As Kate rounds the corner of the square she sees the bus station, teeming with families, the women swaying in their wide skirts, carrying bundles easily with their babies tucked neatly in the scarlet-and-tangerine and green-and-yellow shawls slung around their backs. With small knitted caps tied firmly under their chins, the babies stare wide-eyed at the commotion around them. There are middle-class businessmen, schoolteachers, and across the room, a tall, thin young man with long hair tied back in a ponytail, dressed in jeans and sandals. He must be Peace Corps, Kate thinks, as he nods unsmilingly at her.
She stares at the blackboard with the destinations and times written in chalk. She could go east to Vitor, then north to Nazca, Ica, Pisco, Chilca, Callao, and finally Lima. Or she could head west, back into the highlands.
She steps up to the cashier’s window and asks for a ticket to Lima. The thin, mustachioed man looks up when he hears her American accent.
“Ida y vuelta?” he asks.
“Ida, no más,” she answers faintly. One way. She would not be returning. She counts out the soles carefully, and slips the now much smaller roll deep in the pocket of her habit. She looks around for the bathroom, hoping her period has not begun. In the grimy stall she is reassured for now. She splashes water on her face and scrubs her hands. She doesn’t dare drink this water.
She takes a seat next to an Aymara family. The husband moves down the long bench to make room. The children gaze at her and whisper something in Aymara to their mother. Both the woman and her husband laugh, and the man whispers to Kate, “The children say you are una muñeca, with blue eyes.” Kate laughs.
Finally, at nine thirty, the bus for Lima pulls up in front of the station, half full of passengers from the Altiplano. Shouting over the crowd, the driver herds the waiting passengers toward the bus, and they surge forward, clutching parcels and boxes. Kate, without baggage, arrives first and takes the third seat on the right behind the driver. Two women get on the bus chattering in high-pitched voices, giggling and swaying down the aisle, and Kate realizes they have been drinking. She is surprised, for in the mountains the women are serious and dignified, even when their men are falling down drunk at a carnival. One wide woman in a bowler hat squeezes in next to Kate, plumps herself down with a great sigh, and arranges her many parcels beneath the seat. By the time the bus pulls out of the courtyard, the woman is asleep.
Kate stares out the window at the elegant neighborhood the bus is passing through. They travel down a wide, tree-shaded street, on both sides of which are high walls with massive wooden gates. Once in a while Kate glimpses a villa, its white walls gleaming in the sun, scarlet bougainvillea spilling over wrought-iron balconies. Kate hasn’t seen this part of Peru, the world of great wealth, in which, she imagines, sons were sent to Brown and daughters to Vassar, and women shopped in Miami, Paris, and New York, and men deposited their money in Swiss banks, safe from the dangerous currents of Peruvian politics. Kate has heard Tom and the other priests talk about privileged children, products of exclusive schools run by the Jesuits and the Religious of the Sacred Heart. Surely they had been exposed to the teachings of the Church on social justice, but the consciences of many of the rich remained serenely undisturbed by their fine Catholic educations. No wonder many missionaries followed with great interest Che Guevara’s recent attempt to arouse the Bolivian peasants to join the struggle for change.
She remembers how one Sunday Tom had read out the gospel of St. Matthew to the impassive faces of their small congregation, with a handful of middle-class families sitting in the front at Santa Catalina. “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and did nothing for you?’ And he will answer, ‘I tell you this: anything you did not do for one of these however humble, you did not do for me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
The engine groans in low gear as they climb the final mountain range before descending to the coast and the Pan-American highway that leads north to the capital. Suddenly Kate hears the brakes grind, and the driver, swearing slowly and methodically under his breath, stops the bus. When Kate notices a line of soldiers stretched across the highway, she thinks there must have been an accident. Then she hears a few people mutter, “Contrabando,” and she realizes this is a blockade to search for smuggled goods. According to Father Jack, the border patrol at Desaguadero between Peru and Bolivia is notoriously sloppy as well as greedy; Bolivian goods were constantly being smuggled in and traded at the extensive black market in Lima.
The driver leaps from his seat and flings open the door. He is met by two serious young soldiers who demand his papers, oblivious to his strenuous complaints. Then one of the soldiers boards the bus. Stooping a little as he peers in, he barks the orders: all Peruvian citizens are to get off the bus with their baggage and have their papers ready to be inspected. Kate feels her throat go dry and she sits very still, remembering her passport in the drawer of her desk in Juliaca. She glances at the Peace Corps worker who is pulling his papers from his knapsack. Suddenly the woman next to Kate wakes. She leans over Kate to peer out the window at the soldiers, and her breath reeks of chicha, warm and intimate on Kate’s face. Swiftly she bends down to a small bundle at her feet and slides it under Kate’s seat.
She speaks directly
