Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

Juanita thinks it over for a moment. “Yes, I think so, a dogmatic man.” She nods. “At least he wasn’t at all flexible about religion. We only spoke for a while, perhaps I didn’t understand what kind of man he was. I thought about him a lot later on. He had a huge influence on my brother. He changed his life. He made him read, which was something he almost never did before. Communist books, of course. I tried to warn him: ‘You know he’s catechizing you?’”

“Yes, I know, but I learn a lot of things from him, sister.”

“My brother was an idealist, a rebel, with an innate sense of justice,” adds Juanita. “He found a mentor in Mayta, one who manipulated him as he saw fit.”

“So, as far as you’re concerned, Mayta was calling the shots?” I ask her. “Do you think he planned it all, that he put the Jauja business into Vallejos’s head?”

“No, because I don’t know how to use it.” Mayta was doubtful. “I’ll make you a confession. I’ve never even fired a cap gun in my entire life. But, going back to what you said before about friendship, I have to warn you about one thing.”

“Don’t warn me about anything, I already asked you to excuse my indiscretion,” said Vallejos. “I’d rather hear one of your speeches. Let’s go on with double power, that idea of undercutting the bourgeoisie and the imperialists slowly but surely.”

“Not even friendship comes before the revolution for a revolutionary: get that through your head and never forget it,” said Mayta. “Revolution, above all things. Then comes the rest. That’s what I tried to explain to your sister the other afternoon. Her ideas are good, she goes as far as a Catholic can. But that’s just not enough. If you believe in heaven and hell, then what happens here on earth will always take a back seat to all that. And there will never be a revolution. I trust you and I think of you as a great friend. If I hide anything, if …”

“Okay, okay. I’ve already asked you to forgive me, can’t we forget it?” Vallejos wanted to shut him up. “So you’ve never fired a gun? Tomorrow we’ll go over by Lurín, with the surprise. I’ll give you a lesson. Firing a sub-machine gun is much easier than the thesis of double power.”

“Of course, that was what had to happen,” Juanita said. But she does not seem all that sure, judging by the way she says it. “Mayta was an old hand at politics, a professional revolutionary. My brother was an impulsive kid Mayta could dominate just by his age and his knowledge.”

“I don’t know. I’m just not sure,” I said to her. “Sometimes I think it was the other way around.”

“That’s silly,” said María, joining in. “How could a kid get a savvy old guy like that involved in as crazy a deal as that?”

Exactly, Mother. Mayta was a revolutionary from the shadowy side. He had spent his life conspiring and fighting in insignificant little groups like the one he was a member of. And suddenly, just when he was reaching the age at which people usually retire from militant activism, someone turned up who opened the doors of action to him for the first time. Could there have been anything as captivating for a man like Mayta than out of the blue having someone stick a sub-machine gun in his hands?

“This is make-believe, a novel,” says Juanita, with a smile that forgives me for my transgression. “This isn’t at all like the real story, in any case.”

“It won’t be the real story, but, just as you say, a novel.” I confirm her ideas. “A faint, remote, and, if you like, false version.”

“Then why work so hard at it?” she insinuates with irony. “Why try to find out everything that happened, why come to confess to me like this. Why not just lie and make the whole thing up from top to bottom?”

“Because I’m a realist, in my novels I always try to lie knowing why I do it,” I explain. “That’s how I work. And I think the only way to write stories is to start with History — with a capital H.”

“I wonder if we ever really know what you call History with a capital H,” María interrupts. “Or if there’s as much make-believe in history as in novels. For example, the things we were talking about. So much has been said about revolutionary priests, about Marxist infiltration in the Church … But no one comes up with the obvious answer.”

“Which is?”

“The despair and anger you feel at having to see hunger and sickness day and night, the feeling of impotence in the face of so much injustice,” said Mayta, always choosing his words carefully so as not to offend. The nun noticed that he barely moved his lips as he spoke. “Above all, realize that the people who can do something never will. Politicians, the rich, the ones in the driver’s seat, the ones with power.”

“But why would you lose your faith because of that?” asked Vallejos’s sister, astonished. “I would think it would make it stronger, that it would …”

Mayta went on, his tone hardening: “No matter how strong your faith is, there comes a moment when you say, That’s it . It just can’t be possible that the remedy for so much iniquity is the promise of eternal life. That’s how it was, Mother. Seeing that hell was right here in the streets of Lima. Especially over in El Montón. Ever been to El Montón?”

Another shack city, one of the first, no worse, no more miserable than this one where Juanita and María live. Things have gotten much worse since that time when Mayta confessed to the nun; the shacks have proliferated, and in addition to misery and unemployment, there is murder now. Was it really the spectacle of Montón that fifty years ago transformed the devout little boy that Mayta was into a rebel? Contact with that world has not had the same effect, in any case, on Juanita and María. Neither gives the impression of being desperate, outraged, or even resigned, and at least as far as I can see, living with iniquity has not convinced them that the solution is assassination and bombs. They went on being nuns, right? Would the shots fade into echoes in the Lurín desert?

“No.” Vallejos aimed, fired, and the noise wasn’t as loud as Mayta thought it would be. His palms were sweaty with expectation. “No, they weren’t for me, I lied to you. The books, well, in fact I bring them all to Jauja so the joeboys can read them. I have faith in you, Mayta. I’m going to tell you something I wouldn’t even tell the person I love most in the world, my sister.”

As he spoke, he put the sub-machine gun in Mayta’s hands. He showed him how to brace it, how to take off the safety, how to aim, squeeze the trigger, load and unload.

“A big mistake. Never talk about things like that,” Mayta admonished him, his voice shaken by the jolt he had felt in his body as he heard the burst of fire and realized from the vibration in his wrists that it was he who had fired. Off in the distance, the sand extended, yellowish, ocher, bluish, indifferent. “It’s a simple matter of security. Nothing to do with you, but with the others, don’t you understand? Anyone can do whatever he likes with his life. But no one should endanger his comrades, the revolution, just to show a friend he trusts him. And suppose I worked for the cops?”

“That’s not your style. Even if you wanted, you couldn’t be a squealer.” Vallejos laughed. “What do you think? Easy, huh?”

“You know, it’s really easy,” Mayta agreed, touching the muzzle and burning his fingers. “Don’t tell me any more about the joeboys. I don’t need proof of your friendship, jerk-off.”

A hot breeze had come up and the salt flats looked as if they were being bombarded with grains of sand. It was true that the second lieutenant had chosen the perfect place — who would hear the shots in this solitude? He shouldn’t think he knew all he had to know. The main thing was not loading, unloading, aiming, and firing, but cleaning the weapon and knowing how to take it apart and put it back together.