The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

Mayta, nothing more to be said, and besides, what was it they were discussing? A while ago—it was Comrade Medardo’s fault, because he had brought up the question of the participation of soldiers’ soviets in the Russian Revolution—they were arguing about the sailors’ rebellion in Kronstadt and how it was crushed. According to Medardo, that anti-socialist rebellion, in March of 1921, was solid evidence of the doubtful class consciousness of the troops and of the risks of relying on the revolutionary potential of soldiers. On a talking spree, Comrade Jacinto explained that, instead of speaking about their behavior in 1921, Medardo should remember what the Kronstadt sailors had done in 1905. Weren’t they the first to rise up against the tsar? And in 1917, weren’t they ahead of the majority of factories in forming a soviet? The discussion then drifted to Trotsky’s attitude toward Kronstadt. Medardo and Anatolio remembered that in his History of the Revolution he had approved, as a lesser evil, the repression of the uprising because it was objectively counterrevolutionary and aided both the White Russians and the imperialist powers. But Mayta was sure that Trotsky had rectified that thesis later and clarified it: he didn’t participate in the repression of the sailors, which had been, exclusively, the work of the Petrograd committee, headed by Zinoviev. He even went so far as to write that it was at the time of the liquidation of the rebel sailors during the Lenin government that the first manifestations of the anti-proletarian crimes of Stalinist bureaucratization had emerged. Finally, because of an unforeseen twist, the discussion ground to a halt on the question of whether the translations of Trotsky into Spanish were any good. “There’s no way we can vote on this,” Mayta stated. “Let’s see if there’s a consensus. Even though it hardly seems probable to me, I recognize that Vallejos may be under orders to infiltrate us or provoke us in some way. On the other hand, as Comrade Jacinto has said, we should not pass up the opportunity to win over a young officer. Here’s my proposal. I’ll make contact with him, I’ll sound him out, I’ll see if there is any way to attract him. Without, of course, giving him any information about the party. If I smell something suspicious, that’s it. If I don’t, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
    Either because they were tired or because he was persuasive, they accepted. When he saw those four heads nod in agreement, he was overjoyed: now he could go out and buy cigarettes, have a smoke.
    â€œIn any case, if he had any crises, he certainly concealed them,” Moisés says. “That’s one thing I always envied him: how sure he was about what he was doing. Not only in the RWP(T), but before, too, when he was a Moscow man and in APRA.”
    â€œHow do you explain all those changes? Did he just change ideologies, or were there psychological reasons?”
    â€œI’d say moral reasons,” Moisés corrects me. “Although to talk about morality in Mayta’s case may seem incongruous to you.”
    In his eyes, there burns a malicious light. Is he expecting a little insinuation from me so he can start gossiping?
    â€œIt doesn’t seem incongruous to me at all,” I assure him. “I always suspected that Mayta’s political shifts were more emotional and ethical than ideological.”
    â€œThe search for perfection, for the pure.” Moisés smiles. “He was a very good Catholic when he was a boy. He even went on a hunger strike so he could know how the poor lived. Did you know that? That’s maybe why he was that way. When you start looking for purity in politics, you eventually get to unreality.”
    He observes me for a moment in silence while the waiter pours our coffee. Many of the Costa Verde’s customers have