Pacazo Read Free Page A

his catalog of uncertainties. We have only part of a license plate. The taxi was a private car, like most taxis here, and there are thousands of possible matches throughout the country. No way to know where or even if it is registered. The plate could have been false or stolen, the car itself stolen. These cars are constantly resold. There are thousands of dark-skinned black-haired brown-eyed men in this city alone. My poor eyes do not always see the differences.
    I walk back into the house, am washing my hands when the doorbell rings. My skin comes alive with sweat. Silence. Then a voice calls hello. Reynaldo, only Reynaldo.
    He sits and watches as I help Mariángel with mashed yams. He looks in my eyes, and he knows. He asks anyway.
    - What happened?
    - I killed him.
    - The taxi driver?
    - I think so.
    - You’re not sure?
    - It is hard to be sure. I think so.
    - Did anyone see you?
    - I don’t know.
    - I have friends in Bolivia.
    - What would I do there?
    - From there you could fly back to California.
    - And there? What would I do?
    - I don’t understand. If it was him, you are free.
    - And if it wasn’t?
    Reynaldo nods.
    - And so?
    - If no one comes, I’ll see you at work tomorrow.
    - Would you like me to stay with you?
    - No. Thank you, but no.
    - All right, Reynaldo says. Until tomorrow.
    - Until tomorrow.
    He leaves, and is back twenty minutes later with the painting of the Sacred Heart from his aunt’s house. He hangs it on an empty nail and plugs the red light into a socket.
    - This may help, he says.
    I don’t answer. He shrugs, turns to go, turns back.
    - Come by the laboratory tomorrow. I’ve planted a new tree beside the walkway. A lucuma, from the Tarma Valley in Junín.
    I say that I will, watch as he walks out the door, and Milton is staring at me. I know what has happened. Some shudder or wince and Milton saw it, knows he was not meant to, is afraid. Once I twitched so hard as I broke the man’s neck that I pulled a muscle, and the whole class noticed, and the students discussed it for days.
    I walk to Milton’s desk. He has misunderstood the assignment, has written about his mother. I praise his paragraph structure, explain the difference between moreover and however, have imagined the encounter in many ways — many places, many weapons, many angles of light. It is only recently that the fantasies have curled in on themselves in this way. Reynaldo has begun hinting that perhaps it is time to give up. An odd phrase, to give, and up. My wife has been dead for three hundred days. The police have ended their search, and I am emptying, yes, but I fight it and do not always fail.
     
     

2.
    OUT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY GATE, and the smells of jasmine and offal are settling over the city. The sky catches soft fire in the west and my thesis advisor looks up as I walk into his office. He swivels in his chair, leans back, says that he’s just had a call from Dr. Williamson. I say nothing. He asks me if he’s heard right, if I truly intend to switch topics and frameworks yet again. I nod. So! he says. All hail the new Todorov! Incas instead of Aztecs, Pizarro instead of Cortés…
    I say nothing, and he nods. Then again, he says, given that the old Todorov is still alive and writing, I guess technically speaking we don’t need a new one just yet. Plus he had the codices to work with. You’ve got knotted string.
    Again I say nothing. He has been generous with his time and hypotheses, particularly after I embraced his hermeneutics, and with luck at some point his anger will become frustration and then detachment. He chews his lower lip. Right, he says. Okay, he says, look: you’ve only been working the yanacona subaltern line for a few months, and naturally—
    They cannot be considered subalterns, I say. He guffaws and says, What the hell kind of skeptic are you? Anything can be considered anything! And if you really are going to abandon the yanaconas, well and good, but why not return to the Chachapoya?