The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Tell me something else, don Pedro. When the police from Huancayo arrived and Lieutenant Dongo began to look for guides to track down the rebels, you refused to go. Could it be you weren’t really so mad at them? Or was it that you were unfamiliar with the Jauja mountains?”

  “I knew them better than anyone, good deer hunter that I was,” he drones and dribbles, wiping away the gook that pours out of his eyes. “But even though I don’t like communists, I don’t like cops either. I’m talking about then, because nowadays I don’t even know what I like anymore. I only have a few watches left and this spit that keeps slipping out because I have no teeth. I’m an anarchist and will be one until I die. If anyone walks in here with bad intentions, guerrilla or police agent, this shotgun goes off. Down with communism, goddamn it. Death to the cops.”

  The taxis, one behind the other, passed through Plaza Santa Isabel, where they were to have loaded the Ricrán truck with the weapons captured at the jail, the police station, and the Civil Guard post. But no one around Mayta in the jam-packed car in which they could barely move was complaining about the change. The joeboys couldn’t stop hugging each other and cheering. Condori, reserved, looked at them without partaking of their enthusiasm. Mayta was silent. But this happiness and excitement moved him. In the other taxi, the same scene was undoubtedly taking place.

  At the same time, Mayta was taking note of the driver’s edginess, watching him carefully, worried about the sloppy way he was driving. The car bounced and pitched. Mr. Onaka went into every pothole, hit every rock, and seemed intent on running over every dog, burro, horse, or person who crossed his path. Was it fear, or deliberate? Just then, only a few hunderd yards outside Jauja, the car went off the road and smashed against a pile of rocks alongside the ditch, flattening a fender and throwing the passengers into each other and against doors and windows. The five of them thought Mr. Onaka had done it on purpose. They roughed him up, insulted him, and Condori gave him a punch that split his eyebrow. Onaka whined that he hadn’t crashed on purpose. When they got out of the car, Mayta smelled eucalyptus: a cool breeze from the nearby mountains was wafting it in. Vallejos’s taxi doubled back, raising a cloud of red dust.

  “That little joke cost us fifteen minutes, maybe more,” says Juan Rosas, sub-contractor, truck driver, and owner of a bean and potato farm. He happens to be in Jauja, recovering from a hernia operation at his son-in-law’s house. “We were waiting for another car to replace the Chink’s. Not even a burro came by. The worst bad luck, because there were always trucks on that road coming and going to and from Molinos, Quero, or Buena Vista. That day, nothing. Mayta told Vallejos, ‘You go on with your group—the one I was in—and see about the horses.’ Because no one thought the Ricrán people would be waiting for us. Vallejos didn’t want to go. So we stayed. Finally, a pickup came by. Fairly new, a full tank, good retreads. Not bad. We stopped it, there was an argument, the driver didn’t want to cooperate, we had to scare him. In the end, we just commandeered it. The lieutenant, Condon, and Gonzales were up front. Mayta got in the back with the plain folk—us—and all the Mausers. We were concerned about the loss of time, but as soon as we got started again, we began to sing.”

  The pickup jumped along the roadbed filled with potholes, and the joeboys, their hair flying all over, their fists in the air, cheered Peru and the socialist revolution. Mayta, sitting with his back against the cab, looked at them. Then, suddenly, it occurred to him: “Why don’t we sing ‘The International,’ comrades?”

  The little faces, white with dust, nodded agreement, and several said, “Yes, yes, let’s sing it.” But then he realized that none of them knew the words or had ever heard “The International.” There they were, under the diaphanous mountain sky, in their wrinkled uniforms, looking at him and looking at each other, each one waiting for the others to begin singing. He felt a wave of tenderness for the seven boys. They were years away from being men, but had already graduated into the revolution. They were risking everything in the marvelous spontaneity of their fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years, even though they lacked political experience and any ideological formation. Weren’t they worth more than the experienced revolutionaries of the RWP(T), who had stayed back in Lima, or the lettered Dr. Ubilluz and his worker-peasant legions, who had evaporated that same morning? Yes, they were. They’d chosen action. He wanted to hug them.

  “I’ll teach you the words,” he said, standing up in the bouncing truck. “Let’s sing, sing along with me. ‘Arise, ye prisoners of starvation …’”

  Screeching, out of key, exalted, laughing themselves sick because of their mistakes and cracked voices, raising a left fist in the air, cheering the revolution, socialism, and Peru: that’s how the mule drivers and farmers on the outskirts of Jauja saw them, and also the rare travelers trekking down toward the city through waterfalls and bushy ferns, along that rocky, humid gorge that runs from Quero to the provincial capital. They tried to sing “The International” for quite a while, but because Mayta couldn’t carry a tune, they never got it right. They ended up singing the National Anthem and the anthem of the Colegio Nacional de San José de Jauja. Then they reached the Molinos bridge. The truck didn’t stop until Mayta forced it to by banging on the roof.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Vallejos, sticking his head out the half-open door.

  “Weren’t we going to blow up this bridge?”

  The lieutenant made a face. “How? With our hands? The dynamite’s at Ubilluz’s place.”

  Mayta remembered that in every one of their discussions Vallejos had insisted on blowing up the bridge. With it destroyed, the police would have to go up to Quero on foot or on horseback, which would be one more advantage.

  “Don’t worry.” Vallejos quieted him down. “We’ve done enough. Keep on singing, it makes the trip go faster.”

  The pickup started to move again, and the seven joeboys began singing and joking once more. But Mayta didn’t sing along. He stood with his back against the cab, and as he watched the landscape with its huge trees go by, he listened to the sound of the waterfalls, the trill of the finches, and felt the clear air filling his lungs with oxygen. Lulled by the happiness of the adolescents, he let his imagination run wild. How would Peru be in a few years? A busy hive, whose atmosphere would reflect, on a national scale, the atmosphere of this truck, stirred by the idealism of these boys.

  The peasants, owners of their own lands by then; the workers, owners of their own factories by then; government officials, conscious that now they were serving the community and not imperialists, millionaires, political bosses, or local parties, would feel the same. With discrimination and exploitation abolished, the foundations of equality established through the abolition of inherited wealth, the replacement of the elitist army with a popular militia, the nationalization of private schools, and the expropriation of all companies, banks, businesses, and urban property, millions of Peruvians would feel that now indeed they were progressing, the poorest first. The hardest-working, most talented, and most revolutionary would get the important jobs, instead of the richest or the best connected.

  And every day the chasms that separated the proletariat from the bourgeoisie, the whites from the Indians, blacks, and Asiatics, the coastal people from the mountain and jungle people, the Spanish speakers from the Quechua speakers, would be bridged just a bit more. Everyone, except the tiny group that would flee to the United States or die defending their privileges, would take part in the great production effort to develop the country, end illiteracy, and do away with the stranglehold of central authority. The fog of religion would fade with the systematic rise of science. The worker and peasant councils, in their factories, on their collective farms, and in government ministries, would prevent the outsized growth and consequent ossification of a bureaucracy that would freeze the revolution and use it for its own benefit.

  What would he do in that new society, if he was still alive? He wouldn’t accept any important place in government, in the armed force
s, or in the diplomatic service. Maybe a political post, a minor one, perhaps in the country, on a collective farm in the Andes, or on some colonization project in the Amazon region. Social, moral, and sexual prejudices would give way little by little, and it wouldn’t matter to anyone, in that crucible of work and faith that Peru would be in the future, that he would be living with Anatolio. By then, they would have gotten back together, and it would be more or less obvious that, alone, free of stares, with all due discretion, they could love each other and enjoy each other. He secretly touched his fly with the hand grip of his weapon. Beautiful, isn’t it, Mayta? Very. But how far off it seemed …

  Nine

  The community of Quero is one of the most ancient in Junín province. Today, the people of Quero—just as they did twenty-five years ago and probably just as they did centuries ago—grow potatoes, beans, and coca. They pasture their cattle on mountains which can be reached from Jauja by following a steep trail. If the rains don’t turn the road into a swamp, the trip takes a couple of hours. The potholes make the pickup seem like a bucking bronco, but the countryside more than makes up for the rough ride: a deep pass, bound at each end by twin mountains, paralleled by a foamy, rushing river whose name changes—first it’s called Molinos, and then, nearer to the town, Quero. Luxuriant cinchonas, their leaves made even greener by the morning dew, line the route toward the little town that stretches out along the pass. We go in at about eleven.

  In Jauja, I heard contradictory versions of what took place in Quero. The town itself is in a war zone and in recent years has been the scene of innumerable attacks, executions, and large-scale operations by both the rebels and counterinsurgency forces. According to some, Quero was under rebel control and its plaza was fortified. Others said the army had an artillery company stationed there, as well as a training camp complete with U.S. advisers. One person was sure I’d never be allowed to enter Quero, because the army uses it as a concentration camp and torture center. “That’s where they bring prisoners from all over the Mantaro Valley to make them talk. They use the most up-to-date methods. When they’ve finished with the prisoners, they take them up in helicopters and drop them out over the jungle to terrorize the Reds, who are supposedly watching from below.”

  Tales. In Quero, there’s not a sign of either insurgents or soldiers. I’m not surprised that reality contradicts these rumors. Information in this country has ceased to be objective and has become pure fantasy—in newspapers, radio, television, and ordinary conversation. “To report” among us now means either to interpret reality according to our desires or fears, or to say simply what is convenient. It’s an attempt to make up for our ignorance of what’s going on—which in our heart of hearts we understand is irremediable and definitive. Since it is impossible to know what’s really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream, and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.

  The real Quero, where I’m walking around now, bears no resemblance to its image in the fictions I’ve heard. You see not a trace of war or combatants (of either side) anywhere. Why is the town deserted? I supposed that all eligible men would have been conscripted either by the army or by the guerrillas, but, as a matter of fact, you don’t see old men or boys either. They must be working in the fields or inside their houses. Probably they get scared whenever an outsider walks into town. As I stroll through the little church, built in 1946, with its stone tower and tile roof, and wander around the gazebo in the center of the plaza, surrounded by cypress and eucalyptus trees, I get the feeling it’s a ghost town. Could it have had the same image that morning when the revolutionaries rolled in?

  “The sun was shining brightly, and the plaza was full of people, because it was the time for communal labor,” don Eugenio Fernández Cristóbal assures me, as he points his cane at the sky filled with ashen clouds. “I was here in the square. They came right around that corner over there. About this time of day, more or less.”

  Don Eugenio was justice of the peace in Quero at that time. Now he’s retired. What’s extraordinary is that after all those events in which he was absolutely and totally involved—at least since Vallejos, Mayta, Condori, Zenón Gonzales, and their following of seven children arrived here—he went back to his judicial functions and lived several years more in Quero, finally retiring. Now he lives on the outskirts of Jauja. Despite all the apocalyptic tales about the region, I didn’t have to ask him twice to go with me to Quero. “I always liked adventure,” he tells me. And I didn’t have to ask him twice to tell what he remembered about that day, the most important in his long life. He answers my questions quickly and with absolute certitude, even with regard to insignificant details. He never doubts, never contradicts himself, and leaves no loose threads that might call his memory into question. Not an easy game for an octogenarian who, besides, I have no doubt, hides some things from me and lies about many others. What exactly was his part in the adventure? No one knows for sure. Does he know himself, or does the version he’s cooked up convince him as well?

  “I took no notice, because it wasn’t odd for pickups carrying people from Jauja to come to Quero. They parked right over there, next to Tadeo Canchis’s house. They asked where they could eat. They were very hungry.”

  “And you didn’t notice that they were all armed, don Eugenio? That, besides the weapon each one had, there were rifles in the truck?”

  “I asked them if they were going hunting,” don Eugenio says. “Because this is not a good season for deer hunting, lieutenant.”

  “We’re just going to do a little target practice, doctor,” he says Vallejos told him. Up on the pampa.

  “Wasn’t it perfectly normal for some boys from the Colegio San José to come here for training?” don Eugenio asks himself. “Weren’t they taking military training courses? Wasn’t the lieutenant a soldier? The explanation seemed more than satisfactory to me.”

  “I’ll tell you something. Until we got here, I hadn’t given up hope.”

  “That the Ricrán guys would be waiting for us with horses?” Vallejos smiled.

  “And Shorty Ubilluz, too, with the miners,” confessed Mayta. “I still had my hopes.”

  He looked over Quero’s small, green plaza a couple of times, as if trying to make the missing men appear by an act of will. His brow was furrowed and his mouth trembled. A bit farther on, Condori and Zenón Gonzales were talking with some people from the community. The joeboys stayed by the truck, keeping an eye on the Mausers.

  “A real knife in the back,” he added, in a barely audible voice.

  “Unless some accident held them up on the highway,” said the justice of the peace, standing next to him.

  “There was no accident. They aren’t here because they didn’t want to be here,” said Mayta. “What else could you expect? Why waste time feeling sorry about what they’ve done. They didn’t come and that’s that, what’s the big deal?”

  “That’s the spirit.” Vallejos clapped him on the back. “Better on our own than in bad company, damn it.”

  Mayta made an effort. He’d have to shake off this depression. Let’s get to work, get the horses and mules, buy supplies, get going. Only one idea should be in your head, Mayta: Cross the mountains and get to Uchubamba. There, out of danger, they would be able to recruit men and calmly go over their strategy. On the road, while he was standing in the pickup, his mountain sickness had disappeared. But now, in Quero, as he began to move around, he felt the pressure in his temples again, the same accelerated heart rate, the same dizziness, the same vertigo. He tried to cover it up as he walked through Quero, Vallejos on one side, the justice of the peace on the other, trying to find people who would rent them pack animals. Condori and Zenón Gonzales, who knew people in the village, went to get something to eat and to buy supplies. Cash, of course.

  They should have held a meeting here to explain the insurrection to the peasants. But, without even talking it over with Val
lejos, he rejected the idea. After this morning’s failure he didn’t want to remind the lieutenant of it. Why was he so depressed? He just couldn’t shake it off. The euphoria he’d felt on the road had kept him from thinking over the day’s events. But now he reviewed their situation again and again: four adults and seven adolescents hell-bent on putting plans into action that fell apart with each step they took. This is defeatism, Mayta, the road to failure. Like a machine, remember. He smiled and tried to show he understood what the justice of the peace and the lady who owned the house where they had stopped were saying in Quechua. You should have learned Quechua instead of French.

  “They screwed themselves by staying here so long.” Don Eugenio takes one last drag from the minuscule butt of his cigarette. How long did they stay? At least two hours. They got here around ten and left after twelve.

  He really should say, “We left.” Didn’t he go with them? But don Eugenio, eighty years of age and all, commits not the slightest lapse that might even suggest that he was an accomplice of the rebels. We are in the gazebo in the center of the plaza, besieged by an impertinent rain the gray, hunchback clouds pour over the town. An intense, rapid cloudburst, followed by the most beautiful rainbow. When the sky clears, there always remains a light, imperceptible drizzle, the kind we get all the time in Lima, which makes the grass in the Quero plaza glisten.

  Little by little, the people who still live there emerge. They appear from out of the houses like unreal figures—Indian women lost under multiple skirts, babies wearing hats, ancient peasants wearing sandals. They come over to say hello to don Eugenio, to embrace him. Some leave after exchanging a few words with him; others remain with us. They listen to him recall that episode of times past, at times nodding slightly; at other times, they interpolate brief comments. But when I try to find out how things are now, they all lapse into an unbreachable silence. Or they lie: they haven’t seen soldiers or guerrillas, and know nothing about the war. As I supposed, there is not a single man or woman of fighting age among them. With his vest buttoned up tight, his wool cap pulled down to his eyes, and with the shoulders of his shiny old jacket too wide for his body, the old justice of the peace of Quero looks like a character out of a book, a gnome who’s lost his way among these Andean peaks. His voice has a metallic quality, as if he were speaking from inside a tunnel.