Mario Llosa - The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

That there was such an incident is true; it’s documented in a small Jauja newspaper. There was an APRA demonstration in the Plaza de Armas in honor of Haya de la Torre, who made a speech in the atrium of the cathedral. Vallejos, in civilian clothes, Shorty Ubilluz, and a small group of friends stationed themselves at one corner of the plaza, and when the entourage passed by, they pelted them with rotten eggs. The APRISTA toughs scattered them. Vallejos, Ubilluz, and the others tried to fight back, and then they took refuge in Ezequiel’s barbershop. That’s all we know for sure. Ubilluz and other people in Jauja assert that Vallejos was recognized by the APRA people and that they noisily protested the participation of the head of the prison, an officer on active duty, in action directed against an authorized political meeting. Vallejos was told that because he took part in the demonstration he was going to be transferred. They say he received an urgent message from his immediate superior in Huancayo. That’s what probably pushed him into moving the rebellion up four days, without telling the others about it. Ubilluz swears he only found out what happened when the lieutenant was dead and the other rebels were in jail.

“At first, I didn’t believe it. I thought they’d chickened out,” says Mayta. “Later on, I just didn’t know. Because, months or years later, some of the people originally involved ended up in the Sexto, the Frontón. They were jailed for other reasons — union or political stuff. They all swore that they were surprised when the uprising occurred, that Ubilluz had given them a different date, that there was no desertion, no change of heart. Frankly, I just don’t know. Only Vallejos and Ubilluz knew the first date. Did Vallejos change it? He didn’t tell me. But it isn’t impossible. He was a really impulsive guy, really capable of doing something like that, even if he ran the risk of being all alone. What we used to call a willful individualist in those days.”

Is he criticizing Vallejos? No, it’s a distanced, neutral observation. He tells me that on the first night, when Vallejos’s family came to claim his body, his father wouldn’t speak to him. He came in when they were interrogating Mayta, and Mayta stretched his hand out to him. But the father wouldn’t take it and even looked at him angrily, with tears in his eyes, as if Mayta were responsible for everything.

“I just don’t know, it might have been like that,” he repeats. “Or there might have been a misunderstanding. That is, Vallejos was sure of support that wasn’t actually promised. At the meetings they brought me to in Ricrán between Ubilluz and the miners, they talked about revolution, and everyone seemed in agreement. But did they really offer to take a rifle and come out to the mountains on the first day? I didn’t hear them say they would. Vallejos just assumed everything, he had no doubts. It may be they just made some vague promises, moral support, they would help from a distance, with their group continuing their normal lives. Or it may be that they did commit themselves and that out of fear, or because the plan didn’t convince them, they just backed out. I couldn’t say for sure. I just don’t know.”

He drums his fingers on the arm of the chair. There is a long silence.

“Were you ever sorry you got mixed up in it?” I ask him. “I imagine that in jail you must have thought quite a lot over the years about what happened.”

“Repenting is something Catholics do. I stopped being a Catholic many years ago. Revolutionaries don’t repent. They go through self-criticism, but that’s different. I went through mine, and that’s that.” He seems angry. But a few seconds later he smiles. “You don’t know how strange it is for me to talk politics, to remember political events. It’s like a ghost that comes back from the pit of time to show me the dead and make me see forgotten things.”

Did he stop taking an interest in politics only in these last ten years? Was it during the time before in jail? Or when he was imprisoned because of Jauja? He remains silent, deep in thought, trying to clarify his memories. Could he have forgotten that, too?

“I hadn’t thought about it until now,” he says softly, mopping his forehead. “It wasn’t a decision I made consciously. It just happened, the force of events. Remember that when I went to Jauja for the uprising I had broken with my comrades, with my party, and with my past. I was alone, politically speaking. And my new comrades were only that for a few hours. Vallejos died, Condori died, Zenón Gonzales went back to his community, the joeboys went back to school. See what I mean? It isn’t that I gave up politics. You might say that politics gave me up.”

The way he says it makes me disbelieve him: he speaks in hushed tones, his eyes not meeting mine, as he wiggles around in his chair. He never saw his old friends from the RWP(T) again?

“They were good to me when I was in jail, after Jauja,” he says vehemently. “They came to see me, they brought me cigarettes, they arranged it so I’d be included in the amnesty the new government put into effect. But the RWP(T) broke up a little afterward, because of what happened at La Convención, the Hugo Blanco business. When I got out of jail, the RWP(T) and the other RWP no longer existed. Other Trotskyist groups with people from Argentina sprang up. I didn’t know any of them, and I was no longer interested in politics.”

As he says these words, he gets up to go to the bathroom. When he comes back, I see he’s washed his face as well. Sure you don’t want to go out and get something to eat? He assures me he doesn’t and repeats that he never eats at night. We sit there, each one immersed in his own thoughts, without speaking. The silence continues to be total tonight in the Malecón de Barranco. There are probably only silent lovers protected by the darkness, and not the drunks and marijuana smokers that raise such a ruckus on Friday and Saturday nights.

I tell him that in my novel the character is an underground revolutionary, that he’s spent half his life plotting and fighting against other tiny groups as insignificant as his own, and that he flings himself into the Jauja adventure not so much because Vallejos’s plans convince him — inwardly, he may be skeptical about their chances for success — but because the lieutenant opens the way to action for him. The possibility of taking concrete action, of producing verifiable and immediate changes in everyday reality electrifies him. The minute he meets that impulsive young man, he realizes how inane his revolutionary activities have been. That’s why he embarks on the insurrection, even though he senses it is virtually suicide.

“Do you recognize yourself in that character?” I ask him. “Or does he have nothing at all to do with you, with the reasons why you followed Vallejos?”

He continues to look at me, thoughtful, blinking, not knowing what to say. He raises his glass and drinks the rest of the soda. His vacillation is his answer.

“Those things seem impossible when they fail,” he reflects. “If they succeed, they seem perfect and well planned to everyone. For example, the Cuban Revolution. How many landed with Fidel on the Granma ? A handful. Maybe even fewer than we had that day in Jauja. They were lucky and we weren’t.” He meditates for a moment. “It never seemed crazy to me, much less suicidal,” he affirms. “It had been well thought out. If we had destroyed the Molinos bridge and slowed down the police, we would have crossed the Cordillera. In the jungle, they never would have found us. We would have …”

His voice fades. His lack of conviction is so apparent that you’d say it was senseless to go on trying to make me believe something even he didn’t believe. What does my supposed exfellow student believe in now? At the Salesian School, half a century ago, he ardently believed in God. Later, when God died in his heart, he believed with the same ardor in the revolution, in Marx, in Lenin, in Trotsky. Then Jauja, or perhaps before that, those long years of insipid activism, weakened and finally killed that faith as well. What came to replace it? Nothing. That’s why he gives the impression of being an empty man, without the emotion to back up his words. When he began to rob banks and take part in kidnappings, could he believe in anything except getting money any way he could? Something inside me refuses to accept that. Above all now, as I look at him, dressed in those walking shoes and that shoddy clothing; above all, now that I’ve seen how he earns a living.