by Jay Cantor
And Nico quoting Fidel was, Chaco said, the wind in the reeds, the sea in the background. Not unpleasant, and hardly meaningful. Like his pounding hands, another mechanical discharge of affect.
We had now heard bits of Fidel’s speeches from every epoch—for Nico knew by heart pages of this wordy man’s remarks. What heat, we wondered, did Nico find in this fat rhetoric? It was difficult for us to imagine warming ourselves there. This, Chaco and I agreed, was not literature, was not the sublime poetry of a true, an inspired leader. It was rant. How could someone be so moved by it? Chaco poked me lightly in my ribs, to share the joke.
But I was elsewhere. My father, I thought, had never deceived—not anyone but himself. He might more likely call a meeting to denounce me. Chalk letters on the big brown doors to the dining room. This is what Ernesto Guevara said to his mother.… A moral man, moving away from us into a perfect implacable justice, a quiet that was a continual accusation, the unanswerable accusation of defeat, for the failure of a man truly too good for this world condemned the world. And I, the one person this mistrustful isolated man had allowed himself to rely on, I had abandoned him.
Dearest Tete: Your father died yesterday on the floor of the living room. It was a peaceful end. Please, I beg you do not come home for the burial. By the time you receive this he will already be in the ground. And I am quite capable of taking care of myself. So don’t insult me by returning! You have his name. You are what was best in him. You are Ernesto now. You have a book to write, a world to conquer for all of us.
Love, my darling Ernesto, from your mother,
Celia
“You see,” the wind went on, moving through trees, over buildings, “nothing is more important to Fidel than truth. Nothing. Not his family. Not his career. Not his life. Nothing. Truth is his food. Without it Fidel would die. He wants nothing for himself but justice!” He was shouting again, and smashing his right fist into his thigh.
These charismatics, my mother said, always they want nothing for themselves! Nothing but absolute power over you! She was right, clearly right, sadly, unappealably right. Nico moved far away from me, behind the thick air, the air like glass. These voices! They sealed me off from the world, with their mockery, or their stern moralism.
Chaco placed an arm about Nico, to calm him. “Here,” he said kindly, “have a cigarette.” He offered him a red-and-white package he’d acquired at a cafe we’d stopped at that morning, before guard duty. Chaco made a game out of getting those packages, an amateur sport, for he himself didn’t smoke. He sought out the North American “professors” without universities, the “journalists” who had no newspapers to write for. They flirted with each other. Chaco would smile, wink, encourage an agent to invite him over to his table, engage him in conversation. They asked questions about the city’s morale (very bad), the army’s loyalty (very questionable), the students’ feelings (very strong implacable opposition to a certain country to the north. Know where?). Chaco spewed nonsense. “The Guatemalan people have chewed the food of nationhood.” He nodded his head up and down earnestly, looking over at our table, where Nico grew taut with fury, and I, against my will, smiled fondly. “How can they spit it out?” For this little stew Chaco had garbled up bits of my thoughts and Nico’s “Fidel Theology.” “Do you know the taste of nationhood, sir, of real independence?” He flicked his large earlobe back and forth. His voice squeaked rhythmically, as if this were one of his songs. “It is bitter, but pungent, odoriferous, more vivifying than greed.” He showed the agent the palm of his hand, as if delivering a benediction. The palm was puckered with lines, like my mother’s, as if he, too, had put his hand over a fire. (I wondered how it had happened. I meant to ask him about it.) “The fruit of a tree,” he said. Strange benediction; he began to waggle his fingers. “The fruit of the tree.” The agent looked about, the businessman caught with a chorus girl. Bad for his career. He quickly slid a package of North American cigarettes across the table, the expected gratuity in these encounters. He didn’t want to touch the madman’s lined hand, those long thin fingers waving like worms.
Chaco wasn’t the only one engaged in the cigarette enterprise. At meetings in the university, endless meetings, crowded, hot, meetings without plan, without hope, a long complaint, a shared anxiety without issue, I would see those packages here and there in the assembly, recognize them over my head on the balcony that ran the length of the room, held up for a moment, disappearing into pockets. Offerings of smoke rose to the gold angels on the high domed ceiling. It was hard for me to breathe. The red spots of a disease, I thought. Will the patient live? No one thought so anymore. The cafe was nearly empty this morning, the chairs still tipped over on top of the white metal tables. And the few students there spoke quietly of certain defeat. The Guatemalan Revolution was the grounds in their coffee.
Nico lit his cigarette. We took seats on a gray stone bench in a garden near the Government Palace. Pink and white flowers grew profusely all around us. (Someone, oddly, was still caring for them.) The sun went behind some clouds on the horizon. It would set soon. When it was dark the planes would come. The thought made me nervous. Some birds—could they be gulls? they had long wings—wheeled about the palace, and off towards the setting sun. Were they messengers bringing news of Castillo Armas to the General Staff? Or were they spies of some more far reaching conspiracy?—It was my anxiety, I realized, that made me construct whimsies about birds.
There was no one else in the garden. Last night the twin-engined planes had bombed near La Aurora Air Base, and then had moved on to attack the working-class quarters of the city. We could hear the fire engines at the meeting, a long wail above the speaker’s voice, the beginning of a mourning. There were too many fires for the rescue crews. “We’ll be safe on the golf course,” Chaco had whispered to me, unsure and afraid. “They wouldn’t want to destroy the golf course, would they?”
That morning the mercenary army had taken Asuncion Mita, El Progreso, and Zacapa. The rail line to El Salvador was cut. The battle had begun this afternoon for Puerto Barrios. If it fell, the city would be utterly isolated. The perfume of the flowers made it hard to breathe. The air was too thick.
A few men in dirty, worn clothes came to the Government Palace, a delegation asking for participation in the city’s final defense. The nation longed for leadership For the leader who would act Whose actions would be a symbol A symbol that would Call the people to the necessary sacrifice.
Did I think that? My own thoughts came to me in bits, and seemed as distant to me now as the colors of the flowers, hidden by the glassy thick air. The palace was a picture postcard I looked at far away, in another country. My lungs hurt. But only a little. I don’t need an injection! I won’t complain! I won’t have another attack!
The man I pleaded with was dead.
The delegation would be turned away. The workers must not be armed. Who knows how they might act if Castillo Armas were defeated, if they felt their own power? What might they ask for? What might they demand? They must be sent home, back to their burrows to hide.
Or to run away, if they could get their dog carts over the ridge. Yesterday Soto and the lawyers had left town. I had his farewell letter folded in my pocket, next to my mother’s note. Hilda had read it to us the night before:
Dear Boys: I cannot see what earthly good will be served by your remaining in Guatemala. Clearly, this was a revolution before its time, an experiment that failed! I truly understand your affection for what Arbenz has attempted, and for the Guatemalans. But I don’t see what purpose will be served by our remaining here to watch its death agony. Do you realize the risk you run? This is not your country! Ernesto, you were always a heedless man. I admire you for it, really, in a way. I don’t expect you ever to take my—or anyone’s!—advice. But Chaco! You are a more cautious and reasonable boy! Please don’t be misled by other people’s stories! You should follow my sensible example
Anyway, I’m sure that Ernesto and I and Chaco will meet again under
more favorable circumstances. Perhaps I will see you all in Mexico City.
Your comrade,
Roberto
This disgusted me, this talk of “the electoral way”—of compromises with imperialism and its lackeys.
Hilda smiled warmly at me. She had always despised Soto. She handed me the letter. “He thinks we’re fools.”
“Good. I wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
“He’s not alone, you know,” Chaco said, from the couch. “It’s a general exodus. The Venezuelans left yesterday. And the other Peruvians, besides Hilda. And even Nico’s comrades. The leaves have all fallen from the trees.” He turned towards Nico on the couch. Nico looked uncomfortable, nervous, as if he were about to spring upon someone. (Himself, most likely.) Chaco’s smiling mouth took over most of his thin face. “Why did you stay, Nico? After all, as Soto says, it’s not your country. You have another struggle elsewhere, a leader to wait for. Are you, too, a heedless man, like our friend Ernesto?”
Nico turned to me. He waited, I felt, for me to give him my full attention, to look directly at him, even into his eyes. Or so I felt. It was difficult to see him from my chair opposite. We’d covered the windows with newspapers (newspaper that mysteriously fell to the floor each afternoon while Hilda was at work). The only light was a candle by Hilda’s chair, and the pale, greenish glow from the radio dial. I found Nico’s eyes (for I knew he awaited me); and when I did, he spoke.
“Because I am like Soto, Ernesto. Because I am much worse than Soto. Because I really am a coward. And I must not ever run away again.”
Why did he need my look for his confession? I would not be his judge! My eyes slipped from his for a moment, to the small worn red-and-brown Persian carpet by his feet. I sipped some hot mate. No one replied to his revelation. But when my eyes met his again, he spoke:
The 26th of July. Someone at the assembly point had said they were going to the carnival as a reward for their training. No one had known the plan. Fidel, that is, hadn’t revealed the plan till the last minute, when the arms were distributed. Nico had been given a .22. A .22! The man next to him, a fellow named Marcos, had looked at Nico’s gun and said, “We’re finished.” Just like that! Everyone had known what he meant. Fidel had failed to get real weapons! Then the great plan had been revealed. It was to take the barracks to get army weapons for the spontaneous rising. But they hadn’t had the weapons to take the barracks! Nico had used a .22 in practice. It wouldn’t always knock a tin can over. Marcos said they were all going to die. He had shaken his head wearily. But he had gone. And Nico had gone. You had to trust Fidel.
Nico had stood on the highway, where he was told to stand, with his .22. Troop reinforcements might come down the highway after the main force had attacked the Moncada. He was to delay them.
They had come. Batista’s soldiers had new Yanqui weapons. He hadn’t seen the soldiers, really, only their guns. He had a .22!
So he had run away.
Nico would not look away from me, or allow me to look away. He spoke very slowly, precisely, his hands lying on his knees. Nothing moved but his large Adam’s apple. I knew that if I touched his white shirt now, even over his chest, it would be wet with his odorless sweat. I thought of Fernando’s deaf ear, his hearing destroyed by a beating in a provincial jail. This is not your country! This is not your country! I thought of the smell of burnt pork in Soto’s cell in Buenos Aires. They had other instruments besides straight-backed chairs! Clever Soto had escaped. Bodies found charred in fields outside La Paz, or dead in the backs of old taxis. The soldiers had come down the road towards Nico. He had run away. Politics. Who uses whom. People being held; or holding others; escaping; failing to escape. Tortured and then killed by the police. Too much suffering. Too much pointless suffering.
Nico, I had thought (for I wanted him to be so, a goal, an accusation to move me onward), knew the depth of his courage, the sacrifice he was prepared to make. And he did! He was a coward! And I? How would I have acted when the gun batteries pointed down at the marchers in La Paz? When Batista’s soldiers moved up the street towards me? I was unknown to myself, to others, always unknown, pure potential; a child listening to stories, I might be any character in the tale—the hero? the coward? the great violinist? the Prince of Argentina?
Nico had heard the gunfire from the barracks. It hadn’t been loud enough. There should have been more of it. Something had gone wrong. He had told himself it was all right to escape. Because he was a coward! Because he hadn’t really understood the choice, no matter how many times Fidel had explained to them that in a real revolution you must be prepared to win or die. He heard Fidel’s words. But he hadn’t been able to imagine what they meant. Die? The soldiers had marched up the street towards him, carrying rifles with long curving clips. There had been torches along the highway for the carnival, black smoke had curled from the top of them. He had been able to see the weapons. They had had good weapons. Fidel hadn’t gotten them good weapons. Not like those!
“You see,” he said, “I tried to blame my cowardice on him! As if it were Fidel’s fault that I ran away!”
And now Nico sobbed before us, not from grief or embarrassment, but from fear. He saw the guns again. He was still afraid. His body trembled all along its length. “Mother of God,” he cried, “Fidel would have let us all die! The bastard! Someone should stop him now before he kills more young men!” He put his own large arms around his chest, hugging himself, rocking back and forth on the sofa.
We watched. It was unkind, but all of us watched the large man cry. He saw us watching and dragged his sleeve across his eyes. It was because he had been so scared, he said, that he had thought like that. He didn’t think like that anymore.
He reached up to touch the ridges on his face and neck. “They’re from a car accident,” he said. “Everyone thinks they’re battle scars.” He smiled wanly at me. “I’ll bet you thought that too, Ernesto?” He ran his fingers along their length, over and over, tracing his wound. “But I want you to know that they’re not battle scars, because you’re my friend, Ernesto. You understand the truth of these matters. I want you to know how I got them. I was drunk. In a car.”
Why did he want me to know? So I might judge him, so that I might be the stern moralist? Very well. I smiled my tight-lipped smile. I did judge him. He was a coward.
Outside we could hear the sound of the explosions. The windows shook.
I turned away from Nico, leaving him in darkness. “They’re bombing near civilians now.”
“Near us,” Chaco said harshly. “We’re civilians, Ernesto.” The fingers of Chaco’s right hand curved about his left wrist. To calm himself in crisis he often counted his own pulse beats.
But Nico’s story frightened me more than the bombing—the slow implacable march of his voice. It spoke, like his hands slamming together, of obscure forces, beyond one’s will, carrying one away.
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed, dear,” Chaco said to Nico. “You showed very good sense. Fidel had failed you. Here.” He reached for the wicker basket of fruit—my fruit!—on the table in front of them. “Have an orange.” He held it on the palm of his lined troll’s hand. The orange seemed a thing from another world, a world filled with light.
“Don’t call me ‘dear,’ you stupid clown!” Nico shouted. He slapped at Chaco’s thin hand with his large paw, knocking the orange to the floor. “Just shut up! You don’t understand anything! You don’t understand about Fidel!”
The orange rolled slowly over to my seat. I put it into my jacket pocket. Later, on the golf course, our refuge, I would share its spill of light with Chaco.
No one spoke more. As the sound of the planes moved away, we went outside to see if there was anything we could do to help the victims.
Nico smoked without taking the cigarette from his mouth. I could see his eyes water painfully. A mild reproof, like his hand striking his thigh. He wanted this punishment. He had betrayed Fidel. What further punishment might he want?
/> I stretched my legs out in front of me. Another night on the golf course and they would never be straight again. “He’s a bourgeois,” I said, “isn’t he? Castro? A plantation owner’s son?”
And I? Child of the conquistadors? How might I affirm myself? Today the abstraction of class didn’t seem impersonal; it stood accusingly against me, as if to say that all I could imagine to do was compromised from the start by the sullen nature of my imagination. (Or was I petit-bourgeois, because I would always contrive a way to escape the consequences of my imaginings?)
Nico waved my question about Fidel away, throwing the back of his hand outward, as if my inquiry were an annoying fly.
“You think that matters? That doesn’t matter!”
To understand I need only hear what Fidel had told the Cuban Communists. Fidel loved truth. Fidel wanted justice. One had to trust that. One had to trust his hatred of injustice. It was real. If Marxism was the science of Revolution, as Hilda said, then Castro’s movement would overcome its prejudices in order to realize justice. Fidel would unite all who could be united.
Nico paused to wipe under his nose. “Those aren’t my thoughts,” he said. “Those are Fidel’s own. It’s a beautiful truth isn’t it?”
I laughed, though I knew that my laughter would pain Nico. I couldn’t imagine his pain. I couldn’t imagine, either, the Communist who would agree that faith in Fidel was more vital than the necessary truths of Marxism. “Unite all who could be united!” What magic in this Castro’s personality allowed Nico to think this pointless tautology the ground of wisdom?