Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

“Why the fuck are you stopping”—Vallejos urged them on again. “Go on, go on.”

Mayta obeyed and walked very quickly for a good stretch, his body hunched over, jumping over stony patches, breaking into a run sometimes, tripping, feeling the cold right down to his bones, and his heart going crazy. He heard more shots, and at one time was sure that a bullet had smashed into some stones a short distance away. But, no matter how hard he looked at the ridges, he couldn’t see a single enemy soldier. He had finally become an unthinking machine, a machine with no doubts, no memory, a body concentrated on the task of running, so he wouldn’t be left behind. Suddenly his knees buckled and he stopped, out of breath. Staggering, he went a few steps farther and took cover behind some mossy rocks. The justice of the peace, Vallejos, and Perico Temoche continued to advance very rapidly. You’ll never catch up to them, Mayta.

The lieutenant turned around, and Mayta signaled him to keep going. Just as he was gesturing, he noticed, this time without any doubt, that a bullet struck a few steps away from him: it gouged a small smoky hole in the ground. He crouched as low as he could, looked, searched, and finally saw, peering over the wall of rocks on his right side, the head of a guard, and a rifle pointed straight at him. He had taken cover on the wrong side. He crawled around the rocks, flattened out on the ground, and felt shots going right over his head. When he could finally aim and fire, trying to apply Vallejos’s instructions — the target should be right in the sights — the guard was no longer on the wall. The burst of fire knocked him back and dazed him. He saw that his shots had splintered the stones a yard below, where he’d seen the guard.

“Run, run, I’ll cover you,” he heard Vallejos shout. The lieutenant was aiming at the wall.

Mayta got up and ran. He was stiff from the cold; his bones seemed to creak under his skin. It was a cold both freezing and boiling, which made him sweat, as if he had a fever. When he was next to Vallejos, he went down on his knees and aimed at the rocks.

“There are maybe three or four there,” said the lieutenant, pointing. “We’re moving forward in jumps, by stages. We can’t stay in one place, or they’ll surround us. They mustn’t cut us off from the others. Cover me.”

And, without waiting for a reply, he got up and began to run. Mayta kept watching the cliffs on the right, his finger on the trigger, but there was no sign of life. Finally, he looked for Vallejos and saw him far off, waving him on. He would cover him. He began to run, and after a few steps, he heard shots again. But he didn’t stop, he kept running. Soon he found out it was the lieutenant who was shooting. When he reached him, they were together with Perico Temoche and the justice of the peace. The boy was loading a clip which he’d taken out of a bag hanging on his cartridge belt. So he’d been firing, too.

“And the other groups?” Mayta asked. There was a stony rise in front of them, so they could see nothing.

“We’ve lost them, but they know they can’t stand still,” said Vallejos urgently, without ceasing to look around him. And, after a pause: “If they surround us, we’re fucked. We’ve got to keep going until nightfall. When it’s dark, we’ll be out of danger. There’s no way to hunt us down at night.”

Till it gets dark, thought Mayta. How much longer would that be? Three, five, six hours? He didn’t ask Vallejos what time it was. Instead, he stuck his hand into his pack — he’d done it dozens of times that day — and made sure he had lots of clips.

“We’ll move two by two,” ordered Vallejos. “First the doctor and me, then you and Perico. One pair covers the other. Pay attention, be careful, run in a crouch. Let’s go, doc.”

He took off, and Mayta saw that now the justice of the peace had a revolver in his hand. Where did he get it? It had to be the lieutenant’s, that’s why his holster was open. Right then, he saw two silhouettes above his head, between two rifle barrels. One shouted: “Give up, motherfucker.” He and Perico fired at the same time.

“They didn’t catch all of them that same day,” don Eugenio says. Two joeboys got away: Teófilo Puertas and Felicio Tapia.

I got this story directly from the people involved, but I don’t interrupt him, just to see how his version squares with theirs. A few details either way: the old justice of the peace’s version is very similar to what I’ve already heard. Puertas and Felicio were in the first group, under Condori’s command. They were the first to be spotted by one of the patrols the guards had divided into to search the area. On Vallejos’s orders, Condori tried to move forward, while Vallejos held off the attack, but he was soon wounded. This caused a panic. The boys started running, abandoning the mules and rifles. Puertas and Tapia hid in a cave. They stayed there all night, half frozen. The next day, hungry, confused, and with colds, they retraced their steps and reached Jauja without being caught. Accompanied by their parents, they turned themselves in at the jail.

“Felicio was all swollen up,” the justice of the peace tells me. Because of the beating he’d been given for trying to be a revolutionary.

Out of all those people from Quero who’d been with us, there was left in the gazebo only one old couple now. Both remember Zenón Gonzales’s entrance — tied to a horse, barefoot, and with his shirt ripped, as if he’d struggled with the guards. Behind him came the rest of the joeboys, also tied up and without shoelaces. One of them — no one knows which one — was crying. A dark-skinned kid, they say, one of the little ones. Was he crying because they’d beaten him? Because he was wounded or frightened? Who knows. Maybe because of the lieutenant’s bad luck.

And so, climbing up, always up, two by two, they went on for a period that to Mayta seemed like hours, but which couldn’t have been because it hadn’t grown a bit darker. They constantly changed partners: Vallejos and the lawyer, Mayta and Perico Temoche, or Vallejos and the joeboy, and Mayta and the lawyer. Two ran and two covered. They were together enough of the time to buck each other up, catch their breath, and move on. They would see the guards’ faces at every turn, and they fired shots that never seemed to hit their target. There weren’t three or four, as Vallejos had imagined, but many more; otherwise, they would have had to be ubiquitous to appear in so many different spots. They would peer out from the high ground, sometimes on both sides, although the more dangerous side was the right, where the wall of stones was very close to the path they were running along.

They were following them along the line of the ridge, and even though Mayta from time to time thought they had left them behind, they always reappeared. He’d already changed clips a couple of times. He didn’t feel ill; cold, yes, but his body was holding up well under the tremendous strain of running at this altitude. Why hasn’t anyone been wounded? he thought. After all, the guards had taken lots of shots at them. It’s that the guards are being cautious, they barely stick out their heads and take potshots, just to do their duty, without pausing to aim, afraid of being easy targets for the rebels. It seemed like a game, a noisy but inoffensive ritual. Would it last until dark? Could they slip away from the guards? It seemed impossible that night would ever come, that this clear sky would ever darken. He didn’t feel discouraged. Without arrogance, without even feeling sorry for himself, he thought: Rightly or wrongly, Mayta, you’re doing just what you always wanted to do.

“Get ready, don Eugenio. Let’s run. They’re covering us.”

“You go on without me, my legs have given out,” said the justice of the peace very slowly. “I’ll stay behind. Take this, too.”