The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

  Mayta began to laugh. They had started walking again and were scrambling up out of the hollow, slipping all the time, when he saw Vallejos freeze, crouched over. He looked from side to side, listening.

  “Shots,” he heard him say in a low voice.

  “Thunder, man,” said Mayta. “Sure it’s shots?”

  “I’m going to see where they’re coming from,” said Vallejos, moving off. “You two stay here, don’t make a sound.”

  “And the police believed all that when you told them, don Eugenio?”

  “Of course they believed me. Wasn’t it the truth? But beforehand they put me through the wringer.”

  With his thumbs in his vest and his wrinkled face turned toward the sky, he goes on telling his story. Standing in a circle in the gazebo, there are now about twenty old people and children. They had him for three days in the Jauja jail, then a couple of weeks in the Civil Guard headquarters over in Huancayo, demanding he confess to being an accomplice of the revolutionaries. But he, of course, remained stubborn, indefatigable, and repeated his tale about being tricked into going with them, that he believed Vallejos and the others when they said they needed a justice of the peace to hand over the Aína hacienda to the Uchubamba community, and that the arms were for the joeboys’ military training exercises. They had to accept his story; yes, sir, they did. After three weeks, he was back in Quero, back to his job as justice of the peace, clean as a whistle, and with a good story for his friends. He laughs, and in his laugh I detect a touch of mockery. Now the air is dry, and on the village buildings, on the farmland, and on the nearby mountains, there is a play of ocher, slate, gold, and various shades of green. “It’s sad to see these fields lying fallow,” don Eugenio laments. “All this was excellent farmland. Damn the war! It’s killing Quero, it’s not fair. And to think that twenty-five years ago the town seemed so poor. But things can always get worse, there is no limit when it comes to misery.” I don’t let him get distracted by current events and make him return to the past and to fiction. What did he do during the exchange of fire? How long did it last? Did they ever get out of the Huayjaco gulch? From the beginning to the end, and don’t leave a thing out, don Eugenio.

  Shots, no doubt about it. Mayta was down on one knee, sub-machine gun at the ready, looking all around him. But, down in the hollow, his field of vision was limited: a horizon broken by toothlike crags. A shadow passed, flapping its wings. A condor? He never remembered seeing one, except in photographs. He noticed that the justice of the peace was crossing himself and that, with his eyes closed and his hands pressed together, he had begun to pray. He heard another volley in the same area as the first one. When would Vallejos come back? As if in answer to his wish, the lieutenant appeared at the edge of the hollow. And, behind him, the face of one of the joeboys from the middle group: Perico Temoche. They slid into the hollow and came toward them. Temoche’s face was red and his hands and the butt of his Mauser stained with mud, as if he had fallen.

  “They’re firing at the first group,” said Vallejos. “But they’re far away, the second group hasn’t seen them yet.”

  “What do we do?” asked Mayta.

  “We advance,” replied Vallejos forcefully. “The first group is the important one, we’ve got to save those weapons. We’ll try to distract them until the first group gets away. Let’s get going. Spread out.”

  As they climbed out of the hollow, Mayta wondered why it hadn’t occurred to anyone to give don Eugenio a rifle and why he hadn’t asked for one. If they had to fight, the justice was in for a rough time. He wasn’t anxious or afraid. He was totally serene. He wasn’t surprised about the shots. He had been waiting for them ever since they left Jauja and had never believed they had as big a lead as the lieutenant claimed. How stupid it was to have stayed so long in Quero.

  At the top of the hollow, they crouched down to take a look. They couldn’t see anyone: only the gray-brown, rolling terrain, always rising, with occasional ridges and cliffs, where he thought they could take cover if their pursuers appeared from around a hill.

  “Take cover among the rocks,” said Vallejos. He was carrying his sub-machine gun in his left hand, while with his right he was gesturing for them to fan out more. He was virtually running, bent over, looking all around. Behind him came the justice, with Mayta and Perico Temoche bringing up the rear. He hadn’t heard any more shots. The sky was clearing: there were fewer clouds, and they were not leaden, heavy storm-clouds, but white, spongy, fair-weather clouds. Bad luck, now it would be better if it were raining, he thought. He moved forward, concerned about his heart, afraid he’d be overcome again by shortness of breath, irregular heart rate, fatigue. But he wasn’t; he felt well, although a bit cold. Straining his eyes, he tried to pick out the forward groups. It was impossible, because of the irregularity of the terrain and the abundance of blind spots. Then, between two high points, he seemed to make out the moving spots.

  He beckoned Perico Temoche over. “Is that your group?”

  The boy nodded several times, without speaking. He seemed even more of a child this way, with his face twisted. He was hugging his rifle as if someone were going to try to take it away from him, and he seemed to have lost his voice.

  “There haven’t been any more shots.” He tried to raise the boy’s spirits. “Maybe it was just a false alarm.”

  “No, it was no false alarm,” stammered Perico Temoche. “The shots were real.”

  And in a very low voice, trying his best to keep his self-control, he told Mayta that, when the first shots rang out, his whole group could see that, out in front, the vanguard was scattering, while someone, most likely Condori, raised his rifle to reply to the attack. Zenón Gonzales shouted: “Hit the dirt, hit the dirt.” They remained flat on their faces until Vallejos appeared and ordered them to go on. Vallejos had brought him back so he could be their runner.

  “And I know why.” Mayta smiled at him. “Because you’re the fastest. And the cleverest, too?”

  The joeboy smiled slightly, without opening his mouth. They went on walking together, looking to each side. Vallejos and the justice of the peace were about twenty yards in front of them. Minutes later, they heard another volley.

  “The funny part is that right in the middle of all that shooting I caught a cold,” says don Eugenio. “The rain had been heavy and I was soaked, see?”

  Yes, the small man in his vest and hat, surrounded by guerrillas, ducking bullets being fired by guards from up in the mountains, begins to sneeze. Trying to put the squeeze on him, I ask when did he realize that those he was with were insurgents and that the business about maneuvers and the handing over of Aína was pure make-believe. He isn’t fazed.

  “When the bullets began to fly,” he says, with absolute conviction, “the situation became self-evident. Damn it, man, put yourself in my place. Without knowing how, there I was, with bullets whizzing all around me.”

  He pauses, his eyes watery again, and I remember that afternoon in Paris two or three days after the afternoon we’re recalling. At that hour of the day, I religiously stopped writing, went out to buy Le Monde, to read it while drinking an espresso at the Le Tournon bistro near my house. His name was misspelled, they’d changed the y to an i, but I hadn’t the slightest doubt that it was my schoolmate from the Salesian. His name appeared in a news item about Peru, so small it was almost invisible, barely six or seven lines, no more than a hundred words. “Insurrection Attempt Fails,” or something like that, and although it wasn’t clear whether the movement had any further ramifications, the article did say that the leaders were either dead or captured. Was Mayta captured or dead? That was my first thought as the Gauloise I was smoking fell out of my mouth and I read and reread the notice, unable to accept that in my far-off land such a thing had taken place and that my fellow reader of The Count of Monte Cristo was the main character. But that the Mayta spelled with an i in Le Monde was my Mayta, I was sure of from the start.

  “What time did the prisoners begin to get
here?” don Eugenio repeats my question, as if I had asked it of him. Actually, I asked the old people from Quero, but it’s good that it’s the justice of the peace, a man well known to the locals, who shows interest in finding out. “It must have been at night, don’t you think?”

  There is a chorus of no’s, heads shaking, voices that try to speak over one another. Night hadn’t fallen, it was still afternoon. The guards came back in two groups. The first brought the president of the community of Uchubamba tied onto one of doña Teofrasia’s mules. Was Condori already dead? Dying. He’d been shot twice, once in the back and once in the neck, and he was covered with blood. They also brought several of the joeboys, with their hands tied behind them. In those days, the winners took prisoners. Nowadays, it’s better to die fighting, because when they catch you, they get what they want out of you and kill you anyway, isn’t that right, sir? Anyway, they’d taken the boys’ shoelaces, so they couldn’t try to escape. It was as if they were walking on eggs, and though they dragged their feet, some lost their shoes. They brought Condori to the lieutenant governor’s house and gave him first aid, but it was a joke, because he died right away. About a half hour later, the others arrived. Vallejos waved to them to hurry.

  “Faster, faster,” he heard him shout.

  Mayta tried, but he couldn’t. Now Perico Temoche was several yards in front of him. There were scattered shots, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from or if they were farther away or closer than before. He was trembling, not from mountain sickness, but from the cold. Just then, he saw Vallejos raise his sub-machine gun: the blast exploded in his ears. He looked at the ridge the lieutenant had fired at, and all he saw were rocks, earth, clumps of ichu grass, jagged peaks, blue sky, and little white clouds. He aimed in the same direction, his finger on the trigger.

  “Why the fuck are you stopping”—Vallejos urged them on again. “Go on, go on.”

  Mayta obeyed and walked very quickly for a good stretch, his body hunched over, jumping over stony patches, breaking into a run sometimes, tripping, feeling the cold right down to his bones, and his heart going crazy. He heard more shots, and at one time was sure that a bullet had smashed into some stones a short distance away. But, no matter how hard he looked at the ridges, he couldn’t see a single enemy soldier. He had finally become an unthinking machine, a machine with no doubts, no memory, a body concentrated on the task of running, so he wouldn’t be left behind. Suddenly his knees buckled and he stopped, out of breath. Staggering, he went a few steps farther and took cover behind some mossy rocks. The justice of the peace, Vallejos, and Perico Temoche continued to advance very rapidly. You’ll never catch up to them, Mayta.

  The lieutenant turned around, and Mayta signaled him to keep going. Just as he was gesturing, he noticed, this time without any doubt, that a bullet struck a few steps away from him: it gouged a small smoky hole in the ground. He crouched as low as he could, looked, searched, and finally saw, peering over the wall of rocks on his right side, the head of a guard, and a rifle pointed straight at him. He had taken cover on the wrong side. He crawled around the rocks, flattened out on the ground, and felt shots going right over his head. When he could finally aim and fire, trying to apply Vallejos’s instructions—the target should be right in the sights—the guard was no longer on the wall. The burst of fire knocked him back and dazed him. He saw that his shots had splintered the stones a yard below, where he’d seen the guard.

  “Run, run, I’ll cover you,” he heard Vallejos shout. The lieutenant was aiming at the wall.

  Mayta got up and ran. He was stiff from the cold; his bones seemed to creak under his skin. It was a cold both freezing and boiling, which made him sweat, as if he had a fever. When he was next to Vallejos, he went down on his knees and aimed at the rocks.

  “There are maybe three or four there,” said the lieutenant, pointing. “We’re moving forward in jumps, by stages. We can’t stay in one place, or they’ll surround us. They mustn’t cut us off from the others. Cover me.”

  And, without waiting for a reply, he got up and began to run. Mayta kept watching the cliffs on the right, his finger on the trigger, but there was no sign of life. Finally, he looked for Vallejos and saw him far off, waving him on. He would cover him. He began to run, and after a few steps, he heard shots again. But he didn’t stop, he kept running. Soon he found out it was the lieutenant who was shooting. When he reached him, they were together with Perico Temoche and the justice of the peace. The boy was loading a clip which he’d taken out of a bag hanging on his cartridge belt. So he’d been firing, too.

  “And the other groups?” Mayta asked. There was a stony rise in front of them, so they could see nothing.

  “We’ve lost them, but they know they can’t stand still,” said Vallejos urgently, without ceasing to look around him. And, after a pause: “If they surround us, we’re fucked. We’ve got to keep going until nightfall. When it’s dark, we’ll be out of danger. There’s no way to hunt us down at night.”

  Till it gets dark, thought Mayta. How much longer would that be? Three, five, six hours? He didn’t ask Vallejos what time it was. Instead, he stuck his hand into his pack—he’d done it dozens of times that day—and made sure he had lots of clips.

  “We’ll move two by two,” ordered Vallejos. “First the doctor and me, then you and Perico. One pair covers the other. Pay attention, be careful, run in a crouch. Let’s go, doc.”

  He took off, and Mayta saw that now the justice of the peace had a revolver in his hand. Where did he get it? It had to be the lieutenant’s, that’s why his holster was open. Right then, he saw two silhouettes above his head, between two rifle barrels. One shouted: “Give up, motherfucker.” He and Perico fired at the same time.

  “They didn’t catch all of them that same day,” don Eugenio says. Two joeboys got away: Teófilo Puertas and Felicio Tapia.

  I got this story directly from the people involved, but I don’t interrupt him, just to see how his version squares with theirs. A few details either way: the old justice of the peace’s version is very similar to what I’ve already heard. Puertas and Felicio were in the first group, under Condori’s command. They were the first to be spotted by one of the patrols the guards had divided into to search the area. On Vallejos’s orders, Condori tried to move forward, while Vallejos held off the attack, but he was soon wounded. This caused a panic. The boys started running, abandoning the mules and rifles. Puertas and Tapia hid in a cave. They stayed there all night, half frozen. The next day, hungry, confused, and with colds, they retraced their steps and reached Jauja without being caught. Accompanied by their parents, they turned themselves in at the jail.

  “Felicio was all swollen up,” the justice of the peace tells me. Because of the beating he’d been given for trying to be a revolutionary.

  Out of all those people from Quero who’d been with us, there was left in the gazebo only one old couple now. Both remember Zenón Gonzales’s entrance—tied to a horse, barefoot, and with his shirt ripped, as if he’d struggled with the guards. Behind him came the rest of the joeboys, also tied up and without shoelaces. One of them—no one knows which one—was crying. A dark-skinned kid, they say, one of the little ones. Was he crying because they’d beaten him? Because he was wounded or frightened? Who knows. Maybe because of the lieutenant’s bad luck.

  And so, climbing up, always up, two by two, they went on for a period that to Mayta seemed like hours, but which couldn’t have been because it hadn’t grown a bit darker. They constantly changed partners: Vallejos and the lawyer, Mayta and Perico Temoche, or Vallejos and the joeboy, and Mayta and the lawyer. Two ran and two covered. They were together enough of the time to buck each other up, catch their breath, and move on. They would see the guards’ faces at every turn, and they fired shots that never seemed to hit their target. There weren’t three or four, as Vallejos had imagined, but many more; otherwise, they would have had to be ubiquitous to appear in so many different spots. They would peer out from the high grou
nd, sometimes on both sides, although the more dangerous side was the right, where the wall of stones was very close to the path they were running along.

  They were following them along the line of the ridge, and even though Mayta from time to time thought they had left them behind, they always reappeared. He’d already changed clips a couple of times. He didn’t feel ill; cold, yes, but his body was holding up well under the tremendous strain of running at this altitude. Why hasn’t anyone been wounded? he thought. After all, the guards had taken lots of shots at them. It’s that the guards are being cautious, they barely stick out their heads and take potshots, just to do their duty, without pausing to aim, afraid of being easy targets for the rebels. It seemed like a game, a noisy but inoffensive ritual. Would it last until dark? Could they slip away from the guards? It seemed impossible that night would ever come, that this clear sky would ever darken. He didn’t feel discouraged. Without arrogance, without even feeling sorry for himself, he thought: Rightly or wrongly, Mayta, you’re doing just what you always wanted to do.

  “Get ready, don Eugenio. Let’s run. They’re covering us.”

  “You go on without me, my legs have given out,” said the justice of the peace very slowly. “I’ll stay behind. Take this, too.”

  Instead of handing it to him, don Eugenio threw him the revolver, which Mayta had to bend over to pick up. The justice of the peace was sitting down, with his legs spread apart. He was perspiring copiously and his mouth was twisted into an anxious grimace, as if he’d been left without air to breathe. His posture and his expression were those of a man who’s reached the limits of his resistance, who’s been rendered indifferent by exhaustion. Mayta understood there was no point in arguing with him.