Santiago Roncagliolo - Red April

“I know. They haven't been easy for me.”

The prosecutor noticed the things the commander was putting in the suitcase. Photographs, papers, old albums of his military promotions. Memories. Only memories. Outside was the sound of fireworks and voices and singing, but dim, as if it came from another world. The commander went to the window and looked at the festivities. He closed the curtain.

“Sendero did not do the killings,” said the prosecutor. He had not sat down. “Did you know that? It seemed … but no.”

The commander smiled faintly.

“I was afraid of that. Sometimes I think it's better that I've been retired. I won't be the one bearing the weight of all this. Is there some new line of investigation?”

The commander lit a cigarette. He offered one to the prosecutor, who declined.

“There is something, yes,” he replied.

The commander exhaled smoke while he waited for the prosecutor to explain. The prosecutor had an absent gaze, as if he were seeing fireworks through the blinds.

“And?” asked the commander. “Don't leave me like this. Whom do you suspect?”

The prosecutor seemed to return to himself. Then he said:

“You, Commander.”

The commander laughed, as if he appreciated the joke. Then he realized that the prosecutor was not joking.

“I think … I don't understand,” he said.

“Neither do I, Commander. I thought you would explain it to me.”

The commander took some papers from his desk without losing his composure. Chacaltana had seen that they were all written in lower-case letters and filled with spelling errors. The commander closed the suitcase and said:

“I'm afraid you're making a mistake …”

“You were the only one who could have sent my reports to the police, because you were the only one who had them, Commander.” The prosecutor's voice had risen in volume and authority. “You were also the only one aware of all my movements. And the only one interested in wiping out your own past, the 1980s. Pacheco was posted to Ayacucho much later, and the only thing he wanted was to get out. Just like Briceño, just like everybody.”

Commander Carrión took a long drag on his cigarette. His eyes pierced the prosecutor. Now they were like the eyes of Edith's parents in the photographs. The prosecutor continued:

“You sent me to Yawarmayo so that Justino could get me out of the way. But Justino failed. He was so terrorized he could not even kill an unarmed, cowardly man like me. Besides, he talked too much. What he really wanted was to accuse you. Then you killed him too and decided to hand over the investigation to me in secret to keep me quiet and, in the process, get rid of everyone who could ever incriminate you: Quiroz, Durango … In the end you would incriminate me … or to make certain of my silence you would kill me too, as you planned to do tonight. That is why you ordered the police to let me go. Here no one says no to a top military officer, even if he is retiring. Lima knows everything, the Intelligence Service is aware of what you have done. But it's an old story, isn't it? When the pus spurts out, they retire you or transfer you. Nobody touches a military officer. It's what they did with Lieutenant Cáceres.”

“Cáceres was an animal!” said Carrión, suddenly losing his patience. “Everything was fine, everything was quiet until that shit came back from Jaén. He said they kept him behind a desk. He said he was a war hero, that he had risked his life for this country. He wanted to be recognized. He's the biggest killer we've had. And he wanted us to build him a monument, the son of a bitch! He assumed the right to organize civilian defense militias. Defense against what?”

“Maybe against all of you.”

The commander seemed larger now and was breathing hard, like a wounded animal. He ignored the interruption:

“He left us no alternative. He was reviving old phantoms. The population realized that. The Senderistas in Yawarmayo were more agitated than ever. It wouldn't take long for some opposition shit to let the press know that the lieutenant had returned to Ayacucho. Or even worse, there would be a terrorist attempt during the elections and Holy Week. If that happened, we'd be done for. I tried talking to Cáceres, I tried explaining things to him, I tried calming him down. Cáceres was my friend, Chacaltana, we had fought together. Do you know what it means to hurt a friend? I understood what he was feeling. I felt the same way! We shed blood for this country!”

“But that blood was not yours, Commander.”

“Don't interrupt me, damn it!” he shouted. Then he paused to calm down. It was a sad pause, dedicated perhaps to his old dead friend. “It was easy to convince Justino Mayta to get rid of the lieutenant for us. No soldier would have killed another soldier.”

The prosecutor thought: No soldier except you.

“Justino, on the other hand,” the commander continued, “remembered very well the police coming into his house. And he wanted to avenge his brother. He believed … he believed his brother was acting through him, that he was like the hand of God. Some religious shit. That stupid man was very devout. It occurred to him to use Quiroz's oven to disappear the body. And Quiroz agreed, because he also had a great deal to lose if Cáceres talked. It was all a disaster from the outset. The oven was so old that it fucking broke down halfway through the burning. Quiroz and Justino didn't stop shouting at each other. We had to pull out the scorched body, take it to Quinua, and leave it there. Even after that we thought everything would stay calm and nothing would happen. Everything was going to be fine. It would end there. But you showed up and everybody got nervous. Quiroz wanted to throw suspicion on Justino. Justino didn't even know what he wanted. They had to be silenced. Just like Durango … There was no way to know what you talked about with Durango … Or with your girlfriend, that lousy terrorist.”

His last words cut Chacaltana like a knife.

“Edith Ayala wasn't a terrorist, you son of a bitch.”

“It doesn't matter now, Chacaltana. She isn't anything now. You handed her over to us. After the scene you made last night, it was very easy for me to finish her off. I even thought I was doing you a favor because you didn't have the courage.”

The commander's gaze was not repentant but defiant, like a sudden blaze or a gust of wind. The prosecutor thought about him, Durango, Justino, Cáceres, Quiroz. Murderers killing murderers. Killers exterminating one another, a spiral of fire that would not stop until we were all one, one single giant of blood. But not Edith. Not her at all. He thought of her remains scattered on the bed. He thought of her entire body surrendered in that same bed, forced, broken in advance.

“You are a monster, Carrión. Even if what you say is true. Why like this? Wasn't a bullet in the back of the neck enough for you? Wasn't that the usual method?”

The commander darkened his gaze. He showed him the papers he held in his hand.

“I've written down everything. I've explained everything.”

Chacaltana took the papers and tried to read. But there was nothing to understand in them. Only incoherence. Barbarity. Not simply spelling errors, it was everything. There is no error in chaos, and in those papers not even the syntax made sense. Chacaltana had spent his entire life among ordered words, Chocano's poems, legal codes, sentences numbered or organized into verses. Now he did not know what to do with a heap of words thrown haphazardly at reality. The world could not follow the logic of those words. Or perhaps it was just the opposite, perhaps reality was simply like that and all the rest was pretty stories, like colored beads designed to distract and pretend that things have some meaning.