Who Killed Palomino Molero? by Mario Vargas Llosa Page A

boy—the older one looked only at the girl —went up to Doña Lupe and put his pistol between her withered breasts. “We’re not here, we don’t even exist” he instructed her, drunk with hate and fury. “Open your mouth and you’re a dead bitch. I’ll blow your brains out. Understand?”
    She went down on her knees, begging. She knew nothing, understood nothing. “What did I do, sir? Nothing, nothing. I took in two kids who asked for a room. For the love of God, think of your own mother, sir, don’t shoot, we don’t want any trouble or disgrace around here.”
    “Did the younger man call the older one colonel?”
    “I don’t know, sir,” she replied, trying to find her way through the interrogation. She was trying to guess what he wanted her to say. “Colonel? The younger addressing the older one? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I don’t remember. I’m a poor, ignorant woman, sir. I don’t have anything to do with all this, it was all an accident. The one with the gun said that if I opened my mouth and told what I’m telling you, he’d come back and blow my brains out, then shoot me in the stomach, and then shoot me between the legs. What could I do, what was I going to do? I lost my husband, he was run over by a tractor. I’ve got six kids and I can just barely feed them. I had thirteen, and seven died. If I get killed, the other six will die. Is that fair?”
    “The one with the gun, was he an officer? Did he have stripes on his shoulder or just a silver bar on his cap?”
    Lituma began to believe in telepathy. His boss was asking the very questions he was thinking. He was panting, feeling dizzy.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t you stop torturing me? Don’t ask me questions I don’t understand. What are stripes? What are you talking about?”
    Lituma heard her, but he was seeing the young couple again, clearly, despite the blue shadows that covered Amotape. Doña Lupe, on her knees in front of the frenetic, gesticulating young man, was whimpering right there on the doorstep; the old man’s staring eyes were bitterly, painfully, disdainfully on the girl, who defiantly protected the thin boy with her own body and kept him from stepping up to the men in uniform. Lituma was seeing how the arrival of the outsiders had taken the children, the old people, and even the dogs and goats of Amotape off the streets and buried them in their houses. Everyone was afraid of getting involved in this kind of trouble.
    “You keep quiet, keep your mouth shut, who do you think you are, who gave you the right, what are you doing here anyway,” said the girl, protecting him, pushing him out, holding him back, stopping him from speaking. At the same time she kept on threatening the shadow of the older man: “I’ll kill myself and tell the world everything.”
    “I love her with all my heart, I’m an honorable man, I’ll dedicate my life to loving her and making her happy.” No matter how he tried, the boy couldn’t get around the body of the girl who was shielding him, in order to come forward. The old man’s shadow never turned toward him but remained fixed on the girl, as if no one else existed in Amotape or the world for that matter. But the young man half turned the instant he heard the boy speak and lunged toward him, muttering curses and waving his pistol as if he were going to smash in the boy’s head. The girl grabbed him and tangled him up. Then the shadow of the older man gave a dry, definitive order: “At ease,” which the other obeyed instantly.
    “All he said was At ease? Or did he say At ease, Dufó? Or maybe At ease, Lieutenant Dufó?”
    This went beyond telepathy. The lieutenant asked the questions using the same words that came to Lituma. “I don’t know,” swore Doña Lupe. “I never heard any names. I only found out that his name was Palomino Molero when I saw the photos in the Piura newspaper. I recognized him right away. My heart broke, sir. That’s him,