Free The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa

attic room in a house on a dead-end street lined with two-story buildings, an area about nine by fifteen feet, overflowing with books, magazines, and newspapers scattered all over the floor. There was a bed without a headboard, with a mattress and one blanket. A few shirts and some trousers hung from nails in the wall, and behind the door there was a mirror and a little shelf with his shaving things. A dangling bulb shone a dirty light on the room, which was made even smaller by its incredible disorder. As soon as he entered, he went down on all fours to drag out from under the bed—the dust made him sneeze—the chipped basin which was probably the object he treasured most in the place.
    The rooms had no bath. In the patio, there were two common lavatories and a faucet, where all the neighbors got water for washing and cooking. During the day there were always lines, but not at night, so Mayta went down, filled his basin, and returned to his room—carefully, so he wouldn’t spill a drop—all in a few minutes. He undressed, lay down on his bed, and sank his feet in the basin. Ah, how restful. He had often fallen asleep giving himself a footbath, and would awaken sneezing and frozen to death. But he didn’t fall asleep this time. While the fresh, soothing sensation spread from his feet to his ankles and legs and the fatigue diminished, he thought that even if it had no concrete effect, it was a good thing that someone reminded him: what happened to those literati, historians, and philosophers at San Marcos should not happen to a revolutionary. A revolutionary should not forget that he lives, fights, and dies to make revolution and not to …
    â€œLet’s get the check,” says Moises. “Enough talk. I’ll pay. Rather, the center will pay. Stick that wallet where the sun won’t shine on it.”
    But there is no more sun. The sky has clouded over, and when we leave the Costa Verde, it looks like winter. One of those typical afternoons in Lima, wet, with a low sky that threatens and blusters, promising a storm that never comes. When he picks up his pistol at the entrance—“It’s a 7.65 Browning,” he tells me—Moises checks to see if the safety is on. He puts it in the glove compartment.
    â€œAt least tell me what you’ve got so far,” he says as we roll along Quebrada Armendariz in his wine-colored Cadillac.
    â€œA forty-year-old man with flat feet, who’s spent his life in the catacombs of theoretical revolution (or should I say revolutionary intrigue?),” I sum up for him. “In APRA, an APRA dissident; in the Communist Party, a Communist Party dissident; finally, a Trotskyist. Every variant, all the contradictions of the left during the fifties. He lived underground, was jailed, and lived in permanent indigence. But …”
    â€œBut what?”
    â€œBut the frustration didn’t embitter him or even corrupt him. He stays honest, idealistic, despite that castrating life. Does that sound about right?”
    â€œBasically, yes,” affirms Moises as he slows down to let me off. “But have you ever thought how difficult it is to be corrupted in this country of ours? You have to have opportunities. Most people are honest because they have no choice, don’t you think? Did you ever wonder how Mayta would have reacted if he’d been given a chance to be corrupted?”
    â€œI figure he always behaved in such a way that he never put himself in the path of corruption.”
    â€œYou don’t have much to go on yet,” concludes Moisés.
    Off in the distance, we hear shots.

Three

 
    To get there from Barranco, you have to go to downtown Lima, cross the Rímac—a squalid creek this time of year—at the Ricardo Palma bridge, go along Piedra Liza and skirt the San Cristobal hills. It’s a long, risky, and at certain times of the day extremely slow route because of all the traffic. It also