Corner of the Dead

Chapter 9

[ 53 ] C H A P T E R 9 T H E F I R S T Catholic church in this country is at the entrance to the next town over. Its ceiling is made of reeds from the river. A mural on the inside wall tells the story of the conquest . Inside it I am safe even though the door is open to the wind. Behind a pane of glass are dried flowers from long ago and many small caskets stacked on top of each other. An evangelical minister and his community are building a new church here, three times the size of the old one, with stained glass windows and a steeple that reaches into the sky. Karl and I had spoken with Enrique about reconfiguring the flow of the river for irrigating the land so the Indians in our village might not be so poor. I want the minister to help. He might, for in the helping he will see an opportunity to gather more souls. He is from one of the Dakotas, the one with the faces of men carved into the mountains. He has come with the hope of scratching his face into the Andes just that way. I am drinking coffee the minister’s wife has prepared, hoping maybe they can protect me. I do not think this because they are white, or because they present themselves as being connected to God. It is that I am afraid. [ 54 ] Last night the pigs squealed and I was terrified it was the noise of the few dogs that survived. In the kitchen I am gripped with a new fear. It might be dangerous for me to be here. The evangelicals have mobilized the Indians against Sendero. If I’m not already marked, this visit could be decisive. I’m sweating now, wishing I’d gone with Karl. I hear him telling me not to worry, that after all the worry, what it comes down to is this thing called fate. This preacher whose name I don’t know has a wife who looks like him. She keeps pouring coffee and I keep drinking. This is what it is like back home, always enough, always too much. Would he have left her for two nights, especially when in those two nights so much was hanging in the balance? Their house seems like a house back home. I excuse myself to use the bathroom. In addition to the toilet, bath and sink, it has its own heater. I turn the faucets on and off. They do not leak or gush or drizzle but provide a steady and directed stream. I can not resist sitting on the toilet seat, not because I have to go, not even after all the coffee, just to sit. When I get up I rummage through their cabinets and steal a box of Tampax—even though I don’t use Tampax and do not want to need Tampax. I am afraid to bleed. Their god must see this stealing going on—their god is not Sendero’s god or the god of my village—so this act will go unpunished. No harm will come from this theft of a thing I don’t even like to use, that I don’t think I will ever use, not even here where I am accustomed to making do. When I was younger and wanted to be older I imitated my grandmother by taking the paper inserts from the Tampax and taping them together to make one long cigarette. I practiced being an adult and in my grandmother’s gold Plymouth, which had a plastic sunflower wrapped around the antennae and windows that rolled up and down, I allowed myself to imagine [ 55 ] I was in control. That I was able to drive away. I’m sure the preacher man and his wife have a pickup truck with power windows and even a radio, too. Time to get out of the bathroom. I’m sure by now my coffee is cold, too cold to finish but I don’t believe in waste, not in these parts. I am thinking Karl should be making his way down the mountain now. I don’t want to go home until he’s there or Blanca is going to have to sleep with me again. I don’t know how to say in Quechua, you...