“That’s a sizable accusation,” I tell him. “A spy for the army and a CIA agent at the same time …”
“Spy, agent — those are big words,” he modifies. “Informer, instrument, perhaps victim. Have you spoken with anyone else who knew Mayta then?”
“Moisés Barbi Leyva. How is it he knew nothing about all this? Moisés was involved in all the planning for the Jauja thing, he even saw Mayta the day before …”
“Moisés is a guy who knows a lot of things.” Senator Campos smiles.
Is he going to tell me now that Moisés is a CIA agent? No, he could never make an accusation like that against the director of a center that has already published two of his sociopolitical tomes — one of them with an introduction by Barbi Leyva himself.
“Moisés is a prudent man, full of interests to defend,” he blurts out, in a mildly acid tone. “His philosophy nowadays is what’s done is done. It’s the only way to live, if you want to avoid problems. Unfortunately, I’m not like him. I’ve never hesitated to speak up. That’s why I ended up with a game leg — I always say what I think. Someday I’ll get killed for it. What I can do, of course, is look my family in the eye without feeling shame.”
He turns aside for a moment, as if upset at allowing himself to be drawn into such an autobiographical outpouring.
“What does Moisés think of the Mayta of those days?” he asks me, keeping his eyes fixed on the toes of his shoes.
“He thinks Mayta was a rather naïve idealist,” I tell him. “A headstrong man full of conflicts, but a revolutionary through and through.”
He continues to meditate, shrouded in cigarette smoke. “I told you: it’s better not to take the lid off that pot. There are some stinks in there that would make lots of people choke.” He pauses a moment, smiles, and unloads: “It was Moisés who read the charge that Mayta was an infiltrator the night we expelled him from the RWP(T).”
He’s left me speechless. In the small garage, now turned into a courtroom, an adolescent, thundering Moisés ends his deposition by waving a handful of irrefutable evidence. Squealer! Informer! Pale, slumped over underneath the poster bearing the effigies of the ideologues, my schoolmate utters not a syllable. The door opened and Anatolio entered.
“I thought maybe you’d fallen in,” Mayta greeted him.
“Whew, now I can breathe more easily.” Anatolio laughed, closing the door. He had moistened his hair, face, and chest, and his chest glistened with drops of water. He carried his shirt in his hand, and Mayta watched him carefully lay it out at the foot of the cot. What a little kid he is, he thought. The bones of his slim torso were just barely visible, and a tangle of hair glistened in the middle of his chest. His arms were long and well shaped. Mayta had noticed him for the first time four years before, while he was lecturing at the Civil Construction Union. Every minute or so, a group of boys from the Communist Youth would interrupt him, chanting the usual party line against Trotsky and Trotskyism: Hitler’s allies, agents of imperialism, lackies of Wall Street. Anatolio was the most aggressive, a young guy with big eyes and dark hair, sitting in the front row. Would he be the one to give the signal for the others to attack him? Despite everything, there was something in the boy Mayta found likable. He had felt one of those twinges he’d had before — and been wrong then. This time he was right. When Mayta left the Union, his spirits more tranquil, he went up to the boy and offered to buy him a coffee, “so we can go on airing our differences.” He didn’t have to make the offer twice. Later on, when he was a member of the RWP(T), Anatolio would say to him, “You brainwashed me in the best Jesuit style, comrade.” It was true, he had done an affectionate and clever job on him. He’d lent him books, magazines, had convinced him to join a Marxist studies circle which he was leading, had bought him myriad coffees and persuaded him that Trotskyism was the only true Marxism, revolution without bureaucracy, despotism, or corruption. And now there he was, young and good-looking, naked from the waist up, standing under the single, dusty light in the room, flattening out his shirt. He thought: Ever since I got involved with Vallejos, I haven’t seen Anatolio’s face in my dreams. He was sure: not even once. A good thing Anatolio was in the Action Group. Of all the people in the party, Mayta got along best with Anatolio. It was also Anatolio over whom he had most influence. Whenever they’d agreed to go out to sell the Workers Voice or to pass out handbills in the Plaza Unión or at the entrances to the factories on Avenida Argentina, Anatolio never kept him waiting, even though he lived over in Callao.
“I really wish I didn’t have to go across town at this time of night…”
“If you don’t mind being uncomfortable, stay here.”
All the comrades of the Central Committee of the RWP(T) had slept at one time or another in the little room. And occasionally, several at the same time, all piled on top of each other.
“I really don’t want you to have a bad night because of me,” said Anatolio. “You should have a bigger bed, in case of emergencies.”
Mayta smiled at him. His body, inflamed, had become tense. He made an effort to think about Jauja. Did they kick him out of the party after Jauja?
“Before,” he corrects me, getting satisfaction out of my discomfort. “Immediately before. If my memory doesn’t fail me, they announced that Mayta had resigned from the RWP(T). A pious fiction, so that the enemy wouldn’t see any cracks in our façade. But he was kicked out. Then the Jauja affair took place and there was no way to clear things up. Do you remember how they clamped down on us? Some of us were jailed, and the others went underground. Mayta was forgotten. That’s how history is written, my friend. On account of the confusion and the reactionary offensive unleashed because of the Jauja thing, Mayta and Vallejos turned into heroes …”
He becomes meditative, weighing the extravagant elements in the story. I let him reflect without pressing him, sure he hasn’t finished yet. The self-sacrificing Mayta transformed into a two-faced monster, weaving a really risky plot just to trap his comrades? It’s too hard to swallow, and besides, I think it would be impossible to justify in a novel unless I were to write about the unreal world of thrillers.
“Nowadays, none of that matters,” the senator adds. “Because the right failed. They wanted to liquidate the left once and for all. All they succeeded in doing was hold it up for a few years. Then came Cuba and in 1963 the Javier Heraud business. In ’65, the guerrillas from the Radical Left Movement and the National Liberation Front. Defeat after defeat for insurrectionist theses. Now they’ve got what they want. Except that…”
“Except that…” I say.
“Except that this is no longer revolution, but apocalypse. Could anyone have ever imagined that Peru would be living a permanent bloodletting like this?” He looks at me. “What’s going on now has definitively turned the page on the Mayta and Vallejos story. I’m sure there’s not a soul who remembers it. What else?”
“Vallejos,” I say to him. “Was he a provocateur, too?”
He takes a drag on his cigarette holder and breathes out a mouthful of smoke, turning his head to one side so the smoke doesn’t go into my face.
“There’s no proof about Vallejos. He may have been Mayta’s tool.” He gestures again. “Seems probable, doesn’t it? Mayta was a cunning old fox, Vallejos an unseasoned kid. But, I repeat, there’s no proof.”
He always speaks smoothly, greeting people who pass by.
“You know that Mayta spent his life changing parties,” he adds. “Always on the left. Was he just fickle, or was he clever? Even I — and I knew him well — could never tell. He was as slippery as an eel. There was no way to know him completely. In any case, he was with all of them at one time or another, all the progressive organizations. A suspicious pattern, don’t you think?”