by Jay Cantor
A dollar twenty a ton.
Why did Chaco demand defeat? He continued to follow us, whining his song:
Many people ate in his field that night.
How can Isaias feed them all?
But a consortium met (what’s a consortium?
Is it a road? or is it a wall?),
A consortium decided (if you don’t know, too bad for you!).
He stopped. “Damn. Nothing rhymes with ‘consortium.’ ”
Well, rhyming or not, tin had to fall.
Let me whisper it: ninety-five cents a ton.
Ninety-five cents a ton? That’s not very much for a hole in the ground.
And a deeper hole in your lung.
A final voice, profundo:
Ninety-five cents a ton!
“You’re very clever,” Fernando said, shaking Chaco’s skinny hand.
“I’m not just clever,” Chaco replied. “I’m also very profound.” He looked at me, head to the side, eyes squinted. “But I can tell Ernesto doesn’t like my singing.”
“You long for loss,” I said. “You hate yourself. You want defeat.”
“You don’t like my song?” He pretended a hurt whimpery tone, pushing out his lower lip like a child. “I know you, Ernesto. You want to scream at my music, don’t you? NO! NO! NO!”
I nodded. Chaco was a perspicacious man.
“Don’t you see, Ernesto? I’m not making this song up, such as it is. And your shouting NO doesn’t put an end to it. It’s just another note in the chorus.”
I turned my back on him.
Noncooperation
Near an old tree a broad-shouldered man of about forty, in a light-brown sports coat, had drawn an attentive group of five or six people. A familiar face, thinner and more vulnerable than I remembered: I had seen it in the newspapers. Voting. Speaking from the steps of the palace. “We must build the nation,” he declaimed, “in the framework of international cooperation.” Was he saying that now, as the sun set, or was it a caption on a photograph I’d seen? Fernando and I drifted over to the tree, our clown following after, humming to himself.
The man held an empty plate, thinly filmed with gravy, turned on its side, with the wooden spoon pressed against it by his large thumb. He gestured broadly, with a cigarette held in his other hand, sweeping the arc of the circle. The man’s hair formed a sharp “V” in front, with large areas of scalp on either side. His voice had authority but was a little toneless, as if he were reading a speech. “If Bolivia goes too far, too rapidly with its nationalization, without paying the necessary compensation, it will make for a nice gesture, but it will only endanger the Revolution.”
“Yes,” Isaias agreed gravely, back from his nap. His face looked fuddled from sleep. “Some young people don’t understand the particular problems this nation faces.”
The balding man nodded. Bolivia, he explained, could lose its only market for tin, its chief supplier of machinery and manufactured goods. “And that would only bankrupt the nation in futile gestures of defiance.”
Heads nodded in the circle at the pathetic irreality of gestures. For they did not understand the aura of symbols, how they could reach in and transform the sleeping soul! “Bolivia,” I said, displaying the shining words, “could continue as a nation without tin mines or machinery. Perhaps it would find itself for the first time.”
Chaco’s high voice from behind my shoulder interrupted me, thwarted the lifting of my chalice. “You sound like a Baptist preacher, Ernesto. ‘Bo-li-vi-a’ ”—he made his voice a minister’s singsong, from Voice of the Andes—“ ‘whores after manufactured goods.’ You know, Ernesto, you confuse the sin of sex and the degradation of industry. You’re a modern artist. You can’t tell a woman from a machine.”
“I’m sorry,” the broad-shouldered man said, politely, eagerly, wanting a debate, “but I don’t understand you.” (Anyone could tell that Chaco was vaudeville, entertainment between the acts.)
I admired Paz Estenssoro, the leader of the MNR, President of the Bolivian Republic, for I was certain that he was the broad-shouldered man whose picture I’d seen. Drawn to him I wanted to test him. Perhaps my work, my place, would be here. I stepped forward into the circle and spoke of a people finding their nationhood in the collective sacrifices they made. Independence from the imperialists meant self-rule. And ruling the self meant voluntary sacrifice, feeling one’s will. That’s the place (I said) for gestures. The leadership can show by its own sacrifices how little material things, even life, matter, that dignity is the essential.
“Dignity,” whined a tapir’s voice behind me, “that means not having things. The naked man in the naked room.”
“It means,” I said, without turning round, “not being ruled by things.” Chaco must offer up his whimsy. An Indian people had risen. New possibilities for work were upon us. Europe and irony were over. “It means not letting those who give you things or money be your masters. If the United States threatens Bolivia’s independence it should be defied. We can do without it.”
“Are you a Communist, Ernesto?” Isaias asked. He was more shocked by that possibility than by the rapid delivery of stew to my mouth.
I was astounded. In Gandhi’s words I had found an alternative to the desiccated slogans of the Argentine Communists. But I wouldn’t give the old man the satisfaction of a denial. “I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Others can,” Chaco said quietly. He put a hand on my arm to calm me.
Two or three of the Argentine pilots stirred uneasily, raised their shoulders. And two men with pistols jammed into their belts stood too still and looked from me to Paz Estenssoro, and then at each other. One of them nodded. One of them turned his back.
“Oh, damn you,” Chaco muttered to the ground. “Oh, damn you, Ernesto.”
“Can we do without the United States?” Isaias said. “Bolivia, you know, needs its neighbors’ cooperation.”
“Or perhaps you’re unfamiliar with our geography?” Paz Estenssoro added condescendingly. “Bolivia has no port. And we also need U.S. loans. The tin ore is harder to get than it was at first. The mines need new machinery.”
Chaco, the bard, sang tunelessly (fear had flattened his voice):
Once Bolivia was as thick with tin
as the varicose veins on a fat woman’s legs.
Now the tin is as far away
as the money an Indian begs.
The price, sir?
Seventy-five cents a ton.
People laughed. Their laughter made the air shake before me. Paz Estenssoro was not the man I had thought. Pressed against Gandhi’s vision, he crumbled. He had only words of accommodation, of slow surrender.
“You know,” Paz Estenssoro mused rhetorically, “I wonder if you people have thought about the consequences of your gestures? It could cause, as Isaias says, a blockade of Bolivia. It could cause armed intervention, and unparalleled suffering for the Bolivian people. That’s what I mean about the cost of gestures.” He looked about. “The costs are difficult to compute, but they should be figured precisely.”
This last bit delighted Isaias. He clapped his hands together and laughed. I could see the ropy veins on his ugly, skinny hands as if they made glowing lines in the dusk.
“If there is a struggle,” I said, “we should follow the Gandhian tactic of noncooperation.” It would be an opportunity to share suffering, I went on, a chance for the national will to triumph over greed and fear. People would go to prison gaily, as the masses in India had.
“Nobody cares what you think, Ernesto!” Chaco laughed too loudly, a mechanical sound, without resonance. He placed his head on my shoulder, digging down sharply with what little chin he had. “Please remember who you’re talking to, Ernesto,” he said quietly, insistently. “Don’t talk too much. Don’t say the wrong things to the wrong people. Don’t say anything. Don’t talk. Shut up, damn you!”
“He won’t stop,” Fernando said. “I mean he likes to tell people things they hate heari
ng. But Chaco’s right, Ernesto. Let’s go.”
“This is all very abstract,” Paz Estenssoro said, “like most theories. War wouldn’t be so abstract.” He looked about the group for approval. The dead, I thought, require reassurance, the lie that they are still carnal; ghosts feed upon reflections.
Ricardo grabbed my arm and pushed it up behind my back, forcing my plate from my hand. My muscles stretched painfully, then agonizingly. “How far do you think this nonviolent shit will take you, Ernesto? Do you like this? I think if I tell you to bend down now, you will.” He pulled upward on my arm. It hurt terribly, a stinging pain all the way to the shoulder. But I would not bend. I wasn’t angry with Ricardo, though. At least this wasn’t more talk. This was serious. This hurt. I pressed the spoon in my other hand hard into my own thigh.
“Better to lose an arm,” I said, barely.
Ricardo spat.
“Pain is good.” I clenched my jaws tight to feel my will, to help me bear it. “It separates us from the body. It’s the will that is important, the spirit. Nations and individuals are made … are made … are made by bearing suffering.” The field softened behind a haze of pain. Ricardo forced my arm higher. I screamed; then regained myself. “There’s a joy in suffering, in feeling … of feeling … my will accept this”—I whispered—“volun …”
“You’re a shithead,” Ricardo said, quietly, angrily, releasing my arm. “Or something. I don’t know what you are.”
Isaias ignored our dance. “How can you talk that way about the United States, Ernesto?” He shook his gray head in profound paternal misgivings. “You forget that they are our allies against Peron. You certainly sound like a Communist!” He looked about in the dusk: the bat, searching for agreement, for sound bounced back from the walls. “You know,” the old man went on, “I understand the appeal of dialectics well. A youthful folly of mine, an early flirtation. But not a marriage. Never a lifelong commitment. That isn’t the way for Latin America.”
Why this talk of Marxism again? I hadn’t said anything about dialectics. But he had heard it somewhere, an overtone to my words? an anagram hidden in my name?
Our audience had grown to thirty. All the people of the field had been drawn to us, our voices ringing excitedly in the cold air. The dusk hid the outer ring of faces. Only Paz Estenssoro, standing directly in front of me, and the six or seven right around us, were clearly visible. One or two of the soldiers nodded in judicious agreement with Isaias. The younger people—Ricardo, Helena, and the others—looked away embarrassed. (Good! It drew the lines between our generations more sharply.) One fellow, Roberto Soto, didn’t look away. A plump man with a pencil mustache and a high pompadour, he wore a shirt ornamented with pink and blue flowery shapes, visible even at dusk. A young radical professor, jailed once by Peron, Soto smiled at me, a big grin, as if we shared a wonderful joke.
It got colder as Isaias went on. I pressed my hands into the pockets of my jacket, rolled the lint about with my numbing fingertips. Soto, I thought, must be very cold. One of the silent men took the pistol from his belt and pushed the safety catch on the grip back and forth, back and forth. (Where would it stop?) He walked outside our circle and, holding the gun with both hands, took aim at a tree. Count to eight, I thought. Now gradually let out your breath as you squeeze. The shadows formed around his legs like a long black coat. The shot: a sharp high sound. My shoulders shook involuntarily. He missed the tree.
Chaco gripped my arm, digging his fingers in. But I was glad for this danger. To speak the truth to the powerful, to risk their violence, was Gandhi’s way. And if I could speak Gandhi’s uncompromising words now, I would know that I believed them; it would make those words a part of my composition.
Isaias, deaf to the pistol shot, went on talking.
Paz Estenssoro interrupted the old man; he could see that no one cared about Isaias’s youthful flirtations. “We are linked to the United States, but not only economically. We have a shared concern for the worth of the individual.” His voice gained strength as he went, a wave rolling to its crest. He’d found the place in his text. “Surely you can understand that? We have a profound common heritage of liberal values, of faith in the electoral process. You must recognize that the United States has a greedy face, and a generous liberal face. We must speak to the friendly face, for we have a common way of looking.…”
I interrupted. “Of looting, did you say?” Soto laughed loudly. I was furious with Paz Estenssoro. Opportunist! “I think you’re kidding us with these cartoon faces.” I looked about me, not for support, but defiantly. But I saw nothing. It grew rapidly darker, and my anger made the world darker still.
Chaco, standing behind me and very close, put an arm on each of my shoulders. “Shut up, Ernesto darling,” he whispered in my ear. “Please please please don’t say one word more.”
I couldn’t hear. I wanted to stamp my feet hard in front of Paz Estenssoro. “It’s stupid to need some point proven over and over, and criminal when it’s proved by our people’s suffering.” I shook my spoon at him, splattering drops of gravy on his jacket. There was a rushing sound inside my head. Anger must be concentrated. Anger must be sublimated and formed into words. The powerful must hear the truth. That was Gandhi’s way. “What you call the good face of the United States is just propaganda, the pleased smile on the jackal as it walks up to its dinner. You will end up a traitor to your people.”
I had no right to say such things. (My pretensions became promises I had to fulfill, or become pathetic in my own eyes. More: they helped me find a way to fulfillment; they were the scaffolding for a stage, and costumes for a grand role. Others, seeing my stolen outfit, would expect something of me, require me to play a certain part. They spoke their lines to me. My response was as if already written.)
“Damn you damn you damn you!” Chaco hissed. His body hung from my shoulders like a weight. I shook myself, but he wouldn’t fall.
Paz Estenssoro recoiled from me, his face contorted. He bent down, un-speaking, laid his plate and spoon on the grass, ran his hand over his hair. He looked about the circle, trying to make out faces in the dark. He ground out his cigarette on his plate, rose, lit another. It was difficult to see in the enfolding darkness, but I thought Paz Estenssoro was crying.
“I’m going to kill you.”
I guess he wasn’t crying.
He formed his hand into a fist.
“I won’t resist,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Damn right you won’t hurt me,” Paz Estenssoro shouted, “I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to kill you.” He looked towards the silent man who had shot the tree.
“You’re going to die, dear, just like you want,” Chaco said. He cried and stroked my shoulder.
Soto crossed over in front of Paz, separating us. He took my arm. Soto wore a lot of cologne on his hair, a cloud of alcohol and sweet spices, a sharp smell that in my dizziness seemed to have a harsh tinge of formaldehyde. I gasped. He put out an arm to stop Paz, and smiled engagingly. “When the time is right,” Soto said, “Ernesto will be with us.” This made no sense to me.
Gently, but forcefully, he pulled me backward, out of the circle. I thought I had done well: I had wanted to smash my wooden spoon across the face of that traitor. Yet I would not have resisted if he had attacked me. And I had not moved toward my enemy, as I had in the bar.
My arm hurt where Soto held it. Paz looked away, talked with Isaias.
“You were very hard on my friend,” Soto said wonderingly. “You acted as if he were responsible for the whole Bolivian Revolution.”
I laughed at Soto’s mistake. “He is.” I looked away from Soto to get some clear air. “That was Paz Estenssoro, President of the Republic.” I propped myself against the rough bark of a tree. I felt grand, though, naming our opponent.
Soto and Fernando laughed at me.
“Don’t be silly, my friend. That’s not Paz,” Roberto said, smiling warmly. “Or I would certainly have grabbed you sooner! That woul
d be stupid! That could be dangerous! You couldn’t have thought you were speaking to Paz Estenssoro!” He looked wonderingly from me to Fernando, as if to ask my friend what sort I was. Fernando shrugged. “No, that’s a fellow I know from the Ministry of Industry. A sub-sub sort. Paz Estenssoro has a long sad face, very melancholy, very soulful. I’ll introduce you sometime.”
From President to clerk! I sank lower on my tree. I had hallucinated an opponent. What sort of test was that? Yet my uneasiness about the MNR remained.
“Anyway, I wonder, if you’re going back to town, if I might join you?”
Soto extended his hand to me. I pulled myself up. My arm ached; Ricardo had stretched every muscle thin.
“I’d enjoy talking with you,” Soto went on, “and I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance yet. Your intensity is very compelling, if you don’t mind my saying so. I noticed it tonight, of course, and also at the cafes. It’s as if your whole body were curved into a question mark.”
He had discovered my own metaphor for myself. It pleased me.
Chaco laughed. I think he could see that I felt flattered. “Ernesto reminds me of a wolf who thinks he’s a rabbit.”
“He reminds me,” Fernando said, “of Don Quixote.”
“An unemployed actor,” Chaco replied.
Fernando: “A despairing bandit.”
Chaco: “A cheap gun that will explode in the bandit’s hand.”
Fernando: “A camel.”
Chaco: “A whale.”
F: “A cloud.”
C: “A serpent.”
F: “A dove.”
C: “A ghost.”
F: “A son of God.”
C: “A seltzer bottle.”
The two of them giggled and hugged each other, giddy with relief, returned to life.
