The Memory of Fire Trilogy: Genesis, Faces and Masks, and Century of the Wind
Page 87
These men, or shadows of men, have a total of seven rifles, a little damp ammunition, and uncounted sores and wounds. Since the invasion began there is hardly a mistake they haven’t made. But on this starless night they breathe fresher, cleaner air, and Fidel says, standing before the foothills of the Sierra Maestra: “We’ve already won the war. Batista is fucked!”
(98 and 209)
1957: Benidorm
Marked Cards
Between liberals and conservatives, a conjugal agreement. On a beach in the Mediterranean, Colombia’s politicians sign the compromise that puts an end to ten years of mutual extermination. The two main parties offer each other an amnesty. From now on, they will alternate the presidency and divvy up the other jobs. Colombians will be able to vote, but not elect. Liberals and conservatives are to take turns in power, to guarantee the property and inheritance rights over the country that their families have brought or received as gifts.
In this pact among the wealthy there is no good news for the poor.
(8, 217, and 408)
1957: Majagual
Colombia’s Sainted Egg
Burning towns and killing Indians, leveling forests and erecting wire fences, the masters of the land have pushed the campesinos right up against the river banks in this coastal region of Colombia. Many campesinos have nonetheless refused to serve as slaves on the haciendas and have instead become fishermen—artists at gritting their teeth and living on what they can find. Eating so much turtle, they learn from him: The turtle never lets go what he catches in his mouth and knows how to bury himself on the beaches in the dry season when the seagulls threaten. With that and God’s help they get by.
Few monks remain in these hot regions. Here on the coast no one takes the Mass seriously. Whoever isn’t paralyzed runs from marriage and work, and, the better to enjoy the seven deadly sins, indulges in endless siestas in endless hammocks. Here God is a good fellow, not a grouchy, carping police chief.
The boring Christ of Jegua is dead—a broken doll that neither sweats nor bleeds nor performs miracles. No one has even wiped the bat shit off him since the priest fled with all the silver. But very much alive, sweating and bleeding and miracle-working, is Our Little Black Lord, the dark Christ of San Benito Abad, giving counsel to anyone who will stroke him affectionately. Alive, too, and wagging their tails, are the frisky saints who appear on the Colombian coast at the drop of a hat and stick around.
One stormy night, some fishermen discover God’s face, agleam in lightning flashes, on a stone the shape of an egg. Since then they celebrate the miracles of Saint Egg, dancing the cumbia and drinking to his health.
The parish priest of Majagual announces that he will go up river at the head of a battalion of crusaders, throw the sacrilegious stone to the bottom of the waters, and set fire to their little palm-frond chapel.
In the tiny chapel, where Masses are celebrated with lively music, the fishermen stand guard around Saint Egg. Ax in hand, day and night.
(159)
1957: Sucre
Saint Lucío
While the Majagual priest declares war on Saint Egg, the priest of Sucre expels Saint Lucía from his church, because a female saint with a penis is unheard of.
At first it looked like a cyst, or a bump on the neck; but it kept moving lower and lower, and growing, bulging beneath the sacred tunic that shortened every day. Everyone pretended not to notice, until one day a child suddenly blurted out: “Saint Lucía has a dick!”
Exiled, Saint Lucío finds refuge in a hut not far from the little temple of Saint Egg. In time, the fishermen put up an altar to him, because Saint Lucío is a fun-loving, trustworthy guy who joins the binges of his devotees, listens to their secrets, and is happy when summer comes and the fish begin to rise.
This he, who used to be she, doesn’t figure among the saints listed in the Bristol Almanac, nor has Saint Egg been canonized by the Pope of Rome. Neither has Saint Board, unhinged from the box of soap in which a laundrywoman found the Virgin Mary; or Saint Kidney, the humble kidney of a cow in which a slaughterer saw Christ’s crown of thorns. Nor Saint Domingo Vidal …
(159)
1957: The Sinú River Banks
Saint Domingo Vidal
He had been a dwarf and a paralytic. The people had named him a saint, Saint Domingo Vidal, because with his prophetic hunches he had known just where on this Colombian coast a lost horse had strayed, and which cock would win the next fight, and because he had asked nothing for teaching the poor how to read and defend themselves from locusts and omnivorous landlords.
Son of Lucifer, the Church called him. A priest hauled him out of his grave inside the chapel of Chimá and broke his bones with an ax and hammer. His shattered remains ended up in a corner of the plaza, and another priest wanted to throw them in the garbage. The first priest died a writhing death, his hands turning into claws; the other suffocated, wallowing in his own excrement.
Like Saint Egg, Saint Lucío, and many of their local colleagues, Saint Domingo Vidal remains happily alive in the fervor of all those hereabouts who love—either in or out of wedlock—and in the noisy throng of people who share the grim battle for land and the joys of its fruits.
Saint Domingo Vidal protects the ancient custom of the Sinú River villagers, who visit each other bearing gifts of food. The people of one village bear litters to another loaded with flowers and delicacies from the river and its banks: dorado or shad stews, slices of catfish, iguana eggs, riced coconut, cheese, sweet mongomongo; and while the recipients eat, the donors sing and dance around them.
(160)
1957: Pino del Agua
Crucito
Batista offers three hundred pesos and a cow with calf to anyone who brings him Fidel Castro, alive or dead.
On the other side of the crests of the Sierra Maestra, the guerrillas sweat and multiply. They quickly learn the rules of war in the brush: to mistrust, to move by night, never to sleep twice in the same place, and above all, to make friends with the local people.
When the twelve bedraggled survivors arrived in this sierra, they knew not a single campesino, and the River Yara only through the song that mentions it. A few months later there are a few campesinos in the rebel ranks, the kind of men who cut cane for a while at harvest time and then are left to starve in unknown territory; and now the guerrillas know these areas as if they had been born in them. They know the names of the places, and when they don’t, they baptize them after their own fashion. They have given the Arroyo of Death its name because there a guerrilla deserted who had sworn to fight to the death.
Others die fighting, without having sworn anything.
While smoking his pipe during the rest periods, José de la Cruz— “Crucito”—sierra troubadour, composes in ten-verse guajira stanzas the entire history of the Cuban revolution. For lack of paper he commits it to memory, but has it taken from him by a bullet, on the heights of Pino del Agua during an ambush of army trucks.
(209)
1957: El Uvero
Almeida
Juan Almeida claims he has a joy inside him that keeps tickling, making him laugh and jump. A very stubborn joy if one considers that Almeida was born poor and black on this island of private beaches which are closed to the poor because they are poor and to blacks because they stain the water; and that, to make matters worse, he decided to be a bricklayer’s helper and a poet; and that, as if those were not complications enough, he rolled his life into this crap game of the Cuban revolution, and as one of the Moncada assailants was sentenced to jail and exile, and was navigator of the Granma before becoming the guerrilla that he is now; and that he has just stopped two bullets—not mortal, but motherfuckers—one in the left leg and one in the shoulder, during the three-hour attack on the Uvero barracks, down by the shore.
(209)
1957: Santiago de Cuba
Portrait of an Imperial Ambassador
Earl Smith, ambassador of the United States, receives the keys to the city of Santiag
o de Cuba. As the ceremony proceeds and the speeches pour forth, a commotion is heard through the curtains. Discreetly, the ambassador peers out the window and observes a number of women approaching, clad in black, chanting the national anthem and shouting “Liberty!” The police club them down.
The next day, the ambassador visits the U.S. military base at Guantánamo. Then he tours the iron and nickel mines of the Freeport Sulphur Company, which, thanks to his efforts, have just been exempted from taxes.
The ambassador publicly expresses his disgust with the police beatings, although he recognizes that the government has a right to defend itself from Communist aggression. Advisers have explained to the ambassador that Fidel has been abnormal since childhood, from having fallen off a moving motorcycle.
The ambassador, who was a champion boxer in his student days, believes General Batista must be defended at any cost. With Batista in power, tourists can pick from photos handed them on the airplane their pretty mulatta for the weekend. Havana is a North American city, full of one-armed bandits from Nevada and mafia bosses from Chicago, and with plenty of telephones to order a nice hot supper to be brought on the next flight out of Miami.
(431)
1957: El Hombrito
Che
In the Hombrito Valley, the rebels have installed an oven for baking bread, a printshop consisting of an old mimeograph machine, and a clinic that functions in a one-room hut. The doctor is Ernesto Guevara, known as Che, who apart from his nickname has retained certain Argentine customs, like maté and irony. American pilgrim, he joined Fidel’s forces in Mexico, where he settled after the fall of Guatemala to earn a living as a photographer at one peso per photo, and as a peddler of little engravings of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
In the Hombrito clinic, Che attends a series of children with bloated bellies, almost dwarfs, and aged girls worn out from too many births and too little food, and men as dry and empty as gourds, because poverty turns everyone into a living mummy.
Last year, when machineguns mowed down the newly landed guerrillas, Che had to choose between a case of bullets and a case of medicines. He couldn’t carry both and decided on the bullets. Now he strokes his old Thompson rifle, the only surgical instrument he really believes in.
(209)
Old Chana, Campesina of the Sierra Maestra, Remembers:
Poor dear Che! I always saw him with that curse of his asthma and said, “Ay, Holy Virgin!” With the asthma he would get all quiet, breathing low. Some folks with asthma get hysterical, cough and open their eyes and open their mouth. But Che tried to soften up the asthma. He would throw himself in a corner to rest the asthma.
He didn’t like sympathy. If you said, “Poor guy,” he gave you a quick look that didn’t mean anything, and meant a lot.
I used to warm him up a bit of water to rub on his chest for relief. He, the big flatterer, would say, “Oh, my girlfriend.” But he was such a rascal.
(338)
1958: Stockholm
Pelé
Brazilian football glows. It dances and makes one dance. At the World Cup in Sweden, Pelé and Garrincha are the heroes, proving wrong those who say blacks can’t play in a cold climate.
Pelé, thin as a rake, almost a boy, puffs out his chest and raises his chin to make an impression. He plays football as God would play it, if God decided to devote himself seriously to the game. Pelé makes a date with the ball anywhere, any time, and she never stands him up. He sends her high in the air. She makes a full curve and returns to his foot, obedient, grateful, or perhaps tied by an invisible elastic band. Pelé lifts her up, puffs out his chest, and she rolls smoothly down his body. Without letting her touch the ground he flips her to the other foot as he flings himself, running like a hare, toward the goal. No one can catch him, with lasso or bullet, until he leaves the ball, shining, white, tight against the back of the net.
On and off the field, he takes care of himself. He never wastes a minute of his time, nor lets a penny fall from his pocket. Until recently he was shining shoes down at the docks. Pelé was born to rise; and he knows it.
(279)
1955: Stockholm
Garrincha
Garrincha plays havoc with the other teams, always threatening to break through. Half turn, full turn, he looks like he’s coming, but he’s going! He acts like he’s going, but he’s coming. Flabbergasted opponents fall on their asses as if Garrincha were scattering banana peels along the field. At the goal line, when he has eluded them all, including the goalie, he sits on the ball. Then he backs up and starts again. The fans are amused, but the managers go crazy. Garrincha, carefree bird with bandy legs, plays for laughs, not to win, and forgets the results. He still thinks soccer’s a party, not a job or a business. He likes to play for nothing, or a few beers, on beaches or ragged little fields.
He has many children, his own and other people’s. He drinks and eats as if for the last time. Openhanded, he gives everything away, loses the works. Garrincha was born to fall; and he doesn’t know it.
(22)
1958: Sierra Maestra
The Revolution Is an Unstoppable Centipede
As the war reaches its height, beneath the bullets Fidel introduces agrarian reform in the Sierra Maestra. Campesinos get their first land, not to speak of their first doctor, their first teacher, even their first judge—which is said to be a less dangerous way to settle a dispute than the machete.
Batista’s more than ten thousand soldiers can’t seem to do anything but lose. The rebel army is infinitely smaller and still poorly armed, but under it, above it, within it, ahead of and behind it, are the people.
The future is now. Fidel launches a final offensive: Cuba from end to end. In two columns, one under the command of Che Guevara, the other under Camilo Cienfuegos, a hundred and sixty guerrillas descend from the mountains to conquer the plain.
(98 and 209)
1958: Yaguajay
Camilo
Magically eluding bombardment and ambush, the invading columns strike for the island’s gut, slicing Cuba in two as Camilo Cienfuegos takes the Yaguajay barracks after eleven days of fighting and Che enters the city of Santa Clara. Suddenly, half of Batista’s island has disappeared.
Camilo Cienfuegos, brave and greedy, fights at such close quarters that, killing an enemy soldier, he catches his rifle in mid-air without its touching the ground. Several times the fatal bullet that should have been his just barely wasn’t, and once he nearly died from gobbling down a whole kid after two days of eating nothing at all.
Camilo has the beard and mane of a biblical prophet, but where a worry-creased face should be, there’s only an ear-to-ear grin. The feat he is most proud of is that time up in the mountains when he fooled a light military plane by painting himself red with iodine and lying still with his arms crossed.
(179 and 210)
1959: Havana
Cuba Wakes Up Without Batista
on the first day of the year. The dictator lands in Santo Domingo and seeks refuge with his colleague Trujillo; back in Havana, for the former hangmen, it’s sauve qui peut, a stampede.
U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith is appalled. The streets have been taken over by rabble and by a few dirty, hairy, barefoot guerrillas, just a Latin Dillinger gang who dance the guaguancó, marking time with rifle shots.
(98 and 431)
The Rumba
The guaguancó is a kind of rumba, and every self-respecting Cuban has the rumba under his belt, in peace, war, and anything between. Even when picking a fight, the Cuban rumbas, so now he joins the dance of the bullets without a second thought, and the crowds surge behind the drums that summon them.
“I’m enjoying it. And if they get me, too bad. At least I’m enjoying it.”
On any street or field the music lets loose. There’s no stopping it—that rumba rhythm on drums and crates, or, if there are no drums or crates, on bodies, or just in the air. Even ears dance.
(86, 198, and 324)
1959: Havana
&
nbsp; Portrait of a Caribbean Casanova
Porfirio Rubirosa, the Dominican ambassador, looks with dread on this horrifying spectacle. He has nothing for breakfast but a cup of coffee. The news has taken away his appetite. While servants by the dozen nail down boxes and close trunks and suitcases, Rubirosa nervously lights a cigarette and puts his favorite song, “Taste of Me,” on the phonograph.
The sun, they say, never sets on his bed. Trujillo’s man in Cuba is a famous enchanter of princesses, heiresses, and movie stars. Rubirosa beguiles them with flattery and plays the ukulele to them before loving or beating them.
Some say his tremendous energy derives from the milk of his infancy, which came from sirens’ tits. Dominican patriots insist that his secret is a virility elixir Trujillo concocts from the pega-palo plant and exports to the United States.
Rubirosa’s career began when Trujillo made him his son-in-law; continued when, as Dominican ambassador to Paris, he sold visas to Jews persecuted by Hitler; and was perfected in his marriages to multi-millionairesses Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton. It is the smell of money that excites the tropical Casanova, as the smell of blood excites sharks.