Hesitating, Kate tries to sift through the facts; she’d tell him just enough truth but not too much. His eyes focus intently on her face, and Kate struggles to breathe in the stifling room.
“First of all,” she begins, “the beer beneath my seat wasn’t mine. It was put there by someone sitting next to me, and I did not want to cause her trouble.” She watches him to see if he accepts this. His face remains impassive.
“Go on,” he nods.
“I left Juliaca rather suddenly,” Kate says in halting Spanish. “I had some problems and I needed to get away for a little while. So I hitched a ride to Arequipa.”
“With whom?” Vargas watches her.
“With an Englishman from Cambridge University, Peter Grinnell.”
Vargas’s eyes widen, and he asks her to spell the name for him, writing it down carefully on a scrap of paper. “So where is this Englishman now?” Vargas looks faintly incredulous.
“I . . . I don’t know. He was staying on in Arequipa for a few days, and then going back to England for vacation.”
A knock on the door, and the fat sergeant with pockmarked skin brings in two Orange Crushes and two cloudy drinking glasses. Glancing insolently at Kate, he puts the sodas on the desk in front of his superior, and adjusts the pistol hanging carelessly from a belt around his bulging middle.
“Algo más, teniente?”
He looks hopefully at Vargas, who nods no without a word. Carefully, the lieutenant pours the orange soda into a glass and places it before Kate; then he pours one for himself and sips delicately, deliberately. He nods at Kate to drink; when she tastes the sweetness of the childish orange drink she feels unexpected tears. What is she doing here? Vargas looks at her and then away. Has he seen the sudden weakness his small kind act had aroused? As if reading her mind, he changes the tone of the interrogation.
Vargas gets up and walks around the room. “I would like to ask you something that I have often wondered about when I see the American priests and nuns and even Peace Corps workers coming to our country. Why are you here? Aren’t there problems in your own country? Last year your president was assassinated, and everyday I read in El Comercio of the growing tensions between the blacks and whites in America. There are riots in your cities, no?”
Stalling for time, Kate takes a gulp of soda. How can she answer his question? It was one she’d asked herself hundreds of times since she had come to Peru. She decides to be frank with her inquisitor. “Yes, there are many serious problems in my country. Before I came to Peru I was teaching in a school in a poor area of St. Louis. The school had just combined two segregated schools into one. You understand that in America, until very recently, white children and black children did not go to the same schools?” She’s chattering, she knows, hoping to distract him, to win him.
He nods.
“The black children and parents were unhappy that their school had been closed, and the whites felt the same. Everyday there were fights, lots of name calling, and almost unbearable tension. Many days I would go into the bathroom and cry, where the students couldn’t see me, because I got so tired of all the hatred.” She looks up to see him watching her closely. His glass is untouched on the desk, a white stain spreading on the wood beneath it from the moisture.
She hesitates, thinking what to say next, wishing her Spanish were better. “Little by little my students began to listen to each other. I made them read a book called Black Boy by Richard Wright.”
Vargas says nothing, his eyes flat.
“It tells the story of a young black boy growing up in the South. At first the students hated reading it, but then they began arguing about it, shouting at each other, writing about their feelings when they read it. A slow change came over the classroom during the year. For the first time the white children began to see how it would feel to be a black child in America. And the black students saw white children really listening to them and trying to understand what they were saying.” Breathless now from the effort of the Spanish, Kate admits in a weak voice, “It was a very small change.”
Vargas gets up from his chair and paces around the room. “But you still haven’t answered my question: Why have you come here? You must see that your presence here seems patronizing to us. Peru has a very old and very complicated civilization and history. Missionaries have been coming here since the time of the Inca Conquest.”
Kate winces, expecting another attack.
Vargas continues without looking at her, walking back and forth like a college professor giving a lecture. “Have you read anything by José Mariátegui?” he asks suddenly. When Kate shakes her head no, he goes over to a bookshelf and pulls out a slim volume. “He has a wonderful essay in here on the Catholic Church’s genius in adapting itself to the customs and beliefs of the people it tries to convert. He gives credit to the early missionaries of Peru who brought not only dogma but seeds, vines, tools.” Changing the subject, the lieutenant looks at her directly. “What did you study in school? Theology?”
“Well, yes, but my major field was British and American literature.”
“Ah, Wordsworth, Keats. Do you like Faulkner?”
“No, not really.”
“To me he is the greatest American novelist. You should read him if you want a picture of a decaying, crumbling feudal society.” Vargas smiles, a half-embarrassed look flitting across his face. “I am sorry. I do not often have the chance to speak of
