“This is make-believe, a novel,” says Juanita, with a smile that forgives me for my transgression. “This isn’t at all like the real story, in any case.”
“It won’t be the real story, but, just as you say, a novel.” I confirm her ideas. “A faint, remote, and, if you like, false version.”
“Then why work so hard at it?” she insinuates with irony. “Why try to find out everything that happened, why come to confess to me like this. Why not just lie and make the whole thing up from top to bottom?”
“Because I’m a realist, in my novels I always try to lie knowing why I do it,” I explain. “That’s how I work. And I think the only way to write stories is to start with History — with a capital H.”
“I wonder if we ever really know what you call History with a capital H,” María interrupts. “Or if there’s as much make-believe in history as in novels. For example, the things we were talking about. So much has been said about revolutionary priests, about Marxist infiltration in the Church … But no one comes up with the obvious answer.”
“Which is?”
“The despair and anger you feel at having to see hunger and sickness day and night, the feeling of impotence in the face of so much injustice,” said Mayta, always choosing his words carefully so as not to offend. The nun noticed that he barely moved his lips as he spoke. “Above all, realize that the people who can do something never will. Politicians, the rich, the ones in the driver’s seat, the ones with power.”
“But why would you lose your faith because of that?” asked Vallejos’s sister, astonished. “I would think it would make it stronger, that it would …”
Mayta went on, his tone hardening: “No matter how strong your faith is, there comes a moment when you say, That’s it. It just can’t be possible that the remedy for so much iniquity is the promise of eternal life. That’s how it was, Mother. Seeing that hell was right here in the streets of Lima. Especially over in El Montón. Ever been to El Montón?”
Another shack city, one of the first, no worse, no more miserable than this one where Juanita and María live. Things have gotten much worse since that time when Mayta confessed to the nun; the shacks have proliferated, and in addition to misery and unemployment, there is murder now. Was it really the spectacle of Montón that fifty years ago transformed the devout little boy that Mayta was into a rebel? Contact with that world has not had the same effect, in any case, on Juanita and María. Neither gives the impression of being desperate, outraged, or even resigned, and at least as far as I can see, living with iniquity has not convinced them that the solution is assassination and bombs. They went on being nuns, right? Would the shots fade into echoes in the Lurín desert?
“No.” Vallejos aimed, fired, and the noise wasn’t as loud as Mayta thought it would be. His palms were sweaty with expectation. “No, they weren’t for me, I lied to you. The books, well, in fact I bring them all to Jauja so the joeboys can read them. I have faith in you, Mayta. I’m going to tell you something I wouldn’t even tell the person I love most in the world, my sister.”
As he spoke, he put the sub-machine gun in Mayta’s hands. He showed him how to brace it, how to take off the safety, how to aim, squeeze the trigger, load and unload.
“A big mistake. Never talk about things like that,” Mayta admonished him, his voice shaken by the jolt he had felt in his body as he heard the burst of fire and realized from the vibration in his wrists that it was he who had fired. Off in the distance, the sand extended, yellowish, ocher, bluish, indifferent. “It’s a simple matter of security. Nothing to do with you, but with the others, don’t you understand? Anyone can do whatever he likes with his life. But no one should endanger his comrades, the revolution, just to show a friend he trusts him. And suppose I worked for the cops?”
“That’s not your style. Even if you wanted, you couldn’t be a squealer.” Vallejos laughed. “What do you think? Easy, huh?”
“You know, it’s really easy,” Mayta agreed, touching the muzzle and burning his fingers. “Don’t tell me any more about the joeboys. I don’t need proof of your friendship, jerk-off.”
A hot breeze had come up and the salt flats looked as if they were being bombarded with grains of sand. It was true that the second lieutenant had chosen the perfect place — who would hear the shots in this solitude? He shouldn’t think he knew all he had to know. The main thing was not loading, unloading, aiming, and firing, but cleaning the weapon and knowing how to take it apart and put it back together.
“I told you because I had a purpose.” Vallejos returned to the subject, gesturing at the same time that they should head back to the highway, because the land breeze was going to suffocate them. “I need your help, brother. They’re boys from the Colegio San José, over in Jauja. Really young, fourth or fifth year. We got to be friends playing soccer on the little field near the jail. The joeboys.”
They walked on the sand with their heads bent to the wind, their feet buried up to the ankles in the soft earth. Mayta quickly forgot the shooting lesson and his anger of a moment before, intrigued by what the second lieutenant was saying.
“Don’t tell me anything that’ll make you sorry you did,” Mayta reminded him, even though he was beside himself with curiosity.
“Shut the fuck up.” Vallejos had tied his handkerchief over his face to protect himself from the sand. “The joeboys and I went from soccer to having a few beers together, then to little parties, to the movies, and to meetings. Since we’ve been holding these meetings, I’ve tried to teach them the things you teach me. A teacher from the Colegio San José helps me out. He says he’s a socialist, too.”
“You give classes in Marxism?” Mayta asks.
“You bet, the only true science,” Vallejos says, gesticulating. “The antidote to all those idealist, metaphysical ideas they get pumped into their heads. Just as you yourself would have said it in your own flowery style, brother.”
A moment before, when he was showing Mayta how to shoot, he was a dextrous athlete, a commander. And now he was a timid boy, awkwardly telling him his story. Through the rain of sand, Mayta looked at him. He imagined the women who had kissed those clean-cut features, bitten those fine lips, who had writhed under the lieutenant’s body.
“You know you really knock me out?” he exclaimed. “I thought my classes in Marxism bored you to death.”
“Sometimes they do — to be frank — and other times I get lost,” Vallejos admitted. “Permanent revolution, for example. It’s too many things all at the same time. So I’ve scrambled the joeboys’ brains. That’s why I’m always asking you to come to Jauja. Come on, give me a hand with them. Those boys are pure dynamite, Mayta.”
“Of course we’re still nuns, but without the disguise.” María smiles. “We’ve got a surplus of jobs, not vows. They free us up from teaching and let us work here. The congregation helps us out as best they can.”
Do Juanita and María have the feeling they really are helping in a positive way by living in this shack city? They must. Otherwise, the risk they run by living here under these conditions would be inexplicable. A day doesn’t go by without some priest, nun, or social worker in the slums being attacked. Setting aside whether what they do is useful or not, it’s impossible not to envy them the faith that gives them the strength to withstand this daily horror. I tell them that as I walked here I had the feeling I was crossing all the circles of hell.
“It must be even worse there,” Juanita says, without smiling.