by R. M. Koster
The only spot on the Rcservation border not zipped up with cyclone fence was the intersection of Washington Avenue and Roosevelt Road (a street which curved through the civilian housing area out to the beach). The north corner of this intersection was commanded, as the military historians say, by the Y.M.C.A., which faced Roosevelt but whose west windows gave excellent vantage of the Tinieblan side of Washington from the Instituto Politécnico, along the block of fancy shops to the Edificio Petrolero and past the lower and less sumptuous office buildings to Alcibiades Oruga Park and the Chamber of Deputies. Above the south corner, on a considerable hill, stood the Reservation Club, a fine example of Early Gringo Imperialist architecture, whose swaybacked roof and sagging screened veranda were said to symbolize Uncle Sam straining beneath the White Man’s Burden. In defiance of all Captain Liddell Hart’s strictures against relinquishing the element of surprise, Sancudo (who, like Caesar and De Gaulle, enjoys third person in his war commentaries) had announced this intersection as the point where he would penetrate the Reservation. General Spear, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Hemispheric Interdiction Team, had defended it stoutly.
The windows of the Y.M.C.A. were choked with binoculared staff officers, seersuckered embassy observers, snoops from the Army Metaphysical Police, and spooks from the CIA. Roosevelt Road was held by two platoons of infantry, supported by a tanklike armored personnel carrier (with a black sergeant and a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on its top) and a squad from the 429th Airborne Vomit-Gas Battalion. A reserve platoon was posted on the Reservation Club lawn, their morale bolstered by numerous civilian spectators, many of whom were exercising their constitutional right to bear arms. Besides regular phone lines from Y.M.C.A. and Club, communications were provided by a command car with microwave telephone and three radio-equipped Military Police sedans. (One can imagine General Spear following every move on a huge mock-up of the Reservation in his A-bomb-proof War Room eighty feet beneath Fort Shafter Headquarters: white-faced WAC’s with overly calm voices take messages and relay them to a trio of lieutenants with croupier sticks; these reach gingerly to maneuver toy trucks and soldiers around on the board.) Tactical command was entrusted to a full colonel with four decks of ribbons on his blouse and REMEMBER THE ALAMO in red-white-and-blue letters on his forehead. Into these formidable defenses Sancudo now hurled himself.
As I stepped out from the crowd toward the double line of troops, a helmeted captain gave them: “Attention! Port, Arms! On Guard!” Heels clomped together; rifles swung up; bayonets dipped toward my chest. Most of the front rank had stars and stripes on their faces, but there was one young fellow almost directly ahead of me with nothing but freckles, and I thought, I’ll walk for him and see if he has guts enough to stick me. Then the colonel came over at a parade-ground strut and stepped in front of me. I stopped and felt the crowd stop behind me.
“Sir,” puffed the colonel. “This is a U.S. military reservation. Unauthorized personnel may not enter.” He bit his lip and the letters on his forehead vanished, then blinked back DON’T TREAD ON ME.
“Colonel,” I snorted. “This is part of my country. I don’t need your authorization.” As I spoke, according to people behind me, the hack of my neck went purple-green-and-yellow.
“My orders are to keep you out.”
“My intention is to walk right in.”
We stared at each other and found we could communicate telepathically. Our thoughts crouched behind our eyes, then sprang over at each other:
I’d like to wipe you and your commie rabble out to the last snotnose greaseball.
I don’t care if you kill me and everyone else on this street, I’m not giving up this lovely glow.
Lucky for you I’ve been ordered to use restraint.
That’s your problem. In ten seconds I’m coming through.
My troops will stop you.
The first gringo that touches me gets this flag in his ear. His buddies retaliate, I defend myself, the crowd mixes in, your men open fire. A bloodbath, in short.
You’ll be responsible.
No. You. I’ll be dead.
You prick! You don’t care!
Me? I’m enjoying myself.
Christ! Twenty years of service for this!
Better think of something.
I’ll pass the buck to the C-in-C.
Good idea.
“Wait here, sir,” he said. His forehead flashed STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER. “I’ll communicate your intention to my superiors.”
He trotted over to his command car and reached in the window for the phone. I turned and stepped back almost to the line of bayonets and held up my left hand and yelled to the crowd (which was jeering the soldiers good-humoredly) that the gringos were a little confused, that we’d have to give them time to get organized. The colonel raised a finger to test the wind, which was blowing toward the Reservation, then bent back to the phone. I wondered briefly whether I’d mind being bayoneted to death and decided I wouldn’t. It would be all over before I lost my glow. The sun was out now, and flags were waving above the crowd, and purple-green-and-yellow throats were shouting, “Give it to ’em, Kiki!” and I couldn’t understand why I’d waited so long to try something like this. Then the colonel returned with a miniature Old Glory fluttering at half-mast on his forehead and said I could enter the Reservation under escort and take a delegation of twelve with me.
I was tempted to turn this down—everyone goes and no escort. But all I’d said was that I was going; I hadn’t organized a march. As long as I took a flag out to the beach I was keeping my promise, and I could raise a mob for something else in a week or two. So I told the colonel all right and yelled the terms to the crowd and asked who wanted to go with me. Not everyone did, not nearly everyone, but there were many more than twelve. I hesitated, not knowing how to pick, and then decided on a group of fourteen-year-olds who had got the National Museum to loan them the first Tinieblan flag, one sewn by Simón Mocoso’s sister the night before we declared independence. I was later accused of seeking to shield myself behind children, but that wasn’t it. I thought that particular flag would be the best one to take, but mainly I was having so much fun I wanted the kids to share it. We filed through a gap in the gringo ranks and set off, accompanied by a lieutenant and two squads from the reserve platoon and trailed by a Military Police car.
We swung jauntily along between rows of grand-old-flag-draped houses and red-white-and-blue-glaring faces, the kids taking turns carrying the flag and I chatting with them, trying to make them stop calling me Señor Sancudo. Three months later I had to recall our picnic sense of safety when a garishly-tighted and still unplowed Marta berated me across our dinner plates for risking children’s lives. I wished my own kids were there, though Mito was ten and Olguita only seven and Olga, who had custody, would never have let them go even if they’d been older. It was such a fine lark, carrying the flag with all those gringos watching, and as we weren’t solemn the patriotism of it did no damage. Then, where the road dipped past a movie theater and turned left toward the beach, our way was blocked by about two hundred civilians waving flags and shouting insults. The lieutenant tried halfheartedly to negotiate a passage for us, at which they called him a traitor and started singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” My kids drew in around me and took up “Hijos de Tinieblas” in return. I realized then I’d caught the plague, for at the first strains the back of my neck began burning as though from bee stings. But one of the worst things about the plague was that one actually enjoyed that burning, and when the lieutenant came to tell me we’d have to go back to the border, I began singing too.
Well, there we stood, both sides burning with plague and blaring anthems at each other, while the soldiers shuffled about sheepishly and the lieutenant struggled between his orders and his wish to be accepted by his countrymen. When the gringo crowd realized our escort sympathized with them, they began pushing in toward us. A girl was holding our flag just then, and a matron in slacks and too much lip
stick leaned over a trooper’s shoulder and spat juicily on her school uniform. That amazed me. The sight of that gorgon face rammed forward spitting paralyzed me as fully as I am right now, but it seemed to hearten the gringos. They pressed in, and a beefy fellow with red-and-white stars all over his face pushed a soldier aside and slapped the little girl who’d been spat on and tore our flag off its pole.
I hit him harder than I’d ever hit anyone, harder than I’d hit anyone in the brawling days with Duncan, a lot harder than I hit sailors, the big sailor in that Piraeus bar. Nothing in all my life has pleased me as much as the way I hit that man, and if I enjoy killing Ñato half as much I’ll be happy. Twenty minutes later I found a broken incisor embedded in my middle-finger knuckle, and if I’d hit him once more I’d have killed him. But I yelled for the kids to run back to the border, and when I reached down to pick him up and hit him again, a soldier clubbed me with his rifle butt and I went out.
I came to in the back of the police car. My scalp was cut and my shirt was plastered to my back with my own blood and my medal had been torn away. They took me to be bandaged at Fort Shafter Dispensary. When I was led back to the car, the driver was asking over the radio if I was to be held at the stockade. “Get him off the post!” came the reply, and I realized soon enough why they wanted to be rid of me. The kids had got back to the border more or less unhurt, and when they told how we’d been attacked, the crowd broke down the fence and tried to burn the Reservation Club. The troops pushed them out with a bayonet wedge-formation, but they broke through further down opposite the Chamber, and someone on one side or the other opened fire. By dark we had five dead, and the frustrated mob had burned Alfonso’s building. A dozen looters roasted on the top floors, but you can’t blame that on me, Marta. The gringos started the riot when they spat on that little girl and slapped her and tore our flag.
37
Phil clomps by the door, calling for Marta. Godspeed. Find her, firk her, fork her, and fangle her so she’ll give me some peace. My blessing, boy, and accept these thought-wave pointers from a retired forager:
A. When in a filthy mood, as now and all too often, she will squeak, squawk, snap, and snarl; ignore it.
B. She likes it airedalewise for the sturdy swabs and the feel of your fingers.
C. If you can stay on safety till she’s come three times—I used to bite my lip and count backwards—she will stay sunny for at least three hours.
Press on, good fugleman, and while you work I’ll watch some scenes from your Oscar-winning movie.
Long view of Washington Avenue from the Reservation Club: gringo riflemen prone on the sloping lawn; the flattened fence; the rock-strewn street with butchered command car; the far sidewalk, mob frozen in ballet attitudes before smashed and flame-lit storefronts. Blare of carnival music, jerky and orgiastic. Action!
Looters samba out of a department store and down the street, women with their arms crammed with clothing, bucks with TV sets balanced safari-style on their heads, six pallbearers strutting under a hi-fi console. A line of men dances in the opposite direction, each with his left hand on the one in front’s shoulder and a jerrycan of gasoline clutched in his right. Howl of hoodlums gallops past them carrying Ñato Espino, who twirls a hangman’s noose like a key chain. Close-up: the sweat-gobbed, singing faces of youths who stone the Tinieblas Fire Department outside Alfonso’s smoking building, the fat black woman who slashes office drapes with a carving knife, the thugs who rock a car with Reservation plates, tip it over, and drag the driver out. They pass him, hand to hand, high overhead toward Ñato, who slings his rope across the arm of a streetlamp, fits the noose, and hauls away, dancing.
Fade from the dangling gringo’s Popeyed face to Kiki Sancudo, who stumbles down the avenue toward Oruga Park, his head bandannaed in white gauze, his shirt liberally smeared with drying ketchup. Park full of men and boys, some crouched behind the low wall, some milling, hunched over, near the Chamber of Deputies. Pop. Pop of light rifle fire filtered through the wild saxophones; gringos answer with machine-gun burst. Men swan for cover in choreographed swoops; others pirouette deathwards in the stitching gunfire. The survivors see Kiki, who vaults the wall and circles the park in Jerome Robbins leaps. Trumpets on the sound track. All rise joyfully and sing…
No. Phil hasn’t the guts to film the riots as a musical, and the scene at the Chamber wasn’t that gay. All the gaiety was up by Alfonso’s building with the looters and burners. Some of the kids who’d been with me in the Reservation had reported my injury as fatal, and the men in the park were inspired enough by my resurrection to follow me if I led them in another charge, but there were too many Tinieblans down already, and I was much more sober than I’d been that afternoon. I had a fine, black anger that craved results not gestures. Unarmed charges were futile, as were the wild shots from the upper storeys and the bravery of kids who crept across the avenue to toss rocks at the gringos. Colonel Tolete, afraid of the mob and the gringos, had confined the Guardia to barracks. No one from the government was on the avenue, and a radio announcer was reporting all sorts of crazy lies from a cantina six blocks away. So when I’d learned what had happened and then seen what was happening, I moved among the people there, ducking with the machine-gun bursts, and told them to stay down, that I’d see to it our country was properly defended. Then I found a man who had his car parked nearby and went down to the palace to tell Bonifacio Aguado what to do.
It is traditional for responsible Tinieblans, men of the ruling class, to go to the palace in time of crisis. You don’t have to be a member of the government; you go to give your advice and support. I didn’t go to the palace that night to overthrow Bonifacio Aguado, contrary to what everyone said later. I went to tell him what to do, and it was all right with me if he remained President so long as he did it. He had shilly-shallied over the negotiations, but now men were dying and the city was being sacked. Firm action was called for. We needed the Guardia Civil on Washington Avenue to disperse the mobs and face the gringos. That’s what I meant to tell Aguado, and I didn’t care if he took credit for it.
But President Aguado was in no condition to do anything which might bring him credit. All day he had sheltered in his office —the same office where Alejo had received Lieutenant Colonel Domingo Azote—with the blinds drawn and the lights out, listening to endless repetitions of the funeral scene from Götterdämmerung. He gave orders he was not to be disturbed; he took his private phone off the hook and unplugged his intercom. No note of discord leaked into his office or his mind until six o’clock, when Lino Piojo pushed his way past three secretaries and an aide-de-camp with some of the kids who had gone into the Reservation. Aguado listened in silence to the tale of flag-tearing and mob violence. Then he rose and switched off the phonograph and began to curse. He cursed the day he went into politics and the night he was nominated for vice president, the afternoon when León Fuertes was killed and the evening when he, Bonifacio Aguado, was sworn in as President. He cursed the two hundred thousand people who had voted for León and the person or persons unknown who had blown him up, the gringos in the Reservation and the Tinieblans in the streets. He cursed the U.S. flag and the Tinieblan flag and all other flags, flag by flag, down the roll of sovereign nations from Afganistan to Zambia, and the companies which manufactures flags and the stores which sold flags and the people who bought flags and the flag plague and all those who suffered from it and spread it. He cursed Simón Mocoso’s sister for sewing the first flag and the children for carrying it; he cursed me for thinking up the flag march and Alfonso for publishing the flag letters and Lino for bringing him the news that the flag had been torn. Then, after having cursed without interruption for the space of half an hour, he switched the phonograph back on and sat down behind his desk. He summoned a secretary and dictated an order to his Minister of Justice. Then he summoned another secretary and dictated another order countermanding the first. He would dispatch one man on a vital mission, then send another man to call him back, so that the wh
ole government was soon gyrating futilely about the city—Carlitos Gavilán on his way to the airport to catch a plane for Miami and Washington, Nacho Hormiga racing after him to call him back, and so on—while men stood about the palace discussing the situation in excited, uninformed accents, batting rumors about like badminton cocks from one group to the next; and, in Aguado’s office, Brunhilde mourned.
Then—it was while I was pushing my way through the foyer and up the stairs, getting evil blinks from old rhinos and friendly nods from young cocks, while I was listening to Lino tell me how Boni had gone bats, while I was trying to persuade the aide-de-camp to let me in to see the President—Manfredo Canino, with twelve disciples, forced his way into Radio Patria and pointed a Schmeiser machine pistol at the announcer on duty and took possession of the microphone and the airwaves, and proclaimed a student and workers’ soviet government, accusing the gringos of invading Tinieblas, denouncing Aguado as a quisling, and calling on the people’s republics of China and Albania for recognition and aid. Our radio stations were monitored in the Reservation. I imagine an officer trotting across the War Room to inform General Spear, General Spear lifting the red phone to inform the Pentagon, and someone in the Pentagon lifting a similar phone to inform the White House. Whether or not this imagining is true, at exactly eight o’clock on the evening of November 28, 1964, Bonifacio Aguado’s private secretary, who liked to eavesdrop on his calls, stood up behind her desk near where I was arguing with the aide-de-camp and exclaimed to no one in particular:
“The American Ambassador says the communists are making a revolution. American troops are going to invade us. He wants President Aguado to say he asked them to!”
“What did Aguado say?” asked I.
“He said, ‘All right.’”