It was the pishtaco, Madre, I swear, says Juliana, sitting across from Marta in the half-light of the front room. They’d barreled in moments before, slamming the door behind them, and Juliana had managed to light the kerosene lamp in the confusion. Now, Marta watches the girl, sensing the tension in her young body, there, so close: the ragged breaths, the sweat under her blouse, all so close. Don’t be silly, she responds, those are folk tales. Maybe they’re folk talks, Madre, but I heard them from my abuela. Marta also remembers the stories told by the old women in Huanta, where she spent her childhood, about the gringo who roamed the mountain passes fishing for kids, young people, even grown people, to cut them in half and extract their fat drop by drop. She would imagine him naked, white, walking around like a hungry dog, his snout damp and dirty, smelling of his prey. I heard the same things, Juliana, that it comes out at night looking for fat. They’re just stories, old tales. That was before, Madre. These days what the pishtaco wants is organs, eyes — all that sells for a lot of money over there, in Europe, the United States, those countries.
Marta runs her eyes over the room. The lamp illuminates just a small circle; the wrinkles in the floral paper covering the walls lengthen, forming strange shadows. A few old pieces of furniture in different colors and styles — the table with its four chairs, two bookcases sagging under piles of books and paper, the desk — take up almost all the space. In ’76, when Marta arrived up here, in the Fifth Sector, to support the grassroots groups and especially the women, her neighbors insisted on making her a wood house: the madrecitas weren’t going to live in straw mat houses like the rest of them. With time her neighbors progressed, but taken up with children and work, they ended up forgetting about the organizations and everyone else. Their houses are now brick — bare, but brick; Marta is still living in wood. One day, resigned, she put up the green floral wallpaper she’s gazing at now. Enough, Juliana. It must’ve been the soldiers. Soldiers? No, Madre, it wasn’t a military truck, no ma’am, it wasn’t. You didn’t see, since you were driving, but I did. I turned around and saw them behind us, the lights, from la Avenida up till here. Put it out of your mind, no need to make such a fuss — maybe it was just a regular car. So how come it was following us? You went faster and then he did too, remember? Perhaps they were Sendero, Juliana, not from the committee here. With them we’re all right, but a leader from elsewhere — sometimes they come to take care of some task. Madre, Sendero doesn’t go around in cars. It was a jeep, just like yours. It got right behind us, and I saw him real clear: gringo, red hair, red beard, flaming eyes — the girl falls briefly silent, trembling — and his eyes were searching, Madre. I saw when they saw me. It was the pishtaco, I swear.
Marta tries to compose herself. When in the jeep, she saw Juliana crouched down next to her, scared to death, and the girl began screaming, Madre, the pishtaco! The pishtaco! Her head said it had to be Sendero or soldiers, but her body relived the stories from Huanta, the chill, as she’d listened. Naked, white, on hands and knees, slippery, lying in wait — the pishtaco attacked girls, youths, yes, like Juliana. And the incision — Marta had always gotten snared in thoughts of the incision, ever since she was little, with a warm inner shiver, hooked by the idea of the careful knife opening up the tender flesh of little girls, the smooth lustrous skin of young women. What would it sound like — do incisions make noise? — and how long would it take for them to open up, to spill blood and leak intestines? All this thronged in her head with Juliana’s screams; her foot pressed the gas pedal and her hands gripped the steering wheel down unusual backstreets, trying to lose whomever was following them. The lamp flame between the two of them flares; there’s also light filtering in through the house’s frosted-glass door — they had come running out of the jeep, leaving the lights on. She watches Juliana, her eyes searching for the girl’s, her gaze ready to ensnare the way that she, Marta, learned when she was young. Juliana: slim body, almond eyes, gleaming copper skin, her hair black, long. These days they don’t cut it during the novitiate. Juliana remains seated in a chair across from Marta, her body rigid, alert. The body of a volleyball player, Marta thought the first time she saw her: slender, the curves of her hips pronounced, her breasts firm, pert. She chose the girl from among the several novitiate candidates in Huamanga and brought her to Fifth. That first time she saw her, she’d lost her breath, and her eyes, they sank all by themselves into the cleft left visible by the girl’s blouse, between her breasts — into the cleft that would deepen now if the girl put her arms behind the back of the chair where, across from Marta, she sits, full of fear, her arms braiding behind it like coarse rope, the kind that lacerates skin, arms, ankles, so still, legs open to the view, a drop of sweat rolling down her neck to pool in her belly button, her breathing ragged, the way it is now. Marta closes her eyes: now isn’t the time for lashes or spiked belts, those objects of a bygone era, but — her fingernails pinching one nipple, both, the body arched and flexible, offering itself up without meaning to.
The pishtaco wants fat — isn’t that what the old women used to say? asks Marta in an effort to rouse herself from her torpor. That was before, Madre, Juliana responds. They used it to make soap for the Spaniards; that’s what my abuela told me. Now they want your eyes, your kidneys — they even sell lungs. So they no longer cut along the stomach? Ay, Madre, I don’t know. All I know is it really exists. You’ve spent two years in the novitiate, Juliana. You shouldn’t believe in those things anymore. The girl clutches her hands together and looks toward the door. She’s from the sierra, like the majority of the novices who come year after year to spend an immersion period in Fifth, to see life in the endless ocean of marginal neighborhoods that is the northern cone of Lima. Now, with the presence of Sendero in Fifth, Marta ought to be more alert, to watch out for the novices. The pishtaco has a big knife, Juliana continues, like a machete, and he cuts open the bellies of the people he catches. Maybe that’s how he takes out what he wants, I don’t know. So the cut still happens, says Marta, and shifts in her seat, beset by a sudden warmth. Once, she caught sight of Juliana’s belly button, above her hips, a curved cleft, graceful and perfect. A dark spot on dark skin, almost mahogany. This is what Marta thinks about when she overlaps with Juliana in the bathroom, in the mornings, when the girl comes out of the shower. And there, at the bathroom door, her imagination flies off to impossible places. Yes, Madre, I’m sure they still cut your belly open, the girl says. But Juliana doesn’t have a belly. Much the opposite. Her abdomen is flat, like a volleyball player’s. Flesh is a different color from skin, like when it peeks out from under a scrape or between the lips of a slash, Marta thinks, and she wonders, unsure, what color it would be under olive skin, dark skin. She looks at her own hand, its light skin, a mestiza’s.
Three blows on the door make them jump. Madre Marta, open up! Bam bam bam! A large man with a square head and blocky shoulders cuts a silhouette in the glass of the door, the jeep’s lights behind him. There he is! screams Juliana. Open up! insists the voice on the other side of the door. Marta stands up, dazed. Don’t open it, Madre, Juliana pleads, her eyes huge. Marta remains motionless. She looks at the girl, her body rigid with fear, and she pauses to think or, rather, to look inward. Suddenly she says, Don’t you see it’s Padre Herbert? No! It’s not him! He’s away! responds Juliana. Perhaps he’s returned, or maybe it’s the soldiers, or a representative from Sendero. None of them will do anything to us. It’s not them, Madre, really, it’s not. Juliana leaps up and puts herself between Marta and the door. Her undershirt has risen with the force of the movement, revealing her abdomen, the hem of her underwear. Marta observes her: skin smooth around the dark cleft of belly button — more than smooth, taut. (A knife cut, would it make noise? How long would it take to open up such youthful skin?) Now I remember! says Marta, feigning a weak certainty. A few days ago, Herbert let me know he was coming back early. The girl is pale. Marta can see from the threatening silhouette of whomever is outside — Sendero, soldiers, Herbert… — that the shadow is carrying something in its hands, and then she insists: Yes, Juliana, it must be Herbert. We’re not going to leave him outside now, are we? Silence. In the half-light, Juliana looks anxiously toward the door, then at Marta. In that same half-light, Marta examines the distance between the lifted hem of her undershirt and her underwear. Her gaze deftly finds and hooks Juliana’s elusive, frightened eyes. Open the door, hija, she says to the girl, doing her best to speak in a soothing voice. Nothing is going to happen to you.
