come here, thats right, like that … rest your head on my sholder. ill be with you every step of the way, i wont leave you alone. we wont leave you alone. well take you with us to the end of the rode. well take everybody who unites us to the end of the rode, everybody whose with us from the beginning of time. the moment comes closer and closer, justino. the moment of victory comes closer and closer. do you see the stains on the earth? do you see the red color of the puddels in the night? its your seed, justino, its you who waters the land so that from your guts the world weve fought so hard for will grow. enjoy it, because its the last thing your going to enjoy.
“You think we're a gang of killers. Isn't that right, Chacaltana?”
The commander's question came after a long silence, when they were already on the highway back to Ayacucho, between the mountains and the river. He was driving the vehicle himself. They were alone.
“I do not know … I do not know what you are referring to, Commander.”
“Don't act like a prick, Chacaltana. I know how to read between the lines of reports. And I know how to read faces, too. Do you think you're the only one here who knows how to read?”
The prosecutor felt obliged to explain himself.
“We waged a just war, Commander.” He said it like that, using the first person. “That is undeniable. But sometimes I have difficulty distinguishing between us and the enemy. And when that happens, I begin to ask myself what exactly it is that we fought against.”
The commander let several more minutes go by before he spoke again.
“Have you ever been in a war, Chacaltana?”
“What did you say, Señor?”
“I asked if you've been in a war. In the middle of bullets and bombs.”
The prosecutor remembered the incidents in Yawarmayo. Then he thought about the bombs, the power cuts in Lima, he remembered the night patrols, the ambulances, the buildings destroyed by explosives, the eyes of the police when they saw the mutilated, bloody bodies that came out of the wreckage. No. He had never been in a war. The commander continued:
“Have you ever felt surrounded by fire and known that your life at that moment is worth less than a piece of shit? Or have you found yourself in a town full of people and not known if they wanted to help you or kill you? Have you seen your friends falling in battle? Have you had lunch with people knowing it may be the last time, and the next time you see them they'll probably be in a box? Have you? When that happens you stop having friends because you know you'll lose them. You get used to the pain of losing them and simply try to avoid being one of the empty chairs that keep multiplying in the dining rooms. Do you know what that's like? No. You don't have the slightest idea of what that's like. You were in Lima, after all, while your people were dying. You were reading nice poems by Chocano, I suppose. Literature, right? Literature says too many pretty things, Señor Prosecutor. Too many. You intellectuals have contempt for military men because we don't read. Yes, don't make that face, I've heard your jokes, I've seen the faces of old politicians when we speak. And I understand. Our problem is that for us, reality is a pain in the balls, we've never seen the pretty things your books talk about.”
Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar became aware that he was considered an intellectual. In his way he had been in a war, as an unwilling witness, as the one who stays in the fortress of the capital until fire begins to bring down its walls and the smell of the dead contaminates the clean air. Suddenly, the commander stopped the jeep at a bend in the road and turned toward him:
“There wasn't one terrorist group here, or two. There was a war here, Señor Prosecutor. And in a war people die.”
The commander was becoming agitated. His voice, always so authoritative, seemed to break at certain syllables as he brought his face very close to Chacaltana's. Perhaps that was why he didn't say anything else. The prosecutor tried to calm him.
“I'm with you, Commander. I understand what happened. I saw it too, from the other side.”
The commander drew back his head. He took a deep breath. He no longer seemed furious. He seemed disoriented.
“The other side. Sooner or later they'll come from your side. Sooner or later they'll come from Lima, Chacaltana. They'll come for our heads. They'll sacrifice us, the ones who fought.”
The commander was sweating. The prosecutor offered him his handkerchief. The commander looked straight ahead. He seemed very concentrated. The prosecutor did not dare to move the handkerchief too close to him.
“It was them or us.”
The commander did not say anything else. Them or us, thought Chacaltana, until we are all the same, until there is no more distinction between us.
“I understand,” he said.
The commander started the motor again. He seemed to gradually evanesce as they returned to the highway.
“It's important that you understand,” he insisted, “because you still haven't seen anything.”
They continued on to Ayacucho, and then to the military hospital, where they got out. They climbed the steps and crossed the waiting room together. No one asked where they were going or tried to stop them. No one went to an office to find out if they could go through. They entered the corridor that Chacaltana remembered very well from his last visit, passing several wounded people who did not approach them to ask for help. They had not walked very far before the prosecutor realized they were going to the obstetrics ward, to the closed office surrounded by women in labor. He thought of his mother as the cold illumination revealed the criminal pathologist.
“Please close the door quickly.”
From the door, the dandruff on his shoulders was not noticeable. Only when they were at the autopsy table did the prosecutor notice that the pathologist seemed dirtier than last time. The smell was different too. This time it was clearly the smell of a corpse. Not too decayed yet, but already penetrating. Several cigarette butts and a few matches had accumulated under the table. This time there were no chocolate wrappers.
“Señor Prosecutor, I see you're not alone.”
“Hello, Posadas.”
This time nobody spoke about any paper. The commander's greeting was a gesture. The pathologist gave them two surgical masks smeared with Vicks VapoRub.
“You're going to need them,” he said.
Then he stood and walked to the table covered with a cloth. The prosecutor brought his handkerchief to his mouth in anticipation of what lay underneath. The light flickered. No one had fixed it since the last time. No one would ever fix it. The pathologist uncovered the table. This time the body was not as decomposed as the last time. It was a recent corpse, unburned, the body still bruised by the onset of rigor.
“Completely drained of blood,” Posadas remarked. “Observe the shoulder.”
The chest was an enormous red vulva with several sharp metal protuberances pointing at the ceiling. On the left side a mass of bones, muscles, and arteries erupted. What did not erupt was an arm.
“The first time it was the right arm, now they've cut off the left. It seems these gentlemen want to make a puppet.”
The commander came close to the face. It was a face stretched into a final shout, with open eyes trying to escape their sockets. He closed the dead man's eyes. Only then, safe from the pressure of those eyes on his, could the prosecutor recognize Justino Mayta Carazo.
“They just brought him in,” said the officer. “He was found at dawn, right after the news about the mass grave.”