The night was moonless. Alberto climbed the jacaranda tree, his heart a drum of terror. He sliced the window pane, crawled inside, and found the drawer. As he touched the exam papers, a flashlight blazed.
The Military Academy of Leoncio Prado was not a school. It was a cage of polished boots and shaved heads, perched on the dusty cliffs overlooking Lima. Inside, the boys were not cadets; they were wolves, and the weak were the prey.
But El Poeta, who had been on the roof that morning, saw the truth. He saw El Esclavo hand the loaded rifle to El Boa. He saw El Boa aim not at a target, but at the back of El Jaguar’s head. He saw the premeditated murder—because El Jaguar was going to confess to Gamboa about the stolen exam.
One morning, during weapons training, a rifle fired a live round. The bullet struck Ricardo Arana—El Jaguar—in the chest. He died before the ambulance arrived. The report called it a "cleaning accident." libro la ciudad y los perros
The scapegoat was a timid, chubby boy named Alberto— El Paje (the Page). He was not a wolf. He was a mouse who wrote love letters to a girl he’d never kissed. El Jaguar forced him to memorize the layout of the office. "You go through the window," he said, pressing a razor blade into Alberto's trembling palm. "You cut the glass. You take the exam. If you scream, we find your letters and read them to the whole battalion."
Their ritual was the "circle." Each night, a new recruit was chosen. The victim was dragged to the latrines, stripped of his belt or his rations, and humiliated until he cried. If he told a teacher, they would beat him worse. The unwritten law was simple: silence is the first and last commandment .
The ringleader was known as El Esclavo —the Slave. He was thin, with cunning eyes that had learned to spot fear like a shark smells blood. His lieutenants were El Boa , a brute with fists like sledgehammers, and El Poeta , a quiet, bitter boy who wrote verses about death in a hidden notebook. The night was moonless
The circle, he knew, would never end.
"Stop," said Lieutenant Gamboa, the one honest officer in the academy. His face was a mask of disappointment, not anger. "Whose idea?"
"The only way," El Poeta whispered one night, "is to steal the key from the Commandant while he sleeps. That is suicide." As he touched the exam papers, a flashlight blazed
As the bus took him away, he saw a young cadet on the parade ground, being circled by three older boys. The boy’s eyes were wide with terror. No officer watched. No one would come.
Alberto said nothing. He had learned the first commandment.