The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta (34 page)

He felt sadness, but also a desire to feel Anatolio's head against his breast, to hear that slow, rhythmic, almost musical breathing of his when he was worn out and sleeping on his body. He let out a sigh and realized his teeth were chattering. He felt a rifle butt slam into his back: “Hurry it up.” Every time Vallejos's image came into his mind, the cold became overwhelming, so he tried to blot it all out. He didn't want to think about him, to wonder if he was a prisoner, if he was wounded, dead, if they were beating him, torturing him, because he knew depression would leave him defenseless against what was coming. He was going to need courage, more than was necessary just to resist the rushing wind that beat at his face.

Where had they taken Perico Temoche? Where were the others? Could any of them have managed to escape? He was walking alone between two columns of Civil Guards. They sometimes looked at him out of the corner of their eye, as if he were a rare bird, and forgetting what had just happened, they amused themselves by talking, smoking, and walking with their hands in their pockets, as if coming back from a stroll. Well, I don't think I'll ever be bothered by mountain sickness again, he thought. He tried to figure out where he was, because they were doubling back along the route he'd taken earlier, but now that it wasn't raining, the landscape looked different. The colors were more sharply contrasting, and the edges of things were not as sharp. The ground was muddy and his sneakers constantly slipped off. He had to stop each time to put them back on, and every time he stopped, the guard behind him gave him a shove.

Are you sorry, Mayta? Did you act too quickly? Did you act irresponsibly? No, no, no. On the contrary. Despite the failure, the mistakes, the foolishness, he was proud. For the first time, he had the feeling he'd done something worthwhile, he'd brought the revolution forward, even if only in a minuscule way. He wasn't depressed about being arrested, as he had been other times; then he'd had a sense of waste. They had failed, but they had done the experiment: four intrepid men and a handful of schoolboys had occupied a city, disarmed the police, expropriated the banks, and fled to the mountains. It was possible to do, and they had proven it. In the future, the left would have to take this precedent into account: someone in this country wasn't content with merely predicting revolution, and had tried to do it. You know what it is, he thought, as his sneaker came off. He put it back on and was struck again with a rifle butt.

I wake don Eugenio, who fell asleep halfway back, and I let him off at his place on the outskirts of Jauja, thanking him for his company and his memories. I go straight to the Paca Inn. The kitchen is still open and I could get something to eat, but all I want is a beer. I drink it on the small terrace above the lake. The water sparkles, and the reeds on the shore are lit by the moon, which shines round and white in a sky spattered with stars. In Paca at night, all kinds of noises can be heard: the whistling wind, toads croaking, nightbirds singing. But not tonight. Tonight, even the animals are silent. The only other guests at the inn are two traveling salesmen, in the beer business, whom I hear talking on the other side of the windows, in the dining room.

This is the end of the main part of the story, its core of drama. It didn't last twelve hours, beginning at dawn with the seizure of the jail and ending before nightfall with the deaths of Vallejos and Condori and the capture of the others. They brought them to the Jauja jail, where they held them for a week, and then they sent them to the Huancayo jail, where they remained for a month. There they discretely began to free the joeboys, following the decision of the juvenile court, which placed them in the custody of their families, under a kind of house arrest. The justice of the peace for Quero went back to work, “free of dust and dirt,” after three weeks. Mayta and Zenón Gonzales were taken to Lima, locked up in the Sexto, then in the Frontón, and later returned to the Sexto. Both were amnestied—there never was a trial—years later, when a new president took office. Zenón Gonzales still runs the Uchubamba commune, which has owned the Aína hacienda since the agrarian reform of 1971, and belongs to the Popular Action Party, of which he is the local boss.

During the first days, the newspapers were filled with these events and devoted front pages, headlines, editorials, and articles to what, because of Mayta's past record, they deemed an attempted communist insurrection. An unrecognizable photo of him behind bars in some jail or other appeared in
La Prensa
. But, after a week, people stopped talking about it. Later, when there were outbreaks of guerrilla fighting in the mountains and the jungle in 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1966—all inspired by the Cuban Revolution—no newspaper remembered that the forerunner of those attempts to raise up the people in armed struggle to establish socialism in Peru had been that minor episode, rendered ghostlike by the years, which had taken place in Jauja province. Today no one remembers who took part in it.

As I fall asleep, I hear a rhythmic noise. No, it isn't the night birds. It's the wind, which slaps the waters of Lake Paca against the terrace of the inn. That soft music and the beautiful, starry night sky of Jauja suggest a peaceful land and happy, tranquil people. They lie, because all fictions are lies.

I visited Lurigancho for the first time five years ago. The prisoners housed in building number 2 invited me to the opening of a library, which someone decided ought to be named after me. So I accepted their invitation, in part because I was curious to find out if what people said was really true about the Lima prison.

To get there by car, you have to drive by the Plaza de Toros, cross the Zárate neighborhood, then go through some slums. The slums eventually turn into garbage dumps, where you can see the hogs from the so-called clandestine pig farms feeding. Then the asphalt runs out, replaced by potholes. Soon the cement buildings emerge in the humid morning light, partially blurred by the mist. They are as colorless as the sand flats around them. Even from a distance, you can see that the innumerable windows have no glass in them—if, in fact, they ever had glass—and that the movement in the tiny symmetrical squares are faces and eyes peering out.

What I remember vividly from that first visit is the overcrowding, those six thousand prisoners suffocating in an area meant for fifteen hundred, the indescribable filth, the atmosphere of pent-up violence on the point of exploding. Mayta was in that anonymous mass, more a horde or a pack than a human collectivity—I'm absolutely certain of it. It may be that I saw him and that we waved to each other. Could he have been in building number 2? Would he have bothered to attend the opening of the library?

The buildings stand in two rows, the odd-numbered ones in front, the even-numbered ones in back. The symmetry is broken up by the cell block for fags, which is up against the wire fence along the western wall. The even-numbered buildings are for recidivists or felons, and the odd-numbered ones house first offenders who haven't been sentenced yet or are serving light terms. Which means that Mayta has been an inmate of an even-numbered building for years. The prisoners are housed according to their Lima neighborhoods: Agustino, Villa El Salvador, La Victoria, El Porvenir. Where would they have put Mayta?

My car moves forward slowly, and I realize that unconsciously I've taken my foot off the accelerator, I'm trying to postpone my second visit to Lurigancho as long as possible. Am I frightened by the thought of finally facing the character I've been investigating, about whom I've been questioning people, whom I've been imagining and writing about for a year? Or is my repugnance for this place stronger than my curiosity about Mayta? At the end of my first visit; I thought: It isn't true that the convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around. Kennels, chickenhouses, and stables are more hygienic than Lurigancho.

Between the buildings runs what is sarcastically called Jirón de la Unión, a narrow, crowded alley, dark by day and totally black at night. It's there that the bloodiest fights between gangs and between individual killers take place, and where the pimps peddle their living goods. I remember clearly walking through this nightmare, rubbing elbows with that pitiful, almost sleepwalking fauna: half-naked blacks, half-breeds covered with tattoos, mulattoes with intricate hairdos—veritable jungles cascading down to their waists—and stupefied, bearded whites, foreigners with blue eyes and with scars, squalid Chinese, Indians huddled against the wall, and madmen talking to themselves. I know that for years Mayta has been running a kiosk where he sells things to eat and drink in Jirón de la Unión. But no matter how hard I try to remember, I just can't seem to evoke the image of a food stand in the sultry alleyway. Was I so upset that I didn't realize what it was? Or was the “kiosk” nothing more than a blanket on the ground where Mayta, hunkered down, offered juice, fruit, cigarettes, sodas?

To reach building 2, I had to circle the uneven cell blocks and cross two wire fences. The warden, leaving me at the first fence, told me I was on my own now; not even the National Guard enters that sector, or anyone else carrying firearms. As soon as I passed through the fence, I was surrounded by a multitude waving their arms, all speaking at the same time. The delegation that had invited me formed a circle around me then, and that's how we made our way: me in the center of a ring of men, and outside the ring, a mass of criminals. The convicts must have mistaken me for some official or other, because they began to spout out their case histories, rave, protest abuses, shout, and demand services. Some were coherent, but the majority were chaotic. They all seemed on edge, violent, not quite in focus mentally. As we walked, I discovered the source of the solid stench and the clouds of flies: a wall about a yard high, where all the garbage from the jail must have been accumulating for months, even years. A naked inmate was sleeping soundly, stretched out on the trash. He was one of the insane, normally assigned to the less dangerous buildings, the odd-numbered ones. I remember having said to myself after that first visit that the really strange thing was not that there were madmen in Lurigancho but that there were so few. It was incredible that all six thousand inmates hadn't gone crazy in that abject ignominy. And what if, after all these years, Mayta had gone mad?

He was sent back to prison twice after having served four years for the Jauja affair, the first time seven months after being amnestied. It's extremely difficult to reconstruct his story—his police and prison history—after that, because, unlike the Jauja business, there are almost no written documents relating to the actions he was accused of participating in and no witnesses willing to talk about them. The newspaper accounts I've been able to find in the periodical section of the National Library are so sketchy that it's practically impossible to figure out his role in the robberies in which he was supposed to have participated. It's also impossible to determine whether they were political actions or just ordinary crimes. Knowing Mayta, you'd think they were probably political, but, after all, what does it mean to say “knowing Mayta”? The Mayta I've been researching was in his forties. The Mayta of today is over sixty. Is he the same man?

In which cell block in Lurigancho could he have been spending these last ten years? Four, six, eight? They must all be more or less like the one I saw: low-ceilinged places with faint light (when there isn't a blackout), cold and humid, with large windows covered with rusty bars, and a hole in the floor for sanitary purposes. To find a place to sleep amid all that excrement, vermin, and filth is a daily war. During the ceremony for the library—a painted box and a few secondhand books—I saw several drunks staggering around. When they passed around little cans so we could drink a toast, I found out that they get drunk on a
chicha
they make from fermented
yuca
. Unbelievably strong stuff, made right in the prison. Would my supposed fellow student also get drunk on that
chicha
when he's feeling too high or too low?

The event that sent Mayta back to prison after the Jauja affair, twenty-one years ago, took place in La Victoria, near the street that was the shame of the neighborhood—Jirón Huatica, which literally crawled with prostitutes. Three gangsters, according to
La Crónica
, the only newspaper to write it up, seized a garage where Teodoro Ruiz Candia had an auto-repair shop. When he came to open up at eight in the morning, he found three armed men waiting for him. They also captured Ruiz Candia's assistant, Eliseno Carabías López. The objective of these criminals was the Banco Popular. At the rear of the garage, there was a window that opened onto a lot; the rear door of the Banco Popular opened onto the same lot. Every day at noon, a van went into the lot, to take away the day's deposits, to bring them to the Central Bank, or to deliver money to the branch for the day's transactions. Until noon, the thieves remained in the shop with their two prisoners. They looked out through the window and smoked. Though they wore masks, the owner and his assistant swore one of them was Mayta. They also said it was he who gave the orders.

When they heard a car motor, they jumped out the window into the lot. Actually, no shots were fired. The thieves surprised the driver and the guard and disarmed them both, just after the bank employees had placed a sealed sack containing three million
soles
in the van. After forcing the driver and the guard to lie face down on the ground, one of the gangsters opened the gates of the lot that led to Avenida 28 de Julio. Then he ran back to the bank van, where his other two accomplices were waiting with the loot. They sped out. Because of nerves or careless driving, the van ran over a man sharpening knives, and then smashed against a taxi. According to
La Crónica
, the van turned over twice and came to rest upside down. But the thieves managed to get out and run away. Mayta was captured some hours later. The article does not say whether the money was recovered, and I haven't been able to find out if the other two were ever caught.

And I haven't been able to find out if Mayta was ever sentenced for the robbery. A police report I was able to pull from the archives of the La Victoria precinct house more or less repeats the same information as the article in
La Crónica
(although the humidity has ruined the paper to such an extent that it's difficult to make it out). There is no sign of a prosecutor's report. In the files at the Ministry of Justice, where statistics on crime and data on criminals are stored, the event shows up most ambiguously in Mayta's file. There is a date—April 16, 1963—when he must have been sent from the police station to prison, followed by the note “Attempted robbery of branch bank, people wounded and beaten, also forced detention, traffic accident, and attack on pedestrian,” and, finally, a reference to the court handling the matter. Nothing else. It's possible that the prosecution was slow, that the judge died or lost his job, and that the whole case remained stuck where it was, or simply that the file was lost.

How many years did Mayta spend in Lurigancho for that? I couldn't find that out, either. I found a registry note for his entering prison, but none for his having left. That's another thing I'd like to ask him about. In any case, I lost track of him ten years ago when he went back to jail a second time after Jauja. On that occasion, he had a proper trial and was sentenced to fifteen years for “extortion, kidnapping, and robbery leading to the loss of life.” If the dates on the file are correct, he's been in Lurigancho for just under eleven years.

I've finally arrived. I go through the usual ritual. The National Guards frisk me from head to toe, and I turn in all my identification papers, which will remain at the guardhouse until my visit ends. The warden has left orders that I am to be sent to his office. An aide in civilian clothes brings me here, after crossing a patio outside the wire fences. From here, you can see the entire prison. This is the best-maintained area, the least sordid in the place.

The warden's office is on the second floor of a cold and crumbling building made of reinforced concrete. The office itself is tiny and contains a metal desk and a couple of chairs. The walls are completely bare, and there isn't even a pencil or piece of paper on the desk. This warden is not the one who was here five years ago, but a younger man. He knows why I'm here and orders the guards to bring the criminal I want to speak to. He will lend me his office for the interview, since it is the only place where no one will bother us. “You've probably seen that here in Lurigancho there isn't an inch of space, because of overcrowding.”

While we wait, he adds that things never work right, no matter how hard they try. Now, for example, the convicts are all riled up and are threatening a hunger strike because they think their visiting rights are being cut. It's just not true, he assures me. It's simply that, in order to keep tabs on the visits, the usual way drugs, alcohol, and weapons are smuggled in, he's set visits for the women on one day and for the men the next. That way, there will be fewer people each day, and each visitor can be searched more thoroughly. If they at least could cut down on the cocaine, they would keep a lot of people from getting killed. Because of cocaine, they fight it out with knives. More than because of alcohol, money, or queers, it's the drugs. But until now it's been impossible to keep it out. Don't the guards sell drugs, too? He looks at me as if to say, “Why ask what you already know?”

“You can't stop it. No matter what control systems we devise, they always beat them. Look, by just sneaking in a few grams of coke, just once, a guard doubles his monthly salary. Do you know how much they make? So there's nothing surprising about it. People talk a lot about ‘the Lurigancho problem.' This place isn't the problem. The whole country's the problem.”

He says it without bitterness, as if it were a fact I should be aware of. He seems earnest and well-intentioned. I certainly don't envy him his job. A knock at the door interrupts us.

“I'll leave you with the prisoner,” he says, going to the door. “Take all the time you need.”

The person who enters the office is a skinny little guy with curly white hair and a scraggly beard, who is trembling all over. He's wearing an overcoat that's much too big for him. He's got on worn-out sneakers, and his frightened eyes jump around in his head. Why is he shaking like that? Is he sick, or frightened? I can't say a word. How can this be Mayta? He doesn't look even slightly like the Mayta in the photos. That Mayta would be twenty years younger than this guy.

“I wanted to talk with Alejandro Mayta,” I stammer.

“That's me,” he answers in a tremulous voice. His hands, his skin, even his hair seem vexed with disquiet.

“You're the Mayta of the Jauja business with Lieutenant Vallejos?” I hesitatingly ask.

“No, I'm not that one,” he blurts out, realizing what's going on. “He's not here anymore.”

He seems relieved, as if being brought to the warden's office entailed some danger which has just vanished. He turns halfway around and bangs on the door until it opens and the warden appears with two men. Still shaking, the curly-headed old man explains that there's been a mistake, that I'm looking for the other Mayta. He walks out in a hurry on his silent sneakers, shaking constantly.