The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Nobody came? None? Not a single one?”

  “Well, we’re here,” said the kid with the half-shaved head, and despite his confusion, Mayta remembered what Ubilluz had said about him when they were introduced: Cordero Espinoza, commander of his class, number one, a brain. “But it looks like the others have taken off.”

  Shock, rage, an intimation of the catastrophe closing in on them? Or, rather, the tacit confirmation of something as yet undefined, which he’d feared since earlier, when the Ricrán men weren’t in the plaza, or maybe earlier still, when his Lima comrades from the RWP(T) decided to withdraw their support, or when he’d understood that his attempt at Blacquer’s to get the Communist Party involved in the uprising was useless? Was it since one of those moments that he’d been waiting, without even admitting it to himself, for this coup de grâce? The revolution wouldn’t even begin? But it has begun, Mayta, don’t you realize it, it has begun.

  “That’s why we’re here, that’s why we’ve come,” exclaimed Cordero Espinoza. “Don’t you think we can replace those guys?”

  Mayta saw that the joeboys were clustered around their commander and were nodding in agreement and support. But all he could think of at that instant was that some passerby, someone from the neighborhood, might take notice of that little group of schoolboys at the jail door.

  “It struck me that we should volunteer right then and there. I didn’t even talk it over with my buddies,” remembers Dr. Cordero Espinoza. “It just hit me when I saw the look on poor Mayta’s face when he found out that nobody showed up.”

  We’re in his office on Junín Street, where law offices abound. Law is still the profession in Jauja, even though, over the past few years, war and catastrophes have seriously dampened local legal business. Until fairly recently, in every Jauja family at least one or two sons came into the world with a briefcase of legal documents under their arms. Lawsuits are a sport practiced by all classes in this province, at least as popular as soccer and Carnival. In the throng of lawyers in Jauja, the old cadet commandant and top student at Colegio San José—where he used to teach a course on political economy a couple of times a week, until the war caused classes to be suspended—is still the star.

  He’s an easygoing, friendly man. His office glitters with diplomas from the congresses he’s attended, the honors he’s won as city councilman, president of the Jauja Lions Club, president of the Committee for a Highway to the East, and various other civic functions. Of all the people I’ve talked with, he’s the one who evokes those events with the greatest precision, ease, and—at least it seems to me—objectivity. The handsomeness of his office contrasts with the entrance hall, which has a hole in the floor and half of one wall shattered. As he leads me through, he points to it, saying, “It was a guerrilla bomb. I’ve left it this way to remind me of the precautions I have to take every day if I want to keep my head on my shoulders.”

  With the same wit, he told me, soon after, that when the guerrillas attacked his house, they were more efficient: the two dynamite charges burned it to the ground. “They killed my cook, a little old lady sixty years old. My wife and children, fortunately, were already out of Jauja.” They live in Lima and are about to leave the country. Which is what he will do as soon as he can wrap up his business. Because, as he says, with the way things are going, what sense does it make to go on risking one’s neck? Hasn’t Jauja’s security improved since the Marines came? Things are even worse. Because the people resent the foreign troops so much, they help the guerrillas—by hiding them, supplying them with alibis, or just by keeping quiet. They say something similar is happening among the Peruvian guerrillas and the Cuban and Bolivian internationalists. That there are confrontations between them. Nationalism, as we all know, is stronger than any other ideology. I can’t help liking the excadet commander: he says all these things naturally, without melodrama or arrogance, and even with a sense of humor.

  “As soon as they heard me offer them as volunteers, they got all excited,” he continues. “In fact, the seven of us were like brothers. A kids’ game, compared to what we have today, right?”

  “Yes, yes, we’ll be their replacements.”

  “Open the door, let us in, we can do it.”

  “We are revolutionaries and we’ll be their replacements.”

  Mayta was looking at them, listening to them, and his head was filled with static, disorder.

  “How old are you?”

  “Huasasquiche and I are seventeen,” says Cordero Espinoza. “The others are fifteen or sixteen.” Lucky for us, because they couldn’t bring us up on charges, since we were still minors. They sent us to juvenile court, where they didn’t take the matter too seriously. Don’t you think it’s paradoxical that I was a pioneer in the armed struggle in Peru and that now I’m a target of the guerrillas?” He shrugs.

  “I suppose that by that time there was no way for Mayta and Vallejos to turn back,” I say.

  “Yes, there was. Vallejos could have let the guards out of the barracks where he’d locked them up and cursed them up and down: ‘You have demonstrated that you’re really nothing, pansies, if there really was an attack on the jail by subversives. Not a single one of you has passed the test I just put you to, shitasses.’” Dr. Cordero Espinoza offers me a cigarette, and before lighting his own, he places it in a holder. “They would have swallowed the story, I’m sure of it. He could have sent us off to school, put Gonzales and Condori back in the lockup, and gotten off scot-free. All of them could have, even then. But of course they didn’t. Mayta and Vallejos weren’t men who would just give in. In that sense, even though one was in his forties and the other in his twenties, they were more kids than we were.”

  So it was Mayta who first accepted that romantic and preposterous offer. His hesitation and perplexity lasted a few seconds. He decided suddenly. He opened the main door, said, “Quickly, quickly,” to the joeboys, and as they invaded the patio, he looked down the street. It was empty of people and cars, the houses were all shuttered. His strength came back to him, his blood rushed through his veins, there was no reason to despair. He closed the door after the last boy. There they were: seven anxious and impassioned little faces. Both Condori and Gonzales were now carrying rifles, and they looked with fascination at the kids. Vallejos appeared behind the cherry trees, having finished his inspection of the prisoners.

  Mayta went to meet him. “Ubilluz and the others haven’t come. But we have volunteers to take their places.”

  Did Vallejos pull up short? Did Mayta see that his face twisted into a hideous grin? Did he see that the young second lieutenant labored to appear calm? Did he hear Vallejos say under his breath, “Ubilluz hasn’t come? Ezequiel either? The Parrot either?”

  “We can’t go back now, comrade.” Mayta shook him by the arm. “I told you, I warned you that it would happen. Action selects. Now there’s no going back. We can’t. Accept the boys. They got all fired up coming over here. They are revolutionaries, what other proof could you want. Are we turning yellow, brother?”

  The more he spoke, the more he convinced himself, and for a second time, he repeated his exorcism against good sense: “Like a machine, like a soldier.” Vallejos, mute, scrutinized him—doubting? trying to determine if what he was saying was also what he was thinking? But when Mayta stopped talking, the lieutenant once again became a tissue of controlled nerves and instant decisions. He then approached the joeboys, who had listened to the dialogue.

  “I’m happy this has happened,” he said, standing among them. “I’m happy because, thanks to this, I know there are some brave men in this world like you. Welcome to the struggle, boys. I want to shake hands with every one of you.”

  Actually, he began to hug them, to press them to his breast. Mayta took off his hat, hugging and being hugged, and behind clouds, he saw Zenón Gonzales and Condori joining in. A profound emotion overwhelmed him. He had a knot in his throat. Several boys wept, and the tears poured down their jubilant faces as they embraced the lieut
enant, Mayta, Gonzales, Condori, and one another. Long live the revolution! shouted one, and another shouted: Long live socialism! Vallejos ordered them to be quiet.

  “I don’t think I ever felt as happy as I did at that moment,” says Dr. Cordero Espinoza. “It was beautiful, so much naïveté, so much idealism. We felt as if our mustaches and beards had suddenly sprouted, as if we had grown taller and stronger. Probably not a single one of us had even set foot in a whorehouse. I, at least, was a virgin. And it seemed to me I was losing my virginity.”

  “Did any of you know how to use a rifle?”

  “In the military training course, they gave us some rifle classes. Maybe a few of us had fired shotguns. But we made up for inexperience right then and there. It was the first thing Vallejos did after hugging us: he taught us what a Mauser was all about.”

  While the lieutenant gave the joeboys a lesson on how to fire a rifle, Mayta explained what had happened to Condori and Zenón Gonzales. They didn’t raise the roof when they found out they had no one else to count on. They weren’t outraged to learn that the whole revolutionary body might consist of them and the little group of soldier boys. They were serious as they listened, and asked no questions. Vallejos ordered two boys to get some taxis. Felicio Tapia and Huasasquiche took off on the run. Then Vallejos got Mayta and the peasants together. He had restructured the plan. Divided into two groups, they would seize the police station and the Civil Guard post. Mayta was listening, but out of the Corner of his eye he took note of how the peasants reacted. Would Gonzales be saying, “See? I told you I was right to have my doubts about all this.” No, he said nothing. He was inscrutable as he listened to the lieutenant.

  “Here come the taxis,” shouted Perico Temoche, from the main door.

  “I was never a real taxi driver,” Mr. Onaka assures me, pointing melancholically to the empty shelves in his store, shelves that used to be filled with food and domestic articles. “I was always the owner of this store, which I ran. You may not believe it, but it was the best-stocked shop in Junín province.”

  Bitterness twists his yellow face. Mr. Onaka has been a favorite victim of the rebels, who have robbed his store an incredible number of times. “Eight,” he informs me. “The last was three weeks ago, with the Marines already here. So you see, gringos or no gringos, it’s the same shit. They came at six, wearing masks. They locked the door and said, ‘Where’s the food hidden, pig?’ Hidden? Go look for it and take whatever you can find. It’s because of you that I haven’t got a thing. They found nothing, of course. Why don’t you take my wife instead? She’s all you’ve left me. Why don’t you take my wife instead? She’s all you’ve left me. Why don’t you kill me? Have a good time, kill the guy whose life you’ve ruined. We don’t waste bullets on vultures, one of them said. And all that happened at six in the afternoon, with the police, soldiers, and Marines walking the streets of Jauja. Doesn’t that prove that they’re all the same bunch of crooks?” He snorts, takes a deep breath, and looks at his wife, who, bent over the counter, tries to read the paper by bringing the page right up to her eyes. Both of them are decrepit.

  “Since she could take care of the customers by herself, I did a little taxi driving with the Ford,” Mr. Onaka continues. “It was my bad luck that I got tangled up in the Vallejos business. I cracked up the car because of it, and I had to spend a fortune fixing it. Because of that, I was hit on the head—they split my brow right here—and thrown in jail, while they investigated and found out that I wasn’t an accomplice but a victim.”

  We are in a corner of his run-down store, each standing on his own side of the counter. At the other end, Mrs. Onaka looks away from her newspaper every time a customer comes in to buy candles or cigarettes, the only things the store seems well stocked with. The Onakas are of Japanese descent—the grandchildren of immigrants—but in Jauja they’re called “the Chinks,” a misnomer that doesn’t bother Mr. Onaka.

  Unlike Dr. Cordero Espinoza, Mr. Onaka doesn’t accept his disasters with philosophical good humor. Anyone can see he’s demoralized, resentful about everything. He and Cordero Espinoza are the only people, among all those I’ve talked to in Jauja, who speak openly against the guerrillas. The others, even those who have been victims of their attacks, keep absolutely silent about the revolutionaries.

  “I had just opened up when the Tapia kid—the family lives over on Villarreal—shows up. An emergency, Mr. Onaka. You have to take a sick lady to the hospital. I started up the car, the Tapia boy sat down next to me, and then the little actor said, ‘Hurry up, the lady’s dying.’ In front of the jail, there was another taxi being loaded with rifles. I parked behind it. I asked the lieutenant, ‘Where’s the sick lady?’ He didn’t even answer me. Right then, the other guy, the one from Lima, Mayta—right?—steps up and sticks his gun in my chest: ‘Do what you’re told and you’ll be all right.’ I thought I’d shit in my pants—if you don’t mind my saying so. I was really afraid. After all, those were the first revolutionaries I’d ever seen. What a jerk I was. At the time, I had a little money. I could have gone away with my wife. We could be living out our old age in peace.”

  Condori, Mayta, Felicio Tapia, Cordero Espinoza, and Teófilo Puertas got into the car after loading it with half the rifles and ammunition. Mayta ordered Onaka to drive off: “If you make any funny moves, you’re dead.” He was in the back seat, and his mouth was dry as cotton. But his hands were sweating. Squeezed in next to him, the cadet commander and Puertas were sitting on the rifles. In front, with Felicio Tapia, was Condori.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t crash or run someone over.” Mr. Onaka speaks out of a toothless mouth. “I thought they were thieves, murderers, escaped convicts. But how could the lieutenant be with them? What could the Tapia kid and the child of that gentleman Dr. Cordero be doing mixed up with murderers? They talked about the revolution and I don’t know what else. What is this? What’s going on? They made me take them over to the Civil Guard station, on Jirón Manco Cápac. The guy from Lima, Condori, and the Tapia boy got out there. They left the other two guarding me, and Mayta said to them, ‘If he tries to get away, kill him.’

  “Afterward, the kids swore it was only playacting, that they would never have shot me. But now we know that even kids kill, with hatchets, stones, and knives, right? Anyway, now we know lots of things that nobody knew then. Easy now, boys, don’t get excited. You know me, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, and I’ve given you credit lots of times. Why are you doing this to me? And besides, what’s going on over there? What are they going to do at the station? The socialist revolution, Mr. Onaka, said Corderito—the guy whose house they burned down and whose office they almost blew up. The socialist revolution! What? What is that? I think it was the first time I ever heard the words. That’s when I found out that four grown men and seven joeboys had chosen my poor Ford to carry out a socialist revolution. Holy shit!”

  At the door of the station there were no guards, and Mayta signaled to Condori and Felicio Tapia: he would go in first, they should cover him. Condori looked calm, but Tapia was very pale and Mayta saw that his hands were red from holding on so tight to the rifle. He walked into the room bent over, with the safety off the sub-machine gun, shouting: “Hands up or I’ll shoot!”

  In the half-darkened room, Mayta surprised a man wearing underpants and an undershirt in mid-yawn, a yawn that froze, turning his face into a stupid mask. He sat there staring, and only when he saw Condori and Felicio Tapia appear behind Mayta, they too pointing rifles at him, did he raise his hands.

  “Watch him,” said Mayta, and he ran to the back of the building. He passed through a narrow hall that led to an unpaved patio. Two guards, wearing trousers and boots but without shirts on, were washing their faces and hands in a basin of soapy water. One smiled at Mayta, mistaking him for a buddy.

  “Get your hands up, or I’ll fire!” Mayta said, not shouting this time. “Hands up, goddamn it!”

  The two obeyed, and one of them moved so quickly that he knocked th
e basin over. The water darkened the dirt of the patio. “What’s all the racket, for Christ’s sake?” called out a sleepy voice. How many could there be in there? Condori was next to him, and Mayta whispered, “Take these two out,” without taking his eyes off the room where he’d heard the voice. He crossed the little patio on the run, bent forward. He passed under a climbing vine, and on the threshold of the room, he stopped short, holding back the “Hands up!” he was about to shout. It was the sleeping room. There were two rows of bunks against the walls, and on three bunks there were men, two sleeping and the third smoking, flat on his back. A transistor radio was next to him, and he was listening to country music. When he saw Mayta, he choked and jumped to his feet, staring fixedly at the sub-machine gun.

  “I thought it was all a joke,” he stuttered, dropping the cigarette and placing his hands on his head.

  “Wake those two up,” said Mayta, pointing to the sleeping men. “Don’t make me shoot: I don’t want to kill you.”

  Without turning his back on Mayta or taking his eyes off the weapon, the guard edged along sideways, like a crab, until he reached the others. He shook them. “Wake up, wake up, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I was expecting shots, a huge racket. I thought I’d see Mayta, Condori, and the Tapia kid bleeding, and that in the confusion the guards would shoot me, thinking I was an attacker,” says Mr. Onaka. “But there wasn’t a single shot. Before I knew what was going on inside, the other taxi came with Vallejos. He’d already captured the police station over on Jirón Bolívar and locked Lieutenant Dongo and three guards in a cell. He asked the kids: Everything okay? We don’t know. I begged him: Let me go, lieutenant, my wife is really sick. Don’t be afraid, Mr. Onaka, we need you because none of us drives. Can you imagine anything as dumb as that? They were going to make a revolution and they didn’t even know how to drive a car.”