The Time of the Hero

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Alberto pushed gently at the door, which opened without a sound. He put his head in like an animal sniffing at a cave. There was a sound of peaceful breathing in the shadowy barracks. They closed the door behind them. “At the back,” Alberto whispered, his lips touching the Slave’s ear. “There’s a locker that isn’t close to the beds.”

  “What?” the Slave asked him, without moving.

  “Oh, shit,” Alberto said. “Come on.” They went down the barracks slowly, shuffling their feet, with their hands out to avoid obstacles. If I were a blind man, I’d take out my glass eyes and I’d say to Golden Toes, I’m giving you my eyes, but trust me, my old man’s got enough whores already, it’s enough that you should never leave your post except when you’re dead. They stopped by a locker and Alberto’s fingers slid along the wood. He put his hand in his pocket, took out a skeleton key, tried to find the lock with his other hand, closed his eyes, gritted his teeth. And if I say, I swear, Lieutenant, I just came in here to get a book to study chemistry so I won’t flunk it tomorrow, and I swear I’ll never forgive you for the way my mother’ll cry. Slave, if you ruin me just for a jacket. The skeleton key scraped across the metal, entered, caught, moved back and forth, right and left, entered a little further, stopped, there was a click and the lock was open. Alberto twisted the key out. The door of the locker began to swing open. Somewhere in the barracks an angry voice broke out into incoherent mutterings. The Slave put his hand on Alberto’s arm. “Quiet,” Alberto whispered, “or I’ll kill you.” “What?” the Slave asked. Alberto’s hand carefully explored the inside of the locker, a fraction of an inch away from the woolly surface of the jacket, as if he were stroking the face or the hair of a beloved one and were relishing the pleasure of the imminent contact, still only sensing her. “Get the laces out of a pair of boots,” Alberto said. “I need them.” The Slave took his hand away, bent down, and started crawling. Alberto slipped the jacket off its hanger, put the lock back on the staples, and squeezed it shut with his hand over it to lessen the sound. Then he moved toward the door. When he got there, the Slave put his hand on him again, this time on his shoulder. They went outside.

  “Has it got a name on it?”

  The Slave turned on his flashlight and examined the jacket minutely. “No.”

  “Go to the latrine and see if it’s got any spots on it. And make sure to use different-colored buttons.”

  “It’s almost one o’clock,” the Slave said.

  Alberto nodded. When they got to the door of the first section, he turned to the other. “And the laces?”

  “I only found one,” the Slave said. He hesitated for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

  Alberto stared at him, but did not insult him or laugh at him. He merely shrugged his shoulders.

  “Thanks,” the Slave said. He put his hand on Alberto’s arm again and looked at him, his timid, cringing face bright with a smile.

  “I just did it for the fun of it,” Alberto said. And he added quickly, “Have you got the questions for the exam? I don’t know beans about chemistry.”

  “No,” the Slave said. “But the Circle must have them. Cava went out a while back and he was heading for the classrooms. They must be working out the answers.”

  “I haven’t got any money. That Jaguar is a crook.”

  “Do you want me to lend you some?” the Slave asked.

  “You’ve really got money?”

  “A little.”

  “Can you lend me twenty soles?”

  “Twenty soles? Yes.”

  “Great, great! I didn’t have a centavo. If you want, I can pay you back with some stories.”

  “No,” the Slave said. He lowered his eyes. “I’d rather have letters.”

  “Letters? You? Have you got a girl?”

  “Not yet,” the Slave said. “But maybe I will have.”

  “That’s fine, man. I’ll write you twenty of them. But you’ll have to show me hers, so I can tell what she’s like.”

  The barracks was coming alive. In the various sections there were sounds of footsteps, of lockers closing, even a few jokes.

  “They’re changing the guard,” Alberto said. “Let’s go.”

  They went into the barracks. Alberto went over to Vallano’s bunk, squatted down and took the lace out of one of his boots. Then he began shaking the Negro with both hands.

  “Motherfucker, motherfucker!” Vallano shouted.

  “Come on, it’s one o’clock,” Alberto said. “You’re on duty.”

  “If you woke me up too soon, I’ll murder you.”

  At the other end of the barracks, the Boa was shouting at the Slave, who had just awakened him.

  “Here’s the rifle and the flashlight,” Alberto said. “Go back to sleep if you want to, but the patrol’s in the second section.”

  “No shit?” Vallano said, getting up.

  Alberto went over to his own bunk and undressed.

  “Everybody’s so sweet around here,” Vallano said. “Very, very sweet.”

  “What’s the matter?” Alberto asked.

  “Somebody swiped one of my laces.”

  “Shut up!” a voice shouted. “Sentry, tell those fairies to shut up!”

  Alberto could tell that Vallano was walking on tiptoe. Then he heard a telltale sound. “They’re stealing laces!” he shouted.

  “One of these days I’m going to break your jaw, Poet,” Vallano said, yawning.

  A few minutes later the Officer of the Guard blew a sharp blast on his whistle. Alberto did not hear it. He was asleep.

  Diego Ferré Street was less than three hundred yards long, and a stranger to it would have thought it was an alley with a dead end. In fact, if you looked down it from the corner of Larco Avenue, where it began, you could see a two-story house closing off the other end two blocks away, with a small garden protected by a green railing. At a distance, that house seemed to end Diego Ferré, but actually it stood on a narrow cross street, Porta. Two other parallel streets, Colón and Ocharán, cut across Diego Ferré between Porta and Larco Avenue. After crossing Diego Ferré they ended abruptly two hundred yards to the east at the Malecón de la Reserva, the serpentine that enclosed the Miraflores district with a belt of red brick. It marked the farthest limits of the city, for it was built along the edge of the cliffs, above the clean, gray, noisy waters of the Bay of Lima.

  There were half a dozen blocks between Larco Avenue, the Malecón and Porta Street: about a hundred houses, two or three grocery stores, a drugstore, a soft-drink stand, a shoe repair shop half hidden between a garage and a projecting wall, and a walled lot that was used as a private laundry. The cross streets had trees along both sides of the pavement, but not Diego Ferré. The neighborhood lacked a name. When the boys organized a soccer team to compete in the annual tournament held by the Terrazas Club, they named their team “The Happy Neighborhood.” But when the tournament was over, the name was not used any longer. Also, the crime reporters used “The Happy Neighborhood” to describe the long row of houses called Huatica de la Victoria, the street of the whores, which made it somewhat embarrassing. So the boys simply called it the neighborhood, and when somebody asked them which one, they distinguished it from the other neighborhoods in Miraflores, like the 28th of July or Reducto or Francia Street or Alcanfores, by saying: “The Diego Ferré.”

  Alberto’s house was the third house on the second block of Diego Ferré, on the left-hand side. The first time he saw it was at night, when almost all the furniture from the previous house, in San Isidro, had already been moved. It seemed to him a lot larger than the other one, and it had two obvious advantages: his bedroom was further away from that of his parents, and since there was an inner garden they would probably let him have a dog. But the new house would also have its disadvantages. Every morning, the father of one of his friends had driven both of them from San Isidro to La Salle Academy. From now on he would have to take the express, get off at Wilson Avenue, then walk at least ten blocks to Arica Avenue, since La Sa
lle, although it was a very respectable school, was located in the heart of the Breña district, with its zombos—half-Indian, half-Chinese—and its swarm of workers. He would have to get up earlier, and leave right after breakfast. And there had been a bookstore across from his house in San Isidro, where the owner had let him read the Penecas and Billiken behind the counter, and had even lent them to him for a day, warning him not to crease them or get them dirty. Also, the moving would deprive him of an exciting pastime: that of going up onto the roof to watch what went on in the Nájar family’s yard. When the weather was good they ate breakfast in the garden under bright-colored umbrellas, and played tennis, and gave dances at night, and when they gave dances he could spy on the couples who sneaked off to the tennis court to neck.

  On the day they moved he got up early and went to school in a good mood. When he got out he went straight to the new house. He got off the express at Salazar Park—he still had not learned the name of that grassy esplanade hung out over the sea—and walked along Diego Ferré, which was deserted at that hour. At home he found his mother threatening to fire the maid if she started spending her time with the neighboring cooks and chauffeurs the way she had in San Isidro. After lunch his father said, “I’ve got to leave. It’s very important business.” His mother cried, “You’re lying again! How can you look me in the face?” And then, with the help of the servant and the maid, she began a very careful inspection to make sure that nothing had been lost or damaged by the movers. Alberto went up to his room and stretched out on the bed, aimlessly doodling on the jackets of his books. A little later he heard the voices of boys through the open window. The voices stopped, there was only the sound of a kick and the hum and slap of a ball as it bounced against the door. Then the voices again. He got up from the bed and looked out. One of the boys wore a flaming shirt, red and yellow stripes, and the other wore a white silk shirt with the buttons open. The former was taller, with blond hair, and his voice and looks and gestures were insolent. The other was short and stocky, with curly black hair, and he was extremely quick. The blond boy was playing goalkeeper in the door of a garage. The dark boy kicked the brand-new soccer ball at him, shouting, “Stop this one, Pluto!” Pluto, with a dramatic grimace, wiped his forehead and his nose with the back of his hand and pretended to fling himself at the ball, and if he stopped a goal he laughed uproariously. “You’re an old lady, Tico, I could block your kicks with my little finger.” Tico stopped the ball skillfully with his foot, set it, measured the distance, and kicked, and almost every kick was a goal. “Butterfingers!” he jeered. “Fairy! Look out for this next one. It’s going to the right, and boom!” At first Alberto watched them without much interest, and apparently they had not noticed him. But little by little he began to study their styles, and when Tico kicked a goal or Pluto intercepted the ball, he nodded without smiling, like a veteran fan. Then he began to pay attention to the jokes the two boys were making. He reacted the way they did, and at times the players gave signs that they knew he was watching: they turned their heads toward him as if they had appointed him as their referee. Soon there was a close exchange of looks, smiles and nods. Suddenly Pluto kicked one of Tico’s shots and the ball went sailing down the street. Tico ran after it. Pluto looked up at Alberto.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” Alberto said.

  Pluto had his hands in his pockets. He was jumping up and down in the same place, like one of the professionals loosening up before a game.

  “Are you going to live here?” Pluto asked him.

  “Yes. We moved in today.”

  Pluto nodded. Tico had come back. He was holding the ball on his shoulder with one hand. He looked up at Alberto. They smiled. Pluto turned to Tico.

  “He just moved in. He’s going to live here.”

  “Oh?” Tico said.

  “Do you fellows live here?” Alberto asked.

  “He lives on Diego Ferré,” Pluto said. “In the first block. I live around the corner, on Ocharán.”

  “One more for the neighborhood,” Tico said.

  “They call me Pluto. And this here is Tico. He’s an old lady when it comes to soccer.”

  “Is your father a good guy?” Tico asked.

  “I guess so,” Alberto said. “Why?”

  “They keep running us off the street,” Pluto said. “They take our ball away. They won’t let us play here.”

  Tico began to bounce the ball up and down as if it were a basketball.

  “Come on out,” Pluto said. “We’ll kick some goals till the others come. Then we’ll get up a game.”

  “Okay,” Alberto said. “But I’d better tell you I’m not very good.”

  Cava told us there’s a chicken coop behind the soldiers’ barracks. You’re a liar, peasant, it isn’t true. I tell you I’ve seen them. So we went there after dinner, going around the long way so as not to go past the barracks. Do you see them, are you coming, the bastard said, look at all those different-colored chickens, what more do you want, do you want anything more? Which one’ll we take, the black one or the yellow one? The yellow one’s bigger. What’re you waiting for, idiot? I’ll grab her and hold her wings. Come on, Boa, grab her beak. As if that was so easy. Don’t run away, little chick, come here, come here. She’s afraid of him, she’s giving him a dirty look, she’s turning her tail on him, just look at that, the bastard said. But it was true that she pecked my fingers. Let’s go to the stadium and tie up her beak for good. And what if Curly buggers the fatboy? The best thing, the Jaguar said, is to tie up their legs and beak. But what about the wings? What’ll they say if she cuts somebody’s balls off when she flaps her wings, what’ll they say then? She doesn’t want anything to do with you, Boa. You sure of that, peasant, you too? No, but I saw it with my own eyes. What’ll I tie her with? What animals, what animals, at least a chicken is small, it’s more like a game, but a Ilama! And what if Curly buggers the fatboy? We were smoking in the latrines in the classroom building, keep your lights down. The Jaguar was on the toilet, straining, and it looked like he was being screwed. How about it, Jaguar, how about it? Shut up, they’re cutting me, I’ve got to concentrate. And the beak? And suppose we buggered the fatboy, Curly said. Who? The one in the ninth, the fatboy. Haven’t you ever pinched him? Oomph. It isn’t a bad idea, but does he let you or doesn’t he? They tell me Lañas buggers him when he’s on guard duty. Oomph, at last. How about it, the bastard said. And who goes first, I don’t want to do it now with all the noise she makes. Here’s a piece of string for her beak. Don’t let her go, peasant, or she’ll fly away. Who’s ready? Cava’s got her by the beak, Curly tells her not to move her beak because she’s going to get screwed anyway, and I tied up her feet. Let’s draw lots. Who’s got some matches? Cut the head off one of them and show me the rest, I’m too old to fall for any tricks. Curly’ll probably win. Listen, does it make any difference whether he lets you? It doesn’t to me. That little laugh like a sting. Okay, Curly, but just for the hell of it. And if he doesn’t let you? Shut up, I can smell a non-com, it’s a good thing he didn’t come near, I’m a real he-man. And suppose we screwed the noncom? The Boa screws a dog, the sharper said, why not the fatboy, he’s human at least. I saw him in the mess hall, he’s on the shit list, he was bullying the eight Dogs at his table. No, he probably wouldn’t let you. Who said I’m afraid, did somebody say I’m afraid? I could screw a whole section of fatboys, one after the other, and still be as good as new. We’ve got to have a plan, the Jaguar said, it’ll make things easier. Who got the short match? The chicken was on the ground, gasping. That peasant Cava, can’t they see what he’s doing with his hand? He likes to play with himself, but it’s dead, the Boa’s the one who gets a hard-on even when he’s marching. We’ve drawn lots, everything’s ready, screw her or we’ll screw you like the Ilamas in your village. Don’t you know a story? What if we get the Poet here to tell us one of those stories that make your cock stand up? But that’s horseshit, I can get a hard-on just by thinking about it, it’s
all a matter of will power. What if I get a dose? What’s the matter, loverboy, what’s got into you, peasant, don’t you know the Boa is cleaner than your mother ever since he’s been screwing Skimpy? Where did you get those crazy ideas, haven’t they told you chickens are more sanitary than dogs? So we’ll do it even if they catch us red-handed. And the patrol? Huarina’s the Officer of the Guard, he’s a slob, and on Saturday the patrol’s a laugh. And if there’s trouble? A meeting of the Circle: You’re a convicted squealer, Cadet, but would you tell if they beat you up? Let’s go, they’re going to blow taps. And keep your lights down, damn it. Look, the bastard said, she stood up by herself, pass her over. Take her. Me? Yes, you. Are you sure chickens have holes? Maybe this blonde’s a virgin. She’s moving, look, it’s probably a rooster, a queer one. Don’t laugh or talk, please. Please. That shitty little laugh. Can’t you see that peasant’s hand? You’re feeling her up, you bastard. I’m looking for the, don’t rush me, I’ve found it. What’d he say? She’s got a hole, shut up please, for Christ’s sake don’t laugh or the elephant’s trunk’ll go down. What an ape. Those peasants from the mountains, my brother said, they’re bad ones, the worst there is. Traitors and cowards. Rotten to the core. Shut your beak, you dirty bitch! Lieutenant Gamboa, here’s somebody screwing a chicken. It’s almost ten o’clock, Curly said. It’s after quarter past ten. Has anybody seen the guards? I’ll screw one of them too. You’d screw anything, I think, you’re real hot, just promise you won’t screw your own dear mother. There weren’t any others in the barracks confined to the grounds, but there were some in the second section, and we went out barefoot. I’m freezing to death, I’ll probably catch a cold. I can tell you right now, if I hear a whistle I’ll take off. Let’s bend over going up the stairs, they can see us from the guardhouse. No shit? We went into the barracks slowly and the Jaguar said, who’s the bastard who said there was only two of them confined to quarters, there’s about ten of those midgets snoring there. Are you going to clear out? Who? You know which bed he’s in, you go first, we don’t want to screw the wrong one. It’s the third one, can’t you tell how it smells of a nice little fatboy? Look, her feathers are coming out, I think she’s dying. Are you finished? Tell me, do you always come off so fast, or just with chickens? Look at her, the poor little whore, I think the peasant killed her. Me? She’s suffocating, all her holes are blocked up. If she moves any more, she’s just pretending she’s dead. Do you think animals have any feelings? Do you think they’ve got souls? I mean, do they like it, the way women do? Sure, Skimpy does, just like a woman. Boa, you make me puke. The things that go on. Look, the chicken’s getting up. She liked it and she wants more, what about that? Look at her, she’s walking like a drunk. And are we really going to eat her now? Somebody’s going to get pregnant, don’t forget what the peasant left inside her. I don’t even know how to kill a chicken. Shut up, the fire’ll get rid of the germs. Grab her by the neck and swing her around in the air. Keep her quiet, Boa, I’m going to show you, just watch this. Yes, sir, you showed us all right, very nice footwork too. She’s dead now but Jesus, what a mess. Jesus, what a mess, who’s going to eat her the way she’s all dust and dirt? Are you sure the fire’ll get rid of the germs? Let’s go make a fire, but over there behind the wall, it’ll hide it better. Don’t make any noise or I’ll murder you. Come on, climb onto him, idiot, he’s stretched out, he’s ready. Christ how that midget can kick, how he kicked, what are you waiting for, climb onto him, can’t you see he’s naked as a snake? Look out, Boa, don’t stop his mouth like that, he’ll smother. He keeps getting away, he’s worse than the chicken, Curly said, lie still or I’ll kill you, I’m giving it to you, stop kicking, what more do you want. Let’s go, the midgets are getting up, I told you so, damn it, the midgets are all getting up, there’s going to be bloodshed. The one that turned on the lights had guts. The one that shouted, they’re trying to screw us, come on, let’s get them, that one had guts too. They rattled me with that business of the lights. Was that why I let go of his mouth? Save me, fellows! The only time I ever heard a scream like that was when my mother threw a chair at my brother. And you midgets, who told you to get up, who told you to turn on the lights? The brigadier? We’re not going to let you get away with it, you lousy queers! What did you say, did you say what I think you did, you can’t talk like that to cadets, stand at attention. And you, you can stop screaming, can’t you see it was just a joke? Wait and see, I’ll take care of you midgets. And the Jaguar was still laughing, I remember how he laughed while I was beating up the midgets. Okay, we’re going now, but listen to me and don’t forget what I’m telling you: either you keep your traps shut or we’ll screw the whole section, and not the way you like. The trouble with these midgets is, they’re all too nervous, they don’t know a joke when they see it. Should we duck down again on the stairs? Ugh, Curly said, chewing at a bone, it tastes of burnt feathers.