The Time of the Hero

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I’m going to use the telephone.”

  “At this time of the morning?”

  “Yes,” Gamboa said. “My wife is up by now. She’s leaving at six.”

  Pitaluga made a vague gesture, then put his head in his hands again, like a turtle drawing into its shell. Gamboa’s voice at the telephone was low and gentle, he asked a number of questions, mentioned pills against nausea and the cold, insisted on a telegram, repeated “Are you all right?” several times, and murmured a brief good-by. Pitaluga dropped his arms to his sides, and his head dangled like a bell. Then he blinked a few times and smiled without enthusiasm. “You sound like a honeymooner,” he said. “You talk to her as if you just got married yesterday.”

  “We’ve been married three months,” Gamboa said.

  “I got married a year ago. And I’ll be damned if I want to talk to her. She’s a terror, just like her mother. If I called her up at this hour, she’d scream her head off, she’d call me everything she could think of.”

  Gamboa smiled. “My wife’s very young,” he said. “She’s only eighteen. We’re going to have a baby.”

  “I’m sorry,” Pitaluga said. “I didn’t know. You’ve got to take precautions.”

  “I want to have a son.”

  “Of course,” Pitaluga said. “I can tell that. So you can make a soldier out of him.”

  Gamboa looked surprised. “I don’t know if I’d like him to be a soldier,” he muttered. He looked Pitaluga up and down. “In any case, I wouldn’t want him to be a soldier like you.”

  Pitaluga stood up. “What kind of a crack is that?” he asked bitterly.

  “Bah,” Gamboa said. “Forget it.”

  He turned and left the guardhouse. The sentries saluted him again. One of them had his cap down over his ear. Gamboa was on the point of bawling him out for it, but then he stopped: there was no use having any hard feelings with Pitaluga, who had buried his head in his hands again. This time, Pitaluga could not doze off. He swore, and then shouted to one of the soldiers to bring him a cup of coffee.

  When Gamboa reached the patio of the Fifth, the bugler had already sounded reveille at the Third and the Fourth and was about to sound it in front of the barracks of the last Year. He saw Gamboa, lowered the bugle from his lips, came to attention and saluted. The soldiers and cadets at the Academy all knew that Gamboa was the only officer there who returned the salutes of those under him in a correct military fashion. The others merely gave them a nod, sometimes not even that. Gamboa folded his arms and waited for the reveille to end. He looked at his watch. There were a few cadet sentries in the doorways of the barracks. He looked them over one by one. When they found themselves in front of him, the cadets put on their caps and straightened their ties, then came to attention and saluted. Then they turned and disappeared into the barracks. The usual racket had begun. A moment later Pezoa came running up.

  “Good morning, Lieutenant.”

  “Good morning. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, Lieutenant,” the noncom said. “Why, Lieutenant?”

  “You ought to be in the patio when the bugler gets here. It’s your duty to go through the barracks and hurry them up. Don’t you know that?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Then what are you doing here? Get into the barracks. If the Year doesn’t fall in in seven minutes, I’ll hold you responsible.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  Pezoa went into the first sections on the run. Gamboa remained standing in the center of the patio, glancing now and then at his watch. He could hear the confused welter of sounds that poured out from all around the patio and converged on him as the guy-ropes of a circus tent converge on the center pole. He could sense, without entering the barracks, all the emotions the cadets were feeling and expressing: their anger at being awakened so early, their exasperation at having so little time to make their bunks and get dressed, the impatience and excitement of those who liked to shoot and play soldier, the disgust of those who would go out and flounder around in the fields without caring what they did, just doing it because they had to, and the suppressed happiness of those who would come back from the field exercises to take a shower, change into their blue and black dress uniforms, and go out on pass.

  At seven past five Gamboa blew a long blast on his whistle. He could hear curses and protests, but at almost the same moment the barracks doors burst open and spilled out a dark green mass of cadets, who pushed and shoved and swore as they hurried to fall in, still adjusting their uniforms as they ran, but only using one hand because they were holding up their rifles with the other. The day had not yet fully dawned, that second Saturday in October; it was the same as other dawns, other Saturdays, other days of field exercises. Suddenly Gamboa heard a loud metallic crash and then a curse.

  “Whoever dropped that rifle, come here!” he shouted.

  The racket stopped abruptly. All the cadets looked straight ahead with their rifles at their sides. Pezoa tiptoed over to the lieutenant and stood at his side.

  “I said, whoever dropped that rifle, come here!”

  The silence was broken by the sound of boots on the concrete. The eyes of the whole battalion turned toward Gamboa. The lieutenant glared at the cadet for a moment, then said, “Your name.”

  The boy stammered his name, company, and section.

  “Inspect his rifle, Pezoa,” the lieutenant said.

  The noncom rushed up to the cadet, seized his rifle, and inspected it ceremoniously: he looked it all over, turned it this way and that, opened and closed the bolt, checked the sights, tested the trigger.

  “Scratches on the stock, Sir,” he said. “And it isn’t properly oiled.”

  “How long have you been in the Academy, Cadet?”

  “Three years, Sir.”

  “And you still don’t know how to take care of your rifle? You should never let it fall on the ground. It’s better to crack your skull than to drop your rifle. A soldier’s gun is as important to him as his balls. You protect your balls, don’t you, Cadet?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Good,” Gamboa said. “You should take the same care of your rifle. Go back to your section. Pezoa, mark him down for six points.”

  The noncom took out his notebook and wrote in it, after wetting the point of the pencil with his tongue.

  Gamboa gave the order to march. After the last section of the Fifth had entered the mess hall, he went to the officers’ mess. He was the first one there. A few minutes later the lieutenants and captains began to arrive. The officers of the Fifth—Huarina, Pitaluga and Calzada—sat down next to Gamboa.

  “Snap it up, Indian,” Pitaluga said. “You should serve an officer the minute he comes in.” The soldier who was waiting on them murmured an apology, but Gamboa was not listening: the sound of an airplane cut through the dawn and the lieutenant’s eyes explored the damp gray sky. Then he lowered them and looked at the open field. The fifteen hundred rifles of the cadets were stacked in groups of four, each of the four supporting the others by the muzzle. The vicuña wandered aimlessly among the straight rows of pyramids, sniffing at them.

  “Have they decided anything at the officers’ meetings?” Calzada asked. He was the heaviest of the four. He was chewing a piece of bread and he talked with his mouth full.

  “Yesterday,” Huarina said. “It ended late, after ten o’clock. The colonel was furious.”

  “He’s always furious,” Pitaluga said. “On account of what he finds out or what he doesn’t find out.” He nudged Huarina. “But you shouldn’t kick. You’ve been lucky this time. You’ve got something that’s going to look good on your service record.”

  “Yes,” Huarina said. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “When are they going to strip off his insignia?” Calzada asked. “That’ll be fun to watch.”

  “Monday at eleven.”

  “They’re born delinquents,” Pitaluga said. “They never learn. Don’t they know what’s what? It’s a plain case
of breaking and entering. We’ve expelled half a dozen cadets just since I’ve been here.”

  “They don’t come to the Academy because they want to,” Gamboa said. “That’s the trouble.”

  “You’re right,” Calzada said. “They think like civilians.”

  “Sometimes they think we’re priests,” Huarina said. “One cadet even wanted me to hear confession, he wanted me to give him advice. Believe it or not.”

  “Half of them are sent here so they won’t turn out to be gangsters,” Gamboa said. “And the other half, so they won’t turn out to be fairies. It’s their parents’ fault.”

  “You’d think the Academy was a reform school,” Pitaluga said, pounding his fist on the table. “Everything’s done halfway in Peru, and that’s why everything goes wrong. The soldiers we get are filthy, they’re crawling with lice, and they’re all thieves. But you can beat some civilization into them. After a year in the army, the only thing Indian about an Indian is his looks. But it’s the opposite with the cadets, they go from bad to worse. The ones in the Fifth are even worse than the Dogs.”

  “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” Calzada said. “It’s a damned shame we aren’t allowed to beat them up. If you even raise your hand they put in a complaint, and then there’s a great big stink.”

  “Here comes the Piranha,” Huarina murmured.

  The four lieutenants stood up. Captain Garrido greeted them with a nod. He was a tall man, with a pallid face, somewhat greenish about the cheekbones. They called him the Piranha because, like that savage fish of the Amazon basin, his double row of enormous gleaming teeth protruded beyond his lips, and his jaws were always working. He handed a sheet of paper to each of them.

  “Instructions for the field exercises,” he said. “The Fifth goes out beyond the plowed fields to the open ground on the other side of the hill. You’ll have to hurry. It’ll take us almost an hour just to get there.”

  “Shall we have them fall in or do you want us to wait for you, Captain?” Gamboa asked.

  “Go ahead,” Garrido said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  The four lieutenants left together. When they reached the field, they spread out in a straight line. Then they blew their whistles. The uproar in the mess hall grew louder and a moment later the cadets came pouring out. They grabbed their rifles, ran to the parade ground, and fell in by sections.

  A little later the battalion went out through the main gate of the Academy, between the rigid sentries, into Costanera Avenue. The pavement was clean and shining. The cadets, three abreast, widened the formation in such a way that the lateral columns were on either side of the avenue and the middle column in the center of it. When the battalion reached Palmeras Avenue, Gamboa ordered a turn toward Bellavista. As they went down the slope, under the great curved leaves of the trees, the cadets could see an indistinct mass at the far end: the buildings of the Naval Arsenal and the port of Callao. At each side there were the tall old houses of La Perla with their vine-covered walls, their rusted bars protecting gardens of all sizes. By the time the battalion was approaching Progreso Avenue, the morning had begun to come alive: barefooted women with baskets and sacks of vegetables stopped to watch the cadets; a pack of dogs ran along beside the battalion, leaping and barking; sick-looking, dirty little boys escorted it the way dolphins escort a ship at sea.

  The battalion halted at Progreso Avenue, where there was a steady stream of cars and buses. At a signal from Gamboa, the noncoms Morte and Pezoa stood in the middle of the avenue, stopping the flow of traffic while the battalion crossed. Some of the drivers were annoyed and honked their horns, and the cadets insulted them. Gamboa, at the head of the battalion, raised his hand and signaled that instead of going in the direction of the port they were to turn off into the level fields, skirting a field of newly-sprouted cotton. When the whole battalion was out on the weed-covered ground, Gamboa called to the noncoms.

  “See that hill?” He pointed his finger at a dim mound on the far side of the cotton field.

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Morte and Pezoa said.

  “That’s the objective. Pezoa, go on ahead with half a dozen cadets. Inspect it thoroughly, and if there’s anyone out there, tell them to go away. Don’t let anybody stay on the hill or even near it. Is that clear?”

  Pezoa nodded and went over to the first section. “I want six volunteers,” he said.

  No one stepped forward: the cadets looked everywhere except straight ahead. Gamboa walked up beside Pezoa. “The first six, fall out,” he said. “Go with the noncom.”

  Pezoa began running across the cotton field, raising and lowering his right arm, with his fist clenched, to signal that the cadets should follow him on the double. Gamboa walked back a few steps to join the other lieutenants.

  “I’ve sent Pezoa ahead to clear the terrain.”

  “Good,” Calzada said. “I don’t think we’ll have any problems. My outfit stays on this side.”

  “I have to attack from the north,” Huarina said. “I’m always the one that gets screwed, I’ve still got to walk two and a half miles.”

  “An hour to get to the top isn’t any too much,” Gamboa said. “We’ll have to make them climb fast.”

  “I hope the targets are okay,” Calzada said. “Last month the wind blew them away and we were aiming at the clouds.”

  “Don’t worry,” Gamboa said. “They aren’t cardboard this time, they’re cloth, a yard in diameter. The soldiers put them up yesterday. Don’t start firing till you get within two hundred yards.”

  “Very well, General,” Calzada said. “And what else are you going to teach us?”

  “There’s no use wasting ammunition,” Gamboa said. “Anyway, your company won’t make a single hit.”

  “Do you want to bet on that, General?” Calzada asked.

  “Fifty soles.”

  “I’ll hold the money,” Huarina said.

  “Okay,” Calzada said. “Look out, here comes the Piranha.”

  The captain came up to them. “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “We’re all ready,” Calzada said. “We were waiting for you, Captain.”

  “Do you know your positions?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And have you sent somebody to make sure the terrain is clear of civilians?”

  “Yes, Captain. Pezoa and six cadets.”

  “Good. Let’s synchronize our watches,” the captain said. “We start at nine. Begin firing at nine thirty. Stop firing as soon as the assault begins. Understand?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “They should all be at the summit by ten. There’s room for everybody. Take your companies to their positions on the double, to get them warmed up.”

  The lieutenants moved off, but the captain remained where he was. He could hear the officers issuing their commands. Gamboa’s voice was the strongest, the most energetic. A little later, he was alone. The battalion had split up into three companies, which went out in different directions to surround the hill. The cadets were still chattering as they ran, but the captain could only make out a few stray phrases in the hubbub. The lieutenants were at the heads of their companies, the noncoms on the flanks. Capt. Garrido raised his field glasses to his eyes. The targets came into focus: they were located halfway up the hill, about five yards apart. They were perfect circles. He would have liked to fire at them too, but that was for the cadets now. For him, the field exercises were merely a bore, he had nothing to do except observe them. He opened a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. He had to strike several matches before he got it lit, because of the strong wind. Then he walked quickly after the first company. It was interesting to watch Gamboa in action, since he took the exercises so seriously.

  When he reached the base of the hill, Gamboa realized that the cadets were genuinely tired. Some of them were running with open mouths and purple faces, and all of them had their eyes fixed on him. He could see the anguish with which they waited for the command to halt. But he did not gi
ve the command. He glanced up at the white circles of the targets, the bare ocher slopes that dropped down toward the cotton field, and higher up, above the targets, the wide, bulging crest of the hill. And he kept on running, first along the base of the hill, then through the open field, racing as fast as he could, struggling not to open his mouth although he felt that his heart and lungs were crying out for a great mouthful of air. The veins in his neck were swollen and his whole body was drenched with sweat. He gave a last look backward, to see if they had got to within a thousand yards of the objective. Then he closed his eyes and managed to run even faster, taking longer strides and flailing the air with his arms. He reached the scrub that grew on the barren land outside the cotton field, next to the irrigation ditch which the instructions indicated as the limits of the first company’s position. He stopped there, and only then allowed himself to open his mouth and breathe deeply. Before turning around, he wiped the sweat from his face so that the cadets would not realize that he too was exhausted. The first to reach the position were the noncoms and Arróspide. Then the rest of them came up, in complete disorder: the columns had disappeared, leaving only clusters, scattered bunches. A little later the three sections regrouped, forming a horseshoe around Gamboa. He could hear the brute panting of the hundred and twenty cadets, who had rested their rifles on the ground.