THE BLUE HOUR
I’d like to thank Stephen Hart for the opportunity to visit this distinguished
house of learning. I’d also like to express my gratitude to Random House, the
world’s best publishing house.
I’ve always believed that being a Peruvian writer is a privilege because
Peruvians are born in a country defined by diversity and contrast. Our country’s
history is marked by conquest and immigration. Peru is home to many races,
cultures and languages, both occidental and eastern. Mario Vargas Llosa called
Peru “the country of a thousand faces” and Arguedas’ two best-known novels
about Peru are entitled Deep Rivers and All Bloods.
But diversity is not the only reason why Peru is a writer’s paradise. The
many Europeans, Africans and Asians arriving to its shores over the centuries
often clashed with the native cultures, creating a society characterized not only by
diversity but by conflict. This is why being a Peruvian writer is a privilege. I cannot
think of a story without a conflict, and living in a city like Lima means constantly
being confronted by social and cultural discord. Two people may meet in a market,
a classroom or an office and their cultural and ethnic differences may trigger
hostility. Our diversity may enrich our social and cultural environment but it also
poses a challenge for our integration as a society. Being born and raised in such a
country is wonderful for a storyteller since conflict is crucial to a good story.
Nobody wants to read a story in which all characters look, speak and behave alike.
Nobody wants to read a story in which everybody gets along swimmingly. Those
stories would be exceedingly dull. Complete happiness, if it existed, would be
boring. Of course we all know it does not exist; it is probably better that way. None
of us wants to live in paradise. Good and evil are deeply entwined concepts and
their relationship is what makes life ambiguous and fascinating. A world of total
harmony is as false and artificial as a world of absolute suffering and doom.
Diversity, variety and change are what make us love life and living and also what
make us venerate art.
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Novels and stories narrate what happens when people from different
backgrounds or with different ideas come together. This is a daily reality for all
Peruvians. The co-existence of peoples from very different backgrounds living in
close proximity for centuries. I can’t think of a more intriguing human experiment. I
believe this issue has also become increasingly important for Europe and the
developed world in recent years. Can people of different cultures and languages
live together in an environment of peace and mutual respect? Peruvians have been
asking themselves this fundamental question for centuries. Perhaps because of the
weight of our history and social issues, Peruvian literature has always leaned
toward realism, including that of our best-known writers, such as Arguedas and
Vargas Llosa.
For me, literature began the day the serpent appeared in Paradise. Before
the serpent came along, in the third book of Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in
Paradise, literally. But since we all know paradise does not exist, at least in a
permanent state, that first serpent brought the truth, that is, curiosity and
imagination. Every tale since has somehow dealt with the relationship between
humanity and the established order, in other words, between humankind’s curiosity
and imagination and the limitations reality imposes.
To tell a story is to perform an experiment in human behavior. To conduct
this study, a writer must delve into the hidden identities of the characters. In our
daily lives, our behavior is dictated mainly by the routines of our time and place in
the world.
When faced with the unknown, people are challenged. In those
situations, we tend to reveal our true selves. Most stories are about characters who
face the unexpected, who are confronted by something that challenges them. This
is true for even the most ancient of myths, including that of Adam and Eve: an
individual’s routine, normal life is upset by the unexpected. Novels are an effective
vehicle for exploring characters’ true nature. A novel recounts the adventures of a
character forced to show his many hidden angles as he confronts the unknown.
In many stories, such as those of Kafka, the unexpected becomes the norm.
By placing his characters in a setting and making them act, a writer is asking
himself some questions. To what extremes will the character go? What is he
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capable of doing? What would he sacrifice his life for? These inquiries have no
answers; rather, they raise new questions about each character. A narrative simply
reflects characters in action, whether mentally or physically. No one who seeks pat
answers should pick up a book; they should be reserved for those who want to
make new inquiries into flesh-and-blood characters.
If literature deals with the effects of the unexpected, war clearly provides an
excellent context. The personal and collective sense of risk and danger associated
with war is an ideal scenario for uncovering true human nature.
Peru’s Shining Path terrorists launched a war against the government
beginning in about 1980. A philosophy professor named Abimael Guzmán,
following Maoist ideas, declared war on the democratically-elected government.
Guzmán quickly became a hero for many in a country plagued by prejudice and
inequality. Deep-rooted social resentment proved the perfect breeding ground for
the spread of this violence.
The war lasted from 1980 until 1993. I lived in Lima during the last eight
years of the conflict. Terrorists practiced brutal tactics but the military’s response
was also frequently atrocious. The armed forces established bases in the southern
Andean area of Ayacucho, where the war began. Tragically, these bases often
became the backdrop for episodes of rape and torture.
I wanted to write a story set during this war because I believe it revealed so
much about the underbelly of our society, its social inequalities and barriers. Wars
can bring out both the best and worst in people. Although the war spread
throughout the country, its ground zero was Ayacucho.
How does the seed of a story develop in the mind of a writer? What makes
an author obsess so much about a story that the only way to free himself of it is to
write it down? I have asked myself these questions many times but have yet to
come up with a definitive answer. The Blue Hour started with a conversation with a
friend of mine, an investigative journalist, who had published an account of events
occurring during the civil war.
Over lunch one day, my friend Ricardo Uceda told me a story that intrigued
me. During the war, many young women from local villages were brought to the
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military bases, where they were sometimes raped and killed. One day, a highranking officer had talked to a prisoner and had decided to save her life. He did not
release her but kept her in his room. The woman eventually escaped and managed
to make her way to Lima. Although my friend told me many other stories that day,
this one stayed with me. I do not know why except that it seemed like a revelation
to me. Here was a man who was a torturer during the war, a high-ranking officer
probably known for his cruelty. But somehow, he was suddenly capable of
compassion. He had saved the woman from certain death. There was no
explanation for this. This ambiguity attracted me and I thought it might make an
interesting backdrop for a story.
I set the novel a few years after that event. I decided to make my main
character a wealthy, smug lawyer who unexpectedly learns that his military father
had been a torturer in the war with Shining Path. After his mother’s death, the
lawyer meets with his long-estranged brother, who tells him the truth about their
father. His brother tells him that his father had a prisoner, a young woman he had
perhaps fallen in love with, living with him at the military base until she managed to
escape. I thought the main character would be so surprised to discover this that he
would try to locate the woman. That would be the thread of the story. So if I had to
summarize the plot of this novel, I would say it is about a man who is looking for his
father’s former prisoner and lover while at the same time trying to gain a deeper
understanding of his family, his country and himself. The discovery of his father’s
secret would tap into the main character’s own dark side and lead him on a journey
of self revelation.
Adrian Ormache is determined to find the woman, Miriam, and the first part of
the book is dedicated to his quest. The second half of the novel focuses on his trip
to the southern Andes in search of clues about the woman. I traveled to Ayacucho
to learn more about the context of the story, to meet people who had been tortured
and the soldiers and officers who had been attacked by the Shining Path, and to
listen to the stories emerging from these events. As I said before, the more conflict
and violence, the more stories we uncover.
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There is a debate continuing even now in Peru as to whether we should forget
or forgive everything that happened during the war. I’ve always believed that it is
best for a society to face its past mistakes head-on. Confronting them gives us a
better chance of not repeating them. I think writers should open the Pandora’s Box
of societies. Everything that societies tend to conceal is potentially a treasure trove
for writers. A writer should also strive to unveil that part of his own and his
characters’ psyches that he did not know existed. I have often discovered my
deepest concerns through my writing. The art of fiction can ultimately expose one’s
darker side.
Writing has nothing to do with explaining, however. I have found that whenever
people cannot explain something, they tell a story. In ancient times, when we did
not know why the sun rises or why there are storms and earthquakes, myths were
created to explain them. These myths were not scientific explanations but stories.
Today we know why these phenomena occur, but many mysteries remain. Why do
people fall in love?; why do they keep having faith in themselves when everything
around them appears hopeless?; why are some people capable of murder or of
suicide? We do not have explanations for these things so we write stories about
them. Perhaps literature is our response to the unknown.
The Blue Hour recounts Adrian Ormache’s journey to learn about his father’s
secret life, which ultimately gives him a life-changing glimpse of the reality of his
country’s poor and marginalized citizens. He also acknowledges the dark side of
himself, which he previously neglected or even refused to accept existed. He finally
perceives the other human beings who exist around him. He discovers that his
brother and father were not so different from himself. He learns of the extremes of
suffering and heroism and how an individual can perform the cruelest of actions or
the noblest of feats. This process of discovery is a writer’s business.
In The Blue Hour, the character of Miriam personified the many nameless
people in the war, the people whose efforts made a difference at some point. She
is one of many unsung heroes in the world. She fought for her son’s survival; did
everything in her power to ensure that he would not succumb to violence. I have
always loved a quote from the great George Eliot in Middlemarch: “for the growing
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good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so
ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Perhaps when she was writing these words, George Eliot did not suspect that
almost a 150 years later, she would help a writer on the other side of the world
understand the roles of so many people in his own country’s recent history.
Alonso Cueto
University College London
11 June 2012
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