Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

“Don Ezequiel, don Ezequiel,” I chide him. “Twenty-five years have gone by, Peru’s going down the drain, people are thinking only of saving themselves from a war that isn’t even being fought by Peruvians, you and I might be dead in the next raid or skirmish. Who cares anymore what happened that day? Tell me the truth, help me to end my story before this homicidal chaos our country has become eats both of us up. You were supposed to cut the telephone lines and hire some taxis, using a phony barbeque over in Molinos as a pretext. Don’t you remember what time you were supposed to be at the telephone company? Five minutes after they opened up. The taxis were going to wait at the corner of Alfonso Ugarte and La Mar, where Mayta’s group was going to commandeer them. But you didn’t hire the cabs, you didn’t go to the telephone company, and when the joeboy came to ask you what was going on, you told him: ‘Nothing’s going on, it’s all gone to hell, run to school and forget you even know who I am.’ That joeboy is Telésforo Salinas, director of physical education for this province, don Ezequiel.”

“A pack of lies! More of Ubilluz’s slander!” he growls, purple with rage. “I knew nothing and I had no reason to hide or flee. Get out, go away, disappear. Stinking slanderer! Shiteating gossip!”

Hidden in the semi-darkness, with the sub-machine gun in his hands, Mayta could hear nothing. Nor could he see anything, except two streaks of light where the planks of the door met. But he had no difficulty guessing that at that very instant Vallejos was going into the barracks of the fourteen guards and was waking them up with his thundering voice: Ateeenshun! Rifle inspection! The officer in charge of the Huancayo armory had just told him he would be coming to hold an inspection early in the morning. Be careful, you’ve got to be fanatics about oiling both the outside and the bolts of the rifles. I don’t want anybody written up for a rusty piece. Second Lieutenant Vallejos didn’t want any more bad reports from the armory officer. The working weapons and the ammunition for each republican guard — ninety cartridges — would be taken to the guardroom. Fall in out in the patio! Now it would be his turn. The wheels were beginning to turn, the cogs were moving, this is action, this was it. Have the Ricrán guys gotten here yet? He looked through the cracks, waiting for the silhouettes of the guards carrying their Mausers and their bullets to the little room in front, one behind the other, and among them, Antolín Torres.

He is a retired republican guard who lives on Manco Cápac Street, halfway between the jail and don Ezequiel’s store. To keep the ex-barber from taking a swing at me or from having a fit of apoplexy, I have to retreat. Sitting on a bench in Jauja’s majestic plaza — disfigured now by police barriers and barbed wire on the corners where the municipal building and the sub-prefecture are — I think about Antolín Torres. I talked to him this morning. He’s been a happy man ever since the Marines hired him as a guide and translator.

He used to have a little farm, but the war ruined it. He was dying of hunger until the gringos came. His job is to accompany the patrols as they reconnoiter the area around Jauja. (His Spanish is as good as his Quechua.) He knows that his work may cost him his life. Many of the people in Jauja turn their backs on him, and the façade of his house is covered with graffiti: “Traitor” and “Condemned to Death by the Revolutionary Tribunal.”

From what Antolín has told me and from don Ezequiel’s curses, I conclude that relations between the Marines and the locals are bad, awful. Even the people who oppose the insurgents resent these foreigners they can’t understand, who, above all, eat well, smoke, and suffer no privations — in a town where even the formerly rich experience dearth. A sixty-year-old with a bull neck and a huge stomach, an Ayacucho man from Cangallo who has lived most of his life in Jauja, Antolín Torres speaks a wonderful Spanish spiced with Quechuanisms. “People say the communists are going to kill me. Okay, but when they come to kill me they’re going to find a guy who eats well, drinks well, and smokes American cigarettes.” He’s a storyteller who knows how to achieve dramatic effects with pauses and exclamations. That day, twenty-five years ago, he went on duty at eight, when he was supposed to replace Huáscar Toledo on guard duty at the front door. Huáscar wasn’t in the sentry box but inside with the others, oiling his Mauser in preparation for the visit of the armory officer. Second Lieutenant Vallejos was hurrying them, and Antolín Torres suspected something.

“But why, Mr. Torres? What was so strange about an arms inspection?”

What was strange was that the lieutenant was walking around with his sub-machine gun on his shoulder. What reason could he have for being armed? And why did we have to leave our weapons in the guardroom? This is really strange, sergeant. Where does this stuff come from about separating a trooper from his rifle for an inspection? Don’t think so much, Antolín, it gets in the way of promotion, is what the sergeant said. I obeyed, I cleaned my Mauser, and I left it in the guardroom along with my ninety cartridges. Then I went to fall in in the patio. But I could smell something fishy. But not what happened later. I thought it was something to do with the prisoners. There were maybe fifty in the cells. An escape attempt, I don’t know what, but something.

“Now.” Mayta pushed the door open. From being so long in one position, his legs were completely cramped. His heart pounded like a drum, and he was overwhelmed by a sensation of something final, irreversible, as he walked out into the patio with his oiled sub-machine gun. He took up a position in front of the judge’s office, facing the troops, and said, “Don’t force me to shoot. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

Vallejos had his sub-machine gun trained on his subordinates. The bleary eyes of the fourteen guards swung back and forth from him to the lieutenant, from the lieutenant back to him, without understanding: Are we awake or dreaming? Is this really happening, or is it a nightmare?

“And then the lieutenant spoke, isn’t that a fact, Mr. Torres? Remember what he said?”

“I don’t want to drag you in, but I’ve become a rebel, a revolutionary socialist.” Antolín Torres imitates him and acts out the scene, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. “If anyone wants to follow me of his own free will, let him come. I’m doing this for the sake of the poor, the suffering, and because our leaders have let us down. And you, pay sergeant, buy beer on Sunday for everyone, and take it out of my back pay.” “While the lieutenant was speaking, the other enemy, the one from Lima, had us covered with his sub-machine gun, blocking the way to the Mausers. They made fools of us. The commander punished us with two weeks’ confinement to barracks.”

Mayta had heard Vallejos but hadn’t paid any attention to what he was saying because of his own excitement. “Like a machine, like a soldier.” The lieutenant herded the guards to their barracks, and they obeyed docilely, still not understanding. He saw that the lieutenant, after closing the door, bolted it. Then, with rapid, precise movements, his weapon in his left hand, he ran, with a large key in his other hand, to open a cell door. Were the Uchubamba men there? They had to have seen and heard what had just happened. On the other hand, the other prisoners, the ones in cells on the other side of the patio with its cherry trees, were too far away. From his position next to the guardroom, he saw two men come out behind Vallejos. There they were, yes, the comrades he until now only knew by name. Which one was Condori and which Zenón Gonzales? Before he could find out, an argument broke out with the younger of the two, a fair-skinned little guy with long hair. Even though Mayta had been told that the peasants from the eastern region usually had light skin and hair, he was shocked: the Indian agitators who had led the seizure of the Aína hacienda looked like two little gringos. One was wearing sandals.