We’ve left the Haiti and we’re walking along Miraflores Park, toward the corner of Larco, where Blacquer will take a bus. A thick mass of people stroll among and trip over the vendors who have their trinkets spread out all over the ground. The excitement the news of the invasion has caused is general. Our chat is spattered with the words Cubans, Bolivians, bombings, Marines, war, Reds.
“No, that’s not true,” Blacquer clarifies. “My problems began when I started questioning the party line. But I was castigated for reasons that outwardly had nothing to do with my questions. Among the many charges brought against me was that I had supposedly flirted with Trotskyism. They said that I’d proposed to the party a plan of action that involved the Trots. The same old story: discredit the critic, so that anything he says is garbage. In that kind of game, nobody’s better than we are.”
“So you were also a kind of victim of the Jauja thing,” I say to him.
“In a way.” He looks at me again, with his old, parchment-colored face humanized by a half smile. “Other proofs of my collusion with the Trots existed, but they didn’t know about them. I inherited Mayta’s books when he went out to the mountains.”
“I don’t have anyone else to give them to,” I said jokingly. “I am bereft of comrades. Better you than the informers. If you look at it that way, you needn’t have any scruples. Take my books and learn something.”
“There was a huge amount of Trotskyite shit, which I read in secret, the way we read Vargas Vila in secondary school.” Blacquer laughs. “In secret, right. I even ripped out the pages where Mayta had written down his initials, so there’d be no criminal evidence.”
He laughs again. There is a small crowd of people all craning their necks, trying to hear a news bulletin from a portable radio some passerby holds over his head. We just catch the end of a communiqué: the Junta for National Restoration announces to the community of nations the invasion of the fatherland by Cuban-Bolivian-Soviet forces. The invasion began at dawn, and the enemy has violated our sacred Peruvian soil at three places on the border, in the province of Puno. At 8 p.m., the committee will address the nation on the radio and television to report on this outrageous affront, which has electrified all Peruvians and made them into a single fist in defense of … So it was true, they had invaded. It must also be true, then, that the Marines will be moving in from their Ecuadorian bases, if they haven’t already. We start walking again, among people either stunned or frightened by the news.
“It doesn’t matter who wins, because I lose anyway,” Blacquer suddenly says, more bored than alarmed. “If the Marines win, I lose because I must be on their list as an old agent of international communism. If the rebels win, I lose because I’m a revisionist, a socialist-imperialist, and an ex-traitor to the cause. I’m not going to follow the advice that guy in the Haití was giving. I’m not going to fill pots and pans with water. For me, the fires may be the solution.”
At the bus stop, in front of the Tiendecita Blanca, there is such a crowd that he’ll have to wait a long time before he can get on a bus. In the years he spent in the limbo of the expelled, he tells me, he understood the Mayta of that day. I hear him, but I’m distanced from him, thinking. That the events in Jauja contributed years later, even indirectly, to Blacquer’s fall to the status of nonperson in which he’s lived is yet another proof of how mysterious and unforeseeable the ramifications of events are, that unbelievably complex web of causes and effects, reverberations and accidents that make up human history. It seems, in any case, that he doesn’t resent Mayta’s impulsive visits. It even seems that at a distance he respects Mayta.
“Nobody’s abstaining, you can count the hands,” said Jacinto Zevallos. “Unanimity, Mayta. You are no longer a member of the RWP(T). You have expelled yourself.”
There was a sepulchral silence, and no one moved. Should he just leave? Should he say anything? Should he walk out, leaving the doors open or just tell them to go fuck themselves?
“Ten minutes ago, we both knew we were enemies to the death,” shouted Blacquer furiously as he paced in front of Mayta’s chair. “And now you act as if we’d been comrades all our lives. It’s grotesque!”
“Don’t anybody leave,” said Comrade Medardo softly. “I have a request for a reconsideration, comrades.”
“We are in different trenches, but we are both revolutionaries,” said Mayta. “And we resemble each other in something else: for you and for me, personal matters always take a back seat to politics. So stop bitching and let’s talk.”
A reconsideration? All eyes were fixed on Comrade Medardo. There was so much smoke that from the corner where he was sitting, next to the pile of Workers Voice, Mayta saw their faces as if in a cloud.
“Was he desperate, crushed, did he feel his world was collapsing?”
“He was confident, calm, even optimistic, or at least that’s how he appeared.” Blacquer moves his head in negation. “He wanted to show me that being expelled didn’t affect him in the slightest. It might well have been true. Did you ever meet one of these guys who discovers sex or religion in old age? They get anxious, fiery, indefatigable. That’s how he was. He had discovered action and he seemed like a kid with a new toy. He looked ridiculous, like an old man trying to do the latest dance steps. At the same time, it was hard not to envy him a little.”
“We’ve been enemies for ideological reasons, and for the very same reasons we can be friends now.” Mayta smiled at him. “Being friends or enemies, as far as we’re concerned, is purely a matter of tactics.”
“Are you going to go through the rite of self-criticism and request membership in the party?” Blacquer ended up, laughing.
The veteran revolutionary in decline who one fine day discovers action and throws himself into it without thinking, impatient, hopeful that the fighting and the marching are going to recompense him for years of impotence—that’s the Mayta of those days, the one I perceive best among all the other Maytas. Were friendship and love things he understood only in political terms? No: he talked that way only to win Blacquer over. If he had been able to control his sentiments and instincts, he wouldn’t have led the double life he led, he wouldn’t have had to deal with the intrinsic split between being, by day, a clandestine militant totally given over to the task of changing the world, and, by night, a pervert on the prowl for faggots. There’s no doubt that he could pull out all the stops when he had to—we see the proof of it in that last attempt to attain the impossible, the support of his arch-enemies for an uncertain revolt. Two, three buses pass and Blacquer still can’t get on. We decide to walk down Larco; maybe on Benavides it’ll be easier.
“If news of this gets out, the only people who will gain by it will be the reactionaries. It’s also a black eye for the party,” Comrade Medardo explained delicately. “Our enemies will be rubbing their hands with glee, even the ones from the other RWP. There they go, they’ll say, tearing themselves to bits in one more internal struggle. Don’t interrupt me, Joaquín, I’m not asking for an act of Christian forgiveness or anything like that. Yes, I’ll explain what kind of reconsideration I’m talking about.”
The atmosphere of the garage on Jirón Zorritos had thickened. The smoke was so dense that Mayta’s eyes were burning. He saw that they were listening to Moisés with relief burgeoning on their faces, as if, surprised at having defeated him so easily, they were thankful that someone was giving them an out whereby they could leave with a clear conscience.
“Comrade Mayta has been castigated. He knows it, and so do we,” added Comrade Medardo. “He will not come back to the RWP(T), at least not for now, not as long as current conditions last. But, comrades, he’s said it. Vallejos’s plans are still in effect. The uprising will take place, with or without us. Whether we like it or not, it’s going to affect us.”
What was Moisés’s point? Mayta was surprised to hear Moisés refer to him still as “comrade.” He suspected what the point was, and in an instant all the depression and anger he had felt when he saw all
those raised arms in favor of the motion disappeared: this was a chance he’d have to take.
“Trotskyism will not participate in the guerrilla war,” he said. “The RWP(T) has unanimously decided to turn its back on us. The other RWP isn’t even aware of the plan. But the plan is serious and solid. Don’t you see? The Communist Party has a great opportunity here to fill a vacuum.”
“To stick its neck in the guillotine. A great privilege!” growled Blacquer. “Drink your coffee and, if you like, tell me about your tragic love affair with the Trots. But don’t say a word about that uprising, Mayta.”
“Don’t make up your minds now, not even in a week—take all the time you need,” Mayta went on, paying no attention to him. “The main obstacle for you all was the RWP(T). That obstacle has vanished. The insurrection is now the sole property of a worker-peasant group of independent revolutionaries.”
“You, an independent revolutionary?” Blacquer said, enunciating carefully.
“Buy the next issue of Workers Voice (T) and you’ll see for yourself,” said Mayta. “That’s what I’ve become: a revolutionary without a party. See? You’ve got a golden opportunity here. To run things, stand at the head of it all.”
“That was the resignation you read,” Blacquer says. He takes off his glasses to breathe on them and clean them with his handkerchief. “A decoy. No one believed in that resignation—neither the guy who signed it nor the ones who printed it. So why did they bother? To trick the readers? What readers? Did Workers Voice (T) have any readers beyond the—how many, seven—the seven Trots in the party? That’s the way history is written, comrade.”
All the stores on Avenida Larco are closed, even though it’s still early. Because of the news about the invasion down south? Around here, there are fewer people than on the Diagonal or in the park. And even the gangs of beggars that overrun the streets and the cars are thinner than usual. The side of the Municipal Building is covered with an enormous graffito in red paint: “The People’s Victory Is Coming Soon.” It’s decorated with the hammer and sickle. It wasn’t there when I passed by three hours ago. A commando came with paint and brushes and painted it right in front of the cops? But now I realize that there are no police guarding the building.
“Let’s at least give him a chance, then, to do a little less damage to the party,” Comrade Medardo went on cautiously. “He should resign. We’ll publish his resignation in Workers Voice (T). Besides, it would be proof that the party bears no responsibility for whatever he does in Jauja. A reconsideration in that sense of the word, comrades.”
Mayta saw that various members of the Central Committee of the RWP(T) were nodding in approval. Moisés/Medardo’s proposal might be accepted. He thought it over quickly, balancing the advantages and disadvantages. Yes, it was the lesser of two evils. He raised his hand: Could he speak?
At Benevides, there are as many people waiting for buses as there were at the Tiendecita Blanca. Blacquer shrugs: patience. I tell him I’ll wait with him until he gets on. Several people near us are talking about the invasion.
“Over the years, I’ve come to realize that he wasn’t so crazy,” Blacquer says. “If the first action had lasted longer, things might have turned out the way Mayta planned. If the insurrection had caught on, the party would have been forced to enter and try to take over. As it has with this revolt. Who remembers that, for the first two years, we opposed it? And now we’re fighting the Maoists for control, right? But Comrade Father Time shows no pity. Mayta was twenty-five years too early with his plans.”
Intrigued by the way he talks about the party, I ask him if he was readmitted or not. He gives me a cryptic answer: “Only halfway.” A lady with a child in her arms who seemed to be listening to him suddenly interrupts us. “Is it true the Russians are in it, too? What did we ever do to them? What’s going to happen to my daughter?” “Calm down, nothing’s going to happen. It’s a lot of baloney,” Blacquer consoles her as he waves at an overloaded bus that just keeps on going.
In an atmosphere totally unlike that of the meeting a few minutes earlier, the secretary general whispered that Comrade Medardo’s proposal was reasonable. It would keep the divisionists of the other RWP from taking advantage. He looked at him: there was no problem about having the central figure comment. “You have the floor, Mayta.”
“We talked for quite a while. In spite of what had just happened to him, he became euphoric, talking about the uprising,” says Blacquer, lighting a cigarette. “I found out that it would take place in a matter of days, but I didn’t know where. I would never have imagined Jauja. I thought maybe Cuzco, because some groups were seizing land there. But a revolution in the Jauja jail—who’d ever think of a thing like that?”
I listen to his flat laugh again. Without thinking, we start walking again, toward the bus stop on 28 de Julio. Time passes, and there he is, sweating, his clothes wrinkled and filthy, shadows under his eyes, his stiff hair all messed up. He’s sitting on the edge of his chair in Blacquer’s poor, tiny, crowded living room. He talks, waves his arms, and punctuates his words with decisive gestures. In his eyes, there is an irrefutable conviction. “Is the party going to refuse to enter into history, refuse to make history?” he berates Blacquer.
“Everything about this incident turned out to be contradictory,” I hear Blacquer say half a block later. “Because the very RWP(T) that expelled Mayta for wanting to involve them in Jauja threw itself into something even more sterile: the ‘expropriation’ of banks.”
Was it Fidel Castro’s entrance into Havana, which had taken place in the meantime, that transformed the prudent RWP(T), which had slid out of Mayta’s conspiracy, into a bellicose organization that set about emptying the banks of the bourgeoisie? They attacked the branch of the Banco Internacional that we’ve just passed—Joaquín was captured in the operation—and then, a few days later, the Banco Wiese in La Victoria, where Pallardi fell. These two actions disintegrated the RWP(T). Or was there, as well, a modicum of guilty conscience, a desire to prove that, even though they’d turned their backs on Mayta and Vallejos, they were capable of risking all on a single toss of the dice?
“Not remorse, not anything even like it,” says Blacquer. “It was Cuba. The Cuban Revolution broke through the taboos. It killed that superego that ordered us to accept the dictum that ‘conditions aren’t right,’ that the revolution was an interminable conspiracy. With Fidel’s entrance into Havana, the revolution seemed to put itself within reach of anyone who would dare fight.”
“If you don’t take them, the guy who owns my house will sell them all off in La Parada,” Mayta insisted. “You can pick them up after Monday. And there aren’t that many, anyway.”
“Okay, I’ll take the books.” Blacquer gave in. “Let’s say I’ll store them for you for the time being.”
At the 28 de Julio stop, we find the same mob we found at the earlier stops. A man wearing a hat has a portable radio, and—nervously watched by all those around him—he’s trying to find some station broadcasting news. He can’t find one. All he gets is music. For almost half an hour, I wait with Blacquer. Two buses pass by, packed to the roof, without stopping. Finally I say goodbye, because I want to get home in time to hear the message of the committee about the invasion. At the corner of Manco Cápac, I turn around: Blacquer is still there; I can make out his ruinous face and his air of being lost as he stands at the edge of the sidewalk, as if he didn’t know what to do or where to go. That’s the way Mayta must have been that day after the meeting. And yet Blacquer assures me that after leaving him his books and showing him where to hide the key to his room, Mayta left exuding optimism. “He grew under punishment” is what he said. No doubt about it: his resistance and his daring became stronger in adversity.
Although all the stores are closed, the sidewalks in this part of Larco are still crowded with people selling handicrafts, trinkets, and pictures: views of the Andes, portraits, and caricatures. I thread my way around blankets covered with bracelets and necklaces,
watched over by boys with ponytails and girls wearing saris. The air is filled with incense. In this enclave of aesthetes and street mystics, there is no perceptible alarm, not even any curiosity about what’s going on down south. You’d say that they don’t even know that in the last few hours the war has taken a much more serious turn and that at any minute it could be right here on top of them. At the corner of Ocharán, I hear a dog bark: it’s a strange sound that seems to come from the past, because ever since the food shortage began, domestic animals have disappeared from the streets. How did Mayta feel that morning? The long night had begun in the garage on Jirón Zorritos with his expulsion from the RWP(T), then moved on to his agreement to disguise it as a resignation, and ended with that conversation with Blacquer, which transformed him from an enemy into a confidant, a shoulder to cry on.
Sleepy, hungry, and exhausted, but in the same frame of mind he was in when he returned from Jauja, and still convinced that he had acted properly. They hadn’t thrown him out because he’d gone to see Blacquer: they’d agreed on the pullout before. Their feigned anger, the accusations of betrayal were just a trick to preclude any possibility of reviewing the decision. Was it out of fear of fighting? No, it was their pessimism, their lack of willpower, their psychological inability to break with routine and go on to real action. He had taken a bus and had to stand, hanging on to the rail, crushed between two black women carrying baskets. Didn’t he know that way of thinking all too well? “Wasn’t it your own for so many years?” They had no faith in the masses because they had no contact with them; they doubted the revolution and their own ideas because the intriguing that went on among sects had rendered them incapable of action.
Looking at him, one of the black women began to laugh, and Mayta realized he was talking to himself. He laughed, too. But if that’s the way they thought, then it was better that they didn’t take part, because they’d just be dead weight. Yes, they would be missed, because now there would be no urban support in Lima. But as new adherants emerged, a support organization would spring up here and elsewhere. The comrades of the RWP(T), when they saw that the vanguard was respected and that the masses were joining them, would regret their indecision. The Stalinists, too. The meeting with Blacquer was a time bomb. When they saw that the trickle was turning into a raging torrent, they would remember that the door was open and that they would be welcome. They would come; they would participate. He was so distracted that he forgot to get off at his corner and only realized he’d passed it two stops later.
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Page 18