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  “They didn't leave us much to work with, huh?” Posadas smiled.

  Chacaltana thought again about going to see his mother. He tried to recover his concentration. He wiped away perspiration. It was not the same perspiration as before. It was cold.

  “Why is it kept in obstetrics?”

  “Lack of space. Besides, it doesn't matter. The morgue doesn't have a refrigerator anymore. It broke down in the blackouts.”

  “The blackouts ended years ago.”

  “Not in our morgue.”

  Posadas went back to the papers on his desk. Chacaltana walked around the table, trying to look elsewhere. The burning was irregular. Although the face still had certain characteristics of a face, the two legs had become a single dark extension. Toward the top of the remaining side were some twisted protuberances, like branches of a fossilized bush. Chacaltana felt a wave of nausea but tried to disguise something so unprofessional. Posadas stared at him with slanted, suspicious little eyes, like the eyes of a rat.

  “Are you going to carry out the investigation? What about the military cops?”

  “The gentlemen of the armed forces,” the prosecutor corrected, “have no reason to intervene. This case does not fall under military jurisdiction.”

  Posadas seemed surprised to hear it. He said dryly:

  “All cases fall under military jurisdiction.”

  There was something challenging in Posadas's tone. Chacaltana attempted to assert his authority.

  “We still need to verify the facts in the case. Technically, this may even turn out to be an accident …”

  “An accident?”

  He gave a dry laugh that made him cough and looked at the corpse as if to share the joke with him. He tossed the chocolate wrapper on the floor and took out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to the prosecutor, who refused with a gesture. The pathologist lit a cigarette, exhaled the smoke with another cough, and said in a serious tone:

  “A male apparently between forty and fifty years old. White—at least, whitish. Two days ago he was taller.”

  The Associate District Prosecutor felt obliged to display professional distance. He felt cold. Tremulously he said:

  “Any … clue as to the identity of the deceased?”

  “There are no physical marks or personal effects left. If he was carrying his national ID, it must be in there.”

  Chacaltana observed the body that seemed to dissolve as he looked at it. A black paste saturated his memory.

  “Why do you discount an accident?”

  Posadas seemed to be waiting for the question with indulgent pride, like a teacher with the dunce of the class. He left his desk, took up a position beside the table, and began to explain as he pointed at various parts of the body:

  “First, he was doused with kerosene and set on fire. There are remains of fuel all over the body …”

  “He might have perished in a fire. Someone was afraid to report it and hid the body. The campesinos tend to fear that the police …”

  “But that wasn't enough,” Posadas continued, apparently not hearing him. “He was burned even more.”

  He allowed the silence to heighten the dramatic effect of his words. His rat's eyes were waiting for Chacaltana's question:

  “What do you mean more?”

  “No one is left like this just because he's been set on fire, Señor Prosecutor. Tissues resist. Many people survive even total burns by fuel. Automobile accidents, forest fires … But this …”

  He inhaled smoke and exhaled it over the table, at the height of the black face. The man lying there seemed to be smoking. The light flickered. The doctor concluded:

  “I've never seen anybody so burned. I've never seen anything so burned.”

  He went back to his papers without covering the deceased. The report he was looking for was under a lamp. He handed it to the prosecutor. It had chocolate smears at one corner of the page. Chacaltana glanced at it rapidly and verified that it did not have three copies, but he thought he could make them himself, it would not be a serious breach. He waved good-bye. He wanted to get out of there quickly.

  “There's something else,” the pathologist stopped him. “Do you see this? These stubs like claws on the side? Those are fingers. They twist like that because of the heat. They're only on one side. In fact, if you observe carefully, the body looks unbalanced. At first glance it's difficult to see on a body in this condition, but the man was missing an arm.”

  “A one-armed man.”

  Chacaltana put the paper in his briefcase and closed it.

  “No. He wasn't one-armed. At least not until Tuesday. There are traces of blood around the shoulder.”

  “He was injured, perhaps?”

  “Señor Prosecutor, his right arm was removed. They tore it out by the roots or cut it off with an ax, or maybe a saw. They went through bone and flesh from one side to the other. That isn't easy to do. It's as if a dragon attacked him.”

  It was true. The part corresponding to the shoulder seemed sunken, as if there were no longer an articulation there, as if there were no longer anything to articulate. Chacaltana asked himself how they could have done it. Then he preferred not to ask himself more questions. The light flickered again. The prosecutor broke the silence:

  “Well, I suppose all this is recorded in the report …”

  “Everything. Including the matter of the forehead. Have you seen his forehead?”

  Chacaltana tried to ask a question in order not to see the forehead. He tried to think of a subject. The physician did not take his eyes off him. Finally, he lied:

  “Yes.”

  “His head seems to have been farther away from the heat source, but not by accident. After burning him, the killer cut a cross on his forehead with a very large knife, perhaps a butcher's knife.”

  “Very interesting …”

  Chacaltana felt dizzy. He thought it was time to leave. He wanted to say good-bye with a professional, dignified gesture:

  “One last question, Dr. Posadas. Where could a body be burned so severely? In a baker's oven … in a gas explosion?”

  Posadas tossed his cigarette on the floor. He stepped on it and covered the body. Then he took out another chocolate. He bit into it before he replied:

  “In hell, Señor Prosecutor.”

  sometimes i talk to them. allways.

  they remember me. and i remember them because i was won of them.

  i still am.

  but now they talk moor. they look for me. they ask me for things. they lick my ears with their hot tungues. they want to touch me. they hurt me.

  its a signal.

  its the moment. yes. its coming.

  we will burn up time and the fire will make a new world.

  a new time for them.

  for us.

  for everybody.

  Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar left the hospital feeling out of sorts. He was pale. Terrorists, he thought. Only they were capable of something like this. They had come back. He did not know how to sound the alarm, or even if he should. He wiped away perspiration with the handkerchief his mother had given him. The dead man. His mother. He could not go to see her in this state. He had to calm down.

  He walked aimlessly. In an automatic reaction, he returned to the Plaza de Armas. The image of the burned body flickered in his mind. He had to sit down and drink something. Yes. That would be the best thing. He walked toward his usual restaurant, El Huamanguino, to have a mate. He went in. In one corner, a television set was playing a black-and-white pirated copy of Titanic. A girl about twenty was behind the counter. He did not even see her. She was pretty. He sat down.

  “What'll you have?”

  “Where is Luis?”

  She seemed offended by the question.

  “Luis doesn't work here anymore. Now I'm here. But I'm not so terrible.”

  The prosecutor understood he had made a faux pas. He tried to apologize, but just then not many words were coming out of h
is mouth.

  “A mate, please,” was all he could manage.

  She laughed. Her small white smile was timid.

  “It's lunchtime,” she said. “The tables are for having lunch. You have to eat something.”

  The prosecutor looked at the four other tables. The place was empty. He missed Luis.

  “Then bring me a … an …”

  “The trout's very good.”

  “Trout. And a mate, please.”

  The girl went into the kitchen. Her clothes were not flashy. She seemed simple in her jeans and Lobo sneakers, her hair pulled back in a braid. The prosecutor thought that perhaps, after all, the deceased was a case for the military courts. He did not want to interfere in the antiterrorist struggle. The military had organized it. They knew it best. He looked at his watch. He should not delay too long. His mother was waiting for him. It took the girl fifteen minutes to come out with a fried trout and two potato halves on a plate. In the other hand she carried the cup of mate. She served everything amiably, almost delicately. The prosecutor looked at the trout. Blackened, it seemed to observe him from the plate. He separated it down the middle. One of the sides seemed like a spreading wing, an arm. He let it go. He tried to drink a little mate. With his spoon he moved aside the coca leaves on the surface and raised the steaming cup to his lips. It burned him. He quickly put the cup down on the table. Suddenly, he was very hot. Behind him he heard a sweet laugh.

  “You have to be patient,” the girl behind the counter said.

  Patient.

  “Everything is slower here, it's not like Lima,” she went on.

  “I'm not from Lima. I'm Ayacuchan.”

  She lowered her eyes and smiled again.

  “If you say so …” she said.

  “Don't you believe me?”

  Her only answer was to restrain a little laugh. She did not look him in the eye. He saw her for the first time. She was slim and very refined in her embroidered blouse.

  “Are you familiar with Lima?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “But it must be nice,” she added. “Big.”

  The Associate District Prosecutor thought about Avenida Abancay, its buses vomiting smoke, its pickpockets. He thought about the houses without water in El Agustino, about the ocean, about the zoo, the Parque de las Leyendas and its consumptive elephant, about the bare gray hills, about a game he had seen between the Boys and the U. About a door closing.

  About an empty pillow.

  “It is big,” he replied.

  “I'd like to go there,” she said. “I want to study nursing.”

  “You would be a very good nurse.”

  She laughed. So did he. Suddenly, he felt relieved. He looked at the trout again, which had not stopped looking at him.

  “Didn't you like it?” she asked.

  “It's not that. It's just that … I have to go. How much is it?”

  “I can't charge you. You didn't eat anything.”

  “But you worked.”

  “Come back when you're hungry. The food is nice.”

  He said good-bye to her with a smile that was also nice. He observed that it had been a long time since he had spoken to a stranger. In Ayacucho, the residents did not talk to one another, and they charged for everything. They were suspicious. On the other hand, the girl's pleasantness had made him notice how lonely he felt in this city where he had no friends even though he had been back for a year. People his own age whom he remembered from childhood had left or had died during the eighties, when they were in their twenties, a good age for the first and perhaps the worst time for the second. He walked up the street toward his house. He realized he was almost running. His house was old but in good condition, it was the same one he had lived in when he was a boy, and had been rebuilt after the disaster. He went in and hurried to the bedroom in the rear. He opened the door.

  “Mamacita?”

  Félix Chacaltana Saldívar walked to the chest of drawers where his mother kept her clothes and costume jewelry. He took out a skirt and blouse and laid them on the bed. It was a beautiful bed, small, with a canopy of carved wood.

  “I should have come in this morning. I'm sorry. It's just that there was a homicide, Mamacita, I had to run to work.”

  He brought the broom from the kitchen and quickly swept out the room. Then he sat on the bed, looking at the door.

  “Do you remember Señora Eufrasia? She used to drink mate with you? She's sick, Mamacita. I sent her a Virgin so she'd get better. You pray too. I only pray a little.”

  He felt sheltered in an old, warm mist. He caressed the cloth of the sheets.

  “And pray for the man who died today, too. I will. That way the fear goes … I think the terrorists are coming back, Mamacita. It isn't certain, I don't want you to worry, but this is very strange.”

  He stood and passed his hand along the clothing he had laid on the sheets. He smelled it. It had the scent of his mother, a scent kept for many years. He opened the window to air out the room. The afternoon sun shone directly on his mother's bed.

  “I have to go now. I only … I only needed to come here for a while. I hope that doesn't annoy you … It doesn't annoy you, does it?”

  He crossed himself and opened the door to go back to his office. He gave a last look inside. It hurt him to verify once again, as he had every day for the past year, that there was no one in the room.

  As he returned to the office he felt calmer, unburdened. His mother's room relaxed him. He spent hours there. Occasionally, often at night, he would recall some new detail, a photograph, an altarpiece that had decorated his mamacita's room in his childhood. He would hurry to look for it in the market and order it if there was no copy exactly like the one in his memory. Little by little, the room had become a three-dimensional portrait of his nostalgia.

  When he reached his desk, he found an envelope containing an invitation to the institutional parade on Sunday. He made a note of it in his date book, wrote an account of the complaint for the police, and made copies of the forensic report for each envelope. The chocolate smudges were well hidden on the photocopies. They looked like ink. Then he wrote a request for information to the Ministry of Energy and Mines asking what source could have produced sufficient heat to burn the body. And another request to the municipality of Quinua asking that they send him copies in quadruplicate of missing persons reports dated subsequent to January 1 of the current year.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon taking care of other pending matters, such as the complaint of a citizen against his neighbor, whom he accused in his statement of being a faggot. The prosecutor composed a reply to the report stating that homosexuality in any of its variants does not constitute a misdemeanor, infraction, or serious crime since it is not duly specified as such in the penal code. However, he added, if the individual engaged in relations with a human or judicial person without verifying that it was a concomitant voluntary act by the aforesaid person, he might commit a crime against honor as specified under the classification of violation.

  He asked himself how to sanction the violation of one man by another. He realized he could not marry them because there was no relevant procedure to do so. Perhaps the situation deserved another brief.

  The institutional parade at Lent had been established by decree in 1994 at the request of the archbishop. It began with the several branches of the armed forces passing before the dais in the Plaza de Armas and saluting the competent authorities of the state, the Church, and the military high command. After the hussars and the rangers, and always to the music of the National Police Band, various schools and institutions paraded past while an official introduced them over the loudspeakers:

  “The María Parado de Bellido School: established by ministerial resolution 000578904 and governed by municipal statute 887654333, for two years this school has been training young Ayacuchan seamstresses and serving the interests of national handicrafts. The Daniel Alcides Carrión Institute: created by ministerial resol
ution …”

  Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar liked parades, the sonorous passing by of national symbols. The uniforms made him feel secure and proud, the young students allowed him to trust in the future, the cassocks guaranteed respect for traditions. He enjoyed hearing the National Anthem and the March of the Flag under the brilliance of trumpets and military braid. He sat proudly in the officials' box, dressed in his best black suit, his good tie, and a handkerchief in his pocket. The year before, after his arrival, he had participated by reciting a poem by José Santos Chocano, and the crowd had applauded loudly the seriousness of his recitation and the solemnity of his diction.

  He did not like as much what came afterward, when the parade ended and the functionaries gathered for a fraternal celebration in the municipal ballroom. The year before, he had been invited to the celebration because of his poem. This year, perhaps it was a mistake. Although he felt proud to be considered one of the high-ranking officials, he never really knew what to say on those occasions. The competent authorities circulated around him, holding glasses of rosé, without ever stopping beside him. Many of the mid-and low-ranking functionaries spoke to him for a while but looked elsewhere, searching for someone more important with whom to converse. It was easier to communicate with them in writing.

  As the celebration progressed and the alcohol made the rounds, the subject became limited to enumerating the women each man desired and the details of a hypothetical sexual encounter. For the moment, Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar did not want to desire any woman. He tended to respond to these catalogues by nodding and wondering when he could say something, a word at least, trying to think of some woman who had attracted his attention. As a consequence, he normally preferred not to be present, to stay home tending to his mother's room or reading to himself the poems of José Santos Chocano. He liked small places, where no one heard his voice. But now he had a reason to go. He had to speak to Captain Pacheco, who had not yet responded to his inquiries. A case as important as this one ought to move to the highest levels as quickly as possible.