“As soon as they heard me offer them as volunteers, they got all excited,” he continues. “In fact, the seven of us were like brothers. A kids’ game, compared to what we have today, right?”
“Yes, yes, we’ll be their replacements.”
“Open the door, let us in, we can do it.”
“We are revolutionaries and we’ll be their replacements.”
Mayta was looking at them, listening to them, and his head was filled with static, disorder.
“How old are you?”
“Huasasquiche and I are seventeen,” says Cordero Espinoza. “The others are fifteen or sixteen.” Lucky for us, because they couldn’t bring us up on charges, since we were still minors. They sent us to juvenile court, where they didn’t take the matter too seriously. Don’t you think it’s paradoxical that I was a pioneer in the armed struggle in Peru and that now I’m a target of the guerrillas?” He shrugs.
“I suppose that by that time there was no way for Mayta and Vallejos to turn back,” I say.
“Yes, there was. Vallejos could have let the guards out of the barracks where he’d locked them up and cursed them up and down: ‘You have demonstrated that you’re really nothing, pansies, if there really was an attack on the jail by subversives. Not a single one of you has passed the test I just put you to, shitasses.’” Dr. Cordero Espinoza offers me a cigarette, and before lighting his own, he places it in a holder. “They would have swallowed the story, I’m sure of it. He could have sent us off to school, put Gonzales and Condori back in the lockup, and gotten off scot-free. All of them could have, even then. But of course they didn’t. Mayta and Vallejos weren’t men who would just give in. In that sense, even though one was in his forties and the other in his twenties, they were more kids than we were.”
So it was Mayta who first accepted that romantic and preposterous offer. His hesitation and perplexity lasted a few seconds. He decided suddenly. He opened the main door, said, “Quickly, quickly,” to the joeboys, and as they invaded the patio, he looked down the street. It was empty of people and cars, the houses were all shuttered. His strength came back to him, his blood rushed through his veins, there was no reason to despair. He closed the door after the last boy. There they were: seven anxious and impassioned little faces. Both Condori and Gonzales were now carrying rifles, and they looked with fascination at the kids. Vallejos appeared behind the cherry trees, having finished his inspection of the prisoners.
Mayta went to meet him. “Ubilluz and the others haven’t come. But we have volunteers to take their places.”
Did Vallejos pull up short? Did Mayta see that his face twisted into a hideous grin? Did he see that the young second lieutenant labored to appear calm? Did he hear Vallejos say under his breath, “Ubilluz hasn’t come? Ezequiel either? The Parrot either?”
“We can’t go back now, comrade.” Mayta shook him by the arm. “I told you, I warned you that it would happen. Action selects. Now there’s no going back. We can’t. Accept the boys. They got all fired up coming over here. They are revolutionaries, what other proof could you want. Are we turning yellow, brother?”
The more he spoke, the more he convinced himself, and for a second time, he repeated his exorcism against good sense: “Like a machine, like a soldier.” Vallejos, mute, scrutinized him — doubting? trying to determine if what he was saying was also what he was thinking? But when Mayta stopped talking, the lieutenant once again became a tissue of controlled nerves and instant decisions. He then approached the joeboys, who had listened to the dialogue.
“I’m happy this has happened,” he said, standing among them. “I’m happy because, thanks to this, I know there are some brave men in this world like you. Welcome to the struggle, boys. I want to shake hands with every one of you.”
Actually, he began to hug them, to press them to his breast. Mayta took off his hat, hugging and being hugged, and behind clouds, he saw Zenón Gonzales and Condori joining in. A profound emotion overwhelmed him. He had a knot in his throat. Several boys wept, and the tears poured down their jubilant faces as they embraced the lieutenant, Mayta, Gonzales, Condori, and one another. Long live the revolution! shouted one, and another shouted: Long live socialism! Vallejos ordered them to be quiet.
“I don’t think I ever felt as happy as I did at that moment,” says Dr. Cordero Espinoza. “It was beautiful, so much naïveté, so much idealism. We felt as if our mustaches and beards had suddenly sprouted, as if we had grown taller and stronger. Probably not a single one of us had even set foot in a whorehouse. I, at least, was a virgin. And it seemed to me I was losing my virginity.”
“Did any of you know how to use a rifle?”
“In the military training course, they gave us some rifle classes. Maybe a few of us had fired shotguns. But we made up for inexperience right then and there. It was the first thing Vallejos did after hugging us: he taught us what a Mauser was all about.”
While the lieutenant gave the joeboys a lesson on how to fire a rifle, Mayta explained what had happened to Condori and Zenón Gonzales. They didn’t raise the roof when they found out they had no one else to count on. They weren’t outraged to learn that the whole revolutionary body might consist of them and the little group of soldier boys. They were serious as they listened, and asked no questions. Vallejos ordered two boys to get some taxis. Felicio Tapia and Huasasquiche took off on the run. Then Vallejos got Mayta and the peasants together. He had restructured the plan. Divided into two groups, they would seize the police station and the Civil Guard post. Mayta was listening, but out of the Corner of his eye he took note of how the peasants reacted. Would Gonzales be saying, “See? I told you I was right to have my doubts about all this.” No, he said nothing. He was inscrutable as he listened to the lieutenant.
“Here come the taxis,” shouted Perico Temoche, from the main door.
“I was never a real taxi driver,” Mr. Onaka assures me, pointing melancholically to the empty shelves in his store, shelves that used to be filled with food and domestic articles. “I was always the owner of this store, which I ran. You may not believe it, but it was the best-stocked shop in Junín province.”
Bitterness twists his yellow face. Mr. Onaka has been a favorite victim of the rebels, who have robbed his store an incredible number of times. “Eight,” he informs me. “The last was three weeks ago, with the Marines already here. So you see, gringos or no gringos, it’s the same shit. They came at six, wearing masks. They locked the door and said, ‘Where’s the food hidden, pig?’ Hidden? Go look for it and take whatever you can find. It’s because of you that I haven’t got a thing. They found nothing, of course. Why don’t you take my wife instead? She’s all you’ve left me. Why don’t you take my wife instead? She’s all you’ve left me. Why don’t you kill me? Have a good time, kill the guy whose life you’ve ruined. We don’t waste bullets on vultures, one of them said. And all that happened at six in the afternoon, with the police, soldiers, and Marines walking the streets of Jauja. Doesn’t that prove that they’re all the same bunch of crooks?” He snorts, takes a deep breath, and looks at his wife, who, bent over the counter, tries to read the paper by bringing the page right up to her eyes. Both of them are decrepit.
“Since she could take care of the customers by herself, I did a little taxi driving with the Ford,” Mr. Onaka continues. “It was my bad luck that I got tangled up in the Vallejos business. I cracked up the car because of it, and I had to spend a fortune fixing it. Because of that, I was hit on the head — they split my brow right here — and thrown in jail, while they investigated and found out that I wasn’t an accomplice but a victim.”