The Time of the Hero

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “I’ve never jumped over the wall,” the Slave said.

  “I’m not surprised,” Alberto said. “I did it a few times last year. One time we went to a fiesta in La Punta with Arróspide and we didn’t get back until just before reveille. Things were better then.”

  “Poet,” Vallano shouted, “did you go to La Salle Academy?”

  “Yes,” Alberto said. “Why?”

  “Curly says everybody that goes to La Salle is a fairy. Is that right?”

  “No,” Alberto said. “All wrong. There weren’t any Negroes at La Salle.”

  Curly laughed. “You’re screwed,” he said to Vallano. “The Poet’s got you screwed.”

  “I may be a Negro but I’m more of a man than any of you,” Vallano said. “And if somebody wants me to prove it, come on over.”

  “My my, how you scare me!” someone said. “Oh mamma, help!”

  “Ay, ay, ay,” Curly sang.

  “Slave,” the Jaguar shouted. “Go ahead and make him prove it. Then tell us if the Negro is as much of a man as he says.”

  “Oh mamma, help!”

  “You too!” Vallano roared. “If you’ve got any guts, come on over, I’m ready.”

  “What’s up?” the Boa asked in a hoarse voice. He had just awakened.

  “Boa, the Negro says you’re a queer,” Alberto said.

  “He said it’s obvious you’re a queer.”

  “That’s exactly what he said.”

  “He’s been talking about you for more than an hour.”

  “They’re all liars,” Vallano said. “Do you think I talk about people behind their back?”

  Everybody laughed.

  “They’re kidding you,” Vallano added. “Can’t you tell?” He raised his voice. “Next time you crack a joke like that, I’ll beat the shit out of you, Poet. I’m warning you. You damn near got me in a fight with the boy.”

  “My my my,” Alberto said. “Did you hear that, Boa? He called you a boy.”

  “You trying to start something, Negro?” the Boa asked.

  “No, of course not,” Vallano said. “You’re my friend.”

  “Then don’t call me a boy.”

  “Poet, I swear I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

  “Barking Negroes never bite,” the Jaguar said.

  The Slave thought, Deep down, they’re all friends. They insult each other, they argue all the time, but deep down they have a lot of fun together. I’m the only one here they look at as a stranger.

  “Her legs were plump, smooth and white. They were so luscious they made you want to bite into them.” Alberto studied what he had just written, attempting to calculate its erotic possibilities. It seemed promising. He was lying on the floor in the sunlight that filtered through the grimy windows of the summerhouse. His head was supported on one hand, his other hand was holding a pencil over a half-filled sheet of paper. There were other pages, some of them covered with writing, strewn around on the dusty floor among the cigarette butts and burned matches. The summerhouse had been built at the same time as the Academy, in a small garden containing a fishpond. The pond was always empty and green with moss, and clouds of mosquitoes hovered over it. No one, not even the colonel, knew the purpose of the summerhouse, which stood about six feet off the ground on four concrete pillars and was reached by a narrow winding staircase. Probably none of the officers or cadets had entered the summerhouse until the Jaguar managed to open the locked door with a special skeleton key which almost the whole section helped him to make. This had given the lonely summerhouse a function: it served as a hideout for those who wanted to take a siesta instead of going to class. “The bedroom trembled as if there were an earthquake. The woman moaned and tore her hair, saying, ‘Enough, enough,’ but the man would not let go of her. His nervous hand went on exploring her body, scratching her, penetrating her. When the woman grew silent and lay as if dead, the man burst out laughing. His laughter sounded like the howl of a wild animal.” He held the pencil between his teeth and reread the whole page. Then he added a final sentence: “The woman thought the last bites were the best of all, and she was happy to know the man would come back again the next day.” Alberto leafed through the pages he had written: four stories in less than two hours. He felt he had done well. There were still a few minutes before they would blow the whistle announcing the end of class. He turned over on his back, rested his head on the floor, and lay there with his body completely lax. The sun shone on his face now, but it was so weak that he kept his eyes open.

  The sun had come out during the lunch hour. The mess-hall was suddenly brighter and the usual chaotic murmur stopped dead as fifteen hundred heads turned to look out at the field. The grass looked golden, and the surrounding buildings threw shadows. It was the first time the sun had come out in October since Alberto had entered the Academy. He immediately thought, I’ll go to the summerhouse and write. When they fell in, he whispered to the Slave, “If there’s a roll call, answer for me.” They reached the classrooms, and he took advantage of the officer’s carelessness to duck into one of the washrooms. He waited until the cadets had entered the classrooms, then slipped out and went to the summerhouse. He had written his four-page stories with hardly a pause, but during the last one he began to feel drowsy and was tempted to drop the pencil and let his mind wander. He had run out of cigarettes days ago and he tried to smoke the twisted butts he found in the summerhouse, but he scarcely took two puffs: the tobacco was brittle with age and the dust he breathed in made him cough.

  Read it again, Vallano, read that last part again, come on, read it again, Negro, and my poor abandoned mother thinking about her son here surrounded by so many half-breeds, but in those days she wouldn’t’ve been upset about it, not even there in the midst of us listening to Eleodora’s Pleasures, read it again, Vallano, we’d gone out on our first pass and we were back in again, you were the smartest, you brought Eleodora in your suitcase, all I brought back was some food, if only I’d known. The cadets were sitting on their bunks, intent, silent, hanging on Vallano’s lips as he read to them in an excited voice. Sometimes he stopped reading and waited, without raising his eyes from the book. At once there was a whole storm of protests. Read it again, Vallano, I’m getting a good idea for passing the time and making a few centavos, and my mother praying to God and the saints, Saturday and Sunday, he’ll drag all of us down the road to perdition, my father’s bewitched by the Eleodoras. After reading the yellowish pages of the little book three or four times, Vallano put it into a pocket of his jacket and gave a scornful look at the others, who were all watching him enviously. At last one of them got up the courage to say, “Lend it to me.” Five, ten, fifteen cadets besieged him, shouting, “Come on, lend it to me, Negro.” Vallano grinned, opening his wide mouth; his eyes danced with glee, his nose twitched, he had taken a triumphal stance, the whole barracks was around him, pleading with him, praising him. He merely insulted them: “You jack-offs, you repulsive bastards, why don’t you go read the Bible or Don Quixote?” They flattered him, they told him: “Negro, you’re sharp, you really are.” Suddenly Vallano realized he could take advantage of the situation. “I’ll rent it,” he said. Then they pushed him and threatened him, one of them spit on him, another one called him a selfish son of a bitch. Vallano laughed uproariously, stretched out on his bunk, and took Eleodord’s Pleasures out of his pocket; he held it up in front of his eyes, which were glittering with malice, and pretended to read it, moving his lips lasciviously. Five cigarettes, ten cigarettes, Vallano, Negro, lend me Eleodbra, I want to jack-off, oh mamma I knew the Boa’d be first from the way he scratched Skimpy while the Negro was reading, she howled and then kept quiet, I thought of a wonderful idea for passing the time and making a few centavos, I had a raft of ideas and the only thing I needed was an opportunity. Alberto saw that the noncom was coming directly toward their row, and out of the corner of his eye he could see that Curly was still absorbed in reading: he had the book fastened to the jacket of the cadet
in front of him. He must have been straining his eyes to read it, because the print was very small. Alberto could not warn him that danger was coming: the noncom never took his eyes off him and was approaching as stealthily as a cat stalking its prey. It was impossible to move his elbow or his foot without being seen. The noncom crouched and then leaped on Curly, who let out a scream, and grabbed Eleodord’s Pleasures with a catlike swipe. But he shouldn’t’ve trampled on it and burned it, he shouldn’t’ve left our house to go chasing whores, he shouldn’t’ve abandoned my mother, we shouldn’t’ve left the big house on Diego Ferré with its garden and all, I shouldn’t’ve known the neighborhood or Helena, he shouldn’t’ve confined Curly for two weeks, I shouldn’t’ve begun to write stories, I shouldn’t’ve left Miraflores, I shouldn’t’ve got to know Teresa and I shouldn’t’ve fallen in love with her. Vallano laughed about it, but he could not hide his depression, his homesickness, his bitterness. Sometimes he grew serious and said, “Damn it, I was really in love with Eleodora. Curly, it’s your fault I’ve lost the woman I love.” The cadets sang Ay, ay, ay and swayed like rumba dancers, they pinched Vallano on the cheeks and the buttocks, and the Jaguar leaped at the Slave, picked him up bodily while the others watched in silence, and threw him against Vallano, saying, “You can have this whore as a gift.” The Slave got up, straightened his clothes, and began to move away. The Boa caught him under the shoulders and lifted him up. The effort made his veins bulge and his neck swell out. He held him in the air for only a few seconds and then let him fall like a rag. The Slave limped out of the barracks. “Damn it,” Vallano said, “I tell you I’m dying of grief.” And then I said I’ll write you a better story than Eleodora for half a pack of cigarettes and that morning I knew what’d happened it was mental telepathy or the hand of God, what’s my father doing, mamma, and Vallano said honest? here’s paper and a pencil and I hope the angels inspire you, and she said courage, my son, we’ve suffered a terrible misfortune, he’s beyond hope, he’s abandoned us, and I began writing and the whole section got around me the way they did around the Negro when he was reading. Alberto wrote a sentence in an unsteady hand, and half a dozen heads tried to read it over his shoulder. He stopped, raised his pencil, raised his head and read it aloud to them. They congratulated him, and a few of them made some suggestions which he rejected. As he went on, he became more daring: the coarse words gave way to grand erotic allegories, but the actions were few and repetitious: preliminary caresses, normal love, anal and oral and manual love, ecstasty, convulsions, battles without quarter between bristling organs, and again the preliminary caresses, et cetera. When he finished writing it—ten pages in a notebook, on both sides of the page—Alberto had a flash of inspiration and announced the title: The Sins of the Flesh. He read the story to them in an excited voice. The barracks listened to him with something like awe, and now and then they laughed appreciatively. When he finished, they applauded him and clapped him on the back. Someone said, “Fernández, you’re a poet.” “That’s right,” someone else said, “he’s a real poet.” And that same day the Boa came over to me with a mysterious look on his face while we were washing up and told me write another story like that and I’ll buy it from you, you’re a good guy, Boa, a great jack-off, you were my first customer and I’ll always remember you, you got sore at first when I told you fifty centavos a page, but you resigned yourself to your fate and we changed houses and that was when I left the neighborhood and my friends and Miraflores itself and began my career as a writer, I’ve earned good money in spite of all the deadbeats.

  It was a Sunday in the middle of June. Alberto was sitting on the grass watching the cadets who strolled around the parade ground with their relatives. A few yards away there was another boy from the Third, but from a different section. He had a letter in his hands and was reading and rereading it with a troubled expression. “Are you on barracks detail?” Alberto asked him. The boy nodded and pointed to his arm band. “That’s worse than being confined,” Alberto said. “I know,” the other said. And later we walked over to the sixth section and lay down and smoked Inca cigarettes and he told me where he was from and he said my father sent me here to the Military Academy because I was in love with a girl from a bad family and then he showed me her picture and he told me that as soon as he got out of the Academy he was going to marry her, and that same day she stopped using make-up and wearing jewelry and seeing her friends and playing canasta and every Saturday when I went home on pass she looked older.

  “But don’t you like her as much any more?” Alberto asked him. “Why do you look like that when you talk about her?”

  The boy lowered his voice, speaking as if to himself. “I don’t know how to write to her,” he said.

  “Why not?” Alberto asked.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t. She’s very intelligent. She writes me wonderful letters.”

  “It’s easy to write a letter,” Alberto said. “Easiest thing in the world.”

  “Not for me. It’s easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it.”

  “Bah!” Alberto said. “I could write ten love letters in an hour.”

  And I wrote a few letters for him and the girl answered them and he bought me a cola and some cigarettes at “La Perlita,” and one day he took me to see a cadet in the eighth section and he asked me can you write him a letter to the girl he’s got in Iquitos and so I asked her do you want me to go see him and talk to him and she told me there’s nothing we can do except pray to God and she began going to Mass and novenas and giving me advice Alberto you’ve got to be more religious you’ve got to love God with all your heart so that when you grow up you won’t fall into temptation like your father and I told him okay but you’ll have to pay me.

  Alberto thought, that was more than two years ago. How time flies. He closed his eyes and he could see Teresa’s face. Suddenly he was filled with anxiety. This was the first time he had been confined without caring too much about losing his pass. She uses cheap paper, he thought, and her handwriting is terrible. I’ve read better letters than hers. He had read them a number of times, always on the sly. He kept them inside his cap, like the cigarettes he sneaked into the Academy on Sundays. The first week, after receiving a letter from Teresa, he was eager to reply at once, but after writing the date he felt uncertain and disturbed. All the words and phrases he could think of seemed artificial and useless. He tore up several beginnings and finally decided to answer her with a few simple lines: “We’re confined to the grounds on account of some trouble here. I don’t know when I’ll get a pass. I was very pleased to get your letter. I think about you all the time and the first thing I’ll do when I get a pass is to go and see you.” The Slave followed him everywhere, offered him cigarettes and fruit and sandwiches, talked to him confidentially. He always tried to be next to him in the mess hall, in formations, in the movies. Alberto thought of that pallid face, that meek expression, that innocent smile, and he hated him. Every time he saw the Slave coming up to him he felt sick to his stomach. One way or another the conversation always got around to Teresa, and Alberto had to cover up by pretending to be completely cynical, or by acting friendly and giving him wise advice: “Don’t ask her to be your girl friend in a letter, man. You’ve got to ask her to her face, so you can tell what she’s really thinking. The first time you get a pass, go to her house and ask her.” And the Slave always listened solemnly and agreed without any argument. I’ll tell him as soon as we get a pass, Alberto thought, as soon as we’re outside the Academy gates. He’s already so bitter I don’t want to make it worse than I have to. I’ll tell him I’m sorry but the girl likes me and I’ll knock your teeth out if you go to see her. Then I’ll take her out to the Necochea Park. The park was at the end of the Malecón, above the steep ocher cliffs against which the sea around Miraflores pounded so noisily; from the very edge of it, in winter, you could make out a ghostly scene through the rifts in the fog: an empty beach with immense and solitary rocks. We’ll sit on the last bench
, he thought, next to the log railing. The sun had warmed his face and body, and he kept his eyes closed to prevent the image from vanishing.

  When he woke up, the sun had disappeared again and the light was a dim gray. His back ached and his head felt heavy: he should have known better than to go to sleep on a wooden floor. He was still drowsy, he wanted to stay there, he blinked his eyes, he wished he had a cigarette, just one. Then he sat up and looked out. The garden was empty, the classrooms looked deserted. What time was it? They blew the whistle for going to the mess hall at six-thirty. He looked all around, very cautiously, but the Academy was dead. He climbed down out of the summerhouse and walked through the garden and hurried past the buildings without seeing anyone at all. Finally, when he came to the parade ground, he saw a group of cadets chasing the vicuña, and he knew that the cadets were walking two by two in the patios, wrapped up in their big green coats, and that a vast racket was spilling out of the barracks. He wanted a cigarette desperately. When he got to the patio of the Fifth he turned around and went to the guardhouse. It was Wednesday, he could expect some letters. The doorway was blocked with cadets. “Let me in,” he said, “the Officer of the Day sent for me.”

  No one moved. “Get in line,” someone said.

  “I’m not waiting for letters,” Alberto said. “The lieutenant wants to see me.”

  “Fuck you. Get in line.”

  Alberto waited. Whenever a cadet came out, the line surged forward and they struggled to enter first. He reached the door, and to kill time he read the notice that was posted on it. “Fifth Year. Officer of the Guard: Lt. Pedro Pitaluga. N.C.O: Joaquín Morte. Cadets on active service: 360. Cadets committed to the infirmary: 8. Special order: Confinement of the guards on duty Sept. 13th is suspended.” It was signed by the captain. He reread the last part of it several times and then began shouting, and the noncom on duty, Pezoa, said, “Who’s shooting off all that shit out there, silence, goddamn it, silence!”