“Good morning, Commander. I was surprised by your summons …”
“Come over here, Señor Prosecutor,” was all the commander would say. “Look at this.”
The prosecutor looked up at the hole. His feet refused to move. He heard a rifle being cocked behind him. He took a few steps, very slowly, before he felt the shove that hurried him toward the excavation. Behind his feet he heard a pair of military boots advancing. He approached the huge hole and stopped a meter from the edge. He felt another shove. He was sweating. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He dared to turn around. The commander was about twenty meters from him. He motioned for him to look in. Around him, the soldiers had moved out toward the hills that surrounded the hole, as if not to see. The prosecutor felt another shove. He wondered if it was a hand or the barrel of an FAL. He turned to see the face of the soldier who had come with him. The soldier was pale and muttered:
“Turn around, damn it.”
The prosecutor looked at the sky. The sky was clear, just a few black clouds in a corner, probably heading for Ceja de Selva. He looked down at the ground again. Slowly, he advanced a step and stretched his neck, looking into the circular blackness of the excavation.
The spectacle inside disconcerted him. At first he thought he saw only boxes, old ruined boxes, surrounded by cloth rotted by time and earth. But then, what he had thought were rocks and earth began taking on a more precise form before his eyes. They were limbs, arms, legs, some semipulverized at the time of their burial, others with bones clearly profiled and surrounded by cloth and cardboard, black, earth-covered heads one on top of the other, forming a mountain of human remains several meters deep. One could not even see the end of this accumulation of bones and dry bodies. The prosecutor fell to his knees and vomited. As he threw up the little he had in his stomach, he realized he was in a perfect position to join the bodies down below, the nape of his neck exposed, offered to the rifles, his body leaning over the hillocks of death, his mind lost in some moment of time when everything was even more dangerous, asking himself how long it would take that time to finish dying, how much longer it would take the memory to disappear, the pain to be extinguished, the wounds to scar over, the eyes to close.
He closed his eyes. It seemed that the bodies down there were mirrors that multiplied him into infinity. And he did not want to be multiplied.
Suddenly, he felt a tug. It was the soldier who had brought him there. Now he was picking him up, perhaps to make him more comfortable. He thought about Edith. He thought about fire. But the soldier made him turn and retrace his steps. Almost holding his hand, or rather his arm, almost dragging him while his legs were not sure they could support him, he took him back to the jeep where the commander was waiting for him and deposited him in front of the officer, like a child who is left at the door of a school.
“They found it last night,” said the commander. “The news came just as I was finishing your report. It's the second mass grave that has been opened in three days.”
The Associate District Prosecutor did not know what to say. He looked at the grave again, almost as a gesture of comprehension. Now, a peasant woman was coming down one of the hills on the other side. She tripped and rolled toward the foothills but got up and continued climbing down. Three soldiers on that side moved to block her way. The woman shouted something in Quechua. The prosecutor recognized her. It was the woman who had opened the door for him in Quinua, the mother of Justino and Edwin, Señora Carazo de Mayta.
“We've managed to keep the matter out of the press,” the commander continued, as if he had not seen her. The prosecutor looked at the officer. He had seen her, his dark glasses reflected her as she approached the edge of the pit. The soldiers took her by the arm but she pulled free and kept running and shouting. She reached the edge. She seemed to want to throw herself in. One of the soldiers pulled on her skirt. Another struggled with her, trying to drag her away. The woman refused to move. She seemed stronger than the three of them together. The third soldier took out a pistol. She did not see it. Her back was turned, she was concentrating on the grave, on her shouts. The soldier aimed his weapon at her back.
“Let's go, Señor Prosecutor,” said the commander.
The prosecutor could not look away from the woman and the soldiers. The commander put his hand on his shoulder. The prosecutor said:
“Stop them, Commander.”
But the commander said nothing, gave no order, did not raise his voice to his subordinates. Thirty meters away, the soldier continued to hesitate, holding his weapon while the woman threatened to throw herself, head first, in among the corpses. He aimed at her back, then at the back of her neck, then at her leg. The other two tried to hold her still. They shouted something at her. The prosecutor heard: “Get out of here, Mamacita, there's nothing here you should see.” The soldier with the weapon pointed the barrel at the sky. He turned to his companions. Then to the commander. The commander observed him but made no gesture. The prosecutor wanted to shout. Then he realized that nothing would change, that too many shouts serve only to hide the sound of shots. He held back his tears and said nothing. On the other side of the grave, the soldier put away his weapon and helped the other two drag the woman outside the perimeter of the security cordon.
“They would never kill a mother, Señor Prosecutor,” said the commander. “Sometimes fear makes them go too far. Sometimes they've even hit one. But they never kill them. They wouldn't do that even under orders. It's stronger than they are. It's a natural law. They can't.”
Two other soldiers came over to help. They picked the woman up and carried her past the hills. When the prosecutor climbed into the jeep to go back to Ayacucho, her shouts could still be heard among the hills. Or perhaps not, the prosecutor thought, perhaps they were only inside his head, saturated in his memories.
you behaved very bad, justino, you behaved very very bad. and i dont deserve it. i gave berth to you, i opened the black mouths of deth with you, and this is how you repay me. its not right, unnerstand? look in the mirrer, look at yourself. your a traiter.
dont look at me like that. its not my fault. its not even my desision. blood makes us strong, it doesnt hurt us. even an idiot like you can unnerstand the strenth of what were doing. were creating a new world.
but your weak. its normal. nobody can start a struggel and think hes going to win it very fast. unnerstand? itll take senturies, its allready lasted senturies. remembering is important. each life, each of the fallen, it piles up in history and dissolves in it, like tears in the rain. and its sap so that we can live, we who will die. its all the same to me, dont think its unjust.
do you hear it, justino? that voice. yes, its your brother. hes calling to you. do you hear him? didnt you want to see him? hes here, with us. down here, look at him. dont cry justino, men don't cry. leest of all men who have done what you did, what we did. we shed blood instead of tears, justino, you damn faggot. you almost deserve to live because your life is a slow painful death, but ill save you the effert, yes i will. thats what comrades are for, right? thats what were there for.