Andean Express by Juan de Recacoechea Read Free Book Online Page A

in an office downtown in a well-preserved two-story building. At first he refused to see Rocha, claiming that he was too busy with work; however, several days later, upon noticing Rocha sitting in the lobby, he decided it would be better to attend to him once and for all and be done with it. Rocha showed him a letter from his mother and a few photographs of Nazario at the age of seven. Alderete read the missive and looked at him with a certain curiosity mixed with arrogance.
    â€œSo you’re my half-brother. You look really bad.”
    â€œThings are tough over in Caracoles.”
    â€œI can imagine.”
    â€œOur mother is very frail.”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with her?”
    â€œA crippling arthritis. She can’t get out of bed.”
    â€œYou don’t help her at all? What do you do for a living?”
    â€œI’m a street vendor.”
    â€œYou don’t sell much and then you drink away the rest.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œI can see it in your face. I don’t like meeting with guys who have drinking problems.”
    â€œI’m your brother.”
    â€œThat was just an accident of life. We don’t choose our brothers.
    What did you come here for?”
    â€œI want to work so I can send a few pesos to our mother.”
    â€œWhat can you do besides sell junk?”
    â€œI could be your assistant.”
    Alderete laughed and eyed him with disdain. Rocha began to hate him at that very moment.
    â€œAn assistant like you, maybe in a tavern.”
    â€œYou don’t need to make fun of me,” Rocha said, half-swallowing his words. “I can do anything.”
    â€œDesk work, not a chance. Why don’t you start from the bottom? It’ll take you awhile to rise, but it’s the only way. I’m talking about the deep mine.”
    â€œInside the mine?”
    â€œIt’s the only way.”
    Rocha had no choice but to accept. He became a miner, and that’s no small matter. Being a miner is like being a sailor on the high seas. If you’re the former, you really have to like underground caves, and if you’re the latter, it’s the ocean. Two unmerciful passions. At first it was very tough. Rocha sometimes thought he was in hell. He rented a room in a pension where it was so cold that even the rats couldn’t survive. It was colder inside than outside. He would hang out at miners’ dives and once a week go up the hill to a brothel filled with half-breeds. He drank more and more to rid his mind of the underground agony. Becoming a human mole is part of a pact that man makes with the devil. By the end of three months, he had accepted his lot. He got himself a girlfriend who cooked for him and made love to him in sepulchral silence. When he asked her why she didn’t moan, she said it was because she didn’t want to startle him. Then came the accident, on a Monday, a month before Christmas. They amputated half his leg in the mine hospital. They sawed it off as if he were a soldier in the First World War.
    Deciding he was worthless, Alderete gave him a compensation package that was barely enough to bury their mother. Rocha swore that he would get revenge, but the years took him down roads in which there was no time to remember anything, until one day, just about a week earlier, God had granted him a few happy hours in the midst of that bitter existence. It seemed like plenty to him.
    He couldn’t help himself and took a swig of pisco . It made him feel brave.
    Despite his limitations, he had managed to read a book: Treasure Island by Stevenson. He thought about John Silver, the one-legged pirate, and at times he identified with him. After the rock destroyed part of Rocha’s leg, from the knee down, everything had been a pure tragedy for him, with hardly a break to take a breath. A life mapped by a cruel fate, deprived of the slightest relief. Killing Alderete wouldn’t be murder; it would be a settling of