Red April Read online

  come here, thats right, like that … rest your head on my sholder. ill be with you every step of the way, i wont leave you alone. we wont leave you alone. well take you with us to the end of the rode. well take everybody who unites us to the end of the rode, everybody whose with us from the beginning of time. the moment comes closer and closer, justino. the moment of victory comes closer and closer. do you see the stains on the earth? do you see the red color of the puddels in the night? its your seed, justino, its you who waters the land so that from your guts the world weve fought so hard for will grow. enjoy it, because its the last thing your going to enjoy.

  “You think we're a gang of killers. Isn't that right, Chacaltana?”

  The commander's question came after a long silence, when they were already on the highway back to Ayacucho, between the mountains and the river. He was driving the vehicle himself. They were alone.

  “I do not know … I do not know what you are referring to, Commander.”

  “Don't act like a prick, Chacaltana. I know how to read between the lines of reports. And I know how to read faces, too. Do you think you're the only one here who knows how to read?”

  The prosecutor felt obliged to explain himself.

  “We waged a just war, Commander.” He said it like that, using the first person. “That is undeniable. But sometimes I have difficulty distinguishing between us and the enemy. And when that happens, I begin to ask myself what exactly it is that we fought against.”

  The commander let several more minutes go by before he spoke again.

  “Have you ever been in a war, Chacaltana?”

  “What did you say, Señor?”

  “I asked if you've been in a war. In the middle of bullets and bombs.”

  The prosecutor remembered the incidents in Yawarmayo. Then he thought about the bombs, the power cuts in Lima, he remembered the night patrols, the ambulances, the buildings destroyed by explosives, the eyes of the police when they saw the mutilated, bloody bodies that came out of the wreckage. No. He had never been in a war. The commander continued:

  “Have you ever felt surrounded by fire and known that your life at that moment is worth less than a piece of shit? Or have you found yourself in a town full of people and not known if they wanted to help you or kill you? Have you seen your friends falling in battle? Have you had lunch with people knowing it may be the last time, and the next time you see them they'll probably be in a box? Have you? When that happens you stop having friends because you know you'll lose them. You get used to the pain of losing them and simply try to avoid being one of the empty chairs that keep multiplying in the dining rooms. Do you know what that's like? No. You don't have the slightest idea of what that's like. You were in Lima, after all, while your people were dying. You were reading nice poems by Chocano, I suppose. Literature, right? Literature says too many pretty things, Señor Prosecutor. Too many. You intellectuals have contempt for military men because we don't read. Yes, don't make that face, I've heard your jokes, I've seen the faces of old politicians when we speak. And I understand. Our problem is that for us, reality is a pain in the balls, we've never seen the pretty things your books talk about.”

  Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar became aware that he was considered an intellectual. In his way he had been in a war, as an unwilling witness, as the one who stays in the fortress of the capital until fire begins to bring down its walls and the smell of the dead contaminates the clean air. Suddenly, the commander stopped the jeep at a bend in the road and turned toward him:

  “There wasn't one terrorist group here, or two. There was a war here, Señor Prosecutor. And in a war people die.”

  The commander was becoming agitated. His voice, always so authoritative, seemed to break at certain syllables as he brought his face very close to Chacaltana's. Perhaps that was why he didn't say anything else. The prosecutor tried to calm him.

  “I'm with you, Commander. I understand what happened. I saw it too, from the other side.”

  The commander drew back his head. He took a deep breath. He no longer seemed furious. He seemed disoriented.

  “The other side. Sooner or later they'll come from your side. Sooner or later they'll come from Lima, Chacaltana. They'll come for our heads. They'll sacrifice us, the ones who fought.”

  The commander was sweating. The prosecutor offered him his handkerchief. The commander looked straight ahead. He seemed very concentrated. The prosecutor did not dare to move the handkerchief too close to him.

  “It was them or us.”

  The commander did not say anything else. Them or us, thought Chacaltana, until we are all the same, until there is no more distinction between us.

  “I understand,” he said.

  The commander started the motor again. He seemed to gradually evanesce as they returned to the highway.

  “It's important that you understand,” he insisted, “because you still haven't seen anything.”

  They continued on to Ayacucho, and then to the military hospital, where they got out. They climbed the steps and crossed the waiting room together. No one asked where they were going or tried to stop them. No one went to an office to find out if they could go through. They entered the corridor that Chacaltana remembered very well from his last visit, passing several wounded people who did not approach them to ask for help. They had not walked very far before the prosecutor realized they were going to the obstetrics ward, to the closed office surrounded by women in labor. He thought of his mother as the cold illumination revealed the criminal pathologist.

  “Please close the door quickly.”

  From the door, the dandruff on his shoulders was not noticeable. Only when they were at the autopsy table did the prosecutor notice that the pathologist seemed dirtier than last time. The smell was different too. This time it was clearly the smell of a corpse. Not too decayed yet, but already penetrating. Several cigarette butts and a few matches had accumulated under the table. This time there were no chocolate wrappers.

  “Señor Prosecutor, I see you're not alone.”

  “Hello, Posadas.”

  This time nobody spoke about any paper. The commander's greeting was a gesture. The pathologist gave them two surgical masks smeared with Vicks VapoRub.

  “You're going to need them,” he said.

  Then he stood and walked to the table covered with a cloth. The prosecutor brought his handkerchief to his mouth in anticipation of what lay underneath. The light flickered. No one had fixed it since the last time. No one would ever fix it. The pathologist uncovered the table. This time the body was not as decomposed as the last time. It was a recent corpse, unburned, the body still bruised by the onset of rigor.

  “Completely drained of blood,” Posadas remarked. “Observe the shoulder.”

  The chest was an enormous red vulva with several sharp metal protuberances pointing at the ceiling. On the left side a mass of bones, muscles, and arteries erupted. What did not erupt was an arm.

  “The first time it was the right arm, now they've cut off the left. It seems these gentlemen want to make a puppet.”

  The commander came close to the face. It was a face stretched into a final shout, with open eyes trying to escape their sockets. He closed the dead man's eyes. Only then, safe from the pressure of those eyes on his, could the prosecutor recognize Justino Mayta Carazo.

  “They just brought him in,” said the officer. “He was found at dawn, right after the news about the mass grave.”

  At that moment the prosecutor did not remember fire but he did remember blows, blows on the chest, one after another, like the dripping from the table, blows on the door at dawn, in a house without light.

  “It is clear to us there are several of them,” said the prosecutor. “Or at least two well-trained men. The things they have done in both cases cannot be done individually.”

  “Digging up graves can't be done alone either,” added the officer.

  The prosecutor asked for a glass of water. The physi
cian took a bottle out of a refrigerator for specimens. The prosecutor decided not to drink that water. The physician handed it to him, saying:

  “They're also trained. At least the one with the knife is. These are surgeries. He was stabbed seven times in the heart, with perfect precision. With all kinds of things: machetes, scouting knives, even a butcher knife. They had a good collection, apparently. They destroyed the heart without cutting the principal arteries and deliberately left the body facedown. Almost all the blood came out of his chest, the pulverized heart still managed to pump for a few minutes after death. He was being extinguished. It was slow, but to accelerate exsanguination they cut off his arm. It seems to be the same method as the previous time. It was removed by the roots.”

  “A two-handed saw, probably,” said the commander. “Two people, you cut through the bone as if it were a piece of wood. You only need a little patience. What are those lacerations all over the body?”

  “Beak marks,” the physician explained. “They left the body where we found it, on Acuchimay Hill, for the buzzards to eat.”

  The prosecutor felt he ought to make a contribution to the discussion but was afraid that if he opened his mouth something would escape, tears, retching, inappropriate words. A puppet. A puppet constructed with human parts, a Frankenstein monster made of Ayacuchans. He tried to maintain a professional tone.

  “Was … was there any recovery … of a Senderista … nature near the deceased?”

  The pathologist seemed surprised by the question. His face reflected relief and at the same time terror. He turned toward the officer, who took a paper from his pocket and unfolded it. The prosecutor thought about suggesting more attentive care of evidence but preferred to concentrate on the note. He read:

  KILLED BY THE PEOPLE'S JUSTICE

  for rustling

  Sendero Luminoso

  They are back, thought the prosecutor.

  The commander said:

  “When all is said and done … you may have hit the nail on the head with your idea about the terrorists, Señor Prosecutor.”

  “Nail” was an unfortunate word. The prosecutor tried to focus his gaze on some less horrific part of the body. He stared at the feet splayed from walking through the countryside, the thick nails, green now.

  Dr. Posadas lit a cigarette.

  The second time the prosecutor entered army headquarters, he did not have to present any identification. With Commander Carrión, he crossed the central courtyard of the old building and climbed a wooden staircase to the second floor. There, at the end of a creaking wooden corridor, was the commander's office. Inside, the air seemed heavier than it had the first time. It made him think of the air in Lima, downtown, on Avenida Tacna at six in the evening. The commander poured two glasses of pisco. The prosecutor did not want to refuse. They sat facing each other, this time at the worktable. Sitting there, they were on the same level. The commander took the first drink.

  “I don't like working with civilians too much, Señor Prosecutor. And let's be frank, in general you and I don't like each other much. But I'm very worried.”

  “Well, Commander, I believe we could establish inter-institutional bridges of the greatest …”

  “Chacaltana, let's get to the point.”

  “Yes, Señor.”

  “We'll work together but under my command.”

  “Of course, Señor.”

  They were silent for a period of time that seemed like years. Finally the commander said:

  “All right, say something, damn it!”

  The prosecutor tried to be calm. He wondered if he was feeling palpitations, or if perhaps everything around him was suffering from palpitations. He tried to confine himself to the case:

  “I have written a report that I will send to you, Señor. I will tell you in advance that I would ask for a statement from those involved in this report, to wit, Lieutenant Alfredo Cáceres Salazar of the Army of Peru and the civilian Edwin Mayta Carazo, both of whom can shed useful light on the connection of the deceased to …”

  “See them? Mayta and Cáceres? You want to see them?”

  “See them … and speak with them, Señor.”

  “Speaking with them will be difficult. As for seeing them, you already saw them. You met Edwin Mayta Carazo, at least a part of him, this morning when you looked into the grave. And you saw Lieutenant Cáceres Salazar thirty-eight days ago, when his burned body was found in Quinua.”

  The prosecutor felt blocked by the information, passed over.

  “Señor?” he stammered.

  “Yes, it was that motherfucker Cáceres. He was reported missing in Jaén a month before his body was discovered.”

  “Dog Cáceres?”

  The commander gave a half smile, as if he were remembering an old comrade:

  “They called him Dog, right? He was a shit of a man. A sinchi, a member of the counterinsurgency forces. They were kept rotting on a base in the jungle. Then they were transferred here to bring them up to date. Cáceres outdid himself in every interrogation. He made the entire grave you saw almost by himself. Edwin Mayta Carazo was caught in one of his operations. They began to ask him questions and he didn't cave in. Then he began to confess. He confessed to everything they asked but began to contradict himself on the second round of questions. His testimony didn't fit, his facts were impossible …”

  “Perhaps because he did not know anything.”

  “Or perhaps because he wanted to confuse us. Do you also think we can't tell a terrorist when we see one?”

  The prosecutor drew back in his seat. The commander had turned red with anger but quickly regained his composure.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “For whatever reason, Cáceres went too far. As usual. I believe it was respiratory, I don't really remember. I suppose the lieutenant made up a report about his being released and declared him clandestine a few days later. The body was buried in a nearby garbage dump. But that wasn't enough. His mother went every morning to look for her son in the dump. The soldiers tried to keep her away, but at the first careless moment that damn old woman was digging through the garbage. When things became difficult, the bodies were pulled out and piled up in the grave you saw. From then on, whenever they find a grave somewhere, Edwin Mayta Carazo's mother shows up to look for his body. Though it doesn't appear in the press. I don't know how the fuck she finds out, but she's always there, trying to get close, dragged away by soldiers who can't shoot her, pawing through all the bodies. Very often the heads were … torn off the bodies to make them difficult to identify … but that woman could tell it wasn't her son, even though the body had been decomposing for months.”

  “What happened to Lieutenant Cáceres … when things became difficult?”

  “They gave him twenty years in the military prison in Lima. He served two years of his sentence and then was sent to the garrison at Jaén so nobody would see him. They gave him new documents. They ordered him not to exist.”

  The prosecutor supposed that the orders had been rigorously carried out. Lieutenant Cáceres Salazar no longer existed. The prosecutor completed the sentence:

  “Until he disappeared. He ran away from Jaén and came right here. Why?”

  “I don't know, Chacaltana.” The commander poured himself another pisco. “But I can imagine. I've seen it before. People who have killed too much don't get better. Sometimes they have normal, peaceful years. But it's only a question of time before they blow up. Intelligence reported the presence of the lieutenant in Vilcashuamán three days before his death. They said he had established contact with the campesino patrols to organize a ‘defense against subversion.’ Imagine. Nobody paid attention to him. He had simply gone crazy.”

  “Perhaps the terrorist groups in Yawarmayo found him and took their revenge.”

  “Those people are controlled. They don't operate outside their area. But it seems there are others. You were right about the dates. But besides the ones you mentioned, it's the tenth anniversary of the death of Edwin M
ayta and the end of the first harvest of the year 2000: ‘The blood harvest of the millenarian struggle,’ as they call it.”

  “If they were terrorists, why did they also kill Justino Mayta?”

  The commander looked up at one of the flags on the table. Then he looked at the prosecutor.

  “I believe the reason for that is you, Señor Prosecutor.”

  “What?”

  “According to your report, you spoke to him, didn't you? The Senderistas usually killed those they suspected of being informers, their own people.”

  “But he did not tell me anything important!”

  “And how would they know that? It's understandable, I would have done the same thing, honestly.”

  The prosecutor suddenly felt guilty of a death. It never would have occurred to him that one could be responsible for a death just like that, by default, without having done anything to produce it. Perhaps he was not the only one guilty. Perhaps there were more, in fact, perhaps he lived in a world where everyone was guilty of something.

  “Why haven't you finished them off, Commander? Why are they still in Yawarmayo? The army could …”

  “The army has orders not to do anything there. And the police have no resources. Lieutenant Aramayo has spent ten years asking for weapons and equipment. Lima won't give its approval.”

  “They have to know what is going on …”

  “Lima knows, Señor Prosecutor. They know everything and are everywhere. If for some reason they have to, they will go into Yawarmayo and massacre them. The operation will be on television. The press will be there.”

  Everything was becoming tangled in the prosecutor's head. He felt exhausted by thinking. One cannot choose to see or not see, hear or not hear, one sees, one listens, one thinks, the thoughts refuse to leave one's head, they change, they dissolve, they become disturbed.