Pishtaco by Sandro Francisco Piedrahita
I am waiting for Mariana Monasterios. She has come highly recommended, a sociologist who has extensive knowledge about the Amerindian people who live in the highlands of Peru and who is fluent in quechua. I told her to meet me at noon at Las Manos Morenas, in Barranco, which has a reputation as being one of the best restaurants in Lima. That is one of the fringe benefits of this assignment, that I get to delight in the wonderful variety of Peru’s cuisine, without spending a cent of my own money. Everything can be charged as an expense, payable by none other than USAID, and so I have no reason to skimp. I am eating a wonderful ceviche – raw fish cooked in lime, with a touch of cilantro. Mariana arrives at noon on the dot: a tall, buxom woman with the unmistakable look of the Amerindian, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with a leather satchel from which she extracts a white notebook. I immediately notice she is lovely, in a different way from white limeñas: her skin is a beautiful olive brown, her black hair shines in twin braids, her body is full like that in a painting by Rubens. I imagine her in my arms, wide breasts and rounded buttocks, from the first moment I see her. My wife is so far away that she will never know if I succeed in sleeping with Mariana.
“One of the delights of Peru is its food,” she tells me as she sits down. “It is the first true fusion cuisine, you know, a mixture of the food of the Indians, the Africans and the Spaniards, with a touch from the Asians who immigrated to Peru in the last century. Peruvians are great gourmands. You’ll notice that I have a few more pounds than perhaps I ought to. But Peruvians generally don’t care about that.” Then she adds in a different tone, “Except, perhaps, they care about it now, with what is happening in the highlands. Otherwise we wouldn’t be meeting.”
“Yes,” I say. “That is why you have been hired. We have to investigate why such a great number of women have been struck with anorexia in the Peruvian sierra. It is such a big problem that USAID has asked me to prepare a report. Nobody knows what is happening, certainly not the Peruvian authorities.”
“I know the quechua peoples,” Mariana responds. “This is something unheard of. Women starving themselves to death in such great numbers. Eating disorders had been practically nonexistent among the Amerindian women of Peru. And now we get reports that entire towns have been affected, that the women simply refuse to eat. So many of them have died that there is no room in the local morgues. It is truly bizarre.”
“Is this something that has been building over the years?” I ask. “Or is it something new?”
“Completely new, Steve. I can call you Steve, right? This disease has come out of nowhere. Entire towns decimated by anorexia. As if overnight the quechuan women had adopted Western beauty standards, as if all of a sudden they had seen the pictures of the white models on the posters for beer or Inka Cola which arrive in their towns along with the products, and had suddenly decided that the Western models had to be emulated. I can think of no other explanation.”
“But why would so many women fall ill at the same time?” I ask Mariana. “I am an expert on eating disorders – that is why I have been hired – and I can assure you that anorexia is not contagious, certainly not on a massive scale.”
“Nothing can logically explain how quickly everything has happened, Steve. The weird thing is that for the Amerindians, being fat is something good. It is a sign of strength and health. Indeed, the greatest god of the Inca pantheon, Viracocha, creator of all the other gods – his name means ‘sea of fat.’ And so among the quechua peoples a full, voluptuous body has always been seen as something good. It is excessive thinness that is considered bad.”
“How many women are we talking about?”
“It seems that entire towns have been affected. We are talking about hundreds of women, maybe thousands. And it has become commonplace for Amerindian women to refuse to make love to their partners. That is why the authorities in the capital really started to get alarmed, when the men started complaining, when they sent a delegation to Lima. I don’t need to tell you that an aversion to sex is one of the telltale signs of anorexia.”
“All right, so the first thing we have to do is interview the women. Our final destination is the town of Caixabamba, but it’ll take quite a trek to get there. First, we’ll fly to Ayacucho, then take a bus to Ichabamba, and then we’ll hire a guide to take us to Caixabamba. Thankfully you are fluent in quechua, so we won’t need an interpreter.”
“I am,” Mariana responds. “My mother was a native woman, and quechua has always been a part of my life. I’ve been to Ichabamba, but have never gone deep into the interior. Virtually no non-Runa1 people ever go there. Why have you chosen Caixabamba? It’s so off the beaten path.”
“Because it seems to be the epicenter. The reports we have received establish that more than ninety percent of the women of Caixabamba have fallen ill with anorexia. Although all of the highlands area has been affected by the disease, none has been hit as hard as Caixabamba. I want to get to the core. I have learned that Caixabamba is where the disease started.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Mariana asks.
“Sure.”
“Your Spanish is impeccable. Did you learn it at university or have you lived in Latin America?”
“I am an American-Mexican, the opposite of a Mexican-American. By which I mean that my parents were Anglo-Saxon Americans, but I was born and raised in Mexico. That is part of the reason why I have been chosen for this project by USAID. In addition to the fact that I am a physician.”
“I see,” Mariana says. “It’s just that you look so American – blonde hair, blue eyes, a red beard – I would never have thought you were Mexican.”
“Ah, but looks can deceive you,” I laugh.
The flight to Ayacucho is uneventful – an hour in the air and then a safe arrival. Then we board the bus to Ichabamba. It is an old, dilapidated bus with huainitos2 on the radio – I can tell we are in Amerindian terrain because the music is Andean music, melancholy songs played to the tune of the quena3 and the charango4, not the American music heard on the radios of the buses in Lima. As we sit down, I let my hand alight upon Mariana’s plump right leg, perhaps for thirty seconds, to see if she reacts, but she does not object.
“You must have a boyfriend,” I tell her. “Being such a beautiful woman.”
“No, not now,” Mariana responds. “And I’m not quite sure I’m beautiful. There’s a professor at San Marcos I used to see, but he had another lover on the side and I could not tolerate his deception. To me, honesty is paramount. It’s the basis for any sexual relationship. What about you, Steve? You must be married.”
“Divorced,” I lie to her. “And with no attachments.”
Mariana smiles. She is overweight and I have often taken advantage of such women, since the ridiculous American obsession with thinness at times makes such women insecure. I shall just have to wait for the right moment, for the appointed time, before I act.
When we arrive at Ichabamba, we find what appears to be a ghost town. Only at noon do we see some women, dressed in traditional Amerindian garb – long layered skirts called pollerones, multi-colored shawls, and red-and-black circular hats. They are arranging the produce and meat they have brought from their huertas5 to sell in the town’s main plaza: corn, potatoes, ollucos, guinea pigs and the remnants of pigs. Then some people start to appear in the outdoor market but I suddenly realize something strange. A number of kids, upon seeing me, seem terrified.
“Pishtaco!” they scream in fear, as they fly to their mother’s arms. “It is the Pishtaco!” I notice that the mothers eye me with suspicion, and some begin to wrap up their produce in their shawls and prepare to make their way back home. It seems they are also afraid of the Pishtaco.
“Why are the kids afraid?” I ask Mariana. “Why do they call me the Pishtaco?”
“That’s an old legend. I wouldn’t worry much about it. When I was a kid in Ayacucho, my mother would also remind me of the Pishtaco, whenever I disobeyed. Don’t forget, she told me, if you misbehave the Pishtaco will take you and siphon off your body’s fat until you die.”
“Why do they call me the Pishtaco? I don’t understand.”
“The way the Pishtaco is portrayed is usually as a white blonde-haired, blue-eyed man with a beard. You fill the description perfectly. You have to remember most of these kids have never seen a white man. In Cusco, the locals are used to seeing European and American visitors, but not in Ichabamba. Ichabamba is as far as you can get from any of the popular tourist sites that attract the attention of Europeans and Americans. So when the kids see you, they naturally assume you are the Pishtaco.”
Why are they so afraid of the Pishtaco? Is it some sort of monster?”
“The legend is told in different ways in different places. As my mother told the story to me in my childhood, the Pishtaco appears in the middle of the night and attacks solitary travelers with a special potion made from human bones that makes them fall asleep. The Pishtaco then uses a special syringe to extract all of the person’s fat. The victim wakes up and doesn’t realize he has been degreased but eventually he dies as a result of the lack of fat. The Pishtaco kills the Amerindians by depriving them of their fat, which is sacred, which represents their very self. In some ways, it is similar to your story about Dracula, but the difference is that while Dracula drinks his victims’ blood, the Pishtaco suctions off their fat.”
“So they fear I myself am the Pishtaco?”
“The Pishtaco has always been identified as a white man. It is believed the story started soon after the Conquest of the Incas by the Spaniards. The Pishtaco was initially seen as a Spanish bearded priest who stole his victim’s fat to use in lubricating his church bells or perhaps to eat as chicharrones6. During colonial times, the Pishtaco appeared as a white gamonal7 who took the Indians’ fat to use in curing white ailments. And during the time of the senderista8 civil war, the Pishtaco was seen as a Shining Path guerrilla and as the Peruvian soldier who sought to destroy him. Both were seen as enemies of the Runa people. In modern times, the Pishtaco appears as a North American – a gringo – with hair the color of gold and riding on a white steed who steals the Indians’ fat to use in his airplanes and machines.”
“That sounds like quite a legend.”
“I took a whole course on Amerindian legends in one of my sociology classes at San Marcos, and the myth of the Pishtaco is one of the most intriguing because it begins after the Conquest, as a way to understand the oppression of the Runa people at the hands of the white man. It is not like other myths, most of which were told long before the arrival of the Spaniards.”
“So the Pishtaco legend has to do with the Conquest of Peru?” I ask Mariana. I had never heard anything about it.
“The Pishtaco myth was a way for the Indian people to process the fact of the Conquest. When the Europeans arrived, the Indians were stripped of their religion, of their style of living, in many places even of their language. You have to remember that for the quechua peoples, fat is identified with their very identity. So it is not surprising that in the myth of the Pishtaco, the white man comes to steal their fat. In other words, he takes their very self.”
We spend only a few hours in Ichabamba, although Mariana tells me that a great many of the women there suffer from anorexia. But Caixabamba is our main destination, the place where almost all of the women have succumbed to anorexia, and I don’t want to waste any time. I try to hire a moto-taxi, which is the word the local people use to describe motorcycles retrofitted to transport people as if they were cars. At first, the owner of the moto-taxi expresses a reluctance to take us to Caixabamba – he thinks the place is cursed. He tells Mariana there have been reports that a laboratory has been found in Caixabamba, where a local man discovered hundreds of Inka Cola bottles filled with human fat – unquestionably the work of the Pishtaco – as well as the cadaver of an Amerindian man stripped down to the bone, hanging over what was probably once a flame, since the ashes remained. According to the moto-taxi driver, the flame was probably used by the Pishtaco to melt down the man’s fat.
Mariana tells me that the rumor about the Inka Cola bottles has been spreading throughout the highlands. In recent times, there have been more and more apparitions of the dreaded Pishtaco, Mariana tells me, although she says that perhaps many of the Pishtacos were merely non-Runa people, perhaps even Peruvian mestizos from the coast mistaken for white marauders. As far as the tale about the bottles filled with human fat, Mariana tells me it is an old story, that the authorities investigated it soon after the claim was made, and that by the time they arrived at the scene, there was no evidence it had been used as a laboratory, nor that anyone had been mutilated there nor stripped down for his fat.
“This is the way myths evolve among the quechua peoples,” Mariana tries to explain. “That is why there are so many different versions of the myth of the Pishtaco. Someone sees a non-Runa person walking alone at night, and they report an apparition of the Pishtaco. With the passage of time, the tale gets embellished, until it becomes a story about how the Pishtaco dismembered an Amerindian, cut out all of his fat, and sold the fat for a hefty price to European or American oil companies, or simply to foreigners who use the fat to make soap or grease their machines. There are myriad versions of the appearance of the Pishtaco, because the imagination of the quechua people is endless, and because their oppression at the hands of non-Runa people is also endless.”
At any event, after a fee is negotiated, Ollanta – for that is the name of our moto-taxi driver – agrees to drive us to Caixabamba. The roads – if they can be called that – were very, very primitive, and dangerous as well. During the trip, Ollanta and Mariana engage in a lengthy conversation. Mariana tells me that Ollanta thinks we are both crazy – that Caixabamba is a dangerous, haunted place. There are reports that all of the women are dying, that they all starve to death, some teenage boys as well. From a population of over a thousand women, no more than a hundred are left and those that remain are skeletal, soon to go to the netherworld or to the white man’s heaven if they are lucky. Mariana asks Ollanta whether there is any explanation for what is happening and he raises his arms in the air.
“No one knows for sure,” Mariana reports he says in quechua, “some say that it is the spirit of the Pishtaco, that he has put the women in a trance, in order to make them starve, but I tend not to believe that. What use could the Pishtaco make of women who are skeletal, who have absolutely no fat? How could he profit from them? He couldn’t even make his chicharrones.”
When we arrive near Caixabamba, Ollanta tells us he will be dropping us off at the outskirts because he is afraid to go into the town. We walk over cobblestones until we reach what seems to be the central square – it is too small to be called a plaza. At some point, we run into a teenage boy with a brown vicuña9, just as skeletal as the women we are in Caixabamba to meet. When he first sees me, I see fear in his eyes, as if he had seen a wild animal, but Mariana quickly intervenes and asks him where we can find the varayoc, the name given to the town’s mayor in Andean towns. The boy, reassured by the fact that Mariana looks like an Amerindian and speaks quechua, points with his right arm and tells us the varayoc lives in a small brick structure about three-hundred meters away. Mariana translates for me. “He says the varayoc is an ancient man, that he has been the varayoc for a very long time, but that in recent months he has been pretty much locked up in his home. He hates the smell of death and so tries not to venture outside.”
Walking toward the varayoc’s house, I realize what the young Amerindian meant when he referred to the smell of death. In front of many of the houses, we can see the remnants of Amerindian women. Most of them had been burnt completely, but a few untouched corpses remain. They smell like something rotting, inviting me to vomit, but I place a kerchief in front of my nose and continue walking. It seems that there is a corpse in front of every home, that death is everywhere. Finally, we arrive at the home of the varayoc. He opens the door, a small old man probably in his nineties wearing a red poncho and the circular headdress of the varayoc. He moves slowly, as if his frail body is too heavy for his soul to carry, but he tells Mariana he had been expecting us and one of his daughters brings us two glasses of chicha. Mariana acts as our interpreter.
“I have been expecting you,” he says. “You must be here with the government.”
“Not exactly,” Mariana tells him. “We are here with an American organization that wants to get to the bottom of what is happening in your town, why all the young women are dying.”
“There is nothing new with death,” he says. “The only odd thing is how rapidly she is taking our women. But perhaps you should go to the morgue yourselves. That will give you an idea of what we are up against, much better than any explanation I can give you.”
The varayoc calls his daughter and she takes him by the arm to help him walk. We walk for a long time, since the varayoc’s gait is very slow and he seems to be in no hurry. He knows the corpses in the morgue are not going to go anywhere. When we finally arrive, the varayoc extracts a large metal key from a pocket beneath his poncho and opens the massive wooden door. What I see there is astounding. Not only are there more than a hundred cadavers piled one on top of the other, all of them preternaturally thin, but I instantly make the realization that most of the corpses are blonde. They all have the faces, the skin color of the Amerindian but their hair is as golden as mine. I tell Mariana I cannot understand what is happening and she conveys my question to the varayoc.
“That shouldn’t startle you,” the varayoc says in a slow, matter-of-fact voice. “Some people say it is the Pishtaco’s final joke. But I know better. I think that a short while before the thinness came, many women in town started bleaching their hair with extracts from plants to look like the women in the magazines that come from the coast. What should startle you is that all the women intentionally starved themselves, and that they did it in unison. The only explanation for that is that it is the work of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Pishtaco, that he appeared in the night to give them some poison that made them averse to food. Rather than taking the fat from one woman at a time, he decided to ruin all our women in a single stroke. After all, the Pishtaco’s goal was never to strip the fat off of a single woman. It was to decimate the entire Runa people. And what the newspapers from Ayacucho call anorexia nervosa accomplished that goal better than any of the Pishtaco’s deadly syringes or knives.”
It is nighttime. The varayoc has kindly let us sleep in a sort of shed behind his dwelling, next to a small jail housing a man by the name of Anquimarca, who was almost lynched by the crowds for raping a ten-year-old boy. There is a single bed in the shed, and I see this as a great opportunity.
“Well, I suppose I’ll sleep on the floor,” I say to Mariana, looking fixedly at her, pausing to see how she responds. “After all, we’re co-workers, but we’re not lovers.”
Mariana says nothing and looks at the bed. I catch a glimmer of doubt in her face and decide to pounce. I approach her and tell her, “Although I must admit I’m very attracted to you, Mariana. I’ve been attracted to you from the very first instant. You are such a lovely woman. It’s been such a very long time since I’ve been with a woman.”
“I don’t know,” she responds. “It might interfere with our professional relationship.”
Then I move towards her and kiss her hard on the mouth, and she does not resist. Instead, she confesses, “I’m also attracted to you, Steve. Why lie about it? But swear to me that you’re not married. Tell me that you’re not involved with another woman.”
“I swear to you,” I respond as I begin to undress her. This is the second time that I have denied my Heather’s existence.
I delight in Mariana’s voluptuous body, so different from those of the corpses we’d seen at the morgue. Her breasts are large and brown, her buttocks round and soft. She is the typical Amerindian – or what was the typical Amerindian before the plague. She gives of herself with relentless abandon, as if she lusts for the white man as much as I lust for the native Peruvian. Was this act of love also a re-enactment of the Conquista? An act of conquest reminiscent of the abuses of the white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Pishtaco?
And then Mariana says something which startles me. “I hope you don’t think I’m too fat,” she apologizes. “You must be used to American women, all of whom are thin and blonde. I know I need to get on a diet, Steve, please don’t judge me too harshly.”
“No, no,” I say to her. I suddenly feel that I am in a macabre dream, that the Pishtaco is striking closer to home. I feel dizzy, discomfited, in despair. I look at her and wonder if she, too, will succumb to the depredations of anorexia. My hands begin to sweat, as well as my forehead, and my legs feel too weak for me to stand. I wonder if I will be able to make love to her tonight given my state of nervous tension. I don’t want her lovely, full-bodied figure to be transformed into the decrepit, skeletal bodies we discovered at the morgue. And yet it has happened to so many other women. Why wouldn’t it happen to Mariana? “Don’t let those thoughts creep up on you, Mariana, please don’t let that happen. You are lovely the way you are.” As I pull her body toward mine, I plead with her excitedly. “Please promise me, Mariana, you’ll never, ever get thinner, you’ll never dye your hair blonde. You’ll never fall prey to the temptations of the Pishtaco.”
I wake up early after our night of lovemaking. After a breakfast of chupe10 and pork chicharrones, we begin our search for women to be interviewed. We are told that most young women have died, but that there is an anorexic thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her grandmother who might be willing to talk to us if we agree to help her out with some money.
When we arrive at the hut, the grandmother begins by telling us she will not let her granddaughter be interviewed by a Pishtaco – referring to me – and that she will not allow us into her home. After a lengthy exchange with Mariana, she finally accedes to allow her granddaughter to speak to us, but only if we speak outside. Mariana tells me the old woman had made it clear I could not enter her home and only allowed the conversation with the girl because Mariana had offered her a hundred dollars. After the money is paid, Mariana begins her interrogation of the girl. I can understand nothing, but I can tell the thirteen-year-old Bachue is somehow reluctant to talk and she is speaking in a halting voice.
“She says that she first got sick after falling asleep on a bus next to a Pishtaco,” Mariana tells me after the conclusion of the interview. “She says he had Amerindian features, but that his hair and beard were red, which made her immediately nervous. The bus ride was long, however, and try as she might she could not avoid dozing off from time to time. She suspects that while she was asleep, he injected her with some potion. She knows it is not her imagination because after the end of the trip she noticed that her left arm was swollen, and that it had been punctured by something like a needle, leaving a red mark. When she arrived home and her grandmother offered her some cancha11, she said that she wasn’t hungry. For the first time in her life, she looked in a mirror and noticed she was fat. Since then, despite her grandmother’s entreaties, she has mostly refused to eat. Or when she eats she vomits. She says she doesn’t want to get fat, because then the Pishtaco will return to kill her and suction off her fat to satisfy his hunger or to sell it to the Americans for use as an additive to their gasoline. She says she realizes a lot of women are dying because they refuse to eat, but she says it is a better death than being skinned alive by the Pishtaco trying to get to her fat.”
“That explains it all,” I say with a self-satisfied grin. “The women are starving themselves because they want to lose all of their body fat, so that the Pishtaco will not come after them. You yourself have explained to me that in certain versions of the myth, the Pishtaco does not siphon off his victims’ fat with a syringe, but rather decapitates and dismembers them before using a knife to extract all their body fat.”
“That is true,” says Mariana. “Indeed, the term Pishtaco comes from the quechua verb ‘pishtay,’ which means to decapitate or to be ripped to pieces.”
“It is obvious, then,” I continue, “that these women are starving themselves so they will not have to go through such horrors.”
“Sorry to disagree with your interpretation, but it doesn’t explain why thousands of Native Peruvian women are succumbing to anorexia. I could understand ten or twenty, maybe fifty women, trying to remain thin to avoid the Pishtaco, but it is inconceivable to me that so many women should have the same fear at the same time.”
“That does complicate matters, doesn’t it?” I respond.
“And you should know that the Pishtaco has arrived in the capital. I checked my cellphone this morning and it appears that more than fifty women in Lima have died from anorexia, and many more are ill with the disease. The deaths are all taking place in the pueblos jovenes, the shantytowns which surround the city of Lima where only Amerindians live. The white limeñas have apparently not been affected, even though in the past they were the only Peruvian women who suffered from eating disorders. And given there are so many white people in Lima, the native Peruvian women in the shantytowns live in a perpetual state of fear. They are terrified by anyone who looks Caucasian and have even gotten to the point that a great number of them are wearing masks, to prevent inhaling the Pishtaco’s special powders, which they think are made from pulverized human bones.”
In the ensuing two weeks, we prepare our report. There are few anorexic women willing to talk to us, but many of the widowers seem almost eager to tell their tales. Mariana and I arrive at two working theories to include in our report. First, some of the women were apparently affected by Western body standards, and wanted to imitate foreign women, to the point that they even bleached their hair blonde. Second, some women were afraid that if they gained any weight, the Pishtaco would rape them and then kill them for their body fat. Mariana then suggests a third theory, which she realizes we could not possibly put in our report for USAID.
“What if the Pishtaco exists?” she asks. “What if he has finally decided to ruin the Runa people, to wipe them off the face of the earth?”
I have no response, although I too conclude there is no logical explanation for what is killing the Runa women. My expertise on eating disorders is useless. Our two principal theories collapse of their own weight.
There is only one “restaurant” in town, if it could even be called a restaurant. It is basically the patio of a woman who serves lunch and dinner for a meager twenty intis. I notice that every day, Mariana eats less.
“Thinking about this issue of weight so much, I have decided that I have to lose some weight myself. You say I am a beautiful woman. I would be far more beautiful if I shed a few more pounds.” Then she asks me in a wistful voice: “Do you truly think I am beautiful, Steve, or are you only interested in me for these few weeks we are sharing together? Are you sure that you’re not married?”
I do not know how to respond. The truth is that in the United States, in Maryland, I have a wife and son, and I certainly have no intentions of staying in Peru. But how can I explain that to someone who I suddenly realize is a vulnerable woman, who I suddenly realize is in danger of falling to the lures of the great Pishtaco, if only in a metaphorical sense? I am a wolf with women, I admit it, but I am not completely heartless. In all these weeks of lovemaking, I have developed a fondness for Mariana and the last thing I want is for her to develop anorexia. So I lie to her for a third time and tell her I’m not married, denying my wife Heather three times like Peter denied Jesus.
At any event, the days pass. We continue with our interrogations. Mariana gets thinner and thinner. Then something terrible happens. Bashue, the thirteen-year-old girl we had interviewed upon our arrival, dies from her anorexia and the men in town decide that it is my fault. Suddenly, more than three-hundred men are congregating in front of the house of the varayoc, demanding that he turn over the Pishtaco. As usual, Mariana translates everything that is said. The varayoc slowly walks to a window, and explains in his raspy voice that I am not the Pishtaco, just an American trying to help the Runa people free themselves from the scourge of a terrible plague. But the jornaleros12 will have none of his explanation.
They demand in unison, “Turn over the Pishtaco or we shall burn your house!”
“But he is an innocent man,” pleads the varayoc. “He has come to help you, so that we may regain a normal life. I shall turn over to you Anquimarca, who has been accused of raping a child. You can do with him what you will.”
“We want the Pishtaco!” scream the crowds. “That man, blonde, blue-eyed and bearded, who else could he be? What business does he have in our town? Is it a coincidence that Bashue died just after he met with her? Turn over the Pishtaco, old man, or we shall raze your house!”
The old varayoc turns to me and says, “There is nothing I can do. The men are drunk with chicha and furious, and they mean it when they say they shall burn down my house. They have held their fury in check for so long, and now they think they shall finally have the ability to exact their revenge.”
Then Mariana makes a last-ditch effort, appearing at the window.
“That man is my lover, me a Runa woman. If I thought he was the Pishtaco, do you think for a second I’d share my bed with him? To the contrary, he is here to find the Pishtaco, to stop the dying of all our women. Together we’ll find the Pishtaco, I can assure you of that, we’ll get at the origins of the plague which is killing Runa women throughout the country. Please don’t commit a mistake which will haunt you for the rest of your lives.”
But the crowds are hungry, their rage is omnivorous.
“Turn over the Pishtaco!” they exclaim. “We don’t want Anquimarca! Anquimarca has not killed hundreds of our women. It is that white devil you are housing who has ruined our lives.”
The varayoc looks at me with pity. “There is nothing I can do,” he says as he approaches the door to open it.
I must walk outside, where I shall be ripped to pieces.
And the Pishtaco will continue to roam the Andean highlands, perhaps suctioning off all of my Mariana’s fat and killing her.
1 The Amerindians of Peru describe themselves as the “Runa” people.
2 “Huanitos” is a type of music popular among the Amerindians of Peru’s mountainous regions.
3 The “quena” is a type of flute used by the Amerindians of Peru.
4 The “charango” is a musical instrument used by the Amerindians of Peru, similar to a small guitar.
5 A “huerta” is a small plot of land where the Amerindians grow their crops.
6 “Chicharrones” are fried fat, usually from pork, but the Indians believe that the Pishtaco eats chicharrones of human fat.
7 A “gamonal” is the owner of large haciendas.
8 A “senderista” is a member of Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso), a terrorist group that initiated a civil war in Peru during the 1980’s.
9 A vicuña is an animal found in the Andean highlands, similar to a llama.
10 “Chupe” is a type of potato soup.
11 “Cancha” is fried maize, similar to popcorn.
12 “Jornaleros” are day labourers.