Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
“I left early,” Alberto said. “I’ve got a headache.”
“You must be coming down with a cold,” his mother said. “You’d better go straight to bed, Albertito.”
“But first we’re going to have a little talk, young man,” his father said, shaking the report card at him. “I’ve just finished looking at this.”
“I didn’t do too well in some subjects,” Alberto said. “But the important thing is, I got through the year.”
“Be quiet,” his father said. “Don’t talk like a fool. This has never happened in my family. I’ve never been more ashamed. Do you know how long we’ve taken first place in school, in the University, everywhere? For two hundred years! If your grandfather could see this report card, he’d die on the spot.”
“And what about
my
family?” his wife asked him. “They were somebodies too. My father was in the Cabinet twice!”
“But that’s all over with,” he went on, ignoring her. “It’s scandalous. I’m not going to let you drag my name in the mud. Tomorrow morning you begin studying with a private tutor to get ready for the entrance exams.”
“What entrance exams?” Alberto asked.
“For the Leoncio Prado. It’ll do you good.”
“The Military Academy?” Alberto looked at him incredulously.
“I’m not so very sure about that Academy,” his mother said. “He might get sick. It’s awfully damp in La Perla.”
“And you don’t mind sending me to a school full of halfbreeds?” Alberto asked.
“No,” his father said. “It’s the only way to straighten you out. You can get your own way with the priests, but not with the military. Besides, we’ve always been very democratic in my family. And in any case, a gentleman is a gentleman wherever he is. Go to bed now, and tomorrow you start studying. Good night.”
“Where are you going?” his wife asked him, alarmed.
“I’ve got a very urgent appointment. But don’t worry. I’ll be home early.”
“What a life I have,” she sighed, lowering her head.
But when we fell out I put on a little act. Come here, Skimpy, come here, old girl, what a good dog you are, come here. And she came to me. It was all her fault, for trusting me, if she’d run away from me it wouldn’t’ve happened. I’m sorry about it now, but when I went to the mess hall I was still furious, I didn’t give a damn that she was out there on the grass with her leg all twisted to hell. I’m almost sure she’s going to end up a cripple. It would’ve been better if she’d bled, that kind of injury heals, the skin closes up and there’s nothing left but a scar. But she didn’t bleed. She didn’t bark either. The truth is, I held her muzzle with one hand while I twisted her leg with the other, the way that poor peasant Cava twisted the chicken’s neck. It hurt her, I could tell from her eyes it was hurting her, take that, you bitch, you’ll learn not to bother me when I’m in a formation, don’t forget I’m your master, not your half-breed servant, don’t chew my shoes when there’re officers out front. She trembled, but silently, and it wasn’t until I let her go that I realized what I’d done to her, she couldn’t stand up, she collapsed and her leg was crooked, she got up and fell down, got up and fell down, and she began to howl softly and I felt like punishing her some more. But in the afternoon I felt sorry for her when I came back from the classroom building and saw her lying motionless on the grass in the same place I left her in the morning. I told her, “Come here, you good-for-nothing mongrel, come here and beg my pardon.” She got up and fell down, got up and fell down, and finally she managed to hobble over to me on three legs, and what howls she let out, it must’ve hurt an awful lot. I’ve wrecked her, she’s going to be a cripple the rest of her life. I really felt bad about it, I picked her up and tried to straighten her leg but that just made her shriek, I told myself there’s something broken, better not to touch it. Skimpy doesn’t carry grudges, she still lapped my hand and rested in my arms, and I scratched her neck and her belly. But as soon as I put her down to make her walk she collapsed again or only took a couple of hops, it was hard for her to keep her balance on only three legs, and she was howling again, I could tell how her leg hurt her whenever she tried to walk. The peasant Cava never liked Skimpy, he detested her. Sometimes I caught him throwing stones at her, or giving her a kick when he thought I wasn’t looking. The peasants are all hypocrites and sneaks, and Cava was all peasant that way. My brother always says if you want to know if somebody’s a peasant, look him in the eyes, you’ll see he can’t take it, he’ll look away. My brother knows all about them, he used to be a truck driver. When I was little I wanted to be a truck driver like him. He went up into the mountains, as far as Ayacucho, twice a week, and came back the next day, this was for years, and I don’t remember a single time when he didn’t come back cursing the peasants. He’d have some drinks up there and then there’d be trouble. He said he was drunk when they jumped him that time, and it must be the truth, I can’t believe they could’ve made such a mess of him if he’d been sober. One day I’ll go up to Huancayo, I know who they were, I’ll pay them back for what they did to him. “Look,” the policeman said, “does the Valdivieso family live here?” “Yes,” I said, “if you mean the family of Ricardo Valdivieso,” and I remember my mother dragged me out of the way by the hair, she was startled, she looked suspiciously at the cop and said, “There’s lots of Ricardo Valdiviesos in the world, we don’t have to take the blame for what other people do, we’re poor but honest, Señor, you don’t want to pay attention to what the baby says.” But I was ten years old, I wasn’t any baby.
The cop laughed and said, “It isn’t that Ricardo Valdivieso did anything, it’s what they did to him. He’s in a ward at the Public Aid, all sliced up. They knifed him from head to foot and he said to tell his family.” “Go see how much money I’ve got left in that jar,” my mother told me, “we’ll have to take him some oranges.” We were happy to buy the fruit for him, but we couldn’t even give it to him, he was bandaged all over, you couldn’t see anything but his eyes. The same policeman chatted with us there, he said, “What a brute! Do you know where he got knifed, Señora? In Huancayo. And do you know where he was picked up? Near Chosica. What a brute! He got into his truck and started for Lima as fast as he could. When they found him near Chosica, off the road, he’d fallen asleep on the steering wheel, more on account of the liquor than his wounds. And if you could see how that truck was, all sticky inside from the blood that poured out of the brute along the way. Excuse me for saying it, Señora, but I’ve never seen a brute like this one. Do you know what the doctor told him? He said, ‘You’re still drunk, man, you haven’t come from Huancayo, not in that condition, you’d’ve died before you got half way here, they slashed you thirty times.’” And my mother said, “Yes, Señor, his father was the same, one time they brought him home half dead, he could hardly talk but he made me go out and buy him some more pisco, and he couldn’t raise his arms so I had to hold the bottle to his lips myself, you can see what kind of a family it is. Ricardo turned out like his father, worse luck. Someday he’ll go away like his father and we’ll never know where he is or what he’s doing. But the father of this one”—and she pointed to me—“was the quiet type, a homebody, just the opposite of the other. He came straight home from work, and at the end of the week he handed me his whole pay envelope, I gave him enough money for his cigarettes and his bus fare and I kept the rest. He was completely different from the other one, Señor, he hardly ever drank at all. But my oldest son, the one in the bandages, he had some kind of a grudge against him, and he gave him some very bad times. When Ricardo was late getting home, this was before he was full grown, my poor partner started shivering, he knew this brute was going to come in drunk and shout, ‘Where is he, where’s that guy that says he’s my step-father? I want to have a little talk with him.’ And my poor partner hid in the kitchen until Ricardo found him and chased him all around the house. It got so bad that
he
left me too. But at least he had a good reason.” The cop almost died laughing and my brother Ricardo stirred in the bed. He was furious because he couldn’t open his mouth to tell his mother to shut up and not put him in such a bad light. My mother gave the cop an orange and we took the rest of them home with us. And when Ricardo got well he told me, “Always watch out for the peasants, they’re the sneakiest people in the world. They never stand up in front of you, they always do everything on the sly, behind your back. They waited till I was good and drunk, on the pisco they offered me themselves, before they jumped me. And now that I’ve lost my job, I can’t go back to Huancayo and get even with them.” That’s why I’ve always hated the peasants. There weren’t very many of them at my school, maybe two or three, and they’d learned to behave like us. But how sick I felt when I saw all the peasants they’ve got here at the Academy. There’s more of them than there is of us from the coast. You’d think everybody in the Andes came down here, we’ve got peasants from Ayacucho, Puno, Cuzco, Huancayo, every damned one a complete peasant like poor Cava. We’ve got other ones besides him in the section but he was the one you could pick out the easiest. What hair! I don’t understand how a man can have such stiff hair. I know he was ashamed of it. He tried to plaster it down, he bought God knows what kind of hair grease and smeared it on his head so his hair wouldn’t stand up, his arm used to ache from rubbing in the rancid pig fat or whatever it was and from so much combing. And just when it looked like he had it all flat and smooth, pop! a hair stood up, and another, and fifty, and a thousand, especially next to his ears, that’s where the peasants have hair like needles, also on the back of the head. Cava almost went crazy because they made so much fun about his hair and that stuff he used on it, I never smelled anything so rotten. I’ll never forget the way they kidded him the time he came out with his hair slicked down and they all got around him and started counting, one, two, three, four, as loud as they could, and before we got to ten a few hairs were already standing up, his face turned green and the hairs kept popping up one after the other and before we counted fifty it looked like he was wearing a spiked helmet. That’s what bothers the peasants the most, their hair, but Cava’s the worst off, I never saw hair like that on anybody, you can hardly see his forehead, it grows right up from his eyebrows, it must be uncomfortable, like a wig, I know how I’d feel if I didn’t have any forehead. One time they found him shaving his forehead with a razor, I think it was Vallano that found him, he ran into the barracks and said, “Come on, that peasant Cava’s shaving the hair off his forehead, it’s something worth seeing.” We all ran to the washroom in the classroom building, because he’d gone over there so nobody’d catch him, and there was the peasant with shaving cream on his forehead instead of his cheeks, being extra careful with the razor so he wouldn’t cut himself, and what fun we made of him. He got so mad at us he almost went out of his mind, that was the time he started a fight with the Negro Vallano, right there in the washroom. But the Negro was stronger than he was, he gave him an awful beating, and the Jaguar said, “Look, you’re so anxious to get rid of your hair, we want to help you.” I don’t think he did right, the peasant was in the Circle, but the Jaguar never loses a chance to screw somebody. And the Negro Vallano was still full of life despite the fight, he was the first one to grab the peasant, then I did, and when we had a good hold on him the Jaguar started using the lather that was still on the brush, he lathered his forehead and about half of his head, then he began shaving him. Stay still, peasant, the razor’s going to cut your scalp if you keep moving your head. The peasant flexed his muscles under my arms, but he couldn’t move, all he could do was look daggers at the Jaguar. And the Jaguar went on scraping and scraping, he shaved off half his hair, what a laugh we got. Then the peasant stayed still and the Jaguar wiped off the lather with all that hair in it and suddenly he clapped his hand over the peasant’s mouth. “Eat it, peasant, don’t be so fussy, it’s delicious, eat it.” And how we laughed when he got up and ran to look at himself in the mirror. And I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in all my life as I did when I saw Cava walking ahead of us across the parade ground with half of his head shaved and the other half with that stiff black hair of his. The Poet saw him and started jumping up and down. “Here’s the last of the Mohicans,” he shouted, “we’d better call out the troops,” and everybody came over and the peasant was surrounded by cadets, all of them laughing and pointing at him, and when he got to the patio two of the noncoms saw him and started laughing as hard as the cadets and the only thing the peasant could do was smile. Later, when we fell in, Lt. Huarina said, “What’s the matter with you crazy shits, what are you laughing about? Brigadiers, come here.” The brigadiers said, “It’s nothing, Sir, all are present and accounted for,” but one of the noncoms said, “There’s a cadet in the first section with half his hair shaved off,” and Huarina said, “Front and center, Cadet.” We couldn’t help laughing out loud when the peasant Cava came to attention in front of Huarina, the lieutenant told him, “Take off your cap,” and he took it off. “Silence,” Huarina shouted, “you’re at attention, stop that laughing!” But we could see how his lips turned up at the corners when he looked at Cava’s head. “What’s been going on?” “Nothing, Lieutenant.” “What do you mean, nothing, do you think the Academy is a circus?” “No, Lieutenant.” “Then why’s your head like that?” “I shaved it on account of the hot weather, Sir.” Huarina laughed and said, “You’re a cute little whore but this Academy isn’t a whorehouse, go to the barbershop and get the rest of it cut off, you’re confined until you look decent again.” The poor peasant, he wasn’t a bad guy, after that we got along fine. I didn’t like him at the start, just because he was a peasant, I remembered what they did to my brother Ricardo, and I used to give him a bad time. When the Circle had a meeting and we rolled the dice to see who’d go and get even with somebody in the Fourth, if it turned out to be Cava I said we’d better pick somebody else, they’ll catch him and then they’ll murder us. And the peasant didn’t say a word. Later, when they broke up the Circle and the Jaguar said, “The Circle’s all finished but we can start another one if you want to, just with the four of us,” I said yes but without any peasants, the peasants are cowards, and the Jaguar said, “We’ll take care of that right now, we’ve got to be able to trust each other.” He called Cava over and said, “The Boa tells us you’re a coward, he doesn’t want you in the Circle, you’ll have to show him he’s wrong.” The peasant said all right. That evening the four of us went out to the stadium, taking off our insignias so we could get past the Fourth and Fifth, if they knew we were Dogs they’d grab us and make us work in their barracks. We reached the stadium without any trouble and the Jaguar said, “Okay, go ahead and fight, but don’t shout or anything, the Fourth and Fifth’re in their barracks, the sons of bitches’ll hear you.” And Curly said, “T
hey’d better take off their shirts, they might get torn and there’s a clothing inspection tomorrow.” So we took off our shirts and the Jaguar said, “Start whenever you want.” I was sure the peasant couldn’t beat me, but I didn’t know he could take so much punishment. That’s another thing about the peasants, they can really take a lot. It’s hard to believe, they’re so short, but they really can. And Cava’s as short as the rest of them, but he’s solid as a rock. He hasn’t got a body like us, he’s almost square, and when you hit him it’s as if he doesn’t feel it, he can take almost anything. But he’s a real brute, a real peasant, he grabbed my throat and my waist, it was hard to get loose, I pounded his back and his head and pushed him away but he came charging in again, just like a bull, he could really take it and then some. And it was pitiful to see how clumsy he was. I knew about that, the peasants don’t know how to use their feet. The place they really know how is in Callao, they’re better with their feet than they are with their hands, but it isn’t so easy, you jump at the other guy’s face with both of your feet. The peasants just use their two hands, they don’t even know how to butt like the coast people, though God knows their heads are hard enough. I think the guys from Callao are the best fighters in the whole world. The Jaguar says he’s from Bellavista but I don’t believe it, he’s from Callao, and anyway they aren’t far apart. I’ve never seen anybody so quick with his feet, also with his head. He doesn’t use his hands when he’s fighting, he just kicks and butts, I’ve never wanted to fight with the Jaguar. “Let’s quit, peasant,” I told him, and he said, “All right if you want to, but don’t call me a coward.” “Put your shirts on,” Curly said, “and wipe your faces, somebody’s coming, I think it’s the noncoms.” But it wasn’t the noncoms, it was some cadets from the Fifth. Five of them. “Why haven’t you got your caps on?” one of them asked us. “You’re Dogs, or else you’re from the Fourth, don’t try to lie to us.” And another one said, “Attention, Dogs! Come on, let’s get their money and their cigarettes!” But I was so tired I didn’t do anything when that character frisked me. Then the guy that was frisking Curly said, “Hey, look at this, he’s loaded,” and the Jaguar smiled the way he does, watch out, he said, “You think you’re somebody just because you’re in the Fifth,” and one of them asked, “What’s that Dog saying?” We couldn’t see their faces because it was too dark. Then another one asked the Jaguar, “Would you care to repeat what you just said, Dog?” and the Jaguar said, “If you weren’t in the Fifth, Cadet, you wouldn’t dare steal our money and our cigarettes.” The cadets laughed and said, “You’re a real tough one, aren’t you?” and the Jaguar said, “That’s right, I’m as tough as they come, and I don’t think you’d have the guts to put your hands in my pockets if we were out in the street.” “Listen to him, listen to him,” another one said, “did you hear what I did?” And another one said, “If you want, Cadet, I’ll take off my insignias and I’ll still put my hands where I like.” “No, Cadet,” the Jaguar said, “I don’t think you’ve got the guts.” “Well, we’ll soon find out,” the cadet said. He took off his jacket, and a few moments later the Jaguar had him down on the ground, beating the shit out of him, the guy said, “What’re you waiting for, help me,” so the rest of them piled onto the Jaguar. Curly said, “I can’t let them get away with anything like that.” I jumped onto the pile, what a crazy sort of fight, nobody could see anybody else, sometimes I felt as if I got hit by a rock and I figured that must be the Jaguar with his kicking. We kept at it till the whistle blew and then we all got up and started running. We were quite a mess, we took off our shirts in the barracks and all four of us were bruised and swollen, we almost died laughing. The whole section came crowding into the latrine, asking us what happened, and the Poet rubbed tooth paste on our faces to take down the swelling. A little later, the Jaguar said, “That was like an initiation for the new Circle.” And after a while I went over to poor Cava’s bunk and told him, “Look, we’re friends from now on.” And he just said, “Of course we are.”