The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta

Nine

The community of Quero is one of the most ancient in Junín province. Today, the people of Quero — just as they did twenty-five years ago and probably just as they did centuries ago — grow potatoes, beans, and coca. They pasture their cattle on mountains which can be reached from Jauja by following a steep trail. If the rains don’t turn the road into a swamp, the trip takes a couple of hours. The potholes make the pickup seem like a bucking bronco, but the countryside more than makes up for the rough ride: a deep pass, bound at each end by twin mountains, paralleled by a foamy, rushing river whose name changes — first it’s called Molinos, and then, nearer to the town, Quero. Luxuriant cinchonas, their leaves made even greener by the morning dew, line the route toward the little town that stretches out along the pass. We go in at about eleven.

In Jauja, I heard contradictory versions of what took place in Quero. The town itself is in a war zone and in recent years has been the scene of innumerable attacks, executions, and large-scale operations by both the rebels and counterinsurgency forces. According to some, Quero was under rebel control and its plaza was fortified. Others said the army had an artillery company stationed there, as well as a training camp complete with U.S. advisers. One person was sure I’d never be allowed to enter Quero, because the army uses it as a concentration camp and torture center. “That’s where they bring prisoners from all over the Mantaro Valley to make them talk. They use the most up-to-date methods. When they’ve finished with the prisoners, they take them up in helicopters and drop them out over the jungle to terrorize the Reds, who are supposedly watching from below.”

Tales. In Quero, there’s not a sign of either insurgents or soldiers. I’m not surprised that reality contradicts these rumors. Information in this country has ceased to be objective and has become pure fantasy — in newspapers, radio, television, and ordinary conversation. “To report” among us now means either to interpret reality according to our desires or fears, or to say simply what is convenient. It’s an attempt to make up for our ignorance of what’s going on — which in our heart of hearts we understand is irremediable and definitive. Since it is impossible to know what’s really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream, and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.

The real Quero, where I’m walking around now, bears no resemblance to its image in the fictions I’ve heard. You see not a trace of war or combatants (of either side) anywhere. Why is the town deserted? I supposed that all eligible men would have been conscripted either by the army or by the guerrillas, but, as a matter of fact, you don’t see old men or boys either. They must be working in the fields or inside their houses. Probably they get scared whenever an outsider walks into town. As I stroll through the little church, built in 1946, with its stone tower and tile roof, and wander around the gazebo in the center of the plaza, surrounded by cypress and eucalyptus trees, I get the feeling it’s a ghost town. Could it have had the same image that morning when the revolutionaries rolled in?

“The sun was shining brightly, and the plaza was full of people, because it was the time for communal labor,” don Eugenio Fernández Cristóbal assures me, as he points his cane at the sky filled with ashen clouds. “I was here in the square. They came right around that corner over there. About this time of day, more or less.”

Don Eugenio was justice of the peace in Quero at that time. Now he’s retired. What’s extraordinary is that after all those events in which he was absolutely and totally involved — at least since Vallejos, Mayta, Condori, Zenón Gonzales, and their following of seven children arrived here — he went back to his judicial functions and lived several years more in Quero, finally retiring. Now he lives on the outskirts of Jauja. Despite all the apocalyptic tales about the region, I didn’t have to ask him twice to go with me to Quero. “I always liked adventure,” he tells me. And I didn’t have to ask him twice to tell what he remembered about that day, the most important in his long life. He answers my questions quickly and with absolute certitude, even with regard to insignificant details. He never doubts, never contradicts himself, and leaves no loose threads that might call his memory into question. Not an easy game for an octogenarian who, besides, I have no doubt, hides some things from me and lies about many others. What exactly was his part in the adventure? No one knows for sure. Does he know himself, or does the version he’s cooked up convince him as well?

“I took no notice, because it wasn’t odd for pickups carrying people from Jauja to come to Quero. They parked right over there, next to Tadeo Canchis’s house. They asked where they could eat. They were very hungry.”

“And you didn’t notice that they were all armed, don Eugenio? That, besides the weapon each one had, there were rifles in the truck?”

“I asked them if they were going hunting,” don Eugenio says. “Because this is not a good season for deer hunting, lieutenant.”

“We’re just going to do a little target practice, doctor,” he says Vallejos told him. Up on the pampa.

“Wasn’t it perfectly normal for some boys from the Colegio San José to come here for training?” don Eugenio asks himself. “Weren’t they taking military training courses? Wasn’t the lieutenant a soldier? The explanation seemed more than satisfactory to me.”

“I’ll tell you something. Until we got here, I hadn’t given up hope.”

“That the Ricrán guys would be waiting for us with horses?” Vallejos smiled.

“And Shorty Ubilluz, too, with the miners,” confessed Mayta. “I still had my hopes.”

He looked over Quero’s small, green plaza a couple of times, as if trying to make the missing men appear by an act of will. His brow was furrowed and his mouth trembled. A bit farther on, Condori and Zenón Gonzales were talking with some people from the community. The joeboys stayed by the truck, keeping an eye on the Mausers.

“A real knife in the back,” he added, in a barely audible voice.

“Unless some accident held them up on the highway,” said the justice of the peace, standing next to him.

“There was no accident. They aren’t here because they didn’t want to be here,” said Mayta. “What else could you expect? Why waste time feeling sorry about what they’ve done. They didn’t come and that’s that, what’s the big deal?”

“That’s the spirit.” Vallejos clapped him on the back. “Better on our own than in bad company, damn it.”

Mayta made an effort. He’d have to shake off this depression. Let’s get to work, get the horses and mules, buy supplies, get going. Only one idea should be in your head, Mayta: Cross the mountains and get to Uchubamba. There, out of danger, they would be able to recruit men and calmly go over their strategy. On the road, while he was standing in the pickup, his mountain sickness had disappeared. But now, in Quero, as he began to move around, he felt the pressure in his temples again, the same accelerated heart rate, the same dizziness, the same vertigo. He tried to cover it up as he walked through Quero, Vallejos on one side, the justice of the peace on the other, trying to find people who would rent them pack animals. Condori and Zenón Gonzales, who knew people in the village, went to get something to eat and to buy supplies. Cash, of course.

They should have held a meeting here to explain the insurrection to the peasants. But, without even talking it over with Vallejos, he rejected the idea. After this morning’s failure he didn’t want to remind the lieutenant of it. Why was he so depressed? He just couldn’t shake it off. The euphoria he’d felt on the road had kept him from thinking over the day’s events. But now he reviewed their situation again and again: four adults and seven adolescents hell-bent on putting plans into action that fell apart with each step they took. This is defeatism, Mayta, the road to failure. Like a machine, remember. He smiled and tried to show he understood what the justice of the peace and the lady who owned the house where they had stopped were saying in Quechua. You should have learned Quechua instead of French.

“They screwed themselves by staying here so long.” Don Eugenio takes one last drag from the minuscule butt of his cigarette. How long did they stay? At least two hours. They got here around ten and left after twelve.

He really should say, “We left.” Didn’t he go with them? But don Eugenio, eighty years of age and all, commits not the slightest lapse that might even suggest that he was an accomplice of the rebels. We are in the gazebo in the center of the plaza, besieged by an impertinent rain the gray, hunchback clouds pour over the town. An intense, rapid cloudburst, followed by the most beautiful rainbow. When the sky clears, there always remains a light, imperceptible drizzle, the kind we get all the time in Lima, which makes the grass in the Quero plaza glisten.

Little by little, the people who still live there emerge. They appear from out of the houses like unreal figures — Indian women lost under multiple skirts, babies wearing hats, ancient peasants wearing sandals. They come over to say hello to don Eugenio, to embrace him. Some leave after exchanging a few words with him; others remain with us. They listen to him recall that episode of times past, at times nodding slightly; at other times, they interpolate brief comments. But when I try to find out how things are now, they all lapse into an unbreachable silence. Or they lie: they haven’t seen soldiers or guerrillas, and know nothing about the war. As I supposed, there is not a single man or woman of fighting age among them. With his vest buttoned up tight, his wool cap pulled down to his eyes, and with the shoulders of his shiny old jacket too wide for his body, the old justice of the peace of Quero looks like a character out of a book, a gnome who’s lost his way among these Andean peaks. His voice has a metallic quality, as if he were speaking from inside a tunnel.

“Why did they stay so long in Quero?” he asks himself, his thumbs stuck in the buttonholes of his vest. He observes the sky as if the answer were in the clouds. Because they had a hard time getting the pack animals. These people here can’t rent out the animals they need for work just like that. No one wanted to rent, even though they were willing to pay top dollar. Finally they convinced the widow, doña Teofrasia Soto de Almaraz. By the way, what became of doña Teofrasia? There’s a murmur, some remarks in Quechua, and one of the women crosses herself. Ah, she died. In the bombing? So the guerrillas had been here after all. Damn. Had they gone already? Did many die? Why did they put doña Teofrasia’s son on trial?

Thanks to don Eugenio’s marginal comments in Spanish during his conversation in Quechua with the townspeople, I begin sorting out the episode that obliquely reintroduces the present into Mayta’s story. The guerrillas were in Quero and had “meted out justice” to several people, doña Teofrasia’s son among them. But they had already gone their way, when a plane flew over the town, strafing the place. Among the victims was doña Teofrasia, who, when she heard the plane, had gone out to see what it looked like. She died in the doorway of the church.

“What a sad way to go,” comments don Eugenio. She lived right down this street. Hunchbacked and a bit of a witch, according to local gossip. Well, it was she who accepted their offer after letting them plead with her. But her animals were out in the pasture, and it took her more than an hour to round them up. At the same time, they were held up by the food. I told you already, they were hungry, and they ordered lunch over at Gertrudis Sapollacu’s place — she had a little inn and rented rooms.

“So they were sure of themselves.”

“The police almost caught them with bowls of chicken soup in front of them,” don Eugenio agrees.

The chronology is clear enough. Everyone agrees. An hour after things had calmed down, the busload of Civil Guards from Huancayo, commanded by a lieutenant named Silva and a corporal named Lituma, arrived at Jauja. They stopped briefly in the city to get a guide and to pick up Lieutenant Dongo and the guards under his command. The chase began immediately.

“And how is it you went with them, sir,” I ask him point-blank, just to see if I can rattle him.

The lieutenant tried to get him to stay in Quero. Mayta listed the reasons why he should come with them. They needed someone to act as bridge between the city and the country, especially now, after all that had happened. They had to set up auxiliary networks, recruit people, get information. He was the right man for the job. All the arguing was useless. Vallejos’s orders and Mayta’s entreaties were obliterated by the resolve of the diminutive lawyer. No, gentlemen, I’m no fool, I’m not going to wait around here for the police so I can pay the piper. He was going with them whether they liked it or not. The polite exchange of ideas turned into an altercation. The voices of Vallejos and the justice of the peace grew louder, and in the somber room reeking of grease and garlic, Mayta noticed that Condori, Zenón Gonzales, and the joeboys had stopped eating to listen. It was unwise to let the argument turn bitter. They had enough problems already, and there were too few of them for internal squabbles.

“It’s not worthwhile arguing like this, comrades. If the doctor insists on coming, let him come.”

He was afraid the lieutenant would contradict him, but Vallejos chose instead to eat his lunch. The justice did the same, and in a few minutes the air was clear. Vallejos had posted cadet commander Cordero Espinoza out on a hill to keep an eye on the road as they ate. The stop in Quero was growing longer, and as he nibbled smoked pieces of chicken, Mayta told himself it was foolish to be taking so long.

“We really should be getting out of here.”

Vallejos agreed, glancing at his watch, but he continued eating unhurriedly. Mayta knew inwardly that he was right. Yes, what a bother it was to stand up, to stretch your legs, limber up your muscles, run out to the hills, and walk — for how many hours? What if he fainted from mountain sickness? They’d put him on a mule, like a sack. It was ridiculous to be bothered by this illness. He felt as if mountain sickness were a luxury unacceptable in a revolutionary. But the physical discomfort was very real: shivers, headaches, a generalized lassitude. And, worst of all, that pounding in his chest.

He was relieved to see that Vallejos and the justice of the peace were chatting animatedly. How to explain why the Ricrán people were scared off? Did they have a meeting yesterday to decide not to come? Did Shorty Ubilluz order them not to come? It would be an incredible coincidence for Ubilluz, the miners, and the Ricrán men all to have decided to back out independently, without talking to each other. Was this of any importance now, Mayta? Not the slightest. Later it would be, when history demanded a reckoning and established the truth. (But I, in this case, am history, and I know that things aren’t that simple, that time doesn’t always let the truth come out. About this specific matter, the last-minute absences, there is no way of knowing with absolute certainty whether the missing men deserted or if the protagonists went into action ahead of time, or if it all turned out to be the result of a misunderstanding about dates, days, and hours. And there is no way of setting the record straight, because even the actors don’t know the facts.)

He swallowed the last mouthful and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. The semi-darkness in the room had at first hidden the flies, but now he could see them. They formed a constellation on the walls and ceiling, and they strolled arrogantly over the plates of food and the fingers of those eating. All the houses in Quero had to be like that: no light, no running water, no drainage, and no bath. Flies, lice, and a thousand other bugs must be part of the poor furniture, lords and masters of pots and pelts, of the rustic beds pushed up against the daub-and-wattle walls, of the faded images of the Virgin and of saints nailed to the doors. If they had to pee at night, they probably wouldn’t feel like getting up and going outside. They pee right here, next to the bed where they sleep and the stove where they cook. After all, the floor is just dirt, and dirt soaks up urine, leaving no trace. And the smell doesn’t matter much because it disappears, mixed in with the other smells, thickening the multiple smells of garbage and filth that make up the household atmosphere. And if at midnight they had to shit? Would they have enough energy to go out into the darkness and the cold, the wind and the rain? They’d shit right here, between the stove and the bed.

As they walked in, the lady of the house, an old Indian woman all wrinkly and rheumy, with two long pigtails that bounced off her shoulders as she walked, put some cavies that had been walking loose in the room in a corner behind a trunk. Did the animals sleep with her, cuddled up against her old body in search of warmth? How many months, how many years had that lady been wearing those skirts she had on, which no doubt had grown old with her? How long had it been since she had washed herself from head to toe with soap? Months? Years? Had she ever done it in her entire life? The dizziness of the mountain sickness disappeared, replaced by sadness.

Yes, Mayta, millions of Peruvians lived in this same grime, in this same abandonment, amid their own urine and excrement, without light or water, living the same vegetable life, the same animal routine, the same elemental existence that this woman was living. This woman with whom, despite his efforts, he hadn’t been able to exchange more than a few words, because she barely knew any Spanish. Just looking around here justified what they had done and what they were going to do, didn’t it? When Peruvians like this woman came to understand that they did have power, that all they had to do was become aware of it and use it, the whole pyramid of exploitation, servitude, and horror that was Peru would collapse like a rotten roof. When they understood that by rebelling they would finally begin to humanize their inhuman lives, the revolution would be unstoppable.

“Get ready, we’re moving out,” said Vallejos, standing up. “Let’s load the rifles.”

They all hustled out to the street. Mayta felt uplifted again as he passed from the darkness to the light. He went to help the joeboys remove the rifles from the pickup and tie them on to the mules. In the plaza, the Indians went on buying and selling, uninterested in them.

“They convinced me in the simplest way,” says don Eugenio, with a mournful expression, pitying his own credulity. “Lieutenant Vallejos explained to me that, besides training the boys, he was going to hand the Aína hacienda over to the Uchubamba commune. Remember, Condori was president of the commune, and Zenón Gonzales vice president. Why shouldn’t I believe him? There had been problems in Aína for months. The commune there had occupied the hacienda lands and claimed them, using colonial titles as their proof of ownership. Wasn’t the lieutenant a military authority in the province? I had to do my duty, I wasn’t a justice for nothing, you know. So, and mind you the hike was no laughing matter — I was around sixty at the time — I went with them willingly. Wasn’t it the natural thing to do?”

You’d certainly say it was, to hear the naturalness with which he says it. The sun has come out. Don Eugenio’s face glows.

“You must have been really surprised when the shooting began.”

“You’d better believe it,” he says without hesitation. “It began just after we left, when we went into Huayjaco gulch.”

He frowns — his eyelids wrinkle, his eyebrows bristle — and his eyes turn watery. It must be the effect of the glare. I can’t imagine the former justice of the peace weeping tears of nostalgia over what happened that afternoon. Although it may be that at his age, all his past life, even the most painful parts, arouses his nostalgia.

“They were in such a hurry that I didn’t even have time to pack a bag,” he says softly. “I left dressed just the way you see me now, wearing a tie, a vest, and a cap. We started walking, and an hour, an hour and a half later, the fun began.”

He laughs a little, and the people around us laugh as well. There six, four men and two women, all of them old. Sitting on the rusty railing that runs around the gazebo are several boys. I ask the adults if they were there when the police came. After looking at the justice out of the corner of their eye, as if asking his permission to speak, they say they were. I push on, turning to the oldest of the peasants: Tell me what happened, what took place after the revolutionaries left. He points to the corner of the plaza, where the road ends: That’s where the bus carrying the police came into town. It was smoking and backfiring. How many? A lot. How many would you say? About fifty, maybe. Spurred on by his example, the others also begin to speak and all at once start telling me what they remember. It’s hard for me to follow the thread in this labyrinth where Quechua mixes with Spanish, where the events of twenty-five years ago suddenly get confused with the air strike of a few days or weeks ago — when it took place, in fact, is also unclear — and with the guerrilla trials. In the minds of the peasants there is, naturally, an association that it’s cost me a lot of work to make and that very few of my compatriots see. What I finally establish is that the fifty or sixty policemen thought the rebels were hiding in Quero, so they spent about half an hour searching the town, going in and out of the tiny houses, asking everyone where the rebels were. Did they ask where the “revolutionaries” were? Did they call them communists? No, they didn’t use those names. They said thieves, rustlers, bandits. Are you sure?

“Of course they’re sure,” says don Eugenio, speaking for all of them. “You have to remember that those were other times — who would ever have thought that was a revolution? Remember, too, that they robbed two banks before leaving Jauja …”

He laughs, and the others laugh as well. In that half hour they were here, were there any incidents involving police and members of the community? No, none. The guards were convinced right then and there that the “rustlers” had gone and that the people of Quero had nothing to do with them and knew nothing about what had happened in Jauja. Other times, no doubt about it: then the police didn’t think that any man wearing a poncho and sandals was — until he proved otherwise — an accomplice of the subversives. The Andean world hadn’t yet been polarized to the degree it has today, when its inhabitants can only be either accomplices of the rebels or accomplices of the repressors of the rebels.

“In the meantime,” says the justice of the peace, his eyes once again watery, “we were getting soaked to the skin.”

The rain poured down fifteen minutes after they’d left Quero. A rain so heavy it sometimes seemed like hail. They considered looking for a place to stay dry until it let up, but there was no place. How the landscape has changed, Mayta said to himself. He was probably the only one not bothered by the cloudburst. The water poured off his skin, saturated his hair, ran between his lips, and felt like balm. At the point where the Quero farms ended, the land immediately began to curve upward. It was as if they had once again crossed into a different region or country, because this land had nothing whatever in common with the land between Jauja and Quero. The dense cinchonas, the pastures, the birds, the roar of the waterfalls, the wildflowers, and the reeds waving along the side of the road had all disappeared. On this bald slope, there wasn’t even a trace of a road, and the only vegetation was some giant, thick-armed, spiny cacti that looked like candelabra.

The very earth had become black and hunchbacked, with huge, sinister-looking rocks and stones. They walked in three groups: the mules and arms in front, with Condori and three joeboys; then the rest of the boys, led by Zenón Gonzales, about a hundred yards behind; and finally the last group, the lieutenant, Mayta, and the justice of the peace. He also knew the way to Aína, in case they lost the others. But up to now Mayta was able to keep the other two groups in sight, up ahead, above, at the foot of the mountains, two spots that appeared and disappeared as the land rose or fell and the rain got lighter or heavier. It must have been the middle of the afternoon, although the grayness of the sky suggested nightfall. “What time is it?” he asked Vallejos. “Two-thirty.” When he heard that, Mayta remembered a joke the students at the Salesian School would make whenever someone asked the time. “I don’t know, my cock has stopped,” and they’d point to their fly. He smiled, and in that moment of distraction, he almost fell.

“Carry your weapon with the barrel pointing down, so the rain doesn’t get in,” Vallejos said to him. The rain made the ground muddy, and Mayta tried to step from stone to stone, but the stones had loosened because of the rain, so he was constantly slipping. On the other hand, on his right side, the Quero lawyer — tiny, huddled over, his hat oozing water, his nose and mouth covered with a multicolored handkerchief, his ancient boots caked with mud — walked this mountain trail as if he were on a smooth sidewalk. Vallejos, too, walked easily, hunched forward a bit, his sub-machine gun on his shoulder, and his head down, so he could watch where he stepped. He led the way the whole time, and Mayta and don Eugenio would have to sprint from time to time to catch up to him. Since leaving Quero, they had barely spoken a word. The idea was to reach the pass called Viena, on the eastern slope, where it was milder. Condori and Zenón Gonzales thought it would be possible to get there before nightfall, if they hurried. It wasn’t advisable to camp out on the uplands because of the danger of snow or a storm.

Although he was tired and still occasionally bothered by the altitude, Mayta felt fine. Were the Andes finally accepting him after tormenting him for so long? Had he received his baptism? Yet, a short time later, when Vallejos said they could take a rest, he dropped to the muddy ground, exhausted. The rain had stopped, the sky was clearing, and he could no longer see the other two groups. The three men were in a deep hollow, flanked by rock walls from which sprouted moist clumps of ichu grass. Vallejos came over, sat next to him, and asked to see his weapon. He looked it over carefully, moving the safety on and off. He returned it without saying a word, and lit a cigarette. The young man’s face was covered with drops of water, and, through the cigarette smoke, Mayta could see he was tense with worry.

“You’re the one who’s always optimistic,” he said to him.

“I’m still optimistic,” replied Vallejos, taking a drag and expelling smoke out his nose and mouth. “But …”

“But you still can’t figure out what happened this morning,” said Mayta. “You’ve lost your political virginity, my friend. The revolution is more complicated than any fairy tale, brother.”

“I don’t want to discuss what happened this morning,” Vallejos cut him off. “There are more important things to do now.”

They heard a snore. The justice of the peace had settled down on his back on the ground, with his hat over his face, and appeared to have fallen asleep.

Vallejos looked at his watch. “If I’m right, the guards should be getting to Jauja now. We’ve got about four hours on them. And out here in these badlands we’re like a needle in a haystack. We’re out of danger, I think. Okay, let’s wake up the justice and be on our way.”

No sooner had he heard Vallejos’s last words than don Eugenio jumped to his feet. Instantly he clapped his soaking hat on his head. “Always ready, lieutenant,” he said, giving a military salute. “I’m an owl, I close only one eye when I sleep.”

“I’m amazed you’re with us, doctor,” said Mayta. “At your age, and with all the work you have, you have good reasons to look out for yourself.”

“Well, frankly, if someone had given me the word, I probably would have taken off,” the justice confessed, without the slightest embarrassment. “But they never said a word to me, they treated me like trash. So what else could I do? Wait for the police, so I could be the sacrificial lamb? What jerk would do that?”

Mayta began to laugh. They had started walking again and were scrambling up out of the hollow, slipping all the time, when he saw Vallejos freeze, crouched over. He looked from side to side, listening.

“Shots,” he heard him say in a low voice.

“Thunder, man,” said Mayta. “Sure it’s shots?”

“I’m going to see where they’re coming from,” said Vallejos, moving off. “You two stay here, don’t make a sound.”

“And the police believed all that when you told them, don Eugenio?”

“Of course they believed me. Wasn’t it the truth? But beforehand they put me through the wringer.”

With his thumbs in his vest and his wrinkled face turned toward the sky, he goes on telling his story. Standing in a circle in the gazebo, there are now about twenty old people and children. They had him for three days in the Jauja jail, then a couple of weeks in the Civil Guard headquarters over in Huancayo, demanding he confess to being an accomplice of the revolutionaries. But he, of course, remained stubborn, indefatigable, and repeated his tale about being tricked into going with them, that he believed Vallejos and the others when they said they needed a justice of the peace to hand over the Aína hacienda to the Uchubamba community, and that the arms were for the joeboys’ military training exercises. They had to accept his story; yes, sir, they did. After three weeks, he was back in Quero, back to his job as justice of the peace, clean as a whistle, and with a good story for his friends. He laughs, and in his laugh I detect a touch of mockery. Now the air is dry, and on the village buildings, on the farmland, and on the nearby mountains, there is a play of ocher, slate, gold, and various shades of green. “It’s sad to see these fields lying fallow,” don Eugenio laments. “All this was excellent farmland. Damn the war! It’s killing Quero, it’s not fair. And to think that twenty-five years ago the town seemed so poor. But things can always get worse, there is no limit when it comes to misery.” I don’t let him get distracted by current events and make him return to the past and to fiction. What did he do during the exchange of fire? How long did it last? Did they ever get out of the Huayjaco gulch? From the beginning to the end, and don’t leave a thing out, don Eugenio.

Shots, no doubt about it. Mayta was down on one knee, sub-machine gun at the ready, looking all around him. But, down in the hollow, his field of vision was limited: a horizon broken by toothlike crags. A shadow passed, flapping its wings. A condor? He never remembered seeing one, except in photographs. He noticed that the justice of the peace was crossing himself and that, with his eyes closed and his hands pressed together, he had begun to pray. He heard another volley in the same area as the first one. When would Vallejos come back? As if in answer to his wish, the lieutenant appeared at the edge of the hollow. And, behind him, the face of one of the joeboys from the middle group: Perico Temoche. They slid into the hollow and came toward them. Temoche’s face was red and his hands and the butt of his Mauser stained with mud, as if he had fallen.

“They’re firing at the first group,” said Vallejos. “But they’re far away, the second group hasn’t seen them yet.”

“What do we do?” asked Mayta.

“We advance,” replied Vallejos forcefully. “The first group is the important one, we’ve got to save those weapons. We’ll try to distract them until the first group gets away. Let’s get going. Spread out.”

As they climbed out of the hollow, Mayta wondered why it hadn’t occurred to anyone to give don Eugenio a rifle and why he hadn’t asked for one. If they had to fight, the justice was in for a rough time. He wasn’t anxious or afraid. He was totally serene. He wasn’t surprised about the shots. He had been waiting for them ever since they left Jauja and had never believed they had as big a lead as the lieutenant claimed. How stupid it was to have stayed so long in Quero.

At the top of the hollow, they crouched down to take a look. They couldn’t see anyone: only the gray-brown, rolling terrain, always rising, with occasional ridges and cliffs, where he thought they could take cover if their pursuers appeared from around a hill.

“Take cover among the rocks,” said Vallejos. He was carrying his sub-machine gun in his left hand, while with his right he was gesturing for them to fan out more. He was virtually running, bent over, looking all around. Behind him came the justice, with Mayta and Perico Temoche bringing up the rear. He hadn’t heard any more shots. The sky was clearing: there were fewer clouds, and they were not leaden, heavy storm-clouds, but white, spongy, fair-weather clouds. Bad luck, now it would be better if it were raining, he thought. He moved forward, concerned about his heart, afraid he’d be overcome again by shortness of breath, irregular heart rate, fatigue. But he wasn’t; he felt well, although a bit cold. Straining his eyes, he tried to pick out the forward groups. It was impossible, because of the irregularity of the terrain and the abundance of blind spots. Then, between two high points, he seemed to make out the moving spots.

He beckoned Perico Temoche over. “Is that your group?”

The boy nodded several times, without speaking. He seemed even more of a child this way, with his face twisted. He was hugging his rifle as if someone were going to try to take it away from him, and he seemed to have lost his voice.

“There haven’t been any more shots.” He tried to raise the boy’s spirits. “Maybe it was just a false alarm.”

“No, it was no false alarm,” stammered Perico Temoche. “The shots were real.”

And in a very low voice, trying his best to keep his self-control, he told Mayta that, when the first shots rang out, his whole group could see that, out in front, the vanguard was scattering, while someone, most likely Condori, raised his rifle to reply to the attack. Zenón Gonzales shouted: “Hit the dirt, hit the dirt.” They remained flat on their faces until Vallejos appeared and ordered them to go on. Vallejos had brought him back so he could be their runner.

“And I know why.” Mayta smiled at him. “Because you’re the fastest. And the cleverest, too?”

The joeboy smiled slightly, without opening his mouth. They went on walking together, looking to each side. Vallejos and the justice of the peace were about twenty yards in front of them. Minutes later, they heard another volley.

“The funny part is that right in the middle of all that shooting I caught a cold,” says don Eugenio. “The rain had been heavy and I was soaked, see?”

Yes, the small man in his vest and hat, surrounded by guerrillas, ducking bullets being fired by guards from up in the mountains, begins to sneeze. Trying to put the squeeze on him, I ask when did he realize that those he was with were insurgents and that the business about maneuvers and the handing over of Aína was pure make-believe. He isn’t fazed.

“When the bullets began to fly,” he says, with absolute conviction, “the situation became self-evident. Damn it, man, put yourself in my place. Without knowing how, there I was, with bullets whizzing all around me.”

He pauses, his eyes watery again, and I remember that afternoon in Paris two or three days after the afternoon we’re recalling. At that hour of the day, I religiously stopped writing, went out to buy Le Monde, to read it while drinking an espresso at the Le Tournon bistro near my house. His name was misspelled, they’d changed the y to an i, but I hadn’t the slightest doubt that it was my schoolmate from the Salesian. His name appeared in a news item about Peru, so small it was almost invisible, barely six or seven lines, no more than a hundred words. “Insurrection Attempt Fails,” or something like that, and although it wasn’t clear whether the movement had any further ramifications, the article did say that the leaders were either dead or captured. Was Mayta captured or dead? That was my first thought as the Gauloise I was smoking fell out of my mouth and I read and reread the notice, unable to accept that in my far-off land such a thing had taken place and that my fellow reader of The Count of Monte Cristo was the main character. But that the Mayta spelled with an i in Le Monde was my Mayta, I was sure of from the start.

“What time did the prisoners begin to get here?” don Eugenio repeats my question, as if I had asked it of him. Actually, I asked the old people from Quero, but it’s good that it’s the justice of the peace, a man well known to the locals, who shows interest in finding out. “It must have been at night, don’t you think?”

There is a chorus of no’s, heads shaking, voices that try to speak over one another. Night hadn’t fallen, it was still afternoon. The guards came back in two groups. The first brought the president of the community of Uchubamba tied onto one of doña Teofrasia’s mules. Was Condori already dead? Dying. He’d been shot twice, once in the back and once in the neck, and he was covered with blood. They also brought several of the joeboys, with their hands tied behind them. In those days, the winners took prisoners. Nowadays, it’s better to die fighting, because when they catch you, they get what they want out of you and kill you anyway, isn’t that right, sir? Anyway, they’d taken the boys’ shoelaces, so they couldn’t try to escape. It was as if they were walking on eggs, and though they dragged their feet, some lost their shoes. They brought Condori to the lieutenant governor’s house and gave him first aid, but it was a joke, because he died right away. About a half hour later, the others arrived. Vallejos waved to them to hurry.

“Faster, faster,” he heard him shout.

Mayta tried, but he couldn’t. Now Perico Temoche was several yards in front of him. There were scattered shots, but he couldn’t tell where they were coming from or if they were farther away or closer than before. He was trembling, not from mountain sickness, but from the cold. Just then, he saw Vallejos raise his sub-machine gun: the blast exploded in his ears. He looked at the ridge the lieutenant had fired at, and all he saw were rocks, earth, clumps of ichu grass, jagged peaks, blue sky, and little white clouds. He aimed in the same direction, his finger on the trigger.

“Why the fuck are you stopping”—Vallejos urged them on again. “Go on, go on.”

Mayta obeyed and walked very quickly for a good stretch, his body hunched over, jumping over stony patches, breaking into a run sometimes, tripping, feeling the cold right down to his bones, and his heart going crazy. He heard more shots, and at one time was sure that a bullet had smashed into some stones a short distance away. But, no matter how hard he looked at the ridges, he couldn’t see a single enemy soldier. He had finally become an unthinking machine, a machine with no doubts, no memory, a body concentrated on the task of running, so he wouldn’t be left behind. Suddenly his knees buckled and he stopped, out of breath. Staggering, he went a few steps farther and took cover behind some mossy rocks. The justice of the peace, Vallejos, and Perico Temoche continued to advance very rapidly. You’ll never catch up to them, Mayta.

The lieutenant turned around, and Mayta signaled him to keep going. Just as he was gesturing, he noticed, this time without any doubt, that a bullet struck a few steps away from him: it gouged a small smoky hole in the ground. He crouched as low as he could, looked, searched, and finally saw, peering over the wall of rocks on his right side, the head of a guard, and a rifle pointed straight at him. He had taken cover on the wrong side. He crawled around the rocks, flattened out on the ground, and felt shots going right over his head. When he could finally aim and fire, trying to apply Vallejos’s instructions — the target should be right in the sights — the guard was no longer on the wall. The burst of fire knocked him back and dazed him. He saw that his shots had splintered the stones a yard below, where he’d seen the guard.

“Run, run, I’ll cover you,” he heard Vallejos shout. The lieutenant was aiming at the wall.

Mayta got up and ran. He was stiff from the cold; his bones seemed to creak under his skin. It was a cold both freezing and boiling, which made him sweat, as if he had a fever. When he was next to Vallejos, he went down on his knees and aimed at the rocks.

“There are maybe three or four there,” said the lieutenant, pointing. “We’re moving forward in jumps, by stages. We can’t stay in one place, or they’ll surround us. They mustn’t cut us off from the others. Cover me.”

And, without waiting for a reply, he got up and began to run. Mayta kept watching the cliffs on the right, his finger on the trigger, but there was no sign of life. Finally, he looked for Vallejos and saw him far off, waving him on. He would cover him. He began to run, and after a few steps, he heard shots again. But he didn’t stop, he kept running. Soon he found out it was the lieutenant who was shooting. When he reached him, they were together with Perico Temoche and the justice of the peace. The boy was loading a clip which he’d taken out of a bag hanging on his cartridge belt. So he’d been firing, too.

“And the other groups?” Mayta asked. There was a stony rise in front of them, so they could see nothing.

“We’ve lost them, but they know they can’t stand still,” said Vallejos urgently, without ceasing to look around him. And, after a pause: “If they surround us, we’re fucked. We’ve got to keep going until nightfall. When it’s dark, we’ll be out of danger. There’s no way to hunt us down at night.”

Till it gets dark, thought Mayta. How much longer would that be? Three, five, six hours? He didn’t ask Vallejos what time it was. Instead, he stuck his hand into his pack — he’d done it dozens of times that day — and made sure he had lots of clips.

“We’ll move two by two,” ordered Vallejos. “First the doctor and me, then you and Perico. One pair covers the other. Pay attention, be careful, run in a crouch. Let’s go, doc.”

He took off, and Mayta saw that now the justice of the peace had a revolver in his hand. Where did he get it? It had to be the lieutenant’s, that’s why his holster was open. Right then, he saw two silhouettes above his head, between two rifle barrels. One shouted: “Give up, motherfucker.” He and Perico fired at the same time.

“They didn’t catch all of them that same day,” don Eugenio says. Two joeboys got away: Teófilo Puertas and Felicio Tapia.

I got this story directly from the people involved, but I don’t interrupt him, just to see how his version squares with theirs. A few details either way: the old justice of the peace’s version is very similar to what I’ve already heard. Puertas and Felicio were in the first group, under Condori’s command. They were the first to be spotted by one of the patrols the guards had divided into to search the area. On Vallejos’s orders, Condori tried to move forward, while Vallejos held off the attack, but he was soon wounded. This caused a panic. The boys started running, abandoning the mules and rifles. Puertas and Tapia hid in a cave. They stayed there all night, half frozen. The next day, hungry, confused, and with colds, they retraced their steps and reached Jauja without being caught. Accompanied by their parents, they turned themselves in at the jail.

“Felicio was all swollen up,” the justice of the peace tells me. Because of the beating he’d been given for trying to be a revolutionary.

Out of all those people from Quero who’d been with us, there was left in the gazebo only one old couple now. Both remember Zenón Gonzales’s entrance — tied to a horse, barefoot, and with his shirt ripped, as if he’d struggled with the guards. Behind him came the rest of the joeboys, also tied up and without shoelaces. One of them — no one knows which one — was crying. A dark-skinned kid, they say, one of the little ones. Was he crying because they’d beaten him? Because he was wounded or frightened? Who knows. Maybe because of the lieutenant’s bad luck.

And so, climbing up, always up, two by two, they went on for a period that to Mayta seemed like hours, but which couldn’t have been because it hadn’t grown a bit darker. They constantly changed partners: Vallejos and the lawyer, Mayta and Perico Temoche, or Vallejos and the joeboy, and Mayta and the lawyer. Two ran and two covered. They were together enough of the time to buck each other up, catch their breath, and move on. They would see the guards’ faces at every turn, and they fired shots that never seemed to hit their target. There weren’t three or four, as Vallejos had imagined, but many more; otherwise, they would have had to be ubiquitous to appear in so many different spots. They would peer out from the high ground, sometimes on both sides, although the more dangerous side was the right, where the wall of stones was very close to the path they were running along.

They were following them along the line of the ridge, and even though Mayta from time to time thought they had left them behind, they always reappeared. He’d already changed clips a couple of times. He didn’t feel ill; cold, yes, but his body was holding up well under the tremendous strain of running at this altitude. Why hasn’t anyone been wounded? he thought. After all, the guards had taken lots of shots at them. It’s that the guards are being cautious, they barely stick out their heads and take potshots, just to do their duty, without pausing to aim, afraid of being easy targets for the rebels. It seemed like a game, a noisy but inoffensive ritual. Would it last until dark? Could they slip away from the guards? It seemed impossible that night would ever come, that this clear sky would ever darken. He didn’t feel discouraged. Without arrogance, without even feeling sorry for himself, he thought: Rightly or wrongly, Mayta, you’re doing just what you always wanted to do.

“Get ready, don Eugenio. Let’s run. They’re covering us.”

“You go on without me, my legs have given out,” said the justice of the peace very slowly. “I’ll stay behind. Take this, too.”

Instead of handing it to him, don Eugenio threw him the revolver, which Mayta had to bend over to pick up. The justice of the peace was sitting down, with his legs spread apart. He was perspiring copiously and his mouth was twisted into an anxious grimace, as if he’d been left without air to breathe. His posture and his expression were those of a man who’s reached the limits of his resistance, who’s been rendered indifferent by exhaustion. Mayta understood there was no point in arguing with him.

“Good luck, don Eugenio,” he said, starting to run. He quickly crossed the thirty or forty yards that separated him from Vallejos and Perico Temoche and didn’t hear a single shot. When he reached them, they were on their knees, firing. He tried to explain what had happened to the justice of the peace, but he was gasping so furiously that he couldn’t get the words out. He tried to fire from the ground, but couldn’t. His weapon was jammed. He fired the revolver, the three final rounds, with the feeling that he was doing it for fun. The wall was very close and there was a line of rifles aimed at them: the enemy caps appeared and disappeared. He heard them shout threats that the wind brought to them quite clearly: “Give up, damn you.” “Give up, motherfuckers.” “Your accomplices have already surrendered.” “Start praying, assholes.” It occurred to him: They’ve got orders to take us alive. That’s why no one’s wounded. They were only firing to scare us. Could it be true that the first group had given up? He was calmer and tried to tell Vallejos about don Eugenio, but the lieutenant cut him off with an energetic gesture. “Run, I’ll cover you.”

Mayta realized, from his voice and face, that this time he was really alarmed. “Quickly, this is a bad spot, they’re cutting us off. Run, run.” And he gave him a pat on the back.

Perico Temoche began to run. Mayta got up and ran, too, hearing the shots whistle by him. But he didn’t stop. Gasping, feeling ice piercing his muscles, his bones, his very blood vessels, he kept on running, and even though he tripped and fell twice and once lost the revolver he held in his left hand, he got right up both times and went on, making a superhuman effort. Until his legs gave out and he fell to his knees. He huddled on the ground.

“We’ve gotten ahead of them,” he heard Perico Temoche say. And an instant later: “Where’s Vallejos? Do you see him?” There was a long pause, with gasps. “Mayta, Mayta, I think those motherfuckers have got him.”

Through the sweat that clouded his vision, he saw that down there where the lieutenant had remained to cover them — they’d run about two hundred yards — there were some greenish silhouettes moving about.

“Let’s run, come on,” he said, panting, trying to stand up. But neither his arms nor his legs would move. Then he bellowed, “Run, Perico. I’ll cover you. Run, run.”

“They brought Vallejos in at night, I saw him myself, didn’t all of you?” says the justice of the peace. The two old folks with us in the gazebo confirm what he says by nodding. Don Eugenio points again to the little house with the shield on it, the government office. “I saw it from there. They put us prisoners in that room with the balcony. They brought him in on a horse, wrapped in a blanket they could barely pull off him because it stuck to the blood pouring out of all his wounds. He was very dead when they brought him into Quero.”

I listen to him ramble on about who killed Vallejos and how. It’s a story I’ve heard many times from so many people, both in Jauja and in Lima, that I know no one can tell me what I don’t already know. The former justice of the peace for Quero will not help me determine which among all the hypotheses is the correct one. That Vallejos died in the exchange of fire between the insurgents and the Civil Guards. That he was only wounded and Lieutenant Dongo finished him off, to avenge the humiliation Vallejos inflicted when he captured his police station and locked him up in his own jail. That he wasn’t wounded when they captured him, and was executed on orders from above, out there in the Huayjaco flatlands, to set an example to officers with revolutionary fancies. The justice of the peace recites all these hypotheses and — with his usual prudence — intimates that he accepts the thesis that Vallejos was executed by Lieutenant Dongo.

Personal vengeance, the confrontation between the idealist and the conformist, the rebel and authority: these are images that correspond to the romantic appetites of our people. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that they can’t be true. The fact is that this part of the story — under what circumstances Vallejos died — will never be cleared up. We won’t even know how many times he was shot: there was no autopsy, and the death certificate doesn’t say a thing. The witnesses give the most disparate accounts: from a single shot in the back of the neck to a body turned into a sieve. All we know is that he was dead when they brought him into Quero tied to a horse, that from here they brought him to Jauja, and that his family took him back to Lima the next day. He was buried in the old cemetery in Surco. It’s not used anymore; the old headstones are in ruins, and the paths are covered with weeds. Around the lieutenant’s tomb, which gives only his name and the date of his death, there is a thick crop of wild grass.

“And did you see Mayta when they brought him in, don Eugenio?”

Mayta, who never took his eyes off the guards gathered around down below, where Vallejos was, began to catch his breath, to come back to life. He was still on the ground, pointing at nothing in particular with his jammed sub-machine gun. He tried not to think about Vallejos, about what could have happened to him, but about recovering his strength, getting to his feet, and catching up to Perico Temoche. Taking deep breaths, he sat upright, and then, almost bent double, he ran, without knowing if he was being shot at, without knowing where he was going, until he finally had to stop. He threw himself on the ground with his eyes closed, waiting for the bullets to pierce his body. You are going to die, Mayta. This is what it is to be dead.

“What should we do, what should we do?” stammered the joeboy at his side.

“I’ll cover you,” he said, panting, trying to pick up the sub-machine gun and aim.

“We’re surrounded,” whimpered the boy. “They’re going to kill us.”

Through the sweat pouring down his forehead, he saw guards all around him, some prone, others hunched down. Their rifles were all pointed at them. Their lips were moving, and there were some unintelligible sounds. But he didn’t have to understand to know that they were shouting: “Give up! Drop your weapons!” Surrender? They would kill him, in any case. Or they would torture him. He pulled the trigger with all his strength, but it was still jammed. He worked the action for a few seconds, listening all the time to Perico Temoche’s whimpering.

“Put down your guns! Put your hands on your heads!” bellowed a voice that was very near. Or you’re dead.

“Don’t cry, don’t give them the satisfaction,” said Mayta to the joeboy. “Go ahead, Perico, throw away your rifle.”

He threw the sub-machine far away, and, imitated by Perico Temoche, he stood up with his hands on his head.

“Corporal Lituma!” The voice seemed to come from a bullhorn. “Frisk them. One false move, shoot them.”

“Yes, lieutenant.”

Uniformed figures with rifles came running from all sides. He waited, motionless, for them to come at him, convinced they would beat him, his fatigue and the coldness increasing with every second. But he only felt shoves as they searched him from head to foot. They ripped the pouch off his belt, and calling him “rustler” and “thief,” they ordered him to take the shoelaces off his sneakers. They tied his hands behind his back with a rope, and did the same to Perico Temoche. Mayta heard Corporal Lituma sermonizing the boy, asking if he wasn’t ashamed to be a “rustler” when he was just a snotnose. Rustlers? Did they think they stole cattle? He felt like laughing at the stupidity of his captors. Then he was struck in the back with a rifle butt and ordered to move. He walked, dragging his feet, which were swimming inside his loose sneakers. He was ceasing to be the machine he’d been. He began to think, doubt, remember, and ask himself questions again. He felt he was trembling. Wouldn’t it be better to be dead than to have to drink the bitter brew he had ahead of him? No, Mayta, no.

“The delay in returning to Jauja wasn’t caused by the two casualties,” says the justice of the peace. “It was the money. Where was it? They went crazy looking for it, and it just didn’t turn up. Mayta, Zenón Gonzales, and the joeboys swore that it was on the mules, except for the soles they’d given to the widow, Teofrasia Soto de Almaraz, for her animals, and to Gertrudis Sapollacu for lunch. The guards who captured Condori’s group swore they didn’t find a penny on the mules, only Mausers, bullets, and some pots of food. They spent a lot of time interrogating us about the whereabouts of the money. That’s why we got to Jauja at dawn.”

We, too, are going to arrive later than we had planned. The hours flew by in the Quero gazebo, and it’s getting dark fast. The pickup’s lights are on. All I can see are dark, fleeting tree trunks and the stones and shiny pebbles we bounce over. I vaguely think about the risk of being ambushed at one of the switchbacks, about being blown up by a mine, about getting to Jauja after curfew and being locked up.

“What could have happened to the money from the robbery?” don Eugenio wonders, unstoppable now in his evocation of those events. “Could the guards have split it up?”

Just one more enigma to add to the others. In this case, at least, I have some solid clues. An abundance of lies clouds the whole story. How much could the insurgents have taken away with them from Jauja? My guess is that the bank employees inflated the amount and that the revolutionaries never knew how much they had stolen, because they never had time to count it. They carried the money in bags, which they tied to the mules. Did anybody know how much was in each bag? No one, probably. Probably, too, their captors emptied some of the money into their own pockets, so the total sum returned to the banks was barely fifteen thousand soles, much less than the amount the rebels “expropriated,” and much, much less than the amount the banks said they had stolen.

“Perhaps that’s the saddest part of the story,” I think aloud. “That what had begun as a revolution — as crazy as it was, it was a revolution, nevertheless — should end in a dispute as to how much they had stolen and who ended up with the loot.”

“That’s life,” philosophizes don Eugenio.

He imagined what the Lima newspapers would say, tomorrow, the day after, or the day after that; what the comrades from the RWP and the RWP(T) would say, and what their enemies in the PC would say, when they read the exaggerated, fantastic, sensationalist, yellow-journal versions of what happened which would appear in the papers. He imagined the meeting the RWP(T) would devote to distilling revolutionary doctrine from the episode, and he could almost hear the inflections and tones of each of his old comrades, asserting that reality had confirmed the scientific, Marxist, Trotskyist analysis the party had made, and completely justified its distrust and its refusal to participate in a petit-bourgeois adventure destined to fail.

Would anyone suggest that their distrust and refusal had contributed to the failure? The idea would never even occur to them. Would the rebellion have turned out differently if all the cadres of the RWP(T) had participated in it, and resolutely? He thought so. That would have brought the miners in, as well as Professor Ubilluz, and the Ricrán people. Things would have been planned and executed better, and right now they’d be on their way to Aína safe and sound. Were you being honest, Mayta? Did you try to think lucidly? No. It happened too fast, everything was too compressed. In tranquillity, when all of it was over, it would be necessary to analyze what had taken place from the beginning, to determine objectively if the rebellion would have had better luck if it had been conceived differently, with the participation of those who did take part as well as the RWP(T), or if a different plan would merely have delayed the defeat and made it more bloody.

He felt sadness, but also a desire to feel Anatolio’s head against his breast, to hear that slow, rhythmic, almost musical breathing of his when he was worn out and sleeping on his body. He let out a sigh and realized his teeth were chattering. He felt a rifle butt slam into his back: “Hurry it up.” Every time Vallejos’s image came into his mind, the cold became overwhelming, so he tried to blot it all out. He didn’t want to think about him, to wonder if he was a prisoner, if he was wounded, dead, if they were beating him, torturing him, because he knew depression would leave him defenseless against what was coming. He was going to need courage, more than was necessary just to resist the rushing wind that beat at his face.

Where had they taken Perico Temoche? Where were the others? Could any of them have managed to escape? He was walking alone between two columns of Civil Guards. They sometimes looked at him out of the corner of their eye, as if he were a rare bird, and forgetting what had just happened, they amused themselves by talking, smoking, and walking with their hands in their pockets, as if coming back from a stroll. Well, I don’t think I’ll ever be bothered by mountain sickness again, he thought. He tried to figure out where he was, because they were doubling back along the route he’d taken earlier, but now that it wasn’t raining, the landscape looked different. The colors were more sharply contrasting, and the edges of things were not as sharp. The ground was muddy and his sneakers constantly slipped off. He had to stop each time to put them back on, and every time he stopped, the guard behind him gave him a shove.

Are you sorry, Mayta? Did you act too quickly? Did you act irresponsibly? No, no, no. On the contrary. Despite the failure, the mistakes, the foolishness, he was proud. For the first time, he had the feeling he’d done something worthwhile, he’d brought the revolution forward, even if only in a minuscule way. He wasn’t depressed about being arrested, as he had been other times; then he’d had a sense of waste. They had failed, but they had done the experiment: four intrepid men and a handful of schoolboys had occupied a city, disarmed the police, expropriated the banks, and fled to the mountains. It was possible to do, and they had proven it. In the future, the left would have to take this precedent into account: someone in this country wasn’t content with merely predicting revolution, and had tried to do it. You know what it is, he thought, as his sneaker came off. He put it back on and was struck again with a rifle butt.

I wake don Eugenio, who fell asleep halfway back, and I let him off at his place on the outskirts of Jauja, thanking him for his company and his memories. I go straight to the Paca Inn. The kitchen is still open and I could get something to eat, but all I want is a beer. I drink it on the small terrace above the lake. The water sparkles, and the reeds on the shore are lit by the moon, which shines round and white in a sky spattered with stars. In Paca at night, all kinds of noises can be heard: the whistling wind, toads croaking, nightbirds singing. But not tonight. Tonight, even the animals are silent. The only other guests at the inn are two traveling salesmen, in the beer business, whom I hear talking on the other side of the windows, in the dining room.

This is the end of the main part of the story, its core of drama. It didn’t last twelve hours, beginning at dawn with the seizure of the jail and ending before nightfall with the deaths of Vallejos and Condori and the capture of the others. They brought them to the Jauja jail, where they held them for a week, and then they sent them to the Huancayo jail, where they remained for a month. There they discretely began to free the joeboys, following the decision of the juvenile court, which placed them in the custody of their families, under a kind of house arrest. The justice of the peace for Quero went back to work, “free of dust and dirt,” after three weeks. Mayta and Zenón Gonzales were taken to Lima, locked up in the Sexto, then in the Frontón, and later returned to the Sexto. Both were amnestied — there never was a trial — years later, when a new president took office. Zenón Gonzales still runs the Uchubamba commune, which has owned the Aína hacienda since the agrarian reform of 1971, and belongs to the Popular Action Party, of which he is the local boss.

During the first days, the newspapers were filled with these events and devoted front pages, headlines, editorials, and articles to what, because of Mayta’s past record, they deemed an attempted communist insurrection. An unrecognizable photo of him behind bars in some jail or other appeared in La Prensa. But, after a week, people stopped talking about it. Later, when there were outbreaks of guerrilla fighting in the mountains and the jungle in 1963, 1964, 1965, and 1966—all inspired by the Cuban Revolution — no newspaper remembered that the forerunner of those attempts to raise up the people in armed struggle to establish socialism in Peru had been that minor episode, rendered ghostlike by the years, which had taken place in Jauja province. Today no one remembers who took part in it.

As I fall asleep, I hear a rhythmic noise. No, it isn’t the night birds. It’s the wind, which slaps the waters of Lake Paca against the terrace of the inn. That soft music and the beautiful, starry night sky of Jauja suggest a peaceful land and happy, tranquil people. They lie, because all fictions are lies.