She didn’t cry and they didn’t even argue. “I don’t know, let me see, I’ll think about it.” And at that moment she knew what she had to do, clearly and absolutely.
“So you lied to me.” Adelaida smiled, with a little air of triumph. “When you told me that you were ashamed of yourself, that it made you feel like garbage, that it was the disgrace of your life. I’m happy to see that you finally admit it.”
“It made and still makes me ashamed sometimes,” said Mayta. My cheeks were burning, and my tongue felt coated, but I wasn’t sorry to be talking about these things. “It’s still the disgrace of my life.”
“So then, why didn’t you want to get better,” Adelaida repeated.
“I want to be what I am,” I muttered, “I’m a revolutionary and I have flat feet. I’m also a queer. I don’t want to stop being one. It’s difficult to explain it to you. In this society, there are rules and prejudices; whatever seems abnormal seems a crime or a sickness. All because society is rotten, full of stupid ideas. That’s why we need a revolution, see?”
“And at the same time he told me himself that in the U.S.S.R. he would have been thrown into an insane asylum, and in China he would have been shot, because that’s how they deal with queers,” Adelaida tells me. “Is that why you want to start a revolution?”
Amid the dust of the collapsing buildings, the smoke from the fires, the prayers of the believers, the howls of the wounded, the despair of the unharmed, the sound of rifle shots echoed only a few seconds. Suddenly there came again the sound of screaming engines. Even before the people who had been throwing stones at each other, punching each other, and cursing each other could understand what was happening, bombs and machine-gun fire rained down on Cuzco.
“That’s why I want to start another revolution,” Mayta said, as he passed his tongue over his dry lips. He was dying of thirst but didn’t dare ask for a third glass of water. “No half measures, but the true, the integral revolution. A revolution that will wipe out all injustice, a revolution that will guarantee that no one will have any reason to be afraid of being what he is.”
“And you’re going to bring about that revolution with your pals from the RWP?” Adelaida laughed.
“I’m going to have to bring it about all by myself.” Mayta smiled at her. “I’m not in the RWP anymore. I resigned last night.”
She woke up the next day, and the idea was in her head, perfected by a night’s sleep. She caressed it, she turned it over, she spun it around as she got dressed, waited for the bus, and rattled toward the Banco de Crédito in Lince, and while she checked the balance in an account in her Lilliputian office. At eleven, she asked permission to go to the post office. Juan Zárate was still there, behind the four-paned windows. She managed to let him see her, and when he greeted her, she answered with a Technicolor smile. Juan Zárate, of course, took off his glasses, straightened his tie, and dashed out to shake her hand. The breakdown is total. The broken-up streets are strewn with more dead, more houses collapse, and those still standing are looted. Few of those who moan, weep, steal, die, or search for their dead seem to hear the orders given on every corner by the rebel patrols: “The order is to abandon the city, comrades. Abandon the city, abandon the city.”
“I’m still shocked that I had the nerve,” says Adelaida, looking at her honeymoon photo.
So that, during that last conversation, in this little living room, Mayta spoke to the woman who had been his wife about intimate, ideal things: the true, the integral revolution, the one that would abolish all injustices without inflicting new ones. So that, despite the last-minute reverses and setbacks, he felt, as Blacquer assured me, euphoric and even lyrical.
“If only our revolution would light the way for the others. Yes, Adelaida. I hope our Peru sets the example for the rest of the world.”
“It’s better to be frank, and that’s just how I’m going to talk to you — frankly.” Adelaida couldn’t believe her own self-confidence and daring. Even as she was saying these things, she was able to smile, strike a pose, and shake her hair in such a way that the head of the Lince post office looked at her in ecstasy. “You were wild about marrying me, isn’t that right, Juan?”
“You said it, Adelaidita.” Juan Zárate bent forward over the little table in the Petit Thouars coffee shop where they were having a soda. “Crazy about you, and even more than crazy.”
“Look me in the eye, Juan, and answer me truthfully. Do you still like me as much as you did years ago?”
“More than ever.” The head of the Lince post office swallowed hard. “You’re even prettier now than then, Adelaidita.”
“Well then, if you like, you may marry me.” Her voice hadn’t failed her, and it doesn’t fail her now. “I don’t want to cheat you, Juan. I’m not in love with you. But I’ll try to love you, to comply with your wishes, I’ll respect you, and I’ll do whatever I can to be a good wife.”
Juan Zárate stared at her, blinking. The soda in his hand began to tremble.
“Are you speaking seriously, Adelaidita?” he managed finally to blurt out.
“I certainly am.” And even now she didn’t hesitate. “I ask only one thing from you. That you give your name to the child I’m expecting.”
“Give me another glass of water,” said Mayta. “I just can’t stop drinking, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’ve been making speeches,” she said, getting up. She went on, from the kitchen: “You haven’t changed a bit. You’re even worse. Now you want to start a revolution not just for the poor but also for the queers. I swear you make me laugh, Mayta.”
A revolution for the queers, too, I thought. Yes, for the poor queers, too. He wasn’t the slightest bit angry about Adelaida’s burst of laughter. Amid the smoke and pestilence, you could make out the columns of people fleeing from the destroyed city, tripping over the broken pavement, covering their mouths and noses. The dead, the badly wounded, the very old, and the very young remained among the ruins. And looters, who, defying asphyxiation, fire, and sporadic bombing, broke into the houses still standing, looking for money and food.
“And he accepted,” I conclude. “Don Juan Zárate must have really loved you, ma’am.”
“We had a church wedding while we waited for my divorce from Mayta to go through.” Adelaida sighs, looking at the Cañete photograph. “It was two years before the divorce was official. Then we had a civil ceremony.”
How did Mayta take this story? Without any surprise, certainly with relief. He had gone through the charade of telling her how very concerned he was that she should marry that way, with no feelings at all.
“Wasn’t that what you did with me? But with one difference. You tricked me, and I told Juan everything.”
“But your calculations were wrong,” said Mayta. He had just finished the glass of water and was feeling bloated. “Don’t you remember that I warned you? Right from the beginning, I warned you that …”
“No more speeches, please,” Adelaida interrupted him.
She is silent, tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair, and I can see by the look on her face that she has estimated that the hour is up. But I look at my watch and there are fifteen minutes left. Just then, we hear shots: one isolated report, then two more, than a burst of fire. Adelaida and I jump to the window and look out. The guards have disappeared, no doubt crouching behind the barbed wire and sandbags. But on the left, seemingly unconcerned, a patrol of airmen advances toward Rospigliosi Castle. It’s true that the shots sounded quite far away. Executions in the slums? Has the fighting on the outskirts of Lima begun?