Mario Llosa: The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

“Yes,” I say. “That’s the one I’m looking for.”

“You just missed him, as you might say,” he quickly explains. “He got out last month.”

I think I’ve lost him and that I’ll never find him and that maybe it’s better that way. It could be that, instead of helping me, a meeting with the flesh-and-blood Mayta would undo everything I’ve accomplished so far. Don’t you know where he’s gone? No one has an address where he might be found? They don’t, and have no idea where he might be. I tell the warden not to bother coming with me, and as we go downstairs, I ask him if he remembers Mayta. Of course he does; he’s been here as long as the oldest convict. He came in as a simple office boy, and now he’s vice warden of the whole penitentiary. He’s seen God only knows what things!

“A very correct, easygoing prisoner, never got into any trouble,” he says. “Ran a food kiosk in building 4. Hardworking guy. He managed to support his family while serving his sentence. He was here at least ten years the last time.”

“His family?”

“Wife and four kids,” he adds. “She came to see him once a week. I remember Mayta very well. Walked as if he were walking on eggs, right?”

We’re crossing the patio, between the wire fences, heading toward the guardhouse, when the vice warden stops. “Hold it. Arispe may have his address. He inherited the food kiosk. I think they’re still partners, even now. I’ll have him brought down, maybe you’ll be lucky.”

Carrillo and I remain in the patio, standing in front of the wire fences. To kill time, I ask him about Lurigancho and he, like the warden, says that there are always problems here. “Because here we’ve got, and I really mean it, the bad ones, people who seem to have been born for the express purpose of doing indescribable things to their fellow man.” Off in the distance, breaking the symmetry of the buildings, stands the one reserved for fags. Do they still lock them up there? Yes. Not that it’s of any real use; despite the walls and the bars, the other prisoners get in and the fags get out. Business as usual. Anyway, since they’ve got their own building, there are fewer problems. Before, when they were mixed in with the others, the fights and murders they’d cause were much worse.

I remember, from my first visit, a short talk I had with one of the prison doctors about the rapes of incoming prisoners. “The most common problem is infections of the rectum, complicated by gangrene or cancer.” I ask Carrillo if there are still as many rapes. He laughs. “It’s inevitable, with people who have nothing else, don’t you think? They have to let go somehow.” Finally, the prisoner the warden had called down appears. I explain that I’m looking for Mayta, does he know where I might find him?

He’s a respectable-looking guy, dressed relatively well. He listens without asking any questions. But I see that he has doubts, and I’m sure he’s not going to tell me anything. I ask him to give Mayta my telephone number the next time he sees him.

Suddenly he decides. “He works in an ice-cream parlor,” he says. “In Miraflores.”

It’s a small ice-cream parlor which has been there for many years. It’s on Bolognesi Street, a street I know very well because when I was a kid I knew a beautiful girl who lived there. She had the improbable name of Flora Flores. I’m sure the ice-cream parlor was there then and that I went in with the beautiful Flora Flores to have a sundae. It’s an unusual place for a street where there are no stores, only the typical Miraflores houses: two stories, front lawn, the inevitable geraniums, bougainvillea, and poincianas with big red flowers. I have an attack of nerves as I turn off the Malecón onto Bolognesi. Yes, it’s exactly where I remember it, a few steps away from that gray house with balconies, where Flora’s sweet face and incandescent eyes would appear. I park a short distance from the ice-cream parlor, but I can barely get the key out of the ignition, because I’ve suddenly become jittery.

“Alejandro Mayta,” I say, stretching out my hand. “Right?”

He looks at me for a few seconds and smiles, opening a mouth not overpopulated with teeth. He blinks, trying to remember me. Finally, he gives up.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t place you,” he says. “I thought you might be Santos, but you aren’t Santos, right?”

“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” I say, leaning on the counter. “You’re going to be surprised,” I warn him. “Just now, I’ve come from Lurigancho. The guy who told me how to find you was your partner in building 4—Arispe.”

I study him carefully, to see how he reacts. He seems neither surprised nor upset. He looks at me with curiosity, the hint of a smile still on his dark face. He’s wearing a cotton T-shirt, and I see hands that are rough, the rough hands of a porter or a day laborer. What I notice most is his absurd haircut. Someone has really chopped him up: his head looks like a mop, laughable. He makes me remember my first year in Paris, when I was really poor, and a friend of mine and I would get our hair cut at a school for barbers, near the Bastille. The students, just kids, would cut our hair for free, but they would leave us looking like my invented classmate. He looks at me, squinting up his dark, tired eyes — crow’s-feet at each end — with distrust growing in them.

“I’ve been investigating you for a year now, talking with the people who knew you,” I say. “Imagining you, even dreaming about you. Because I’ve written a novel that in a remote way deals with the Jauja business.”

He looks at me without saying a word, quite surprised now, not understanding, not sure he’s heard correctly, but very jumpy.

“But …” he stammers. “Why would you even bother, how can it be …”

“I don’t really know why, but that’s what I’ve been doing all this year,” I say to him quickly, afraid of his fear, afraid he’ll refuse to talk to me now or ever again. I try to explain: In a novel there are always more lies than truths, a novel is never a faithful account of events. This investigation, these interviews, I didn’t do it all so I could relate what really happened in Jauja, but so I could lie and know what I’m lying about.

I realize that, instead of calming him down, I’m confusing and alarming him. He blinks and stands there with his mouth open, mute.

“Now I know who you are. You’re the writer.” Now he’s out of the difficulty. “Sure, I recognized you. I even read one of your novels, at least I think so, years back.”

Just then, three sweaty boys come in from some game, judging by the equipment they’re carrying. They order ice cream and sodas. While Mayta takes care of them, I observe how he handles himself in the ice-cream parlor. He opens the freezer, fills the ice-cream dishes, opens the bottles, reaches for the glasses with an ease and familiarity that reflect a lot of practice. I try to imagine him in building 4 in Lurigancho, serving fruit juice, packages of cookies, cups of coffee, selling cigarettes to the other convicts, every morning, every afternoon, over the course of ten years. Physically, he doesn’t seem worn down; he’s a tough-looking guy, and carries his sixty-plus years with dignity. After settling the bill of the three athletes, he comes back to me, with a forced smile on his face.

“Damn,” he says. “That’s the last thing I’d ever imagine. A novel?”

And he moves his head incredulously from right to left and left to right.

“Naturally, your real name never appears even once,” I assure him. “Of course I’ve changed dates, places, characters, I’ve created complications, added and taken away thousands of things. Besides, I’ve invented an apocalyptic Peru, devastated by war, terrorism, and foreign intervention. Of course, no one will recognize anything, and everyone will think it’s pure fantasy. I’ve pretended as well that we were schoolmates, that we were the same age, and lifelong friends.