Red April (21 page)

“And what would you do with them?”

The other policeman answered:

“If it was up to me, I'd lock them up and throw away the key. There's no changing them. As the tree grows …”

The older boy turned to look at the policeman with hatred. The officer spat at him and said:

“What are you looking at, damn it? You're all grown up, huh? You must be at least twenty, but you play the snot-nose kid, damn undocumented shit. With your record, we can send you to be
fucked in maximum security. So don't look at me too much because I'll turn you into a woman, see?”

The prosecutor understood why he did not know anything about them. There were no complaints at the Ministry of Justice, no papers on these boys. As Commander Carrión had said, they did not even have a name.

He went back to the center of town with his head lowered, preoccupied. As he crossed the residential tract he thought someone was walking behind him. When he turned, there was only a woman with some flowers for the procession.

Later, at police headquarters, the officers informed him that the tourists who had been attacked did not have even minor wounds. Pure fright, they said. The one who had taken their complaint remarked:

“Gringos, Señor Prosecutor, they're all faggots. They scream and carry on and nobody's done anything to them. They weren't even robbed because they all started shouting. We ought to export some criminals to them so they'll know what a real robbery is and stop wasting our time with stupid bullshit.”

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar spent the rest of the afternoon watching the festivities. He saw the Lord of Palms leave the Monastery of St. Teresa mounted on a white donkey, accompanied by twelve Ayacuchans dressed as apostles, and the principal civilian authorities of the city. After them came another donkey carrying baskets of fruit. When they reached the cathedral, the sculpture of Christ was taken down and brought into the temple to the sound of hurrahs and applause. The prosecutor recognized the carpet of the Heart of Jesus that he had seen at the beginning of the ceremony. After the passage of people and animals, it had been destroyed. The figure of the heart was torn to pieces, shreds of it still hanging from the hooves of the donkeys.

On Monday afternoon, after having lunch with Edith, the Associate District Prosecutor walked to the maximum security
prison of Huamanga. His entrance was easier than the last time. Colonel Olazábal welcomed him with open arms and offered him a
mate
because he knew it was his favorite drink. The prosecutor did not ask how he knew. He imagined the answer: Ayacucho is a small city, everybody knows everything. He assured Olazábal that he had interceded on behalf of his promotion, and then he could see Hernán Durango González, alias Comrade Alonso.

“You're becoming very fond of me, Señor Prosecutor,” was the first thing the terrorist said. “I don't have many visitors who are so faithful.”

“I have come on a professional matter, Señor Durango.”

“Call me Alonso, please.”

“Your name is Hernán.”

On the previous occasion, the terrorist had been aggressive and self-assured. Now, a certain irony seemed to emanate from his eyes, otherwise as fixed and stony as always. Knowing that Durango always had an answer even before knowing the question, the prosecutor decided to move ahead to what he had to say.

“I want to know what connections …”

“Why do you think I'll tell you anything, Señor Prosecutor?”

It was a good question. The prosecutor shuffled through possible responses: because I cannot think of anyone else to talk to, because I have no idea what is going on here, because I am not a policeman and do not know how to investigate, because I have to turn in a report and for the first time do not know how to do it …

“Because you like to talk, Señor Durango,” he finally said. “You feel superior to all of us and you like to flaunt it.”

“It's quite a stretch from that to betrayal, don't you agree?”

“I have already told you there is nothing left to betray. Your people are finished. But I am dealing with a special case, and you might perhaps be helpful.”

“Thank you,” he said sarcastically. “Can I smoke?”

As on the previous occasion, the terrorist was handcuffed. The
prosecutor thought he might relax a little with a cigarette. He opened the office door and asked the guard for one. Chacaltana coughed when he lit it. He went back in and gave the cigarette to the terrorist. Durango inhaled deeply and looked out the window.

“Tell me, it's Holy Week out there, isn't it? I noticed because of the holiday visits.”

“Don't tell me you did not know.”

“I haven't kept track of time for a long while now.”

The prosecutor detected a hint of sadness in the terrorist's voice. He thought it was one of his strategies to confuse him. He tried to confuse him in turn:

“I never would have imagined you were so devout.”

The terrorist's eyes were glued to the window. He turned and looked at the prosecutor, and suddenly began to recite:

“And Jesus went into the temple and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”

He kept staring at the prosecutor with pride. The prosecutor asked:

“Is that in the Bible?”

“In the Gospel of St. Matthew. There are things that are universal, Prosecutor Chacaltana, like indignation at the dens of thieves.”

“Interesting. Is there … any kind of relationship between your movement and some religious prophecy? The Apocalypse or … something like that?”

Now the terrorist burst into laughter. He let the explosion of laughter resonate along the bare walls of the office. Then he said:

“We are materialists. But I suppose you don't even know what that is.”

“What do you think will happen after death?”

Comrade Alonso gave a nostalgic smile.

“It will be like the Indian servant's dream. Do you know it? It's a story by Arguedas. Do you read?”

“I like Chocano.”

Now the terrorist laughed sarcastically. There was something like cultural petulance in his attitude. He did not consider the prosecutor to be an intellectual.

“I prefer Arguedas. They don't let us read here, but I always think about that story. It's about an Indian, the lowest of the slaves on a plantation, a servant of the servants. One day the Indian tells the master that he's had a dream. In his dream, they both died and went to heaven. There God ordered the angels to cover the Indian with manure until all his skin was hidden by shit. But he ordered the rich man to be completely bathed in honey. The master is happy to hear the Indian's dream. He thinks it reasonable, he thinks that is exactly what God will do. He urges him to go on and asks: ‘And then what happens?’ The Indian replies: ‘Then, when he saw the two men covered in shit and honey respectively, he says: Now lick the other's body until it is completely clean.’ That must be divine justice, the place where everything's turned upside down, where the defeated become the victors.”

The prosecutor oozed discomfort. He cleared his throat.

“That is a story,” he said. “I was referring to whether or not you believe in heaven or the Resurrection …”

The prosecutor thought it was a very strange question for an interrogation, but the entire case was more than strange, so he supposed it was an adequate question. The terrorist took his time looking out the window and smoking a little more before he began to speak:

“About four years ago, Comrade Alina was given a radio by one of her visitors, a … small battery-operated radio, almost invisible. Sometimes she even managed to get it to us in the men's block. We listened to it for a couple of nights and then sent it back one way or another. Often the police themselves would carry it back and forth in exchange for cigarettes or something to eat. For
us it was an event. For years we hadn't seen television or heard the news, no papers, nothing to read. We kept the radio for a couple of months until one of the guards fought for some reason with Comrade Alina, some damn stupid thing, I suppose, and told his superiors that we had it. Colonel Olazábal demanded that the radio be turned in. Comrade Alina and the party members refused. They said we had the right to have a radio according to all the laws and treaties on human rights. The colonel threatened a round of searches, but the comrade didn't give him the radio. She said it would be over her dead body …”

The terrorist's voice broke. He threw the cigarette to the floor and stepped on it. He seemed to have collapsed. At first the prosecutor was surprised by his vulnerability but thought again that he was trying to confuse him. Durango continued:

“Olazábal didn't dare to provoke an uprising, and everybody forgot about it. But two days later he had the men and women arrested for terrorism line up in the central courtyard. The rest of the inmates were locked in their cells. We thought it would be a routine inspection. Until the doors opened and in came the Force for Special Operations, accompanied by a prosecutor … a prosecutor like you, of course. The prosecutor said he would conduct a search for illegal material and asked if anyone had any object to declare. After a long silence, Alina raised her hand and mentioned the radio but refused to turn it in. The prosecutor asked her for it twice, without result. Then he said he had done what the law required … He declared us mutinous … and put the officer at the head of the Special Forces in charge. He left. Then …”—now his eyes swelled. Threads of spittle formed inside his mouth as he spoke—“when the door closed, the Special Forces attacked us, Señor Prosecutor. There were about two hundred of them armed with clubs, paralyzing gases, and chains, set loose like mad dogs coming toward us across the courtyard. Most of our people were handcuffed or shackled. Some of us, the ones who were free, ran to surround Alina, to defend her …”—he stopped for a second.
It seemed as if he would not continue, that he would break down. “About twenty of them came directly toward her. They sprayed chemicals into our faces, and when we couldn't see they clubbed us down to the ground. And didn't stop until they made sure we couldn't get up for a long time … They hit me in the head, the testicles, the stomach … But they weren't satisfied with that.” Now Durango looked at some point on the white wall, some infinite place. “The women, they …”—he closed his eyes—“they tore off their clothes, and then, in front of us, they brandished their clubs and laughed, telling them things like ‘Come on, Mamita, you'll like it,’ they said … Do you want … do you want to know what they did to them with those clubs, Señor Prosecutor?”

No. The prosecutor did not want to know. He wanted to stand up and leave, he wanted to close his eyes and clench his teeth forever, he wanted to tear out his ears so he would not have to go on listening. The terrorist no longer hid the tears rolling down his cheeks.

“You should know,” he continued, staring now at the prosecutor with hatred. “You should know what they did with their clubs to the women, because then they did the same thing to us men …”

He tried to control himself, to swallow his tears of shame and rage. The prosecutor tried to do the same. He remained silent. The terrorist, after sobbing for a moment, concluded:

“You asked me if I believed in heaven. I believe in hell, Señor Prosecutor. I live there. Hell is not being able to die.”

Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, Associate District Prosecutor, returned to the city at 7:00 in the evening, when the procession of the Lord of the Garden was leaving the Temple of the Good Death on its way to the Plaza Mayor. The platform was decorated with pineapples, fruit, ears of corn, tall candles, and olive branches in memory of Jesus' prayer on the Mount of Olives, when he asked his father to save him from dying. The prosecutor asked himself
why no one in the world can choose either not to die or to die later. And his answer was that perhaps no one on high is listening to our pleas, perhaps prayers are only things we tell ourselves because nobody else wants to hear them.

In the procession for Holy Monday no fireworks were set off, since this was a remembrance of an act of sorrow. But that night, as he advanced on Edith's body, trying not to go too far, the prosecutor thought again about blows. Blows that thundered in his ears and on the back of his neck, blows like God's hate, blows that only fire could stop, turn into ash, into silence, into mute supplication. Suddenly, he could not go on.

“What is it?” she asked.

The prosecutor thought of telling her. He remembered Lieutenant Aramayo in Yawarmayo. He remembered his inability to speak.

“I love you,” was his only reply.

And then he continued to touch her, to press against his body the first warm body offered to him in years, the only living body he had touched in recent days. He made an effort to remove her underwear, but she resisted. Then he lay on top of Edith and tried to rub his groin against hers, until Edith moved away from his attacks, annoyed.

“That's all you want, isn't it?” she asked.

What concerned the prosecutor most was not the impulse to say yes, at that moment it was the only thing he cared about and he did not feel capable of controlling himself anymore. In reality, what concerned him most was the certainty he could achieve it, so easily, barely stretching out his hand, no longer being as good as he usually was, so amiable, so weak. Almost without realizing it, he tried again. He nibbled at her ears and ran his palms along her back. This time, when she stopped him, she pointed at a photograph hanging on the wall. His mother was observing them and did not seem to approve of what they were doing.

“It's as if she were here,” said Edith.

Then, they did not have the courage to continue.

That night, after walking Edith home, he returned to his house, said good night to his mother, made certain he had closed her door carefully, and masturbated in the bathroom, afraid she would hear him.

On Tuesday, the prosecutor had to take part in the procession of the Lord of Judgment, which was the responsibility of the personnel of the Judicial Branch. Normally he would have been proud to be part of the procession, but that day he did not want to. He felt drained and could think only of Edith's bosom. The image of Christ captured by the Jews had its hands tied and displayed evident signs of torture. Out of the corner of his eye he stared at that livid, exhausted body, its welts and scars. He felt he could not look directly at the platform during its passage.