As they waited in front of the cathedral for Sister Josepha to finish her rosary, Kate admired the modest courtyard to the side, a riot of red and purple and yellow flowers. She walked over and bent low to smell the poppies and chrysanthemums. There were wild flowers she had never seen, whose spiked blue and white shafts blended in a lush bed against the wall of the courtyard. Josepha joined them, and cried out at the sight of a garden that rivaled her own. Then she went to see if the small museum was open, hoping to find a caretaker who could give her some seeds. But the place was closed. Everyone had gone to the festival.
Now they were in the street, and the smell of roasting beef reminded Kate of supper. She eyed the anticuchos hungrily, watching the man deftly slip the bite-sized chunks of meat on straw skewers while stirring sizzling pieces in the iron skillet on his stand. Kate looked at Sister Josepha. “I’m famished!”
They bought six skewers, and Jeanne looked around for something to drink. There were chicha stands on every corner, and men were staggering through the streets after hours of celebrating. After finding a vendor selling sodas, they bought Cokes and sat together on a bench near the main plaza to eat. Kate ate greedily; the meat was spicy and hot. She licked her fingers behind her handkerchief, hoping no one noticed.
Later the three nuns followed the crowds to a small stadium on a hill about twenty minutes outside of the town where rickety wooden bleachers had been set up. The scene reminded Kate of a high-school football game. They watched as group after group of fantastically dressed devil dancers swayed before them. Each town for miles around had a brotherhood of dancers. Jeanne told Kate how the men worked on their costumes all year, spending their meager funds on spangles and gold trim, which the women sewed into the fine cloth of gold and silk. Devils were everywhere with leering masks, prancing with giant phalluses swinging between their legs. Some dancers wore cartoon masks to portray the Spanish Conquerors beneath helmets of silver and gold. The women, in layers of petticoats called polleras, twisted and swung to the incessant beat of the drums and the high whine of the flutes. On their heads were huge feathered hats from which dangled streamers of curly silk ribbons.
A float bearing the Inca was pulled in by a dozen men in bright red costumes. Kate watched one woman, taller and more slender than the others, twirl her handkerchief high in the air, bowing and weaving among the men who surrounded her. As it grew dark, the temperature plunged rapidly, a cool breeze coming off the Lake. Torches were lit, for there was no electricity this far from the town. In the swirling dust the dancing figures took on a red, hazy hue, as if they were performing in a lake of fire. On and on the music played.
By now the dancers were drunk; Kate saw more than one person fall as he danced, and roll out of the way of the others. Sister Josepha stood up abruptly. “I think we’ve seen enough, Sisters.”
Soon the nuns were working their way through the crowds milling around the stadium. A man turned to them as they passed, and Kate saw his penis in his hands. He bowed and greeted them, his urine plunging in a steady stream at their feet.
Later, in their room, Kate stood at the window in her nightgown. Both Josepha and Jeanne Marie were asleep, and someone was snoring softly. Kate gazed at the people in the plaza below. The music was muted, but in the distance she heard the blare of horns. A man and woman staggered together, their arms around each other. They stopped beneath a tree, and in the dim light of the plaza Kate watched their bodies meld into a long passionate kiss. She felt a stirring deep inside, a fierce ache of desire like a clutching hand within. She and Tom should be below in the street, tipsy and happy, on their way home from a dance. She wanted to press against him and feel the length and hardness of his body against hers. But that would never be if they obeyed the rules she had so naively set.
What had Tom thought of her letter? That she was a green girl, like Ophelia, “unsifted in such perilous circumstances”? Green she was at love, she thought as she lay down on the thin mattress and watched the moonlight through the gauze curtains. Outside the music throbbed in the long night of the festival of Copacabana.
C
hapter Fourteen
Sunday, June 28, 1964
The bus winds along the coast through fog, twisting like Kate’s thoughts. She leans her head against the window, finally dozing in a fitful sleep punctuated by the huayno music coming from the driver’s portable radio. When she awakes, the gray light of dawn gleams on the Pacific, its waves crashing against the long stretch of beach. Kate drinks in the lonely beauty. Through the dusty windows to her left she glimpses sand dunes, spectral white in the early light. The curves and billows of the dunes swim before her like ghostly whales amidst blowing sand spray from the desert ocean. For all is desert now, all the way up the coast, yet beyond, the ocean stretches to the horizon.
Kate swallows the rest of the Coke she has saved and munches on the last of her roll. Gazing out at the moon-like landscape, she mumbles the words of Lauds, the morning prayer: “Now in the sun’s new dawning ray, lowly of heart our God we pray . . .”
By mid-morning, as the highway enters a green valley, the