A louder murmur went through the crowd, and people started jamming into the doorway. The ones already inside shuffled closer, pushed from behind, some almost falling. Vicente began to herd them back, the way Maggie’s father did at golf tournaments, raising his arms and walking forward, calling quietly for silence, silence.
Maggie appealed to a woman standing above her. “Hay sacer-dote?” Is there a priest? The woman shook her head.
“Hermano,” said Vicente, flicking an imaginary drop onto Nasir’s forehead. Brother.
Nasir opened his eyes as if the drop had been cold.
“Te queremos,” Vicente declared. We love you.
The shopkeeper struggled a bit, noticed Vicente, and called for him by name. “Aquí, papito,” Vicente said. Nasir started trying to sit up, and Carson and Vicente both put their arms behind his shoulders to support him. The shopkeeper’s lips moved and Vicente leaned toward his face to hear whatever he was saying. Nasir squeezed his eyes shut and muttered, muttered on. His voice was full of liquid rolling in the back of his nose and throat. He seemed to be telling what had happened, and Vicente kept saying he understood. “Si, sí, ya, papá, ya, sí, papito, entiendo.”
He gently passed Nasir onto Carson’s arms. Carson nodded, taking the weight of Nasir, who was still breathing.
Vicente stood up and asked the room who else had seen the robbery. He said three names, which Maggie immediately forgot. Everyone stared at the floor. Some people were moving their heads vaguely, in distress not to be able to say definitely yes or no. Vicente yelled “Si?” One fat man with a dimpled face said “No,” sarcastically, under his breath. There was a murmur of dissent. Vicente repeated the names with more certitude, shaking his head at people’s fear and stupidity. Still no one spoke.
“No pue’ ser,” the shopkeeper mumbled. It can’t be. His breathing began to make a loud sucking bubbling sound, so Carson laid him down. A carnation of froth grew from his lips. Now his breath turned into a retching metallic clangor, like parts falling off the bottom of a moving car. Men and women pressed in closer.
“Aire!” Carson cried, but they all ignored him. Nasir’s neck started to swell. Carson said, “Pneumothorax,” and ripped the shirt from his neck. They all saw more bruised holes on his chest, just in front of his right arm, inside the shoulder joint.
“Verduguillo,” Vicente said. The name of the knife, the little executioner.
“I never saw these.” Carson bit off chunks of adhesive tape to seal them. “You should never have sat up,” he shouted in English at Nasir, who was resisting being laid down again, craning his neck to see new bandages, new wounds.
“Ay, es mi pulmón,” it is my lung, Nasir said, having understood at last. He relaxed and lay back, his stare fixed loosely on the ceiling. Maggie would always remember seeing a person disappear without disappearing. “Aay Diosito. Diosito mitio,” a woman wailed over and over. Doña Albita had been standing in the dark, behind the glass counter. Now she came out to kneel at Nasir’s side. Maggie stood up to leave space for her.
“Puta mierda,” Carson said richly under his breath. He recited all his Spanish swear words. “Cono, carajo, puta, pendejo, mierda.”
“Stop that,” Maggie said. She squeezed his shoulder and he stopped.
Liliana was wrong, Maggie thought. He does know I exist.
Doña Albita sat down on the floor, placed her husband’s head in her lap. Everyone stepped back, but stayed in range, watching as she bent over her husband’s face, stroking and tucking his hair behind both ears. She told him to take care. It had impressed Maggie since the beginning how Peruvians weren’t very demonstrative in public.
…
Outside, the road was the same as usual. The air was soft and the mango trees a positive blackness against the bright cloudy sky. The river roared on and on. How could there be so much water in the world to keep the rivers flowing day and night?
Carson walked in his own wheel rut, a yard to Maggie’s right. Without any preamble he started telling what he’d heard and understood. Three bandits had come down from a place called Meado de Vaca (“cow piss”), on the eastern edge of the puna. It wasn’t clear whether they were residents or fugitives hiding out there. People seemed to know who they were.
Why would anyone choose Meado de Vaca, Maggie wondered. Eight hours before, on the bus, she’d passed through it again: two dozen hovels scattered around a forty-foot mud puddle in which pantless babies stood thigh-deep. The only grace of the town was the humor of its name, inspired by that central wallow of murky water. Generally it resembled an ogre’s den where drying sheepskins rattled stiffly in the wind. Bones and garbage littered the ground. The shacks were piles of sticks and stones, kept low because of the incessant wind and caulked with turfy clods—all was blackened by age, wood smoke, and poverty. Men leaned in the doorways, scowling, never waving at the bus. Women turned their backs and ran, throwing stones to scare herds of stunted, spaniel-sized goats and sheep.
When the three men had come into Nasir’s, he’d served them beer and even turned on his old World Cup video, taped by his brother from Cajamarca TV. They’d drunk steadily all afternoon. At sunset he’d finally asked them for a payment, and the men had said si, sí, claro, seguro, they’d pay with Nasir’s own cash and gold. He’d known he was lost. They’d stood up, drawing their needle knives. One got behind him and the other two grabbed his arms and pushed him into the storeroom, where they forced him to dig up the sack of nuggets he kept buried in the dirt floor, about two hundred grams of gold. Everyone knew it was there.
“How much is that worth?” Maggie wanted to know, but Carson didn’t have the answer.
Next they went out front to take the cash. Nasir offered to unlock the wooden box, hoping to grab his pistol from under the counter, but they’d sucker-punched him instead, smashed the box, and then given him a few jabs with the verduguillo, as many as pleased each one. Doña Albita had watched it all from the crack of the kitchen door. While they’d been in the storeroom digging up the floor, she’d sent the shave-head boy for help, but he’d only run away in fear.
Carson fell silent and Maggie knew he was entering the rest of the story as it reeled through his mind, the part that included himself. His self-blame for not noticing the chest wounds earlier. They were just walking past the boulder. Her belly tightened, imagining the sensation of the verduguillo going in. She had her own selfishness, feeling terrible for having been exempted from dying on the floor. Unworthily, it had come to her that she could have borne Nasir’s death better than Nasir, because she would have known it was not her true destiny. She could have had some other end, whereas Nasir might have suffered from some final, bitter thoughts about what it meant to have been born in Damascus only to come down to this ignominious dying on the floor.
Give the man credit, she told herself. Credit was all she had to give to him, or rather to his memory. Her own death would be just as intimate and limiting.
“He might have been saved in a big-city emergency room,” Carson said.
“Not even,” Maggie said. Surely there had been no such murders while Comandante Oquendo had ruled this valley. All bandits would have had to register with Fortunata right away. She found this idea reassuring, dampening Liliana’s alarums. Even if Vicente had less power now, he was on her side and Carson’s.
Out on this part of the road, the river took a bend and the sky was bigger. The wind had cleared the sky somewhat, so that only half of it was now covered with clouds, the half that included the moon. The other half was perfectly clear and still had a lot of stars. The road was lit a dull pinkish gray.
