Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa Page A

who was not angry. “This is war. You can’t understand, mute, you have no idea.”
    â€œCry for your brothers and sisters, cry for those who suffer,” advised a girl, consoling him. “For those who’ve been murdered and tortured, for the ones who’ve gone to prison, the martyrs, the ones who sacrificed themselves.”
    He went from one to the other, trying to kiss their hands, pleading with them, going down on his knees. Some moved him away gently, others with repugnance.
    â€œHave a little pride, have some dignity,” they said. “Think about yourself instead of the vicuñas.”
    They were shooting them, chasing them, killing off the wounded and dying. It seemed to Pedro Tinoco that night would never come. One of them blew up two calves lying quiet next to their mother, sent them flying with a stick of dynamite. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder. Pedro Tinoco no longer had the strength to cry. He sprawled on the ground, his mouth open, looking at one, looking at another, trying to understand. After a while, the boy with the cruel expression came over to him.
    â€œWe don’t like doing this,” he said, modulating his voice and putting a hand on the mute’s shoulder. “It’s orders from the high command. This reserve belongs to the enemy. Ours and yours. A reserve devised by imperialists. In their world strategy, this is the role they’ve assigned us: Peruvians raise vicuñas. So their scientists can study them, so their tourists can take pictures of them. As far as they’re concerned, you’re worth less than these animals.”
    â€œYou should leave this place, little father,” one of the girls said in Quechua, embracing him. “Police will come, soldiers will come. They’ll kick you and cut off your manhood before they put a bullet in your head. Go away, far away.”
    â€œMaybe then you’ll understand what you don’t understand now,” the boy-man explained again as he smoked a cigarette, looking at the dead vicuñas. “This is war, nobody can say it’s not their business. It’s everybody’s business, even mutes and deaf people and half-wits. A war to put an end to señores. So nobody has to kneel or kiss anybody’s hands or feet.”
    They stayed there for the rest of the afternoon and the entire night. Pedrito Tinoco saw them cook a meal, post sentries on the slopes that faced the road. And he heard them sleep, wrapped in their ponchos and shawls, leaning against each other in the caves on the hillside, like the vicuñas. The next morning, when they left, telling him again that he should leave if he didn’t want the soldiers to kill him, he was still in the same spot, mouth hanging open, body wet with dew, unable to understand this new, immeasurable mystery, surrounded by dead vicuñas on which birds of prey and carrion eaters were feasting.

    â€œHow old are you?” the woman suddenly asked him.
    â€œI wonder about that, too,” exclaimed Lituma. “You never told me. How old are you, Tomasito?”
    Carreño, who had begun to doze, was wide awake now. The truck was not jolting them quite as much, but the motor kept roaring as if it would explode on the next uphill curve. They were ascending into the Cordillera, with stands of tall vegetation to the right and on the left the almost bare rock of slopes, with the Huallaga River thundering at their base. They were sitting in the back of an ancient truck that had no canvas to protect them if it rained, surrounded by sacks and crates of mangoes, lucumas, cherimozas, maracuyas, which were draped in sheets of plastic. But in the two or three hours it had taken to drive away from the jungle and climb into the Andes on the way to Huánuco, the storm had not broken. The night turned colder with the altitude. The sky teemed with stars.
    â€œOh God, before they come and kill us, let me fuck a woman just one