by Robert Stone
“Compañeros,” the elderly man said, “salud.”
The terseness and dignity of his greeting held them in place. They took their seats again.
With a courtly smile, the old man placed the stack of books he had been carrying on the polished table, and extended his hand to the young woman.
“I am Aguirre,” he told her.
The girl took his hand and held it. Her accident had in fact been the signal for his safe entry.
“We met once, Don Sebastián, but you wouldn’t remember me. When you left we were all afraid … never to see you again.”
“But here I am,” Aguirre said. “And I’m not Don Sebastián to you, compañera.”
All in the room were smiling now. Aguirre himself was not well and was extremely tired. Within the past week he had visited foreign friends in several countries, had even made the transatlantic journey from Prague, a process which never failed to exhaust him utterly.
In Prague, in addition to business, there had been late nights with his old friends from the Spanish war—much spinning out of the past and hardly any talk of the future. Their relentless nostalgia discouraged and exasperated him and to his own grief he had found many of his old fellow soldiers—brothers and more than brothers from the terrible days of the defense of the University City—tiresome and redundant. Even more depressing to him than the burned-out nature of so many old comrades had been the occasions of his lack of communication with the young. These, fortunately, had been few—but they frightened him. His courtesy had served to conceal much impatience with empty nostalgia, rhetoric à la disco, self-indulgence and mindless bohemianism. He was relying on the same courtesy now, for few in the room had anything to tell him, in spite of his three years’ absence from Tecan. He was eager for action, for hard information that would complete his strategic assessment, that would move things forward. There was only one person in the room who could provide for his requirements in this regard and he had now to wait, benign and courtly, until the real conversation could take place.
As he pretended to listen to young Comrade Rodo present her report on the student situation in the capital, he used his time as valuably as he could trying to read in the faces of the men around him, in their manner and demeanor, some record of the three years he had lost of Tecan. Of course, they in their turn were seeking out the reverse side of the record in watching him. The concentration that seemed focused on Rodo’s assessment, as she shuffled her coded aides-mémoire, was profound.
Across the table from Aguirre sat an Atapa Indian called a la Torre. Taller and more broad-shouldered than most Atapas, he was otherwise physically typical of them. The Atapas were a Malay-like people, and even their artifacts resembled those of Southeast Asia. During the conquest, the Spaniards had thought of the Atapas as docile, although in the period before independence they had come to learn otherwise.
A la Torre himself was a small landowner and while it would be unfair to speak of him as vicious, he was, drunk or sober, feared by Indians and whites alike. A kulak, the Russians might call him. But their social designations did not apply well in Tecan.
Several attempts had been made on a la Torre’s life by both gentry concerned with mineral rights and ultra-right fanatics. Each had failed and some had occasional mortal consequences. He was the unquestioned leader of the southern group of Atapas, in spite or because of the ways in which his life differed from most of theirs. In his youth, he had been converted to Adventism by North American missionaries, but his enthusiasm for the gospel and its evangelists had evaporated during his two years at the National Technical College, obviated, it seemed, by his discovery of the Republic and the machine.
His experiences had left him with a curious and volatile variant of the Protestant ethic. He was an unstinting and indefatigable worker of strong ambition and great physical strength. His small holding, given over to scarce and hence relatively valuable vegetables and a small dairy herd, had been cleared from scrub jungle by his own muscle and sweat. When he had occasion to hire the labor of his fellow Atapas he paid them as generously as possible and supervised their work through terror. Yet his society had forced him to see his own and his people’s work as a humiliation, surrounded and dominated as he was by those who did none or lived off that of others.
All work to a la Torre was physical work. Doctors and teachers he recognized as necessary, but they were not workers. Making reluctant exceptions for these professions, he was consumed by a serious and quite personal hatred for large groups of people whom he saw as living without working. The rich and the priests did none and he hated these most of all. The bourgeoisie did none. Nor did the gringos, the gachupines, the soldiery. Their existences consisted in living by trickery off the work of others and he was prepared to kill them in good conscience as he would those he caught stealing or cheating him at cards. He was thoroughly honest and a leader, not cruel but unyieldingly just in accordance with his perception of justice, which owed something to that of the Adventist God.
Looking covertly into his black Tonkinese eyes, Aguirre shuddered. The man was so thoroughly the emotional product of social forces as to pose a dilemma, one that Aguirre might find the energy to discuss over good Pilsener with his old comrades in the Charles Square. In terms of socialist humanism, a la Torre was almost too good to be true. That history has provided us in our poor country with such treasures, Aguirre thought gratefully! And que huevon, the old man thought. Invincible!
Seated beside the formidable Atapa—owlish, effervescent with wise humor and contained intelligence—was another personified dilemma, Héctor Morelos de Medina, one of the few surviving members of the old Communist Party of Tecan and one of Aguirre’s oldest friends. Ironical, learned, the best of company and, most rare in San Ysidro, a true wit—Morelos ran a bookshop in the Buenos Aires neighborhood. For many years as a Communist in Tecan he had led a terribly dangerous life, endured exile, acted with the greatest bravery in the face of torture and excruciating sacrifice. Now, like Aguirre’s other old friend in Compostela, Oscar Ocampo, Morelos had become a North American spy. Intelligence abroad had not identified the motive for his defection but it did not seem to be ideological. Presumably it was banal like Ocampo’s. Aguirre had always been close to Morelos; certainly he preferred his company to that of Stakhanovites like a la Torre. On the other hand it could not be said that he was profoundly shaken. He had known many defectors in his lifetime and plenty of them had construed for themselves the best of motives. Sometimes the nature of their treason was objective only. It was disagreeable and regrettable for Sebastián Aguirre to now consider his friend Morelos an enemy in war, but it was certainly not impossible.
Señorita Rodo finished her report and everyone nodded. She was Urban Youth, Studentdom, Woman; an essential. A good-hearted rich kid who might or might not have a mean streak for good or ill when the time came. No question of guts; she was risking interrogation by the Guardia. Aguirre gave her his choicest approving smile.
Beside Rodo—the moderates. Agustín Baz, a manufacturer of soap, a mestizo of poor origin who had worked his way to enlightened wealth and been rewarded with sharp dealing and extortion at the hands of the ruling clique. He was also in competition with foreigners. Most of the local capitalists endured and took what they could for themselves; Baz had the gift of resentment and more balls. He preferred facing revolution to being openly cheated. Baz was as honest as a la Torre and ran the clandestine organization in San Ysidro effectively. He had moments of tactical brilliance. Yet, he would not go the distance, Aguirre thought. The man was no traitor and no weakling but they were simply not fighting for the same things and Baz would finish in Miami, embittered, a gusano, as the Cubans said. He himself had not the remotest idea that this would come to pass, but Aguirre, listening to his report on the state of the nation’s finances, felt fairly certain of it. Naturally, he was always ready to be proven wrong.
Next, inevitably, the priest—at the moment another essential. Monsignor Golz was of part
ly Swiss origin, another honest man conversant with and not unsympathetic to Marx. Inspired by the example of Calles, a disciple of Gustavo Gutiérrez, he thought of himself as an intellectual. Aguirre, as much a connoisseur of engagé priests as he was anticlerical, thought him fatuous. But there was no question in his mind of the necessity of having Golz, and in his portly, priestly way, Golz was a fanatic. Aguirre was much more certain of Baz’s ultimate desertion than of Golz’s. His fanaticism might take him either way—one could never be sure with priests.
The moderates, Baz and Golz, were ill at ease. They were aware of the patronizing and faint scorn of nearly all the other participants, and the monsignor, as he described conditions on the Caribbean coast, was particularly aware of the distaste and distrust with which the terrible a la Torre watched him. Even young Rodo curled her lip as she listened. And of course Morelos, the CIA stool pigeon, was least able to dissemble his amusement at this ecclesiastical presence.
Listening carefully to Golz’s report, and giving no evidence of any suppressed contumely, was the man whom Aguirre had come to see. He was a man in his middle thirties, dark-skinned and massive, with a face not easily forgotten. His hair was thick and straight, he was bull-necked and broad-faced and down the length of his broken nose from brows to nostrils was a jagged crooked scar, showing the red imperfectly healed flesh of a deep wound. The coarseness of his features and the disfiguring mark of violence seemed to sum up the fortunes of a Tecanecan campesino; in fact the young man’s origins and career were in no sense proletarian. His father had been a botanist at the Institute of Sciences and he himself had degrees in art and in art history from the University of California. For years he had been a moderately successful painter, spending most of his time in New York and in Mexico City; presently he was chairman of the Art Department at the National University. He was on social terms with the families of several presidential henchmen and with quite a few Americans in the diplomatic community.
He was the man, Aguirre thought, reassured, watching him nod encouragement to the rambling monsignor. They thought well of him abroad. The Americans thought they knew him, liked him, had no reason to fear him. He looked as vital, as capable as ever. He was the man who would lead—during the revolution and afterwards. Among those in the room, only Aguirre and the young man himself realized this. The realization had taken Aguirre a long time to arrive at; the young man himself seemed always to have known it.
From his suit pocket, Aguirre drew a forbidden cigarette—Benson & Hedges—and waited, smoking, for the mock council to draw to its conclusion. The scarred young man was his only true collaborator among the lot of them and there were things now that required urgent consultation.
The pro forma strategy session was not ended easily. All participants required a stroke for their self-esteem, the spy required reassurance. Roles had to be assigned and abrazos exchanged with the venerable and distinguished visitor. It seemed a long time before they had all gone and Aguirre was left alone with the scarred man, whose name was Emilio Ortega Curtis.
When they were across the table from each other in the abandoned conference room, Aguirre lit another cigarette and offered Ortega the pack. Ortega smiled and shook his head.
“How was Prague?”
“Beautiful as ever. A bit subdued, as you may imagine.”
“Well,” Emilio Ortega said, “too bad. But that’s their problem, of course. How did you find our friends abroad?”
“How?” Aguirre weighed his words. “Cautious. Patronizing. Faux naïve.”
“Then nothing’s changed.”
“Nothing essential. Tell me about Tecan.”
“As they say in the Koran, Don Sebastián, no one has promised us tomorrow. But I think, my friend, you’ve lived to see the revolution.”
Aguirre’s frail heart began to beat in his throat.
“And have I just seen the provisional government—more or less?”
“Some of it. The same sort of people. Except, of course, for Morelos. Whom we know is a Yanqui spy.”
Aguirre nodded. “Sad, no? I can’t know how you feel, Emil, but—myself—I’ll miss him.”
“I miss him,” Ortega said. “I’ve already mourned for him.”
They sat without speaking, observing something like a moment of silence for the man’s treachery.
“If one must have a moral,” Ortega said, “I propose: Look too long into yourself and you won’t know whom you’re seeing.”
“He was always,” Aguirre said, “an exquisite ironist.”
“Well,” Ortega said. “Small suffering countries don’t require ironists. When we require ironists we’ll produce our own. Without help from the United States.”
“But not too many, one hopes.”
“The representatives of our provisional government—what did you think of them? The ‘usual suspects’?”
“Yes, I suppose. I have hopes for Golz, as priests go.”
“I do too,” Ortega said. “His organization within the church was built very discreetly and subtly. He’s lined up some solid ones for this stage.”
“Godoy, I think, is his man, no?”
“Godoy is among his chiefs. Like him, but not a man to my taste.”
“You’re not Spanish enough to appreciate Godoy.”
Ortega shrugged. He was indifferent to the legend of Spain and the self-obsession of Spaniards. Even Tecanecan criollos like Aguirre, with their peninsular pieties, offended his indigenismo.
“I’m a man of UCLA,” he said. “In spite of what they say, we weren’t all mystics in Los Angeles.”
“Clearly not,” Aguirre agreed, then changed the subject. “You’re aware, I hope, that the gringos have filled up the country with spies. Their activity is more than routine. We have this from primary sources abroad.”
“We’re aware. They’re here for the show, so we’re making it hot for them. In fact, a la Torre shot one in the mountains last week.”
“You’re joking! A U.S. citizen?”
Ortega was unable to repress a smile; in a moment his expression sobered.
“Not merely a U.S. citizen but an imported gringo.”
Dr. Aguirre whistled between his teeth.
“A man named Cole showed himself in Extremadura. He claimed to be a journalist and full of sympathy and he expressed great interest in visiting our military formations. He had just come from Oscar Ocampo. A la Torre took him up to First Brigade. He talked a great deal and he demonstrated familiarity with every sort of weapon. He had been in Vietnam—he told us this himself. We held back awhile—we wanted to be fair and avoid a provocation. The third day there he was court-martialed and executed.”
“I approve,” Aguirre said. “Let them stop taking us for fools. Let them find out that Yanquis die as easily as peasants. And perhaps,” Aguirre said, “the regrettable time has come to do something about Oscar. He seems to enjoy making difficulties.”
“The time has come. But we have to clear it abroad—or so we’re told.”
“I grant you dispensation,” Aguirre said. “Let the Compostelan comrades have him.” He stood up from his hard-backed chair and began pacing the room. Then tiring, he took a different chair. “Thank God for the Atapas,” he said, his eyes closed. “The Fascists truly screwed themselves when they went mad over those mineral rights. They tore the last spines out of the social structure.”
Ortega smiled in agreement.
“For forty years,” Sebastían Aguirre said, “we worked to bring the Atapas to our side and like pious donkeys they ignored us. It would have taken us forty more without the mineral grab.”
“We have them now,” Ortega said. “Moreover, the government has taken to drafting more and more Atapas into the Guardia to find reliable troops—and also of course to demoralize them. When these Indians get out they’re changed men. And right now half of the Guardia is Atapa.”
“My God,” Aguirre said, “it’s going to happen! I don’t know if I ever believed it.”
“
There were times, my friend, when you were the only man in the country who did.”
“Morelos and I,” Aguirre said.
There was a tray in the center of the table that held a pitcher of cold coffee and some cups. Ortega poured them both a quarter cup and they drank.
“I want to talk strategy now,” Aguirre said. “Is there a chance that Señor Morelos or these good brothers have placed some electronic instruments here? A bug?”
“We have had help from abroad to determine that. Not here.”
“You must realize,” Aguirre told him, “that I have instructions for you. More help from abroad. Most of it is so much shit. So now I’ll ask you what you propose to do.”
“With pleasure. Sunday—a demonstration here in the capital. A dangerous one, a bad one—but as you’ll see a necessary one for our purposes. They’ll bring in more Guardia from the mountains. A day passes and we hit the Libertad Guardia barracks on the edge of town in small force with automatic weapons. The Guardia troops there are slightly less than half of them Atapas—we don’t expect to take it but anything can happen and we’ll see. Should we take it, we won’t try to hold it but we may gain some arms and recruits. While this is happening the main force will move. The five Atapa brigades will take command of the cordillera and liberate the fincas. In a single offensive they can close the Pan-American Highway north of the capital, close the Pacific highway and the river. The Guardia will never dislodge them, even with aircraft. This is the important thing, and you may depend on its not being in the newspapers. We’ve had tons of automatic weapons and surface-to-air missiles flown in and we haven’t lost a single shipment. Guardia troops going into the mountains will meet Atapas more numerous and better armed than themselves. They will have no support whatever from the population. The Guardia air arm has no experience against surface-to-air missiles and the bastards don’t know how to fly anyway—at least not in a combat situation. The gringos trained them in close air support and if they try doing what they’ve been taught they’ll cease to exist in those mountains within an hour. The ground-to-air missiles are miraculous; they’re easy to hide and two half-trained men can use them. They’ll be the only ordnance from the socialist bloc we’re using and they’re untraceable.”