Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

felt her body next to his, he embraced her.
    â€œA virgin at twenty-three?” Lituma said. “My boy, I don’t know what you’re doing in the Civil Guard.”
    As he kissed her hair, her neck, her ears, he heard her say very quietly: “I finally think I’m beginning to get it, Carreñito.”

4
    Were they making any progress on that highway? Lituma had the impression it was moving backward instead. In the months he had been here, there had been three work stoppages, and in all of them the same process was repeated like a broken record. The project was going to be halted at the end of this week, or this month, the government had already given notice to the construction company, a union meeting was called, and the laborers took over the installations and equipment and demanded guarantees. Nothing happened for a period of time. The engineers left and the camp remained in the hands of the foremen and the paymaster, who socialized with the strikers and shared the communal meal prepared at dusk in the empty field surrounded by barracks. There was no violence, and the corporal and his adjutant never had to intervene. The work stoppages would end mysteriously, without defining the future of the highway. The company, or the ministerial representative sent to mediate the dispute, would agree not to fire anyone and to pay the workers for the days they had been on strike. Work was resumed in slow motion. But Lituma always thought that instead of picking up where they had left off, the laborers retraced their steps. Because of landslides on the hills where they were blasting, or because flooding after the rains had washed away the track and destroyed the roadbed, or for whatever reason, the corporal had the impression that they were still excavating, dynamiting, steamrolling, and laying down layers of gravel and tar in the same section they had been working on when he first came to Naccos.
    He was on a rocky elevation at the foot of a snowfield, a kilometer and a half from the camp, and down below, in the clean dawn air, he could see the tin roofs of the barracks gleaming in the early-morning sun. “Near the mouth of the abandoned mine,” the man had told Tomasito. There it was, partially obscured by rotting beams that had once marked the entrance to the shaft but had collapsed, and by rocks and boulders that had rolled down from the peak and now blocked three-quarters of the opening.
    What if this meeting was an ambush? A trick to separate him from Carreño? They’d attack them singly, disarm them, torture them first, then kill them. Lituma imagined his corpse riddled with bullets or hacked to pieces by machetes, wearing a sign scrawled in red paint: “This is how the dogs of the bourgeoisie die.” He took the Smith & Wesson .38 out of its holster and looked around: rocks, sky, a few very white clouds in the distance. Not even a damn bird in the air.
    Last night the man had come up behind Tomasito while he was watching a soccer game between two teams of laborers, and, pretending to comment on the plays, had whispered: “Somebody has information about the guys who disappeared. He’ll give it to the corporal personally if there’s a reward.” Was there one?
    â€œI don’t know,” Carreño said.
    â€œSmile,” said the man. “Look at the ball and point, don’t make problems for me.”
    â€œOkay,” said the guard. “I’ll ask the corporal.”
    â€œTomorrow at sunrise, at the abandoned mine. Tell him to go alone.” The man grinned, gesturing and making faces as if he had his eye on every kick. “Smile, point at the ball. Most important, forget all about me.”
    Carreño had been very excited when he came to give him the news: “Finally we have something to go on, Corporal.”
    â€œWe’ll see, Tomasito. I hope you’re right. Do you have any idea who he is?”
    â€œHe looked like a laborer. I