Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

“I told you because I had a purpose.” Vallejos returned to the subject, gesturing at the same time that they should head back to the highway, because the land breeze was going to suffocate them. “I need your help, brother. They’re boys from the Colegio San José, over in Jauja. Really young, fourth or fifth year. We got to be friends playing soccer on the little field near the jail. The joeboys.”

They walked on the sand with their heads bent to the wind, their feet buried up to the ankles in the soft earth. Mayta quickly forgot the shooting lesson and his anger of a moment before, intrigued by what the second lieutenant was saying.

“Don’t tell me anything that’ll make you sorry you did,” Mayta reminded him, even though he was beside himself with curiosity.

“Shut the fuck up.” Vallejos had tied his handkerchief over his face to protect himself from the sand. “The joeboys and I went from soccer to having a few beers together, then to little parties, to the movies, and to meetings. Since we’ve been holding these meetings, I’ve tried to teach them the things you teach me. A teacher from the Colegio San José helps me out. He says he’s a socialist, too.”

“You give classes in Marxism?” Mayta asks.

“You bet, the only true science,” Vallejos says, gesticulating. “The antidote to all those idealist, metaphysical ideas they get pumped into their heads. Just as you yourself would have said it in your own flowery style, brother.”

A moment before, when he was showing Mayta how to shoot, he was a dextrous athlete, a commander. And now he was a timid boy, awkwardly telling him his story. Through the rain of sand, Mayta looked at him. He imagined the women who had kissed those clean-cut features, bitten those fine lips, who had writhed under the lieutenant’s body.

“You know you really knock me out?” he exclaimed. “I thought my classes in Marxism bored you to death.”

“Sometimes they do — to be frank — and other times I get lost,” Vallejos admitted. “Permanent revolution, for example. It’s too many things all at the same time. So I’ve scrambled the joeboys’ brains. That’s why I’m always asking you to come to Jauja. Come on, give me a hand with them. Those boys are pure dynamite, Mayta.”

“Of course we’re still nuns, but without the disguise.” María smiles. “We’ve got a surplus of jobs, not vows. They free us up from teaching and let us work here. The congregation helps us out as best they can.”

Do Juanita and María have the feeling they really are helping in a positive way by living in this shack city? They must. Otherwise, the risk they run by living here under these conditions would be inexplicable. A day doesn’t go by without some priest, nun, or social worker in the slums being attacked. Setting aside whether what they do is useful or not, it’s impossible not to envy them the faith that gives them the strength to withstand this daily horror. I tell them that as I walked here I had the feeling I was crossing all the circles of hell.

“It must be even worse there,” Juanita says, without smiling.

“You’ve never been in this place before, young man?” María interjects.

“No, I’ve never been in El Montón,” Juanita replied.

“I have, often, when I was a kid, when I was such a devout Catholic,” said Mayta. She noticed that he had an abstracted — nostalgic? — expression on his face. With some boys from Catholic Action. There was a Canadian mission in the dump. Two priests and a few laymen. I remember one young, red-faced, tall priest who was a doctor. ‘Nothing I’ve learned is of any use,’ he would say. He couldn’t stand the fact that children were dying like flies, he couldn’t bear the high incidence of tuberculosis, and that at the same time the newspapers were filled with page after page on parties, banquets, the weddings of the rich. I was fifteen. I would go back to my own home and at night I could not pray. God doesn’t hear, I would think. He covers His ears so He can’t hear and His eyes so He doesn’t have to see what’s going on in El Montón. Then one day I was convinced. To fight against all that, I had to stop believing in God, Mother.”

To Juanita, it seemed like drawing an absurd conclusion from correct premises, and she told him so. But she was moved by the fervor she saw in him.

“I’ve had my moments of anguish about my faith, too,” she said. “But, happily, I’ve never gotten to the point of demanding a reckoning from God.”

“We don’t talk only about theory, but about practical things as well,” Vallejos went on. They were walking along the highway toward Lima, trying to flag down a truck or a bus, the sub-machine gun concealed in a bag.

“Practical things — you mean like how to make Molotov cocktails, set dynamite charges, manufacture bombs?” mocked Mayta. “Practical things — you mean like your revolutionary plan of the other day?”

“Everything in its proper time, brother,” Vallejos said, as always in a jovial tone. “Practical things — I mean like going to the Indian communities to see the problems of the peasants on site. And to see solutions. Because those Indians have begun to move, to occupy the lands they have been demanding for themselves for centuries.”

“To recover them, you mean,” Mayta said softly. He fixed a curious gaze on Vallejos. He was disconcerted, as if, despite the fact that they had been seeing each other for so many weeks, he was just now discovering the real Vallejos. “Those lands belonged to them, don’t forget.”

“Exactly, the recovery of lands is what I mean,” agreed the second lieutenant. “We go and talk with the peasants, and the boys see that those Indians, without the help of any party, are beginning to break their chains. That’s how the boys are learning the way the revolution will come to this country. Professor Ubilluz helps me out with the theory, but you’d help me much more, brother. Will you come to Jauja?”

“Well, I have to say you’ve left me gaping,” Mayta said.

“Shut your mouth before it gets filled with sand.” Vallejos laughed. “Look, that bus’s going to stop.”

“So you’ve got your group and all,” repeated Mayta, rubbing his eyes, which were irritated from all the dust. “A Marxist studies circle. In Jauja! Plus you’ve made contact with peasant groups. Which means that …”

“Which means that, while you talk about the revolution, I do it.” The lieutenant gave him a pat on the back. “Fuckin’ right. I’m a man of action. You, you’re a theoretician. We’ve got to put it all together. Theory and practice, buddy. We’ll get the people moving, and no one’ll be able to stop them. We’ll do great things. Shake hands and swear you’ll come out to Jauja. Our Peru is a great place, brother!”

He looked like an excited, happy kid, with his impeccable uniform and his crew cut. Once again, Mayta felt happy to be with him. They took a corner table and ordered two coffees from the Chinese storekeeper. Mayta imagined they were both the same age, both boys, and that they had sealed their friendship with blood.

“Nowadays, there are lots of priests and nuns in the Church just like that Canadian priest from El Montón,” the Mother said, not at all upset. “The Church has always known what misery is, and, whatever you say, it has always done what it could to alleviate it. But now, it’s true, it has understood that injustice is not individual but social. The Church no longer accepts the fact that the few have everything while the majority has nothing. We know that under today’s conditions purely spiritual aid is nothing but a joke … But I’m wandering from the subject.”

“No, that is the subject,” Mayta urged her on. “Misery, the millions of hungry people in Peru. The only subject that counts. Is there a solution? What is it? Who’s got it? God? No, Mother. The revolution.”