The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  He thought he would die, fall off a cliff, that his nose would never stop bleeding. Nevertheless, that twenty-four-hour trip to the Ricrán district, way out there in a corner of the mountains, was the most stimulating thing that he did in Jauja. A land of condors, snow, clear sky, jagged, ocher peaks. He had thought: “Incredible how they can live at these altitudes, dominate these mountains, sow and cultivate on these slopes, build a civilization in this wasteland. The men to whom Shorty Ubilluz introduced him—a dozen subsistence farmers and artisans—were highly motivated. He was able to communicate with them because they all spoke Spanish. They asked him lots of questions, and infused with enthusiasm, he gave them even more assurances than he gave the joeboys about the support of the progressive sectors in Lima. How encouraging it was to see the naturalness with which these humble men, some wearing sandals, talked about the revolution. As if it were imminent, concrete, decided, irreversible. There were no euphemisms at all in their conversation: they talked about arms, hideouts, and their participation in the action from day one on. But Mayta did have one difficult moment. What help would the U.S.S.R. give them? He didn’t have the heart to talk to them about the betrayed revolution, the Stalinist bureaucratization, about Trotsky. He felt it wouldn’t be prudent to confuse them with all that stuff just yet. The U.S.S.R. and the other socialist countries would help, but later, when the Peruvian revolution was a fact. Before, they would lend only their moral support—words, not deeds. The same as some Peruvian progressives. They would extend a hand only when all the others pressed them to do it. But they would be pressed, because the revolution, once in motion, would be unstoppable.

  “In sum, Ricrán left you with your mouth hanging open,” Vallejos said. “I knew it would, brother.”

  They were in front of the train station, in a small restaurant with oilcloth on the tables and calico curtains on the windows: the Duckpull. From their table, Mayta could see the mountains, on the other side of the railing and the tracks. They were turning black and gray after having been ocher and golden. They had been there for several hours, ever since lunch. The owner knew Ubilluz and Vallejo and would come over to chat with them. Whenever he did, they would change the subject, and Mayta would ask about Jauja. Where did that name “Duckpull” come from? Because of a local game played on the festival of January 20 in the Yauyos neighborhood: they would dance the pandilla and they would hang up a live duck that horsemen and dancers would try to decapitate by grabbing at it and pulling.

  “Lucky times those, when there were ducks to decapitate in the Duckpull festival,” growls Professor Ubilluz. “We thought we had touched bottom. And yet there were ducks within reach of anyone’s budget, and people in Jauja ate twice a day, something that children today can’t even believe.” He sighs again. “It was a beautiful festival, more fun and more to drink even than during Carnival.”

  “All we ask is that when we get moving, the party comes through for us,” Vallejos said. “They’re revolutionaries, right? I’ve read every single Workers Voice you gave me, backwards and forwards. Every single article is about the revolution. Well, I hope they’ll come across with actions to back up their words.”

  Mayta became nervous. It was the first time Vallejos had let him know he had doubts about the support of the RWP(T). Mayta hadn’t mentioned a word about the internal debates concerning the project and concerning Vallejos himself.

  “The party will come through. But it has to be sure this is a serious, well-planned action that is likely to succeed.”

  “Well, it was during those days that our Trotskyite saw that our project was neither hastily organized nor mad.” Professor Ubilluz returns to the subject. “He just couldn’t believe that we had prepared things that well.”

  “It’s true, it’s more serious than I’d thought.” Mayta turned to Vallejos. “You know you completely faked me out? You had a network of insurgents, made up of peasants, workers, and students. I tip my hat to you, comrade.”

  They put on the lights in the Duckpull. Mayta saw that buzzing insects were beginning to smash into the bulb that swayed over them, hanging from a long wire.

  “I, too, had to take precautions, as you did with me,” said the lieutenant, speaking suddenly with that aplomb which, when it emerged, made him into another man. “I had to be sure I could confide in you.”

  “You learned the lesson well.” Mayta smiled at him. He paused to take a deep breath. Today the mountain sickness bothered him less. He was able to sleep for a few hours, after having had insomnia for two days. Were the mountains accepting him? “Two more comrades, Anatolio and Jacinto, will be coming next week. Their report will be decisive as far as the party’s going all the way is concerned. I’m optimistic. When they see what I’ve seen, they’ll understand that there’s no reason to hold back.”

  It was here, no doubt about it, during his first visit to Jauja, that the idea that brought him so many problems lodged in his head. Did he share it with them in the Duckpull? Did he unfold it in a low voice, choosing his words carefully so he wouldn’t upset them with revelations about the divisions in what they thought was a united left? Professor Ubilluz assures me he didn’t say anything about it. “Even though this body of mine is the worse for wear, my memory is still good.” Mayta never told him about his intention to involve other groups or parties. Could he have told only Vallejos about it? In any case, it’s certain that he had already decided on the plan in Jauja, because Mayta was not impulsive. If he went to see Blacquer and, probably, the people from the other RWP when he went back to Lima, it’s because he had seriously thought things over in the mountains.

  It was on one of those insomniac, heart-pounding nights in the boardinghouse on Tarapacá Street, as he listened to his friend’s tranquil breathing and his own roaring pulse. Wasn’t what was at risk too important for just the tiny RWP(T) to take charge of the uprising? It was cold, and he curled up under the blanket. With his hand on his chest, he felt his heart beat. The logic was crystal-clear. The divisions on the left derived to a large extent from the absence of real action, from their sterile gesturing: that’s what made them splinter and eat each other alive—that, even more than ideological controversies. Guerrilla fighting could change the situation and bring together the genuine revolutionaries by showing them just how byzantine their differences were. Yes, action would be the remedy for the party politics that resulted from political impotence. Action would break the vicious circle, would open the eyes of the opposing comrades. Someone would have to be daring and rise to the occasion. “What do Pabloism and Anti-Pabloism matter, when the revolution is at stake, comrades?” He imagined in the cold of the Jauja night the sky spattered with stars, and he thought: This clear air is inspiring you, Mayta. He dropped his hand from his chest to his penis and, thinking about Anatolio, began to rub it.

  “He didn’t tell you that the plan was too important for it to be the exclusive monopoly of a Trotskyist splinter group?” I insist. “Why would he have bothered trying to get help from the other RWP, and even from the Communist Party?”

  “He never said a word,” Professor Ubilluz answers quickly. “He told us nothing about it and tried to conceal from us the fact that the left was divided and that the RWP(T) was insignificant. He deceived us, deliberately and treacherously. He talked about the party. The party this and the party that. I thought he was talking about the Communist Party, which would have meant thousands of workers and students.”

  In the distance, we hear a flurry of rifle shots. Or is it a clap of thunder? We hear it again in a few seconds, and remain silent, listening. We hear another salvo, even farther off, and the professor says softly, “It’s dynamite caps the guerrilla fighters set off out in the hills. To break the nerve of the garrison soldiers. Psychological warfare.” No: it was ducks. A flock flew over the reed patches, quacking. They had gone out for a walk, and Mayta had his bag in his hand. Within a short hour, he would be on the return train to Lima.

  “There’s room for everyone, of course,�
� Vallejos said. “The more, the merrier. Of course. There will be enough weapons for all who want to fight. All I ask is that you carry out your negotiations fast.”

  They were walking on the outskirts of the city, and in the distance some roofs with red tiles glowed. The wind sang through the eucalyptus trees and the willows.

  “We have all the time we need,” said Mayta. “No need to rush things.”

  “Yes, there is,” said Vallejos dryly. He turned to look at him, and there was a blind resolve in his eyes. Mayta thought: There’s something else, I’m going to find out something else. “The two leaders of the Uchubamba land seizure, the ones who led the takeover of the Aína hacienda, are here.”

  “In Jauja?” asked Mayta. “Why haven’t you introduced them to me? I would have wanted to meet them.”

  “They’re in jail and are not receiving guests.” Vallejos smiled. “That’s right—prisoners.”

  They had been brought in by the Civil Guard patrol that had gone out to undo the land takeover. But it wasn’t certain the two would remain in Jauja for long. At any moment, an order could come, transferring them to Huancayo or Lima. And the whole plan depended to a great extent on them. They would lead them from Jauja to Uchubamba quickly and surely, and they would guarantee the collaboration of the communities. Did he see why there was so little time?

  “Alejandro Condori and Zenón Gonzales,” I tell him, naming names before he has a chance to do it. Ubilluz gapes. The light from the bulb has faded and we are almost in darkness.

  “Right, those are their names. You are very well informed.”

  Am I? I think I’ve read everything that came out in newspapers and magazines about this story, and I’ve talked with an infinite number of participants and witnesses. But the more I investigate, the less I feel I know what really happened. Because, with each new fact, more contradictions, conjectures, mysteries, and incongruities crop up. How did it happen that those two peasant leaders, from a remote community in the jungle region of Junín, ended up in the Jauja jail?

  “A fantastic accident,” Vallejos explained. “I had nothing to do with it. This was the jail they were sent to because this is where they would come before the prosecution. My sister would say that God is helping us, see?”

  “Were they in with you before they were captured?”

  “In a general way,” says Ubilluz. “We spoke with them during the trip we made to Uchubamba, and they helped us hide the weapons. But they only came in with us all the way in the month they were imprisoned. They really got close to their jailer. That is, the lieutenant. I think he didn’t tell them the whole plan until the thing blew open.”

  That part of the story, the end, makes Professor Ubilluz uncomfortable, even though so much time has passed. About that part he knows only what he’s heard, and his role is both disputed and doubtful. We hear another volley, far off. “They may be shooting the accomplices of the terrorists,” he says, grunting. This is the time they usually choose to take them from their homes, in a jeep or an armored car, and bring them to the outskirts. The corpses turn up the next day on the roads. And suddenly, with no transition, he asks me, “Does it make any sense to be writing a novel with Peru in this condition and Peruvians all living on borrowed time?” Does it make any sense? I tell him it certainly does, since I’m doing it.

  There’s something depressing about Professor Ubilluz. Everything he says has a sad cast to it. Maybe I’m prejudiced, but I can’t get rid of the notion that he’s always on the defensive and that everything he tells me is aimed at some kind of self-justification. But doesn’t everyone do the same thing? Why is it I have no confidence in him? The fact that he’s still alive? That I’ve heard so much gossip and so many rumors about him? But am I not also aware of the fact that in political controversies this country was always a garbage heap, until it became the cemetery it is today? Don’t I know the infinite horrors which have no basis in fact that enemies ascribe to each other? No, that isn’t what seems so pitiful to me in him, but, simply, his decadence, his bitterness, the quarantine in which he lives.

  “So then, in short, Mayta’s part in the plan of action was nil,” I say.

  “To be fair, let’s say minimal,” he corrects me, shrugging his shoulders. He yawns, and his face fills with wrinkles. “With him or without him, it would have turned out the same. We let him in because we thought he was a political and union leader of some importance. We needed the support of workers and revolutionaries in the rest of the country. That was to be Mayta’s function. But it turned out he didn’t even represent his own group, the RWP(T). Politically speaking, he was a total orphan.”

  “A total orphan.” The expression rings in my ear as I bid Professor Ubilluz goodbye and go out onto the deserted streets of Jauja, heading toward the Paca Inn, under a sky glistening with stars. The professor tells me that, if I’m afraid of such a long walk, I can sleep in his tiny living room. But I prefer to leave: I need air and solitude. I have to quell the static inside my head and put some distance between me and a person whose mere presence depresses my work. The volleys have ceased, and it’s as if there were a curfew, because there’s not a soul around. I walk down the middle of the street, banging my heels, making every effort to be noticed, so that if a patrol comes along, they won’t think I’m trying to sneak by. The sky glows—an unusual sight for someone from Lima, where you almost never see the stars through the mist. The cold chaps my lips. I don’t feel as hungry as I did in the afternoon.

  A total orphan. That’s what he became, by being a militant in smaller and smaller, ever more radical sects, looking for an ideological purity he never found. He was the supreme orphan when he threw himself into this extraordinary conspiracy to start a war in the heights of Junín, with a twenty-two-year-old second-lieutenant jailer and a secondary-school teacher, both of them totally disconnected from the Peruvian left. It certainly was fascinating. It kept on fascinating me for a year after I made the investigation, just as much as it fascinated me that day when I found out in Paris what had happened in Jauja … The wretched light of the widely spaced streetlights wraps around the old façades of the houses, some with enormous gateways and ironclad doors, wrought-iron bars on their windows, and shuttered balconies. Behind all that, I can imagine entrance-ways, patios with plants and trees, and a life once upon a time ordered and monotonous and now, doubtless, beside itself with fear.

  In that first visit to Jauja, nevertheless, the total orphan must have felt exultation and happiness such as he never felt before. He was going to act, the revolt was becoming tangible: faces, places, dialogues, concrete action. As if suddenly his whole life as a militant, a conspirator, a persecuted individual, a political prisoner was justified and at the same time catapulted into a higher reality. Besides, it all coincided with the attainment of something which until a week ago had seemed a wild dream. Hadn’t he dreamed? No, it was as true and concrete as the imminent revolt: he had had in his arms the boy he had desired for so many years. He had made him experience pleasure and he had experienced pleasure himself. He had heard him whimper under his caresses. He felt a burning in his testicles, the prelude to an erection, and he thought: Have you gone crazy? Here? Right in the station? Here, in front of Vallejos? He thought: It’s happiness. You have never felt like this before, comrade.

  Nothing’s open, and I remember from a previous visit, years ago, before all this, the eternal shops of Jauja at dusk, illuminated with kerosene lamps: the tailor shops, the candlemaker’s shop, the barbershops, the jewelers, the bakeries, the hat stores. And also that hanging from the balconies you could sometimes see rows of rabbits drying in the sun. Suddenly I’m hungry again, and my mouth waters. I think about Mayta. Excited, happy, he got ready to return to Lima, certain that his comrades in the RWP(T) would approve the plan of action without reservations. He thought: I’ll see Anatolio, we’ll spend the night talking, I’ll tell him everything, we’ll laugh, he’ll help me to get the others excited. And later … There is a placid silence, th
e kind you find in books by the Spanish writer Azorín, broken from time to time by the cry of a night bird, invisible under the eaves of a house.

  Now I’m leaving the town. This is where it took place, this is where they did it, in these little streets, so tranquil, so timeless then, in that plaza of such beautiful proportions, which twenty-five years ago had a weeping willow and a border of cypresses. Here in this land where it would be difficult to imagine that things could be worse, that hunger, murder, and the danger of disintegration would reach the extremes of today. Here, before returning to Lima, when they said goodbye in the station, the total orphan indicated to the impulsive second lieutenant that in order to give a greater impetus to the start of the rebellion he should consider a few armed acts of propaganda.

  “And just what is that?” Vallejos asked.

  The train was in the station and people were shoving their way on. They talked near the stairs, taking advantage of the last minutes.

  “Translated into Catholic language, it means to preach by example,” said Mayta. “Actions that educate the masses, that take hold in their imagination, that give them ideas, show them their own power. One armed act of propaganda is worth hundreds of issues of the Workers Voice.”

  They were speaking in low tones, but there was no danger of their being heard, because of the pandemonium all around them.

  “And you want more armed acts of propaganda than taking over the Jauja jail and seizing the weapons? More than seizing the police station and the Civil Guard post?”

  “Yes, I want more than that,” said Mayta.

  Capturing those places was a belligerent, military act, which would seem like a traditional military coup because a lieutenant was doing it. It wasn’t sufficiently explicit from the ideological point of view. He would have to take maximum advantage of those first hours. Newspapers and radios would be reporting nonstop. Everything they did in those first hours would reverberate and remain engraved in the memory of the people. So he would have to take full advantage and carry out acts that would have a symbolic charge to them, whose message would be both about revolution and about the class struggle, which would reach the militants, students, intellectuals, workers, and peasants.