B004QGYWDA EBOK (6 page)

“That’s a lie,” the voice said. “If they don’t hurt you, Dog, why are you bawling?”

He thought they had finished. But they had only begun.

“Are you a dog or a human being?” the voice asked him.

“A dog, Cadet.”

“So why are you standing up? Dogs go around on all fours.”

He dropped down, and when he put his hands on the floor he felt a burning pain in his arms. There was another boy next to him, also on hands and knees.

“Correct,” the voice said. “And when two dogs meet in the street, what do they do? Answer me, Dog, I’m talking to you.”

The Slave was kicked in the buttocks, and he answered hurriedly, “I don’t know, Cadet.”

“They fight,” the voice said. “They bark and they leap at each other. And they bite.”

The Slave could not remember having seen the face of the boy who was being initiated with him. He must have come from one of the last sections because he was so small. His features were twisted with dread, and the voice had scarcely stopped speaking when he lunged forward, barking and frothing at the mouth, and suddenly the Slave felt a bite on his shoulder like that of a rabid dog. Then his whole body reacted, and as he barked and bit he felt certain that his skin was covered with thick fur, that his mouth was a pointed muzzle, that over his back his tail cracked like a whip.

“That’s enough,” the voice said. “You’re the winner. But the midget fooled us. He isn’t a male dog, he’s a female. Do you know what a male and a female do when they meet in the street?”

“No, Cadet,” the Slave said.

“They lick each other. First they sniff around and then they lick each other.”

After that, they took him out of the barracks to the stadium and he could not remember if it was still daytime or if it was night. They stripped him and the voice ordered him to lie down and “swim” on his back around the soccer field. Later they took him into one of the barracks of the Fourth, where he made up a lot of bunks, sang and danced on a locker, imitated movie stars, polished many pairs of boots, cleaned a floor tile with his tongue, screwed a pillow, drank piss, but all that took place in a feverish dream and suddenly he found himself back in his own section, stretched out on his bunk, thinking: I swear I’ll run away from here. Tomorrow morning. The barracks was silent. The boys looked at each other, and in spite of having been beaten and spit on, smeared and pissed on, they were solemn, even ceremonious. That same night, after the bugle played taps, the Circle was born.

They were all in their bunks but no one was asleep. The bugler had just left the patio. Then a silhouette left one of the bunks, moved down the barracks and went into the latrine. The leaves of the door swung back and forth behind him. A few moments later they could hear him retching and then vomiting, loudly, desperately. Almost all of them jumped out of their bunks and ran barefoot to the latrine. Vallano, who was tall and thin, was in the middle of that yellowish room, rubbing his stomach. Instead of going over to him, they watched his strained black face as he threw up again. Finally Vallano went over to a sink and rinsed out his mouth. Then they began to talk excitedly, all at once, cursing the cadets of the Fourth in the vilest language they knew.

“We can’t let this keep on,” Arróspide said. “We’ve got to do something.” His white face stood out among the copper complexions of the others. He was in a rage and his fist shook in the air.

“Let’s bring in the guy they call the Jaguar,” Cava suggested.

It was the first time they had heard that name. “Who?” some of them asked. “Is he in our section?”

“Yes,” Cava said. “He’s still in his bunk. It’s the first one next to the latrine.”

“Why do we need the Jaguar?” Arróspide asked. “Aren’t there enough of us already?”

“No,” Cava said, “it isn’t that. He’s different. They haven’t initiated him. I saw the whole thing. He didn’t even give them time. They took him to the stadium along with me, out there behind the barracks. And he just laughed in their faces and said, ‘You’re going to initiate me, are you? We’ll see, we’ll see.’ Then he laughed in their faces again. And there were ten of them.”

“Then what?” Arróspide asked.

“They looked at him sort of surprised,” Cava said. “There were ten of them, don’t forget. But that was when they took us to the stadium. Out there, a lot of others gathered around us, twenty or more, a whole gang of cadets from the Fourth. And he still laughed in their faces. ‘You’re going to initiate me, are you?’ he asked them. ‘How nice, how nice.’”

“And?” Alberto said.

“‘Are you a killer, Dog?’ they asked him. And listen to this, he went and jumped them. And he was still laughing. I tell you there were ten or twenty of them, maybe even more, but they couldn’t grab him. Some of them took out their belts and started swinging at him, but I swear by the Virgin they didn’t get close to him, they were all too scared, and I saw a bunch of them fall down, just listen to this, some of them were grabbing their balls, some of them had bloody noses, and all the time he kept on laughing and shouting, ‘You’re going to initiate me, are you? How nice, how nice.’”

“Is that why you call him the Jaguar?” Arróspide asked.

“I didn’t name him,” Cava said. “He named himself. They had him surrounded and they’d forgot all about me. They were threatening him with their belts and he started to insult them and even their mothers. Then one of them said, ‘We’ll have to show this animal to Gambarina.’ So they called over a great big cadet with a face like a bruiser. They said he was a weight-lifter.”

“Why did they call him over?” Alberto asked.

“So they’d fight,” Cava said. “They told him, ‘look, Dog, you think you’re so brave, here’s somebody your own size.’ So he told them, ‘they call me the Jaguar. Watch out when you call me a Dog.’”

“Did they laugh?” someone asked.

“No,” Cava said. “They made room for them. And he was still laughing, even while he was fighting.”

“Who won?” Arróspide asked.

“They didn’t fight very long,” Cava said. “I could see why they called him the Jaguar. He’s quick, he’s damned quick. He isn’t too strong, but he’s just like an eel. Gambarina strained a gut but he couldn’t grab hold of him, and the Jaguar kept giving it to him with his head and his feet again and again, and Gambarina couldn’t do a thing. So he said. ‘We’ve had enough fun for today. I’m worn out.’ But everybody could see he was all beat up.”

“Then what?” Alberto asked.

“That’s all,” Cava said. “They let him go and started initiating me.”

“Go get him,” Arróspide said.

They were squatting in a circle. A few of them had lit cigarettes, which were passed from hand to hand. The latrine began to fill up with smoke. When the Jaguar came in, behind Cava, they all realized that Cava had been lying to them: the Jaguar’s chin and cheekbones were bruised and so was his flat bulldog nose. He stood in the middle of the circle and looked at them from under his long blond lashes out of strange, violent blue eyes. The sneer on his lips seemed forced, like his insolent posture and the calculated slowness with which he studied them one by one. The same was true of his sudden, cutting laughter when it echoed in the room. But no one interrupted him. They waited, motionless, until he had finished examining them and laughing at them.

“They say the initiation lasts a whole month,” Cava said. “We can’t put up with this shit for all that time.”

The Jaguar nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “We’ve got to defend ourselves. We’ll get revenge on the Fourth, we’ll really make them pay for their fun. The important thing is to remember their faces, and their names and sections if you can. We’ve got to go around in groups. We’ll hold our meetings at night after taps. There’s another thing: we’ve got to think up a name for our gang.”

“The Falcons?” someone suggested timidly.

“No,” the Jaguar said. “That sounds like kid stuff. We’ll call ourselves the Circle.”

Classes began the next morning. During recesses, the cadets from the Fourth bullied the Dogs by setting up duckraces: ten or fifteen Dogs, lined up in a row with their hands on their hips and their knees bent, waddled forward at the word of command, imitating the movements of a duck and quacking at the top of their voices. The losers had to form right angles. The cadets from the Fourth also frisked every one of the Dogs, taking away their money and cigarettes, and they mixed cocktails of gun grease, oil, and soap which the Dogs had to drink in one gulp, holding the glass in their teeth. The Circle began its counterattack two days later, shortly after breakfast. The three Years swarmed noisily out of the mess hall and spread across the field like a stain. Suddenly a hail of stones flew over their bare heads and a cadet from the Fourth rolled on the ground, moaning. After they fell in, they saw the wounded cadet being taken to the infirmary by his friends. On the following night, a sentry from the Fourth was attacked by masked shadows while he was sleeping on the grass. The bugler found him at day break: he had been stripped naked and tied up, his body was covered with bruises and weak from shivering in the cold. Others were stoned or beaten up. But the most daring stroke was an invasion of the kitchen to empty bags of shit in the soup kettles of the Fourth Year: this sent many of them to the infirmary with dysentery. The cadets of the Fourth were enraged by these anonymous reprisals, and carried on the initiations even more brutally. The Circle met every night, various proposals were discussed, and the Jaguar chose one of them, worked out the details, then gave his instructions. The month of automatic confinement to barracks passed quickly, in the midst of wild excitement. The tension created by the initiations and the actions of the Circle was increased by a new excitement: their first passday was approaching and their navy-blue uniforms were being made. The officers gave them an hour’s lecture each day on the conduct of a uniformed cadet in public.

“A uniform attracts the girls like honey,” Vallano said, rolling his eyes greedily.

It wasn’t as bad as they said, it wasn’t even as bad as I thought it was at the time, not counting what happened when Gamboa came into the latrine after taps, you can’t compare that month with the other Sundays without passes. On Sundays, that month, the Third Year took over the Academy. There was a movie in the middle of the day and then their families arrived. The Dogs wandered around the parade ground, the field, the stadium and the patios, surrounded by doting relatives. A week before the first pass, they tried on their wool uniforms: navy-blue trousers, jackets with gilt buttons, white caps. Their hair grew out slowly and they were more and more eager for the pass-day to come. After the meetings of the Circle they talked about their plans for the first pass-day. And how did he know about it, was it just by chance or did somebody squeal, and what if Huarina’d been on duty, or Lt. Cobos? Yes, at least not so fast, it seems to me that if the Circle hadn’t been discovered the section wouldn’t’ve turned into such trash, we’d’ve been sitting pretty, not so fast. The Jaguar was standing up, talking about one of the cadets from the Fourth, a brigadier. The rest of them squatted as usual as they listened to him. They kept passing around their cigarettes. The smoke rose up, bumped against the ceiling, came back down and circulated through the room like an opaque, multiform monster. “But even if he did, Jaguar, it isn’t something to kill a guy for,” Vallano said, “It’s all right to get revenge but not like that,” Urioste said, “What really stinks about all this is he might end up by losing an eye,” Pallasta said, “People get what they’re looking for,” the Jaguar said, but who knows what would’ve happened, and which came first, the bang on the door or the shout? Lt. Gamboa had either pushed open the double door with his hands or kicked it open, but the cadets went on squatting there, not hearing the noise at the door and Arróspide’s shout, but watching the stale smoke flow out into the dark barracks through the open door. It was almost filled by the tall figure of Lt. Gamboa, who was holding the halves open with both hands. The cadets dropped their cigarettes, but since they were all barefoot they could not stamp them out. They all stood at attention in rigid, exaggerated postures. Gamboa stepped on the cigarettes and then counted the cadets. “Thirty-two,” he said. “The whole section. Who’s the brigadier?”

Arróspide stepped forward.

“Tell me what’s going on here,” Gamboa said in a quiet voice. “From the beginning. And don’t leave anything out.”

Arróspide glanced at the others out of the corner of his eye while the lieutenant waited as motionless as a tree. What about the way he complained to him? And then we were all his sons after we began complaining, and what a dirty deal, Lieutenant, you don’t know the way they initiated us, don’t men have the right to defend themselves, and what a dirty deal, Lieutenant, they beat us up, they really hurt us, they insulted our mothers, look at what happened to Montesinos, look at his ass from all those right angles, Lieutenant, and he was looking at the ceiling, what a dirty deal, without saying a word to us, except he said, just tell me the facts, never mind your remarks, speak one at a time, don’t make such a racket, you’ll wake up the other sections, and what a dirty deal, the regulations, he began reciting them, I ought to expel the whole bunch of you but the army is tolerant, it understands that you kids still don’t know about military life and respect for your superiors and team spirit, but I don’t want any more of this, Yes, Lieutenant, this time but it’s the last time I’m not going to report you, Yes, Lieutenant, all I’m going to do is hold back your first pass, Yes, Lieutenant, let’s see if you can learn to behave like men, Yes, Lieutenant, if it happens again there’ll be a court-martial, Yes, Lieutenant, so memorize the regulations if you want a pass for the Saturday after next, now get some sleep, you guards get back to your posts, I’ll be checking you in five minutes, Yes, Lieutenant.

The Circle never met again, though later the Jaguar used the same name for his own group. That first Saturday, the first section spread out along the rusty iron railing to watch the Dogs from the other sections, proud and excited, stream out into Costanera Avenue and dye it with their shining uniforms, their immaculate white caps, their gleaming leather satchels. They saw them gang up at the battered Malecón, with the sea rasping behind it, to wait for the Miraflores-Callao bus, or go down to Palmeras Avenue to get to Progreso Avenue, which cuts through a cluster of small farms and enters Lima by way of Breña, or, in the opposite direction, swings down in a wide, smooth curve to Bellavista and Callao. They watched them all disappear, and when the avenue was empty again, and wet with fog, they still stood there with their faces against the bars until they heard the bugle calling them to the mess hall. Then they walked away, slowly and silently, leaving behind them the statue of the hero, whose blind eyes had regarded the explosive joy of the departed and the gloom of the punished section as they disappeared among the lead-colored buildings.