The Time of the Hero

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Yes,” Alberto said. “But not close to him. I was at the other end of the line. It was the captain who found him. While we were climbing the hill.”

  “It isn’t fair,” the man said. “It isn’t a just punishment. We’re decent people. We go to Mass every Sunday. We’ve never done anything wrong. His mother spends all her time working for her charities. Why did God punish us like this?”

  “We feel pretty bad in the section,” Alberto said. “All of us.” After a long pause, he added, “We think a lot of him. He’s a real buddy.”

  “I know,” the man said. “He’s all right. But only on account of me. I’ve had to be pretty strict with him now and then. For his own good, you know. It hasn’t been easy to make a man out of him. He’s my only son. Everything I do is for him, for his future. Won’t you tell me something about him? I mean, here at the Academy. Ricardo doesn’t talk very much. He never tells us anything. But sometimes I don’t think he’s been happy.”

  “Well…it’s kind of rough,” Alberto said. “You have to get used to it. Nobody’s happy at the start.”

  “But it did him good,” the man said, almost passionately. “It did him good, it changed him, it made a man out of him. Nobody can say it didn’t! Nobody!” Then, in a calmer voice, “You don’t know what he was like when he was little. But the Academy gave him some guts, gave him a spine. And anyway, if he wanted to quit he just had to tell me. I asked him to go to the Academy and he agreed. It isn’t my fault. I just did what I thought was best. For him, I mean.”

  “It’s all right, Señor,” Alberto said. “Don’t get upset. He’s going to get better.”

  “His mother thinks I’m to blame,” the man said, ignoring what Alberto told him. “That’s a woman for you. They aren’t fair, they don’t understand. But I’ve got a clear conscience, absolutely clear. I wanted him to be a man. A somebody. Do you think I was wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Alberto said, confused. “I mean, no. But the main thing is for Arana to get better.”

  “I’m all nerves,” the man said. “Don’t mind what I say. Sometimes I lose control.”

  They arrived at “La Perlita.” Paulino was behind the counter, his head resting on his hand. He looked at Alberto as if he were seeing him for the first time.

  “A box of matches,” Alberto said.

  Paulino glanced suspiciously at Arana’s father. “I’m all out,” he said.

  “Not for me,” Alberto said. “For the señor.”

  Without a word, Paulino reached under the counter and brought out a box of matches. The man had to use three of them to light his cigarette. In the brief flashes, Alberto could see how his hands were trembling.

  “A cup of coffee,” the man said. He turned to Alberto. “What would you like?”

  “I haven’t got any coffee,” Paulino said in a bored voice. “There’s cola if you want.”

  “All right,” the man said. “A cola. Anything.”

  He had forgotten that calm morning: it was sunless, but there was no rain. He got off the Lima-San Miguel streetcar at the stop near the Brazil movie theater. It was where he always got off. He preferred to walk those ten unnecessary blocks, even in the rain, to increase the distance that separated him from the inevitable meeting. It was the last time he would make the trip: exams had ended the week before, they had just handed out the grades, the school was dead and would not come to life again for three months. His schoolmates were happy at the thought of the vacation, but he felt afraid. The school was his only refuge. The summer would drown him in a dangerous inertia, at the mercy of his parents.

  Instead of turning onto Salaverry Avenue, he continued along Brazil Avenue to the park. He sat down on a bench, thrust his hands into his pockets, hunched over a little and remained there motionless. He felt old. His life was monotonous, without any incentives, a heavy burden. In class, his schoolmates cut up the moment the teacher turned his back. They played practical jokes, threw spitballs, grinned at each other. He studied them, very serious and uncomfortable. Why couldn’t he be like them, live without worries, make friends, have relatives who cared about him? He closed his eyes and sat there for a long time, thinking about Chiclayo, about his Aunt Adelina, about the happy impatience with which he had waited for the coming of summer when he was little. Then he stood up and headed for his house with lagging steps.

  A block before he got there, his heart turned over: the blue car was parked in front of the house. Had he lost track of the time? He asked a passing stranger what time it was. It was only eleven o’clock. His father never came home before one. He walked faster. As he reached the doorway he could hear his parents’ voices. They were arguing. I’ll tell them a streetcar got derailed, he thought as he rang the doorbell, I’ll say I had to walk from Old Magdalena.

  His father opened the door for him. He was smiling, and there was not the least sign of anger in his eyes. To his amazement, his father gave him a cordial slap on the arm and said, almost joyfully, “Ah, so you’re here at last. Your mother and I were just talking about you. Come in, come in.”

  He felt calmer then and his face immediately broke into that stupid, helpless, impersonal smile that constituted his best defense. His mother was in the living room. She embraced him tenderly and he felt ill at ease: her effusiveness could change his father’s good humor. During the last few months he had been forced to act as a judge or witness in the family squabbles. It was humiliating, horrible. He had to answer yes to all the belligerent questions his father hurled at him, although they were made up of grave accusations against his mother: waste, carelessness, incompetence, whoring. What would he have to testify about this time?

  “Look,” his father said amiably. “On the table. There’s something I brought for you.”

  He turned his eyes. The cover of the pamphlet showed the blurred front of a large building, and below it there was a sentence in capital letters: “The Leoncio Prado Academy is not just a gateway to a military career.” He picked it up and began to glance through it with a stunned expression on his face. It had pictures of soccer fields, a gleaming swimming pool, a mess hall, and some empty barracks, all of them clean and orderly. The center spread was a color photograph showing a formation of perfect ranks marching past a reviewing stand.

  “Doesn’t it look great?” his father asked. His voice was still cordial, but he knew that voice so well by now that he could detect the slight change of tone in it, a change that suggested a warning.

  “Yes,” he said quickly, “it looks great.”

  “Of course it does!” his father said. He paused for a moment, then turned to his wife. “You see? I told you he’d be the first one to agree.”

  “I don’t like it,” she said in a weak voice. And without looking at her son she added, “If you want to go there, do what you think is best. But don’t ask me for my opinion. I’m not in favor of your going to a military school.”

  He looked up. “To be a cadet in a military school?” His eyes were shining. “But that’d be great, mamma, I’d like that a lot.”

  “Ah, these women,” his father said. “They’re all alike. Stupid and sentimental. They never understand anything. Go ahead, son, explain to this woman that the best thing you could do is to go to a military school.”

  “He doesn’t even know what it’s like,” she murmured.

  “Yes, I do,” he said excitedly. “It’s the best thing for me. I’ve always told you I wanted to be a cadet. My father’s right.”

  “Look, son,” his father said, “your mother thinks you’re a dumbbell who can’t make up his own mind. Now do you see all the harm she’s done you?”

  “It’ll be wonderful,” the boy said. “Wonderful.”

  “All right,” his mother said. “If we can’t discuss it, I’ll just keep my mouth shut. But I want you to know I don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t ask your opinion,” her husband said. “I’ll settle these matters myself. I was simply telling you what I’ve decided.”

&n
bsp; She stood up and left the room. His father calmed down at once. “You’ve got two months to get ready,” he said. “The entrance exams aren’t going to be easy, but you’re not an imbecile, you can pass them without any trouble. Isn’t that right?”

  “I’ll study hard. I’ll do everything I can to get in.”

  “That’s the way,” his father said. “I’ll enroll you in the Leoncio Prado and I’ll buy you the sample exams. I suppose it’ll cost me a lot of money, but it’s worth it. It’s for your own good. They’ll make a man out of you. They’ll give you a strong body, a strong personality. I wish to God I’d had someone to worry about my future the way I do about yours.”

  “Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much…” And after hesitating a moment, he added for the first time, “Papa.”

  “You can go to the movies after lunch,” his father said. “I’ll advance you ten soles on your allowance.”

  Skimpy feels unhappy on Saturdays. Before, it was different. She went out with us on the field exercises, racing around and jumping and barking when she heard the shots whistling over her head, she was everywhere at once, she got more excited than she ever did on other days. But after she became my pet she wasn’t the same. She began acting strange on Saturdays, she stuck to me like a leech, walking right beside me, licking me and glancing up with her big wet eyes. I noticed a good while ago that when I come in from the field exercises and go to take a shower, or after I finish showering and come back into the barracks to put on my dress uniform, she crawls under my bunk and starts whining very softly, she knows I’m going out on pass. And she’s still whining when we fall in, and she follows me with her head bowed down, you’d think she was a soul in torment. She stops at the main gate of the Academy and raises her head to look at me, and even when I’m a good way off, even when I’m as far as Palmeras Avenue, I know she’s still there at the gate, looking down the road, waiting. I don’t know why but she never tries to follow me out of the Academy, though nobody’s ever told her to stay in, I guess it’s some sort of idea she’s got, like a penance or something, that’s a queer thing too. And when I come back on Sunday night, she’s always there at the gate, excited, whining, running back and forth among the cadets as they enter, sniffing at everybody, and I know she can tell me from a distance because I can hear her running over to me, barking and wagging her tail, and the minute she reaches me she jumps up and down and her whole body quivers with joy. She’s a faithful dog and I’m sorry now that I hurt her. I haven’t always treated her right, lots of times I’ve made her suffer just because I was feeling bad or wanted to have some fun. But Skimpy never got mad at me, it seemed as if she even enjoyed it, perhaps she thought I was showing her how much I liked her. “Jump, Skimpy, come on, don’t be afraid,” and the poor dog, up there on the locker, kept growling and barking and shivering, she was scared to be up there. “Come on, jump, Skimpy.” But she wouldn’t jump until I gave her a little push from behind, then she jumped to the floor with her hair standing on end. But it was only a joke, I didn’t feel sorry for her and she didn’t really mind doing it, even though it hurt her when she landed. What I did to her today was different, it wasn’t any joke, I did it on purpose. But it was only partly my fault. Too many things’ve happened all of a sudden. That poor peasant Cava, what they did to him was enough to make anybody nervous, and then the Slave with a bullet in his head, no wonder we’re all on edge. Besides all that, they shouldn’t’ve made us wear our dark blue uniforms, not in this summer heat, we all sweated like pigs and felt sick to our stomachs. When’ll they bring him out, what’ll he look like, he’s got to look different after all that time in the guardhouse, he must’ve lost weight, they’ve probably had him on bread and water, locked up all the time except when the officers grilled him, standing at attention in front of the colonel and the rest, I can almost hear the questions and the shouting, they must’ve thrown the book at him. He’s a peasant, but so what, he took it like a man, he didn’t say a word about anybody else, he told them the blame was all his: I did it, I stole the chemistry exam, nobody helped me, nobody knew about it, I broke the windowpane myself, it cut my hands, look at the scabs I’ve got. Then back to the guardhouse again, to wait for a soldier to hand in a meal through the peephole, I know what kind of meal it was, the same as they give to the soldiers. And to think what his father’ll do when he goes back to the mountains and says, “They expelled me.” His father must be really brutal, all the peasants are brutal, I had a friend at school who came from Puno and sometimes he came back to school with great big welts where his father hit him with a belt. That poor peasant Cava, he’s had a bad time, I really feel sorry for him. I know I won’t see him again. That’s the way it is, we’ve been together for three whole years, almost, and now he’ll go back to the mountains and won’t ever study again, he’ll just stay up there with the Indians and the llamas, he’ll just be a stupid field hand. That’s the worst thing about this Academy, if they expel you the time you spent here doesn’t count, the bastards know how to screw you coming and going. The peasant’s had some bad times all right, and the whole section thought the way I did when they had us standing in our blue uniforms out in the patio with the sun beating down on us. We waited and waited but nothing happened. Finally the lieutenants arrived in their flashiest uniforms, then the major who’s in charge of the soldiers, then the colonel himself. What a horse’s ass. So we all stood at attention. The lieutenants saluted him, we shivered in our boots, and he started yapping at us. We didn’t even dare cough, but it wasn’t only that, they scared us but we also felt sad, especially those of us in the section, we knew we’d be seeing a guy who’d lived with us such a long time, a guy we’d seen dressed and undressed, a guy who’d turned out to be okay, who’d done so many things with us, you’d need to have a heart of stone not to feel sad about it. The colonel talked to us in that fairy voice of his, he was white with anger and he said awful things about the peasant, the section, the Year, everybody, and I began to realize that Skimpy was chewing at my shoes. Go away, Skimpy, get out of here, you mangy bitch, go chew the colonel’s shoelaces, don’t take advantage of me now. And I couldn’t even give her a kick so she’d go away, Lt. Huarina and the noncom Morte were standing at attention less than a yard away from me and they’d know it if I even took a deep breath, stop that, you bitch, don’t take advantage of me, but I never saw her so stubborn, she worked and worked at my shoelace until it broke and I could feel how my foot was loose inside my shoe. She was having a grand time, why don’t you go away, Skimpy, you’re to blame for everything. Instead of keeping still she began to chew at my other shoe, as if she understood I couldn’t move a fraction of an inch, couldn’t say anything, couldn’t even give her a dirty look. Then they brought out the peasant Cava. He was between two soldiers, as if they were taking him out to shoot him, and his face was very pale. I could feel my stomach churning, and something bitter rose up in my throat. The peasant looked yellowish, he was marching between the two soldiers and they were peasants too, all three had the same appearance, they looked like triplets except Cava’s face was yellowish. They came across the parade ground and everybody watched them. They turned and started marking time in front of the battalion, a few yards from the colonel and the lieutenants. I wondered why they went on marking time, then I realized the soldiers didn’t know what to do in front of the officers and nobody remembered to give them the command to halt. Finally Gamboa stepped forward and made a gesture with his hand and the three of them halted. The soldiers moved back and left Cava there in front of us all alone and he didn’t dare look at anybody, don’t take it so hard, buddy, the Circle’s with you, someday we’ll get revenge for you. I told myself, now he’ll start crying, don’t cry, peasant, don’t give those shits that satisfaction, stand up straight, don’t tremble, show them what a man is. Just be calm, it won’t take long, smile a little if you can, you’ll see how it burns them up. I had a feeling the whole section was a volcano just waiting to erupt. The colonel was talking again, squ
eaking things at the peasant to lower his morale, you have to have a twisted mind to make a guy suffer any more after they’d already punished him so much. The colonel gave him advice we could all hear, he told him to let this teach him a lesson, he even talked about the life of Leoncio Prado, how the hero said to the Chileans when they were going to execute him, “I wish to command the firing squad myself,” what a stupid fart. Then the bugle sounded and the Piranha went up to the peasant with his jaws working the way they do, and I thought, I’m going to cry with rage, and that damned Skimpy kept worrying my shoe and the cuff of my pants, I’ll get even with you, you bitch, you’re going to be sorry. Don’t break down now, peasant, this next part’s the worst but then you can get out of here, no more officers, no more confinements, no more guard duty. The peasant stayed motionless but he kept on getting paler, his skin’s dark but his face was turning white, even from a distance you could see how his chin was trembling. But he didn’t break down. He didn’t step back or start crying when the Piranha ripped the insignias off his cap and his lapels, then the emblem off his breast pocket, he left him in rags, and the bugle sounded again and the two soldiers got on either side of him and marched him away. The peasant could hardly lift up his feet. They crossed the parade ground and I had to twist my eyes to see them as they went away. The poor guy couldn’t keep in step, he just stumbled along, and every now and then he’d look down, I guess to see the way they wrecked his uniform. The soldiers lifted their feet smartly to make the colonel notice them. Then the wall hid them and I thought, you wait, Skimpy, keep on chewing my pants, your turn comes next, I’m going to pay you back, and they still didn’t tell us to fall out because the colonel was talking about the heroes again. You must be outside by now, peasant, waiting for the bus, looking at the Academy for the last time, don’t forget about us, and even if you do, the Circle’s still here to get even for you. And you aren’t a cadet any more, just another civilian, you can walk up to a lieutenant or a captain without saluting him, you don’t have to step out of his way or give him your seat. Come on, Skimpy, why don’t you jump up and bite my tie or my nose, do anything you want, make yourself right at home. The heat was terrible and the colonel kept on talking.