The Autobiography of Red (18 page)

Geryon sat in the back seat watching the edge of Herakles’ face.

 

He had dreamed of thorns. A forest of huge blackish-brown thorn trees

 

where creatures that looked

 

like young dinosaurs (yet they were strangely lovely) went crashing

 

through underbrush and tore

 

their hides which fell behind them in long red strips. He would call

 

the photograph “Human Valentines.”

 

Herakles in the front seat rolled down his window to buy a tamale.

 

They were driving

 

through downtown Lima. At each traffic light the car was surrounded

 

by a swarm of children

 

selling food, cassettes, crucifixes, American dollar bills, and Inca Kola.

 

Vamos!
shouted Herakles

 

pushing the arms of several children out of the car as Ancash’s mother

 

shifted gears and shot the car ahead.

 

Bright smells of tamale filled the car. Ancash sank back to sleep

 

with his head against

 

a thick knot of greasy cloth plugging one of the holes in the side of the car.

 

Got an air-conditioned one!

 

Herakles had announced with a grin when he returned from the rental place.

 

Ancash’s mother said nothing,

 

as was her custom, but motioned him out of the driver’s seat. Then she

 

took the wheel and off they went.

 

They drove for hours through the filthy white sludge of Lima suburbs

 

where houses were bags of cement

 

piled up to a cardboard roof or automobile tires in a circle with one tire

 

burning in the middle.

 

Geryon watched children in spotless uniforms with pointy white collars

 

emerge from the cardboard houses

 

and make their way along the edge of the highway laughing jumping holding

 

their bookbags high. Then Lima ended.

 

The car was enclosed in a dense fist of fog. They drove on blindly. No sign

 

of road or sea. The sky got dark.

 

Just as suddenly fog ended and they came out on an empty plateau where

 

sheer green walls of sugarcane

 

rose straight up on both sides of the car. Sugarcane ended. They drove up

 

and up and up and up

 

around switchbacks carved out of bare rock higher and higher all afternoon.

 

Passed one or two other cars

 

then they were entirely alone as the sky lifted them towards itself.

 

Ancash was asleep.

 

His mother did not speak. Herakles was strangely silent. What is he thinking?

 

Geryon wondered.

 

Geryon watched prehistoric rocks move past the car and thought about thoughts.

 

Even when they were lovers

 

he had never known what Herakles was thinking. Once in a while he would say,

 

Penny for your thoughts!

 

and it always turned out to be some odd thing like a bumper sticker or a dish

 

he’d eaten in a Chinese restaurant years ago.

 

What Geryon was thinking Herakles never asked. In the space between them

 

developed a dangerous cloud.

 

Geryon knew he must not go back into the cloud. Desire is no light thing.

 

He could see the thorns gleam

 

with their black stains. Herakles had once told him he had a fantasy

 

of being made love to in a car

 

by a man who tied his hands to the door. Perhaps he is thinking of that now,

 

thought Geryon as he watched

 

the side of Herakles’ face. The car all of a sudden flew up in the air and crashed

 

down again onto the road.

 

Madonna!
spat out Ancash’s mother. She shifted gears as they lurched forward.

 

The road had been getting steadily

 

rockier during their ascent and now was little more than a dirt path strewn

 

with boulders. It seemed

 

that darkness had descended but then the car rounded a curve and the sky

 

rushed open before them—

 

bowl of gold where the last moments of sunset were exploding—then another curve

 

and blackness snuffed out all.

 

I really could go for a hamburger right now,
Herakles announced.

 

Ancash moaned in his sleep.

 

Ancash’s mother said nothing. The car passed a small cement house with no roof.

 

Then another. Then a huddle

 

of women squatting on the ground smoking cigarettes in the glare of the moon.

 

Huaraz,
said Geryon.

 

Water boils in Huaraz at seventy degrees centigrade.

 

It is very high. The altitude will set your heart jumping. The town is held in a ring

 

of bare sandrock mountains

 

but to the north rises one sudden angular fist of total snow.
Andes!
cried Herakles

 

as he entered the dining room.

 

They had stayed overnight in Huaraz’ Hotel Turístico. The dining room faced north

 

and was so dark against

 

the morning light outside they were all momentarily blinded. They sat.

 

I think we are the only guests

 

in this hotel,
said Geryon looking around the empty tables. Ancash nodded.

 

No tourism in Peru anymore.

 

No foreigners? No foreigners, no Peruvians either. Nobody goes north of Lima

 

these days. Why?
said Geryon.

 

Fear,
said Ancash.
This coffee tastes weird,
said Herakles. Ancash poured coffee

 

and tasted it then spoke to his mother in Quechua.

 

She says it’s got blood in it. What do you mean blood? Cow blood, it’s a local recipe. Supposed to

 

strengthen your heart.

 

Ancash leaned toward his mother and said something that made her laugh.

 

But Herakles was gazing out the window.

 

This light is amazing!
he said
Looks like TV!
Now he was putting on his jacket.

 

Who wants to go exploring?

 

Soon they were proceeding up the main street of Huaraz. It rises in sharp relations

 

of light towards the fist of snow.

 

Lining both sides of the street are small wooden tables where you can buy Chiclets,

 

pocket calculators, socks,

 

round loaves of hot bread, televisions, lengths of leather, Inca Kola, tombstones,

 

bananas, avocados, aspirin,

 

soap,
AAA
batteries, scrub brushes, car headlights, coconuts, American novels,

 

American dollars. The tables

 

are manned by women as small and tough as cowboys who wear layers of skirts

 

and a black fedora. Men wearing

 

dusty black suits and the fedora stand about in knots for discussion. Children

 

dressed in blue school uniforms

 

or track suits and the fedora chase around the tables. There are a few smiles,

 

many broken teeth, no anger.

 

Ancash and his mother were speaking Quechua all the time now or else Spanish

 

with Herakles. Geryon kept

 

the camera in his hand and spoke little. I am disappearing, he thought

 

but the photographs were worth it.

 

A volcano is not a mountain like others. Raising a camera to one’s face has effects

 

no one can calculate in advance.

 

It is a photograph of four people sitting around a table with hands in front of them.

 

The pipe glows on a small clay bowl

 

in the middle. Beside it a kerosene lamp. Monstrous rectangles flare up the walls.

 

I will call it “Origin of Time,”

 

thought Geryon as a terrible coldness came through the room from somewhere.

 

It was taking him a very long while

 

to set up the camera. Enormous pools of a moment kept opening around his hands

 

each time he tried to move them.

 

Coldness was planing the sides off his vision leaving a narrow canal down which

 

the shock— Geryon sat

 

on the floor suddenly. He had never been so stoned in his life. I am too naked,

 

he thought. This thought seemed profound.

 

And I want to be in love with someone. This too fell on him deeply. It is all wrong.

 

Wrongness came like a lone finger

 

chopping through the room and he ducked.
What was that?
said one of the others

 

turning towards him centuries later.

 

It is a close-up photograph of Geryon’s left pant leg just below the knee.

 

Resting the camera on the rear window of the car Geryon is watching the road

 

fall away behind them

 

into a light so brilliant it feels cold and hot at once. The car hurtles over gravel

 

and rock traveling

 

almost vertically on the steep mountain track that leads up to Icchantikas.

 

Car travel gives some people hemorrhoids.

 

Each time the car bounces him up and down Geryon utters a little red cry.

 

No one hears him.

 

Herakles and Ancash in the front seat are (in English) discussing Yeats which

 

Ancash pronounces Jeats.

 

Not Jeats. Yeats,
says Herakles.
What? Yeats not Jeats. Sounds the same to me.

 

It’s like the difference between Jell-O and yellow.

 

Jellow?

 

Herakles sighs.

 

English is a bitch,
Ancash’s mother announces unexpectedly from the back seat

 

and that closes it—

 

Ancash hits the brakes and the car jumps to a halt. Geryon’s hot apple icepicks

 

all the way up his anus to his spine

 

as four soldiers appear from nowhere to surround the car. Geryon is focusing

 

the camera on their guns

 

when Ancash’s mother slides her left hand over the shutter and gently forces it

 

out of sight between Geryon’s knees.