Victoria the Mad ((of Huancayo, Peru)(a tribute))

Victoria the Mad
((Of Huancayo, Peru) (a tribute))





This is what I can put together on her, what happened up to the time she up and disappeared, forevermore, how I see it, this Mad Coffee Lady from Huancayo.
It was in the early 1970s, a dim rainy day in this mountain city of Peru, Victoria the Mad, as she was often called. She walked to and fro, around the Plaza de Arms, as often she did, with her tin cup half filled with coffee; knocking on business doors to the little shops that encircled the plaza to get a coin for something to eat, already hollering in her high pitch strong voice, in a childlike manner.
“Mr. Desoto! Give me a sol!” She asked. And he did, because if he hadn’t she would have taken whatever food her eye caught, even from school kids, she’d grab their sandwiches and hide in a doorway corner, and eat it. And with a sol, she could buy some bread and perhaps a tamale. Nobody knew exactly how old Victoria really was, not old, old, but somewhere in her late forties or fifties, or early sixties presumed—no, no, the older folks of the city claimed she was closer to fifty than sixty, she never asserted to be of any age. She was at one time quite a looker I had heard from those kids she stole sandwiches from—now grown men and women—who remembered her; but in due time—well, things changed, from bad to worse.
Nobody in Huancayo even remembered just how long she had been this way, kind of a borderline manic-depressive, vagabond, homeless, poor, always with bare feet, weathered-beaten, chilled to the veins, benumbed, sucked in cheeks, always wearing a black blouse and dress, long black hair caked with mud and knotted like someone had knitted it all together in a crisscross manner.
That is, Victoria the Mad, used the plaza, and the archways and at times the poorhouse, but that was too far away, somewhere on some backstreet of the city, on a dirt road, between the plaza and the old folks home, she was noticed through the front windows of maybe half the city folks, in particular ladies, watching her, hearing her manic screams, and at times cheerful voice, from house to house—perhaps preferring her to stay in the plaza area and out of the residential, as she’d walk to that poorhouse; —anyhow, they all locked their doors, locked themselves in their own homes. But even this was useless if she was determined, because she’d sit on their doorsteps, knowing sooner or later they’d have to leave, and then she’d pester them for food or a coin. And they’d want to get rid of this rat-colored thin lady who carried a tin cup, half filled with coffee, or something else, cloaked and wrapped in sludge, muck, and mud.
How she remained alive under such conditions was a mystery—to those who knew her, and didn’t know her, but knew of her—a mystery as bottomless and dark as a coal mine.
Already settled in Huancayo, the day she was born, it would have appeared she was already established upon the begging invitation, one often times: uncles and parents, and aunts, demanded of their children—to help pay their way.

Today was no different for her, she went from store to store around the plaza, begging, moving rapidly, in a kind of desperation, alarm and consternation as she charged her daily toll of food scraps and thrown- away garbage, and receiving that occasional coin for food, moving among the uproar of the people, inescapable from the tax payers. “Please, please…”she whispered, twisting and jerking dimly at her legs and arms, scratching, holding that tin cup up to faces, in front of faces, trying not to scream: no silk stockings, no lipstick, no high heels, no perfume, and then that evening she was gone, just like that, as if she had vanished into thin air, the way she appeared fifty-years ago, or thereabouts. She passed that way—that’s all I can say, she passed that way, but I guess that’s all, we all can say.

No: 636 (6-30-2010)