Andean Express Read Online Free PDF Page A

nightmare.
    â€œThe Marquis puts too much powder on his face. He thinks life is one long cabaret.”
    â€œThe poker player told me Anita is a madam.”
    â€œShe’s the most experienced one,” Tréllez said. “She was very beautiful until just a few years ago. She knows everyone in La Paz.”
    A waiter cleared a table for four next to the kitchen where some railway employees had been sitting. He invited the Marquis to sit down.
    â€œHow have you been, Pepe?” the Marquis said in greeting.
    â€œWorried,” Tréllez replied.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œMy Indian farmhands are getting riled up over all this Marxist bullshit.”
    â€œSell your land before the holocaust.”
    The Marquis was waiting for the man and the woman Ricardo had seen on the El Alto station platform. As the couple entered the car, they recognized Pepe Tréllez and waved. The man was wearing a light green tweed jacket, khaki pants, and boots.
    â€œThat’s Ian Durbin, an Irishman who works for the Bolivian Railway. The quiet, sad-looking woman is his wife. She’s from Potosí.”
    â€œDurbin is huge,” Ricardo said.
    â€œHe weighs around 220 pounds. In his younger days in Dublin, I think he was a boxer. The guy is a serious drinker. He can finish off a bottle of whiskey in half an hour by himself.”
    The waiter placed two bowls of chairo soup on the table and asked: “Anything to drink?”
    â€œA beer,” Tréllez said. “Do they let you drink beer?”
    â€œI’m eighteen,” Ricardo said.
    â€œHow time flies. I remember when you used to ride that tricycle around your house on Federico Zuazo.”
    Tréllez poured hot sauce into his soup. “Here comes Alderete. Poor girl. To have to put up with a pig like him.”
    Alderete couldn’t hide the angry grimace etched on his dark face.
    â€œThe one behind the girl is her mother,” Tréllez explained. “Doña Clara is from La Paz’s crème de la crème. She arranged the marriage.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œAlderete cheated her late husband out of his mine. He was the guy’s accountant.”
    Doña Clara was the image of simplicity. Half her body was wrapped in a gray shawl. Gulietta was wearing a bluish skirt and a fine sweater of braided wool. She turned her gaze on Ricardo and caught him staring at her, spellbound.
    â€œShe’s really beautiful,” Ricardo said.
    â€œAnd they say she’s smart. What do you think of the trio, nephew?”
    â€œA permanent short circuit.”
    â€œI’ve always admired brave women, like Isabella of Castile and the Coronilla heroines * ,” Tréllez said. “But anyone who can put up with that guy deserves to be canonized.”
    â€œYou don’t seem to think much of him.”
    â€œHe’s a son of a bitch,” Tréllez said in English.
    The languid whistle of the locomotive sounded, announcing its arrival at a tiny village near an ancient-looking farmhouse. Alderete’s hoarse and heavy voice was the only other dissonant noise, aside from the cars’ incessant swaying from side to side. The train stopped in front of a small stone house covered by a red corrugated-metal roof.
    A thin, bony man rang a bell heralding the train’s arrival. Behind the building, at the end of a windy path, there was a farmyard in which a group of skinny cows rested alongside a small bull swatting flies with its tail. A solitary dog barked half-heartedly.
    Ricardo was surprised by the sight of the contortionist walking deliberately alongside the train, toward the car in which her dog had been confined. The railway inspector followed behind her, talking to the wind. The station manager joined them, apparently unaware of what was happening. The contortionist touched the side of the car with one hand and cried out in pain.
    â€œIt’s an oven in there. My dog must be suffocating from the