We are in a corner of his run-down store, each standing on his own side of the counter. At the other end, Mrs. Onaka looks away from her newspaper every time a customer comes in to buy candles or cigarettes, the only things the store seems well stocked with. The Onakas are of Japanese descent — the grandchildren of immigrants — but in Jauja they’re called “the Chinks,” a misnomer that doesn’t bother Mr. Onaka.
Unlike Dr. Cordero Espinoza, Mr. Onaka doesn’t accept his disasters with philosophical good humor. Anyone can see he’s demoralized, resentful about everything. He and Cordero Espinoza are the only people, among all those I’ve talked to in Jauja, who speak openly against the guerrillas. The others, even those who have been victims of their attacks, keep absolutely silent about the revolutionaries.
“I had just opened up when the Tapia kid — the family lives over on Villarreal — shows up. An emergency, Mr. Onaka. You have to take a sick lady to the hospital. I started up the car, the Tapia boy sat down next to me, and then the little actor said, ‘Hurry up, the lady’s dying.’ In front of the jail, there was another taxi being loaded with rifles. I parked behind it. I asked the lieutenant, ‘Where’s the sick lady?’ He didn’t even answer me. Right then, the other guy, the one from Lima, Mayta — right? — steps up and sticks his gun in my chest: ‘Do what you’re told and you’ll be all right.’ I thought I’d shit in my pants — if you don’t mind my saying so. I was really afraid. After all, those were the first revolutionaries I’d ever seen. What a jerk I was. At the time, I had a little money. I could have gone away with my wife. We could be living out our old age in peace.”
Condori, Mayta, Felicio Tapia, Cordero Espinoza, and Teófilo Puertas got into the car after loading it with half the rifles and ammunition. Mayta ordered Onaka to drive off: “If you make any funny moves, you’re dead.” He was in the back seat, and his mouth was dry as cotton. But his hands were sweating. Squeezed in next to him, the cadet commander and Puertas were sitting on the rifles. In front, with Felicio Tapia, was Condori.
“I don’t know why I didn’t crash or run someone over.” Mr. Onaka speaks out of a toothless mouth. “I thought they were thieves, murderers, escaped convicts. But how could the lieutenant be with them? What could the Tapia kid and the child of that gentleman Dr. Cordero be doing mixed up with murderers? They talked about the revolution and I don’t know what else. What is this? What’s going on? They made me take them over to the Civil Guard station, on Jirón Manco Cápac. The guy from Lima, Condori, and the Tapia boy got out there. They left the other two guarding me, and Mayta said to them, ‘If he tries to get away, kill him.’
“Afterward, the kids swore it was only playacting, that they would never have shot me. But now we know that even kids kill, with hatchets, stones, and knives, right? Anyway, now we know lots of things that nobody knew then. Easy now, boys, don’t get excited. You know me, I wouldn’t hurt a fly, and I’ve given you credit lots of times. Why are you doing this to me? And besides, what’s going on over there? What are they going to do at the station? The socialist revolution, Mr. Onaka, said Corderito — the guy whose house they burned down and whose office they almost blew up. The socialist revolution! What? What is that? I think it was the first time I ever heard the words. That’s when I found out that four grown men and seven joeboys had chosen my poor Ford to carry out a socialist revolution. Holy shit!”
At the door of the station there were no guards, and Mayta signaled to Condori and Felicio Tapia: he would go in first, they should cover him. Condori looked calm, but Tapia was very pale and Mayta saw that his hands were red from holding on so tight to the rifle. He walked into the room bent over, with the safety off the sub-machine gun, shouting: “Hands up or I’ll shoot!”
In the half-darkened room, Mayta surprised a man wearing underpants and an undershirt in mid-yawn, a yawn that froze, turning his face into a stupid mask. He sat there staring, and only when he saw Condori and Felicio Tapia appear behind Mayta, they too pointing rifles at him, did he raise his hands.
“Watch him,” said Mayta, and he ran to the back of the building. He passed through a narrow hall that led to an unpaved patio. Two guards, wearing trousers and boots but without shirts on, were washing their faces and hands in a basin of soapy water. One smiled at Mayta, mistaking him for a buddy.
“Get your hands up, or I’ll fire!” Mayta said, not shouting this time. “Hands up, goddamn it!”
The two obeyed, and one of them moved so quickly that he knocked the basin over. The water darkened the dirt of the patio. “What’s all the racket, for Christ’s sake?” called out a sleepy voice. How many could there be in there? Condori was next to him, and Mayta whispered, “Take these two out,” without taking his eyes off the room where he’d heard the voice. He crossed the little patio on the run, bent forward. He passed under a climbing vine, and on the threshold of the room, he stopped short, holding back the “Hands up!” he was about to shout. It was the sleeping room. There were two rows of bunks against the walls, and on three bunks there were men, two sleeping and the third smoking, flat on his back. A transistor radio was next to him, and he was listening to country music. When he saw Mayta, he choked and jumped to his feet, staring fixedly at the sub-machine gun.
“I thought it was all a joke,” he stuttered, dropping the cigarette and placing his hands on his head.
“Wake those two up,” said Mayta, pointing to the sleeping men. “Don’t make me shoot: I don’t want to kill you.”
Without turning his back on Mayta or taking his eyes off the weapon, the guard edged along sideways, like a crab, until he reached the others. He shook them. “Wake up, wake up, I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I was expecting shots, a huge racket. I thought I’d see Mayta, Condori, and the Tapia kid bleeding, and that in the confusion the guards would shoot me, thinking I was an attacker,” says Mr. Onaka. “But there wasn’t a single shot. Before I knew what was going on inside, the other taxi came with Vallejos. He’d already captured the police station over on Jirón Bolívar and locked Lieutenant Dongo and three guards in a cell. He asked the kids: Everything okay? We don’t know. I begged him: Let me go, lieutenant, my wife is really sick. Don’t be afraid, Mr. Onaka, we need you because none of us drives. Can you imagine anything as dumb as that? They were going to make a revolution and they didn’t even know how to drive a car.”
“No problem,” said Mayta, relieved to see them again. “What about the police station?”
“A breeze,” answered Vallejos. “Well done, I congratulate all of you. And we have ten more rifles.”
“We aren’t going to have enough men for so many rifles,” said Mayta.
“We’ll have enough,” replied the lieutenant, as he looked over the new Mausers. “In Uchubamba there are more than enough, right, Condori?”
It seemed incredible that everything was going so well, Mayta.
“They loaded another pile of rifles in my Ford,” Mr. Onaka says, sighing. “They ordered me to drive to the telephone company, and what else could I do?”
“When I got to work, I saw two cars there, and I recognized the Chink from the store, that Onaka character, the crook,” says Mrs. Adriana Tello, a tiny, wrinkled-up old lady with a firm voice and gnarled hands. “He had such a face on that I thought he’s either gotten up on the wrong side of the bed or he’s a neurotic Chinaman. As soon as they saw me, some guys got out and went into the office with me. Why should I have been suspicious? In those days there weren’t even robberies in Jauja, much less revolutions, so why be suspicious? Wait, we’re not open yet. But it was as if they hadn’t heard a word. They jumped over the counter, and one turned Asuntita Asís’s — may she rest in peace — desk over. What’s all this? What are you doing? What do you want? To knock out the telephone and telegraph. Good gracious! I’ll be out of a job. Ha, ha, I swear that’s just what I was thinking. I don’t know how I can still laugh with all the things that are going on. Have you seen the impudence of these gringos who say they have come to help us? They can’t even speak Spanish, and they walk around with their rifles and just go into any house they please, what nerve. As if we were their colony. There must not be any more patriots left in our Peru when we have to put up with that kind of humiliation.”