Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

Shots, no doubt about it. Mayta was down on one knee, sub-machine gun at the ready, looking all around him. But, down in the hollow, his field of vision was limited: a horizon broken by toothlike crags. A shadow passed, flapping its wings. A condor? He never remembered seeing one, except in photographs. He noticed that the justice of the peace was crossing himself and that, with his eyes closed and his hands pressed together, he had begun to pray. He heard another volley in the same area as the first one. When would Vallejos come back? As if in answer to his wish, the lieutenant appeared at the edge of the hollow. And, behind him, the face of one of the joeboys from the middle group: Perico Temoche. They slid into the hollow and came toward them. Temoche’s face was red and his hands and the butt of his Mauser stained with mud, as if he had fallen.

“They’re firing at the first group,” said Vallejos. “But they’re far away, the second group hasn’t seen them yet.”

“What do we do?” asked Mayta.

“We advance,” replied Vallejos forcefully. “The first group is the important one, we’ve got to save those weapons. We’ll try to distract them until the first group gets away. Let’s get going. Spread out.”

As they climbed out of the hollow, Mayta wondered why it hadn’t occurred to anyone to give don Eugenio a rifle and why he hadn’t asked for one. If they had to fight, the justice was in for a rough time. He wasn’t anxious or afraid. He was totally serene. He wasn’t surprised about the shots. He had been waiting for them ever since they left Jauja and had never believed they had as big a lead as the lieutenant claimed. How stupid it was to have stayed so long in Quero.

At the top of the hollow, they crouched down to take a look. They couldn’t see anyone: only the gray-brown, rolling terrain, always rising, with occasional ridges and cliffs, where he thought they could take cover if their pursuers appeared from around a hill.

“Take cover among the rocks,” said Vallejos. He was carrying his sub-machine gun in his left hand, while with his right he was gesturing for them to fan out more. He was virtually running, bent over, looking all around. Behind him came the justice, with Mayta and Perico Temoche bringing up the rear. He hadn’t heard any more shots. The sky was clearing: there were fewer clouds, and they were not leaden, heavy storm-clouds, but white, spongy, fair-weather clouds. Bad luck, now it would be better if it were raining, he thought. He moved forward, concerned about his heart, afraid he’d be overcome again by shortness of breath, irregular heart rate, fatigue. But he wasn’t; he felt well, although a bit cold. Straining his eyes, he tried to pick out the forward groups. It was impossible, because of the irregularity of the terrain and the abundance of blind spots. Then, between two high points, he seemed to make out the moving spots.

He beckoned Perico Temoche over. “Is that your group?”

The boy nodded several times, without speaking. He seemed even more of a child this way, with his face twisted. He was hugging his rifle as if someone were going to try to take it away from him, and he seemed to have lost his voice.

“There haven’t been any more shots.” He tried to raise the boy’s spirits. “Maybe it was just a false alarm.”

“No, it was no false alarm,” stammered Perico Temoche. “The shots were real.”

And in a very low voice, trying his best to keep his self-control, he told Mayta that, when the first shots rang out, his whole group could see that, out in front, the vanguard was scattering, while someone, most likely Condori, raised his rifle to reply to the attack. Zenón Gonzales shouted: “Hit the dirt, hit the dirt.” They remained flat on their faces until Vallejos appeared and ordered them to go on. Vallejos had brought him back so he could be their runner.

“And I know why.” Mayta smiled at him. “Because you’re the fastest. And the cleverest, too?”

The joeboy smiled slightly, without opening his mouth. They went on walking together, looking to each side. Vallejos and the justice of the peace were about twenty yards in front of them. Minutes later, they heard another volley.

“The funny part is that right in the middle of all that shooting I caught a cold,” says don Eugenio. “The rain had been heavy and I was soaked, see?”

Yes, the small man in his vest and hat, surrounded by guerrillas, ducking bullets being fired by guards from up in the mountains, begins to sneeze. Trying to put the squeeze on him, I ask when did he realize that those he was with were insurgents and that the business about maneuvers and the handing over of Aína was pure make-believe. He isn’t fazed.

“When the bullets began to fly,” he says, with absolute conviction, “the situation became self-evident. Damn it, man, put yourself in my place. Without knowing how, there I was, with bullets whizzing all around me.”

He pauses, his eyes watery again, and I remember that afternoon in Paris two or three days after the afternoon we’re recalling. At that hour of the day, I religiously stopped writing, went out to buy Le Monde , to read it while drinking an espresso at the Le Tournon bistro near my house. His name was misspelled, they’d changed the y to an i , but I hadn’t the slightest doubt that it was my schoolmate from the Salesian. His name appeared in a news item about Peru, so small it was almost invisible, barely six or seven lines, no more than a hundred words. “Insurrection Attempt Fails,” or something like that, and although it wasn’t clear whether the movement had any further ramifications, the article did say that the leaders were either dead or captured. Was Mayta captured or dead? That was my first thought as the Gauloise I was smoking fell out of my mouth and I read and reread the notice, unable to accept that in my far-off land such a thing had taken place and that my fellow reader of The Count of Monte Cristo was the main character. But that the Mayta spelled with an i in Le Monde was my Mayta, I was sure of from the start.

“What time did the prisoners begin to get here?” don Eugenio repeats my question, as if I had asked it of him. Actually, I asked the old people from Quero, but it’s good that it’s the justice of the peace, a man well known to the locals, who shows interest in finding out. “It must have been at night, don’t you think?”

There is a chorus of no’s, heads shaking, voices that try to speak over one another. Night hadn’t fallen, it was still afternoon. The guards came back in two groups. The first brought the president of the community of Uchubamba tied onto one of doña Teofrasia’s mules. Was Condori already dead? Dying. He’d been shot twice, once in the back and once in the neck, and he was covered with blood. They also brought several of the joeboys, with their hands tied behind them. In those days, the winners took prisoners. Nowadays, it’s better to die fighting, because when they catch you, they get what they want out of you and kill you anyway, isn’t that right, sir? Anyway, they’d taken the boys’ shoelaces, so they couldn’t try to escape. It was as if they were walking on eggs, and though they dragged their feet, some lost their shoes. They brought Condori to the lieutenant governor’s house and gave him first aid, but it was a joke, because he died right away. About a half hour later, the others arrived. Vallejos waved to them to hurry.

“Faster, faster,” he heard him shout.

Mayta tried, but he couldn’t. Now Perico Temoche was several yards in front of him. There were scattered shots, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from or if they were farther away or closer than before. He was trembling, not from mountain sickness, but from the cold. Just then, he saw Vallejos raise his sub-machine gun: the blast exploded in his ears. He looked at the ridge the lieutenant had fired at, and all he saw were rocks, earth, clumps of ichu grass, jagged peaks, blue sky, and little white clouds. He aimed in the same direction, his finger on the trigger.