Blood of the Dawn Read online

  The guide says he doesn’t believe in those superstitions. He adjusts his glasses to give himself a more serious air. He starts to tell me about his career and the many journalists he has accompanied in the area, but my attention is drawn to two women approaching along the same path. One is young; her black felt hat and two plaits frame her face perfectly. Her eyebrows are furrowed with tension, and in her eyes there’s fear, mistrust, and rage. An elderly woman walks beside her, carrying a small girl on her shoulders. The elderly woman is bony and avoids looking me in the eye. Her lips are moving slightly as if she is repeating a useless litany. Both have their fists clenched. The girl turns to look at me when I click the shutter release. Papacitos, the military came through here and carried off some community members, saying they were terrorists. They’re not, papacitos, they’re not. The soldier regards her with an icy serenity. They know all about amulets and torture. The looks exchanged are like arrows. Or it’s also possible that’s not what I saw, señores. I’m not sure. Ay, I know nothing. Best you don’t write down any of what I just said. I don’t understand what I see, not even what my hands feel. My memory’s failing. I’m probably imagining things. She twists her fist with even greater force, and anger draws her eyebrows closer together.

  Mamacha, please, now that you’re going to the capital, please take my daughter, they’ll kill her here. Take her to the capital, please. I have relatives there. Please leave her with them. She insists so much that I can’t say no. There are strange ways of saving a life. We decide not to pay any more visits this afternoon and to get going right away.

  The girl has been asleep the whole trip. At this rate, your maternal instinct will kick in and I don’t want to be around when that happens, Álvaro jokes, the first time in the whole journey. There’s still so much to uncover, to photograph. I have to go back.

  The women advance, marching along the gray patio. The first of them holds a banner with the image of Comrade Leader. Honor and glory to the proletariat and the people of Peru. Hair trained under green caps. Red blouses. Aquamarine skirts to the knee. Marching in formation. Educated in the shining trenches of combat. Jail, others call it; prison. All at the same pace. Give one’s life for the party and the revolution. Banners of red flags with a yellow star. Torches in hand. Rhythm. Rhythm. Rhythm. Drum one. Drum two. Drum three. The feminine ferment, rising. We travel a shining path. We shall struggle without truce to the end. Leg up. Leg down. Leg up. People’s revolution. Leg down. Communism. Gazes raised to the walls with their enormous murals, from which Mao, Lenin, Marx, and our Leader look down on them. They are in jail to learn. Armed struggle against hunger. We will vanquish vile imperialism. Victory is in the hands of the people and their firearms. Women’s says one side women’s responds the other movement says one side movement responds the other. Women’s popular movement all together. Again. Women’s says one side women’s responds the other movement says one side movement responds the other. Women’s popular movement all together. They organize themselves in columns. Posing as if in a Chinese mural. Tai chi step. The great helmsman. They keep time. One two one two one two one two.

  It is the same room as always, down through the years of the life of the republic. But now it’s someone else. He also looks toward the river. He has never paid the columns any attention. Recalling the news irritates him. He moves away from the window and goes to the mirror to check his reflection. His shirt collar fits him perfectly. The blue suit does, too. He is sweating a bit. He senses lunchtime approaching. His stomach announces it. He dreams of that seco de chabelo the presidential chef has promised him.

  The general arrives at last. It is preferable to settle the matter at once. It’s not as if he’s at a public gathering where he can expound for hours and hours, feeling the vibration of the roaring multitude following his words in a hypnotic trance. In these meetings he can be more concise. More sparing. As soon as the general takes a breath to interject, he cuts him off. He speaks almost mechanically about the situation in the jails. Subversives and jails. Do they go there to reform or to come out more convinced of their ideology? There are things that simply cannot be permitted. They even have a little school. What’s happened to law and order, then. A firm hand so they understand. It will be up to the general to assume responsibility, as corresponds with his rank. Each of us triumphs where possible, do we not?

  He notes that the general is impatient when he moves his arms with a certain discomfort on the table. Mr. President, I await your orders. He prefers not to sit down, and instead returns to the window. Hunger. He wants it to be over and done with. To get a move on. The slow pace of others irritates him, as it does when they fail to understand the first time, when he has to repeat everything all over again. You need to take action in the jails. He tells the general that he may leave. He should not expect memos, or decrees, because there will be none.

  When your father Samuel got an idea in his head, there was no talking him out of it, Modesta. A little girl, you were. Your mamá had cooked his favorite dish to see if that might butter him up. We need to send her to school. But he didn’t want to. What for. She should see to the smallholding, or learn to weave. When she marries, her husband will take care of everything. So she can hold her own in life. It’s her turn. So she can learn to read. The more your mamá spoke to him, the more stubborn he got. She should learn to cook, why all this reading and writing. He scraped the plate of its last crumb. You’re so stubborn. He didn’t want to know any more about it. You heard everything and kept quiet. She winked at you and smiled.

  After your papá left to work the field, your mamá showed you one of your older brother’s books. My daughter, look at the letters. Your brother copies them down, here in his exercise book, and this is how he learns to read and write. She left the book and showed you a table of colors. This is the alphabet table, look, I memorized the letters like this. Don’t tell your papá because he’ll get angry. The table had a figure for each letter. The one that said A looked like a bent iron. The B was like handles of the coffee cup. The C was in the form of the moon when it was waxing. You were enjoying this reading business. Take this new little exercise book I bought for you. Grip the pencil like this, look. Your mamá took your hand and you drew your first A. You smiled, victorious. There were a lot of blank pages, white waiting for letters. I’m going to teach you all I can, my daughter, she told you, stroking your forehead.

  I wanted to see it. Time and again the nuns at school repeated, You don’t look, girls, and you don’t touch. I could no longer restrain my curiosity, so, dispelling my sense of shame, I lay on the bed after taking a bath. How old must I have been? Twelve, maybe. I was completely naked. The softness of the quilt embraced me. I was tempted to touch myself, to feel the electricity, but this time I wanted to see it first. I had by my side the mirror, a big one, about the size of the cover of a photograph album, as if it were a picture frame. I separated my legs and put the mirror between them. I took a breath. I would finally see it. Would I see it? Better not. Was it not enough to feel it and know it was there and could give pleasure even though the best way to gain entrance into heaven was to avoid it? No. I had to see it. I wanted to see it. How embarrassing! I’d had it for twelve years and until that moment I didn’t know what it was like. I pushed myself up on my elbows. I peered at myself. Some hairs. Now, to separate them. I held the mirror in my left hand and with the fingers of my right parted the curtain of hair. There it was. I looked at it. I narrowed my eyes to make it out better. There it was. That little cowl must be where the fingers slipped to produce the electrical current. My index and middle fingers made an inverted V to expose it. It looked like a broad bean parted down the middle. “Dicotyledonous group.” Those must be the lips. All of it somewhere between red, purple, and pink. I peered at the opening. A baby’s head passes through there? How horrifying. I enlarged the V a little more to look at it in detail. “Let’s see. Don’t let it transcend outward, and think as if it’s not being listened to, and chrome and not be seen.
” The hairs beginning at the edges. Disgusting. It seemed to me such an ugly thing…

  A thousand eyes and a thousand ears. It is monstrous and unfathomable, just like God. It hears and sees everywhere, in every direction. One eye is called word. One ear is called word. The other eye: word. And the other ear? The same, on and on, for all the two thousand organs that are everywhere. My body multiplies in this way not in the organs but in the word. I see, feel, hear, know, and experience because they understand that’s where the only trinity, the central committee, the light of the path is to be found. Placing an eye-word in a suitable place is a more delicate task than planting a grenade and detonating it, more delicate than calculating the exact quantity of dynamite and ANFO in a car bomb. The effects even more explosive, more potent, more prolonged. If they think a body blown into hundreds of pieces is impressive, it means they haven’t understood a thing. A thousand eyes and a thousand ears. Like God. Everywhere. I wanted to be God.

  Your husband left two days ago to visit relatives and wouldn’t be back for three weeks. He would probably stay a little longer to see if someone would purchase part of the harvest in advance. You have Enrique in your arms when the terrorists burst into the communal room. Two of your own are thrown against the wall and struck with rifle butts. Justina Quispe is not intimidated. Opportunist faggot dogs! It would have been better if she’d kept quiet. Nice and quiet like you, Modesta. You’re only ruthless because you’ve got guns. Two men grab her and carry her out of the room. They strip her naked and hang her by her plaits from the flagpole, just as another time they left five dogs with their throats slit, hanging by their front paws. Justina screams uncontrollably, insulting and cursing them. One of the subversives—Felipe, you hear him called—his face rigid and expressionless, pushes the blade of his dagger against the throat of your comadre Justina. Pachamama is fertilized with her blood. That’s how those who don’t respect the revolution die. And he sheaths the dagger in his boot, storing there a cry that everyone represses.

  They drag Fabián Misaico, community councilor, to the middle of the room. They slip a rope around his neck and with one strike of the rifle butt fell him to his knees. Fabián is dealt one blow after the other to the face. He almost can’t make anything out; his eyes are swollen. A flow of blood spills from his left eyebrow, another from his bottom lip, yet another from his left cheek. A suffering Christ with no crown. His wife, Dominga, lets out a wail that pierces the room. Don’t kill my dear husband! One of the terrorists, huge and with the footfalls of a jaguar, moves toward her and then drags her over to where Fabián lies. We were waiting for you. You’re going to help us install the government of the people. Stab him! Stab this traitor! And he holds out the dagger to Dominga. How can I stab him, señor, when he’s my husband? I can’t, señor, I can’t. The man grows enraged, hoarse and furious as a bull. Stick it into him, for fuck’s sake! Dominga is gentle as a fawn. The bull bellows and Dominga does not stop crying out He’s my husband! The dagger, wrapped by force in Dominga’s hand, plunges into Fabián Misaico’s heart. The revolution has reached your community.

  Your son Enrique starts to bawl, breaking the silence that weighs heavy in the wake of Fabián’s death. Felipe raises an eyebrow. He’s a predatory condor, irritated by the little one’s uncontrollable crying. He tells you to press him to your chest. You refuse; you’re not about to suffocate your own son. Either you press him against your chest or what I’ll do is this and in the air he makes out as if he is putting something facedown and tearing it in half like a piece of paper.

  You know you would never suffocate your own son, but little Enrique is no longer with us.

  Every day, at exactly four in the afternoon, new words parade into your ears just like the terrorists parade every morning. That if the class, they say, that if the proletariat, they say, that if the revolution, they say, that if the people’s war, they say, are saying, say. You only nod in agreement, already tuning out. They speak of people you don’t know, a certain Marx, a certain Lenin, a certain Mao, and a certain President Leader who is the boss of them all. We’re all going to be equal, they say. They sound just like the politicians who have passed so often through the community, but these ones already have their president. President of where, you wonder. The engineer was the president of the nation, you remembered that clearly. Their leader was president, then, of where exactly? You wanted to walk up to your smallholding with your beloved animals and get away from it all for a few minutes. Even just to take a little drink to the Apu so he won’t forget you.

  You sense that all eyes are on you. You ask them to repeat the question. The struggle is long and there’s no time for daydreaming, they say, and pull you up to the front by your plaits. Your hat falls off. Don’t hurt me, papacito, please, you beg, clasping your hands together. The other one has fire in his eyes and in his tongue. Kneel. You think of your comadre Justina, the chicken you’ll cook for lunch, your husband and Abel, the one son you have left. Where has Gaitán got to? Have mercy, papacito. I won’t get distracted again. When he has got you to kneel down, he steps on your right calf, immobilizing you, and with ten lashes opens up wounds down your back. You burn all over. A few drops slip down your blouse but don’t reach the floor. Forgive me, papacito, forgive me.

  The man releases your leg and brings his face to your ear. His metallic voice scrapes your trembling eardrums and he makes you repeat the slogan, say it, repeat it, name them. It is his voice, not yours, though the air propelling that voice comes from your lungs and makes your vocal cords vibrate in a cry that is not your own: Long live the party!

  A plate of food; it is no trouble to dish up a plate of food, Modesta. You are always the one who nourishes, who provides. Whoever comes to your table will be welcomed, always, because you are the provider, tending to others, like the earth in which your generous broad beans, your silky-bearded corn, and your rock-shaped potatoes grow. Animals are made for sating man’s hunger. The terrorists have asked for lunch, so you set about gathering together what’s needed; you have to fix them something to eat. A little hen that was poor Justina’s. You cook it quick smart, otherwise you might be next. You cut into its neck with a blade. Just like they did to Justina. You want to cry but squeeze your eyes shut and breathe deeply. You offer some coca leaves to the Apu and then stuff them into your mouth. You don’t want to end up at the bottom of the ravine like half your community. You need to keep yourself alive because you’re all little Abel has left. The coca leaf is bitter; you swallow down the saliva and cry with your mouth numb. The hen has stopped kicking.

  “How many what?”

  “You heard me right, Mel, I asked how many centimeters of film you want.”

  “Now I have to measure my work by the centimeter?”

  “Those are the new rules, there’s no money for imported material and everything’s being rationed. Film, travel allowance, everything.”

  “Then however many centimeters five of the usual rolls of film adds up to. You do the math, honey.”

  He starts grumbling. How many centimeters are needed to depict everything? Will a centimeter of film be enough for the dead body of one adult? Half a centimeter if it’s a child? And a whole village? Cruelty by the centimeter.

  The soldier escorts encumber our reporting. On this trip, we’ll have to do without them. The campesinos are increasingly wary and tense up when they see them. If the soldiers come dressed as civilians, they recognize them because of their haircuts and the way they walk. They’re impossible to camouflage.

  They look so content seated at the mess. Two of the soldiers have brought back a goat, they probably confiscated it from some smallholding close by. Some steal, they steal, the others steal, everyone doing their best to survive. A bit of meat, finally! We were so sick of living on rice and potatoes! They share out helpings for us, too. Most of them are young, still beardless—sons of campesinos, campesinos themselves. The one whose gaze had frozen the poor woman on our last trip laughs with his companions now, showing perfec
t teeth, the canines a tad sharp. It’s so long since I’ve seen my family, señorita, I’ve been here far too long, have seen so many terrifying things. The smoke of the roasted meat envelops them, shielding them from the war for a few minutes. They’re like a group of adolescents telling each other about their pranks, flings, missing their own. One of the officials stops eating. He looks at me. You’re all too lucky, you are. I don’t know how you got a safe-conduct, they’re not giving them out just like that. Even my superiors have made it known that we need to look out for you. I think about the vodka and those women. Cheers to them, whose names I can’t say, who I also have to protect. I smile at the captain, not saying anything in particular. My smile makes him a bit uncomfortable; he tightens his grip on his plate and moves toward the soldiers, turning his back on us. The volume of the group’s conversation rises. More stories, some laughs, all enveloped in that meat smoke.

  Now’s our chance. Álvaro, our guide and I move away as if heading out for a stroll. Bit by bit, we manage to leave behind the watchful eyes. We find some transport. I want to go where other journalists haven’t been yet. Our plan works: three hours later, we’re far from the escorts in a hamlet that seems almost deserted. Each hamlet has fewer people than the last, whether because of forced or voluntary displacement, I’m not sure. Along the way, we come across a woman. She is alone, hurrying; there is a lost look in her eyes and her chin is trembling. She eyes us warily. Our guide approaches and manages to get a few words out of her. Everyone is afraid of their neighbors. Nowhere is safe, papacito. No one knows whether a relative might be a terrorist, too. Something has cracked, here. We tell her she can get in and we’ll drive her home. No, papacitos, there’s almost no one left in the hamlet. When we ask her what happened and why she’s walking alone, she squeezes my hand. Hers is cold and sweaty. She doesn’t want to answer. She is shaking all over. We let her go and continue on to the hamlet. What will become of her?