The ticket agent does not even look up when she asks for a ticket to Lima.
“Ida y vuelta?” he inquired automatically.
“Ida, no más,” she replies. She will not be needing a return ticket. What has she done? Up until now her flight has been an adventure, a dream. Luck has been with her, as the condor she’d seen that first night promised. In Ica especially, she had been lulled into a false sense of ease. Now she is more confused and afraid than she’s been since the day she left the convent in Juliaca. Lima is a big city; she can no longer count on the “kindness of strangers,” as Blanche Dubois would say.
What is she doing in Peru anyway? She hadn’t been prepared for this country; learning Spanish wasn’t enough. She doesn’t understand the politics. Her work in the Altiplano seems trivial in the face of great poverty. She remembers Lt. Vargas: “We alone will change Peru.”
She buys a ticket for Lima. By seven o’clock that morning Kate is on the bus headed toward Pisco and the Pacific Ocean. They are leaving the green oasis of the valley. But as the highway heads north and west, the green gives way to great white sand dunes and she is in a desert. The landscape is moonlike, and the fine powdered rocks of desert sand blow against the windows of the bus, making sharp pinging sounds like hail. Through the dust a white chapel with two towers appears. The small crossing is marked “Pozo Santo,” Holy Well.
By eight-thirty the bus pulls into the first stop, the station in Pisco. Kate looks out at a statue in the center of the plaza, shaded by dusty ficus trees. The station is crowded as people mill around between the buses and colectivos parked everywhere. Here the roads to Cuzco, Lima, and the South converge. Kate has never seen Cuzco and the ruins at Machu Picchu, and for a crazy moment wonders if she has enough money for a ticket there..
She gets off the bus and follows the other passengers into the wide-roofed station. Tourists, many of them American it seems, wait in line for tours by boat and bus of the Ballestas Islands. Josepha and Jeanne had stopped here once, and they had gone out to the islands covered with guano. They told her of the terns, cormorants, penguins, and the strange blue birds called boobies. The sea around the islands was black with seals and sea lions.
But she isn’t a tourist. She is a poor runaway who is starving. She stares at a little boy who walks by chewing a roll. She can smell coffee and feels in her pocket for the few bills she has left. She walks back outside where the vendors are squatting on the ground in front of the bus station. She buys a roll and tries to buy a single banana. An old woman squints up at her, shading her eyes from the sun.
“Buy the whole bunch,” she urges. Her smile reveals a gap where her front teeth should have been.
“No, gracias, señora,” said Kate. “Only one.”
The woman’s smile fades and she looks away. “I do not sell them like that. The whole bunch or nothing.”
Kate knows this isn’t true. Many people buy a single piece of fruit. The woman can see she is a foreigner. The fact that she is also a nun means nothing to the woman. Kate stands still a minute, trying to decide which is more important, her hunger or her desire to call the woman’s bluff. She feels a flush of anger.
“Señora, I will buy the whole bunch. How much is it?”
“For you, madrecita, I will only charge five soles.” Her smile has returned, and she quickly wraps the fruit in a small piece of paper. Kate murmurs her thanks, and, slowly, knowing that the woman is watching her, tears off one banana and offers the rest to a woman nearby who is nursing her baby. The young mother accepts the gift stoically, with no motion of surprise or gratitude. Kate feels a twinge of shame at her gesture of charity, which was done to spite the vendor who angered her. Well, the mother probably needs the nourishment. Or maybe she will sell the fruit for something else.
She looks around for a place to sit and eat, when she notices the bus driver herding his passengers back in for the final push on to Lima. She runs across the street, stuffing her breakfast into the jacket. She had meant to buy some coffee, but now it’s too late.
She boards the bus and takes a seat next to a window on the left side, so she can see the ocean. Then she sees a girl walking up and down beside the bus selling sodas, passing them up to the passengers seated on the bus. She stands up and leans her head out of the window to ask for a Coke. The girl’s eyes are bright. Kate clasps her hand through the open window.
By now the bus is full, yet the driver lets more and more people on. They crowd the aisles, leaning over the seated passengers, reading their newspapers or stooping to look out the window. Kate is starving. She turns toward the window as far as she can and tears off a piece of bread under the jacket. It is delicious, and she tries to eat slowly. The bus winds through the narrow road out of Pisco, and soon they are back on the highway. Now Kate gives in to her hunger and devours the bread and fruit, not caring who is watching her. She drinks the warm Coke slowly, forcing
