The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa Read Free Book Online

each other and balance each other out in their silver frames: Moisés shaking hands with Senator Robert Kennedy when Kennedy was in Peru promoting the Alliance for Progress, and Moisés next to Premier Mao Ze-dong in Beijing, with a delegation of Latin Americans. In both, he flashes a smile of neutrality.
    â€œThe person in charge may report,” says Comrade Jacinto.
    The person in charge of Workers Voice was Mayta. He shook his head to dispel both the image of Lieutenant Vallejos and the drowsiness that had been bothering him since he had awakened that morning after only three hours of sleep. He stood up and took out the three-by-five card with the outline of what he intended to say.
    â€œThat’s the truth, comrades. Workers Voice is our most urgent problem, and we have to resolve it today, right now,” he said, stifling a yawn. “In fact, there are two problems and we should take them up separately. The first, the problem of the name, has come up because the divisionists have withdrawn. The second is the usual problem, money.”
    All of them knew what was going on, but Mayta spelled it out for them in great detail. Experience had shown him that being prolix in presenting an idea saved time later on in the discussion. Item one: Should they go on calling the party newspaper Workers Voice , with the T added! After all, the divisionists had brought out their own paper, which they called Workers Voice , even using the same logo, to make the working class believe that they represented the continuation of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party and that the RWP(T) was the splinter group. A sleazy move, of course. But facts have to be faced. How could there be two Revolutionary Workers’ Parties without the workers getting confused? And two Workers Voice , even if one of them had the letter T for Trotskyist all over it, would confuse them even more. By the same token, the articles for the next issue were already set, over in the Cocharcas print shop, so a decision had to be made right away. Would it be Workers Voice (T) , or should the name be changed? Mayta paused to light up a cigarette, and to see if Comrades Jacinto, Medardo, Anatolio, or Joaquín would say anything. Since they remained silent, Mayta went on, exhaling smoke. “The other matter is that we need five hundred soles to pay the printer. The business manager told me that beginning with the next issue they’ll have to charge us more, to meet the rising cost of paper. Twenty percent.”
    The Cocharcas shop charged them two thousand soles to print a thousand copies, two pages each, and they sold the paper for three soles . Theoretically, if they sold out the issue, they would have had a profit of a thousand soles . In practice, the stands and paperboys charged a fifty percent commission for each copy, so that—naturally, they had no advertising—they lost fifty cents per copy. They only made a profit on the copies they sold themselves outside factories, universities, and unions. But, except for rare occasions—and those stacks of yellowed papers that demoralizingly surrounded the central committee of the RWP(T) in the garage on Jirón Zorritos were testimony to how rare they were—they had never sold out the thousand copies. Besides, many of the copies that made it to the street weren’t sold but were given away. The Workers Voice always ran at a loss, and now with the split, things had got worse.
    Mayta attempted an encouraging smile. “Comrades, it isn’t the end of the world. Don’t be so downcast. Let’s try to find a solution.”
    â€œThey threw him out of the Communist Party when he was in prison, if I’m remembering right,” Moisés recalls. “Probably I’m wrong. I get confused with all those schisms and reconciliations.”
    â€œWas he in the Communist Party for long?” I ask him. “Were you both in it?”
    â€œWe were in and not in, depending on