Jaime Bayly, at the death of Alan García: "The suicide of Mozart"

I met Alan García in 1984. He was a deputy and candidate for the presidency. He was only 35 years old. I had a TV show. This was called "Connections". He belonged to a generation after Alan: he was 19 years old.

I interviewed him at a convention of businessmen. I was impressed by his intelligence, his eloquence and his sympathy. He was a magician with the words, a hypnotist. He was born to seduce. Nobody has resisted his charms. It seemed unbeatable. J & # 39; was

Shortly after, I came back to interrogate him at home. He lived in a modern tower of Pardo de Miraflores Avenue. I met his wife Pilar. Argentina, Cordoba, daughter of a governor of Cordoba, I thought of a woman as beautiful as distinguished. He had a natural elegance. After the interview, Alan showed me books from his vast library. He quoted many of Neruda's poems by heart. He recited Neruda's poem, "Alturas de Machu Picchu". I was fascinated by his vast culture, rare in a politician of my country. I felt a real sympathy and admiration for him. I even thought I could vote for him. I was wrong. Fate took care to distort these plans, to sabotage this budding friendship.

Andres Townsend, the historic leader of his party, a man of honor who had failed to run for president in the 1980 election, called me to his house to tell him that he had to send me an urgent message. I went, hurry up. Townsend took me to his library and said:

–Alan is crazy. He suffers from mental disorders. We must prevent it from taking power. It would be a disaster for Peru.

Then he told me that Alan had been hospitalized several times at the San Felipe de Lima clinic, where he had been subjected to sleep cure, sleeping with sedatives so that it kind of deep depressive crises, or to calm down in front of virulent crises of mania, or to prevent it from getting hurt. I promised Townsend to use this information as soon as possible.

–You must ask him if he has had the sleep cure –he told me– Peru must know that it's a dangerous fool.

I was very disturbed after this conversation. The owners of the chain, three adorable brothers, looked at him sympathetically and one of them was his close friend and his confidant. I knew that if I asked Alan this question, I would be in trouble. However, I felt that my mission was to inform Peruvians of this dark area of ​​the favorite candidate to win the presidency.

A week before the first round of voting, one of the chain's owners announced that Alan would give his last campaign interview as part of a show titled "Pulse", broadcast on Monday evening. In this program, a moderator and a panel of four journalists asked the questions. The owner asked me to be part of the panel and asked:

"You will treat him with love, is not it?

But I was lying. Because several hours before the broadcast of the live broadcast, I decided to ask the question of suicide bombers, even at the risk of being fired. Not only did he claim that Alan had been forced to confess that he was suffering from mental disorders and that he had been groomed for sleep, but he was naive, he wanted him to go to school. to prevent taking power. I thought I was so powerful that I thought to myself: if I ask him the question and humiliate him and he becomes ridiculous, he will lose the election and I will remain a hero. I like to remember the stupidity of my candor.

When the moderator gave me the tour of my first question, I took courage and asked:

-Have you ever been to a mental health clinic? Have you done the dream cure?

–Your question is a low shot I will not answer Alan said.

At the end of the program, my colleagues from the panel said that I had serious trouble. They were right. A few days later, while Alan had already won, one of the owners of the channel called me to his office and told me that if I wanted to continue working on this TV channel, I could only speak of international politics, not Peruvian politics and, above all, not Alan García, who, as one might expect, swept the first round in such an overwhelming way, matifying his opponents, that it was not necessary to move to a second vote. Alan came to power, swore as president, bought his party from historical chess. The whole country was submissive to his charms, kneeling before him. I could not accept the censorship imposed by the channel. I have resigned. I lost my job No chain wanted to hire, their owners feared that this insolence costs them dearly. Alan had defeated me.

A few weeks later, I had the odd chance of being hired to present an international political program shot in Santo Domingo. This was called "Planet 3" (because the third planet in the solar system is Earth, which name is derived from the hair). It was a program of international politics. I was moderator and I had three guests on a panel, to whom I asked my questions. He went to Santo Domingo every month to record the program. In the five years that Alan's first government lasted, I came out of Peruvian television. I have lived between Lima, Santo Domingo and Miami, always in hotels.

When Alan was still spending a long honeymoon with the Peruvians in 1986, one of the owners of the cbad tried to reconcile us. He asked me to go to New York and go to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where Alan would stay, who would speak at the United Nations, ask for an interview and apologize for the question about his mental health.

"Alan will forgive you," said the owner. And he will give you an interview. But you have to start excusing yourself.

I have traveled to New York. I went to the Waldorf Astoria. My plan was to ask him for the interview: if he gave it to me, I would not apologize and I would ask him again the question he did not want to answer. I announced at the reception. They let me wait a few hours. When Alan finally walked imperceptibly, watching Olympus two meters high, I wanted to approach him, but I asked his guards to stop him. He watched me with disdain. Then he entered the elevator, looked at me one last time and the doors closed. There was no apology, reconciliation, interview. Alan had the trick to think that if he gave me the talk, I would not withdraw, I would continue to bother him. That's why he did not want to make me worthy and he made me feel like an insect. That night, in a bar, a very nice TV journalist, spoiled by Alan, confessed:

–Alan told me that he is Mozart and that you are his Salieri.

It hurts me. I felt humiliated. But it was true: Alan was Mozart, an absolute genius of politics, seduction, collective hypnosis, a wizard, a magician. Salieri, his envious and his resentment: I could never be as brilliant and charming as him, my vices, my imperfections and my imperfections weighed me too much to reach the summits of the power, the immortal glory. I would have liked to be like him, a politician with terrific talent, but even at that time, I knew that besides women, I also loved men, what I was stupidly trying to conceal, and that's why I realized that I would never become a beloved president. , worshiped, like Alan. I remember that night at the bar in New York, I told the reporter:

-I do not aspire to the glory of politics. I want to be a writer. I write a book. I am not your Salieri because I aspire to the glory of the writer.

But he was deceived: in truth, Alan was Mozart and me, his Salieri. Once again, he had defeated me. His intelligence and intelligence far surpbaded me.

Time puts things in their place. His pbading through power, at such an early age, proved that he was not a completely stable person. I was not there either. I did not know then that I was bipolar, maybe like Alan himself. This is to say that ours was an epic two crazy fight that we did not know we were crazy.

Years later, in 2001, when Alan had returned from Paris and was again running for president, he had gone to the second round against all odds, against Alejandro Toledo's cachafaz, I went to visit him at his side. He received me privately. We shook hands, we kissed each other, we forgave each other, we forgot the grievances of the past, we buried the resentments. Alan felt like a conqueror, a mythological creature: he had saved his life, since Fujimori had ordered him to be killed and that he had cleverly escaped the vicious persecution of that dictatorship. He was now back in power, silencing his enemies and his envy of all life. I also felt a winner, in a way: I had managed to be a writer, published several books in Spain, and the critics in this country were kind to my novels, and now I was doing a successful program in Lima, " The Sniper ". . In a gesture of gratitude and chivalry, corresponding to the visit I gave him, Alan gave me an hour interview on TV. He came to the studio with Pilar, his wife. I dared to ask him again the 1985 question. Denied that he had mental problems. I reminded him that he had censored me. He denied it. I asked him to apologize for his first poor government. He did it. I interviewed her life in Paris. He defended himself sagaciously. At the end of the interview, we were not friends, but we were not enemies either. Improbably, we had reconciled. Alan was not as proud as in his youth. The long journey in the desert had reduced the colossal size of his ego.

Five years later, when he went to the second round with the chavista of Ollanta Humala, I've publicly supported Alan and voted for him. So, being already president, I mocked him without compbadion every Sunday for "The Sniper". Alan did not call the owner of the channel to complain, to ask me out of the air. I had learned the lesson. He had forged a tolerance for criticism, had learned to be a statesman who understood the irritating role of the press, which was to be hostile to those in power.

My ferocious criticisms, heartless jokes, and poisoned darts had no influence on friendship, did not undermine our friendship, or at least did not undermine our alliance of minimal cordiality. He did not hold grudge. He did not add me to the blacklist of his enemies. I realized that his job was to administer power and mine, to criticize him, to make fun of him..

I know that he did not hold a grudge because at the end of his second term, when my name was among the most favored presidential candidates in the polls, I asked him for a secret meeting and he met me at the government hotel at midnight.. I told him, almost like friends, sliding into the field of confidences, my mental health problems, bipolarity and insomnia, and I even listed the pills that I had. he had taken. I told him that I did not know if I had to register as a candidate. He strongly encouraged me. He said that he had had the opportunity to go into history. He spoke of the unparalleled glory of serving the poorest. He said that he could win if he defended a liberal program and made me the youth candidate. He was extremely generous to me. He advised me on a paternal tone, I felt that he had a real affection for me. He said that if he would launch me as a candidate, he would support me.

But I did not know whether to throw myself or not. I was afraid that if he threw me, I would stop being a writer. He feared that if he went into politics he would never be able to get out of this swamp where innocent and guilty people, heroes and villains eventually sank. I feared that the pretension not understood of the glory leads me to the precipice, to the precipice.

In the midst of these tribulations, I invited Alan to dine at my home in San Isidro. He came with his girlfriend, a charming woman. He encouraged me again to be a face-to-face candidate. He reminded me that I had to defend a modern libertarian program that captivates young people's imagination. I told him that I did not have money to finance the campaign. Serious. From a paternal tone, He told me that if I registered my candidacy and excelled in the polls, the money would arrive alonebecause the most powerful businessmen hastened to finance the campaigns of the candidates offering possibilities of victory. Was right. Indeed, the money came alone. Shortly thereafter, the representative of Odebrecht proposed, during a dinner at the national club, to finance the presidential campaign. For starters, he could give me a million dollars.

-You understand that this is not a gift, but a loan – he warned me.

It was obvious that if I won, which seemed very unlikely, given my history of scandals, my dissolute behavior and my bipolar disorder, he would have to pay the debt, by awarding him millionaire public works.

Fortunately, I made the decision not to register my candidacy for the presidency. I remembered what I told the reporter in New York: I do not want to be a politician, I want to be a writer.

This is the last time I saw Alan: at my home in San Isidro, Lima, in 2010. Then we took our distance: I counted in a column that had me incited to be a candidate, telling me that the money would arrive alone. I should not have done it. It was an infidelity. It was an intimate dinner and what was being talked about was to be kept secret. But I'm not good at keeping secrets: my family knows it.

That night, in my house, Alan told me that he believed in eternal life, that he often saw the spirit of Haya de la Torre, the founder of his party who was convinced that he would meet Haya and his father. Carlos, in eternal life. I hope you are now in such good company.

Alan: It was an honor to be your enemy and briefly your friend. I will miss you God may take pity on your soul and grant you the eternal rest you deserve.

Mozart is dead. Salieri is not happy.