But there were some very strange details in the latest deaths. Things he ought to investigate, which did not fit with traditional Senderista methods. His function now was to investigate on his own, to put his head where nobody wanted to put it, not even himself. Perhaps it was a promotion after all. That is what those famous ambitions brought one to.
He returned the pistol to the holster and put it under his jacket, between his armpit and his waist. He made certain it could not be seen. It felt strange and heavy. He took it off again and locked it in his drawer with two turns of the key. Before he closed the drawer, he took out the report and put it in an envelope to take to Carrión personally. When he walked without the weapon, he was filled with a sensation of peace and normality. He left the office at night, when he could begin to hear the procession of the Virgin of Sorrows.
The Magdalena district was packed with Limenians in sports clothes holding beers and cameras in their hands. The younger Ayacuchan girls approached the tourists calling them “amigo, amigo” and smiling at them. The older ones, the ones who had grown up shut in their houses during the war, looked at those brazen girls disapprovingly, though many mothers harbored the hope that some Limenian or, better yet, an American, would fall in love with one of their daughters and take her away from Ayacucho. It became difficult for the prosecutor to move forward. He was trapped by people, by the stands selling drinks, the smell of punch, the din. His mind wandered with the movement of bodies. Each person he bumped into seemed like a blow in his memory.
When he thought he had found a way through the crowd, an even larger surge of people blocked his way. Beside him the platform carrying St. John emerged; it had just left the church. He let himself be carried along, exhausted. The lights of the city and the fireworks gave him the impression of an overpopulated sky filled with souls circulating together toward some destination. At times the explosion of a firecracker startled him, but the sound was muffled by the mass of people. The prosecutor advanced with the procession until the moment he found most interesting: the encounter of the Lord of Agony and the Virgin of Sorrows, which symbolized the suffering of Christ and his Mother. When the platforms began to approach each other, the Associate District Prosecutor felt spurred on by a presentiment. Filled with tension, he tried to get closer, in among the men carrying the platforms, until he felt himself held back by his shirt. Somebody had sewn his sleeve to the sleeve of someone else. It was part of the celebration. The prosecutor freed himself violently, to the surprise of the other man, who laughed. He felt dizzy, perhaps because of the smell of the platforms and the people. He felt a jab. Beside him, several women were jabbing one another with needles and laughing, “to help the Lord in his pain.” He managed to move closer to the platform of the Virgin, who now was shining almost above him, like a true apparition of light, like a mother who materializes before her son, the Lord of Agony, the son who is going to die in his final farewell to life. He reached the edges of the platform and at last could see her clearly. The Virgin's black dress, the candles on the platform that illuminated her from below, her immaculate face, and the seven daggers that pierced her chest, as they pierced the chest of Justino Mayta Carazo, the son of the mother who searched mass graves.
The prosecutor tried to kneel before the holy image, but the movement of the people was too dense. He tried to move away, avoiding the jabs like daggers waiting in ambush. With the seven stab wounds piercing his mind, he tried to move away from the center of the procession. He looked up when he calculated he was in front of Edith's restaurant. Shoving his way through the crowd, he reached the door. Edith looked at him from the counter. She smiled, showing her brilliant teeth. Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar got around the last human obstacles to reaching her, went into the restaurant, rushed to her and embraced her, very closely, surrounded by people who for the first time filled the restaurant. Some tourists applauded, others smiled, like the startled Edith herself, but he did not stop embracing her. He clung to that small body, that smell of the kitchen, with his eyes closed, as if it were the last time.
Saturday, April 15 / Wednesday, April 19
Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar welcomed in Saturday by dancing. He had not done that for a long time. Since he did not consider it appropriate to his state of mind, he tried to resist. But Edith insisted when she left work and took him to a concert of indigenous groups at a fairground.
In the middle of the field an enormous bonfire was shining, and around it hundreds of bodies were dancing, sometimes embracing, sometimes alone, moving to the rhythm of the folk music and drinking punch and beer. At first, the prosecutor refused to dance. Edith dragged him to the floor, but he felt rigid, incapable of moving a body that was good only for carrying out basic vital functions.
At a certain point, worn out by the crowd and the noise, he went to a food stand and asked for Ayacuchan chorizo and a glass of punch. The woman gave him a piece of fried spiced pork with hot ají peppers and vinegar. It was good. As he ate, he saw Edith, who had stayed with the group in the middle to dance. He wondered if what he was doing made sense. Edith was no more than twenty, she had been born at the same time as the war. And he felt old.
He drank a little punch. The taste of the milk and cinnamon with the effect of the pisco warmed his body. Now Edith was dancing close to the bonfire, her smile hidden at times by her hair. The prosecutor ordered another punch while the Gaitán Castro brothers came up on stage and people welcomed them with enthusiastic applause. Even in their happiest songs, what predominated was the Andean lament that their public loved. The prosecutor realized he was keeping time with his foot. He took a few steps forward.
Edith saw him approaching and gave him a smile. At times the mass of people hid her, because she was very short. Pushing his way through, and in a good humor after two glasses of punch, the prosecutor reached her side. He began moving his feet, trying to look like all the people around him. It was good to look like everyone else and disappear into the crowd, dissolve in it. Edith directed a smile at him and he did not know if it showed tenderness or mockery for how badly he danced. But he kept on. Now he had to move his arms, as if he were harvesting a crop, now his waist, and again his feet. It was difficult for him to do everything at the same time. As he made the attempt, Edith whirled around him, framed by the fire, moving her head and shoulders, laughing, with a laugh that to the prosecutor seemed as welcoming as a warm room in winter.
The next morning started out gray, but as noon approached, the sky began to clear. Prosecutor Chacaltana got up later than usual and hurried to greet his mother and open the windows in her room. He told her he had danced. He knew she was returning his smile from somewhere. Then he went out.
At the prefecture and at the market they were distributing yellow and green palms brought in from the province of La Mar in Ceja de Selva. The faithful walked through the city carrying their branch for Palm Sunday. At the Church of Pampa San Agustín they were preparing the procession of the Lord of the Vineyard, scheduled to go out that night, holding a cluster of grapes in his hand to guarantee fertility. The entire city was given over to the celebration.
The Associate District Prosecutor appeared at the Church of the Heart of Christ at approximately 11:35. In the priest's office, the stewards of the eight processions of the celebration were arguing with Father Quiroz because they wanted to modify their routes. Quiroz responded without restraining his indignation: