Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

What explanations did I give them? Even though none of those who were there at that session would even admit it took place, I feel the unquenchable need to believe it did, and just as Blacquer described it. What could I say to them that would justify my visit to the arch-enemy? With the aid of hindsight, it doesn’t seem so inconceivable. The Reds who may enter Lima tomorrow, or the day after, belong to a vast Marxist spectrum, which includes Communist Party members, Trotskyists, and Maoists, all apparently fighting under one flag. The revolution was too important, serious, and difficult to be monopolized by anyone, to be the private property of a single organization, even if that organization had interpreted Peruvian reality more correctly than the others. The revolution would be possible only if all revolutionaries, setting aside their quarrels, but without giving up their individual concepts, united in a concrete action against class enemies. Badly dressed, in his forties, sweaty, overexcited, blinking, he tried to sell them that marvelous toy which had changed his life and which — he was sure — could change theirs and that of the entire left: action, purifying, redemptive, absolute action. Action would file away the rough spots, the rivalries, the byzantine differences; it would abolish the enmities born out of egoism and the cult of personality; it would sweep away the groups and factions in an unquenchable current that would carry along all revolutionaries, comrades.

That’s why I went to talk to Blacquer. Not to reveal any key information to him: I mentioned no names, no dates, and not a single location. And I in no way compromised the RWP(T). The first thing I told Blacquer was that I was speaking only for myself and that any future agreements would have to be made party to party. I went to see him without requesting authorization, so I could save time, comrades. Wasn’t I on my way to Jauja? I went simply to notify them that the revolution was going to begin, so they could come to the proper conclusions, if, that is, they really were the revolutionaries and Marxists they said they were. So they would be ready to take part in the struggle. Because the reactionaries would defend themselves, would fight like cornered rats, and so as not to be bitten, we all had to form a common front … Did they listen to me until I finished? Did they make me shut up? Did they throw me out of the garage on Jirón Zorritos, kicking and insulting me?

“They let him speak several times,” Blacquer assures me. “There was a lot of tension, and a lot of personal things came to the surface. Mayta and Joaquín almost started swinging at each other. And then, instead of killing him off once and for all, they picked him up off the floor where they’d left him like a dirty rag, and they gave him an out. A Trotskyite melodrama. I suppose that last meeting of the RWP(T) is going to be quite useful to you.”

“Yes, I suppose so. But I still don’t get it. Why do Moisés, Anatolio, Pallardi, and Joaquín absolutely deny that it ever took place? Their version of what happened shows discrepancies in many areas, but they all agree on this one point: Mayta’s resignation reached them by mail, he resigned on his own when he went to Jauja, once the RWP(T) decided not to participate in the uprising. Bad collective memory?”

“Bad collective conscience,” Blacquer says in a low voice. “Mayta couldn’t have made up that meeting. He came to tell me all about it a few hours after it happened. It was the coup de grâce, and it must still trouble them. Because, as they started piling charge after charge on him, everything started coming out, even his Achilles’ heel. Can you imagine them being that cruel?”

“What you really mean to say is that the end of the world is coming, buddy,” a confused patron exclaims. The girl is still laughing her dumb and happy laugh, and the beggar kids leave us in peace for a moment as they start kicking a can around among the pedestrians.

“He actually told you about that?” I’m surprised. “It was a subject he never mentioned, not even to his best friends. Why did he come to you at that particular moment? I just don’t understand.”

“At the beginning, I didn’t get it either, but now I think I do,” says Blacquer. “He was a revolutionary, one hundred percent, don’t forget. The RWP(T) had just thrown him out. Perhaps he thought that would make us reconsider our refusal. Maybe now we would take his plan seriously.”

“As a matter of fact, we should have expelled him a long time ago,” affirms Comrade Joaquín. He turned to look at Mayta in such a way that I thought: Why does he hate me? “I’m going to tell you what I think without pulling any punches, as a Marxist and as a revolutionary. I’m not surprised at what you have done, not about the plot, not about having secretly talked with that Stalinist policeman Blacquer. You can’t do anything straight, because you aren’t straight, you’re just not a man, Mayta.”

“Let’s keep personal differences out of this,” the secretary general interrupted him.

What Joaquín said took him so by surprise that Mayta couldn’t say a word. All I could do was shrink back. Why did it surprise me so much? Wasn’t it something that was always in the back of my mind, something I always feared would come up in debates, a quick low blow that would lay me out and keep me on my back for the rest of the discussion? With a cramp in every part of his body, he leaned back on the pile of newspapers. I felt a hot wave roll over me and in despair I thought: Anatolio is going to stand up and confess that we slept together last night. What was Anatolio going to say? What was he going to do?

“It isn’t a personal difference, because it’s directly related to what’s happened,” replied Comrade Joaquín. Even with all my fear and perturbation, Mayta knew that Joaquín really did hate him. What did I ever do to him that was so serious, so wounding to him that he would take this kind of revenge? “That way of doing things of his, complicated, capricious, that idea of going to see our worst enemy, is feminine, comrades. It’s a subject that’s never been brought up here out of consideration for Mayta, the very kind of consideration he didn’t have for us. Is it possible to be a loyal revolutionary and a homosexual at the same time? That’s the real question we’ve got to decide, comrades.”

Why does he say homosexual and not fag? I thought absurdly. Isn’t fag the right word? Recovering, he raised his hand, signaling to Comrade Jacinto that he wanted to speak.

“Are you sure that it was Mayta himself who told them he’d gone to see you?”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Blacquer nods. “He thought he had done the right thing. He wanted to have a motion approved. That once the three who had to go went up to Jauja, the ones who stayed in Lima would again try to set up an agreement with us. It was his biggest mistake. For the Trots, who couldn’t figure out how they were going to get out of the Jauja operation — which they never believed in, and which they thought Mayta had dragged them into — this was the perfect pretext. They could get rid of Jauja and Mayta all in one shot. Which meant splitting up even more. That’s always been the Trots’ favorite sport: purges, divisions, fractions, and expulsions.”

He laughs, showing his nicotine-stained teeth.

“Personal differences have nothing to do with it, and neither do sexual or family differences,” I answered, without taking my eyes off the back of Anatolio’s head, as he sat on one of the little milking stools, his eyes fixed on the floor. “And that’s why I’m not going to pay attention to that provocation. Because there’s only one way to respond to what you said, Joaquín.”

“It’s against the rules to get personal. Threats are also against the rules.” The secretary general raised his voice.