Red April (11 page)

“Prosecutor Chacaltana has been … alarmed at the alleged behavior of some soldiers in the elections. Where did you get this information, Señor Prosecutor?”

Chacaltana looked at Cahuide, who gave him a pleading glance.

“Statements by the residents, Señor,” he replied.

Carrión put on that paternal smile again.

“Please, my dear Chacaltana, the residents can't even speak Spanish. I don't know what they tried to tell you, but don't worry about it.”

“Excuse me, Señor, but in elections …”

Carrión interrupted him:

“The people here don't give a shit about the elections, don't you know that?”

“But the fact is that according to the law …”

“What law? There's no law here. Do you think you're in Lima? Please …”

Carrión sat down. The man in the sky-blue tie passed him a paper, which the commander read calmly. They began to talk quietly. They seemed to have forgotten about the prosecutor. Chacaltana cleared his throat. They continued, not looking at him. Chacaltana had the impression that they did not want to look at anything else either, not anything that was real, not anything standing beside them, clearing his throat. He made a decision and spoke:

“Permit me to say, in that case, I do not understand what my function here is.”

Eléspuru and the commander stopped reviewing their papers.
Carrión looked as if he were summoning all his patience in order to respond:

“Reporters will come to fuck over the armed forces. You have come to defend us. You can go.”

Eléspuru, as if he were thinking of something else, poured himself more coffee. He looked at the prosecutor. Chacaltana decided to say everything once and for all, make a last-ditch stand, the way heroes did:

“There is something else, Señor. Last night … a terrorist outbreak was verified in the zone.”

Eléspuru seemed to pay attention for the first time. Now he looked at the commander, who smiled with certainty.

“An outbreak. Don't exaggerate, Señor Prosecutor. We know there are a few clowns around here who set off fireworks, but they're harmless.”

“But the fact …”

“Did they kill anyone?”

“No, Señor.”

“Did they hurt anyone? Did they occupy any houses?”

“No, Señor.”

“Threats? Disappearances? Damage to private property?”

“No, Señor!”

“Were you afraid?”

He had not expected that question. In his mind, he had not wanted to formulate that word. He hated that word. He found himself obliged to acknowledge mentally that nothing serious had occurred last night.

“A little, Señor.”

The commander laughed louder. Eléspuru smiled as well.

“Don't worry, Señor Prosecutor. We'll leave a patrol here for any eventuality. Don't let yourself be intimidated. We sent you because you're a brave man. There may be a subversive or two left, but essentially we've gotten rid of them.”

Eléspuru looked at his watch and signaled to the commander, who stood up.

“It's time to bring this meeting to an end. We'll see each other in Ayacucho.”

The prosecutor shook the hand that the commander offered him. It was a hard hand that squeezed his as if it were going to break it. Looking into his eyes, the commander said:

“Tomorrow is a very important day, Chacaltana. Don't betray our trust. That won't be good for you.”

“Yes, Señor. I am sorry, Señor.”

Eléspuru said good-bye with a gesture, not offering his hand or letting his voice be heard. When they went out, Johnatan Cahuide said:

“Now you're really fucked, brother.”

They spent the rest of the morning making final preparations for the elections the next day and arranging the material in the school. At noon they went to have lunch at Cahuide's house. As they were eating a corn and pork stew, the prosecutor asked:

“How were you appointed to the position in the National Office?”

“I was head of the president's campaign in the region. Then they called me for this job.”

Head of the campaign. Yet Cahuide was so sincere that the prosecutor did not even want to hold the regulations in one hand and remind him of his duties. “Cahuide, do you realize that you are a huge walking electoral irregularity? You should be proscribed.”

“Are you going to proscribe me?”

No. He was not going to proscribe him. In the past twenty-four hours, the things that needed to be proscribed had grown dim.

“I will not do anything to you, Cahuide. And I could not. I am not here to avoid fraud, am I?”

“I'm not going to commit any fraud. And I know these things
aren't seen very often, Chacaltana. But no one has organized anything. There's no need.”

“There's no need?”

Johnatan Cahuide offered him more stew. He served himself as well.

“Félix, eight years ago, if I went out they would kill me. Not now. The damn terrorists killed my mother, they killed my brother, they took away my sister so the damn soldiers could kill her afterward. Since the president took office, they haven't killed me or anybody else in my family. You want me to vote for somebody else? I don't understand. Why?”

Why? Chacaltana thought that the question did not appear in the manuals, the brochures, or the regulations. He himself had never formulated it. He thought that one should believe in order to build a better country. The person who asks does not believe, he doubts. One does not get very far with doubts. Doubting is easy. Like killing.

The two men sat in silence, thinking, until they heard the sound of motors and shouts in the streets. The sounds were much closer than the ones the night before. Cahuide closed the window. Chacaltana tried to look out.

“What is going on now?”

“Don't get involved, Félix, don't fuck around anymore.”

“I have to know what is going on.”

“Félix. Félix!”

The prosecutor went outside, followed by Cahuide. In the streets, young men were running, pursued by soldiers hitting them with their clubs. The jeep and the truck had closed off the two principal exits from the village. Patrols of soldiers with rifles were stationed around the perimeter. At times they fired into the air. The pursuers did not carry firearms but they did have clubs that they used to beat the fugitives who had fallen to the ground. Farther away, two soldiers broke down the door to a house. The wails of a woman were heard inside. A few minutes later, they
came out with two boys about fifteen years old. They had twisted their arms against their backs and kicked them to make them walk.

“What is all this?”

Cahuide tried to make Chacaltana go back inside the house.

“Let it go, forget it.”

“How can I forget it? What are they doing?”

“Don't be an asshole, Félix. This is a press.”

“Press conscriptions are illegal …”

“Félix, stop thinking like a law book. Did you want security measures? Now you have security measures.”

“Where are they taking them?”

“They'll perform their obligatory military service. And that's it. They'll have work. There's nothing to do here. What do you want them to do? Study engineering? It's better for them. Félix. Félix!”

Chacaltana was hurrying to the police station. He remembered that electoral law prohibited detentions twenty-four hours before elections. He knew he would seem ridiculous, but he could not think of anything else to do.

Near the station was another military truck, toward which soldiers were shoving the young men they had hunted down. If they refused to climb in they were forced to by blows with a club to the face, stomach, and legs, until they had been hurt so much they could not refuse anymore. Three meters from the door of the police station, two soldiers stopped the prosecutor. He tried to resist and showed his identification, but they barred his way. One put his hand on his revolver. The prosecutor calmed down. He said he would wait. Farther away, in the dust raised by the skirmish, he could see the commander with the official in the sky-blue tie and Lieutenant Aramayo. Eléspuru seemed unperturbed and looked away while the commander shouted something at the lieutenant. The police officer looked down and nodded, appearing repentant, like a little boy admitting his mistakes, while the furious commander criticized him. After shouting several times in the confusion
of the roundup, the commander walked away. He gestured to an officer, and his jeep drove up. He and Eléspuru climbed in. Only then did the prosecutor manage to break through and approach the vehicle.

“Commander! Commander!”

Carrión sighed. The prosecutor's presence exhausted him. He barely looked at him as he came up sweating, covered with dust in spite of his handkerchief and the clean, pressed suit he had worn for the occasion. Chacaltana panted as he spoke to him:

“Commander, this operation must be stopped. This is … it is …”

“Take it easy, little Chacaltita. We're picking up people without documents and those wanted for questioning. So they won't frighten you.”

The commander laughed, but not like a father. The jeep drove away, and behind it came the two military trucks filled with villagers and soldiers. In five minutes, even the town's dust was still, as if it were dead. A few meters away, the lieutenant followed on foot, chewing on his rage. The prosecutor tried to talk to him; he wanted to offer his cooperation in finding help at the highest level. But when he reached his side, the lieutenant spat in his face:

“Chacaltana, you motherfucker! I told you not to say anything! You're very brave. Huh? You want to be a hero? All right, then. We'll see who helps you when you come crying in the night. Your fucking mother will protect you. It's really easy to be a hero here.”

“But Lieutenant! The correct thing was …”

He could not go on. The continuation of that sentence was obscure, perhaps impossible. The lieutenant turned his back and went into the station. Chacaltana looked for a glance of support in the other policemen, who responded to him by dispersing, one by one.

The prosecutor returned to Cahuide's house. He knocked on the door several times, but no one answered. He went up to the
window. Cahuide was there. From the interior he looked back at him with a mixture of pity and fear. The prosecutor did not insist further. He crossed the half-deserted village feeling the distrustful looks piercing him from the windows. They did not answer the door in the house where he was staying either. This time, he did not even go up to the window. He continued walking until he reached the countryside.

As he walked, not doing anything, he thought about Edith. He missed her, her silver tooth, her table settings in a restaurant where he had never eaten. He thought that, for the moment, Edith was the only person waiting for him. He did not know if he should tell his mamacita about it. He stopped at a stream to skip stones the way his mother had taught him when he was little. He became sad. The way things were going, Edith would have no good reason to respect him. He would not be promoted. Perhaps that was better. If Yawarmayo was a promotion, he preferred to stay where he was. He took a deep breath. For a few moments he enjoyed the peaceful light and air in the countryside. He forgot where he was.

As the ripples disappeared on the surface of the water, images reappeared as geometrical reflections: a branch, a projecting rock, a tree trunk. The images of the countryside seemed small, insignificant, so different from the disordered, foul-smelling visions of the capital. Among the decomposing figures he saw the face of his ex-wife. Perhaps she was right, perhaps Chacaltana had never had any ambition and the best thing for him was to sit in an office in Ayacucho and write reports and prepare recitations of Chocano. Ayacucho was a city you could walk all around on foot; he liked that. And it was a safe place, sheltered from roundups and bombs in the night. His ex-wife's face was turning into his mother's face. The prosecutor would have liked to do something to make her proud of him.

He decided to go back. He took a last look at the stream. The
figures continued to play on the water. One of them was becoming fixed as the surface settled down. At first it appeared to be a strange bird, but then the prosecutor looked more carefully. That was not a bird. It was the shadow of a man.

He did not look up. He wanted it to be nothing but an optical illusion. He had already seen enough in the past two days. His eyes were not accustomed to seeing so much. Slowly, he moved toward a spot where the stream narrowed. He jumped to the other side in order to leave. The shadow did not move. He took a few more steps. About two hundred meters away, two campesinos, each with a machete, approached on foot. He wanted to call to them but was afraid of provoking the shadow. He thought about moving closer to them. After a few more steps, he could not control himself any longer. He shouted:

“Excuse me! Señores!”

The campesinos turned toward him. They made a move toward him but then seemed to think better of it. They stopped. The prosecutor greeted them from a distance. They looked at him with curiosity. They said something to each other. He smiled at them. They resumed walking and moved away, speeding up the pace. The prosecutor wanted to follow them or call to them. It occurred to him to identify himself as an electoral observer. He realized that the best thing was to let them go. He listened to the sound of the branches as they moved. He tried to hurry too and reach the village. At that moment, he was hit on the back of his neck by a falling body.

The blow made him lose his footing. He almost fell in the water but held on to the branches of a bush and managed to crawl out from under the pressure of the man, who rolled a few meters and stood to throw himself at the prosecutor. Félix Chacaltana recognized the dwarfish silhouette he had seen the day before at the entrance to the village. As he tried to stand, he caught a glimpse of the old shoes with the tire soles and, above all, the same red
chullo
cap he had pursued days before in Quinua. Justino Mayta Carazo did not give him time for more before he leaped at his throat.

The prosecutor managed to hit him in the face with a branch and run toward the steep rocks. He found himself facing a stone wall. Justino came bounding after him. Chacaltana began to climb. He felt that each rock pierced his hands, that his feet were slipping on the falling rocks. He did not want to look down. He simply let himself be hit in the face by some of the stones dislodged from the wall as he advanced. The rocks ended in an embankment. The prosecutor took several seconds to reach the top, feeling that at any moment he might slip down to the bottom. But spreading before him at the top was a large ascending plain surrounded by another stone wall. He ran. Justino had climbed up very quickly but seemed to be limping slightly after his fall from the tree. The prosecutor sensed that Justino was gaining on him, but the slopes of the rise were too steep for him to descend any of them. He veered to the right, trying to reach the next wall in order to climb it. He tried and failed, feeling that altitude and exhaustion were overwhelming him. His heart was pounding, he needed air. He reached the slope and clung to the rocks with his hands. He began to climb, supporting himself on occasional projections. He hung from a cornice and pushed himself forward. The vertical surface seemed impossible to conquer. He spent his last breath in the effort and managed to rest on a rock and move a meter up from the ground. When he tried to take the second step, his foot rested on a false projection and slipped. The rock he was on gave way, and his entire body hurtled toward the ground in a small avalanche of stone and soil. He fell on his back.