The Gringa Read online

  She knows she shouldn’t be there. You’re a tourist, Chaski said. Let them believe. At first she thrilled to the intrigue, the sense of infiltration: she was undercover in Lima, observing without being seen. But he hasn’t been back in a week. Here, now, something is happening—the first tentative surges of the crowd, the seductive smell of adrenaline and sweat and fear. Could he really expect her to do nothing? Who benefitted, other than the government, when good people stood idly by?

  A loud whistle, piercing and quick. Another—and then an old man limps into the gap between cops and demonstrators. “Don’t look!” he says and whistles twice more. “Don’t look at her! Sons of bitches, close your eyes!”

  A restless hush slowly takes hold. Bent nearly double, in a gray blazer and a fedora, the old man looks uncertainly back at the crowd. His long face and white whiskers, the dark mole at one temple, remind Leo of her Grandpa Carol.

  “Close your eyes,” he cries, shaking a finger at the cops. “This is your mother! You want to look at your mother?” One of the half-clothed women turns full circle, giving everyone gathered a proper look. Laughter rattles among the restless crowd. “Shut up, fools,” the old man says. “You allow this indecency?”

  “Get out of the way, Papi!” a woman shouts.

  “Go home, viejito!”

  “You let them look at your mother? You want to fuck your mother, you pigs?” One of the demonstrators reaches for his arm but the old man shrugs him aside. Furiously, he searches his pockets and, finding nothing, strips off his wristwatch and flings it at the police line, where it smacks against a plastic shield and falls to the ground.

  “Close your eyes! Close your eyes!” he cries, limping past the cops, and when he stoops to retrieve his watch a foot shoots out and kicks him squarely in the ass—he staggers forward, splaying face-down at the edge of a flowerbed, his fedora nudged by the wind just out of reach.

  The pause is long enough for Leo to suck in breath—then the crowd swells forward with a howl, a mass of bodies accelerating, expanding in every direction. From somewhere behind her she can still hear singing—¡Vengan todos a ver! ¡Ay, vamos a ver!—but now the clang and pop of tear gas canisters hitting the flagstones, screams and moans, the crack of wood on iron. She shouldn’t be there—she knows it, she should go back to the hostel, write a postcard, do as she was told. But when she spots three of the old women, small and pale, marching arm in arm toward a line of armored vehicles, a flutter of alarm rises in her chest. A tourist. That’s what she’d been at Los Muertos. A thoughtless spectator. Why did she always stand aside while others took the risks?

  The old man limps through the flowerbed, holding a bloody rag to the side of his head. Next to him, a cop raises his truncheon. With a sudden whoosh, the tanks fire their water cannons, long spraying jets that arc over the old women’s heads and splatter to the pavement like a sudden ovation—a warning shot, a threat, and as the tanks retarget, lining those flimsy bodies in their sights, it’s as if the decision were made somewhere outside her, some collective mind moving Leo’s body toward the place she’s needed most. She’s running now, not knowing what she’ll do only that she’ll finally do something—the giant fountain ahead of her, its bowl dry and coated with green and white scum, one of the old women still standing, doubled over and retching in the smoke, and just as Leo reaches the concrete platform, reaching for a handhold to climb up next to her someone grabs Leo’s elbow, drags her off balance from the fountain, rushes her through a flowerbed footless and blind and shoves her backward to the grass.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he says. Gasping, one leg twisted under her, she looks up to find a man with a mop of curly hair standing over her. “Are you crazy?”

  “I wanted…quería…ayudar,” she says. “I was trying to help.”

  “You think this is a party?” he says, looming over her, shifting when she moves, blocking her from the view of the policemen. He’s fair and slender, mid-thirties, a strong chin and full, almost feminine lips. “This is no place for you. Get out of here now, before they see you.”

  “Las mujeres…” she stammers, twisting to look for the old women, “ellas están en peligro—”

  “English!” he hisses, bending toward her. “He told you only speak English, no?” As she stares, uncomprehending, one of the cops detaches from the line and starts toward them, peering suspiciously. “Are you going to do what you’re told?” the man says. “We can’t help you if you don’t know how to listen.”

  She nods, heart banging. “Sí—yes, okay.”

  “Then get back to the hostel. Nobody can see you here. You hear me?” He watches her until he’s sure she understands. Then, sensing the cop approaching, he straightens and raises his voice. “Stupid fucking gringa, go back to your hotel. Go hike the Inca Trail!”

  Again the roar of the water cannons, the thud of a baton against flesh. She clears her throat, mustering all her confusion. “I just wanted to know what was happening,” she says, biting back tears that may even be real. “I just wanted to see.”

  “You want to see something?” he shouts, grabbing his crotch. “Look at this!”

  When he takes off across the plaza, she eases herself to her feet, sodden and ridiculous. Her face burns, her breath comes in nervous half-sobs. She ignores the crude laughter of the cops, who stare at her wet shirt, her mud-smeared jeans. The smoke and gas have begun to lift, tanks clearing the streets with blasts of water, backing off to let the horses prance. No one stops her when she limps out of the plaza. She appears in none of the photographs of that ordinary day.

  * * *

  —

  When she gets back to the hostel, filthy and wet, the lobby is full of Swedes—hale, towering explorers clustered around the couches, their trussed backpacks heaped on the checkerboard floor. She threads her way toward the stairs, but a glance at the television stops her, the sight of a familiar streetscape rooting her in place.

  “Be quiet,” she says. “Everybody, please. ¡Cállate!”

  A reporter stands at the edge of a deserted playground, a small crowd gathered nearby. Police tape runs along the sidewalk and surrounds the concrete bungalow in the background. The sound is too low, the reporter talking too quickly for Leo to make out. Across the bottom of the screen, the caption reads, Se encuentra tres cuerpos en Los Arenales.

  Three bodies found.

  “Please,” she says. “Please, shut up.” But the Swedes are oblivious, inspecting their maps, lashing ice axes to their packs. Leo sits on the bottom step, transfixed by the familiar image of the playground—its rusty swings and forlorn basketball hoops, the drab office where she’d spent so many days. Early that morning a scavenger had come across a trash heap in a corner of the lot, covered in new-looking cardboard he thought he could sell. He had not thought anything was amiss until he saw the shoe.

  “Be quiet,” Leo pleads. Ricky remembers wondering if she was sick again. “Please, you have to see this.”

  Two men and a woman. Late teens or early twenties. They’d probably died the day before. Their skulls had multiple fractures, their half-buried bodies showed signs of torture: burn marks, broken ribs, long welts where they’d smashed against restraints.

  Let it be a mistake, she thinks. Please, let it be someone else. When the camera scans the small crowd, she examines every face, desperately hoping to recognize his shy grin, his solemn eye. My Neto, Nancy had called him. Leo remembers her steely focus, like a lance she held pointed at a thundercloud. My Neto, she’d said.

  Of course she’d known he wasn’t coming back.

  4

  “You’re being obstinate, Leonora,” Maxine says. “Will you please go to a doctor? This is exactly what I worried about. I told your father not to let you go, but he had—”

  “Let me go?”

  “Just get yourself checked out, young lady. Take the credit card and find yourself a good doctor. T
his is your health. I don’t care what it costs.”

  “What credit card? What are you talking about?”

  An odd little pause. “You never found the credit card?”

  A group of Israelis tromp through the lobby in a blur of harem pants and cigarette smoke. Bill Clinton waggles a finger on the television while Ricky polishes the front desk and pretends not to listen. Everywhere, life persists in its absurdity and self-absorption: soap operas, traffic disputes, her mother’s endless prattle. No one stops to see what’s happening all around them. No one cares. That’s why Ernesto is dead, she thinks, resisting the urge to scream at them all—because no one can be bothered to care.

  Four days since they found the bodies. There’s been no word from Chaski, no sign anything will be done. The police have already closed the investigation: Inconclusive, they said. Possibly the same gangs who caused the Los Muertos disturbance. Possibly a retaliation. Leo can’t sleep, the shadows full of movement, the resurgent fever lurking in every dank recess. When she finally nods off she dreams of children running, of bodies broken and lit on fire. She lurches awake with the stink of burnt flesh in her throat.

  This is no place for you, the man in the plaza said. She knows he was right. Chaski, her mother—everyone was right. She doesn’t belong here, was a fool to think she could change anything. The women of Los Arenales are no better off for their handful of English phrases. The trenches she dug are still empty; no one has the money to lay the pipes. She’s accomplished nothing, benefitted no one. She’s worse than a tourist: she’s not even having a good time.

  A new voice comes on the line, jokey and self-assured: “Hey, Leo. How’s life in the Third World?”

  “Matt?” she says, bracing for a wave of fatigue. “What are you doing there?”

  “Just popping in for Sunday brunch, give the parental units a thrill.”

  She hasn’t heard her brother’s voice since the wedding and is surprised at how adult he sounds—more solid, somehow, than the people around her. It had been a shock, this grown-up Matthew; when she’d seen him under the chuppah, holding hands with Samira, she’d hardly recognized the man he’d become—as if somehow he’d leapfrogged her and now she was the younger sibling, looking up in resentment and awe.

  “Mom says you got malaria,” he says. “That sucks.”

  “I’ll live. How was your honeymoon?”

  Rome, he says, was “a nonstop party,” Venice a disappointment, “too much attitude for me.” Then the long, lazy ocean crossing that brought them back to New York. “Sami won like two grand at the roulette table. It practically covered our whole bar tab! Do they have casinos in Peru? Maybe we’ll come down there.”

  Leo eyes the Israelis, who’ve draped themselves over the lobby furniture and spread playing cards on the table. “I don’t think you’d like it here.”

  “Come on, Leo. I’m not Dad,” he says. Then, lowering his voice, “Seriously, though—what’s it like?”

  The question brings on an unexpected surge of loneliness. How long has it been since she and her brother shared secrets? For a moment she wants to tell him: about naked toddlers wandering amid trash heaps, mute beggars outside government buildings, water cannons and heartbroken old men. But these things would mean as little to Matt as stories about Atlantis: fantastical tales of creatures in another dimension, to be wondered at, even pitied, then forgotten.

  “This friend of mine,” she says, “he disappeared—”

  Just then the Israelis erupt into wild cheers, bottles and ashtrays toppling in the commotion. On the television, a soccer player sprints barechested across the field, waving his shirt over his head, mouth open in a bellicose howl.

  When they quiet down, Matt is saying goodbye. He has to get back to the city, to prepare for a Monday presentation. “Send me a postcard, Leo. And be careful, okay?”

  She hangs up, defeat welling in her throat. Three and a half months here. What has any of it meant? She imagines her parents and brother sitting down to brunch, talking about the same old things, moving in patterns established a lifetime ago. Does she even exist in that world anymore? Or has she become one of those strange creatures—a story to be told, even marveled at, but not believed?

  “¿Todo bien?” Ricky says.

  She forces her mouth into a mirthless smile. “No comprendo,” she says.

  * * *

  —

  But is it enough? Is any of this enough?

  A few photographs, some demonstrations, suggestions in the Leo File—but how does she get from there to the house in Pueblo Libre, from Pueblo Libre to a prison 14,000 feet above the sea? Chaski, her family, even Ernesto, even the death of a friend—such things don’t lead to the Cuarta Filosofía any more surely than a butterfly leads to a car bomb. Why did she cross the line?

  At her civilian retrial, in 2002, Manrique “Ricky” Díaz Poma described Leonora as friendly, if solitary and high-strung. He remembered her dowdy glasses and how she carried herself: hunched slightly forward, as though to investigate a faint sound. He testified that he hadn’t seen anything strange about her work in Los Arenales. What made him suspicious was her decision to live on the roof.

  “This was where we sometimes allowed the cleaning woman to sleep,” he said. “Why would a gringa from a good family choose to live there?”

  I’ve seen the ledger, Ricky’s giant leather journal, traced my fingernail back through months and years until I found her scrawled signature. I was lucky—the Macondo was to be demolished the very next week, to make way for a new Zara. The current dueña regarded me with irritation, as if I were a cross between a building inspector and a mouse. But standing at that high desk, in that dusty old foyer, I felt briefly like a real reporter, doing what I was supposed to do, finding something that could pass for the truth.

  Gracias, amigo lindo, she wrote when she checked out. ¡Venceremos!

  Kilroy was here.

  So what?

  * * *

  —

  That night she sits up late, sewing buttons on a torn shirt with quick stabs of the needle, folding laundry, sweeping her room with swift, vicious strokes. There are no more sudden tears, only a profound disorientation that intensifies when she looks across the roof at the glimmering city. The radio plays old pop songs, interrupted by flashes of news. Every so often the announcer repeats the three names—Juan Vargas Quispe, 23 años; Nalda Calderón Flores, 23 años; Ernesto Paucar Rojas, 19 años—already just words, faceless entries in the record. History.

  But he was her friend. Leo remembers the chaste way they would kiss in greeting, how his thigh pressed against hers on the bus. What is the relationship between that person and a corpse? How can a name on the radio replace an entire life?

  And what about her life? What does it amount to? For as long as she can remember she’s wanted to justify it, to be worthy of it, to do something for someone. For a month or two she thought she’d found a way. But she was not living in the same world as Ernesto, or the old women in the plaza. She’d never really found the way in.

  “Be patient,” says a woman’s voice. “Take a deep breath, and the truth will come out.” Leo glares at the radio, considers hurling it off the roof, but Ricky would probably charge her for it. “There is a vast right-wing conspiracy. I’m very concerned about the tactics that are being used, the intense political agenda at work.”

  Nothing, that’s what it amounts to. Her blistered hands and bleeding heart have changed nothing—just as the old women changed nothing, just as Nancy’s years of work for her neighbors, putting her body between them and the abyss, couldn’t even save her son’s life.

  But what was the alternative? Ski masks and Molotov cocktails? Crushing someone else to save yourself? She can understand the impulse, intellectually she can see why, in time, you might come to feel you had no choice. At least the masked woman in Los Muertos had stood up for herself.
At least she’d extracted a price. But kill or be killed was not a choice, it was an obscenity, a degradation of Leo’s every idea about justice, about humanity. Was there no third option? No better way?

  She finishes straightening the room, packs her books, leaves tomorrow’s clothes folded on the chair. She’ll go wherever the first bus goes. Her desires, her conscience—these things are worthless, the worst kind of gringo narcissism. She’ll keep moving, find someone who will put her to work. What other option is there? Just because there’s nothing she can do doesn’t give her the right to do nothing.

  Sometime later, she wakes without knowing why. She lies still and listens: a door closing, footsteps on the stairs, whispers across the roof. Probably drunken backpackers, the Swedes smoking one last joint before their trek. Soon there’s a small crowd outside her door. When she pulls on a shirt and flips the light switch, the light doesn’t come.

  Outside, a dozen people are gathered at the edge of the roof, faces pale against a section of the city gone dark. The sky glows damp mauve, sagging like a satin udder. The church’s dark belltowers stand watch over a sea of black that stretches east into the foothills, north to the river and beyond: the anti-city, an absence stamped out of the glittering pattern.

  “Fucking Peruvians,” one of the Swedes says. “This better not affect my flight.”

  “I think the hamster running on his little wheel died,” someone else says.

  Leo spots Ricky and his wife and moves through the congregation of shadows, standing with them at the low wall that looks onto the churchyard.