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

how you look at it. We never officially joined and we didn’t have cards. But no one had a card in those days. The party was proscribed and was tiny. We collaborated as sympathizers more than as militants. In jail, Mayta, with his spirit of contradiction, began to feel heretical sympathies. We began to read Trotsky, I dragged along by him. In Frontón, he was already lecturing the prisoners about double power, permanent revolution, the stagnation of Stalinism. One day he got word that the party had expelled him, accusing him of being ultra-left, of being a divisionist, a provocateur, a Trotskyite, etc. A little later, I was exiled to Argentina. When I got back, Mayta was carrying on the fight in the RWP. But aren’t you hungry? Let’s have some lunch.”
    It’s a splendid summer afternoon, with a white sun overhead that cheers up houses, people, and trees. In Moisés’s sparkling, wine-colored Cadillac, we go out into the streets of Miraflores. There are many more police patrols out than on other days, and many more army jeeps filled with helmeted soldiers. A sandbag-protected machine-gun nest manned by Marines has been set up at the entrance to the Diagonal. As we pass, I see that the officer in charge is speaking over a walkie-talkie. On a day like this, the only place to eat is at the seaside, Moisés says. The Costa Verde or the Suizo de La Herradura? The Costa Verde is closer and better defended against possible attack. On the way, we talk about the RWP in the last years of Odría’s dictatorship, 1955 and 1956, when the political prisoners were let out of jail and the exiles came home.
    â€œJust between us, all that business with the RWP was a joke,” Moisés says. “A serious joke, of course, for the men who dedicated their lives to it and got screwed. A tragic joke for the ones who got killed. And a joke in bad taste for the ones who dried out their brains writing jerk-off pamphlets and getting caught up in sterile polemics. But, no matter how you look at it, a joke with no sense to it at all.”
    Just as we feared, the Costa Verde is crowded. At the door, the restaurant’s security people frisk us, and Moisés leaves his revolver with the guards. They hand him a yellow check slip. While we wait for a table to come free, we sit under a straw awning next to the breakwater. We drink a cold beer, watch the waves break, and feel the spray on our faces.
    â€œHow many members did the RWP have in Mayta’s time?” I ask.
    Moisés stares into space and takes a long drink that leaves a beer mustache on his face. He removes it with his napkin. He turns his head, and a mocking little smile floats over his face. “Never more than twenty,” he murmurs. He speaks in such a low voice that I have to lean over to hear him. “That was the most. We celebrated in a Chinese restaurant. We had twenty members. A little later, the divisions began. Pabloists and Anti-Pabloists. Do you remember Comrade Michel Pablo? The RWP and the RWP(T). Were we Pabloists or Antis? I swear I can’t even remember. It was Mayta who got us involved in those ideological subtleties. Now I remember. We were Pabloists and they were Antis. Seven of us, and thirteen of them. They got the name and we had to add a capital T to our RWP. Neither group grew after the split; that I know for sure. That’s how it went, until the Jauja business. Then the two RWPs disappeared, and another story began. Which was good for me. I was exiled in Paris, where I could write my thesis and devote myself to serious things.”
    â€œThe points of view are clear, and the arguing is hot,” said Comrade Anatolio.
    â€œYou’re right,” grunted the secretary general. “We’ll vote with a show of hands. How many in favor?”
    Mayta’s suggestion—to change the name of Workers Voice (T) to Proletarian Voice —was rejected, three to two. Comrade Jacinto’s vote broke