Joe Stevens Mocks a Llama Page 3

  “Oh, museum! Great, great, there are great museums in Lima,” Louis said, waving his hands like he wanted someone to pat on the back. No one was within arm’s reach so he slapped one of his thick, bare-skinned thighs instead.

  Louis produced a map for us, complete with listings of all tourist destinations and interesting sights to be found. It was a simple piece of paper, a photocopy of a photocopy, and Louis poured over it with three different colored highlighters to show where we should go.

  “Here are the museums,” Louis said, circling the various locations and explaining what they had to offer, “Night clubs, bars, restaurants. You go this direction and you will find the best night life, find the best girls eh? Hehe. Take a cab. Ask them to go to the center of Lima. That will be the best museums. But make sure you do not go here.” Louis proceeded to highlight various black Xs that were placed in multiple locations throughout the map.

  “What do the Xs mean?” I asked.

  “Don’t go there. You will be robbed.”

  “Really?” Freddy asked, “Like, you might get robbed, it’s dangerous…”

  “No.” Louis thrust a sausage-sized finger onto the map. With the smile and laughter completely gone from his face and eyes, Louis pressed his finger three more times onto the map. “You will be robbed if you go here.”

  There were maybe twenty Xs. It was a big map, sure, but that was still a significant portion of the city of Lima that we were flat out not supposed visit, ever. I’ll sneak into an abandoned lighthouse, sure, but when a half-naked, fat hostel owner tells me to never go to a certain street, I’m strangely inclined to trust him implicitly.

  “So,” Louis continued, humor returned and his chubby fingers slapping together in satisfied conclusion, “I will call you a cab, and tell him to take you to central Lima. Be sure to get back to Miraflores tonight. That’s where the best nightclubs are. Prettier girls, much prettier, hehe.” Once again lacking a shoulder to pat for enthusiasm, Louis smacked his thigh and laughed hard enough it made Freddy step back a few more steps.

  Upon entering central Lima, I was immediately struck by the transition. The district known as Miraflores is a colorful, pleasantly seaside district. The district known as Central Lima is an odd mixture of Soviet-like apartment complexes and Spanish colonial government buildings. It was as if Moscow and Madrid had a love child that neither of them wanted and decided to drop it off in the jungle where no one could find it.

  This is not to say Central Lima is an unpleasant place. It’s quite pretty, actually.

  The central square, called Plaza Mayor, held many bright and polished buildings, the presidential palace, a massive church, and a plethora of other buildings all with intricately designed patios and columns holding up more patios.

  Our cab dropped us off at the edge of the square, because the crowd was thick enough the driver could not progress any further, although his repeated honking at pedestrians and parked cars made a considerable effort to defeat the crowd. Upon exiting, I swear Freddy nearly giggled and skipped as he spied a church set at the edge of the square.

  “Ooh, ooh, that’s Pizarro’s church! Look – look this is the church Pizarro built!” Freddy said with an enormous smile as he bounded to the crowded church entrance. Peruvians, both tourists and church-goers alike, were massed around the immense church doors and milling about around the dust and smoke-stained gray stones that made up the church’s exterior.

  “That guy who painted blue hexagonal guitars built a church in Peru?” I asked, following behind and hoping I didn’t lose Freddy in the crowd.

  “Not Picasso, Pizarro! He was a conquistador not a painter.”

  “Oh, yeah, that guy who conquered Peru or something.”

  “Not or something. Look.” Freddy stopped at the edge of one particular pillar on the church wall and pointed down at a large gray stone. Engraved in the stone were the words “Pizarro” and something else in Spanish.

  “Pizarro built this church,” Freddy said with a hushed voice that was barely discernible amidst the crowd, “He might have placed this very stone.” Freddy held his hands inches from the stone, giving the engraved letters a reverence that he did not extend to the rest of the church surrounding this frankly unassuming hunk of rock.

  “If I recall my history, didn’t he also massacre a bunch of the locals?”

  “One does not have to be good to be significant. Genocidal intentions or not, the man who placed this stone had a monumental impact on this continent’s history.”

  I looked around at the square where the church was set. Far on the other corner of the square, opposite where the church lay, I could see a large building with white walls and guards carrying rifles marching in formation before black-lacquered gates. People were standing and watching the guards march around, while a brass band played in what looked to me like a poorly-rehearsed formation.

  “You are interested in Pizarro, yes?” I heard a voice ask in heavily-accented Spanish.

  Turning about I came face to face with a bone-skinny man wearing a suit and tie that not only did not match but seemed to cling to his body like the long-dried rags of a buried corpse. The man’s smile stretched a thin mustache across his lips that twitched at the edges.

  Before I could scream in girlish terror at the sight of this ghoul, Freddy stepped toward the skinny man and said, “Yes. Did he place this stone?”

  “He did, yes, yes, he did.”

  “He built this church?”

  “Yes, yes he built this church. Built it beginning with his own hands, Pizarro did. Are you interested in learning more about the history of the Plaza Mayor?”

  “I don’t…” I began, hoping to find a gap in the crowd to flee inside the church in hopes that this mustachioed man could not pass over the threshold. I have no idea about supernatural creatures or otherwise dangerous foes but it made sense to me at the moment that such things may have difficulty crossing thresholds, especially church thresholds.

  “Yes we would,” Freddy interrupted before I could escape safely across the church threshold.

  “Wonderful! So, I can give you a walking tour, yes, yes? I will show you all the places of Plaza Mayor and all that Pizarro placed in this history of Lima,” the skinny man explained.

  “A walking tour? That sounds fun. That sounds fun, right Joe?”

  At that moment I was more concerned with worrying over whether or not the skinny man held some sort of supernatural control over the minds he encountered if you made direct eye contact with him. Thus distracted, I was unable to tell Freddy that I in no way recommended trusting this man with giving us a tour.

  “How much is it?” Freddy asked.

  “Eighty soles,” the skinny man responded.

  That amounted to about twenty dollars. Not a small number but quite reasonable if what the man offered was true. Unreasonable if he intended to chop off our arms with a machete.

  “We’ll take it,” Freddy said before I could offer an objection, or an exorcism.

  “Yes, yes, very good. We start with this church.” The skinny man practically shoved his way through the crowd of people milling about in front of the church, and they quickly parted for our impromptu walking tour. Shockingly, the church’s threshold did not pose a threat to the skinny tour guide. Instead, he led us through the church and its multi-colored chapels, explaining to me and an ever-fascinated Freddy the details of who had built parts of the church and why.

  After this, the skinny guide checked his little plastic wristwatch. With a look of shock, he informed Freddy and I that the next church would be closing in twenty minutes and we would have to run to get there.

  Freddy dragged me along in hurried enthusiasm as the skinny guide shouted curses to those in our way so they’d part for our passage. From there we went down a narrow alleyway toward another church.

  At each new building, and each break in the streets, the skinny guide pointed out something of historical interest. With one hand he would point out how the intricately ca
rved window panels on a particularly fascinating porch displayed the melding of native Inca and colonial architecture. With the other hand he was rubbing thumb and forefinger together, licking his lips and glancing at Freddy, as though he were massaging an invisible knife and pondering what it would look like protruding from Freddy’s eyeballs.

  “Hurry, hurry, yes-yes,” the skinny guide said as he led us through the narrow alley. Much to my surprise, we actually did reach the church at the end of this alley and were not cornered by razor-toting zombies hungering for the salty flesh of Americans.

  The church was black and imposing, made of dark-colored wood that added intensity to its carvings and arches. We made it to the church just before its massive wooden doors closed behind us.

  Apparently the church was having a service of some kind, a Catholic service and thankfully not some sort of flesh-eating cult service, so the skinny guide had to speak in hushed tones.

  “This church,” the guide said beneath the calls to worship from the pulpit, “Was built after the church that Pizarro built. Yes, yes, it was for the nobility, not the peasants.”

  Freddy made note of how the gilding over black iron architecture mimicked the gilding the nobility placed over their own entitled sense of control over the population. I made note of how the skinny guide cracked his knuckles and adjusted his faded tie when the church congregation launched into recitations of Hail Mary’s and prayers.

  The guide led us to various similar places of rest and holiness for the church and for the city of Lima. There was a monastery that at one point had been the home of a couple saints in the Catholic church, along with a similarly holy nunnery.

  “Now, there has yet to be rain in twenty five years, yes, yes, at least not of any big amount,” the skinny guide said as he led us out of the monastery and past what looked to be a gaping trench just past the Plaza Mayor square. This was not a trench, however, but a dried up riverbed. The skinny guide, Freddy, and I stood at an iron fence that separated the Plaza Mayor from the deep riverbed, looking across the trench and into its empty expanse. Not a drop of water existed in the trench, and I was suddenly fascinated that such a large riverbed could have dried up so completely.

  The ocean was just a few miles away. What climactic change or shift could have occurred to make this happen was beyond me, but I suddenly realized why so much of Lima was dirty and unkempt. The whole city just needed a good washing nature was twenty five years late in delivering.

  I was so fascinated with the skinny guide’s description of the lack of rain that I ignored the way he was rubbing the tips of the fence, his eyes closed and one hand reaching toward Freddy.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling Freddy away from the skinny guide and the precipitous edge, “I think we’re about done.”

  “But we still have to see the catacombs,” Freddy insisted.

  “Yes, yes, the catacombs. Must not forget the catacombs,” the skinny guide insisted with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, “Follow me.” The guide took one last, nostalgic touch at the iron fence and led us back toward Pizarro’s church.

  I actually led the way, wanting no proximity to the fence we’d just left, but quickly eased my pace upon reaching a large cathedral set just beyond the central square.

  “This is the last part of the tour,” the skinny guide informed us, and kept walking past the cathedral, “Yes, yes, but what you really want to see, what is the best part of the tour, is the inquisition museum. We will save the catacombs for the finale, yes, yes.”

  “There was an inquisition in Peru?” Freddy asked.

  “Of course there was. If you questioned the church, or the government, pow!” The skinny guide punched a fist into his open palm and laughed. “They inquisition you.”

  “I didn’t know inquisition was a verb,” I noted.

  I soon discovered, however, that inquisition could very easily be classified as a verb. And God help the poor souls who were inquisitioned.

  The museum of the inquisition was not far from the main plaza, it turned out, and the guide led us toward its seemingly plain, white-washed edifice. There was a guard standing at the door of the square-shaped building and the museum was apparently closed. But this didn’t stop the skinny guide. He walked right past the guard, saying, “Yes, yes, come, come,” when I hesitated at the door, and led us inside.

  It was true that the museum was not open to the public at the moment, as motion-sensing lights switched on at our entrance. “Um, Freddy,” I said at the sight of the first room. It was a Salem-witch-trials-like courtroom. Carved beams, thick as trees and intricately designed, crisscrossed the ceiling while equally thick benches decorated the floor. At the front were mannequins depicting a judge, a priest, and a man with his hands bound behind his back. All the mannequins were faceless, simple depictions that made the room seem almost fake. The building’s smell of age, however, challenged any assumption that this was a false display of history.

  Before Freddy could respond to my hesitant, slightly echoing words of caution, the skinny guide stepped behind the mannequin depicting the faceless judge and spoke loud enough to shut me right up.

  “This was where they were judged, where they brought your crimes and told you to confess” the skinny guide said, bone-like fingers hovering over the judge mannequin’s neck as if preparing to strangle the faceless prop. He went on to explain the process, how those placed before the judge were proclaimed heretics and not worthy of living, and that the only way they could escape damnation was to confess their heresy.

  Practically skipping, the guide led us to the next room. Walking along creaking, wooden planks of age-stained wood, Freddy and I followed into what looked like a children’s toy room. That was what the white-washed walls and plain-faced mannequins on platforms, and the applauding smiles of the guide, made me initially think. In a reversal of my first impression, I realized that the platforms and toy-like pieces were not playthings, but torture devices.

  The whole room had a clinical feel to it, as if what the faceless torturers and their faceless victims were doing was merely a necessary procedure and not inhuman cruelty.

  “This is where they were tortured,” the skinny guide said, placing a hand on the crank that made the torture device in front of us, commonly called “the rack,” stretch a victim’s limbs to tearing.

  “Don’t stand too close to the ropes,” I informed Freddy, one eye kept on the skinny guide’s hands.

  Pincers and prods, heat and hunger, hundreds of different implements were laid out in this room with only the skinny guide’s grinning explanation to reveal their horrific use. “Confess, they would cry,” the skinny guy shouted, grabbing a poking rod from a mock fireplace and brandishing it with what I swear was a fire in his eyes.

  In response I threw Freddy aside and grabbed a nearby plastic spear prop, brandishing it in self defense.

  “Knock it off, Joe,” Freddy said, swatting the fake spear out of my hands and, to my horror, stepping once more into the path of the skinny guide’s fire poker, “You’re lucky these are just fakes.”

  “Some of them are fakes, yes, yes,” the skinny guide said, adding no further comment as he returned what I discovered was a plastic poker to the fake fireplace, “Come. You must see the final room.”

  Up until now, the displays had all been in the wood-paneled, civilized-seeming confines of the building proper. Where the skinny guide led us next, we had to descend steps. These steps were lit only with a single bulb, which cast yellow shadows on bare stone steps that were scarred and crooked from being cut in jagged haste.

  At the bottom of the steps were black-iron guarded indentions in the walls. These looked to be no bigger than a person could lay across, and literally carved out of the bedrock.

  “These were the cells,” the skinny guide explained, opening the creaking gate to one of the carved rock cells and beckoning us to enter.

  Every bit of my instincts immediately flashed warning lights, telling me with an instinctual bat to the
head that it was a bad idea to willingly enter sealable confines at the whims of a man who was grinning like that! Freddy, apparently, had no such lights in his head and rushed inside.

  “Come on, Joe, don’t be stupid. Get in,” Freddy said, insisting I follow. I hesitated, in no way supported by the guide’s grin, but upon Freddy’s continued urging I joined him in the cramped rock cell.

  “They would be locked in here, starved and tortured,” the skinny guide said and shut the door. Without hesitation, the skinny guide turned back toward the staircase. “And of course, these lights are new. Those imprisoned would be in complete darkness, at all times.”

  “What if they confessed?” Freddy asked, sticking his hands out the cells with an excited smile, thoroughly enjoying himself as I tested the door.

  The door did not open.

  “They were killed.”

  “They were killed even if they confessed? Even if they converted?”

  “The inquisitions weren’t about converting. They were about power, about proving the power of the church, and destroying any who questioned it,” the skinny guide said. His hand then moved to the old single light bulb that lit the cells and pulled on its chain, encasing Freddy and I in complete darkness.

  One part of my mind was roaring in terror. The other just sort of sat back, looked down on me from a third person perspective and said, “Yup. I told you, Joe. You’re an idiot and now you’re going to be killed by snakes or occultists or snake occultists,” while sipping a cognac from a fancy leather chair.

  I hate that sensible cognac-sipping jerk Joe Stevens. He’s so self-righteous. But darn it he was right!

  “Isn’t this exciting, Joe?” Freddy asked, an invisible voice just to my right.

  “Hey. Hey come back here!” I shouted after the skinny guide, shaking the aged iron bars and finding that they’d been built effectively and built to last, “Come back here!”

  “He’s really giving us an experience.”

  I couldn’t see Freddy but I assumed he had an enormous smile on his face. My face, however, was tensing with the effort of trying to pull five hundred year-old metal out of the bedrock.