“How long have we been seeing each other?” asks Mayta. “Two months?”
“We’re really tight, though, right?” Vallejos says as he applauds a kick made by a small, extremely agile wing. “What were you going to say?”
“That sometimes I think we’re wasting our time.”
Vallejos forgot the match. “You mean, about lending me books and teaching me Marxism?”
“Not because you don’t understand what I teach you,” Mayta clarified. “You’re smart enough to understand dialectical materialism, or anything else.”
“That’s good,” said Vallejos, returning to the match. “I thought you were wasting your time because I’m a jerk.”
“No, you’re no jerk.” Mayta smiled at the lieutenant’s profile. “The fact is, when I’m talking to you, knowing what you’re thinking, knowing you yourself, I think that theory, instead of helping you, can actually get in your way.”
“Darn! Almost a goal. Nice shot.” Vallejos got up to clap.
“In that sense, understand?” Mayta went on.
“I don’t understand a thing,” Vallejos said. “Now I am a jerk. Are you trying to tell me to forget my plan, that I was wrong to give you the sub-machine gun? What do you mean, brother? Goal! All right!”
“In theory, revolutionary spontaneity is bad,” Mayta said. “If there is no doctrine, no scientific knowledge, the impulse is wasted in anarchic gestures. But you have an instinctive resistance to getting tangled up in theory. Maybe you’re right. Perhaps, thanks to that instinct, what happened to us won’t happen to you …”
“Us?” asked Vallejos, turning to look at him.
“From worrying so much about being well prepared in doctrinal terms, we forgot the practical, and …”
He fell silent because there was a huge uproar in the stands: firecrackers were going off, and a rain of confetti came down on the field. You’d made a mistake, Mayta.
“You haven’t answered me,” Vallejos insisted, without looking at him, contemplating his cigarette. Was he an informer? “You said us, and I asked who us is. You didn’t answer, buddy.”
“Revolutionary Peruvians, Marxist Peruvians,” Mayta spelled it out, scrutinizing him. Was he an agent ordered to find out about them, to provoke them? “We know a lot about Leninism and Trotskyism, but we don’t know how to reach the masses. That’s what I meant.”
“I asked him if he at least believed in God, if his political ideas were compatible with the Christian faith,” Juanita says.
“I shouldn’t have asked you that, brother,” Vallejos begged pardon, contrite, the two of them immersed in the flood of people emptying out of the stadium. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to tell me anything.”
“What can I tell you that you don’t already know?” Mayta said. “I’m happy we came, even if the match was no good. It’s been ages since …”
“I want to tell you just one thing,” Vallejos declared, taking him by the arm. “I understand that you have your doubts about me.”
“You’re nuts,” said Mayta. “Why should I have doubts about you?”
“Because I’m a soldier, and because you don’t know me all that well,” said Vallejos. “I can understand that you’d hide certain things from me. I don’t want to know anything about your political life, Mayta. I play fair and square with my friends, and I think of you as a friend. If I pull a fast one on you, you’ve got a way to even the score — the surprise …”
“The revolution and the Catholic religion are incompatible,” asserts Mayta softly. “Don’t fool yourself, Mother.”
“You’re the one who’s fouled up. You’re also way behind the times,” Juanita jokes. “Do you think I’m put out when I hear religion called the opiate of the people? It may have been, probably was, in any case. But that’s all finished. Everything is changing. We’re going to bring about the revolution, too. Don’t laugh.”
Had the era of progressive priests and nuns already begun then in Peru? Juanita says yes, but I have my doubts. Anyway, it was in such an early stage of development, as yet so inarticulate, that Mayta couldn’t have had any idea of it. Would he have been pleased? The ex-child who had gone on a hunger strike to be like the poor, would he have been happy that Monsignor Bambarén, bishop of the slums, wore his famous ring with the pontifical coat of arms on one side and the hammer and sickle on the other? Would he have been happy that Father Gustavo Gutiérrez conceived liberation theology by explaining that bringing about the socialist revolution was the obligation of every Catholic? That Monsignor Méndez Arceo advised the Mexican faithful to go to Cuba as they used to go to Lourdes? Yes, no doubt about it. Maybe he would have gone on being a Catholic, as have so many these days. Did he give one the feeling that he was dogmatic, a man of rigid ideas?
Juanita thinks it over for a moment. “Yes, I think so, a dogmatic man.” She nods. “At least he wasn’t at all flexible about religion. We only spoke for a while, perhaps I didn’t understand what kind of man he was. I thought about him a lot later on. He had a huge influence on my brother. He changed his life. He made him read, which was something he almost never did before. Communist books, of course. I tried to warn him: ‘You know he’s catechizing you?’”
“Yes, I know, but I learn a lot of things from him, sister.”
“My brother was an idealist, a rebel, with an innate sense of justice,” adds Juanita. “He found a mentor in Mayta, one who manipulated him as he saw fit.”
“So, as far as you’re concerned, Mayta was calling the shots?” I ask her. “Do you think he planned it all, that he put the Jauja business into Vallejos’s head?”
“No, because I don’t know how to use it.” Mayta was doubtful. “I’ll make you a confession. I’ve never even fired a cap gun in my entire life. But, going back to what you said before about friendship, I have to warn you about one thing.”
“Don’t warn me about anything, I already asked you to excuse my indiscretion,” said Vallejos. “I’d rather hear one of your speeches. Let’s go on with double power, that idea of undercutting the bourgeoisie and the imperialists slowly but surely.”
“Not even friendship comes before the revolution for a revolutionary: get that through your head and never forget it,” said Mayta. “Revolution, above all things. Then comes the rest. That’s what I tried to explain to your sister the other afternoon. Her ideas are good, she goes as far as a Catholic can. But that’s just not enough. If you believe in heaven and hell, then what happens here on earth will always take a back seat to all that. And there will never be a revolution. I trust you and I think of you as a great friend. If I hide anything, if …”
“Okay, okay. I’ve already asked you to forgive me, can’t we forget it?” Vallejos wanted to shut him up. “So you’ve never fired a gun? Tomorrow we’ll go over by Lurín, with the surprise. I’ll give you a lesson. Firing a sub-machine gun is much easier than the thesis of double power.”
“Of course, that was what had to happen,” Juanita said. But she does not seem all that sure, judging by the way she says it. “Mayta was an old hand at politics, a professional revolutionary. My brother was an impulsive kid Mayta could dominate just by his age and his knowledge.”
“I don’t know. I’m just not sure,” I said to her. “Sometimes I think it was the other way around.”
“That’s silly,” said María, joining in. “How could a kid get a savvy old guy like that involved in as crazy a deal as that?”
Exactly, Mother. Mayta was a revolutionary from the shadowy side. He had spent his life conspiring and fighting in insignificant little groups like the one he was a member of. And suddenly, just when he was reaching the age at which people usually retire from militant activism, someone turned up who opened the doors of action to him for the first time. Could there have been anything as captivating for a man like Mayta than out of the blue having someone stick a sub-machine gun in his hands?