The Sky Over Lima

by Juan Gómez Bárcena

  As he falls he thinks he sees José turn to look at him. José hesitates a moment and then keeps running.

  It’s possible that things don’t happen exactly like that. Maybe José does not see him fall. Perhaps he too is dragged along by the crowd and could have done nothing to help him anyway. It is possible that the person who looks at him and then runs off amid the uproar isn’t even José. But whatever the case, that’s how events will be etched in Carlos’s memory: him falling and José abandoning him to his fate.

  For a moment he thinks he’s going to pass out. That’s what always happens in his favorite novels. The hero falls, wounded, and the world stops with him. Everything turns black, or white, or red, according to the author’s whims; reality disappears into a fog, and that fog does not clear until, hours or days later, the protagonist regains consciousness. But none of that happens.

  He is able to feel, almost to count each of the blows he receives—twenty-seven—as the terrified mob tramples his body. He hears shouts, gunshots, horses’ hooves scraping the cobblestones. Voices cry out, pleading for help. Then something like silence. The taste of blood in his mouth. And finally some words he can’t understand, and the eyes of the soldier bending over him to check his pulse.

  ◊

  The wounded are taken to the Guadalupe house of aid. The first to be treated is one Florencio Aliaga, who has a bullet lodged in his groin and is as gray as a corpse. Then the medics come back for the less seriously injured. Finally they even come to Carlos’s aid, though he has only a few contusions and a laceration on his face. He is embarrassed to be transported on a stretcher, since his single wound has already stopped bleeding. But he lets himself be carried, what choice does he have, while he looks around for José. He does not find him.

  “My goodness, a gentleman like yourself—what were you doing among that rabble?” the aide asks as he helps Carlos remove his eighty-sol suit.

  “I was waiting for some letters . . .”

  And he doesn’t whimper once as he gets five stitches in his cheek. That’s one of the most important lessons he must credit his father for having taught him: not to cry out, not ever, even when they’re shredding the skin on your back with lashes.

  He is afraid they will want to interrogate him, but nobody seems to be paying any attention to him. The doctors and nurses hurry from one cot to another, fold and unfold mosquito nets, push little carts loaded with scalpels and buckets of blood-tinged water. The aide also leaves him alone. Carlos struggles to his feet and then sits back down. The room is an immense nave with dozens of beds along either side, and everywhere are muffled moans and whimpers as the suture needle sews up wounds or the forceps dig around in them to pull out shrapnel. Two soldiers are posted by the door at the far end of the room, but they hold their rifles listlessly, as if they were laborers’ tools. They look like peasants. Perhaps, when they return home and remove their leathers and uniforms, they really are peasants. Now, though, away from their horses, their unsheathed swords, their combat formations, they also look like little boys.

  That’s when he spots Sandoval. He’s going from bed to bed with concern on his face, checking on his comrades, murmuring a few words of encouragement. The doctors eye him reprovingly, but no one dares say anything. He looks like a father anxious about his children’s health, pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back and a solemn expression.

  “Gálvez!” he says upon recognizing him. “Carlos Gálvez! What on earth are you doing here?”

  Carlos—Rodríguez—hesitates a moment. No one has ever mixed up their last names before.

  “Actually, I’m Rodríguez. It’s José who’s—”

  “What goddamn difference does a last name make? Haven’t you learned anything?” he asks, making a grand gesture in the air, one that blots out genealogies, privileges, the past. “Oh dear, you’re injured! What have those butchers done to you?”

  His voice sounds oddly tender. He draws near and examines the sutured wound. His eyes fill with pride. He takes off his hat and points to his own scar, also on the left side of his face, in almost exactly the same spot.

  “Here’s my own baptism gift. A souvenir of the strike of ’99,” he says boastfully. “A soldier gave me this gift when I was about your age and I too was just beginning to engage in the struggle.”

  “I’m not in the struggle. I just—”

  “Of course, of course. You were just there by chance, right?”

  Carlos begins babbling about Georgina, about letters that neither came nor went, but Sandoval interrupts him.

  “Martín.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You don’t have to call me Sandoval. You can call me Martín,” says Martín.

  Then, before Carlos can start explaining again, Martín places his hand on his shoulder and adds solemnly:

  “And you don’t have to say anything. When our enemies bite the dust at last, we will remember sacrifices like yours. We will be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Those who were in the trenches from the beginning, and those who will have no place in the new order.”

  “In 2014,” Carlos says, almost without thinking.

  Martín scowls.

  “Long before that! Why, today alone we have brought the eight-hour workday two or three years closer.”

  He falls silent. Two beds away, a nurse is closing the eyes of the first martyr of the revolution. Martín clutches his hat to his chest.

  “It’s a pity it’s already too late for our comrade Florencio,” he adds.

  And he crosses himself, because it’s still 1905 and, according to his own calculations, God will not die for another sixty-four years.

  ◊

  A little while later, José appears. He strides confidently up to the bed and hugs Carlos. It’s so wonderful to have found him! He’s spent hours going from hospital to hospital in El Callao. He felt so guilty when he saw him fall; he shouldn’t have left him to the mercy of those brutes, don’t think he hasn’t been telling himself that, but what else could he do? What would Carlos have done in his place? The same thing . . . the same thing, of course! But the worst is over. Can he walk? Then he’s coming with him right now and leaving this paupers’ hospital; there’s a carriage waiting for him outside.

  And he hugs him again, because the most important thing is that everything has turned out all right; everything is forgiven. A sergeant, accompanied by several soldiers, comes to intercept them as Carlos is getting out of bed. He says he can’t let them leave, it’s impossible. There are procedures and protocols that can’t just be shrugged off; recent events have been quite serious, and statements must be taken from those involved. José sighs. He holds out a piece of paper that he has already prepared. The sergeant goes pallid when he sees the last name on the letterhead. He doesn’t even dare to read the full document. He returns it, awestruck, and tells the soldiers that it’s all been a misunderstanding, that the young men have been released and are free to go whenever they wish. With all due respect.

  Carlos returns home at dusk. He’s almost all better; the aide has said all he needs is a little arnica and a change of bandage once a day. But his mother does not agree: their personal doctor must be called; Carlos must be kept awake in case of internal bleeding; the criminals who tried to kill her son must be reported to the police. She looks shaken and her eyes are red. She has been weeping and praying all day, ever since the driver informed her of the young man’s disappearance and they started searching for him in the jail, the morgue, the hospitals. For the first time in a long time, Carlos hears her shout, and with every shout she seems to become a little more real, filling in that years-long silence. His sisters emerge from their bedrooms and run down the stairs to kiss him, still wearing their nightgowns.

  Don Augusto is fidgeting with a snuffed-out cigar. He’s anxious too, but he doesn’t chastise his son. It’s true that getting mixed up with agitators and terrorists was a numbskull thing to do, only Carlos would be capable of it, but in the end, weren
’t we all young once? And at least the incident pushed Carlos into the fray for a bit of brawling—in short, made him act a bit manlier than usual, which, with regard to his son, is more reassuring than it is anything else. He’s not worried about the stitches either; he’s seen Indians still standing even with the white of their bones showing through their wounds. What’s more, the mark of the injury gives his son rather a determined look, a virility Don Augusto would never have thought possible and that he hopes is here to stay. Nevertheless, he accedes to his wife’s demands and orders his servants to fetch the doctor at once, even if they have to drag him out of bed.

  And the doctor doesn’t find anything. Or, rather, he finds a clean bandage covering a few stitches—extraordinarily neat work, especially for a proletarian hospital, he thinks admiringly—and a small laceration that threatens no consequence more dire than staining the dressing a little. All he needs is a little arnica and a change of bandage once a day, and the doctor starts to say just that, but something in Señora Rodríguez’s eyes stops him. So he drags out the checkup a little longer and finally says that, come to think of it, better safe than sorry, so perhaps the boy should also rest a few days to recover from the shock and his injuries. He makes the suggestion without conviction; he’s very sleepy and wants to go home. Carlos’s mother desperately seizes on the idea. “The doctor said a week in bed!” she announces to her son after seeing the doctor to the door. Carlos says he feels perfectly fine, that he doesn’t need any rest, but in the end he gives in. Just as he allowed himself to be carried on the stretcher. Just as, eight years earlier, he endured those doses of liver-strengthening castor oil.

  He spends the week in bed, and that week is enough time for a good many things to happen. He finds out about all of it through the papers, which his sisters sneak in to him on the breakfast tray (“And make sure you don’t read anything upsetting”).

  The night of the riot, rocks shatter streetlights all over El Callao and Lima. The next day the people—but who or what is “the people,” really?—bury the martyr Florencio Aliaga in a grave paid for by the government. Someone writes a two-column editorial demanding that those responsible for the injured strikers be found, but even if anyone is responsible, nobody finds the culprit. Two days later the negotiations begin. At last the workers and the steamship companies reach an agreement establishing that everything will remain more or less the same, give or take a few soles. His mother’s prayers have been heeded once more, and the river of reality returns to its customary course, to what has always been and must always be.

  One day Martín Sandoval shows up at the house looking for Carlos and is ushered into his bedroom. He comes bearing his own version of events—they have accepted a twenty percent increase in wages, victory is ever nearer, etc.—and a stack of books for him to read during his convalescence. Carlos, who is not allowed to get up even during visits, accepts them wordlessly from his bed: Marx, Kropotkin, Bakunin. He doesn’t know what to say. At last he says, “Thank you, they’re very nice,” and as he speaks, he realizes how stupid he sounds. But Martín doesn’t seem to care; he smiles broadly and says he must read them all. On his way out he winks and raises his left fist, and Carlos responds by raising his right. Martín laughs.

  That same day, José also comes to visit. Don Augusto interrupts them a number of times during their conversation. He is thrilled to have a Gálvez, a descendant of the heroes of the Pacific, calling at his home. So he keeps reappearing under various implausible pretexts, giving exaggerated bows and plying his guest with wine and cigars that José simply must try and that José does not try. Carlos squirms in his bed. He mutters a few scathing words that his father does not hear. As he sees it, his father is behaving like a fawning footman eager to please his master with a few clever comments, and José receives the offerings with frosty graciousness. Don Augusto also brings in a newspaper describing events abroad and attempts a verbatim recitation of an article on the Russo-Japanese War he’s just memorized; in his opinion, he says, despite the Yalu River victory, the Japanese will be utterly vanquished; they’ll see when the Baltic fleet of Admiral Rozhestvensky—is he pronouncing that damned difficult name correctly?—rounds the Cape of Good Hope and surprises them from the south; Czar Nicholas isn’t going to let a bunch of yellow men from the far ends of the earth tell him where he can and cannot dock his ships. Doesn’t José agree? he asks when he runs out of ideas—which is to say, right where the article ended. Gálvez doesn’t know anything about the war, but he pretends to reflect a moment. At last he smiles a genuine smile and says he does not agree, that in fact he and his father believe just the opposite: that the Russians are out of options and that Japan is going to trounce the czar and the aforementioned Rozinsky. Don Augusto blinks a moment, stammers, rolls and unrolls the newspaper a couple of times—Why don’t you just go away, thinks Carlos, and stop making us look ridiculous?—and finally says that he hadn’t seen it like that, but, come to think of it, the Gálvez analysis does make sense, that Japan is going to win and not Russia. Indeed, he has no doubt, and it is so obvious now that he has considered it carefully, he is embarrassed to have thought otherwise. He leaves.

  At long last, he leaves.

  And only then can José perch on the edge of the bed and tell Carlos why he has come. The novel, of course. Now that the strike is finally over, a wide array of possibilities will open before them, and they cannot pass them up. So they must answer the letters, which have just arrived—did he not say that already? Six of them, no less, six envelopes that languished a month in the hold of one of the ships. It takes Carlos a few moments to realize that José has already read the letters, that for the first time he has not waited for him—that he hasn’t even brought them with him. He hasn’t brought them, and Carlos has to say that it’s fine, that it doesn’t matter, that he forgives him for that too.

  “Since you were sick . . .”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I’ll bring them to you.” José pats the sheets and, below them, Carlos’s knees. “I forgot them, but don’t worry, I’ll bring them. You’ll see!”

  But that’s not even the best part. Even better is the fantastic idea he had the other day and couldn’t wait to tell him about. He was thinking about the novel and suddenly remembered Schneider’s seven hundred writing tips, specifically one of the few that hadn’t been expunged from his memory by the fire. The one that talked about the middle pages of every novel and how something extraordinary had to take place in them.

  “I remember,” says Carlos, propping the pillow up behind him so he can sit up.

  “Well, it occurred to me that that’s exactly what’s needed to pique the Maestro’s interest: a little action. The novel has been rather dull so far, don’t you agree?”

  “Dull?”

  “I mean, nothing much has happened. Of course that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Schneider said that at the beginning of the second act the story always drags a bit—gets a little slow, let’s say. The same thing has happened with us: weeks with those letters rotting in the port. But now . . .”

  “Now what?”

  “Now the action begins! The strike, to be precise. We had it right there in front of our noses, and we didn’t see it. Don’t you realize? You yourself said it the other day: you were saying that Georgina would sympathize with the workers. Maybe she’d even go down to scope out the port, don’t you think? And that’s when the action takes off. Police repression! Stampede! Georgina in peril! She could even get injured—why not?”

  “And what the hell does that get us?”

  “What do you mean, what does that get us? For starters, a rip-roaring chapter. And then, imagine the Maestro’s reaction . . . his transatlantic friend at death’s door! That would awaken anyone’s emotions, you must admit. Poets’ muses are always on the verge of croaking. That’s probably why they’re muses. And maybe that’s what Juan Ramón needs to make up his mind . . .”

  Carlos asks for a cigarette. His mother has forbidden him
to smoke during his convalescence, but to hell with that. He needs a cigarette. And he also needs a moment to reflect—the time that it takes José to stand up, fetch his coat, take a cigarette out of his case, light it.

  “It’s just a suggestion, of course,” José continues before Carlos has exhaled the smoke from his first drag. “I know Georgina is your thing. But I thought it might make a splendid chapter. Georgina would also talk about the workers and how worried she is about their situation. It fits her personality, don’t you think? The concern for people in need. You could put in those things you were telling me in the port. All that stuff about twenty soles a day . . .”

  “Two soles.”

  “Whatever. What do you think? Don’t tell me there’s not any material there.”

  Carlos feels his blood beating against the stitches of his wound and tastes the acrid smoke in his mouth.

  “Yes . . . I guess it’s not a bad idea,” he murmurs.

  Gálvez scratches his ear.

  “It was actually Ventura’s idea, you know? He and I . . . well, let’s say he’s going to give us a hand with the novel. As long as you have no objections, of course.”

  “Ventura?”

  “You don’t remember him? You must know him. Ventura Tagle-Bracho . . . the fellow with the pipe.”

  Ventura—of course. Carlos remembers having seen him at the club a few times, with his pipe and his somewhat rough manners. He especially remembers the way Tagle-Bracho always looked down at him from the disdainful heights of his last name, whose hyphenated sonority could intimidate even the Gálvezes. He doesn’t like Ventura. But fortunately he remembers his mirror mimicry exercises in time and almost effortlessly pulls off what looks like perfect assent. Only his hand betrays him: an involuntary movement, brusque and contemptuous, that drops cigarette ash on the bed.