Mario Llosa: Who Killed Palomino Molero?

‘Something bothering you, Doña Adriana?” Now Lituma was serious.

“Bothering me? No. But something’s got me worried Lituma. Matías won’t go to the clinic. He’s so stubborn and I can’t convince him.”

She paused and sighed. She said that for at least a month her husband had been hoarse and when he coughed hard he brought up blood. She bought him some medicine at the pharmacy and almost had to force it down his throat, but it hadn’t helped. It might be something serious you couldn’t cure with drugstore medicine. He might need X-rays or an operation. He wouldn’t even hear of going to the clinic; he always said it would go away by itself, that only fairies went to the doctor for a cough. But he couldn’t fool her: he felt worse than he let on, because every night it got harder for him to go out fishing. He forbade her to mention the spit-up blood to their sons. But she was going to tell them anyway on Sunday when they usually visited. Maybe they could drag him to a doctor.

“You really love Don Matías, don’t you, Doña Adriana?”

“We’ve been together for almost twenty-five years. It seems incredible how fast the years go by. Matías caught me when I was just a girl, about fifteen years old. I was afraid of him because he was so much older. But he kept after me for so long that he finally wore down my resistance. My folks didn’t want me to marry him. People said he was so much older that the marriage couldn’t last. But they were wrong, see? It’s lasted, and through it all we’ve gotten along pretty well together. Why did you ask me if I love him?”

“Because now I’m a little ashamed to tell you what I was doing here.”

The foot digging in the sand stiffened a few inches away from where Lituma was hunched down. “Stop being mysterious, Lituma. Or is this a guessing game?”

“Lieutenant Silva sent me down to see if Don Matías has gone out to sea,” he whispered in a malicious tone. He waited, and since she asked no more questions, he added: “Because he went to pay you a visit, Doña Adriana, and he didn’t want your husband to catch him. He must be knocking on your door right now.”

There was a silence. Lituma heard the nearby waves lapping on the shore. After a moment, he heard her laughing, slowly and mockingly, holding it in, as if she didn’t want him to hear. He started to laugh all over again. And they both laughed out loud.

“It’s not right for us to be laughing at the lieutenant’s passion this way, Doña Adriana.”

“He must still be there, knocking at the door and scratching at the window, begging and begging for me to let him in. Promising me the moon and the stars if I let him in. Ha-ha-ha! Talking to the man in the moon! Ha-ha-ha!”

They laughed some more, and when they fell silent, Lituma saw that Doña Adriana’s foot had again begun to dig methodically and obstinately in the sand. In the distance, the refinery whistle blew, announcing a new shift. He could also hear the sounds of trucks out on the highway.

‘The truth is, the lieutenant’s crazy about you. If you ever heard him. He doesn’t talk about anything else. He doesn’t even look at other women. For him, you’re the Queen of Talara.”

He heard Doña Adriana give a pleased little laugh. “He’s got a dozen hands, that guy, and someday he’ll get slapped for getting fresh with me. Crazy about me? It’s just a game Lituma. He’s got it in his head that he’s got to conquer me and since I won’t give in, he won’t give up. Do you think I can believe that a boy like him is in love with a woman who’s old enough to be his mother? I’m not a fool, Lituma. Some fun, that’s all he wants. If I did it just once, you’d never hear another word about love.”

“And are you going to do it-just once-Doña Adriana?”

“Not a chance in the world.” Her voice was angry, but Lituma could see she was faking. “I’m not one of those women. I have a family, Lituma. No man but my husband touches me.”

“Well, the lieutenant’s going to die then, Doña Adriana. Because I swear I’ve never seen a man as much in love with anyone as he’s in love with you. He even talks to you in his sleep, imagine that.”

“And what does he say to me in his sleep?”

“I can’t tell you that; it’s dirty.”

When she finished giggling, she stood up with her arms still crossed and walked off. She went toward the restaurant followed by Lituma.

“I’m glad we ran into each other. You made me laugh and forget my worries.”

“I’m happy, too, Doña Adriana. Our talk made me forget the dead kid. He’s been on my mind ever since I saw him up in the pasture. Sometimes I even get nightmares. I hope tonight I won’t.”

He said goodbye to Doña Adriana at the door of her restaurant and walked to the station. He and the lieutenant slept there, Silva in a large room next to the office and Lituma in a sort of shed near the cells. As he walked through the deserted streets, he imagined the lieutenant scratching at the restaurant windows and whispering words of love to the empty air.

At the station, he found a piece of paper stuck on the door handle so someone would see it. He carefully took it down, went inside, and turned on the light. The note had been written in blue ink by an educated person with good handwriting:

Palomino Molero’s killers kidnapped him from Doña Lupe’s house in Amotape. She knows what happened. Ask her.

The station regularly received anonymous notes, usually about unfaithful wives or husbands or about smugglers. This was the first about the death of Palomino Molero.

“Amotape, what kind of a name is that?” asked Lieutenant Silva sarcastically. “Can it be true that it comes from that story about the priest and his maid? What do you think, Doña Lupe?”

Amotape is thirty miles south of Talara, surrounded by sun-parched rocks and scorching sand dunes. There are dry bushes, carob thickets, and here and there a eucalyptus tree-pale green patches that brighten the otherwise monotonous gray of the arid landscape. The trees bend over, stretch out and twist around to absorb whatever moisture might be in the air; in the distance they look like dancing witches. In their benevolent shade, herds of squalid goats are always nibbling the crunchy pods that fall off their branches; there are also some sleepy mules and a shepherd, usually a small boy or girl, sunburnt, with bright eyes.

“Do you think that old story about Amotape with the priest and his maid is the truth, Doña Lupe?”

The hamlet is a confusion of adobe huts and little corrals made from wooden stakes. It has a few aristocratic houses clustered around an old plaza with a wooden gazebo. There are almond trees, bougainvilleas, and a stone monument to Simón Rodriguez, Simón Bolivar’s teacher, who died in this solitary place. The citizens of Amotape, poor, dusty folks, live off their goats, their cotton fields, and the truck and bus drivers who detour between Talara and Sullana in order to drink some chicha , the local corn beer, or have a snack.

The name of the town, according to local legend, comes from colonial times, when Amotape, a rich town then, had a greedy parish priest who hated to feed visitors. His maid abetted him in this by warning him whenever she saw a traveler approaching. She would call out, “Amo, tape, tape la olla, que viene gente” (Master, cover, cover the pot, people are coming). Could it be true?

“Who knows,” murmured the woman at last. “Maybe yes, maybe no. God only knows.”

She was very thin with olive-colored parchment-like skin that sagged and hung from her cheekbones and upper arms. From the moment she saw them coming, she had a look of distrust on her face. “More distrust than people usually have on their faces when they spot us,” thought Lituma. She studied them with deep-sunk, frightened eyes, and occasionally rubbed her arms as if she’d felt a chill. When her eyes met theirs, she tried to smile, but it was so false it made her look like a cheap whore. “You’re scared shitless, lady,” thought Lituma. “You know something.” She’d looked at them like that as she served them fried and salted banana chips and stewed kid with rice. And she went on looking at them like that every time the lieutenant asked her to refill their gourds with chicha .