“Are you okay?” Vallejos asked him on the way out.
“A touch of mountain sickness from running. Let’s hold the meeting with whatever people are here. We’ve got to do it.”
One of the boys euphorically shouted: “Long live the revolution!”
“Hurrah!” bellowed the other joeboys. One of them pointed his Mauser at the sky and fired. The first shot of the day. The other four followed. They invaded the plaza, cheering the revolution, firing shots in the air, and telling people to gather around.
“Everyone’s told you there was no meeting, because nobody wanted to hear what they had to say. They called to the people walking on the square, standing in doorways, anyone — but no one would come,” says Anthero Huillmo, ex-street photographer, now blind and selling novenas, religious pictures, and rosaries from eight in the morning until eight at night at the cathedral door. “They even tried to stop the truck drivers: ‘Stop!’ ‘Get out!’ ‘Come on!’ But the drivers had their doubts and just stepped on the gas. But there was a meeting. I was there, I saw it and heard it. That was before God saw fit to send that tear-gas grenade that burned my face. Now I can’t see, but then I could and did. Actually, it was a meeting held exclusively for me.”
Was that the first sign that their calculations were wrong not just about the people involved in the uprising but about the people of Jauja? The purpose of the meeting was crystal-clear in his mind: inform the man on the street about what had gone on that morning, explain the class struggle in its historic and social sense, and show their conviction — maybe even give some of the poorest money. But in the center of the plaza, to which Mayta had made his way, there was no one but a street photographer, the little bunch of Indians petrified on their bench, trying their best not to look at the revolutionaries, and the five joeboys. They vainly waved and called to the groups of curious people on the corners near the cathedral and the Colegio del Carmen. If the joeboys tried to approach them, they ran off. Did the shots scare them? Could the news have spread already, so that these people would be afraid to be taken for revolutionaries if the police were suddenly to appear? Did it make any sense to go on waiting?
Cupping his hands over his mouth, Mayta shouted: “We are rebelling against the bourgeois order, so the people can throw off their chains! To end the exploitation of the masses! To give land to the people who work it! To stop the imperialist rape of our nation!”
“Don’t shout yourself hoarse. They’re far away and can’t hear you,” said Vallejos, jumping off the little wall around the garden in the plaza. “We’re wasting our time.”
Mayta obeyed and began walking alongside him toward the corner of Bolognesi, where the taxis, guarded by Gualberto Bravo and Perico Temoche, were waiting. Well, there was no meeting, but at least his mountain sickness was better. Would they get to Quero? Would the people who were supposed to be there really be there with horses and mules?
As if there were telepathic communication between them, Mayta heard Vallejos say, “Even if the Ricrán guys don’t show up in Quero, there won’t be any problem, because there are lots of horses and mules there. It’s a cattle town.”
“We’ll buy them, in that case,” said Mayta, patting the bag he carried in his right hand. He turned to Condori, who marched behind him: “How is the road to Uchubamba?”
“When it’s dry, easy,” replied Condori. “I’ve done it a thousand times. It’s only rough at night because of the cold. But as soon as you get to the jungle, easy as pie.”
Gualberto Bravo and Perico Temoche, who were sitting next to the taxi drivers, got out to meet them. Envious of not having gone with them to the banks, they kept saying, “Tell us about it, tell us.” But Vallejos ordered an immediate departure.
“We mustn’t separate under any circumstance,” said the lieutenant, coming up to Mayta, who, with Condori and the three joeboys, was already in Mr. Onaka’s taxi. “No need to speed. First stop, Molinos.”
He went to the other taxi, and Mayta thought: We’ll get to Quero, we’ll load the Mausers on mules, we’ll cross the mountains, go down to the jungle, and in Uchubamba the community will receive us with open arms. We’ll give them weapons, and Uchubamba will be our first base camp. He had to be optimistic. Although there had been desertions, and even if the Ricrán men didn’t show up in Quero, he couldn’t allow himself to doubt. Hadn’t everything gone so well this morning?
“That’s what we thought,” says Colonel Felicio Tapia, a doctor drafted into the army, a married man with four sons, one an invalid and another an army man, wounded in action in the Azángaro sector. He’s passing through Jauja because he has to make constant inspections of the clinics in the Junín zone. “We thought the guards and the lieutenant we’d left locked up would take a long time to get out, and since communications were cut, they’d have to go to Huancayo to get reinforcements. Five or six hours, at least. By then, we’d be well on our way to the jungle. Who’d find us then? Vallejitos had chosen the place very well.
“It’s the area where we’ve had the most trouble carrying out operations. Ideal for ambushes. The Reds are out there in their dens, and the only way to root them out is by saturation bombing, by destroying everything, and attacking with bayonets — which means heavy casualties. If people knew how many men we’ve lost, they’d be shocked. Well, I don’t suppose Peruvians are shocked by anything nowadays. Where were we? Oh yeah, that’s what we thought. But Lieutenant Dongo got right out of the cell. He went to the telegraph office and saw everything smashed, so he went down to the station and found the telegraph there working perfectly. He telegraphed, and a busload of police left Huancayo about the time we were leaving Jauja. Instead of five hours, we barely had a two-hour lead on them. How stupid! To knock out the telegraph at the train station would have taken two minutes.”
“So why didn’t you do it?”
He shrugs and blows smoke out his mouth and nose. He’s old before his time, his mustache stained by nicotine. He gasps. We are talking in the infirmary at the Jauja barracks. From time to time, Colonel Tapia glances into the waiting room crowded with sick and wounded being looked after by nurses.
“You know, I don’t know why we didn’t do it. Underdevelopment, I suppose. In the original plan, in which there were going to be some forty people, I think, not counting the joeboys, one group was supposed to seize the station. At least that’s how I remember it. Then, in the confusion of changing plans, Vallejitos must have forgotten about that. Probably no one remembered that there was a telegraph at the station. The fact is, we left happy, thinking we had all the time in the world.”
In fact, they weren’t very happy. When Mr. Onaka (whining that he couldn’t go to Molinos with his wife sick, that he didn’t have enough gas to get there) started up, the incident with the watchmaker took place. Mayta saw him appear suddenly, snorting like a wild bull, right in front of the glass door with gothic letters on it: “Jewels and Watches: Pedro Bautista Lozada.” He was an older man, thin, wearing glasses, his face red with indignation. He was carrying a shotgun. Mayta took the safety off his sub-machine gun, but he was calm enough not to fire — after all, the man was howling like a banshee, but he wasn’t even aiming his gun at them. He was waving it around like a cane, shouting: “Fucking communists, you don’t scare me,” while stumbling around by the curb, his glasses bouncing on his nose. “Fucking communists! Alight if you’ve got any balls!”