The pack hesitated. Then they laughed. This one, they decided, was made of the same rotten wood as them.
El Poeta did nothing. He went to his bunk, opened his notebook, and wrote a poem titled The City of Dogs : Here the strong devour the weak, And the truth is a buried bone. We bark, we bite, we never speak, And the city is our prison of stone. Years later, Alberto—the former mouse—walked out of the academy’s iron gates for the last time. He was eighteen. He had a scar on his palm from the broken glass. He had learned to smoke, to curse, to never cry. He had learned that the city of dogs was not just the academy. It was Lima. It was the army. It was the whole country. libro la ciudad y los perros
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." The pack hesitated
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. El Poeta did nothing
"Stop," said Lieutenant Gamboa, the one honest officer in the academy. His face was a mask of disappointment, not anger. "Whose idea?"