The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta Read Online Free Page B

he said them, blowing out gray smoke rings at the same time. There was something spontaneous and lively in his manner of speaking that made whatever he was saying sound even better. Why did this boy arouse in him that nostalgia, that sensation of something altogether extinct. Because he’s sound, thought Mayta. He’s not perverted. Politics hasn’t killed his joy in living. He’s probably never taken part in politics of any kind. That’s why he’s irresponsible, that’s why he says whatever comes into his head. There seemed to be no guile, no hidden intentions, no prefabricated rhetoric in the lieutenant. He was still in that adolescence in which politics consists exclusively of feelings, moral indignation, rebellion, idealism, dreams, generosity, disinterestedness, mysticism. Yes, those things do still exist, Mayta. There they were, incarnate—who the fuck would have thought it—in a little army officer. Listen to what he says. The injustice of it all was monstrous, any millionaire had more money than a million poor people, the dogs of the rich ate better than the Indians in the mountains, that iniquity had to be stopped, the people had to be mobilized, the haciendas had to be taken over, the barracks seized, the troops, who came from the people, made to revolt, unleash strikes, remake society from top to bottom, do justice. What envy. There he was, young, slim, handsome, smiling, talkative, with his invisible wings, believing that the revolution was a question of honesty, bravery, disinterestedness, daring. He didn’t suspect and would perhaps never know that the revolution was a long act of patience, an infinite routine, a terribly sordid thing, a thousand and one wants, a thousand and one vile deeds, a thousand and one … But here comes the chicken soup, and Mayta’s mouth watered when he smelled the aroma of the steaming bowl Alci put into his hands.
    â€œHow much work, and also what an expense every birthday,” doña Josefa remembers. “I was in debt for a long time after. People broke glasses, vases. The house the next morning looked like a battleground or as if there had been an earthquake. But I took the trouble every year because it was a tradition in the neighborhood. Many relatives and friends saw each other only that one day a year: I did it for them as well, so as not to deprive them. Here, in Surquillo, my birthday parties were like national holidays or Christmas. Everything’s changed, now there’s no room in life for parties. The last time was the year that Alicita and her husband went to Venezuela. Now on my birthday I watch TV and then go to bed.”
    She looks sadly around the room devoid of people, as if putting back into those chairs, corners, and windows all the relatives and friends who would come to sing “Happy Birthday” to her, to applaud her good cooking, and she sighs. Now she looks seventy years old. Did she know if any relative had Mayta’s notebooks and his articles? Her distrust rekindles.
    â€œWhat relatives?” she murmurs, making a face. “The only relative Mayta ever had was me, and he never even brought a box of matches here, because whenever the police were looking for him this was the first place they came to. Besides, I never knew he was a writer or anything like that.”
    Yes, he wrote, and once in a while I read the articles that would come out in those little newspapers—handbills, really—in which he collaborated, and which he printed himself, and which are not to be found anywhere, not even in the National Library, or in any private library. But it’s natural that doña Josefa never knew about Workers Voice , or any of the other little papers. Neither did the vast majority of the people in this country, especially those for whom they were written and printed. By the same token, doña Josefa was right: he wasn’t a writer, or anything like that. Even though it would