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By Root 457 0

—and we walked back through town, on a futile search for poultry. An entire fleet of taxis extended down the main street, but the dispatching system allowed the first driver in line to wait as long as he wished for a promising fare. Taking us back to Huancacalle didn’t qualify. No other driver was allowed to jump the line. Justo and I bought a bag of popcorn and some chicha morada (the nonalcoholic purple version of the corn drink) and sat on a bench for forty-five minutes, watching the dozen or so drivers smoke and pick their noses as they waited for some big spender to show up and ask for a ride to Mexico City. Finally, we walked back. It had taken me four hours to buy a tube of bug cream. I was beginning to sympathize a bit with Bingham.

Back in town, I stopped by the empty general store and tried my call again. To my surprise, Nati answered. “Hola, señor explorador!” she said. “Have you seen any of my cousins?”

“You have cousins around here?”

“No, my cousins the Incas!” She laughed and handed the phone to Aurita.

“Hi, honey, where are you? We got your message that you were in a place called Huancacalle, but it doesn’t show up on Google Maps.”

“That doesn’t really surprise me,” I said, looking over my shoulder out the doorway. Every word I spoke was echoed back to me on a twosecond delay, as if I were shouting into the bottom of a well. “We’re sort of in the middle of nowhere. How’s everything there?”

“Let’s see. Of course everybody misses you. Alex took third place at his cross-country meet. Lucas and Magnus are fighting over the medal. Yesterday a cat came into the clinic with a tumor the size of a tennis ball.”

I was just warming up to the sounds of normal familial contentment—rarely has a description of one’s stack of waiting mail sounded so inviting—when I noticed a digital timer on the phone, very rapidly counting down the few seconds I had left on my prepaid phone card. “Um, I’m sorry, baby, but we’re about to get cut off. I love you and . . .” Click. I walked downhill through the deserted town.

I used to think that the musicians who play Andean pan-flute music in subways around the globe—those guys are probably Peru’s thirdlargest export, after precious metals and Machu Picchu souvenirs—were just annoying. Bingham would have agreed; he described llama herders playing “weird, monotonous airs” of “simple strains . . . varied with high, screechy notes.” But as I walked back through Huancacalle after my abbreviated phone call, it occurred to me that living in the chilly shadow of the Andes, you probably acclimate to melancholy just like you do to the altitude. It’s no wonder pan-flute virtuosos can make a rendition of “Walking on Sunshine” (which I later heard at the Cusco airport) sound like a funeral dirge. The Andes are a lonely place.

Juvenal had invited everyone over to his home for lunch. The house was a carbon copy of Valentin’s: two rooms, mud brick, thatch roof. This was evidently a semiformal occasion, for Mateo had not only removed his wool hat but combed his hair and put on a clean soccer jersey. John was wearing his nicest baseball cap. Rosa, Mateo and the Señora Cobos ate next to the fire in the cooking area. I sat at the table in the other room with John, Juvenal and Justo. The menu was roast chicken with seven or eight varieties of potato, offered in a palette of colors straight out of the J.Crew fall catalog, from ecru and rust to cinnamon and grape. We ate with our hands. The chicken was lean and gamy—even the breast meat tasted like a cross between duck and the drumsticks I knew at home. I asked Justo where he’d found it. His mouth full, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder out the open door toward the garden, where a small flock of poultry was pecking the ground.

“Juvenal found this one out there an hour ago. He’s quieter in here.” He patted his flat belly.

After the meal, we drank an herbal infusion made from greens picked in the Cobos’s garden, which magically dissolved the lump of meat and potatoes in my gullet. Juvenal, who was usually too busy performing his twin roles as jefe and