The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I thought maybe you’d fallen in,” Mayta greeted him.

  “Whew, now I can breathe more easily.” Anatolio laughed, closing the door. He had moistened his hair, face, and chest, and his chest glistened with drops of water. He carried his shirt in his hand, and Mayta watched him carefully lay it out at the foot of the cot. What a little kid he is, he thought. The bones of his slim torso were just barely visible, and a tangle of hair glistened in the middle of his chest. His arms were long and well shaped. Mayta had noticed him for the first time four years before, while he was lecturing at the Civil Construction Union. Every minute or so, a group of boys from the Communist Youth would interrupt him, chanting the usual party line against Trotsky and Trotskyism: Hitler’s allies, agents of imperialism, lackies of Wall Street. Anatolio was the most aggressive, a young guy with big eyes and dark hair, sitting in the front row. Would he be the one to give the signal for the others to attack him? Despite everything, there was something in the boy Mayta found likable. He had felt one of those twinges he’d had before—and been wrong then. This time he was right. When Mayta left the Union, his spirits more tranquil, he went up to the boy and offered to buy him a coffee, “so we can go on airing our differences.” He didn’t have to make the offer twice. Later on, when he was a member of the RWP(T), Anatolio would say to him, “You brainwashed me in the best Jesuit style, comrade.” It was true, he had done an affectionate and clever job on him. He’d lent him books, magazines, had convinced him to join a Marxist studies circle which he was leading, had bought him myriad coffees and persuaded him that Trotskyism was the only true Marxism, revolution without bureaucracy, despotism, or corruption. And now there he was, young and good-looking, naked from the waist up, standing under the single, dusty light in the room, flattening out his shirt. He thought: Ever since I got involved with Vallejos, I haven’t seen Anatolio’s face in my dreams. He was sure: not even once. A good thing Anatolio was in the Action Group. Of all the people in the party, Mayta got along best with Anatolio. It was also Anatolio over whom he had most influence. Whenever they’d agreed to go out to sell the Workers Voice or to pass out handbills in the Plaza Unión or at the entrances to the factories on Avenida Argentina, Anatolio never kept him waiting, even though he lived over in Callao.

  “I really wish I didn’t have to go across town at this time of night…”

  “If you don’t mind being uncomfortable, stay here.”

  All the comrades of the Central Committee of the RWP(T) had slept at one time or another in the little room. And occasionally, several at the same time, all piled on top of each other.

  “I really don’t want you to have a bad night because of me,” said Anatolio. “You should have a bigger bed, in case of emergencies.”

  Mayta smiled at him. His body, inflamed, had become tense. He made an effort to think about Jauja. Did they kick him out of the party after Jauja?

  “Before,” he corrects me, getting satisfaction out of my discomfort. “Immediately before. If my memory doesn’t fail me, they announced that Mayta had resigned from the RWP(T). A pious fiction, so that the enemy wouldn’t see any cracks in our façade. But he was kicked out. Then the Jauja affair took place and there was no way to clear things up. Do you remember how they clamped down on us? Some of us were jailed, and the others went underground. Mayta was forgotten. That’s how history is written, my friend. On account of the confusion and the reactionary offensive unleashed because of the Jauja thing, Mayta and Vallejos turned into heroes …”

  He becomes meditative, weighing the extravagant elements in the story. I let him reflect without pressing him, sure he hasn’t finished yet. The self-sacrificing Mayta transformed into a two-faced monster, weaving a really risky plot just to trap his comrades? It’s too hard to swallow, and besides, I think it would be impossible to justify in a novel unless I were to write about the unreal world of thrillers.

  “Nowadays, none of that matters,” the senator adds. “Because the right failed. They wanted to liquidate the left once and for all. All they succeeded in doing was hold it up for a few years. Then came Cuba and in 1963 the Javier Heraud business. In ’65, the guerrillas from the Radical Left Movement and the National Liberation Front. Defeat after defeat for insurrectionist theses. Now they’ve got what they want. Except that…”

  “Except that…” I say.

  “Except that this is no longer revolution, but apocalypse. Could anyone have ever imagined that Peru would be living a permanent bloodletting like this?” He looks at me. “What’s going on now has definitively turned the page on the Mayta and Vallejos story. I’m sure there’s not a soul who remembers it. What else?”

  “Vallejos,” I say to him. “Was he a provocateur, too?”

  He takes a drag on his cigarette holder and breathes out a mouthful of smoke, turning his head to one side so the smoke doesn’t go into my face.

  “There’s no proof about Vallejos. He may have been Mayta’s tool.” He gestures again. “Seems probable, doesn’t it? Mayta was a cunning old fox, Vallejos an unseasoned kid. But, I repeat, there’s no proof.”

  He always speaks smoothly, greeting people who pass by.

  “You know that Mayta spent his life changing parties,” he adds. “Always on the left. Was he just fickle, or was he clever? Even I—and I knew him well—could never tell. He was as slippery as an eel. There was no way to know him completely. In any case, he was with all of them at one time or another, all the progressive organizations. A suspicious pattern, don’t you think?”

  “What about all the times he was in jail?” I ask. “The Penitentiary, the Sexto, the Frontón.”

  “The way I hear it is that he never spent much time in jail,” the senator insinuates. “He was in lots of different jails, but never really in jail. All I know is that his name was on the Intelligence service books.”

  He speaks with equanimity, without the slightest sign of ill will toward the man he’s accusing of lying day and night over the course of years, betraying and knifing in the back the people who believed in him, organizing an insurrection just so there’d be a pretext for a general repression of the left. He hates Mayta’s guts, no doubt about it. Everything he tells me, everything he suggests against Mayta must come from way back. He must have been thinking and rethinking it, saying and resaying it for twenty-five years. Is there any foundation of truth underneath this mountain of hatred? Is it all a game to vilify Mayta’s memory for all those who remember him? Where does this hatred come from? Is it political, personal, or both?

  “It was really something Machiavellian.” He pries the butt out of the cigarette holder with a match and puts it out in the ashtray. “In the beginning, we couldn’t believe it—the refinement with which he’d set up the trap seemed impossible. A masterly operation.”

  “Did it seem likely that the Intelligence services and the CIA would organize a plot like that?” I interrupt him. “Just to liquidate a seven-man organization?”

  “Six, six.” Senator Campos laughs. “Don’t forget that Mayta was one of them.” But he quickly turns serious. “The target of the trap wasn’t just the RWP(T) but the whole left. A preventive operation: nip any revolutionary movements in Peru in the bud. But we ruined the surprise, there was a provocation, but it didn’t have the results they hoped it would. Insignificant as we were, it was the RWP(T) which saved the left from a bloodbath like the one going on now in Peru.”

  “How did the RWP(T) make the plot fail?” I ask him. “The Jauja thing happened, didn’t it?”

  “We made at least ninety percent of it fail,” he points out. “They only got ten percent of what they wanted. How many of us were jailed? How many had to hide out? They had us where they wanted us for four or five years. But they didn’t finish us off, which is what they wanted.”

  “Wasn’t the price high?” I ask. “Because Mayta, Vallejos …”

  His gesture silences me. “It’s risky being a provocateur and an informer,” he affirms with severity. “They failed and they p
aid the price, of course. Isn’t that how things work in that business? Besides, there’s other proof. Check the survivors. What’s happened to them? What did they do afterward? What are they doing now?”

  It would seem that over the years Senator Campos has lost the habit of self-criticism.

  “I always thought the revolution would begin with a general strike,” Anatolio said.

  “A Sorelian detour, an anarchist error,” said Mayta sarcastically. “Neither Marx nor Lenin nor Trotsky ever said that a general strike would be the only method. Have you forgotten China? What was Mao’s method? Strikes, or revolutionary war? Slide back, or you’ll fall off the bed.”

  Anatolio slid back from the edge.

  “If the plan works, there will never be a coming together of the people and the soldiers,” he said. “It will be war to the death.”

  “We have to break old patterns and discard empty formulas.” Mayta kept his ears open, because it was usually at that time of night that he would hear the sounds. Despite his anxiety, he would have preferred not to go on talking politics with Anatolio. What should they talk about, then? Anything, but not that militance that had established an abstract solidarity, an impersonal fraternity between them. He added, “It’s harder for me than for you, because I’m older.”

  The two of them could barely fit on the narrow cot, which creaked if one of them made the slightest movement. They had removed their shirts and their shoes, but still had their trousers on. They had put out the light, and the glow from the streetlamp could be seen through the window. Far off, from time to time, they could hear the lewd howl of a cat in heat: it was nighttime.

  “I’ll confess something to you, Anatolio,” Mayta said. On his back, resting on his right arm, he had smoked an entire pack in a few hours. Despite those pains in his chest, he still felt like smoking. His anxiety was suffocating him. He thought: Calm down, Mayta. Don’t make a fool of yourself, okay, Mayta? “This is the most important moment of my life. I’m sure it is, Anatolio.”

  “It is for everybody,” said the boy, like an echo. “The most important in the life of the party. And I hope in the history of Peru.”

  “It’s different for you,” Mayta said. “You’re a kid. And so’s Pallardi. You two are just beginning your lives as revolutionaries, and you’re starting out right. I’m over forty already.”

  “You call that old? Don’t they say that life begins at forty?”

  “No, it’s old age that begins at forty,” Mayta murmured. “I’ve been in this game for almost twenty-five years. Over the last few months, over this last year, most of all since we split up and there are only seven of us, all this time I’ve had one little idea ringing in my ear: Mayta, you’re wasting your time.”

  There was silence, broken finally by the howls of the cat.

  “I get depressed sometimes myself,” he heard Anatolio say. “When things don’t go right, it’s only human to paint the whole picture black. But I’m really surprised to hear you say it, Mayta. Because if there’s one thing I’ve always admired about you, it’s your optimism.”

  It was hot, and when their forearms brushed, they were moist with sweat. Anatolio was also flat on his back, and Mayta could see in the semi-darkness his bare feet next to his own. He thought that at any moment their feet would touch.

  “Get me right,” he said, covering up his discomfort. “I’m not depressed about having dedicated my life to the revolution. That could never happen, Anatolio. Every time I walk down the street and I see the country I live in, I know there can be nothing more important for me. I just wonder if I’ve wasted my time, if I’ve taken the wrong road.”

  “If you’re going to tell me you’ve lost your belief in Leon Davidovich and Trotskyism, I’ll kill you,” Anatolio joked. “I hope I haven’t read all that crap just for fun.”

  But Mayta wasn’t in the mood for jokes. He was experiencing exaltation and at the same time anguish. His heart was beating so hard, he said to himself, that Anatolio could probably hear it. The dust piled up on the books, papers, and magazines all over the room tickled his nose. Hold in that sneeze, or you’ll die, he thought, absurdly.

  “We’ve lost too much time, Anatolio. In byzantine problems—mental masturbation totally unrelated to the real world. We’re disconnected from the masses, we have no roots in the people. What kind of revolution were we going to bring about? You’re very young. But I’ve been in this thing for a long time, and the revolution isn’t an inch closer to taking place. Today, for the first time, I’ve felt we were advancing, that the revolution wasn’t a dream, but flesh and blood.”

  “Calm down, brother,” Anatolio said to him, stretching out his hand and patting him on the leg. Mayta recoiled, as if instead of affectionately touching him, Anatolio had punched him. “Today, in the Central Committee meeting, when you presented your proposal for going into direct action, when you asked how long we would go on wasting time, you went right to our hearts. I never heard you speak so well, Mayta. It came right from your guts. I was thinking: Let’s go out to the mountains right now, what are we waiting for. I felt a knot in my throat, I swear.”

  Mayta turned on his side, making an effort, and saw Anatolio’s profile take shape against the cloudy background of the bookshelf. Anatolio’s curly hair, his smooth forehead, his white teeth, his slightly parted lips.

  “We are going to begin another life,” he whispered. “Out of the cave, into the air, out of garage and café intrigue to working with the masses and directly attacking the enemy. We are going to plunge right into the heart of the people, Anatolio.”

  His face was very close to the boy’s bare shoulder. A smell, strong and elemental, of human flesh assailed his nose and made him dizzy. His bent knees grazed Anatolio’s leg. In the semi-darkness, Mayta could just barely make out Anatolio’s unmoving profile. Did he have his eyes open? His breathing made his chest move rhythmically. Slowly, he stretched out his moist and trembling right hand, and feeling around, he found Anatolio’s trousers.

  “Let me jerk you off,” he whispered in an agonizing voice, feeling that his whole body was burning. “Let me, Anatolio.”

  “And, last but not least, there is one other matter we haven’t gone into, but that, if we want to get to the bottom of things, we’re going to have to bring up.” Senator Campos sighs—sorry, one might say, for bringing the matter up. “You know that Mayta was a homosexual, of course.”

  “In our country, people always accuse their enemies of being homosexuals. It’s hard to prove, though. Does it have anything to do with Jauja?”

  “Yes, you see it must have been the way they got to him,” he adds. “That’s how they got him up against the wall and made him work for them. His Achilles’ heel. All he had to do was give in once. What could he do then but go on collaborating?”

  “I learned from Moisés that he got married.”

  “All queers get married.” The senator smiles. “It’s the handiest disguise there is. Aside from the fact that it was a joke, his marriage was a disaster. It only lasted a minute.”

  The Senate has been called to order, or maybe it’s the deputies, because a growing noise and the sound of briefcases hitting tables comes from the hall. We hear amplified voices. The bar empties. Senator Campos says softly: “We are going to appeal directly to the minister. The Chamber is going to demand that he tell us once and for all if foreign troops have actually entered national territory.” But he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. He goes on talking without losing that scientific objectivity he uses to cover up his hatred.

  “Perhaps the explanation is in all that,” he reflects, playing with his cigarette holder. “Is it possible to be sure of a homosexual? An incomplete, feminine being open to all kinds of weakness, and that includes being an informer.”

  Growing excited, carried away by the theme, he forgets Mayta and Jauja and explains to me that homosexuality is intimately linked to the division of classes and to bourgeois culture. Why, if this isn’t so, are there virtually no
homosexuals in socialist countries? It’s no accident, it doesn’t come about because the air of those latitudes makes people more virtuous. It’s a shame the socialist countries are fomenting subversion in Peru. Because there is a lot to imitate in those countries. The culture of idleness, that dispirited emptiness, that existential insecurity typical of the bourgeoisie that even comes to have doubts about the sex it was born with. Being queer is to lack definition—a good image.

  “Aren’t you ashamed?” he heard him say. “To take advantage of me because we’re friends, because I’m in your house. Aren’t you ashamed, Mayta?”

  Anatolio was sitting up, on the edge of the bed, with his elbows on his knees and his hands together, holding up his chin. A slick shine from the window fell on his back and gave his smooth skin a dark green glow in which you could see his ribs.

  “Yes, I’m ashamed,” Mayta whispered. He struggled to speak. “Forget what happened.”

  “I thought we were friends,” the boy said, his voice breaking, his face turned away from Mayta. He passed from rage to disdain and back to rage. “What a lousy trick, fuck! Did you think I was a queer?”

  “I know you aren’t,” whispered Mayta. The heat of a moment before had given way to a cold that went right through his bones: he tried to think about Vallejos, about Jauja, about the exalting and purifying days to come. “Don’t make me feel worse than I already feel.”

  “And how the fuck do you think I feel?” whined Anatolio. He moved, the little cot groaned, and Mayta thought the boy was going to stand up, slip on his shirt, and leave, slamming the door behind him. But the cot became quiet once again, and those taut shoulders were still there. “You’ve fucked it all up, Mayta. What a jerk you are. You sure picked a good moment. Today, of all days.”

  “Did anything really happen?” Mayta murmured. “Don’t be such a kid. You’re talking as if we’d both died.”