It was terrifying to tell himself that these soldiers might be right. And to feel he was one of them.
Elias walked a little way through the throng of bodies numbed with drunkenness and drugs, and suddenly remembered that it was his birthday. He was sixteen. He had the impression of a long vista opening up before him, a vortex of encounters, faces, new things to explore, to taste, to conquer. All the infinite richness of human life …
A shadow stirred in the darkness; he stepped back, peered intently. A drunken woman, almost naked, was extricating herself from the embrace of a sleeping man. She was seated now, her eyes glinting in the moonlight, her body rendered blue by its phosphorescence. Her mouth was gasping for air; her broad thighs formed a dark, hollow triangle … Elias told himself it would be so easy to copy the soldiers, to crouch down, to thrust the woman onto her back, to plunge into that dark triangle.
The infinite richness of life … As he moved away, he reflected that this one night alone concentrated within it all that man desires, fears, hopes for, detests. There was the victors’ jubilation, and the despair of the vanquished. Ernesto’s vibrant homily, and the soldiers’ abusive mockery. Dead flesh, and bodies stirred with pleasure. The abundance of food, and the famine that from tomorrow would torment the survivors of this ravaged village. There was the almost godlike freedom the soldiers took upon themselves in killing, raping, and torturing, and the subjection of those who, reduced to a mass of pain, were the victims of this freedom. There was the sky above and, doubtless, a god to whom so many suppliant voices were raised, but who remained silent, did not intervene, allowed a child to turn itself into a ball of flesh, wedged between the legs of a little table.
The whole world was condensed into that night. And yet something was missing. The essential thing was missing. Elias felt this lack like a gentle pressure on his eyelids: those evenings long ago, the threshold of their house in Dondo and his mother still, silent, as he hid his face in the crook of her arm. Life throbbed softly beneath the smooth curve of that arm … The essential thing was this love, and that was what was missing from this world. Each of the women who had just been raped and killed had carried this universe of tenderness and peace in the crook of her arm. Each of the men killing or being killed had been that child pressing his face against his mothers arm. All that was needed was to say this, to get other people to understand this.
It was thanks to this train of thought, he later realized, that he did not go out of his mind during that murderous night.
The following morning the fighter in his new khaki uniform who had demanded payment of his wages from Ernesto a week earlier reported to the “command post.” “I’ve had several of the arsonists shot, Commandante,” he announced. “Now’s the time to talk to the troops. Raise their political consciousness … Sober them up, while you’re at it.” He said it with the same mocking disdain, the assurance of one who knows himself to be master of the situation. I’ve witnessed the birth of a warlord, Elias would one day reflect, when that race of killers was taking possession of the continent.
Ernesto left Africa a week after that night of fire. Elias saw him vigorously cramming a bundle of notebooks tied with string into his pack. The reason for his departure was just and noble, like everything the Cuban proclaimed in his speeches: he was going to carry the torch of the revolutionary struggle elsewhere, to seek the support of liberation movements in fraternal nations. He said this in grave, inspired tones, and as they heard him they savored the slightly faded piquancy of that verbal drug so intoxicating to men’s souls.
Jacqueline followed him almost immediately, but hers was a noisy, resentful flight. In the flood of reproaches she poured forth right up to the last minute, what stayed in Eliass mind was this regret that, for him, best defined the true nature of white people: “It could have been a fascinating experiment!” Jacqueline exclaimed. “I could have launched a veritable cultural revolution, starting with film, the art form most accessible to the people …” The whole of the West was there, thought Elias. The arrogant desire to transform other peoples lives Into an “experiment,” into a testing ground for their own Ideas. And then if this human material resists, to abandon it, to move on in search of a more malleable one.
Most of all, he grasped the very great difference between two types of revolutionary: those who could pack their bags, depart, settle somewhere else, and those who did not have this choice. Elias’s father remained.
FROM THEN ON THEIR STRUGGLE WAS HARSHER, more primitive, and also more authentic — the day-to-day battle for survival of a handful of men. Elias noted that the resistance of the defeated expressed the essence of war better than grand strategies and glorious victories. The fury of their fighting no longer had any goal beyond that moment at nightfall, after the final shots, when they found themselves still alive, another day of reprieve, when the glances they exchanged were silently eloquent of their poignant closeness as human beings.
Previously Ernesto’s speeches had given a semblance of logic to the endless treks through the forest, the gun battles, the deaths of young men who had lived so little. Such deaths did not seem pointless now, but rather directed toward a different destination, like the light of that constellation reflected in the eyes of the wounded soldier Elias gave a drink to. His lips were still moving under the trickle of water; the iris in his eyes caught the glittering of the night, then suddenly everything froze, the mouth, the eyelashes … As he closed his eyelids, it seemed to Elias as if these eyes still perceived the dark abyss of the sky more broadly than ever. This was the very first man he had kept company with as he died.
Defeat taught him a lot. One day, hidden in a thicket, he saw soldiers finishing off wounded men, watched by their commander, that soldier in a new uniform, the man he had thought capable of changing sides for more pay He had done so, and was now hunting down the diminishing number of rebels led by Elias’s father.
The rout had transformed his father as well. He was no longer the operatic revolutionary in his fancy uniform that made him look like a Portuguese officer. No, like the fighters he was trying to extricate from the encirclement, his father was russet with dust, bearded, his eyes reddened from lack of sleep, from the sun, and from stress. He had a limp in his left leg, hit by shrapnel, and the calf was swathed in dirty bandages.
Elias realized that before he came to the Congo, this was how he had pictured his father.
One evening, passing through a village, Elias caught sight of two women, one young, the other older, halfheartedly arguing as they prepared a meal. He stopped, struck by the similarity: this was an exact replica of what he had seen that very first day, on his arrival at the rebel camp. The same actions, the same voices, the same serenity. All of It perfectly Indifferent to Ernesto’s speeches, to the violence of the fighting, to the promises of a better world. These women’s happiness had nothing exalted about it, and yet happiness it was: the golden haze of the sunset on the road, the cries of the children among the huts, the smell of food and the cool breeze already filtering up from the river, the gentle lapping of the water beneath an oar … In a train of thought he did not succeed in following through to the end, he told himself that this happiness presented a greater threat to Ernesto’s revolution than any class enemy.
Finally there came a moment when the very thing that gave strength to their band on the run, the tie, the blood-soaked bond, became its principal flaw: together, they were easily identifiable; they needed to separate and, one by one, “blend in with the populace.” Elias remembered Ernesto instructing the soldiers in this technique.
He had already read, and would later read again, scenes in books of farewells between comrades in arms. These featured ringing turns of phrase, solemn oaths, tears choked back, and, if a loving woman was involved, long embraces interrupted only by the revving of engines. Their own parting had nothing melodramatic about it. They counted up and shared out the remaining ammunition, then did the same with the food and the scant medical supplies. His father, follo
wed by several men, took up position between two hills to allow the others to move away safely to escape the commando units that maintained tight surveillance of the area. Elias did not even really have time to talk to him, and it was only the next day that the meaning of their separation became clear: impossible now to ask all the questions that had been slowly accumulating within him since his arrival in the Congo.
A week later this impossibility of talking felt like a suffocation. For he saw his father again.
Mingling with a group of peasants in flight from the fighting, Elias was standing on the high bank of a river and, like them, watching a boat as it traveled past. A man was rowing with all his strength to pull away from the shore, where soldiers were directing almost continuous gunfire at him. The grimaces of the men shooting could be made out clearly down below as they aimed long bursts in the direction of the boat. The face of the man in flight was clearly visible too: his mouth urgently gasping for breath, a vagabonds beard, that roll of bandages on the left calf — his father. A man about to be killed at any moment.
To prevent this death he would have had to throw himself from the top of the bank, roll down the slope, rush at the soldiers, and … And be killed by the first bullet. Elias remained motionless, hypnotized by the spurts from bullets hitting the water around the boat, as if in a random game.
The distance was already considerable; the shooting from the submachine guns lacked precision, the soldiers swore, got annoyed, their aim became even wilder. For a moment Elias believed, hoped with all his being, that his father was going to escape.
It was then that he saw the white man with a ginger mustache and red patches on his round face, smiling and dour at the same time. Of average height, stocky, his bowlegs in khaki shorts, he had the air of a professional irritated by the incompetence of amateurs. Unhurriedly, he set up the mount of his machine gun on the sand, cleared the sights, took a drag on his cigarette, and laid the stub down on a rock. Aimed, fired … And smiled condescendingly at the soldiers as they applauded him. In the distance the fugitive, struck in the head and throat, threw up his arms, let go the oars, fell backward. The boat continued in its course across the river, then began to drift. The ginger-haired man picked up his cigarette again, exhaled a slow curl of smoke.
When Elias had the strength to think, he told himself that his fathers death resembled the fall of a bird hit in mid-flight. He did not know why, but this image made his grief less appalling.
One of Ernesto’s promises was kept. Traveling via clandestine networks, then via Algeria and East Germany, Elias managed to reach Cuba. It felt as if he were traveling through time, toward an encounter with a dream that had already been realized, one that in Africa was barely beginning to put out shoots, nourished by endless tides of blood.
Aftermath of a Dream
1
CUBA WOULD TEACH HIM THE USE OF WEAPONS, the science of revolution, the flesh of woman. Then one evening, in 1967, on a beach bathed in the sunsets copper light, he learned that Ernesto had met his end.
So it was that this death remained forever associated in his memory with the vivid blood-red clouds, the sleepy swell of the waves, and the tearstained face of the young Cuban woman who broke the news to him. Hair stiff with salt, lips on which he silenced her somewhat overartistic lamentation with a kiss: “Che is dead! The Americans have killed him …” Ernesto’s death mingled with the smooth warmth of the first body he had loved, now shaken with sobs.
Elias sensed the coquettish element in her grief. His girlfriend had met him to make love, to which she generally applied herself with fierce, healthy zest, wasting no time on emotional outpourings. The national hero’s death brought a new savor of drama to their encounter. Thanks to these slightly forced tears, he grasped that it was possible for love to be no more than two bodies taking pleasure, parting, tangling with each other again … Sometimes a few theatrical effects could add spice to this sweet physical fulfillment. Slivers of moonlight on the sea, tender little lies tickling an ear, the feeble death throes of a wave, the choking death throes of a guerilla in the Bolivian jungle …
He lay there beside the woman glowing with pleasure and was amazed as one of those thoughts struck him, simple enough to be almost banal in their aptness: So the revolution hasn’t changed any of this!
Three years later, during a mass meeting in Havana, the same idea about love and revolution occurred to him: just as crude a consideration, and just as disconcertingly lucid. And yet he had meanwhile made good progress in the study of the armed struggle, of Marxist theory, and he thought he knew what women, with their beauty, their strength, and their vulnerability, could give, and could not give, a man. But the question that had troubled him in the old days remained as clear and insoluble as ever: If the revolution doesn’t change the way we love, what’s the point of all this fighting?
Motionless in the lineup of his comrades, young soldiers like himself, he was watching the vast open space crowded with the “toiling masses,” who were being warmed up by the speakers before Castro took the floor. Slogans rattled out on the wind with the slashing resonance of Spanish, the applause and shouting erupted in long, foaming waves. From his place behind the platform, Elias could see the speakers’ backs and the reverse side of two enormous banners. The sunlight was so strong that the painted figures showed through and could be recognized: Marx and Engels to the right of the rostrum, Lenin and Castro to the left. He was not listening to the harangues but noting the bizarre features of the spectacle. Unusually, the four mentors of humanity were shown full length, on the canvas of the banners: generally only their heads were portrayed. The reverse side of the canvas was punctuated with nails that held it to the framework of wooden struts. Curiously, the thought that one of the nails had been driven into Engel s’s chest and another had pierced Castro’s beard rendered the speeches both ludicrous and ambiguous. Libertad … movimiento … histórico … poder popular… The faces in the crowd smiled foolishly, as if watching a film, while the backs of the banners revealed fabric frayed at the edges.
A woman with blond hair mounted the platform, and the impression of a staged performance increased. She spoke with a strong accent, gesticulating. Elias experienced the unease that is felt when a person dear to one makes a public appearance. Especially a woman recently held in one’s arms, kissed, pleasured. An inane pride (“They’re cheering a woman IVe just slept with”) and shame, as if the two of them had suddenly exposed themselves naked.
He had known Louise Rimens for several months — a Frenchwoman from a very wealthy family who had broken with her background and “married the revolution,” as she put it. At first Elias perceived hers as a unique and exemplary life story, before learning that the agitation among the young in ‘68 had spawned hordes of apprentice rebels who were now at large in those countries where they could still fan the embers and lead lives capable of shocking their bourgeois parents. Everything Louise did in Cuba was, consciously or not, directed at an imaginary audience back in France.
Now she was calling for the flame of revolt to be spread to other continents. (“For there are no flameproof countries anywhere in the world!” Where on earth did she learn these expressions?) Her voice faltered when she mentioned Ernesto Guevara. And within the enclosed space behind the lectern her feet were arranged in a ridiculous and touching manner: her heels splayed out and her big toes pressed together. Her body was robust but not graceful. The plumpness of a young woman from a good family (plentiful food, riding, holidays in a vast country house), a young woman eager at all costs to take advantage of the benefits of her bourgeois youth in adventures at the other end of the world, among starving populations, upheavals, and struggles.
It all seemed so clear to Elias now! A little girl of twenty-five, a spoiled child, busy crafting a life story for herself. Manipulating the modeling clay that had come to hand: this Cuba in ferment, this Havana crowd drinking in her words like those of a prophet (so she believed), the enthusiastic articles she sent to a Paris n
ewspaper and “Che,” an icon, immortal, because he had died at the right moment… And myself too, an exotic lover, the embodiment of “négritude,” a perfect feature of the whole scenario …
He had never sensed this so plainly before. So all it took was to be located behind the platform, to see the backs of the banners and the nails driven through the bodies of the revolutionaries (There, squarely in Fidel’s crotch, he noted, repressing an untoward smile), to notice Louise’s feet. Her French accent, after the harshness of the Spanish, made one think of a cabaret singer’s rhyming lyrics.
It’s playacting, he reflected, recalling how that young Cuban woman had sobbed three years earlier as she gave him the news of Ernesto’s death. Yes, it’s still the same playacting, except that I now have the enviable role of male juvenile lead in it …
Then it was as if a flood of fresh and disconcerting perceptions suddenly struck him. He reflected that the persona of the black lover, with a legendary warrior’s aura, would certainly turn out to be the heartthrob role white women would adore casting him in. And that a male model like this would attract European women of a very specific type: disaffected young middle-class women with a mania for heroic exoticism, rather plain women who would instinctively home in on that sought-after male, the black man they believe eager to possess a white woman … He suddenly realized that Louise was very similar to his fathers companion, the Belgian woman who had abandoned, or rather betrayed, them in the Congo. And that this Frenchwoman, too, was free to leave whenever the fancy took her. And that he, the black lover, would disappear from her life as soon as the curtain fell. And that in truth she despised this crowd of Cubans, because instead of flying to Che s rescue, they got married, grilled fish in stinking oil, dreamed of buying cars … And that she was consuming the revolution just as, in Europe, she would have consumed food and clothes, and that for her, he himself, his black skin, his body, his genitals, were also consumer goods …
Human Love Page 6
