by Jay Cantor
“He’s dead!” Teran shouted, but not at Prado—at the body he had just killed, and too loudly, as if he wanted to reach the dead man himself, wherever he was. “He’s dead! I killed him! He’s dead!”
Once again Willy had been in the unfortunate place, had heard what he didn’t want to hear. From the other room he shouted, “We’ll kill them Che! Someday we’ll kill them all!”
Which wasn’t what Teran wanted to hear. Those words, Teran thought, must be erased. I didn’t hear them. No one heard them. They weren’t spoken. He went into the other room, to the man who had cursed him, and, without waiting for further orders from Prado, he shot Willy.
THE END
Hardly. The captain came into Guevara’s room, and fired a single bullet of his own, which pierced Che’s heart and one of his lungs.
THE END
No. It doesn’t matter how many times I write THE END; it’s not over. The other officers begged Prado that they, too, might be allowed to shoot Guevara’s body. “All right,” Prado said, giddy, as if a weight had been taken off his chest, as if Che’s life had made it harder for people like Prado to breathe. “But not above the waist.”
The officers unholstered their pistols and shot Che in the legs and genitals, not laughing as they did it, one after another, as if they’d been ordered to take turns. This is as you wanted it, not a game, certainly, or accident, or play, we want to hurt you badly, do you damage, smash you down, pulverize your atoms, blow away the dust and erase your memory from the earth. Shoot him in the balls. That means he won’t have any followers! You kept yourself apart, distant, judged us and what we did, you thought you could be our leader, our superior, better than us. This is your pride come home, you practiced making us keep our distance, compelled our admiration, and this is how we show it to you.
Che responded by jiggling a bit as the bullets struck him. When they were done he just lay there, of course, where he’d fallen, on the floor, in corpse position.
The doctor leaned over the corpse, putting his ear to its nose. “He’s dead, gentlemen. I can’t hear a thing. And a man you can’t hear,” the doctor said, smiling, “is a dead man.”
He borrowed Prado’s pistol and put a bullet in Guevara’s neck. “A good hole for the formaldehyde,” he told the officers, who stood over him, watching.
At five o’clock that day a helicopter flew from La Higuera to Vallegrande, with the corpse tied to a board across its runners.
As was the army’s custom with the bodies of dead guerrillas, they put Guevara’s corpse on display outside the hospital laundry, a shed with a red tile roof and no front wall, in the middle of a dusty field. The press might see the body and know Guevara was dead. Photographers were permitted to take pictures.
General Barrientos announced to the reporters that Che Guevara had been wounded in battle, and had died a few hours later, from his wounds.
The corpse was left outside the laundry, on a board across two sawhorses. At dusk the next day some peasants came from their fields and placed candles at his head and feet, kicking the sawhorses he lay on, and praying. And each evening the week thereafter they came, too, in increasing numbers.
This solemn attendance was not what the authorities wanted. They took the corpse away and loaded it on a small plane. It was thrown from the plane into a jungle region, a pointless place where no one ever went; or went and came out sane.
Before they discarded the corpse they cut off Che’s hands at the wrist and stuck them in a jar.
JULY 31
THE DEATH OF
CHE GUEVARA
BY
Travis Tulio
—Because the first time is tragedy and the second time is farce. Because maybe he saved me, and maybe he left me to die.
• • •
The scene: November 1. Day of the Dead. Outside a laundry shed in Vallegrande. A corpse on a board laid across two sawhorses. A lime cross has been made on the ground nearby and around the corpse people had placed incense, a plastic bowl of water with a small saint floating in it, a plate of pork rinds, and some white candles.
Six peasants come down the mountain in the background. Or seven peasants. (They multiply like lice, as fast as the Lord can think up stupid names for them.) They have rented a truck for the occasion, for they couldn’t afford a mourners’ bus. FAITH IN GOD! ONWARDS has been painted on a board across the cab of the truck, in front. They have come because they know that where there is a corpse laid out there will be something to drink as well. But they have already started drinking. As they come down the painted mountain, a stream can be seen, like a rainbow in the last light of the setting sun, arcing over the back of the truck. It’s their piss—several of them are pissing over the back, and the wind carries their urine away in this high lovely curve. They wear rags, and their faces are smeared with dirt.
On the front of the stage, near the corpse, they climb off the truck, looking about. One of them punches the air vigorously as he goes.
SHIT HEAD [a professional mourner]: Our father who art in heaven, hollow be thy name. Tower of David, forgive him!
SCUM MOUTH: Idiot! Shit head! [He picks up a stick from the ground, and puts its end in the bonfire near the corpse. Then he swings the lighted torch at his friend’s head.]
BIG ASS: Give me that! [He takes the stick, and burns his own arm to show how unhappy he is.] The light has gone out of the world! Why should we be allowed to live when he is gone? But his spirit has come to me! His spirit has entered me! I’m not afraid of anything now! [He looks about him to make sure there are no soldiers nearby. Reassured, he repeats:] I’m not afraid of anything now! I am weak. I have a big ass, as he did. But I can be terrible!
SCUM MOUTH: The only terrible thing about you is the smell from your big ass. Pray Shit Head! That’s why we pay you!
[Stands have been set up by the board. Women with English accents, in bowler hats, sit behind them, selling mementos: Pictures of Guevara. Plastic Inhalator models made from clay. Chicha.]
SHIT HEAD: We have no respect for anyone. Here he is dead. He was a good person. He wanted to help us. And what do we do? We get drunk.
SCUM MOUTH: Help us? He wanted to help us get killed! Just like him!
SHIT HEAD: Shut up! He died a terrible death. He is set apart. And we have no shame! We act like drunks!
BIG ASS: Yes. Bolivians are shits, just as he always said. He was right. Bolivians are just pieces of shit.
SHIT HEAD [walking around the corpse]: Why don’t they bury him?
SCUM MOUTH: They can’t afford it. The army can’t afford it. [He takes down his dirty white pants and pisses on the ground.] Let’s take up a collection for the army.
BIG ASS: Let’s piss and shit together in a pile. Then no one will steal from our collection!
[They do.]
SCUM MOUTH: They have no religion, these generals. They would even steal from our collection. They don’t know what’s right.
BIG ASS: Well, they knew enough to kill him. And now they’re leaving his body out here to stink. That’s why they haven’t buried him. If he stinks, they think the stupid Indians won’t go thinking he’s a saint. But his friends came here at night, with a special syringe, and they put a magic fluid in him so he will never decay.
SCUM MOUTH: Think him a saint! This bandit! He was no saint! He could steal piss from your bladder if he wanted to! But, then, why would he want to? Who would want to steal piss? We’re happy to give it away. [He pisses, and once again his urine makes a magical arc that gleams like diamonds in the firelight] I’m tired, and out of booze. Let the women stay up with him. He liked women.
[The women enter, all in black, in layer after layer of black blouses and black shawls and black skirts. They look like giant lumps of coal]
FIRST WOMAN: After he left us, my husband beat me. He was so ashamed of himself for not having gone with the heroes. He hit me on my face, made it all black and blue. That was the first time he ever hit me on the face. He does it all the time now.
SECOND WOMAN: The same thing happened to me.
THIRD WOMAN: And mine did it, too.
FIRST WOMAN: Did you bear a child for him?
SECOND WOMAN: For the dead one? Yes.
FIRST WOMAN: SO did I!
SECOND WOMAN: Mmmm. He was good at that!
THIRD WOMAN [hurriedly, not wanting to be left out]: I did, too! I did, too!
FIRST WOMAN: My husband put me outside because I slept with him.
THIRD WOMAN: Mine did, too! Mine did, too!
SECOND WOMAN: I loved him. I would have done anything for him.
[SHIT HEAD, the professional mourner, falls across the corpse. The dead man has flies around his eyes, eyes that bugged out when he died, from the asthma attack]
FIRST FLY: Bzzzz! Delicious! Lots of nice morsels of blood and shit.
SECOND FLY: He really understood natural history! He took his proper place in the scheme of things!
[The men come back, staggering.]
SHIT HEAD [from across the corpse]: Look. They’ve cut off his hands. So he will be angry, and won’t come back. Or if he does they think that he won’t be able to fight!
DOG’S BREATH: But this is not his body. What they say he suffered, he did not suffer. What they do not say, that he suffered! He is still alive. He rules at his kingdom in Nancahuazu.
SCUM MOUTH: Idiot! It’s him. He’s dead.
BIG ASS: Still, you must admit, he died a hero’s death.
SHIT HEAD: A king’s!
SUCK BUTT: A god’s!
DOG’S BREATH: You’re right! He’s dead. But this is not his body. The heroes have taken his body back to Cuba, and preserved it so it will last forever. They bring him forward on feast days, and offer him a meal. The heroes have his gun, called “Never Unsheathed in Vain.”
BIG ASS: “Toledan quality, the soldier’s dream.”
SHIT HEAD: “For my lady and my king, this is my law.”
SCUM MOUTH: What? What does that mean?
[The others shrug.]
SHIT HEAD: I don’t know.
DOG’S BREATH: When he was captured they tormented him, for they knew how we loved him. They singed his eyelashes with a lighted candle.
BIG ASS: They urinated on him!
SHIT HEAD: In the battle, when he was captured, all his chiefs died the deaths of heroes, so they might be part of the Giant’s body, and part of our immortal nation when it wakes again. His chief Joaquin hurled his weapons down on his attackers, in a frenzy of despair. His chief Marcos grabbed handfuls of earth, stuffed them into his mouth, and ripped his face with his nails. His chief Ricardo, the one who loved all men, covered his head with his cloak and leaped to his death from the top of the Nancahuazu fortress wall.
SUCK BUTT: When he died, many died with him.
DOG’S BREATH: More than ten!
SUCK BUTT: The number greater than more than ten!
BIG ASS: The number that is many many more than tens together!
DOG’S BREATH: Yes. I like that. I mean, that’s true.
SCUM MOUTH [won over, his skepticism overcome]: He was a weak man. Yet he could stand it when they burned his eyelashes. He could stand great torture, for his will was strong.
SUCK BUTT: His will was strong because his love of the people was strong.
BIG ASS: His love was strong because his prick was big!
SUCK BUTT: Many many tens together in length!
SHIT HEAD: They tried to rape his sister, Tania, when they captured her. But she covered herself with shit, so that the generals would be nauseated.
DOG’S BREATH: SO they killed her, and floated her down the river in a basket, so that Che’s men would find her and be driven mad.
SCUM MOUTH: And they did find her, and they were mad! They attacked when they shouldn’t have.
DOG’S BREATH: When the army caught a peasant who had helped the heroes —and we all wanted to help—they cut off her breasts or his hands.
BIG ASS: SO we would be turned to stone, thinking all who help the heroes must suffer the knife!
SCUM MOUTH [now one of the most eager exponents of the life of the heroes]: But we suffered gladly. For we saw ourselves in him, as in a bright plate, polished, made of gold. We were turned to light.
DOG’S BREATH: The generals are stones, dead things. We can’t see ourselves in them. They’re not worth our spit!
SCUM MOUTH: More even than the army, the priests hated him. For he despised them as weaklings, who lied to us.
BIG ASS: It’s the priests who led the army to destroy his well-ordered kingdom on this earth, in the Nancahuazu, where they sacrificed llamas, and told the future from the sun and the clouds.
SUCK BUTT: When he was captured, the priests called him an apostate, a liar, a homicide, a rebel, a tyrant.
SCUM MOUTH: And a worker.
SUCK BUTT: They said he was guilty of all the ills of mankind. But really, he has taught us, it is the Imperialists who are guilty of these things.
(I am like the peasant Guzman, who ran into the schoolroom, and couldn’t stand Che’s gaze. Fuck you! I scream.)
BIG ASS: Che was led by a chain of gold, and his comrade, Willy, by a chain of silver. The generals ordered the captives to bow when they passed the window where General Barrien tos ate dinner with the Imperialists, the Kennedys.
SUCK BUTT: But he would not bow.
SCUM MOUTH: SO they struck him across the eyes, like a mare, drawing blood.
SHIT HEAD: They say that he converted to Christ worship before he died.
SCUM MOUTH: But he didn’t.
SHIT HEAD: They said they would shoot him if he converted, instead of hanging him like a common criminal.
SUCK BUTT: But he refused.
DOG’S BREATH: They said they would save him if he converted, and not shoot him.
SHIT HEAD: But he refused.
DOG’S BREATH: SO they had a trial.
BIG ASS: They accused him of spreading disease, of laziness, of causing fighting between husband and wife, of poor crops.
DOG’S BREATH: Of all the things that have befallen Bolivians since Adam was tempted by the Imperialists, they accused him.
SUCK BUTT: And they condemned him.
BIG ASS: All the leaders of the world came to see his death. Barrientos, and the Kennedys, and Johnson, and Brezhnev, they came to watch Che die.
SCUM MOUTH: And the Pope, too.
SUCK BUTT: Who’s that?
SHIT HEAD: The king of all the priests.
SUCK BUTT: SO many Indians came to see the death of Che Guevara, their beloved leader, that there was no room on the ground.
BIG ASS: Indians covered the walls and roofs of the houses.
SUCK BUTT: The crowd was so thick in the streets that if a little boy had fainted the throng of people would have held him up.
SHIT HEAD: All the hills around were covered with a blanket of Indians, and when they lit fires at night as they waited it looked like the starry sky.
SUCK BUTT: The open spaces of the town were so crowded that if an orange had been thrown down from the roof it would not have reached the ground.
DOG’S BREATH: What’s an orange?
SUCK BUTT: I don’t know. But it wouldn’t have reached the ground.
BIG ASS: They led Che Guevara, our beloved Lord, down out of the prison, and down a steep hill, to where they were to hang him.
SUCK BUTT: His hands were tied, and there was a rope already around his neck. He rode a small mule,
DOG’S BREATH: Called Rosinante.
SUCK BUTT: Yes, and it was covered in black velvet, and he himself was dressed in black.
DOG’S BREATH: And the Indians screamed, as if the sun were going down, and would never come up again.
SUCK BUTT: But when Che raised his right hand with the palm open—his great and bloody hand—to the right of his ear, and slowly lowered it to his right thigh, and said “Oiari Guaichic!,” all grew silent.
BIG ASS: Though he had a weak voice! He was a weak man. He coul
d hardly breathe!
SCUM MOUTH: But he was terrible!
SUCK BUTT: His voice was like a wisp of smoke from his mouth. But immediately all the lamentations stopped. For he was our Lord.
SCUM MOUTH: They wanted him to say, “Lords of all the four suyos, Be it known to you that I am a Christian!” They wanted him to say, “They have baptized me, not with chicha, but with water, and I wish to die under the law of their God. And I have to die, for I have stood against the all-powerful Imperialists.” They wanted him to say, “All that I have told you up to now, about the Giant that is our Nation, and of the way to join yourself to that Giant, and live forever within that Giant by killing the soldiers, and driving the Imperialists from our land, all that is a lie. All that I have told you about becoming heroes, about the leader who will bear your own face, all that, too, is a lie, completely false. All that I said about my vision of a free people, working their land together, that vision which I said gave me power, that, too, was a lie. I did not speak for the Giant. The people did not speak through me. I alone spoke. For there is no Giant. There are no people. We are each separate, and must go down into the grave utterly alone. Each man should save his own soul.” They wanted him to say those things.
DOG’S BREATH: But he would not!
SUCK BUTT: No! He would not. Our Lord Che held his hand up, and said, “I am a weak man. But a weak man can be terrible. I have a bloody hand. And you will avenge me. For no matter how you tell my story, Walter Ponco Travis Tulio, you son of a bitch, child of a drunkard mother, and raised by a faggot uncle you yourself killed, still you cannot hide the truth of it: I will be avenged. For it is right to rebel!
DOG’S BREATH: SO they would not let our Lord Che speak anymore, and they shot him where he stood.
BIG ASS: But he has taught us to fight, and that we must fight, if we are to stop being clowns, and have names other than Dog’s Breath, and Big Ass, and Suck Butt.