He reached the alley completely worn out. In the patio, there was a long line of women with pots, all shouting because the first one was taking too long at the tap. He went into his room and stretched out on the bed, without even taking off his shoes. He just didn’t have the energy to go down and get in line. But how good it would have been now to sink his tired feet in a pan of cool water. He closed his eyes and, fighting sleep, chose the words for the letter he was to bring that afternoon to Jacinto so it could come out in the issue of Workers Voice (T) that was at the press.
That issue barely covers four pages, a single sheet folded in four, now so yellow that as I pick it up—sitting in front of the television, where the generals of the Junta have yet to appear, even though it’s eight o’clock—I get the feeling it’s going to crumble in my hands. The resignation is not on the first page, which consists of two long articles and a smaller one, boxed, at the bottom. The editorial, set in small caps, takes up the left column: “Halt, Fascists!” It concerns some incidents that took place in the central mountains regarding a strike over two mining contracts with the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation. When the police removed the strikers, they shot a few of them, one of whom later died. This is not random violence but is, instead, part of a plan to intimidate and immobilize the working classes, a plan hatched by the police, the army, and reactionary groups, in accord with Pentagon and CIA Latin American policy. What’s it all about?
They’ve started playing military music, and pictures of the national emblem and the flag are followed by busts and portraits of national heroes. Are they going to start or what? To halt the advance, every day more powerful and unstoppable, of the workers toward socialism. Those methods cannot surprise anyone who has learned the lessons of history: they were used by Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and now Washington is applying them to Latin America. But they will not succeed, they will be counterproductive, a nutrient fertilizer, as Leon Trotsky wrote: For the working classes, the blows of repression are like pruning for plants. There they are: the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, and behind them, the advisers, the ministers, the heads of garrisons and military units in the Lima region. Their somber faces seem to confirm the worst rumors. The editorial in Workers Voice (T) ends with an exhortation to workers, peasants, students, and progressives to close ranks against the Nazi-Facist conspiracy. They’re singing the National Anthem.
The other article is about Ceylon. It’s true, at that time Trotskyism had taken hold there. The text asserts that Trotskyism is the second most powerful force in the Parliament and the most powerful among the unions. From the way the tenses go, it would seem the article was translated from the French—by Mayta himself, perhaps? The names, beginning with that of Madame Bandaranaike, the Prime Minister, are difficult to remember.
Okay, the National Anthem is over, and the representative of the army, the usual spokesman for the Junta, steps forward. In an unusual move, he skips the pompous patriotic rhetoric he normally uses, and instead gets right to the heart of the matter. His voice has less of a military ring and is more tremulous. Three military columns, made up of Cubans and Bolivians, have penetrated deep into our territory, supported by planes which, beginning last night, have been bombing civilian targets in Puno, Cuzco, and Arequipa. An open violation of all international laws and agreements. There are many casualties, and considerable property damage. In the very heart of the city of Puno, bombs have destroyed part of the Social Security Hospital, causing an as yet undetermined number of deaths. The description of the disasters takes him several minutes. Will he tell us if the Marines have crossed the Ecuadorian border?
The small box at the bottom of the page announces that shortly the RWP(T) will present at the union hall of the Civil Construction Union its previously postponed program on “The Betrayed Revolution: A Trotskyist Interpretation of the Soviet Union.” To find Mayta’s resignation, you have to turn the page. It’s in a corner, below an extensive article entitled “Let’s Set Up Soviets in the Barracks!” With no heading or frame: “Resigns from the RWP(T).” The spokesman now assures us that the Peruvian troops, despite the fact that they are fighting against superior numbers and greater logistical support, are heroically resisting the criminal invasion of international communist terrorism, and have the decided support of the civilian populace. The committee, invoking martial law, has this afternoon activated three new divisions of reservists. Will he tell us if U.S. planes are bombing the invaders?
Comrade Secretary General of the RWP(T)
Lima
Comrade:
I take this opportunity to communicate to you my irrevocable decision to resign from the ranks of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (Trotskyist), in which I have been a militant for more than ten years. I have taken this decision for personal reasons. I wish to be independent again and to act under my own responsibility, so that anything I might say or do will not compromise the party in any way. I need my freedom of action in these moments in which our country is foundering once again in the struggle between revolution and reaction.
My voluntary withdrawal from the RWP(T) does not mean that I am breaking with the ideals that have marked the path of revolutionary socialism for the workers of the world. I would like, comrade, to reaffirm once again my faith in the Peruvian proletariat, my conviction that the revolution will become a reality that will once and for all break the chains of exploitation and obscurantism which have weighed so heavily on our people for centuries. The process of liberation will be carried out in the light of that theory—more solid and stronger than ever before—conceived by Marx and Engels and implemented by Lenin and Trotsky.
I request that my resignation be published in Workers Voice (T) so that the public will be informed.
Long live the Revolution!
A. Mayta Avendano
He’s only said it at the end, very quickly, with less firmness, as if he wasn’t very sure. In the name of the Peruvian people, who are gloriously fighting in defense of Western civilization and Christianity in the free world, against the onslaught of collectivist and totalitarian atheism, the Junta has requested and obtained from the government of the United States of America support troops and logistical supplies to repel the communist Russo-Cuban-Bolivian invasion that seeks to enslave our homeland. So this is true as well. Here we go. The war is no longer a Peruvian affair. Peru is just one more theater for the war the Great Powers are waging, directly and through satellites or allies. Whoever wins, the fact is that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will die. If Peru survives, it will be prostrate. I was so sleepy I didn’t feel I had enough energy even to turn off the TV.
His anxiety was justified when he turned around: Anatolio was pointing a pistol at him. He wasn’t afraid, just sorry: the delay it would cause! And what about Vallejos? The plan had to be carried out step by step with absolute precision, and it was clear that Anatolio wasn’t there to kill him but to keep him from getting to Jauja. He strode firmly toward the boy to try to convince him to be reasonable, but Anatolio stretched out his arm energetically and Mayta saw that he was going to squeeze the trigger. He raised his hands over his head, thinking: To die without even having fought. He felt a lacerating sadness; he’d never be with them, there on Calvary when the Epiphany began. “Why are you doing this, Anatolio?” His own voice disgusted him: a real revolutionary is logical and cold, not sentimental. “Because you’re a faggot,” said Anatolio in a calm, leaden, forceful, irreversible tone, one Mayta wished he could use just now. “Because you’re a queer and you’ve got to pay the price,” confirmed the secretary general, his jaundiced face and pointy ears jutting forward. “Because you’re a faggot and disgusting,” added Comrade Moises/Medardo, sticking his profile over Comrade Jacinto’s shoulder. The whole Central Committee of the RWP(T) was there, one behind the other, all armed with pistols. He had been judged, sentenced, and they were now going to execute him. Not for indiscipline, errors, or betrayal, but—how petty, how asinine—for having slid his tongue, like a st
iletto, between Anatolio’s teeth. He lost all composure and began to cry out for Vallejos, Ubilluz, Lorito, the peasants from Ricran, the joeboys: “Get me out of this trap, comrades.” With his back soaking wet, he woke up. From the edge of the bed, Anatolio was looking at him.
“I couldn’t make out what you were saying,” he heard him whisper.
“What are you doing here?” Mayta stuttered, still partly in his nightmare.
“I just came by,” said Anatolio. He was looking at him without blinking, with an intriguing little light in his eyes. “Are you mad at me?”
“The truth is that you’re hard to figure,” Mayta said softly, without moving. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, his eyes were bleary, and he still had goose bumps from the scare he’d had. “The truth is, you’re a cynic, Anatolio.”
“You taught me everything,” said the boy gently, always looking him in the eye with an undefinable expression that irritated Mayta and made him remorseful. A horsefly began to buzz around the light bulb.
“I taught you to screw like a man, not to be a hypocrite,” said Mayta, making an effort to control his rage: Calm down, don’t insult him, don’t hit him, don’t argue. Just get him out of here.
“The Jauja idea is crazy. We talked it over, and we all agreed that you had to be stopped,” said Anatolio without moving, with a certain vehemence. “No one was going to kick you out. Why did you go to Blacquer? No one would have expelled you.”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” said Mayta. “This is all ancient history. Why don’t you just leave.”
But the boy didn’t move a muscle and didn’t stop looking at him with that look that had both provocation and scorn.
“We aren’t comrades or friends anymore,” said Mayta. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I want you to give me a blowjob,” said the boy slowly, looking him in the eye and touching his knee with his five fingers.
Seven
“What are you doing here, Mayta?” exclaimed Adelaida. “What do you want?”
Rospigliosi Castle marks the border between Lince and Santa Beatriz, neighborhoods that have become indistinguishable. But when Mayta and Adelaida were married, there was a class struggle going on between them. Lince was always modest, lower-middle-class tending toward proletarian, with narrow, colorless little houses, tenements and their alleys, cracked sidewalks and rocky little gardens. Santa Beatriz, on the other hand, was a pretentious neighborhood where a few well-off families built mansions in “colonial,” “Sevilian,” or “neo-Gothic” style-like this monument to extravagance, the Rospigliosi Castle, a castle with battlements and pointed arches made of reinforced concrete. The inhabitants of Lince viewed their neighbors in Santa Beatriz with resentment and envy, while the good citizens of Santa Beatriz looked down their noses at the Linceans and scorned them.
“I’d just like a word with you,” said Mayta. “And, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see my son.”
Nowadays Santa Beatriz and Lince are the same: one decayed and the other improved, until they finally met at a median point. It’s a shapeless region, inhabited by white-collar workers, business and professional people neither rich nor impoverished, but hard pressed to get to the end of the month without money problems. This mediocrity is personified perfectly by Adelaida’s husband, don Juan Zarate, an employee of the Mail and Telegraph Service with many years’ service. His photo is next to the curtainless window. Looking through that window, I can see the Rospigliosi Castle. Since the building is used by the Air Ministry, it is surrounded by coils of barbed wire and sandbag walls, behind which I can see the guards’ helmets and rifle barrels. One of those patrols stopped me as I was on my way over here and frisked me from head to toe before letting me pass. The air-force men are on edge, their fingers wrapped around their triggers. Justifiably so, given the situation we’re in. In the photo, don Juan Zarate wears a suit and a tie and looks serious. Adelaida, clinging to his arm, also looks stern.
“That’s when we got married, over in Cañete. We spent three days there, in a house that belonged to one of Juan’s brothers. I was seven months’ pregnant. Barely shows, right?”
She is right. No one could ever guess she was so far advanced in her pregnancy. The photograph must be almost thirty years old. It’s unbelievable how well preserved this woman, who for a short time was the wife of my schoolmate from the Salesian School, is.
“It was Mayta’s child,” Adelaida adds.
I pay close attention to what she says and observe her carefully. I still can’t get over the impression her looks made on me when I walked into that lugubrious little house. I’d only spoken with her over the telephone and I never thought that harsh voice could be connected to a woman who was still attractive despite her age. Her hair is gray and falls in waves to her shoulders. Her face has soft features, with prominent, fleshy lips, and deep eyes. She crosses her legs: smooth, well-rounded, long, solid. When she was married to Mayta, she must have been a knockout.
“A fine time to be remembering your son,” Adelaida exclaimed.
“I always remember him,” Mayta replied. “It’s one thing not to see him and another not to think of him. We made a deal, and I’ve stuck by it.”
But there’s something desolate about her, a depression, an air of defeat. And an absolute indifference: it doesn’t seem to matter to her that the rebels have taken Cuzco and established a government there, that there were undecipherable shots last night in the streets of Lima, not even whether or not it’s true that hundreds of Marines have just reached the La Joya base in Arequipa to reinforce the army, which seems to have collapsed all along the southern front. She doesn’t even mention the events that have all of Lima in suspense and that—despite the genuine triumph it is for me to be speaking with her—distract me with recurring images of red flags, rifle shots, and shouts of victory on the streets of Cuzco.
“This is how you stick by it—coming to my house?” said Adelaida, pushing back a curl that had fallen over her forehead. “Do you have any idea the mess you’d be making if my husband finds out?”
As I listen to her tell how her wedding to Juan Zarate was moved forward so that Mayta’s child could be born with another name and another father, in a real home, I remind myself that I am wrong to be distracted: I haven’t got much more time. Being here is my reward for being persistent. Adelaida refused to see me several times, and the third or fourth time I called, she just hung up on me. I had to insist, beg, swear that neither her name nor Juan Zarate’s nor her son’s would ever appear in what I wrote. Finally, I had to suggest to her that since this was business—I wanted her to tell me about her life with Mayta and that final meeting just hours before he went to Jauja—I would pay for her time. She’s granted me an hour of conversation for a stiff price. She will not discuss anything she considers “too private.”
“It’s something special,” insisted Mayta. “I’ll be gone in a minute, you’ll see, I swear.”
“I thought he was on the run and had no place to go,” Adelaida says. “The usual thing. Because, from when I first met him until we separated, he always felt he was being watched. Rightly and wrongly. And full of secrets, even from me.”
Did she ever love him? She couldn’t have any other reason for living with him. How did she meet him? At a fair, by the wheel of fortune at Plaza Sucre. She bet on number 17 and someone next to her bet on 15. The wheel stopped right on 15. “What luck! The little bear,” exclaimed Adelaida. Her neighbor: “It’s yours. Will you accept it as a gift? How do you do? My name’s Mayta.”
“Okay, okay, I’d rather the gossip who lives across the hall not see us together here.” Adelaida finally opened the door to him. “Five minutes and that’s it, please. If Juan finds you here, he’ll be really mad. You’ve already given me enough headaches for one lifetime.”
Didn’t she suspect from his nervousness and his fidgeting that this unusual visit had been prompted by the fact that he was on the verge of doing something extraordinary? Not in
the slightest. Because, in fact, she didn’t see any sign of nerves or excitement in him. He was his normal self: calm, badly dressed, a little thinner. When they’d got to know each other better, Mayta confessed that the meeting at the wheel of fortune in Plaza Sucre was not accidental: he had seen her, followed her, and hung around, looking for a way to strike up a conversation.
“He convinced me that he’d fallen in love with me at first sight,” Adelaida adds in a sarcastic tone. Every time she mentions his name, she becomes bitter. Despite the fact that it all happened a long time ago, there’s an open wound somewhere inside her. “A total fraud, and I fell for it like the sucker I am. He was never in love with me. And he was so self-centered he never even realized how much he hurt me.”
Mayta took a look around: a sea of red flags, a sea of fists held high, a sea of rifles, and ten thousand throats hoarse from shouting. Being here in Adelaida’s house seemed incomprehensible to him, in the same way that it seemed incomprehensible that any son of his, even if he had someone else’s name, could live with these armchairs covered with clear plastic, surrounded by these walls and their cracked paint. Was I right to come? Wasn’t this visit merely a meaningless, gratuitous, sentimental gesture? Wouldn’t Adelaida figure something strange was going on? Was that song they were singing “The International” in Quechua?
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Page 19