Mayta attempted an encouraging smile. “Comrades, it isn’t the end of the world. Don’t be so downcast. Let’s try to find a solution.”
“They threw him out of the Communist Party when he was in prison, if I’m remembering right,” Moisés recalls. “Probably I’m wrong. I get confused with all those schisms and reconciliations.”
“Was he in the Communist Party for long?” I ask him. “Were you both in it?”
“We were in and not in, depending on how you look at it. We never officially joined and we didn’t have cards. But no one had a card in those days. The party was proscribed and was tiny. We collaborated as sympathizers more than as militants. In jail, Mayta, with his spirit of contradiction, began to feel heretical sympathies. We began to read Trotsky, I dragged along by him. In Frontón, he was already lecturing the prisoners about double power, permanent revolution, the stagnation of Stalinism. One day he got word that the party had expelled him, accusing him of being ultra-left, of being a divisionist, a provocateur, a Trotskyite, etc. A little later, I was exiled to Argentina. When I got back, Mayta was carrying on the fight in the RWP. But aren’t you hungry? Let’s have some lunch.”
It’s a splendid summer afternoon, with a white sun overhead that cheers up houses, people, and trees. In Moisés’s sparkling, wine-colored Cadillac, we go out into the streets of Miraflores. There are many more police patrols out than on other days, and many more army jeeps filled with helmeted soldiers. A sandbag-protected machine-gun nest manned by Marines has been set up at the entrance to the Diagonal. As we pass, I see that the officer in charge is speaking over a walkie-talkie. On a day like this, the only place to eat is at the seaside, Moisés says. The Costa Verde or the Suizo de La Herradura? The Costa Verde is closer and better defended against possible attack. On the way, we talk about the RWP in the last years of Odría’s dictatorship, 1955 and 1956, when the political prisoners were let out of jail and the exiles came home.
“Just between us, all that business with the RWP was a joke,” Moisés says. “A serious joke, of course, for the men who dedicated their lives to it and got screwed. A tragic joke for the ones who got killed. And a joke in bad taste for the ones who dried out their brains writing jerk-off pamphlets and getting caught up in sterile polemics. But, no matter how you look at it, a joke with no sense to it at all.”
Just as we feared, the Costa Verde is crowded. At the door, the restaurant’s security people frisk us, and Moisés leaves his revolver with the guards. They hand him a yellow check slip. While we wait for a table to come free, we sit under a straw awning next to the breakwater. We drink a cold beer, watch the waves break, and feel the spray on our faces.
“How many members did the RWP have in Mayta’s time?” I ask.
Moisés stares into space and takes a long drink that leaves a beer mustache on his face. He removes it with his napkin. He turns his head, and a mocking little smile floats over his face. “Never more than twenty,” he murmurs. He speaks in such a low voice that I have to lean over to hear him. “That was the most. We celebrated in a Chinese restaurant. We had twenty members. A little later, the divisions began. Pabloists and Anti-Pabloists. Do you remember Comrade Michel Pablo? The RWP and the RWP(T). Were we Pabloists or Antis? I swear I can’t even remember. It was Mayta who got us involved in those ideological subtleties. Now I remember. We were Pabloists and they were Antis. Seven of us, and thirteen of them. They got the name and we had to add a capital T to our RWP. Neither group grew after the split; that I know for sure. That’s how it went, until the Jauja business. Then the two RWPs disappeared, and another story began. Which was good for me. I was exiled in Paris, where I could write my thesis and devote myself to serious things.”
“The points of view are clear, and the arguing is hot,” said Comrade Anatolio.
“You’re right,” grunted the secretary general. “We’ll vote with a show of hands. How many in favor?”
Mayta’s suggestion — to change the name of Workers Voice (T) to Proletarian Voice—was rejected, three to two. Comrade Jacinto’s vote broke the tie. The answer Medardo and Anatolio gave to Mayta’s and Joaquín’s argument about the confusion caused by the existence of two papers with the same name attacking each other was that changing the name would seem to be giving in to the divisionists, admitting that they were the real RWP, not the RWP(T). And wasn’t it the RWP(T) that was holding to the party line? Besides, to give them the name of the paper as well as the name of the organization — wasn’t that like rewarding betrayal? According to Medardo and Anatolio, the similarity of the titles, a transitory problem, would no longer confuse the workers as soon as the workers saw how the content of the articles, editorials, the news itself — the doctrinal coherence — defined the situation, revealing which was the genuinely Marxist, anti-bureaucratic newspaper, and which the fraud. The discussion was harsh, extremely long, and Mayta thought how much more fun he had had talking the night before with that silly, idealistic boy. I’ve lost this vote because I’m befuddled by lack of sleep, he thought. Oh, well, what difference did it make? If keeping the title meant they’d have more problems distributing Workers Voice (T), he would request a review of the decision when all seven members of the committee were present.
“You mean there were really only seven of you when Mayta met Second Lieutenant Vallejos?”
“So you remember Vallejos, too.” Moisés smiles. He studies the menu and orders a shrimp ceviche and scallops with rice. I’ve left the choice to him, having told him that a sensualized economist like himself could do a better job than I ever could. “Yes, seven. I don’t remember all their names — their real names — but I do remember their party names. Comrade Jacinto, Comrade Anatolio, Comrade Joaquín. I was Comrade Medardo. Have you noticed how the Costa Verde’s menu has declined since rationing went into effect? If we go on like this, every restaurant in Lima will close down.”
They’ve given us a table in back, and we can just barely see the ocean. It’s blocked by the heads of the other customers — tourists, couples, employees celebrating some company birthday. There must be an important politician or a member of the board of directors among them, because I see four bodyguards dressed in business suits, and carrying automatic rifles, sitting at a nearby table. They are silently drinking beer, keeping an eye on everything that goes on in the restaurant. The talk, the laughter, the clatter of dishes and glasses drowns out the surf.
“With Vallejos, then, you were eight,” I say to him. “Your memory’s tricked you.”
“Vallejos was never in the party,” he replies instantly. “The idea of a party with only seven members sounds like a joke, doesn’t it? Vallejos was never a member. As a matter of fact, I never met the man. The first time I saw him was in the papers.”
He speaks with absolute certainty, and I have to believe him. Why would he lie? In any case, what he says surprises me, even more than the number of militants in the RWP(T). I imagined it was small, but not as tiny as that. I had imagined a scenario that I now have to discard — Mayta bringing Vallejos to the garage on Jirón Zorritos, introducing him to his comrades, incorporating him into the party structure as secretary of defense… Another idea down the drain.