“I’m going away and I don’t know when I’ll be back to Peru,” Mayta explained to her, sitting on the arm of the nearest chair. “I didn’t want to leave without meeting him. Would it bother you if I saw him for a minute?”
“It sure would bother me,” Adelaida cut him off brusquely. “He doesn’t have your name, and Juan is the only father he knows. Don’t you know what it cost me to get him a normal home and a real father? You’re not going to ruin it on me now.”
“I don’t want to ruin anything,” Mayta said. “I’ve always respected our deal. I just wanted to meet him. I won’t tell him who I am, and if that’s the way you want it, I won’t even talk to him.”
He said nothing about his real activities when they first began seeing each other, only that he worked as a journalist. You couldn’t say he was good-looking, with that gait of his, as if he were walking on eggs, and with those spaces between his teeth. He didn’t even have a good job, judging by his clothes. But in spite of all that, you liked something about him. What was there about this revolutionary that appealed to the cute employee of the Banco de Credito over in Lince? The airmen guarding Rospigliosi Castle are uptight. They stop every passerby and ask to see his papers. Then they frisk him in hysterical detail. Has something else happened? Do they know something that hasn’t been announced yet over the radio? A young girl carrying baskets who stubbornly refused to be frisked has just been hit with a rifle butt.
“When I was with him, I felt I was learning things,” Adelaida says. “Not that he was so well-educated. It was that he talked about things the other guys I went out with never mentioned. Since I didn’t understand anything, I was like a mouse hypnotized by a cat.”
She was also impressed by the fact that he respected her, that he was so relaxed, so sure of himself. He said beautiful things to her. Why didn’t he kiss her? One day, he brought her to meet an aunt of his over in Surquillo, the only relative of Mayta’s she would ever meet. Aunt Josefa prepared them a lunch, complete with little cakes, and was affectionate toward Adelaida. They were chatting away when suddenly dona Josefa had to step out. They stayed in the living room listening to the radio, and Adelaida thought: Now is the moment. Mayta was right next to her on the sofa, and she waited. But he didn’t even try to hold her hand, and she said to herself: He must really be in love with me. The girl with the baskets has finally resigned herself to being frisked. Then they let her go. As she passes opposite the window, I see her lips moving as she insults them.
“I’m begging you, don’t ask to talk to him,” Adelaida said. “Besides, he’s in school. Why would you want to meet him, what for? If he put two and two together, it would be awful.”
“Just by seeing my face he’s miraculously going to discover I’m his father?” Mayta mocks.
“It frightens me, like tempting fate,” Adelaida stuttered.
In fact, her voice and face were consumed with worry. It was useless to make any more demands. Wasn’t this flash of sentimentality, this desire to see the son he rarely remembered, a bad symptom? He was wasting precious moments; it was foolish to have come. If Juan Zarate found him, there would be a scene, and any scandal, no matter how small, would have negative repercussions for the plan. Get up, say goodbye. But he was glued to the armchair.
“Juan was postmaster here in Lince,” Adelaida says. “He would come to see me when I went to work at the bank and again when I got off. He followed me, he asked me out, he asked me to marry him once a week. He put up with my rejections and never gave up.”
“Did he offer to give his name to the child?”
“That was the condition I set for our getting married.” I glance at the photo taken in Cañete, and now I understand why the beautiful employee would marry this ugly, older bureaucrat. Mayta’s son must be thirty years old. Did he have the normal life his mother wanted for him? What can he think about the current situation? Is he supporting the rebels and internationalists, or is he backing the army and the Marines? Or, like his mother, does he believe that either alternative is pure garbage? “Even though he hadn’t kissed me by our fifth or sixth date, he gave me a big surprise.”
“What would you say if I were to propose to you?”
“Let’s wait until that day and you’ll find out,” she said, playing the coquette.
“I’m proposing, then,” said Mayta. “Would you marry me, Adelaida?”
“He hadn’t even kissed me,” she repeats, nodding. “And he proposed just like that. I cooked my own goose in all of this, so I can’t blame anyone else.”
“Proof that you were in love.”
“It isn’t that I was dying to get married,” she asserts. Once again, she makes the gesture I’ve seen several times: she throws her hair back off her face. “I was young, quite good-looking, and lots of guys were interested in me. Juan Zárate wasn’t the only one. And I said yes to the one who was as poor as a church mouse, the revolutionary, the one who had other problems, too. Wasn’t I a jerk?”
“Okay, I won’t see him,” Mayta says softly. But he still didn’t get off the arm of the chair. “Tell me something about him, at least. And about yourself. Has married life been good for you?”
“Better than my life with you,” said Adelaida, in a resigned, even melancholic tone. “I live quietly, without worrying whether the cops might barge in day or night, break the place up, and arrest my husband. With Juan, I know that we’ll be eating every day and that we won’t be evicted for not paying the rent.”
“To judge by the way you say it, you don’t seem so happy,” said Mayta. Wasn’t this conversation, at this precise moment, absurd? Shouldn’t he be buying medicines, picking up his money down at France-Presse, packing his bag?
“No, I’m not,” said Adelaida, who displayed more hospitality since Mayta had agreed not to see the boy. “Juan made me quit working at the bank. If I were still working, we’d be living better, and I’d see people, know what’s going on. Here in the house, I spend my time sweeping, washing, and cooking. Not exactly the kind of life to make you happy.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Mayta, looking around the living room. “And yet, compared to millions of people, Adelaida, you’re living very well.”
“Are you starting in with politics now?” She gets riled up. “In that case, get out. It’s your fault that I’ve come to hate politics above everything.”
They were married three weeks later in a civil ceremony in the Lince town hall. Then she began to know the real Mayta. Under that clear blue sky, and over the roofs of red tiles in Cuzco, wave hundreds, thousands of red flags, and the old façades of its churches and palaces and the ancient stones of its streets are red with the blood of the recent fighting. At the beginning, she didn’t understand all that stuff about the RWP. She knew that in Peru there was one party, the APRA, which General Ordía had outlawed and which Prado had made legal again when he took office. But a party called the RWP? Screaming demonstrations, shots fired in the air, and frenetic speeches proclaim the beginning of another era, the advent of the new man. Have the executions of traitors, informers, torturers, and collaborators with the old regime begun in the beautiful Plaza de Armas, where the viceregal authorities had Túpac Amaru drawn and quartered? Mayta gave her a partial explanation: the Revolutionary Workers’ Party was still small.
“I didn’t think it was important, because it seemed like a game to me,” she says, pushing back a falling lock of hair. “But before a month was out, one night when I was alone I heard knocking at the door. It was two investigators. Under the pretext of carrying on a search, they cleaned the place out—they even took away a bag of rice I had in the kitchen. That’s how the nightmare began.”
She barely ever saw her husband, never knowing if he was at meetings, at the print shop, or in hiding. Mayta’s life was not France-Presse, because he only got an hourly and extremely low wage from them. They couldn’t have survived if she hadn’t gone on working at the bank. She quickly realized that the only thing important to Mayta was politics
. There were times when he’d come home with those guys and argue until all hours of the morning. “So the RWP is communist?” she asked him. “We’re the real communists,” he answered. Who is this man you’ve married? she began to ask herself.
“I thought Juan Zárate loved you and turned himself inside out to make you happy.”
“He loved me before you turned up,” she said. “And he must have loved me when he agreed to give his name to your son. But once he went through with it, he began to resent me.”
Did he mistreat her? No, he treated her well enough, but always made her feel that it was he who had been the generous one. With the kid, on the other hand, he was good, he took charge of his education. What are you doing here, Mayta? Wasting your last hours in Lima talking about all this? But some kind of inertia kept him from leaving. That they were talking about conjugal problems in that final conversation, when Mayta was already halfway to Jauja, disappoints me. I was hoping to find something spectacular, something dramatic in that last conversation, something that would throw a conflicting light on what Mayta was feeling and dreaming on the eve of the uprising. But, to judge by what I’m hearing, I see that you two spoke more about you than about him. Sorry for interrupting, let’s go on. So his political activities brought you suffering?
“I suffered more because he was queer,” she replies. She blushes and goes on, “More because I found out he’d married me to cover up what he was.”
Finally, a dramatic revelation. And yet my attention is still split between Adelaida and the flags, the blood, the shootings, and the euphoria of the insurgents and internationalists in Cuzco. Is that how Lima will be in a few weeks? On the bus I took to Lince, the driver assured me that the army, starting last night, had begun publicly shooting presumed terrorists in Villa el Salvador, Comas, Ciudad del Niño, and other new towns. Will we see the same lynchings and murders in Lima that were perpetrated in Lima when the Chileans occupied the city during the War of the Pacific in 1881?
I can hear, quite clearly, the lecture a historian gave in London, based on the account of the British consul in Lima. While the Peruvian volunteers sacrificed themselves to hold the line against the Chilean attack in Chorrillos and Miraflores, the Lima mob murdered the Chinese in their shops, hanging them, stabbing them, and burning them in the street after accusing them of being accomplices of the Chileans. Then they went on to loot the houses of the rich, terrified ladies and gentlemen who were praying the invaders would get there quickly. They discovered that they were less afraid of the Chileans than of those frenzied masses of Indians, cholos, mulattoes, and blacks who had taken over the city. Would something like that happen now? Would the hungry masses loot the houses of San Isidro, Las Casuarinas, Miraflores, Chacarilla, as the last vestiges of the army melted away before the final rebel offensive? Would there be a stampede toward embassies and consulates, while generals, admirals, functionaries, and ministers boarded planes and ships with all the jewels, dollars, and deeds they could dig out of their hiding places at the last minute? Would Lima burn, the way the city of Cuatro Suyos is burning now?
“It would seem you haven’t forgiven him for that,” I say to her.
“Whenever I remember, my blood freezes in my veins,” Adelaida admits.
That time? That night—rather, that dawn. She heard the car’s brakes, a skid out in front of the house. And since she lived in fear of the police, she jumped out of bed to take a look. Through the window, she saw the car. In the bluish light of dawn, she could see Mayta’s faceless silhouette get out of the car on one side. On the other side, she could make out the driver. She was going back to bed, when something—something strange, unusual, difficult to explain, to define—upset her. She pressed her face to the window. Because the other man had made a gesture as if to say goodbye to Mayta, a movement it didn’t seem right to make to her husband. The kind of obscene gesture you’d see jokers, drunks, and playboys make. But Mayta was never playful or familiar. So? The guy, as if he were saying goodbye, had grabbed his fly. His fly. He still held on to it, and Mayta, instead of slapping his hand away—Let go, you stinking drunk!—nuzzled up to him. He was hugging him. They were kissing. On the face, on the mouth. “It’s a woman,” she wished, hoped, begged heaven it would be, all the time feeling her hands and knees shaking. A woman wearing trousers and a jacket? The foggy glow kept her from seeing clearly who was kissing and rubbing her husband down there on that deserted street, but there could be no doubt—because of his size, his build, his head, his hair—it was a man. She felt the desire to run out, half dressed as she was, and shout at them: “Queers, queers!” But a few seconds later, when the two separated and Mayta walked toward the house, she pretended to be asleep. In the darkness, mortified with shame, she glimpsed him coming in. She hoped that he would be so drunk that anyone who saw them would say, “He didn’t know what he was doing or with whom.” But of course he hadn’t even had a single drink. Did he ever drink? She saw him undress in the darkness, except for the underpants he slept in, and slip into bed with her, carefully, so as not to wake her up. Then Adelaida began to throw up.
“I don’t know how long,” Mayta replied, as if the question had taken him by surprise. “It’ll all depend on how I do. I want to change my life-style. I don’t even know if I’ll come back to Peru.”
“Are you going to give up politics?” a surprised Adelaida asked him.
“In a way,” he said. “I’m going because of something you always used to get on me about. I’ve finally proven you right.”
“A little late, don’t you think?” she said.
“Better late than never.” Mayta smiled. He was thirsty, as if he had eaten fish. Why not just leave?
Adelaida had that expression of disgust on her face that he remembered so well, and the crowd didn’t even manage to understand until—noisy and cataclysmic—the first bombs exploded. Roofs, walls, the bell towers of Cuzco all began to collapse. Debris of all sorts—stones, roof tiles, bricks—flew all over. Then they started to machine-gun the people who were running. In their panic, the crowd created as many casualties as the bursts of fire from the strafing planes. In the confusion of moans, bullets, and screams, those with rifles fired at the sky dirty with smoke.
“You were the only person Mayta said goodbye to,” I assure her. “He didn’t even visit his Aunt Josefa. Doesn’t his visit, when you think about it after so many years, seem strange to you?”
“He told me he was leaving the country and that he wanted to find out how his son was doing,” Adelaida says. “Naturally, I understood everything later, when it was in the papers.”
Outside, there is a sudden flare-up of activity at the entrance to the Rospigliosi Castle, as if, behind the barbed wire and the sandbags, they were redoubling their guard. Out there, not even the horror of the bombing has brought the looting under control. Frenzied bands of escaped convicts are breaking into the downtown stores. The rebel commanders are ordering anyone found looting to be shot where he stands. The buzzards are tracing circles over the bodies of those shot, who are soon indistinguishable from the victims of the bombing. It all smells of gunpowder, rotten flesh, burning.
“Take advantage of things, so you can be cured,” whispers Adelaida, so low that I barely heard her. But her words have the same effect on me as a slap in the face.
“I’m not sick,” Mayta stuttered. “Tell me about the kid before I go.”
“You are sick,” Adelaida insisted, trying to look him in the eye. “Are you cured, maybe?”
“It isn’t a sickness, Adelaida,” I stammered. I could feel that my palms were sweaty, and I was even thirstier.
“In your case, it is,” she said, and Matya thought something had reawakened all her resentment of before. It was his fault: What were you doing there, why didn’t you leave? “In others, it’s degenerate, but that kind of vice has nothing to do with you. I know all about it, I talked to that doctor about it. He said it could be cured, and you didn’t want to try shock treatments. I offered
to get a loan from the bank for the therapy, but you said no, no, no. Now that it’s all over, tell me the truth. Why didn’t you want to go through with it? Were you scared?”
“Shock treatment is useless for these things,” I said, muttering. “Let’s not talk about it. Could I please have a glass of water?”
Wasn’t it possible that marrying you was his “therapy,” ma’am? Couldn’t he have married her, thinking that living with a young, attractive woman would “cure” him?
“That’s what he wanted me to believe, when we finally got around to talking,” Adelaida says softly, pushing back her hair. “A lie, of course. If he had wanted to be cured, he would have tried. He married me to cover up. Above all, in front of his revolutionary buddies. I was the screen for his filthy activities.”
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to answer this question. Did you two have a normal sex life?”
She doesn’t seem to be uncomfortable. Because there are so many dead and it’s impossible to bury them, the rebel commanders order them doused with anything flammable and burned. The rotting bodies scattered through the city must not be the cause of infection. The air is so thick and polluted that you can scarcely breathe. Adelaida uncrosses her legs, makes herself comfortable, and scrutinizes me. Otherwise, there is a clamor. An armored car has taken up a position in front of the barbed wire. There are more guards. Things must have gotten worse. It looks as if they’re getting ready for something.
As if she had read my mind, Adelaida says softly, “If they are attacked, we’ll be the first to be fired on.” The crackling of the bonfires of corpses doesn’t silence the irrepressible, maddened voices of the relatives and friends who try to stop the burning, who demand Christian burial for the victims. Swathed in smoke, stench, fear, and despair, some try to wrench the bodies away from the revolutionaries. From a monastery, church, or convent there comes a funeral procession. It advances, ghostlike, the people chanting prayers and imprecations amid the dying and the ruin that is Cuzco.
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Page 20