Red April

Saturday, April 22 / Sunday, April 23

we reeched the end. oh, ends are so sad. no. this is a happy end. its reely a new start, rite? you unnerstand. i can see it. i can see the choris of the ded greeting me, patting me on the back with there hands sweting with blood. itll be soon. we can play together, for eternity, in a new world, in a world of peepel who live ferever.

it wasnt always like this, you know? there was a time i thowt you cood live another way. but thats a lie. i was inosent. if historys going to come for us anyway, the best thing is to speed it up, forse it forward, control it. like we did to you. well be mirrers of the universe, sacrifises of flesh that skech the wake of time. itll be nise.

i like your sholders. there soft. the others will like you too. your the senter of everything, did you know that? all the parts will go to you, youll have a grate responsibility. i hope your up to it. did you ever do what im doing? its like cutting up a chicken, allways full of bones and things. but what you eat is the mussel. you dont eat the blood. thats a sin.

but dont let your mind wander. yesteday was the day of the sepulcher and today will be the day of glory. they stoped waving the black flags in the cathedrul. its a good day for you. tomorrow god will begin to resurrect. and sunday the sun will shine on a new world. all thanks to us. the world will know what we did. i made shure of that. itll be sad, because theyll come for me too because of that.

oh i dont like it eether. but grate changes are like that, there born of pane. i dont want you to think this is a punishment, no. its penitense. an act of convershun. we take our flesh and purify it until we turn it into lite, into eternal life, into something devine. well be angels, angels with sords of fire, the ones who watch the entrense to paradise. gardians of eden. do you like that? i like it. gardians of eden. ha. nobody will get in unless we test him first with our sharp, burning blades. well all be there, and well all be one and the same, multiplyd by the mirrers we are for each other. itll all end in our hands and itll all begin there. maybe some day we can overthrow god. and then nobodyll be able to stop us. forever and ever.

but for that, im telling you, theyll have to come for me first.

On Saturday, April 22, at nine in the morning, the prosecutor was awakened by the bells of the city's thirty-three churches announcing the resurrection and glory of Christ. At the same time, the police were pounding loudly, almost angrily, on his door. Before he opened it, he imagined what he would hear them say.

“We have orders from Captain Pacheco to take you to the examination of a body.”

As he washed quickly, he regretted having allowed Edith to escape. It had not occurred to him that her homicidal rage would continue unrestrained even after his warning. He reproached himself for his own weakness and stupidity. Above all, he reproached himself for having chosen that woman in particular. And still, the news had not surprised him. Perhaps he was growing accustomed to death. Before he went out, he had time to be surprised at not having been the last victim. He discovered he was almost wishing for that.

Outside, preparations were beginning for the end of Holy Week. On Acuchimay Hill, celebrants from Andahuaylas, Cangallo, and even Bolivia were gathering around the stands that sold handicrafts, chicha, fresh cheeses, gourds of pumpkin soup. Some drunks, bottles of cheap cane liquor still in their hands, were lying in the streets. Here and there were the globs of green spittle of those who chewed coca. There was also elegance. Notable citizens were going to the blessing of new fire and Easter candles in the cathedral. Some would spend the entire day at vigil masses. Others were beginning the celebratory transfer of the bulls to the old-age home and the prison. The guards had mentioned to the prosecutor that Olazábal had tried to prohibit the transfer of the bull for reasons of security, but his own men had wanted some kind of celebration in that dismal place.

The prosecutor was still drowsy. He was thinking how to formulate the charge against Edith in his report. In spite of everything, he would regret having to do it. It would be sad but necessary. But as they moved forward, he suddenly recognized the road they were taking. The progressive aging of the houses, the painfully modernized neighborhood, the edges of the city on the hill, the three-story building, the neighbor Dora, shattered, looking at him suspiciously from her window. After a few seconds of paralysis, he ran up the stairs to the third floor. The stairs creaked at each step as if they were going to collapse. Captain Pacheco stopped him at the door.

“I don't know if you should come in here,” he said.

He had to go in. He shoved the captain aside and crossed the threshold. The small room was almost entirely spattered with blood. The floor was covered with sheets of transparent plastic so that people could walk without leaving footprints, and go out with no blood on the soles of their shoes. On the only wall not completely covered in blood were scrawls of Senderista slogans, written with a pencil that the killer had dipped into the body lying on the bed. Body. It was not really a body. When the prosecutor approached the sheets — the sheets he had already stained with blood and sweat — he discovered that this time everything was reversed: two legs, two arms, a head. Piled on the bed, leaving the space for the trunk free. And nothing else. He still had a hope before he recognized, in the absolute red of the limbs, Edith's gleaming tooth and the luster, now vermilion, of her hair. He could not repress a long howl. He had to stop himself from stomping all over the room, destroying it, as if in this way he could destroy memory too. He had to go out to the staircase to vomit, to cry, to stomp his feet.

Half an hour later, he had recovered somewhat. At least he could see now without a red mist blurring his vision. A police officer showed him a faucet where he could wash his face. He did not know what to feel: rage, sorrow, frustration, self-pity … All these feelings were accumulating in his chest undefined.

When he went down, Captain Pacheco was waiting for him. Judge Briceño was there as well. His gaze was strange, distant. The prosecutor thought he must look pitiful. There had been no mirror at the faucet. He did not care. At this point he cared about very few things. Instinctively he tried to smooth back his hair, but without conviction. He tried to say something, but not a word came out of his mouth. The judge spoke:

“A slaughter, right?”

He nodded. He tried to get back to work. It made no sense, but perhaps it was one of those useless gestures that one makes, like smoothing back one's hair, like being horrified, like being afraid or crying, useless things we cannot avoid.

“Give me … give me the certificate of examination of the body. I'll sign it and be present at the autopsy if … if the pathologist can do anything with this.”

Pacheco and Briceño exchanged glances. The judge said:

“I'll take over the investigation. I don't know if you … are in any condition.”

“I'm in condition,” said the prosecutor, looking down at the ground. He tried to hold back his tears. “Edith was … a member of a terrorist cell. They killed her to keep her quiet. You just have to find her accomplices. There's … a very clear line of investigation to follow.”

Pacheco shook his head. He took off his kepi and turned it in his hands as he said:

“We already have a very clear line of investigation, Señor Prosecutor.”

The prosecutor stood there, waiting for the rest of the sentence. Since it did not come, he looked up. The looks of the other two were icy. Pacheco took out a notebook and read in the tone of an official report:

“Last night you were seen leaving El Huamanguino restaurant in the company of the victim. According to our information, you were visibly agitated. There are witnesses who affirm that the two of you were arguing. A good number of witnesses. Several of them state that you threatened her with a firearm in a public street. After that, she did not return to the restaurant. No one saw her alive again. What do you have to say?”

Nothing. He had nothing to say. Not even the sickly giggle that had afflicted him the day before at police headquarters came out now in his defense. The police coming toward him seemed surprised that he offered no resistance, that he let himself be dragged off like a toy in the wind, like a paper doll. They put him in a patrol car and took him out at police headquarters. They threw him in a cell the size of a closet. In a corner was a hole to be used as a toilet. He knew by the stink that he was far from the first one to occupy the cell. Scratched on the walls with pieces of stone there were still “vivas” to the people's war. He spent several hours there, trying to think of a solution, but it seemed there was nothing left to think about, that everything he needed to know was now beyond his thoughts. That afternoon, Pacheco himself interrogated him. It was not necessary to employ violence:

“Why don't you confess once and for all?” the captain asked. He seemed serene, protective, paternal. “We've sent the prints we found next to Quiroz's body to Lima. The results will be here on Tuesday, but they're not even necessary. There are more witnesses who saw you come out of the parish house carrying a weapon. And Edith Ayala's neighbor saw you crazed when you went into the girl's house the night before, immediately after the bloody acts you perpetrated at Heart of Christ. You're on the list of visitors to Hernán Durango, and Colonel Olazábal states that you offered to negotiate a promotion for him following the escape of the terrorist. We have obtained a report signed by you in which you declare that you made contact with Justino Mayta Carazo in clandestinity. That makes you the last person who claims to have seen him alive. From what we have observed, you carried out the investigation without informing us and wrote reports intended only to cover your back …”

Prosecutor Chacaltana responded to everything with vague movements of his head, like a senseless lump. For the first time, the captain lost patience.

“You've killed as if you were in your own home! Even the terrorists left fewer clues when they placed bombs!”

The prosecutor did not even look up. The captain recovered his serenity and continued:

“It's understandable, Chacaltana. It isn't justifiable, but it is understandable. Death floats in the air of this city. I've seen others like you lose their heads. But no one in the way you did. For now, you can be certain of life imprisonment, and thankful the death penalty was never enacted. Still, your regimen in prison can be made easier to the extent that you cooperate. Do me a favor, do yourself a favor …”

The prosecutor did not react. He seemed stupefied, beaten. The captain showed him some papers. They were the Senderista notes left on the bodies of Durango and Mayta.

“Let's go one step at a time,” he said. “Did you write these notes? You can tell me in confidence. Just tell me that. Did you write them?”

The prosecutor looked at the papers. He remembered the notes. He remembered the scrawls in Edith's room. The signature: Sendero Luminoso.

“You did it badly,” said the captain. “Very badly. Sendero never signed like that. They signed PCP, Peruvian Communist Party. Or they simply left their slogans: Long Live the People's War, Long Live President Gonzalo, that kind of thing. Hmm? How obvious it is that you didn't live here in the time of terrorism. Your efforts to throw us off wouldn't have convinced an eight-year-old. These papers don't help you. On the contrary, they work against you. And your methods. The Senderistas were savages, but they made a certain political sense. Do you understand? But what you did is slaughter plain and simple, Señor Prosecutor.”

For the first time, the prosecutor showed signs of responding. He moved his mouth, as if he had to get rid of the numbness in order to speak. Then he said, in an inaudible whisper:

“It wasn't Sendero?”

Pacheco, who'd had a moment of animation, seemed disappointed again.

“Señor Prosecutor, show us a little respect and stop acting like an imbecile. Confess everything once and for all and get it off your conscience. We'll bring you a statement, you'll sign it, and you'll be able to rest easy. After all, you're one of our own, Chacaltana. That will be taken into consideration, no one will hurt you.”

“It wasn't Sendero …,” the prosecutor repeated.

Now he did feel incompetent. All this time he had been following a dead end, pursuing ghosts, pursuing his own memories rather than a reality that was laughing at him. Then, only then, the light began to shine in his mind. Perhaps the light of the fire, perhaps the light of the burning torches on the hills, but a bright, intense light beginning to make its way through the darkness of his reason. He remembered Pacheco warning him about evil companions. This is a small town, everybody knows everything. They had been following him, they had always known where he was going, they had always known to whom he spoke. His eyes lit up. With recovered self-assurance, he asked:

“Did you say you have my reports? How is it that on Thursday you did not have the reports and now you do?”

“Excuse me?” said Pacheco. He still wore a peaceable smile.

“Why did you obstruct the entire investigation and suddenly take it over now?”

Pacheco's smile of superiority was disappearing from his face.

“Well, the departure of Carrión has left a gap in the city's security that …”

“Why was I free if witnesses incriminated me on Thursday and again on Friday night? Why didn't you come for me right away?”

Pacheco began to stammer. He had suddenly turned pale.

“The witnesses … well … the fact is …”

“You want to incriminate me. You want to incriminate me in this! You want to lock me away!”

“Chacaltana, calm down …”

Chacaltana did not calm down. He got up from the table and lunged at the captain. He grabbed him by the neck. Everything was so clear and so late. Now that he was lost, perhaps he would at least be able to take Pacheco to hell with him. He threw him to the floor and began to squeeze his neck, the way he remembered Mayta squeezing his. In the end, the killers are exchanging faces, he thought, they become confused with one another, they all turn into the same one, they multiply, like images in distorted mirrors. Pacheco tried to throw him off, but the prosecutor was too enraged. The captain was turning purple when the prosecutor felt the blow to his head. He tried to squeeze a little more as he felt himself losing consciousness, sinking into sleep, while everything around him turned into the same, single darkness.

The last dream Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar had before what subsequently occurred was very different from all his previous ones: there was no fire or blood or blows. There was only an enormous, peaceful field, an Andean landscape, perhaps. And a body lying in the middle of it. Little by little, slowly at first, then with increasing agility, the body was getting up until it stood on its feet. Then it could be seen clearly. A body made of different parts, a Frankenstein sewn with steel threads that did not close the seams very well, for clots and scabs were dripping from them. It had two different legs, and the arms did not correspond either. It had a woman's trunk. The sight of the body was macabre, but it did not seem to have a violent attitude. It limited itself to standing and recognizing itself gradually as it became aware of itself. What really startled the prosecutor came only at the end of the vision, when the monster finished standing, and on its shoulders the prosecutor saw his own head, trapped on that body he had not chosen, before the light became more and more intense until it blinded him completely in a luminous white darkness.

Then he awoke. Beside him, the bars of the cubicle were open. Two police officers extended their hands toward him and dragged him out. They shoved him into the captain's office and threw him at Pacheco's feet. The prosecutor thought that everything was over, that he would not even deserve a trial, that they would simply take him to one of the graves and that would be the end. Case closed, no terrorists here, and nothing ever happened. He thought about the grave almost with relief as he raised his head toward his captor.

“You have powerful friends, Señor Prosecutor,” said Pacheco. “Who's in this with you?”

The prosecutor did not understand the question. The captain looked furious.

“I shouldn't ask, right? Sometimes there are so many things you shouldn't ask that you no longer know which ones you can ask. Sometimes, Señor Prosecutor, I wonder who we're working for. Especially when I see you.”

The prosecutor began to stand. It seemed, in fact, that the body he inhabited was not his, that it was made of other people's parts, that someone had lent it to him to use like a marionette.

“Is it an Intelligence matter?” the captain asked again. “That's it, isn't it?”

The prosecutor did not respond. The captain seemed satisfied by his silence.

“Get out,” he said.

“What?”

He was certain he had misheard.

“Get out, I said! There's no record of your being here, Señor Prosecutor. You never came here. But know I won't be responsible for this, Chacaltana. And at the first opportunity, I'll cut you down. Take him away.”

Chacaltana tried to protest but did not know what to protest about. Then it occurred to him to ask something. Again, he did not know what. He let himself be dragged by the same officers to the door. The noise on the street seemed like a distant, vague memory. When they let him go on the corner of the square, his own legs felt strange, as if he had to grow accustomed to them. He wondered if the odor of punch and the sound of bands on the square were the sound of heaven. Or of hell.

He walked to his house. His whole body ached. When he arrived, he hurried to his mother's bedroom. He gathered all the photographs and placed them on the bed. Then he lit candles in the four corners of the room, as if he were performing a ceremony for his mother. He kneeled beside the bed and kissed the sheets. He caressed the wood of the canopy. He wept.

“I know what has happened, Mamacita. I know what they have done to me. A body is missing, you know? Tomorrow is Easter Sunday. And the head is missing. I am the head, Mamacita. Tonight they are going to kill me.”

He stayed there for several hours, wondering what death was like. Perhaps it was not all that terrible. Perhaps it was a soft bed with a wooden canopy. Perhaps it was simply nothing. Living in no one's memory, because everybody you knew was dead. He wondered when his killers would come for him. It was after midnight. He wondered if he would be safer in the cell at police headquarters. He laughed weakly at his own idea. He waited for them impatiently. He imagined the saw that would cut his neck. He thought of it passing with difficulty through his vertebrae, his veins. At a certain moment he grew annoyed, he wanted them to come and be done with it. He spent some time meditating, remembering isolated, chaotic images of his mother smiling at him, advising him, embracing him, waiting for him there where she was, where she had always been, in the fire. When he evoked the image of his mother emerging from the flames, an idea took shape in his mind. Perhaps all was not lost. Perhaps there was a place where he could be safe. Only one, the last one. He made a decision. Before acting on it, he kissed all the photographs of his mother one by one, in a kind of long, affectionate farewell on the sheets. Affectionately, he put out each of her candles. Then, with new energy, he returned to his room, took out the weapon, loaded it, placed it in the holster under his arm, and went out. He felt that perhaps he would not die that night.

He walked through the street festivities like a zombie, brushing against people who were dancing and singing. Sometimes those who saw him approach moved aside to let him pass. He understood that he did not look clean and decent. He did not think about it anymore. After walking for about ten minutes, he reached military headquarters. Perhaps because of the celebration, there were no guards at the door. And he did not see anyone inside. He pressed the intercom and the commander opened the door for him from his office. He sounded pleased to hear him. The prosecutor crossed the gloomy courtyard and climbed the wooden stairs that creaked beneath his feet. When he reached Commander Carrión's office, he went in without knocking. The commander was inside, packing a suitcase. When he saw the prosecutor, his face contracted into an expression of shock:

“Chacaltana. What the hell happened to you?”

“Don't you know?”

“Nobody tells me anything anymore, Chacaltana. My retirement has broken speed records.”

He said it sadly. He felt nostalgia in advance for the Ayacuchan horror. Chacaltana took a few steps forward and caught a glimpse of his reflection in a mirror in the office. He really did look awful. As if he had come out of a sewer. Or a mass grave.

“They accused me of the murders,” the prosecutor explained, “and then they let me go again. Strange, isn't it? These weeks have been very strange.”

“I know. They haven't been easy for me.”

The prosecutor noticed the things the commander was putting in the suitcase. Photographs, papers, old albums of his military promotions. Memories. Only memories. Outside was the sound of fireworks and voices and singing, but dim, as if it came from another world. The commander went to the window and looked at the festivities. He closed the curtain.

“Sendero did not do the killings,” said the prosecutor. He had not sat down. “Did you know that? It seemed … but no.”

The commander smiled faintly.

“I was afraid of that. Sometimes I think it's better that I've been retired. I won't be the one bearing the weight of all this. Is there some new line of investigation?”

The commander lit a cigarette. He offered one to the prosecutor, who declined.

“There is something, yes,” he replied.

The commander exhaled smoke while he waited for the prosecutor to explain. The prosecutor had an absent gaze, as if he were seeing fireworks through the blinds.

“And?” asked the commander. “Don't leave me like this. Whom do you suspect?”

The prosecutor seemed to return to himself. Then he said:

“You, Commander.”

The commander laughed, as if he appreciated the joke. Then he realized that the prosecutor was not joking.

“I think … I don't understand,” he said.

“Neither do I, Commander. I thought you would explain it to me.”

The commander took some papers from his desk without losing his composure. Chacaltana had seen that they were all written in lower-case letters and filled with spelling errors. The commander closed the suitcase and said:

“I'm afraid you're making a mistake …”

“You were the only one who could have sent my reports to the police, because you were the only one who had them, Commander.” The prosecutor's voice had risen in volume and authority. “You were also the only one aware of all my movements. And the only one interested in wiping out your own past, the 1980s. Pacheco was posted to Ayacucho much later, and the only thing he wanted was to get out. Just like Briceño, just like everybody.”

Commander Carrión took a long drag on his cigarette. His eyes pierced the prosecutor. Now they were like the eyes of Edith's parents in the photographs. The prosecutor continued:

“You sent me to Yawarmayo so that Justino could get me out of the way. But Justino failed. He was so terrorized he could not even kill an unarmed, cowardly man like me. Besides, he talked too much. What he really wanted was to accuse you. Then you killed him too and decided to hand over the investigation to me in secret to keep me quiet and, in the process, get rid of everyone who could ever incriminate you: Quiroz, Durango … In the end you would incriminate me … or to make certain of my silence you would kill me too, as you planned to do tonight. That is why you ordered the police to let me go. Here no one says no to a top military officer, even if he is retiring. Lima knows everything, the Intelligence Service is aware of what you have done. But it's an old story, isn't it? When the pus spurts out, they retire you or transfer you. Nobody touches a military officer. It's what they did with Lieutenant Cáceres.”

“Cáceres was an animal!” said Carrión, suddenly losing his patience. “Everything was fine, everything was quiet until that shit came back from Jaén. He said they kept him behind a desk. He said he was a war hero, that he had risked his life for this country. He wanted to be recognized. He's the biggest killer we've had. And he wanted us to build him a monument, the son of a bitch! He assumed the right to organize civilian defense militias. Defense against what?”

“Maybe against all of you.”

The commander seemed larger now and was breathing hard, like a wounded animal. He ignored the interruption:

“He left us no alternative. He was reviving old phantoms. The population realized that. The Senderistas in Yawarmayo were more agitated than ever. It wouldn't take long for some opposition shit to let the press know that the lieutenant had returned to Ayacucho. Or even worse, there would be a terrorist attempt during the elections and Holy Week. If that happened, we'd be done for. I tried talking to Cáceres, I tried explaining things to him, I tried calming him down. Cáceres was my friend, Chacaltana, we had fought together. Do you know what it means to hurt a friend? I understood what he was feeling. I felt the same way! We shed blood for this country!”

“But that blood was not yours, Commander.”

“Don't interrupt me, damn it!” he shouted. Then he paused to calm down. It was a sad pause, dedicated perhaps to his old dead friend. “It was easy to convince Justino Mayta to get rid of the lieutenant for us. No soldier would have killed another soldier.”

The prosecutor thought: No soldier except you.

“Justino, on the other hand,” the commander continued, “remembered very well the police coming into his house. And he wanted to avenge his brother. He believed … he believed his brother was acting through him, that he was like the hand of God. Some religious shit. That stupid man was very devout. It occurred to him to use Quiroz's oven to disappear the body. And Quiroz agreed, because he also had a great deal to lose if Cáceres talked. It was all a disaster from the outset. The oven was so old that it fucking broke down halfway through the burning. Quiroz and Justino didn't stop shouting at each other. We had to pull out the scorched body, take it to Quinua, and leave it there. Even after that we thought everything would stay calm and nothing would happen. Everything was going to be fine. It would end there. But you showed up and everybody got nervous. Quiroz wanted to throw suspicion on Justino. Justino didn't even know what he wanted. They had to be silenced. Just like Durango … There was no way to know what you talked about with Durango … Or with your girlfriend, that lousy terrorist.”

His last words cut Chacaltana like a knife.

“Edith Ayala wasn't a terrorist, you son of a bitch.”

“It doesn't matter now, Chacaltana. She isn't anything now. You handed her over to us. After the scene you made last night, it was very easy for me to finish her off. I even thought I was doing you a favor because you didn't have the courage.”

The commander's gaze was not repentant but defiant, like a sudden blaze or a gust of wind. The prosecutor thought about him, Durango, Justino, Cáceres, Quiroz. Murderers killing murderers. Killers exterminating one another, a spiral of fire that would not stop until we were all one, one single giant of blood. But not Edith. Not her at all. He thought of her remains scattered on the bed. He thought of her entire body surrendered in that same bed, forced, broken in advance.

“You are a monster, Carrión. Even if what you say is true. Why like this? Wasn't a bullet in the back of the neck enough for you? Wasn't that the usual method?”

The commander darkened his gaze. He showed him the papers he held in his hand.

“I've written down everything. I've explained everything.”

Chacaltana took the papers and tried to read. But there was nothing to understand in them. Only incoherence. Barbarity. Not simply spelling errors, it was everything. There is no error in chaos, and in those papers not even the syntax made sense. Chacaltana had spent his entire life among ordered words, Chocano's poems, legal codes, sentences numbered or organized into verses. Now he did not know what to do with a heap of words thrown haphazardly at reality. The world could not follow the logic of those words. Or perhaps it was just the opposite, perhaps reality was simply like that and all the rest was pretty stories, like colored beads designed to distract and pretend that things have some meaning.

The commander lowered his voice. He had a new gaze, one the prosecutor had never seen. He said:

“It's clear, isn't it? Now do you understand? Do you need more explanations?”

The prosecutor wondered if he could be the one who read in twisted lines. If his reports were the ones that lacked meaning. If perhaps Carrión's papers were the truly legible ones but he no longer was capable of understanding them. Then he thought of Edith and realized that in reality it no longer mattered.

“There is no explanation for what you have done,” he said.

As Carrión walked slowly to his desk, the prosecutor moved his hand toward his weapon. The commander said:

“I didn't want it, little Chacaltita. I didn't want it to be this way. They forced me.”

“Who?”

Now the commander twisted beside the desk, fell to the floor, and his eyes filled with tears. He was trembling.

“Don't you see them, Chacaltita? Is it possible you don't see them? They're everywhere. They're always here.”

Then Chacaltana saw them. In fact, he had been seeing them for a year. All the time. And now the blindfold fell from his eyes. Their mutilated bodies crowded together around him, their chests, split open from top to bottom, reeked of the grave and death. There were thousands and thousands of corpses, not only there in the commander's office but throughout the city. He understood then that they were the dead who sold him newspapers, drove the buses, made handicrafts, served him food. There were no other inhabitants in Ayacucho; even those who came from elsewhere died. But there were so many dead that by now no one could acknowledge it. He knew a year too late that he had come to hell and would never leave. The commander continued speaking in a cavernous, guttural voice:

“They asked me not to spill blood in vain, Chacaltana, and I didn't: a terrorist, a soldier, a peasant, a woman, a priest. Now they're all together. They form part of the body demanded by all those who died before. Do you understand? They'll help to construct the history, recover the greatness, so that even the mountains tremble when they see our work. At the beginning of the eighties we promised to resist the bloodbath. Those who have been sacrificed recently have not died. They live and feel in us. Only one more is needed to make the earth shudder, the prairie burn, the world turn upside down. Only the head is missing …”

He disappeared behind his desk. The prosecutor took out the pistol. He aimed in his direction. At that moment no image made his hand shake. It was as if all his bad dreams had come to an end.

“Get away from the desk, damn it!”

The commander peered out and suddenly smiled, as if he thought everything was amusing and original.

“I see you're using my weapon. Are you getting used to it?”

“Raise your hands and move back. If I don't blow your head off right now it's only because you didn't act alone. I want you to tell me who your accomplice is — or who they are. And I want you to tell me before I lose my patience, because after that you won't be able to say anything.”

The commander remained motionless beside the window. His hands were raised, more in an ironic gesture than in surrender. The smile had not left his face.

“To tell the truth,” he replied, “my best accomplice was you.”

At that moment, the lights in the office went out. The prosecutor tried to look through the half-open door. He did not even know where the door was. The blackout affected the entire building. The blinds were closed.

“Who's out there? Who turned out the light?”

In the dark he heard the voice of the commander.

“You must feel a little guilty, Chacaltana. All the people you talk to die. That's very bad.”

He heard a drawer open and close. He fired toward the place the sound came from. For a moment, the darkness of the empty building returned only the echo of the bullet. Then he heard Carrión's voice again:

“After all, it isn't the first time you've killed, is it? Perhaps that's why I've enjoyed all of this so much. It's a game between equals.”

He moved the weapon toward the voice, but the commander moved constantly. He wanted to follow him. He wanted to speak to him in order to track his voice, though that would also reveal his own position:

“What the hell are you talking about?”

When he bumped into a lintel he realized he was going through a door. The voice seemed to be very close, but it rebounded all around him in the open space of the building.

“Why don't you ever talk about your father, Señor Prosecutor?”

He leaned against a wall. He was afraid. Suddenly, the memory of his dreams was projected on the darkness. He heard the commander again:

“I knew your father.”

“I never had a father.”

The prosecutor felt a tremor coming from his stomach.

“We all had one, Señor Prosecutor. Often they turn out to be motherfuckers, but that's no obstacle to paternity. Yours was almost better than mine.”

The prosecutor fired. He heard a board creak. He supposed they were out of the office, near the stairs. The commander continued:

“Yours was a soldier too. A handsome young man, a white man. He married a very sweet girl from Cuzco. I know she's always present for you.”

“That's enough, Carrión. Shut up!”

“Why? Do stories of the dead frighten you? Because he's dead. The living ought to frighten you more. And you also must have known that he was dead. You must have known that very well.”

The prosecutor stumbled on a step and fell. Four steps down he managed to grab the banister. He got up aiming in front of him, not knowing what was before him or behind. Now he was trembling. The blows from the staircase did not hurt as much as those from his memory.

“Now do you remember?”

“Be quiet, Carrión! That's enough!”

“He was something of an animal, that young man. A good kid, except when he drank. Then he became difficult. You weren't so little that you've forgotten …”

The prosecutor fired again. Now he heard a piece of plaster fall off the wall.

“Your mother suffered a good deal when he got like that … Especially because he was a … let's say … a violent drunk. You didn't like it either. But in those days one didn't object to a husband, and you weren't old enough to return the blows. Isn't that right? There were too many blows. Whole rainstorms of bruises. He broke your mother's arm twice. You almost lost an eye. Remember?”

Now the images came one after the other in the prosecutor's mind. As if he were rebelling after decades of being forgotten, his father appeared before him. His twisted smile, his alcohol breath, the blows, the blows, his belt, his fist, the blows.

“He doesn't exist … He no longer exists …”

“You were a smart kid. And there were kerosene lamps in your house. Or maybe oil. One of those flammable things that always has a flame burning. Let's be frank, the supply of electricity in Ayacucho was always pretty unreliable.”

“That isn't so … It's not true!”

The prosecutor did not know if the commander's voice came from one floor or another. Now it came from everywhere, from inside himself, from the dark.

“Did you enjoy it as I've enjoyed it, Chacaltana? Did you like it? He was too busy kicking her to see what the boy was doing, the boy he thought was retarded. Were those his words?”

“Leave me in peace!”

But the whirlwind of memories was not going to leave him in peace. It would never leave him in peace.

“Do you realize what you did, Chacaltana? And how you ran away? You didn't even go back to hear your mother's screams, you didn't take a risk even for her. You only ran, you ran wherever your legs took you, and you got to Lima, far away, very far away, where the cries of Señora Saldívar de Chacaltana wouldn't reach you. But the dead don't die, little Chacaltita. They keep screaming forever, demanding a change. And now when we're about to change everything, you don't like it. Now when only one more life has to be given, you find it repugnant. You'll give a life, Chacaltana. And after you give it, you can be at peace. It will all have ended. You won't have to worry anymore.”

“Noooooo!”

The rest was a matter of a second. Perhaps a thread of air, the slight vibration a body produces when it moves through space. Perhaps for Chacaltana it was an intuition. He turned, still shouting, and emptied the magazine of the pistol into the body he felt close by. Again and again and again he pulled the trigger, as if his entire life were devoted to that, as if he alone waged war against the killers, as if the pistol were a machine gun in a helicopter, or a two-man saw, until he sensed he was no longer shooting, because he was out of bullets or simply because nothing was breathing on the other side.

He spent another hour crouched on the staircase, afraid to reload the weapon or move, afraid he would hear Carrión's voice again.

But that did not happen.

The prosecutor breathed heavily and heard no other breathing in the air. Outside, he could hear the songs of Easter Sunday that he had heard so often. He felt along the wall until he reached one of the windows and opened it. In the light that filtered in from the street and the fireworks, he saw Carrión lying on the landing. The shots had pierced a lung, his forehead, a kidney, and a leg. When he approached to inspect the body, he discovered that the commander was not carrying a weapon. Commander Carrión had not been trying to kill him in this final duel. He had merely walked to his death, just like the others, just like all of us. The head of the monster was his. Now his work was done.

Wiping away his tears, the prosecutor walked out to the street. At each corner of the crowded square, the previous Sunday's branches were burning. In the cathedral, the imposing white pyramid of the Resurrection was about to appear at the door, to the accompaniment of fireworks. It carried lighted candles on each of its steps. The prosecutor was lost in the crowd. Slowly, from the interior of the pyramid, the resurrected Christ emerged to the applause of the people. More than three hundred of them began to pass the platform from shoulder to shoulder around the square. When the platform reached his shoulders, Chacaltana crossed himself and said a silent prayer. In the background, between the dry hills, the sun intimated the first light of a new time.