“Can I go out for a moment?”
The owner agreed with a look of annoyance, more to get rid of them than out of courtesy.
“Five minutes, that's all,” he warned as they were leaving.
They moved away from the crowd, walking with long strides toward the district of Carmen Alto. The prosecutor remembered having gone to the cathedral when he was little, on another Good Friday. He had heard a long lament and then the church, covered in purple mourning cloths, had darkened. One after another, the canons had gone up to the altar, dressed in black robes whose trains dragged as they walked forward. They carried immense black flags and waved them in the air, like wings of sinister birds. Without knowing why, it seemed to him that the ancient ceremony had something to do with all this. As soon as they reached a quieter street, the prosecutor looked for a place where they could talk calmly. He held Edith's arm tightly, perhaps as he had that morning. She shook him off:
“You're hurting me!”
“I'm hurting you?”
The prosecutor was furious. If he had been brutal that morning, now his fury seemed like something just and honorable.
“I don't want to talk to you,” she went on. “I don't want to see you again!”
She turned and began to go back to the center of town. Several people passed them. Some children were playing with a plastic ball. He caught hold of her again and pushed her against a wall.
“You knew Hernán Durango, Edith. You are the only person who could have talked to him about me, about my mother.”
She looked surprised. Then she started to weep without saying a word. The prosecutor grabbed her hair:
“You knew him!”
“So what?” she shouted. “Tell me! What difference does it make?”
“Why did you talk to him about me?”
“Why couldn't I? I didn't know you knew him until last night.”
“Don't lie to me!” He raised his hand but stopped it in midair and did not hit her. He did not understand why he wanted to hit her so much. “Why did you talk to him about me? Tell me the truth!”
She tried to break free but he pushed her back against the wall, this time more violently. When Edith looked up again, it was difficult to know if the gleam in her eyes was due to terror or hatred.
“Because I liked you!” she said in a faint voice. Then she began to cry again. The children, who had not moved, ran away. Several couples passed close to them, walking faster. No one approached. “I thought you were different …,” she continued. She sobbed and gasped for breath, like a small animal. “I thought you were a good man, not the wretch you are …”
The prosecutor let her go. His body became rigid. His voice hardened:
“I know dirty terrorists like you, Edith. I know your lies. You won't deceive me anymore.”
“Then let me alone.”
“Be quiet!” The shout came out louder than he intended, but it worked. She was quiet and trembling, like a chick in a raffle at a fair.
She began to swallow snot and saliva.
“Are you … are you accusing m …?”
“There are sufficient indications of your connections to Sendero. And your parents, obviously. The savages who brought you up. Look what they did with you.”
“You wash your mouth when you talk about my …”
He did not let her finish. He covered her mouth and pushed her head against the wall.
“The murderer I am looking for knew the victims. He could go in the parish house, and had the trust of Durango, and certainly of Justino as well. And he knew I had talked to them. As you did. But you did not act alone. Where is the rest of your cell? Talk!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You could never forgive him, could you? You waited fifteen years to take your revenge. You kept that hatred your whole life. What did you do? Did you deceive him into coming to Ayacucho? Or did you simply find out he had come and then could not control yourself? Durango helped you from prison?”
“What are you talking about? Who am I going to take revenge on?”
“Lieutenant Alfredo Cáceres Salazar! The man in charge of the station where your parents were killed. Or do you think I am an idiot? Did you think it would never be traced back to you if you killed everybody involved? When were you going to kill me?”
Now she could no longer speak. Her body was sliding down the wall to the ground. She looked like a half-empty sack of rice, almost shapeless. The street was deserted and silent now, except for what gushed out of her mouth, the mouth he had kissed.
“If I wanted to kill you,” she said suddenly, “I would have done it last night. I should have done it …”
The prosecutor thought about Cáceres Salazar brandishing the pistol that had pierced the back of her father's neck. He thought about the scene that morning as he had penetrated her body. He did not feel repentance anymore, he felt pleasure. The pleasure of a job well done. He took out the pistol and aimed at the small head trembling near the ground. He recalled all the dead he had seen. He realized his hand no longer trembled.
“You don't deserve a trial either,” he spat at her.
Edith did not move and did not look up. He thought she had not even realized he was pointing the gun at her. She had become a weeping, crouching thing sliding down along the wall. Perhaps she had seen the weapon and did not care about dying as her family had. Prosecutor Chacaltana cocked the gun. He pointed it right at her forehead. He thought she ought to die looking at what she had searched for. She raised her head and fixed her eyes on him, as if her gaze were going through the weapon to lodge directly in the prosecutor's eyes.
“I won't be the first who dies like this,” she said. “And I won't be the last.”
That was a confession. Now the prosecutor felt certain. He moved the barrel slightly to the right to place the bullet just between her eyes. He adjusted his finger on the trigger. He gave her a final look, a look of disappointment, pity, and hatred. Perhaps he also felt disgust for having touched that body stained with blood, submerged in death, like the sinister birds of the Sepulcher. Now he would never touch it again. In his mind he said good-bye to her. After all, he would miss her. At least he would miss the warmth of her hands, the smell of her neck, the almonds of her eyes, the balm of her smile. He gripped the weapon more firmly and took a few steps forward. But as soon as he had taken aim at the target, the blows, the fire, the rain of blood returned to his mind, as if all the things that had appeared in his dreams were really inside Edith's head. The black flags. He wanted to fire immediately, without waiting anymore, he wanted to wipe away once and for all the life that had been hers, he wanted to do away with the nights of love he would never have now and the ones he had never had, all in one stroke, all in one shot, with all his might he wanted not to have to hear her lies ever again, not to have her face remind him of how stupid he had been. And his eyes blazed with a red fire, he heard shouting in his ears, he felt punches, kicks in his stomach. He wanted to be able to end everything with a single, final, fatal movement of his finger.
He could not.
He moved a few steps away from her and then came closer again. Now her gaze that had not wavered turned into a shield. He thought of himself at the edge of the mass grave, a weapon pointing at his head. At his back. He wanted to ask her not to look at him, he wanted to slap her, he wanted to tear off her clothes and rape her. But that gaze paralyzed him. He still had the weapon raised when he spoke, his voice breaking with grief:
“Why like this? Why did those people die so cruelly? Why the awful brutality?”
She was no longer sobbing. She seemed like a statue of black ice. When she responded, her voice sounded strong and resolute: