“I don't know, Chacaltana.” The commander poured himself another pisco. “But I can imagine. I've seen it before. People who have killed too much don't get better. Sometimes they have normal, peaceful years. But it's only a question of time before they blow up. Intelligence reported the presence of the lieutenant in Vilcashuamán three days before his death. They said he had established contact with the campesino patrols to organize a ‘defense against subversion.’ Imagine. Nobody paid attention to him. He had simply gone crazy.”
“Perhaps the terrorist groups in Yawarmayo found him and took their revenge.”
“Those people are controlled. They don't operate outside their area. But it seems there are others. You were right about the dates. But besides the ones you mentioned, it's the tenth anniversary of the death of Edwin Mayta and the end of the first harvest of the year 2000: ‘The blood harvest of the millenarian struggle,’ as they call it.”
“If they were terrorists, why did they also kill Justino Mayta?”
The commander looked up at one of the flags on the table. Then he looked at the prosecutor.
“I believe the reason for that is you, Señor Prosecutor.”
“What?”
“According to your report, you spoke to him, didn't you? The Senderistas usually killed those they suspected of being informers, their own people.”
“But he did not tell me anything important!”
“And how would they know that? It's understandable, I would have done the same thing, honestly.”
The prosecutor suddenly felt guilty of a death. It never would have occurred to him that one could be responsible for a death just like that, by default, without having done anything to produce it. Perhaps he was not the only one guilty. Perhaps there were more, in fact, perhaps he lived in a world where everyone was guilty of something.
“Why haven't you finished them off, Commander? Why are they still in Yawarmayo? The army could …”
“The army has orders not to do anything there. And the police have no resources. Lieutenant Aramayo has spent ten years asking for weapons and equipment. Lima won't give its approval.”
“They have to know what is going on …”
“Lima knows, Señor Prosecutor. They know everything and are everywhere. If for some reason they have to, they will go into Yawarmayo and massacre them. The operation will be on television. The press will be there.”
Everything was becoming tangled in the prosecutor's head. He felt exhausted by thinking. One cannot choose to see or not see, hear or not hear, one sees, one listens, one thinks, the thoughts refuse to leave one's head, they change, they dissolve, they become disturbed.
“Why … why are you telling me this, Commander?”
Again the commander showed that turbid smile, a mixture of irony and disillusion. Now he seemed to be in another world, wrapped in a blanket of memories.
“Do you know what Cáceres used to do when he found a terrorist in a village?” he said. “He would call together the entire village that had sheltered the terrorist, lay the accused down in the main square, and cut off an arm or a leg with a two-man saw. He often ordered his sinchis to do it, but sometimes he did it himself, with someone helping him. He did it while the terrorist was alive, so nobody in the village could avoid seeing him or hearing his screams. Then they would bury the separate parts of the body. And if the head was still complaining, they would give him the coup de grâce just before putting him in the ground, and then the campesinos were obliged to fill in the hole with dirt. Cáceres would say that with his system, that village would never be disobedient again.”
“He died under his law.”
“He died under the only law there was, Señor Prosecutor, if there was any.”
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
The commander seemed to hesitate over what he would say. He looked at the bottle of pisco but did not get up. Then he said:
“At that time I was a captain. I was Cáceres's immediate superior. And according to the signals they're giving, the next victim … will be me.”
He tried to say the last sentence with self-assurance. A slight break in his voice betrayed his true state of mind. The prosecutor was moved to see this man confess that he was afraid. He felt better about his own fear. He said:
“Why don't you speak to the Intelligence Services?”
“Absolutely no contact with Lima, Chacaltana. Lima shouldn't know anything about this. During Holy Week, twenty thousand tourists will be in this city. It's the symbol of pacification. If they find out there's a recurrence, they'll cut off our balls. I don't want you to talk to anybody. Do you remember Carlos Martín Eléspuru?”
The prosecutor remembered the functionary Eléspuru. His ubiquity, his almost inaudible voice, his sky-blue tie. His serenity, his superiority.
“He shouldn't hear anything about this,” the commander continued. “And if we happen to run into him, you repeat everything I say: that terrorism is finished, that Peru waged a glorious struggle, any fucking stupid thing you can think of.”
“I do not understand, Commander. He should not hear anything about this?”
From one of his drawers, the commander took out a leather holster with a pistol inside. He placed it on the table, in front of the prosecutor. He recovered his authoritative tone to say:
“From now on you alone will take care of this investigation, Chacaltana. And fast. You'll deliver your reports directly to me and you'll have all my support, but I want you to find out once and for all what the fuck is going on and where so many terrorists are coming from. Carry this, you'll need it.”
“It will not be necessary, Se …”
“Carry it, damn it!”
The prosecutor picked up the holster by the barrel of the gun so the weapon would not go off. It was the first time he had held a weapon. It was very heavy for its size.
“Pick it up like a man, Chacaltana. Now leave. I have work to do.”
The prosecutor stood. He did not know if his appointment was an honor or a liability. He did not know whether to say thank you or request a transfer. There were many things he did not know. Mayta's was a long act of vengeance. It had taken ten years to arrive. From the door he turned to the commander to ask a final question:
“Commander, I need to know something. Edwin Mayta Carazo … was he innocent?”
“I don't know, Chacaltana. I don't think even he knew.”
It was afternoon when he left the commander's office and found himself in crowds of tourists waiting for the first processions of the day. He realized it was Friday of Sorrows. No one would be at the Office of the Prosecutor. He hurried to his own office and locked the door.
He put the holster on his desk. He looked at it. He did not want to take it to his house, so close to his mother. He thought about the mother of the Mayta family. Two sons lost at ten-year intervals. The bullets had reached her family from both sides of a battle that this woman surely never understood completely, just like the prosecutor. He opened the holster and took out the pistol with two fingers before putting it down again on the desk. It was black, 9mm, with a box of ammunition on the back of the sheath. The kind of weapon lieutenants use, like Cáceres, who had become intoxicated by the death of other people and in the end had left his job and run directly toward his own. Why?
It was difficult for him to take out the cartridge to verify that the weapon was loaded. It cost him even more effort to think what would happen if Sendero was rearming. He would not be enough to control it, or Commander Carrión, or all the functionaries in Lima. He closed the pistol carefully and put on the safety, or what he thought was the safety. If Sendero was regrouping, the best thing he could do with that pistol was blow his brains out.