Red April (14 page)

“I'll reply only with my superior present.”

“It is not with you but with the inmate Hernán Durango González.”

“I cannot allow unscheduled interviews without orders.”

The prosecutor felt he was confronting the final wall before he could see his suspect. He observed the pistol in the officer's belt. He thought that he had a weapon too. A double-edged one. He said:

“Call Commander Carrión, please. He will tell you what you want to know. But he will not like anyone questioning his authority.”

Then, it was as if the colonel had stumbled. His eyes opened wide, his entire body became rigid except for his face, which he tried to stretch into a smile. The prosecutor continued:

“I am working on an investigation for the General Staff regarding …”

“You don't need to tell me,” the colonel interrupted. “Our doors are always open for the commander.”

Suddenly everything moved faster. The officer left him with a corporal who would take him to his prisoner. With him as an escort, Prosecutor Chacaltana crossed the no-man's-land and entered the cell blocks. They turned to the right. In the long corridor of Cell Block E they passed faces filled with stony, silent curiosity. They reached a central courtyard. Between the barred windows were worktables for handicrafts and manual labor. Some
of the prisoners were putting together fishing rods or making weights.

“Did you come to review our sentences?” asked one of the inmates.

“Quiet, damn it,” said the corporal. And then he shouted into the air: “Hernán Durango González!”

The prosecutor saw the prisoners' eyes all fixed on him, on this man in a suit and tie who could be anybody, perhaps a lawyer. The prosecutor took charge of the situation. He felt pity. He said to the prisoner:

“I will try to have your case reviewed, Señor. Write down your information for me and I …”

The policeman laughed. He said to the prosecutor:

“You're going to have this motherfucker's case reviewed? It's already been reviewed. He killed twenty-six people, six of them children. All in cold blood. Review it again if you want.”

The prisoner did not respond. He seemed annoyed. Another prisoner approached from the other side, thin, dark, with icy eyes. He said he was Hernán Durango González. He preferred to be called Comrade Alonso. The corporal handcuffed the terrorist and led him and the prosecutor to an office in the entrance tower, where they could have a private interview. While the prosecutor was thinking about what to say, the prisoner spoke first:

“If you're going to ask me for information in exchange for benefits, forget it. I won't betray my comrades.”

The prosecutor had expected this direct challenge, the first effort at intimidation. He had read about it in countless manuals on the antisubversive war. He had also read the response. The scorn:

“Your comrades? Your comrades no longer exist. They have all been arrested. The war is over. Don't you watch TV?”

Hernán Durango González fixed his eyes on the prosecutor's. He seemed to be engaged in a staring contest, waiting for the prosecutor to look away. The terrorist's gaze was difficult to endure.
No. He could not lower his eyes. He tried to conceal the shudder that ran down his spine. He had been told that confessed terrorists attempt to impose themselves in interrogations, that one needs a good deal of personality or a couple of blows from a rifle butt to tame them. He tried to look up, to not be deflected from the subject:

“I have come to ask you about a person you knew: Edwin Mayta Carazo.”

The terrorist seemed surprised.

“Edwin?”

“Do you remember him?”

Durango seemed to recover and try to gain ground.

“I won't talk.”

“He was arrested ten years ago. After he was freed, he became clandestine.”

“Freed?” In spite of the smile formed by his mouth, the terrorist maintained a gaze as steely as a bullet. “He was arrested by Dog Cáceres. Cáceres didn't free suspects. He got rid of them.”

The prosecutor remembered that he should not debate, that he should not be provoked into an argument. He had been told that terrorists argued only to confuse, lied as a distraction, shielded themselves behind the worst falsehoods. The prosecutor took a deep breath:

“That is what is recorded in our files.”

“And are Cáceres's murders recorded in your files? And when he said better a hundred dead half-breeds than one live terrorist?”

“I have not come to talk about …”

“Do you know how Lieutenant Cáceres trained his men? He made them kill dogs and eat their intestines. The soldier who refused would be treated like a dog. That's how Cáceres got his name. Where's that in your files?”

The prosecutor remembered the dogs in Yawarmayo. He tried
to move the memory out of his head, as if he were brushing away a mosquito.

“Señor Durango, for now I will ask the questions.”

“Ah, right. I forgot who it is you work for.”

The prosecutor wanted a glass of water. He realized there was nothing in the office where they were, no water, no bathroom, no decorations, only two chairs and a desk that was clear except for a small Peruvian flag. He decided to continue:

“According to the information at my disposal, it is not clear if Edwin in fact was part of Sendero Luminoso or if he was innocent …”

“And you? Are you innocent? And your superiors? Are they innocent?”

“I am referring to the question of whether he committed acts of terrorism …”

“Of course. If you kill with homemade bombs it's called terrorism, and if you kill with machine guns and hunger it's called defense. It's a play on words, isn't it? Do you know what the difference is? We don't care. But your people piss with fear without a machine gun in their hands.”

Almost twenty years earlier, in his last visit to Ayacucho, the prosecutor had flown over the area surrounding Huanta in a military helicopter as the guest of a captain who was a friend of his. In the middle of the flight over the mountains, a man came out of the scrub carrying a red flag. He was alone. And he ran in front of the helicopter displaying the flag. The soldier on board had a Star machine gun. He fired. The pilot changed the route to follow the flag. The man on the ground ran as fast as he could, pursued by bursts of machine-gun fire that tried to catch him before he returned to the underbrush. But when the man with the flag reached some bushes that could have hidden him, he kept on, he continued running through the clearings with his flag like red spittle in the face of the military. He did not hide and went on for hundreds
of meters, scorning the natural hiding places along the way and followed by the dust raised by the bullets coming closer and closer to his heels. After five minutes of pursuit, the bullets hit him, first in the legs and then, when he had fallen, in the back and chest as he dedicated his final movements to keeping the flag in the air. The shooter congratulated himself as if he had shot down a bird, and continued firing as he shouted insults at the man down below who would never hear them now.

“Why did he do that?” the prosecutor asked on that occasion. “Why did he let himself be killed that way?”

“To show that he doesn't care about dying,” the pilot replied.

Then the helicopter turned back toward the place where the flag had appeared, and riddled the underbrush, the trees, the bends in the river, the plants with bullets. The prosecutor asked again:

“And why are you shooting now at nothing?”

“To see if we hit any of the kids who saw him. That's part of their training. Sendero is full of thirteen-year-old children who get excited when they see these things. Each dead man with a flag like the one we've seen produces ten to twelve assassins ready to do the same thing.”

He remembered that episode for a moment before he collected his thoughts and answered Hernán Durango González:

“I will not permit you to compare the troops of the armed forces to …”

“There is no comparison. They're the watchdogs for their masters.”

“You people are defeated. You no longer exist.”

“Are you in the habit of talking to people who don't exist?”

The prosecutor thought about his mother. He hesitated.

“You … You are defeated. And let me remind you that you are a prisoner.”

“We're there, Señor Prosecutor. We're hunkered down. This
prairie will catch fire, as it has for centuries, when a spark ignites it.”

It will catch fire. The phrase made Prosecutor Chacaltana nervous. He repeated to himself that he should not engage in discussions or justify himself. He replied:

“I have come simply to ask you about Edwin Mayta Carazo. Not to listen to your speeches.”

The terrorist seemed to relax his gaze for a moment. He looked out the window. The windows in the offices had fewer bars than the ones in the cells. He spoke:

“You ought to visit maximum security prisons once in a while, Señor Prosecutor. Is this the first time you've come to one?”

“Well … yes. I previously did not have cases of this …”

“You ought to visit the cells. You'd see interesting things. Maybe it would rid you of that mania for distinguishing between terrorists and innocents, as if this were heads or tails.”

The prosecutor did not want to say what he said. But he could not avoid it.

“I am afraid I do not understand.”

“There's a man in prison for distributing Senderista propaganda, but he's illiterate. Innocent or guilty?”

The prosecutor mentally shuffled through the legal code searching for an answer as he stammered:

“Well, in a technical sense, perhaps …”

“Another's in prison for throwing a bomb at a school. But he's retarded. Innocent or guilty? And those who killed under threat of death? According to the law they are innocent. But then, Señor Prosecutor, we all are. Here we all kill under threat of death. That's what the people's war is about.”

There were too many questions together. The prosecutor's capacity for looking into regulations collapsed.

“I have limited myself to asking what you know about a suspect.”

“And I've limited myself to telling you, Señor Prosecutor.”

A silence like a tombstone fell between them. The prosecutor could not think of anything else to ask. He was confused. Perhaps he should not have come to the prison. He was not obtaining any useful information. He had already been warned that to interrogate a Senderista you need cunning, balls, and a club. The prosecutor was very thirsty. When he was about to end the interview, the terrorist asked:

“Now you tell me. How is your mamacita?”

Félix Chacaltana felt each muscle in his body contracting in a heavy, gray nausea. Durango had expressionless eyes, the contemptuous eyes the prosecutor had seen in every dirty terrorist who had been arrested.

“What?”

“I know you keep her memory alive. She died, didn't she?” Durango continued.

“I …”

“You were very little, weren't you?”

“How do you know that?” the prosecutor asked, perhaps only to reverse the roles in their encounter. Suddenly, it had seemed that he was the one being interrogated.

“The party has a thousand eyes and a thousand ears,” said Durango, smiling with inexpressive eyes fixed on those of the prosecutor. “They're the eyes and ears of the people. It's impossible to lock up and kill all the people, somebody's always there. Like God. Remember that.”

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar felt faint when he left the office, and he had a lump in his throat. Suddenly he felt more than ever that the case of the dead man in Quinua had something to do with him more concretely than he had imagined. He went into a bathroom in the guard building and washed his face. Since there was no toilet paper, he dried himself with his handkerchief while he smoothed the rebellious hairs in his combed-straight-back hairdo. He took a breath. He tried to
relax a little. He opened the door and came face-to-face with Colonel Olazábal. He was startled. Olazábal, however, seemed attentive.

“How did it go? Did you get the information you wanted?”

“Yes, more or less …”

“You can come back whenever you like.”

“No … I don't think that will be necessary.”

He hoped it would not be necessary.

“Can I offer you something to drink? Coffee?
Mate?”

“No, thank you. I think I ought to be going now.”

“I hope you'll give my regards to Commander Carrión.”

“Yes, of course.”

The prosecutor began to walk down to the exit. The police colonel was close behind him.

“And communicate to him my desire to support all his initiatives.”

“I will do that, yes.”

“Señor Prosecutor …”

“Yes?”

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar felt he should stop and face him. It was very difficult for him to do so. He wanted to leave. He was a little sorry he had insisted on the investigation. There are things better left alone and forgotten. There are things that are conjured up when you mention them, words that should not be said. Or thought.

“Do you think … Señor Prosecutor … that you could speak to Commander Carrión about something?”

“Tell me what it is. I will let him know.”

“I've been in a maximum security prison for ten years now. Within the chain of command, I ought to have a better position in the police region. I'd like at least to change my fate. Could you have the commander approve my transfer?”

Now the prosecutor felt that the look on the colonel's face came from a place light years away from his problems. He promised
to do what he could and left the building, walking as quickly as he could, almost running, although he maintained the dignity appropriate to an official of his rank. As he crossed the plain that separated the prison from the city, he felt he was being watched. He turned. There was nobody for three kilometers around.

When he returned to the Office of the Prosecutor, he wrote his report.

Now, as the sun was setting, he continued his meticulous revision of the document, asking himself if it was worth sounding the alarm or if there was no alarm to sound or if talking about it would cost him his rank and his job. He understood the reasoning of Lieutenant of the Army of Peru Alfredo Cáceres Salazar and his investigative methodology, but it was not clear to him that Edwin Mayta was a terrorist. Perhaps he was merely thinking too much about the entire case. Perhaps Justino had simply lost his mind after his brother's arrest and thought the prosecutor had something to do with it. In any case, the prosecutor recapitulated, the whole problem is limited to one corpse and has already been resolved, there are plenty of corpses in Ayacucho and it is better not to poke your finger into any in particular because pus is gushing out of all of them. There was no terrorist threat. Terrorism was finished. The rest was nonsense propounded by the terrorists themselves in order to confuse people. He put the report in a drawer, under the pencils and forms for requesting supplies. Then he looked at his watch. It was time to go. He gathered his things and left punctually. He felt strangely nervous. Out on the street the tourists arriving for Holy Week were beginning to give a livelier image to the city. Most came from Lima but there were even some gringos, Spaniards, perhaps a Frenchman or two, the kind who travel through the Andes with backpacks. Prosecutor Chacaltana decided to stop at the restaurant and see Edith and relax a little. Perhaps it was also time to apologize for his absence. He had begun in a very impetuous way with her and then had disappeared. That was not how gentlemen behaved.