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

age she wasn’t in any shape to go around collecting rents from house to house. They had a fit of laughing, forgot the discussion, and began to dream up scenarios. Could Mrs. Blomberg have seen Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky? Could she be on her way to the police station? Would the garage be raided that night? They had told her they were renting the garage as the headquarters for a chess club, and about the only thing the old lady wouldn’t see in her quick visit was a chessboard or a pawn. But the police never came, so Mrs. Blomberg must have noticed nothing suspicious.
    â€œUnless this lieutenant of yours who wants to start a revolution is an outcome of that visit,” said Medardo. “Instead of raiding us, infiltrating us.”
    â€œAfter all these months?” Mayta demurred, afraid to reopen a discussion that would keep him from his cigarette. “We’ll know soon enough. Ten minutes have gone by. Shall we go?”
    â€œWe’ll have to find out why Pallardi and Carlos didn’t come,” said Jacinto.
    â€œCarlos was the only one of the seven who led a normal life,” Moisés says. “A contractor, he owned a brickworks. He paid the garage rent, the printer, and he paid for the handbills. We all chipped in, but our contributions were nothing. His wife wished we’d drop dead.”
    â€œAnd Mayta? At France-Presse he couldn’t have earned much.”
    â€œAnd he spent half his salary or more on the party,” Moisés adds. “His wife hated us, too, of course.”
    â€œMayta had a wife?”
    â€œMayta was married as legally as can be.” Moisés laughs. “But not for long. To a woman named Adelaida—she worked in a bank. A real cutie. Something we never understood. You didn’t know Mayta was married?”
    I knew nothing about it. They left together and locked the garage door. At the corner store they stopped off so Mayta could buy a pack of Incas. He offered them to Jacinto and Medardo and lit up his own so hastily he actually burned his fingers. Heading toward Avenida Alfonso Ugarte, he took several deep drags, half closing his eyes, enjoying to the fullest the pleasure of inhaling and exhaling those diminutive clouds of smoke that faded into the night.
    â€œI know why I can’t stop thinking about the lieutenant’s face,” he thought aloud.
    â€œThat soldier boy’s made us lose a lot of time,” complained Medardo. “Three hours, for a second lieutenant!”
    Mayta went on as if he hadn’t heard a word: “It’s either because he’s ignorant or because he’s inexperienced, or who knows why—he was talking about the revolution the way we never talked.”
    â€œDon’t use dem big words wit’ me, sir, ah’s jus a worker, not uh intelleftual,” mocked Jacinto.
    It was a joke he made so often that Mayta had begun to wonder if in fact Comrade Jacinto didn’t envy the intelleftuals he said he respected so little. At that moment, the three of them had to hug the wall to keep from being run over by a crowded bus that came sliding over the sidewalk.
    â€œHe talked with humor, joyfully,” added Mayta. “As if he were talking about something healthy and beautiful. We’ve lost that kind of enthusiasm.”
    â€œYou mean we’ve gotten old,” joked Jacinto. “Maybe you have, but I’m still growing.”
    But Mayta wasn’t in the mood for jokes and went on speaking anxiously, hastily: “We’re too wound up in theory, too serious, too politicizing. I don’t know… Listening to that kid spout off about the socialist revolution made me envy him. Being involved in the struggle for so long hardens you, sure, but it’s bad to lose your illusions. It’s bad that the methods we use make us forget our goals, comrades.”
    Did they understand what he wanted to tell them? He felt he was getting upset and changed the subject.