Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [40]
He finally went to hand in his report to the lieutenant, who opened red, puffy eyes. “Another damned shift that’s just about over,” he said, his mouth as dry as dust. “One day less to serve in the corps, Lituma.”
And one day less to live, too, the sergeant thought. He clicked his heels together smartly and left. It was six in the morning and he was free. As usual, he went to the market to Doña Gualberta’s to have a bowl of steaming-hot soup, meat pies, beans with rice, and a custard, and then to the little room where he lived, in the Calle Colón. He had trouble getting to sleep, and the minute he finally did, he began dreaming about the black man. He saw him surrounded by red, green, and blue lions and snakes, in the heart of Abyssinia, with a top hat, boots, and an animal tamer’s whip. The wild beasts did tricks to the rhythm of his cracking whip, and a crowd sitting amid the jungle vines, the tree trunks, and the thick foliage enlivened by the songs of birds and the screams of monkeys applauded him madly. But instead of bowing to the audience, the black got down on his knees, stretched out his hands in a gesture of supplication, tears welled up in his eyes, and his big thick-lipped mouth opened and from it there came pouring out, in an anguished, tumultuous rush, his gibberish, his absurd music.
Lituma woke up around three in the afternoon, in a bad humor and very tired, despite having slept seven hours. They must have taken him to Lima by now, he thought. As he washed his face like a cat and got dressed, he followed the black’s trajectory in his mind’s eye: the nine o’clock patrol car would have come to pick him up, they’d have given him a rag to cover himself with, they’d have taken him to the prefecture and opened a file on him, they’d have put him in the cell for prisoners awaiting trial, and there he’d be this minute, in that dark hole, among bums, sneak thieves, muggers, and troublemakers picked up in the last twenty-four hours, shivering from the cold and dying of hunger, scratching his lice.
It was a gray, humid day; people were moving about in the fog like fish in dirty water, and Lituma walked, slowly and pensively, over to Doña Gualberta’s to eat lunch: two rolls with cream cheese and a coffee.
“You’re in a strange mood today, Lituma,” Doña Gualberta, a little old woman who knew a thing or two about life, said. “Money troubles or love troubles?”
“I’m thinking about a darky I found last night,” the sergeant said, testing his coffee with the tip of his tongue. “He’d broken into a warehouse down at the harbor terminal.”
“And what’s so strange about that?” Doña Gualberta asked.
“He was stark-naked, full of scars, with a head of hair as matted as a jungle, and doesn’t know how to talk,” Lituma explained. “Where can a character like that be from anyway?”
“From Hell.” The old woman laughed as he paid the bill.
Lituma walked down to the Plaza Grau to meet Pedralbes, a petty officer in the navy. They’d known each other for years, ever since the days when the sergeant was just a private in the Guardia Civil and Pedralbes an able-bodied seaman and both of them were stationed in Pisco. After that, their respective careers had separated them for almost ten years, and then, in the last two years, brought them back together again. They were in the habit of spending their days off-duty together, and Lituma felt like one of the family at the Pedralbes house. They went off today to La Punta, to the club for seamen and petty officers, to have a beer and play toad-in-the-hole. The sergeant told him straightway the story of the black, and Pedralbes immediately came up with an explanation. “He’s a savage from Africa who got here as a stowaway on a boat. He hid aboard all during the crossing and when the ship docked at El Callao he slipped into the water in the