The girl he had seen earlier in the station hurried out of the cabin next to his and slammed the door. She seemed irritated. Her pearly cheeks were burning; she looked like she had just been subjected to a lava bath. She rested both hands on the windowsill and turned her uneasy gaze toward him.
“I think we know each other from somewhere,” Ricardo said.
“I have the same impression,” she replied.
“I'm Ricardo Beintigoitia.”
“Gulietta Carletti.”
“Is it okay if I call you
tú
?”
“Of course.”
“You're quite flushed. Is something wrong?”
“Nothing serious. Just a little dizzy.”
“A cup of coca tea would do the trick.”
The door to Carletti's cabin opened and the husband's insolent figure injected itself between them.
“I'll be damned, you already have company,” he said with sarcasm.
Gulietta threw a punch at him with her eyes.
“I want to speak with you for a moment,” the man said.
She had no choice but to obey him. Alderete looked Ricardo over from head to toe. His smile was hateful, like the sneer of a Gestapo guard.
Ricardo dodged his oversized buttocks and headed toward the dining car. It was nearly empty. The poker player had settled in at a table near the kitchen. When he saw Ricardo, he invited him to sit down. His hands, covered with moles and warts, were shuffling a deck of cards. He ordered a round of beers.
“Waiting for your first victim?”
“It's still very early. I'm just massaging them. It's a matter of friendship. Later, they'll respond to me.”
Lalo Ruiz made his living from poker. Railroad dining cars were his specialty. He traveled constantly, ripping off unwitting enthusiasts. He was an addict who needed not only to win, but to lose as well. The fun of it lay in that perpetual disequilibrium, in the day-to-day instability.
“How's the Reverend Father?”
“A bit of a curmudgeon.”
“It's not bad to have a friar at your side. Don't forget that we'll be reaching an elevation of around 16,000 feet.”
“I've known you ever since I could talk,” said Ricardo.
“That's true. I spend my life on trains. This dining car is a great place for trapping idiots.”
He was right. The dining car of the La PazâArica train was the perfect environment for confounding occasional gamblers. The roar of the train, the misery of the Altiplano, the desire to see the ocean: All of this produced an uncontrollable yearning for entertainment, and what better way to get it than playing cards with the conjurer of that journey through the clouds.
“The Marquis plays poker?” asked Ricardo.
“When he's got nothing else to do. He trades in dancers whom he brings from Chile, and I figure he's on his way to see the goods in person. He has a sharp eye. The woman traveling with him is Anita Romero, the most famous madam in the country. She's Chilean. She plays go-between; years ago, she ran a couple of brothels in Caiconi. Don't tell me you never went there.”
Ricardo blushed.
Ruiz wasn't impressed and continued: “There was no resisting it. Now she's old and retired from the business. As an advisor she's a gold mine.”
“I'd like you to play that Alderete guy and destroy him.”
“You don't like him?”
“If I'm not mistaken, the guy's an asshole.”
“You're not mistaken. He's the biggest asshole of them all.”
“Petko said you should ask him for a rematch.”
“I'll challenge him,” said Ruiz. “If he lets me, I promise you that he'll never forget this trip.”
Ruiz asked for something to snack on. The train entered a tunnel, causing the water to disappear in the darkness. The waiter returned with a plate of peanuts and French fries. Ruiz was in a good mood. An insouciant smile lit up his face, which looked like that of a bird of prey. Ricardo couldn't help but admire his simple happiness, unbounded by the inscrutable mysteries of life. The poker player was a born optimist, the kind whose enthusiasm is contagious.
“Here comes that Alderete's wife,” Ruiz said.
Gulietta settled into a table in the middle of the car. She was alone and she began to contemplate the landscape. Off in the distance, Mount Illimani's magnificence was on full display. Evanescent clouds adorned its snowy peaks. Ricardo thanked Ruiz for the beer and approached Gulietta.
“May I sit down?”
“Of course. Did my husband say anything to you?”
“He didn't have time,” Ricardo said. “Now I remember where we saw each other. In Buenos Aires, at my aunt Blanca Colorado's house.”
“It's possible,” Gulietta said. “I studied in Buenos Aires. I just graduated.”
“Me too,” Ricardo said. “From the Instituto Americano.”
“Blanca Colorado. Isn't she the poet?”
“Exactly.”
The irritated expression that Ricardo remembered from the corridor had vanished. Her face, though not beautiful, was attractive. Her eyes, which looked as if they had matured before her other features, gazed indolently at her surroundings with a bold sensuality. She summoned the waiter and asked for a cup of black coffee.
“I imagine you already know that I'm married to Alderete.”
“It surprised me,” Ricardo said, trying not to sound imprudent.
“Someday I'll explain it to you.”
The waiter placed the coffee on the table and walked away.
She took off her shoes, bending down without taking her eyes off Ricardo. He felt her foot brush against his ankle.
“I'd like to ask you to give me a foot massage, but that would be too forward.”
“In the end,” Ricardo said, “we're from the same generation and we play the same games.”
Gulietta caressed the sides of the cup. Her long, fine fingers wrapped around it in a tactile ceremony.
“I bet you're dying to know how a woman like me married an old half-breed like Alderete.”
“Maybe you're in love.”
“Don't be ridiculous. Love is blind, but even the blind have a sense of touch.”
“Then tell me.”
“You might misunderstand. It's a complicated story. Let's talk about you. When my mom saw you, she told me she's friendly with your parents. She also warned me that you would try to make a move on me.”
Ricardo smiled. “What else did she tell you?”
“That you're a goof-off. That you hang out with those boys from Saint George's.”
“They've been my buddies since grade school.”
“They drink a lot.”
“Only beer.”
“At the Chic café on Rosendo Gutiérrez.”
“How do you know so much?”
“La Paz is a small town. Who are you going out with?”
“I don't have a steady girlfriend.”
“How strange. There are lots of pretty girls.”
“Most of them are a little too old-fashioned.”
“And you don't like that?”
“Let's say that it makes me feel inhibited.”
“At the Instituto Americano they teach American Lit, I suppose.”
“No, that would have been great, but instead they overloaded us with grammar. Even so, that was my most interesting class . . . the teacher was pretty hot.”
“My mother's right. You're not a very serious person.” Gulietta drank the rest of her coffee, stood up, and looked around furtively at her surroundings. She walked away, swaying her compact, fluid hips.
The train was drawing close to the El Alto district. On the edge of the cliff, which marked the beginning of the endless plateau, the first shacks were discernible. A whistle announced that the train was reaching the end of its climb. The dining car emptied out, its passengers making way for the waiters setting tables for lunch, which would be served once the train left El Alto. The sun was shining gloriously. An expanse of trees, which had been planted recently to humidify the extremely dry air, moved to the rhythm of a dusty wind. The green patch tinged the pale mountain. The curves of the train tracks, which were cut into the mountainside and hung over the abyss like a series of balconies, disappeared as the land turned flat and the horizon became one with the sky.
On the platform of the El Alto station lay piles of bundled coca leaves. Ricardo spotted a few stragglers who had probably missed the train at Central Station in La Paz and hired a taxi to catch up in El Alto, which would be an easy feat, since it took the train an hour to reach its first stop whereas a taxi made the trip in thirty minutes.
A blond-haired man weighing well over two hundred pounds commanded a porter to load luggage into the sleeping car in a hurry. To Ricardo, the leather coat in which the man was wrapped evoked a German military officer from the Second World War. The man led a woman by the hand who was dressed completely in black and wore a hat that looked like a bullfighter's cap covered with fine gauze. The railway inspector approached the man and greeted him deferentially. He then greeted the woman and helped them both up onto the train. Ricardo noticed three eccentric-looking women holding their skirts as they battled the wind. The most attractive one, a contortionist for a Chilean circus troupe that often visited Bolivia, had a puppy on her lap. Next to her was a midget with an enormous head that looked as if it belonged in a pumpkin contest, laughing uncontrollably in concert with the third woman, who had the unmistakable look of a gypsy. She was wearing a red headscarf and a long skirt which brushed against the small cement platform. The contortionist tried going up the ramp with the puppy on her back until the inspector shouted, “No dogs allowed on board!”
“And where do you want me to put him?” the woman shot back.
“In the freight car,” the inspector said.
“If he can't travel, then I won't either.”
The gypsy and the midget joined in the ruckus. The Franciscan opened one of the train windows and the contortionist approached the car pouting, holding back tears. After they exchanged a few words, the priest promptly descended the walkway and planted himself in front of the inspector.
“The cold in Charaña will be too much for him. He'll die,” Father Moreno said.
“We can't break company rules,” the inspector replied emphatically.
Father Moreno adopted a monastic tone. The inspector, who had been raised in the English tradition, didn't budge.
“Saint Francis taught us to love animals,” Father Moreno said in a deliberate, artificial-sounding voice.
“I love dogs too, but I won't let one travel in a passenger car.”
“So what can I do?” the contortionist asked.
“Like I told you, you'll have to leave it in a freight car. You've got no other choice.”
“That's an absurd rule,” she said.
“That's just the way it is. I don't make the rules around here.”
“It's a puppy,” Father Moreno argued. “It's not a Saint Bernard.”
“A dog is a dog,” the man averred.
The gypsy stepped in. “You just don't listen. You're being stubborn.”
“And rude,” the midget added.
“Lower your voice!” demanded the inspector.
A crewman opened one of the freight cars and the contortionist deposited her dog.
“It's too hot in there,” Father Moreno said. “The dog's going to fry.”
“Which one is it going to be,” the inspector said, “death from cold or death from heat?”
“What a jerk!” the contortionist exclaimed.
“I suppose that once it gets dark, they could open the car and bring him a blanket,” Father Moreno suggested.
“We'll see,” the inspector answered.
As the train slowly pulled away from the station, the gypsy and the midget waved goodbye with their handkerchiefs. The contortionist settled into one of the second-class cars.
Alderete walked out into the corridor wearing an undershirt, his mud-colored torso looking as smooth as a newborn baby's. “What's going on?”
“Something about a dog,” the priest said.
Alderete scrutinized him like a policeman sizing up a crook. “Your face is familiar,” he said.
“We Franciscans look alike, maybe because of our modest appearance.”
Alderete frowned. “You look exactly like a rabble-rouser I know who's always inciting the mineworkers to rise up with the MNR
*
against the owners.”
Father Moreno turned slightly pale. “They say we all have a double somewhere,” he said, his voice trailing off.
*
The leftist Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) spearheaded a popular revolution in Bolivia in 1952.