Red April (12 page)

The campesino picked him up from the ground and pinned him against the wall. Chacaltana had time to think of something to say:

“Señor Justino Mayta Carazo, you are liable for contempt and lack of respect for the law.”

The other man shouted something in Quechua. His voice betrayed more fear than courage.

“I assure you that I will bring you up on charges for your assault on my physical well-being …”

Frothing at the mouth and sputtering in Quechua, Justino began to squeeze Chacaltana's neck. For a moment, the prosecutor had the sensation that the air was escaping his lungs, his throat, his mouth trying to articulate that he was merely an electoral official. The campesino did not let him go; on the contrary, the pressure became harder and harder. With his right hand, the prosecutor felt around him until he found a stone, lifted it, and with all his remaining strength hit Mayta in the face. The campesino fell to the ground. The prosecutor needed to catch his breath before he got to his feet. He gulped in all the air he could. He felt as if his chest were about to explode. Off to one side, Justino raised his hand to his face. The prosecutor was afraid he would attack him again. But the campesino in the red
chullo
began to sob gently.

“I ain't done nothin', Your Worship! My brother's the one. He does everythin'! Everythin'!”

“Honestly, I don't understand what you're saying,” the prosecutor managed to say.

“My brother, it's my brother, Your Worship! I ain't done nothin'!”

Chacaltana understood he could not say much else in Spanish. He understood what Pacheco and Carrión were alluding to when they said these people do not speak, do not know how to communicate, it was as if they were dead. The campesino did not crawl on the ground. His body was square and solid from working the land, but he did not seem to threaten him now, it was more as if he were pleading. He had moved from aggressor to victim to unmoving man. The prosecutor thought that now he would let himself be taken away peacefully, having understood the principle of authority that made him subordinate to the Ministry of Justice.
He wanted to take the campesino someplace where there was a translator. His testimony had to be something important. He thought about calling Ayacucho. But he would not find a telephone he could use. The campesino sank progressively lower and lower until he was sobbing at his feet. The prosecutor decided he would oblige the police to receive him and take his statement. They could not refuse. Sobbing and whimpering, the campesino kept talking about his brother. The prosecutor wondered to which jurisdiction Yawarmayo belonged and which judge he would appear before. Suddenly a new possibility occurred to him that he had not considered previously. Or, rather, he had assimilated the obvious. He looked again at the wretched man groveling on the ground. He asked him:

“You were … you were going to kill me, weren't you?”

It had never occurred to him that someone might want to kill him. Perhaps Justino had intended to burn him and make his body disappear. He felt the impulse to hit him, to kick him until he bled. He realized he could not. Justino's pathetic suffering had disarmed him. The killer had been consumed in his own attack. Without warning, the wretch lamenting on the ground filled him with fear and pity, just like the mountains, the stream, the clean, dry air.

He grabbed Justino by the back of the collar and lifted him up.

“I am going to take you to the police station. The lieutenant will have to listen to me now.”

But Justino had other plans. As soon as he found himself on his feet, he gave the prosecutor a surprise blow in the stomach with his elbow. Chacaltana had the air knocked out of him, and could not respond. Justino punched him in the face and then kicked him to the ground. In one jump he was on the stone wall and began climbing again. Down below, Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar could do nothing but watch him disappear up the mountain while he tried to warn him that now he was committing the crime of assault and flight.

As soon as he recovered his strength, he returned to the village, thinking that the police still had time to pursue Justino. In the station he found Yupanqui and Gonza playing cards. He went in short of breath, panting. He had a bruise on his face.

“I found a terrorist. I have his name and description. I know where he has gone. We can still catch him.”

Yupanqui threw a card on the table. He did not even turn to look at him.

“Go away, Señor Prosecutor.”

“Listen to me! He is a killer. I can prove it.”

Yupanqui had won the hand. He smiled and picked up the cards from the table, along with three one-sol coins. Gonza made an annoyed face. Yupanqui said:

“If you don't leave, we'll have to throw you out.”

“I want to speak to Lieutenant Aramayo.”

Yupanqui shuffled and began a new deal. Chacaltana insisted:

“I want to speak to … !”

“Don't raise your voice, Señor Prosecutor. The lieutenant isn't here. As far as you're concerned, he won't ever be here again.”

The prosecutor left the police station. He walked to Teodoro's house, looking at the mountains, as if he might discover Justino's hiding place there. He understood that the enemy was like the hills: mute, immobile, mimetic, part of the landscape.

He had to knock a long time on Teodoro's door before they let him in. His things were still there but opened and disturbed. His suit was wrinkled and thrown under his bag. He was surprised to realize he did not care. Teodoro said something to him in Quechua. It did not sound like a lament. It sounded like a reproach. The prosecutor took a couple of coins from his pocket and put them on the ground, in front of the owner of the house, who said nothing else to him. Chacaltana appreciated the progress he had made in his ability to communicate. He lay down right away, in his clothes and shoes. Although it was just getting dark, he felt exhausted.

At night, he again heard the sound of bombs and saw the light of fires coming from the mountains. He did not turn to look at Teodoro's family, and he did not try to leave the house. The first shouted slogans seemed like the echoes of an old movie. Then, everything seemed like the background music to a nightmare.

He thought about his mother.

That night, he did not dream.

The next morning, he got up early to go to his work. At seven, police were still painting the facades of houses. No dogs had been hung that night either.

Voting began at eight, with six members absent from the table and a total ignorance of electoral procedures on the part of the other six. Some voters were recruited for the tables, and they tried to get out of their duties until two soldiers energetically asked them to sit down. No agent or representative of any political party was accredited. The entire police force guaranteed security in the area surrounding the Alberto Fujimori Fujimori School.

At about noon, a civil service helicopter appeared in the sky and landed at one end of the village, making the plants shake in the wind from the rotors. The villagers enjoyed watching it descend. The children went up to play with it. Civilian journalists climbed out with cameras and tape recorders. They were all white, Limenians or gringos. They looked very serious. They greeted the police and Johnatan Cahuide and went into the school to verify the normal process of the elections. They spoke with the two table members who knew Spanish. The table members asked if the president had come in their helicopter.

While the journalists were taking the usual photographs, a reporter went out to the square and lit a cigarette. One of the villagers came up and asked him for one. And then another villager. And another. In five minutes, the reporter was surrounded by villagers who wanted to smoke. Prosecutor Chacaltana considered it appropriate to move them away. He approached and asked
them to allow the reporter to do his work in peace. When they were alone, the reporter said:

“It seems that everything's calm, doesn't it?”

“It seems so, yes.”

“There haven't been any problems the last few days? This zone is completely pacified?”

Prosecutor Chacaltana thought that perhaps it was his last opportunity to tell what he knew. The reporter could publish it and let them know about it in Lima, where they surely would become indignant and send a commission or demand an investigation. Perhaps the commander simply was not aware of what was going on, but if the order came from Lima, he would make new inquiries. He wanted to talk about Justino Mayta Carazo and his mysterious appearances and disappearances, about the hammers and sickles burning in the Yawarmayo night, about the shouts from the hills and the shouts of the young men from the village when they were shut inside the military trucks. He opened his mouth and began:

“Well, sometimes …”

“Sometimes you'd think there had never been a war here.”

The voice that interrupted him belonged to Lieutenant Aramayo, who had come up to them wearing an amiable, satisfied smile.

“As you can see,” the police officer continued: “A good climate, a peaceful countryside, people freely exercising their right to vote … What else could you ask for?”

“You're right,” said the journalist. “I ought to move here. Lima can be an unbearable city.”

“I can well imagine,” Aramayo replied with complicity. “Can I steal a cigarette from you?”

Prosecutor Chacaltana did not say anything for the next twenty minutes. Then the journalists returned to their helicopter and left. The winds did not allow planes to fly into Ayacucho after two
in the afternoon. They were running out of time. From the ground, the prosecutor could see the cameras taking their final shots from the helicopter windows.

At four o'clock, when it was time for the voting tables to close, polls had called the opposition candidate the victor. Some gave him more than half the votes. At the National Office and among the military a strange uneasiness was spreading. Until five o'clock, Cahuide kept receiving phone calls and preparing the packages for the military truck. Officers ran back and forth, indifferent to the prosecutor, who had been transformed into one more object that had to be taken away, one that made no noise.

Four hours later, the truck was approaching Ayacucho with the radio playing. Filtering through the salsa and vallenatos that the soldiers had tuned in to for the trip was the announcement of the first official returns. All the polls had been wrong. The real winner was the president. It was about to be decided if there would be a recount. The soldiers driving the truck tuned in to music. Politics bored them.

That night, two hours before they arrived, Chacaltana remembered Aramayo's words when he said that in Lima they did not want to see what happened in his village. But he also asked himself why (lately he was asking himself why a good deal) the lieutenant had refused to inform the journalists and the high command. He thought that perhaps he was ashamed. It is not easy to admit that you are dead.

On the eighth day of March, 1990, on the occasion of a Senderista assault in which the electrical installations of the region were blown up, a detachment of armed forces appeared at the domicile of the Mayta Carazo family, located at Calle Sucre 14 in the municipality of Quinua, to carry out the appropriate inquiries with regard to Edwin Mayta Carazo, twenty-three years old, suspected of terrorism.

For reasons of security the detachment, led by Lieutenant Alfredo Cáceres Salazar of the Army of Peru, exercised its prerogatives and broke into the aforementioned residence with no prior warning, its members hooded and armed with antisubversive H&K combat rifles, at which time they discovered in the interior the family composed of the abovementioned suspect, his brother Justino, and the mother of both men, Señora Nélida Carazo widow of Mayta, who were spending the night at that site.

After the detachment entered the site, the two Mayta men, who offered no resistance, were subdued with the butts of the weapons for the sake of greater security, while Nélida Carazo widow of Mayta was removed from the area of operations by two troops who, according to their statement, proceeded to place her against an exterior wall of the property at gunpoint, under orders that she not shout or attract the attention of the neighbors. The request of the troops seems to have been heeded, since none of the residents of Calle Sucre has confirmed the version of the family, the majority of the residents stating that they were absent from the location, having left for various reasons related to work from
midnight until three in the morning, the hours in which these events were recorded.

By order of Lieutenant Cáceres Salazar, the troops proceeded to inspect the domicile in search of explosives or Senderista propaganda. After examining the interior of the property and removing the appropriate pieces of furniture without success, they interrogated both suspects, who denied having knowledge of any terrorist activity. Lieutenant Cáceres maintained, however, that terrorists who do not appear to be terrorists are those who present the greatest danger to national security, and consequently proceeded to seize the possessions of the family and arrest the suspect Edwin Mayta Carazo, leaving his brother at large in consideration of the fact that in the course of the interrogation the femur of his left leg had been fractured.