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

Junín at top volume, but tonight he hadn’t turned on the radio yet.
    â€œDo you believe in pishtacos?” Lituma asked the men at the next table. Four faces, half hidden by shawls, turned toward him. They all seemed made from the same mold—skin burned by hot sun and cutting cold, evasive, inexpressive eyes, noses and lips livid with harsh weather, unruly hair—and it was difficult for him to tell them apart.
    â€œWho knows?” one of them answered at last. “Maybe.”
    â€œI do,” one of the men in a hard hat said after a moment. “They must exist if so many people talk about them.”
    Lituma narrowed his eyes. He could see him. A stranger. Half gringo. At first glance you didn’t know what he was because he looked just like everybody else in this world. He lived in caves and committed his crimes at night. Lurking along the roads, behind boulders, hiding among haystacks or under bridges, waiting for solitary travelers. He would approach with cunning, pretending to be a friend. His powder made from the bones of the dead was all ready, and at the first careless moment he threw it in his victims’ faces. Then he could suck out their fat. Afterward he let them go, emptied, nothing but skin and bone, doomed to waste away in a few hours or days. These were the benign ones. They needed human fat to make church bells sing more sweetly and tractors run more smoothly, and now, lately, to give to the government to help pay off the foreign debt. The evil ones were worse. They not only slit their victims’ throats but butchered them like cattle, or sheep, or hogs, and ate them. Bled them drop by drop and got drunk on the blood. Son of a bitch, the serruchos believed this stuff. Did that witch Doña Adriana really kill a pishtaco?
    â€œCasimiro Huarcaya was an albino,” murmured the laborer who had spoken first. “What Dionisio said might be true. Maybe they took him for a pishtaco and knocked him off before he could cut out their fat.”
    His companions celebrated his remarks with whispers and giggles. Lituma felt his pulse quicken. Huarcaya had broken rocks and shoveled dirt and sweated alongside these men on the unfinished highway; now he was either dead or kidnapped. And these fuckers allowed themselves the luxury of making jokes.
    â€œYou don’t give a shit about any of this,” he said accusingly. “What happened to the albino could happen to you. And suppose the terrucos attack Naccos tonight and start their people’s trials the way they did in Andamarca? How’d you like to be stoned to death for being traitors or faggots? How’d you like to be whipped for being drunkards?”
    â€œWell, I’m not a drunkard, or a traitor, or a faggot, so I wouldn’t like it at all,” said the man who had spoken earlier.
    His companions congratulated him with titters and nudges.
    â€œWhat happened in Andamarca is a sad business.” One of the men who had not said anything yet spoke seriously. “But at least they were all Peruvians. I think what happened in Andahuaylas is worse. Those French kids, you know, what can you say? Why mix them up in our troubles? Not even foreigners are safe.”
    â€œI believed in pishtacos when I was a kid,” Carreño interrupted, speaking to the corporal. “My grandmother used to scare me with stories about them when I made her mad. I grew up suspicious of every stranger who came through Sicuani.”
    â€œAnd do you think the pishtacos dried and sliced up the mute, and Casimiro Huarcaya, and the foreman?”
    The guard drank from the glass of anisette.
    â€œLike I told you before, Corporal, the way things are going, I’m ready to believe anything that comes along. As a matter of fact, I’d rather deal with pishtacos than terrucos.”
    â€œYou’re right to believe,” the corporal agreed. “If you want to understand what goes on around here, you’re