Red April (31 page)

“After all, it isn't the first time you've killed, is it? Perhaps that's why I've enjoyed all of this so much. It's a game between equals.”

He moved the weapon toward the voice, but the commander moved constantly. He wanted to follow him. He wanted to speak to him in order to track his voice, though that would also reveal his own position:

“What the hell are you talking about?”

When he bumped into a lintel he realized he was going through a door. The voice seemed to be very close, but it rebounded all around him in the open space of the building.

“Why don't you ever talk about your father, Señor Prosecutor?”

He leaned against a wall. He was afraid. Suddenly, the memory of his dreams was projected on the darkness. He heard the commander again:

“I knew your father.”

“I never had a father.”

The prosecutor felt a tremor coming from his stomach.

“We all had one, Señor Prosecutor. Often they turn out to be motherfuckers, but that's no obstacle to paternity. Yours was almost better than mine.”

The prosecutor fired. He heard a board creak. He supposed
they were out of the office, near the stairs. The commander continued:

“Yours was a soldier too. A handsome young man, a white man. He married a very sweet girl from Cuzco. I know she's always present for you.”

“That's enough, Carrión. Shut up!”

“Why? Do stories of the dead frighten you? Because he's dead. The living ought to frighten you more. And you also must have known that he was dead. You must have known that very well.”

The prosecutor stumbled on a step and fell. Four steps down he managed to grab the banister. He got up aiming in front of him, not knowing what was before him or behind. Now he was trembling. The blows from the staircase did not hurt as much as those from his memory.

“Now do you remember?”

“Be quiet, Carrión! That's enough!”

“He was something of an animal, that young man. A good kid, except when he drank. Then he became difficult. You weren't so little that you've forgotten …”

The prosecutor fired again. Now he heard a piece of plaster fall off the wall.

“Your mother suffered a good deal when he got like that … Especially because he was a … let's say … a violent drunk. You didn't like it either. But in those days one didn't object to a husband, and you weren't old enough to return the blows. Isn't that right? There were too many blows. Whole rainstorms of bruises. He broke your mother's arm twice. You almost lost an eye. Remember?”

Now the images came one after the other in the prosecutor's mind. As if he were rebelling after decades of being forgotten, his father appeared before him. His twisted smile, his alcohol breath, the blows, the blows, his belt, his fist, the blows.

“He doesn't exist … He no longer exists …”

“You were a smart kid. And there were kerosene lamps in your house. Or maybe oil. One of those flammable things that always has a flame burning. Let's be frank, the supply of electricity in Ayacucho was always pretty unreliable.”

“That isn't so … It's not true!”

The prosecutor did not know if the commander's voice came from one floor or another. Now it came from everywhere, from inside himself, from the dark.

“Did you enjoy it as I've enjoyed it, Chacaltana? Did you like it? He was too busy kicking her to see what the boy was doing, the boy he thought was retarded. Were those his words?”

“Leave me in peace!”

But the whirlwind of memories was not going to leave him in peace. It would never leave him in peace.

“Do you realize what you did, Chacaltana? And how you ran away? You didn't even go back to hear your mother's screams, you didn't take a risk even for her. You only ran, you ran wherever your legs took you, and you got to Lima, far away, very far away, where the cries of Señora Saldívar de Chacaltana wouldn't reach you. But the dead don't die, little Chacaltita. They keep screaming forever, demanding a change. And now when we're about to change everything, you don't like it. Now when only one more life has to be given, you find it repugnant. You'll give a life, Chacaltana. And after you give it, you can be at peace. It will all have ended. You won't have to worry anymore.”

“Noooooo!”

The rest was a matter of a second. Perhaps a thread of air, the slight vibration a body produces when it moves through space. Perhaps for Chacaltana it was an intuition. He turned, still shouting, and emptied the magazine of the pistol into the body he felt close by. Again and again and again he pulled the trigger, as if his entire life were devoted to that, as if he alone waged war against the killers, as if the pistol were a machine gun in a helicopter,
or a two-man saw, until he sensed he was no longer shooting, because he was out of bullets or simply because nothing was breathing on the other side.

He spent another hour crouched on the staircase, afraid to reload the weapon or move, afraid he would hear Carrión's voice again.

But that did not happen.

The prosecutor breathed heavily and heard no other breathing in the air. Outside, he could hear the songs of Easter Sunday that he had heard so often. He felt along the wall until he reached one of the windows and opened it. In the light that filtered in from the street and the fireworks, he saw Carrión lying on the landing. The shots had pierced a lung, his forehead, a kidney, and a leg. When he approached to inspect the body, he discovered that the commander was not carrying a weapon. Commander Carrión had not been trying to kill him in this final duel. He had merely walked to his death, just like the others, just like all of us. The head of the monster was his. Now his work was done.

Wiping away his tears, the prosecutor walked out to the street. At each corner of the crowded square, the previous Sunday's branches were burning. In the cathedral, the imposing white pyramid of the Resurrection was about to appear at the door, to the accompaniment of fireworks. It carried lighted candles on each of its steps. The prosecutor was lost in the crowd. Slowly, from the interior of the pyramid, the resurrected Christ emerged to the applause of the people. More than three hundred of them began to pass the platform from shoulder to shoulder around the square. When the platform reached his shoulders, Chacaltana crossed himself and said a silent prayer. In the background, between the dry hills, the sun intimated the first light of a new time.

The bullets found in the body of Commander Carrión came from the same weapon that had been fired in the parish house. Based on this evidence and on statements attributing recklessly violent attitudes to Prosecutor Chacaltana, as well as the presence of motive and opportunity for the crimes, the Fourth Criminal Court of the Judicial Branch has initiated proceedings against him for multiple aggravated homicides, a procedure which for the moment is pending until the accused appears in person for the oral hearing.

The officials who are supposed to testify as witnesses in this case, however, have been transferred following the bloody deeds recorded during Holy Week: Colonel Olazábal, promoted to the rank of general, is currently responsible for logistical supply in the Second Police Region. Captain Pacheco, although he did not receive a promotion, was transferred to the district of Máncora, on the northern coast of Piura, to guarantee the security of the area. Judge Briceño, for his part, is a regular member assigned to the Family Court of Iquitos. As for the accused, the whereabouts of Félix Chacaltana Saldívar are unknown.

It must be emphasized in this extensive report that the armed forces, in conjunction with the institutions responsible for maintaining public order and the Army Intelligence Services, have been able to keep the facts out of the press, thus avoiding the spread of panic throughout the region. Similarly, it is a noteworthy achievement to have removed all the files related to the case, which have been transferred to the National Intelligence Service so that it may act in accordance with its judgment and at its own discretion. It
should be noted that the opening of proceedings in criminal court lacks binding power with relation to the aforementioned Intelligence Service, and by the same token, civil institutions lack competence in cases that may be related to national security, such cases being automatically transferred to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Military Justice.

Remitted to the Intelligence Service, along with these files, is the totality of documents referring to disappearances, torture, and mistreatment engaged in during the period of the state of emergency by the following members of the military and police, to wit: Alejandro Carrión Villanueva, commander in the Army of Peru; Alfredo Cáceres Salazar, lieutenant in the Army of Peru; Gustavo Olazábal Goicoechea, general in the National Police. For the moment, it is not expected that these cases will be brought to civil justice or to the attention of the press, lest they be manipulated by unscrupulous elements with the intention of damaging the image of our nation abroad or obscuring the significant achievements of the government with regard to the countersubversive struggle.

The documents missing from the records, that is to say, the reports signed by Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar and the lower-case notes written by Commander Alejandro Carrión Villanueva, are attached to this report, along with a detailed and exhaustive narration of the facts known firsthand by the undersigned, due to his having carried out his duties close to the suspects during the interval of time corresponding to the first six-month period of the year 2000.

Recently, new reports from the Army Intelligence Service indicate that the accused, Félix Chacaltana Saldívar, Associate District Prosecutor, has been seen in the environs of the Ayacuchan localities of Vischongo and Vilcashuamán, on the occasion of his attempting to organize “defense militias” with intentions that remain unclear. Our informants state that the abovementioned prosecutor displayed evident signs of psychological and moral deterioration, and that he still retains the murder weapon, which he
flourishes constantly and nervously at the least provocation, although it lacks the appropriate ammunition.

Neither the patrols in the area nor the outposts of the forces of law and order have attributed excessive importance to the bellicose attitude of the abovementioned prosecutor, whom they do not consider to constitute a serious danger for the moment. Although members of the police have requested instructions in this regard, the command staff has issued orders not to carry out the detention and capture of the accused, at least while the nation is still engaged in the electoral process, since under these circumstances the case could come to light, with lamentable consequences for our institutional structures.

Having taken these steps, the undersigned official considers his work in the district concluded and takes the liberty of recommending that, for reasons of security, he be transferred to a new post. My sky-blue tie has been destroyed and my connections to the military forces, in expectation of a replacement for Commander Carrión, have been weakened. Furthermore, the intervention of the Intelligence Service in this case has fulfilled its mission of safeguarding the peace and security of the region, at the same time that it has directed information to the channels most suited to the interests of law and order, thus collaborating in the future development of a nation like ours.

In witness whereof the above is hereby signed, on May 3, 2000, by

Carlos Martín Eléspuru
Agent of the National Intelligence Service