“Everybody
strip, goddammit!” ordered the técnico, a fifth-year cadet at the Escuela. “I
don’t want to see anyone wearing a stitch of clothing. I want you na-ked as the
day you were born.”
He managed
to make out that only one of the Trece del Gallo, Julián, was standing behind
him, in the same column. The others must have been in the other dozens of rows
spread out between the parade grounds and the showers.
“Eyes
front, you pieces of shit, front! Keep your eyes on the back of the neck of the
guy in front of you, goddammit.”
He had
already been warned about this welcome.
“The
fifth-years, the técnicos, are in charge of the welcoming ceremony. Those
bastards can’t wait for their chance to get even, to give back tenfold what was
done to them when they started out as zorrinos.”
“Zorrinos?”
“Yeah,
that’s what they’ll call you all through your first year. In your second,
you’ll be a dog; in your third, an old dog; in your fourth, an aspirante; and
in your fifth, a técnico.”
He had
heard all this from Lieutenant López, a friend of his father, Francisco. His
father had allowed López to take him to a bar downtown to talk, to give him a
firsthand account, from the mouth of an Escuela graduate, of what life was like
in that place. He had to be prepared.
“Panchito
told me you’re leaving for Lima the day after tomorrow, is that right?” The
officer gazed at the effervescent foam in his glass and, in its bursting,
bubbling surface, recalled his own days as a zorrino.
“Yes, along
with twelve other friends from school. Thirteen of us got in. We’re the Trece
del Gallo.”
“Why del
Gallo?”
Vladimiro
realized that present and future generations of Peruvians, civilians and
military alike, were and would remain blissfully ignorant of their own history.
It confirmed his conviction that the country was heading straight for the
abyss.
***
“Are you
scared?” Julián asked. Vladimiro had realized that, when they were alone
together, Julián showed himself for what he really was: an adolescent prisoner
of a million insecurities. He had barely survived boarding school at the
military high school, but Chorrillos would be far more brutal. Lima would
swallow him whole.
“Things are
going to happen whether you like them or not,” Vladimiro said. “All we can do
is understand that and be physically and mentally prepared. Whatever life
throws at us is beyond our control. We can only control how we react to it. You
have to know how to handle any situation and die with honour trying, if it
comes to that. We’ve just seen an example.” He pointed to some notebooks. They
were in Julián’s room. They had finished the final assignment for their
literature course. The teacher had instructed them to pair up and write a
four-page report on a work of world literature. “Don’t go bringing me just any
old thing, mind you. I’m giving you a month to come up with something decent.”
Beowulf was
an ancient Anglo-Saxon epic poem that Vladimiro had read a couple of years
earlier. He had been fascinated by the story of the warrior who knew he would
die fighting a dragon but fought it anyway. And he died, yes, but on his feet,
with honour.
They had
met a couple of times at Julián’s house, not to write the assignment together,
but so Vladimiro could explain the plot of the lengthy poem to him in detail,
ensuring that the teacher wouldn’t realize that Vladimiro had written the whole
report himself in just a couple of days.
“Not even
the teacher knows this book,” he had proudly told Julián. “And it’s not covered
in any school textbook. I found it in my grandfather’s library.”
Julián
picked up the book. It was bound in leather. It was heavy.
“You read
all this in a month?” he asked in astonishment.
“Yes, a few
years ago. But don’t worry, you don’t have to read it. I’ll tell you the story,
and we’ll go over the report together. Here. Take a look,” Vladimiro said,
handing him a notebook.
“Easy for
you to say. I don’t even know if I can last another five years.”
“You’re
going to make it, man. We’ll help each other along, just as we always have.”
That
frightened teenager was the only person at the military boarding school with
whom Vladimiro felt more or less comfortable. He would tell Julián about the
books he had read, and Julián always listened attentively.
***
“First,
they’ll strip you naked. You know why, don’t you?” Lieutenant López said. He
was smoking.
“I suppose
it’s to humiliate us.” Vladimiro smoked too. He was forbidden to smoke or
drink, but this was a special occasion.
“No. They
do it to identify the fags. When a fag sees naked men, he gives himself away.
It’s in a fag’s nature. And the military know it. The fifth-years know it.”
There were
few drunks in the bar. It was a Tuesday.
“There are
other, less obvious and more laborious ways of identifying a fag, but they
teach you those as you advance in your career. When you first enter the Escuela,
they use the most humiliating method. That’s the ritual. We military men love
rituals.”
These
bastards are Confucianists, Vladimiro thought. The lieutenant would never
understand the reference, so he kept it to himself. Unlike the officer, he was
drinking a Kola Escocesa, Arequipa’s pride and joy among soft drinks. Was there
a drink in Lima as delicious as this one? He was going to miss it.
“And when
they identify a fag, do they expel him?”
“No,” the
lieutenant laughed. “They don’t expel them, but they make their lives hell. The
thing is, there’s nothing a military man hates more than a fag, because deep
down, every military man is one himself. And that’s his curse: a burden that
fucks him for life.”
“So all it
takes is seeing a naked man for a fag to give himself away?” Vladimiro asked.
The lieutenant’s theories sounded more like myths than certainties.
The officer
filled his glass with beer. The teenager’s skepticism made him laugh so hard
that he let the beer overflow.
“No, son.
The stripping is just the beginning. The real test comes afterward.”
***
“Now I want
the men at the back to hug the ones in front of them. Hug them tight,
goddammit, as if they were your mothers, whom you haven’t seen in five years!”
the técnico roared.
Very
slowly, fearfully, disgustedly, the zorrinos in the line obeyed. Many closed
their eyes and tried to imagine themselves in less horrifying situations.
The
buttocks in front of Vladimiro were so hairy that not a patch of skin showed
through. A thick crust of bristling hair climbed all the way up the man’s back
and ran down to his calves.
Vladimiro
obeyed quickly, not allowing his brain time to process the images. That would
only make things worse. The instant his skin pressed against the sweaty hair of
the man in front of him, he felt something hard, hot, and fleshy against his
own buttocks, a little higher up. Is that an arm? he wondered. Amid all the
terrifying impressions crowding in on him that day, he remembered that the man
behind him was his friend Julián.
He feels
sorry for me and doesn’t want to fuck me, so he’s put his arm there instead.
Good man, brother, he thought.
***
“Vladimiro,
you’ve realized that I like men, haven’t you?”
About a
hundred meters away, the other eleven members of the Trece del Gallo were
saying goodbye to their friends, girlfriends, and families. There were tears
and a sadness that matched the cold Arequipa night.
“Yes,”
Vladimiro said.
There was
no need to elaborate. A natural expert at reading people’s moods and
intentions, young Montesinos Torres had known from his very first encounter
with Julián what lay behind the sorrow in his friend’s soul.
“Thank
you,” Julián said, extending a firm hand, the hand of a soldier, of an honourable
and courageous warrior, like Beowulf’s hand, the hand of the hero Vladimiro had
described with such passion and clarity in the literature assignment they had
earned the highest grade for.
Their hands
moved in a silent handshake that signified and sealed a promise: to stand by
each other through good times and bad, whatever lay ahead, through all the
adventures and misfortunes to which that battered Morales Moralitos company bus
would carry them.
***
“Are you
hugging properly? Squeezing each other tight?” the técnico bellowed.
“Yes, técnico!”
the naked, terrified boys answered in unison, clinging to one another.
Two
sentries, also fifth-year cadets, walked along the line, making sure the boys
were doing what they claimed.
“Now,
without letting go, jump! Jump, goddammit! One, two! Two, three!”
The zorrinos
jumped.
“That’s it!
Rock back and forth, rub against each other, keep going, keep going. Squeeze
tight! Anyone I see failing to squeeze and jump is getting his ass whipped with
a belt!”
The
sentries shouted orders and egged them on.
“Sing,
sing! One, two! Three, four! Four, three! Two, one!”
The boys
sang and jumped.
“Now,” the técnico
said, allowing a pause to drift through the air like a fig leaf floating on the
surface of a pond, “break apart, you pieces of shit, and get back into
position!”
When
Vladimiro obeyed, he was astonished to discover that his penis was stiff and
erect, pearled with droplets of someone else’s sweat. It throbbed, retaining
its slight, characteristic curve to the left.
“Freeze
right there, zorrino! Don’t move!”
The técnico’s
thunderous voice shook Vladimiro’s skull. Not even the fear of humiliation and
the blows that were sure to come could diminish the power that kept his member
upright and pulsating.
***
“I’ll beat
the living shit out of anyone who lays a hand on me,” Vladimiro said.
“If you
fight back, you’re fucked. A military man never forgets an insult. You have no
idea which of those bastards might end up becoming a general or the president
of the country. Because if the asshole you decide to get tough with ends up
becoming your superior, your military career is going straight down the fucking
drain.”
“So I’m
just supposed to let them beat me?”
“Don’t
worry. They only humiliate and beat the fag whose cock is still standing after
the jumping,” the lieutenant said. “I don’t think you’re going to get a
hard-on, are you?” He burst out laughing.
Vladimiro
took another sip of his soda. The stony expression on his face made it clear
that he hadn’t found the insinuation funny.
The
lieutenant cleared his throat, regained his composure, and lit another
cigarette.
“I have to
go now, but I’ll leave you with a trick in case you happen to get a hard-on by
accident. Don’t take offense or get upset. I’m not saying you’re a fag, but
it’s better to be prepared, don’t you think?”
It was
almost eight in the evening. Vladimiro remembered that he still hadn’t finished
packing his bags.
***
“Don’t move
a single hair, zorrino, or I’ll fuck you right now. And you don’t want that.”
Every atom
of his being could feel the técnico’s heavy footsteps approaching. They
reverberated like hunger in the gut, producing the same feeling of anxiety.
Then Vladimiro remembered the trick the lieutenant had revealed to him for
bringing an erection down.
***
“When
nobody’s looking, just quietly grab the bit of skin between your two balls with
your thumb and forefinger.”
“The
scrotum,” Vladimiro corrected him. As a child, he had devoured a little anatomy
book from Don Guillermo’s library. His grandfather’s knowledge had never been
confined to a single field.
“So that’s
what you call the skin around the balls? Anyway, put your fingers where I told
you.”
“Am I
supposed to pinch my scrotum?”
“No, it’s
not a pinch. Let me explain it properly.”
The
teenager took a drag on his cigarette. He had learned from Charlemagne, as he
had when confronted with his rival Marsil’s promises in The Song of Roland,
never to appear gullible and to keep a straight, stupid-looking face when
someone revealed something astonishing or mind-boggling. His eyes and mouth had
to remain firmly shut. His sharply angled eyebrows seemed to say, I don’t
believe a word of your bullshit.
***
Vladimiro
moved his right hand to his scrotum. He gripped the space between his testicles
with the specified fingers and performed the movement the lieutenant had taught
him.
The técnico’s
footsteps stopped. He heard the man’s voice behind him.
“Just look
at that. What a cock.”
It was
clear that he wasn’t talking about Vladimiro. He looked down at his own penis.
It had died. It had shrunk.
“Look at
those veins! And that big head! What a spectacular head!”
A belt
lashed across Vladimiro’s buttocks. His hands and feet went numb, and a wave of
fire swept across his face.
“You, zorrino
in front. About-face to the left! Left!”
Vladimiro
obeyed without a word. His entire skin burned. He suppressed the powerful urge
to rub his ass. Instead, he fixed his gaze upward, avoiding Julián’s face.
After turning around, he was now standing in front of him.
It had been
Julián’s penis, not his arm, that had been pressed against his lower back.
“What’s
your name, zorrino?” the instructor demanded.
“Julián.”
His voice barely held.
“Look,
Julián, this is how a man’s cock should be when he’s among men: dead as my
mother’s cunt,” the técnico said, pointing at Vladimiro’s penis. Then, turning
to him, he ordered, “Zorrino, look at your comrade’s equipment. Tell me what
you see.”
Vladimiro
didn’t need to lower his eyes. He knew what stood before him, a few centimetres
below the carefully stitched line of his military gaze.
“Tell me
what you see, zorrino,” the técnico repeated savagely.
“I see a
fag,” Vladimiro said.
“Correct, zorrino!
What we have here is an out-and-out fag. He sees naked men and, bam! His
fucking thing springs to life. And what a waste of humanity, of the army,
goddammit, with a rifle that size and grenades like those. No, no, we cannot
allow this, gentlemen. We cannot let such a magnificent specimen keep dancing
on the fags’ team. The country needs men, goddammit!”
Julián’s
penis remained hard, erect, and drooling.
“And look
at that, will you? All this commotion, and the thing still won’t go down. On
the contrary, I think this little butt-boy gets even more excited when men like
us talk about him. Do you like your comrade? Do you like all of us, you filthy
little queer? Speak!”
Julián’s
eyes struggled to hold back a torrent of tears.
The técnico
turned to Vladimiro again.
“What do
you suggest we do to reclaim this man for the country? Because when we send him
onto the battlefield, the first thing he’ll do is offer his ass to the enemy.
Huh? Speak up! What do we do, zorrino?”
“Make him a
man, técnico!” Vladimiro roared.
“So be it, zorrino.
So be it,” the técnico agreed, handing him the belt that was swinging in his
hands. He looked at Julián with contempt. His lips were split, and he was
holding back his sobs through sheer force of will.
“You, get
down on all fours, you piece of shit,” the técnico ordered.
Julián
assumed the prescribed position.
The técnico
brought his mouth close to one of Vladimiro’s ears.
“Now beat
the shit out of him until that cock of his dies and he begs you to believe he’s
not a fag anymore.”
The first
lash split the skin of the boy being punished and splattered Vladimiro’s own
face with blood.
The técnico’s eyes bulged. He had never seen such fury in a zorrino.
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