Read Online Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa - Free Book Online Page A

her,” he explained. “Mercedes was sweating. So was I. Her hair brushed my face, tickled my nose. I felt the curve of her hip right next to mine. When she spoke, her lips touched my chest, and I could feel her warm breath right through my shirt.”
    â€œSon of a bitch, the one who’s getting a hard-on here is me,” said Lituma. “So what do I do now, Tomasito? Jerk off?”
    â€œGo out and take a leak, Corporal. The cold will make it go down.”
    â€œAre you religious? A good Catholic? Can’t you accept that a man and a woman do certain things? Was it sin or something that made you kill him, Carreñito?”
    â€œI felt happy having her so close,” his adjutant admitted. “I kept my mouth closed tight, stayed very still, listened to the truck struggling up the Cordillera, and that’s how I could stand how much I wanted to kiss her.”
    â€œDon’t get angry because I asked,” Mercedes insisted. “It’s just that I’m trying to understand why you killed him, and nothing comes to me.”
    â€œGo to sleep and don’t think about it,” the boy said. “Like me. I don’t remember anymore. I’ve forgotten about Hog and Tingo María. And don’t bring religion into it.”
    It was the dead of night over the great peaks of the Andes, which seemed to grow higher with each curve in the road. But down in the jungle they were leaving behind, day was breaking in a thin bluish-white streak along the horizon.
    â€œDid you hear that? Did you?” Lituma sat up abruptly in his cot. “Grab your revolver, Tomasito. I’ll swear those are footsteps coming up the hill.”

3
    â€œMaybe they got rid of Casimiro Huarcaya because they thought he was a pishtaco,” said Dionisio the cantinero. “He spread the rumor himself. I don’t know how many times I heard him bellow like a wild boar, right there where you’re standing: ‘I’m a pishtaco and so what? One of these days I’ll slice up your fat and suck out your blood. All of you.’ Maybe he was a little high, but everybody knows drunks tell the truth. The whole cantina heard him. By the way, are there any pishtacos in Piura, Corporal, sir?”
    Lituma raised the glass of anisette that the cantinero had just poured, said “Cheers” to his adjutant, and drank it in one swallow. The sweet-tasting warmth went down to his belly and raised his spirits, which had been dragging on the ground all day.
    â€œPersonally, I’ve never heard of pishtacos in Piura. Now, spirit-chasers are a different story. I knew one in Catacaos. He would go to houses where there were souls in torment and talk to them and get them to leave. Of course, a spirit-chaser isn’t much compared to a pishtaco.”
    The cantina was in the very center of the camp, surrounded by the barracks where the laborers slept. It had a low ceiling, benches and crates that served as chairs and tables, a dirt floor, and pictures of naked women tacked to the plank walls. The place was always crowded at night, but it was still early—the sun had just set—and in addition to Lituma and Tomás there were only four other men, all wrapped in scarves, and two wearing hard hats; they were sitting at a table and drinking beer. The corporal and the guard each carried his second glass of anisette to the adjoining table.
    â€œI can see that what I said about the pishtaco hasn’t convinced you.” Dionisio laughed.
    He was a fat, flabby man with a sooty face that looked as if it had been streaked with coal, and greasy, kinky hair. He was stuffed like a sausage into a blue sweater that he never took off, and his eyes were always bloodshot and burning, for he drank along with his customers. Though he never became completely drunk. At least Lituma had never seen him in the state of total intoxication that so many laborers reached on Saturday nights. He usually played Radio