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apprehensive? What filthy stuff did she and Dionisio do in the cantina with the drunken laborers late at night, when Lituma and his adjutant were in their beds? “Maybe he didn’t like what you read in the coca leaves,” said Tomás.
    â€œIn his hand,” the woman corrected him. “I’m also a palm reader and an astrologer. Except that these Indians don’t trust the cards, or the stars, or even their own hands. Just coca.” She swallowed and added: “And the leaves don’t always speak plain.”
    The sun was shining directly into her eyes but she did not blink; her eyes were hallucinatory, they overflowed their sockets, and Lituma imagined they could even speak. If she really did what he and Tomás suspected she did at night, the men who mounted her would have to face those eyes in the dark. He couldn’t have done it.
    â€œAnd what did you see in his hand, señora?”
    â€œThe things that have happened to him,” she answered with great naturalness.
    â€œDid you read in his palm that he was going to disappear?” Lituma examined her in small stages. On his right, Carreño was craning his neck.
    The woman nodded, imperturbable. “The walk up here made me a little tired,” she murmured. “I’m going to sit down.”
    â€œTell us what you told Demetrio Chanca,” Lituma insisted.
    Señora Adriana snorted. She had sat down on a rock and was fanning herself with the large straw hat she had just taken off. There was no trace of gray in her straight hair, which was pulled back and fastened at the back of her neck with the kind of colored ribbon the Indians fastened to the ears of their llamas.
    â€œI told him what I saw. That he would be sacrificed to appease the evil spirits that cause so much harm in this region. And that he had been chosen because he was impure.”
    â€œCan you tell me why he was impure, Doña Adriana?”
    â€œBecause he changed his name,” the woman explained. “Changing the name they give you at birth is an act of cowardice.”
    â€œI’m not surprised Demetrio Chanca didn’t want to pay you.” Tomasito smiled.
    â€œWho was going to sacrifice him?” asked Lituma.
    The woman made a gesture that could have indicated either weariness or contempt. She fanned herself slowly, snorting.
    â€œYou want me to say ‘the terrucos, the Senderistas,’ don’t you?” She snorted again and changed her tone. “This was out of their hands.”
    â€œDo you expect me to be satisfied with an explanation like that?”
    â€œYou ask and I answer,” said the woman calmly. “That’s what I saw in his hand. And it came true. He disappeared, didn’t he? Well, they sacrificed him.”
    â€œShe must be crazy,” Lituma thought. Señora Adriana was snorting like a bellows. With a plump hand she raised the hem of her skirt to her face and blew her nose, revealing thick, pale calves. She blew again with a good deal of noise. In spite of his apprehension, the corporal chuckled: what a way to get rid of snot.
    â€œWere Pedrito Tinoco and the albino Huarcaya sacrificed to the devil, too?”
    â€œI didn’t read the cards for them, or see their hands, or cast their charts. Can I go now?”
    â€œJust a minute.” Lituma stopped her.
    He took off his kepi and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The round, brilliant sun was in the middle of the sky. This was a northern kind of heat. But in four or five hours the temperature would begin to drop, and by ten o’clock the cold would make your bones creak. Nobody could make sense out of a climate as incomprehensible as the serruchos. He thought again about Pedrito Tinoco. When he had finished washing and rinsing the clothes, he would sit on a rock, not moving, staring into emptiness. He would remain that way, immobile and absorbed, thinking about God knows what, until the clothes were dry. Then