Red April (30 page)

He stayed there for several hours, wondering what death was like. Perhaps it was not all that terrible. Perhaps it was a soft bed with a wooden canopy. Perhaps it was simply nothing. Living in no one's memory, because everybody you knew was dead. He wondered when his killers would come for him. It was after midnight. He wondered if he would be safer in the cell at police headquarters. He laughed weakly at his own idea. He waited for them impatiently. He imagined the saw that would cut his neck. He thought of it passing with difficulty through his vertebrae, his
veins. At a certain moment he grew annoyed, he wanted them to come and be done with it. He spent some time meditating, remembering isolated, chaotic images of his mother smiling at him, advising him, embracing him, waiting for him there where she was, where she had always been, in the fire. When he evoked the image of his mother emerging from the flames, an idea took shape in his mind. Perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps there was a place where he could be safe. Only one, the last one. He made a decision. Before acting on it, he kissed all the photographs of his mother one by one, in a kind of long, affectionate farewell on the sheets. Affectionately, he put out each of her candles. Then, with new energy, he returned to his room, took out the weapon, loaded it, placed it in the holster under his arm, and went out. He felt that perhaps he would not die that night.

He walked through the street festivities like a zombie, brushing against people who were dancing and singing. Sometimes those who saw him approach moved aside to let him pass. He understood that he did not look clean and decent. He did not think about it anymore. After walking for about ten minutes, he reached military headquarters. Perhaps because of the celebration, there were no guards at the door. And he did not see anyone inside. He pressed the intercom and the commander opened the door for him from his office. He sounded pleased to hear him. The prosecutor crossed the gloomy courtyard and climbed the wooden stairs that creaked beneath his feet. When he reached Commander Carrión's office, he went in without knocking. The commander was inside, packing a suitcase. When he saw the prosecutor, his face contracted into an expression of shock:

“Chacaltana. What the hell happened to you?”

“Don't you know?”

“Nobody tells me anything anymore, Chacaltana. My retirement has broken speed records.”

He said it sadly. He felt nostalgia in advance for the Ayacuchan horror. Chacaltana took a few steps forward and caught a glimpse
of his reflection in a mirror in the office. He really did look awful. As if he had come out of a sewer. Or a mass grave.

“They accused me of the murders,” the prosecutor explained, “and then they let me go again. Strange, isn't it? These weeks have been very strange.”

“I know. They haven't been easy for me.”

The prosecutor noticed the things the commander was putting in the suitcase. Photographs, papers, old albums of his military promotions. Memories. Only memories. Outside was the sound of fireworks and voices and singing, but dim, as if it came from another world. The commander went to the window and looked at the festivities. He closed the curtain.

“Sendero did not do the killings,” said the prosecutor. He had not sat down. “Did you know that? It seemed … but no.”

The commander smiled faintly.

“I was afraid of that. Sometimes I think it's better that I've been retired. I won't be the one bearing the weight of all this. Is there some new line of investigation?”

The commander lit a cigarette. He offered one to the prosecutor, who declined.

“There is something, yes,” he replied.

The commander exhaled smoke while he waited for the prosecutor to explain. The prosecutor had an absent gaze, as if he were seeing fireworks through the blinds.

“And?” asked the commander. “Don't leave me like this. Whom do you suspect?”

The prosecutor seemed to return to himself. Then he said:

“You, Commander.”

The commander laughed, as if he appreciated the joke. Then he realized that the prosecutor was not joking.

“I think … I don't understand,” he said.

“Neither do I, Commander. I thought you would explain it to me.”

The commander took some papers from his desk without losing
his composure. Chacaltana had seen that they were all written in lower-case letters and filled with spelling errors. The commander closed the suitcase and said:

“I'm afraid you're making a mistake …”

“You were the only one who could have sent my reports to the police, because you were the only one who had them, Commander.” The prosecutor's voice had risen in volume and authority. “You were also the only one aware of all my movements. And the only one interested in wiping out your own past, the 1980s. Pacheco was posted to Ayacucho much later, and the only thing he wanted was to get out. Just like Briceño, just like everybody.”

Commander Carrión took a long drag on his cigarette. His eyes pierced the prosecutor. Now they were like the eyes of Edith's parents in the photographs. The prosecutor continued:

“You sent me to Yawarmayo so that Justino could get me out of the way. But Justino failed. He was so terrorized he could not even kill an unarmed, cowardly man like me. Besides, he talked too much. What he really wanted was to accuse you. Then you killed him too and decided to hand over the investigation to me in secret to keep me quiet and, in the process, get rid of everyone who could ever incriminate you: Quiroz, Durango … In the end you would incriminate me … or to make certain of my silence you would kill me too, as you planned to do tonight. That is why you ordered the police to let me go. Here no one says no to a top military officer, even if he is retiring. Lima knows everything, the Intelligence Service is aware of what you have done. But it's an old story, isn't it? When the pus spurts out, they retire you or transfer you. Nobody touches a military officer. It's what they did with Lieutenant Cáceres.”

“Cáceres was an animal!” said Carrión, suddenly losing his patience. “Everything was fine, everything was quiet until that shit came back from Jaén. He said they kept him behind a desk. He said he was a war hero, that he had risked his life for this
country. He wanted to be recognized. He's the biggest killer we've had. And he wanted us to build him a monument, the son of a bitch! He assumed the right to organize civilian defense militias. Defense against what?”

“Maybe against all of you.”

The commander seemed larger now and was breathing hard, like a wounded animal. He ignored the interruption:

“He left us no alternative. He was reviving old phantoms. The population realized that. The Senderistas in Yawarmayo were more agitated than ever. It wouldn't take long for some opposition shit to let the press know that the lieutenant had returned to Ayacucho. Or even worse, there would be a terrorist attempt during the elections and Holy Week. If that happened, we'd be done for. I tried talking to Cáceres, I tried explaining things to him, I tried calming him down. Cáceres was my friend, Chacaltana, we had fought together. Do you know what it means to hurt a friend? I understood what he was feeling. I felt the same way! We shed blood for this country!”

“But that blood was not yours, Commander.”

“Don't interrupt me, damn it!” he shouted. Then he paused to calm down. It was a sad pause, dedicated perhaps to his old dead friend. “It was easy to convince Justino Mayta to get rid of the lieutenant for us. No soldier would have killed another soldier.”

The prosecutor thought: No soldier except you.

“Justino, on the other hand,” the commander continued, “remembered very well the police coming into his house. And he wanted to avenge his brother. He believed … he believed his brother was acting through him, that he was like the hand of God. Some religious shit. That stupid man was very devout. It occurred to him to use Quiroz's oven to disappear the body. And Quiroz agreed, because he also had a great deal to lose if Cáceres talked. It was all a disaster from the outset. The oven was so old that it fucking broke down halfway through the burning. Quiroz and Justino didn't stop shouting at each other. We had to pull out the
scorched body, take it to Quinua, and leave it there. Even after that we thought everything would stay calm and nothing would happen. Everything was going to be fine. It would end there. But you showed up and everybody got nervous. Quiroz wanted to throw suspicion on Justino. Justino didn't even know what he wanted. They had to be silenced. Just like Durango … There was no way to know what you talked about with Durango … Or with your girlfriend, that lousy terrorist.”

His last words cut Chacaltana like a knife.

“Edith Ayala wasn't a terrorist, you son of a bitch.”

“It doesn't matter now, Chacaltana. She isn't anything now. You handed her over to us. After the scene you made last night, it was very easy for me to finish her off. I even thought I was doing you a favor because you didn't have the courage.”

The commander's gaze was not repentant but defiant, like a sudden blaze or a gust of wind. The prosecutor thought about him, Durango, Justino, Cáceres, Quiroz. Murderers killing murderers. Killers exterminating one another, a spiral of fire that would not stop until we were all one, one single giant of blood. But not Edith. Not her at all. He thought of her remains scattered on the bed. He thought of her entire body surrendered in that same bed, forced, broken in advance.

“You are a monster, Carrión. Even if what you say is true. Why like this? Wasn't a bullet in the back of the neck enough for you? Wasn't that the usual method?”

The commander darkened his gaze. He showed him the papers he held in his hand.

“I've written down everything. I've explained everything.”

Chacaltana took the papers and tried to read. But there was nothing to understand in them. Only incoherence. Barbarity. Not simply spelling errors, it was everything. There is no error in chaos, and in those papers not even the syntax made sense. Chacaltana had spent his entire life among ordered words, Chocano's poems, legal codes, sentences numbered or organized into verses.
Now he did not know what to do with a heap of words thrown haphazardly at reality. The world could not follow the logic of those words. Or perhaps it was just the opposite, perhaps reality was simply like that and all the rest was pretty stories, like colored beads designed to distract and pretend that things have some meaning.

The commander lowered his voice. He had a new gaze, one the prosecutor had never seen. He said:

“It's clear, isn't it? Now do you understand? Do you need more explanations?”

The prosecutor wondered if he could be the one who read in twisted lines. If his reports were the ones that lacked meaning. If perhaps Carrión's papers were the truly legible ones but he no longer was capable of understanding them. Then he thought of Edith and realized that in reality it no longer mattered.

“There is no explanation for what you have done,” he said.

As Carrión walked slowly to his desk, the prosecutor moved his hand toward his weapon. The commander said:

“I didn't want it, little Chacaltita. I didn't want it to be this way. They forced me.”

“Who?”

Now the commander twisted beside the desk, fell to the floor, and his eyes filled with tears. He was trembling.

“Don't you see them, Chacaltita? Is it possible you don't see them? They're everywhere. They're always here.”

Then Chacaltana saw them. In fact, he had been seeing them for a year. All the time. And now the blindfold fell from his eyes. Their mutilated bodies crowded together around him, their chests, split open from top to bottom, reeked of the grave and death. There were thousands and thousands of corpses, not only there in the commander's office but throughout the city. He understood then that they were the dead who sold him newspapers, drove the buses, made handicrafts, served him food. There were no other inhabitants in Ayacucho; even those who came from elsewhere died.
But there were so many dead that by now no one could acknowledge it. He knew a year too late that he had come to hell and would never leave. The commander continued speaking in a cavernous, guttural voice:

“They asked me not to spill blood in vain, Chacaltana, and I didn't: a terrorist, a soldier, a peasant, a woman, a priest. Now they're all together. They form part of the body demanded by all those who died before. Do you understand? They'll help to construct the history, recover the greatness, so that even the mountains tremble when they see our work. At the beginning of the eighties we promised to resist the bloodbath. Those who have been sacrificed recently have not died. They live and feel in us. Only one more is needed to make the earth shudder, the prairie burn, the world turn upside down. Only the head is missing …”

He disappeared behind his desk. The prosecutor took out the pistol. He aimed in his direction. At that moment no image made his hand shake. It was as if all his bad dreams had come to an end.

“Get away from the desk, damn it!”

The commander peered out and suddenly smiled, as if he thought everything was amusing and original.

“I see you're using my weapon. Are you getting used to it?”

“Raise your hands and move back. If I don't blow your head off right now it's only because you didn't act alone. I want you to tell me who your accomplice is—or who they are. And I want you to tell me before I lose my patience, because after that you won't be able to say anything.”

The commander remained motionless beside the window. His hands were raised, more in an ironic gesture than in surrender. The smile had not left his face.

“To tell the truth,” he replied, “my best accomplice was you.”

At that moment, the lights in the office went out. The prosecutor tried to look through the half-open door. He did not even
know where the door was. The blackout affected the entire building. The blinds were closed.

“Who's out there? Who turned out the light?”

In the dark he heard the voice of the commander.

“You must feel a little guilty, Chacaltana. All the people you talk to die. That's very bad.”

He heard a drawer open and close. He fired toward the place the sound came from. For a moment, the darkness of the empty building returned only the echo of the bullet. Then he heard Carrión's voice again: