The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (22 page)

Okay, the National Anthem is over, and the representative of the army, the usual spokesman for the Junta, steps forward. In an unusual move, he skips the pompous patriotic rhetoric he normally uses, and instead gets right to the heart of the matter. His voice has less of a military ring and is more tremulous. Three military columns, made up of Cubans and Bolivians, have penetrated deep into our territory, supported by planes which, beginning last night, have been bombing civilian targets in Puno, Cuzco, and Arequipa. An open violation of all international laws and agreements. There are many casualties, and considerable property damage. In the very heart of the city of Puno, bombs have destroyed part of the Social Security Hospital, causing an as yet undetermined number of deaths. The description of the disasters takes him several minutes. Will he tell us if the Marines have crossed the Ecuadorian border?

The small box at the bottom of the page announces that shortly the RWP(T) will present at the union hall of the Civil Construction Union its previously postponed program on “The Betrayed Revolution: A Trotskyist Interpretation of the Soviet Union.” To find Mayta's resignation, you have to turn the page. It's in a corner, below an extensive article entitled “Let's Set Up Soviets in the Barracks!” With no heading or frame: “Resigns from the RWP(T).” The spokesman now assures us that the Peruvian troops, despite the fact that they are fighting against superior numbers and greater logistical support, are heroically resisting the criminal invasion of international communist terrorism, and have the decided support of the civilian populace. The committee, invoking martial law, has this afternoon activated three new divisions of reservists. Will he tell us if U.S. planes are bombing the invaders?

He's only said it at the end, very quickly, with less firmness, as if he wasn't very sure. In the name of the Peruvian people, who are gloriously fighting in defense of Western civilization and Christianity in the free world, against the onslaught of collectivist and totalitarian atheism, the Junta has requested and obtained from the government of the United States of America support troops and logistical supplies to repel the communist Russo-Cuban-Bolivian invasion that seeks to enslave our homeland. So this is true as well. Here we go. The war is no longer a Peruvian affair. Peru is just one more theater for the war the Great Powers are waging, directly and through satellites or allies. Whoever wins, the fact is that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, will die. If Peru survives, it will be prostrate. I was so sleepy I didn't feel I had enough energy even to turn off the TV.

His anxiety was justified when he turned around: Anatolio was pointing a pistol at him. He wasn't afraid, just sorry: the delay it would cause! And what about Vallejos? The plan had to be carried out step by step with absolute precision, and it was clear that Anatolio wasn't there to kill him but to keep him from getting to Jauja. He strode firmly toward the boy to try to convince him to be reasonable, but Anatolio stretched out his arm energetically and Mayta saw that he was going to squeeze the trigger. He raised his hands over his head, thinking: To die without even having fought. He felt a lacerating sadness; he'd never be with them, there on Calvary when the Epiphany began. “Why are you doing this, Anatolio?” His own voice disgusted him: a real revolutionary is logical and cold, not sentimental. “Because you're a faggot,” said Anatolio in a calm, leaden, forceful, irreversible tone, one Mayta wished he could use just now. “Because you're a queer and you've got to pay the price,” confirmed the secretary general, his jaundiced face and pointy ears jutting forward. “Because you're a faggot and disgusting,” added Comrade Moises/Medardo, sticking his profile over Comrade Jacinto's shoulder. The whole Central Committee of the RWP(T) was there, one behind the other, all armed with pistols. He had been judged, sentenced, and they were now going to execute him. Not for indiscipline, errors, or betrayal, but—how petty, how asinine—for having slid his tongue, like a stiletto, between Anatolio's teeth. He lost all composure and began to cry out for Vallejos, Ubilluz, Lorito, the peasants from Ricran, the joeboys: “Get me out of this trap, comrades.” With his back soaking wet, he woke up. From the edge of the bed, Anatolio was looking at him.

“I couldn't make out what you were saying,” he heard him whisper.

“What are you doing here?” Mayta stuttered, still partly in his nightmare.

“I just came by,” said Anatolio. He was looking at him without blinking, with an intriguing little light in his eyes. “Are you mad at me?”

“The truth is that you're hard to figure,” Mayta said softly, without moving. He had a bitter taste in his mouth, his eyes were bleary, and he still had goose bumps from the scare he'd had. “The truth is, you're a cynic, Anatolio.”

“You taught me everything,” said the boy gently, always looking him in the eye with an undefinable expression that irritated Mayta and made him remorseful. A horsefly began to buzz around the light bulb.

“I taught you to screw like a man, not to be a hypocrite,” said Mayta, making an effort to control his rage: Calm down, don't insult him, don't hit him, don't argue. Just get him out of here.

“The Jauja idea is crazy. We talked it over, and we all agreed that you had to be stopped,” said Anatolio without moving, with a certain vehemence. “No one was going to kick you out. Why did you go to Blacquer? No one would have expelled you.”

“I'm not going to argue with you,” said Mayta. “This is all ancient history. Why don't you just leave.”

But the boy didn't move a muscle and didn't stop looking at him with that look that had both provocation and scorn.

“We aren't comrades or friends anymore,” said Mayta. “What the fuck do you want?”

“I want you to give me a blowjob,” said the boy slowly, looking him in the eye and touching his knee with his five fingers.

“What are you doing here, Mayta?” exclaimed Adelaida. “What do you want?”

Rospigliosi Castle marks the border between Lince and Santa Beatriz, neighborhoods that have become indistinguishable. But when Mayta and Adelaida were married, there was a class struggle going on between them. Lince was always modest, lower-middle-class tending toward proletarian, with narrow, colorless little houses, tenements and their alleys, cracked sidewalks and rocky little gardens. Santa Beatriz, on the other hand, was a pretentious neighborhood where a few well-off families built mansions in “colonial,” “Sevilian,” or “neo-Gothic” style-like this monument to extravagance, the Rospigliosi Castle, a castle with battlements and pointed arches made of reinforced concrete. The inhabitants of Lince viewed their neighbors in Santa Beatriz with resentment and envy, while the good citizens of Santa Beatriz looked down their noses at the Linceans and scorned them.

“I'd just like a word with you,” said Mayta. “And, if you don't mind, I'd like to see my son.”

Nowadays Santa Beatriz and Lince are the same: one decayed and the other improved, until they finally met at a median point. It's a shapeless region, inhabited by white-collar workers, business and professional people neither rich nor impoverished, but hard pressed to get to the end of the month without money problems. This mediocrity is personified perfectly by Adelaida's husband, don Juan Zarate, an employee of the Mail and Telegraph Service with many years' service. His photo is next to the curtainless window. Looking through that window, I can see the Rospigliosi Castle. Since the building is used by the Air Ministry, it is surrounded by coils of barbed wire and sandbag walls, behind which I can see the guards' helmets and rifle barrels. One of those patrols stopped me as I was on my way over here and frisked me from head to toe before letting me pass. The air-force men are on edge, their fingers wrapped around their triggers. Justifiably so, given the situation we're in. In the photo, don Juan Zarate wears a suit and a tie and looks serious. Adelaida, clinging to his arm, also looks stern.

“That's when we got married, over in Cañete. We spent three days there, in a house that belonged to one of Juan's brothers. I was seven months' pregnant. Barely shows, right?”

She is right. No one could ever guess she was so far advanced in her pregnancy. The photograph must be almost thirty years old. It's unbelievable how well preserved this woman, who for a short time was the wife of my schoolmate from the Salesian School, is.

“It was Mayta's child,” Adelaida adds.

I pay close attention to what she says and observe her carefully. I still can't get over the impression her looks made on me when I walked into that lugubrious little house. I'd only spoken with her over the telephone and I never thought that harsh voice could be connected to a woman who was still attractive despite her age. Her hair is gray and falls in waves to her shoulders. Her face has soft features, with prominent, fleshy lips, and deep eyes. She crosses her legs: smooth, well-rounded, long, solid. When she was married to Mayta, she must have been a knockout.

“A fine time to be remembering your son,” Adelaida exclaimed.

“I always remember him,” Mayta replied. “It's one thing not to see him and another not to think of him. We made a deal, and I've stuck by it.”

But there's something desolate about her, a depression, an air of defeat. And an absolute indifference: it doesn't seem to matter to her that the rebels have taken Cuzco and established a government there, that there were undecipherable shots last night in the streets of Lima, not even whether or not it's true that hundreds of Marines have just reached the La Joya base in Arequipa to reinforce the army, which seems to have collapsed all along the southern front. She doesn't even mention the events that have all of Lima in suspense and that—despite the genuine triumph it is for me to be speaking with her—distract me with recurring images of red flags, rifle shots, and shouts of victory on the streets of Cuzco.

“This is how you stick by it—coming to my house?” said Adelaida, pushing back a curl that had fallen over her forehead. “Do you have any idea the mess you'd be making if my husband finds out?”

As I listen to her tell how her wedding to Juan Zarate was moved forward so that Mayta's child could be born with another name and another father, in a real home, I remind myself that I am wrong to be distracted: I haven't got much more time. Being here is my reward for being persistent. Adelaida refused to see me several times, and the third or fourth time I called, she just hung up on me. I had to insist, beg, swear that neither her name nor Juan Zarate's nor her son's would ever appear in what I wrote. Finally, I had to suggest to her that since this was business—I wanted her to tell me about her life with Mayta and that final meeting just hours before he went to Jauja—I would pay for her time. She's granted me an hour of conversation for a stiff price. She will not discuss anything she considers “too private.”

“It's something special,” insisted Mayta. “I'll be gone in a minute, you'll see, I swear.”

“I thought he was on the run and had no place to go,” Adelaida says. “The usual thing. Because, from when I first met him until we separated, he always felt he was being watched. Rightly and wrongly. And full of secrets, even from me.”

Did she ever love him? She couldn't have any other reason for living with him. How did she meet him? At a fair, by the wheel of fortune at Plaza Sucre. She bet on number 17 and someone next to her bet on 15. The wheel stopped right on 15. “What luck! The little bear,” exclaimed Adelaida. Her neighbor: “It's yours. Will you accept it as a gift? How do you do? My name's Mayta.”

“Okay, okay, I'd rather the gossip who lives across the hall not see us together here.” Adelaida finally opened the door to him. “Five minutes and that's it, please. If Juan finds you here, he'll be really mad. You've already given me enough headaches for one lifetime.”

Didn't she suspect from his nervousness and his fidgeting that this unusual visit had been prompted by the fact that he was on the verge of doing something extraordinary? Not in the slightest. Because, in fact, she didn't see any sign of nerves or excitement in him. He was his normal self: calm, badly dressed, a little thinner. When they'd got to know each other better, Mayta confessed that the meeting at the wheel of fortune in Plaza Sucre was not accidental: he had seen her, followed her, and hung around, looking for a way to strike up a conversation.

“He convinced me that he'd fallen in love with me at first sight,” Adelaida adds in a sarcastic tone. Every time she mentions his name, she becomes bitter. Despite the fact that it all happened a long time ago, there's an open wound somewhere inside her. “A total fraud, and I fell for it like the sucker I am. He was never in love with me. And he was so self-centered he never even realized how much he hurt me.”

Mayta took a look around: a sea of red flags, a sea of fists held high, a sea of rifles, and ten thousand throats hoarse from shouting. Being here in Adelaida's house seemed incomprehensible to him, in the same way that it seemed incomprehensible that any son of his, even if he had someone else's name, could live with these armchairs covered with clear plastic, surrounded by these walls and their cracked paint. Was I right to come? Wasn't this visit merely a meaningless, gratuitous, sentimental gesture? Wouldn't Adelaida figure something strange was going on? Was that song they were singing “The International” in Quechua?

“I'm going away and I don't know when I'll be back to Peru,” Mayta explained to her, sitting on the arm of the nearest chair. “I didn't want to leave without meeting him. Would it bother you if I saw him for a minute?”

“It sure would bother me,” Adelaida cut him off brusquely. “He doesn't have your name, and Juan is the only father he knows. Don't you know what it cost me to get him a normal home and a real father? You're not going to ruin it on me now.”

“I don't want to ruin anything,” Mayta said. “I've always respected our deal. I just wanted to meet him. I won't tell him who I am, and if that's the way you want it, I won't even talk to him.”

He said nothing about his real activities when they first began seeing each other, only that he worked as a journalist. You couldn't say he was good-looking, with that gait of his, as if he were walking on eggs, and with those spaces between his teeth. He didn't even have a good job, judging by his clothes. But in spite of all that, you liked something about him. What was there about this revolutionary that appealed to the cute employee of the Banco de Credito over in Lince? The airmen guarding Rospigliosi Castle are uptight. They stop every passerby and ask to see his papers. Then they frisk him in hysterical detail. Has something else happened? Do they know something that hasn't been announced yet over the radio? A young girl carrying baskets who stubbornly refused to be frisked has just been hit with a rifle butt.

“When I was with him, I felt I was learning things,” Adelaida says. “Not that he was so well-educated. It was that he talked about things the other guys I went out with never mentioned. Since I didn't understand anything, I was like a mouse hypnotized by a cat.”

She was also impressed by the fact that he respected her, that he was so relaxed, so sure of himself. He said beautiful things to her. Why didn't he kiss her? One day, he brought her to meet an aunt of his over in Surquillo, the only relative of Mayta's she would ever meet. Aunt Josefa prepared them a lunch, complete with little cakes, and was affectionate toward Adelaida. They were chatting away when suddenly dona Josefa had to step out. They stayed in the living room listening to the radio, and Adelaida thought: Now is the moment. Mayta was right next to her on the sofa, and she waited. But he didn't even try to hold her hand, and she said to herself: He must really be in love with me. The girl with the baskets has finally resigned herself to being frisked. Then they let her go. As she passes opposite the window, I see her lips moving as she insults them.

“I'm begging you, don't ask to talk to him,” Adelaida said. “Besides, he's in school. Why would you want to meet him, what for? If he put two and two together, it would be awful.”

“Just by seeing my face he's miraculously going to discover I'm his father?” Mayta mocks.

“It frightens me, like tempting fate,” Adelaida stuttered.

In fact, her voice and face were consumed with worry. It was useless to make any more demands. Wasn't this flash of sentimentality, this desire to see the son he rarely remembered, a bad symptom? He was wasting precious moments; it was foolish to have come. If Juan Zarate found him, there would be a scene, and any scandal, no matter how small, would have negative repercussions for the plan. Get up, say goodbye. But he was glued to the armchair.

“Juan was postmaster here in Lince,” Adelaida says. “He would come to see me when I went to work at the bank and again when I got off. He followed me, he asked me out, he asked me to marry him once a week. He put up with my rejections and never gave up.”

“Did he offer to give his name to the child?”

“That was the condition I set for our getting married.” I glance at the photo taken in Cañete, and now I understand why the beautiful employee would marry this ugly, older bureaucrat. Mayta's son must be thirty years old. Did he have the normal life his mother wanted for him? What can he think about the current situation? Is he supporting the rebels and internationalists, or is he backing the army and the Marines? Or, like his mother, does he believe that either alternative is pure garbage? “Even though he hadn't kissed me by our fifth or sixth date, he gave me a big surprise.”

“What would you say if I were to propose to you?”

“Let's wait until that day and you'll find out,” she said, playing the coquette.

“I'm proposing, then,” said Mayta. “Would you marry me, Adelaida?”

“He hadn't even kissed me,” she repeats, nodding. “And he proposed just like that. I cooked my own goose in all of this, so I can't blame anyone else.”

“Proof that you were in love.”

“It isn't that I was dying to get married,” she asserts. Once again, she makes the gesture I've seen several times: she throws her hair back off her face. “I was young, quite good-looking, and lots of guys were interested in me. Juan Zárate wasn't the only one. And I said yes to the one who was as poor as a church mouse, the revolutionary, the one who had other problems, too. Wasn't I a jerk?”

“Okay, I won't see him,” Mayta says softly. But he still didn't get off the arm of the chair. “Tell me something about him, at least. And about yourself. Has married life been good for you?”

“Better than my life with you,” said Adelaida, in a resigned, even melancholic tone. “I live quietly, without worrying whether the cops might barge in day or night, break the place up, and arrest my husband. With Juan, I know that we'll be eating every day and that we won't be evicted for not paying the rent.”

“To judge by the way you say it, you don't seem so happy,” said Mayta. Wasn't this conversation, at this precise moment, absurd? Shouldn't he be buying medicines, picking up his money down at France-Presse, packing his bag?

“No, I'm not,” said Adelaida, who displayed more hospitality since Mayta had agreed not to see the boy. “Juan made me quit working at the bank. If I were still working, we'd be living better, and I'd see people, know what's going on. Here in the house, I spend my time sweeping, washing, and cooking. Not exactly the kind of life to make you happy.”

“No, it isn't,” said Mayta, looking around the living room. “And yet, compared to millions of people, Adelaida, you're living very well.”

“Are you starting in with politics now?” She gets riled up. “In that case, get out. It's your fault that I've come to hate politics above everything.”