by Jay Cantor
I aimed my pistol at the first man’s chest, gripping it with both my hands. Just as North America had set them walking towards me, past the edge of the cathedral, so, I felt then, some equal and opposite force had set me here, where one street joined another, facing them. I know now that it was an illusion, that there was no election, all just molecules thrown together by chance with opposite valences. But I felt then as if I were concentrated to one blow, that I could in one stroke make the world mine again, the true world that Hilda’s words had revealed to me, that was our place of play, that was Hilda. “Are you a Communist, Ernesto?” your friend, old man Isaias asked me in that field. He was shocked at that thought. The United States, he said, is our ally. We have a shared concern for the worth of the individual. Wasn’t that stupid, Father! Criminally stupid! You taught me in our walks about the city that the United States is a callous top-hatted magician turning dead people into round gold coins. They are our enemies, Father, now and forever, yours and mine. They destroyed the Guatemalan Revolution as if they were crumpling the page of someone’s story. They condemned the Indians to death, death from parasites, death from cold, death from hunger, all for a few more gold coins. Am I a Communist, Father? I, child of the conquistadors, plantation owner’s son, petit-bourgeois? No. I’m not. Not yet. Nor are those who, like Fortunoy and the Guatemalan party, call themselves Communists, but only talk, sitting around their glass kitchen tables—and so betray the masses. But I could change myself. It was given to me to act. I could bind Marx’s truth to me.
And then, Father, I heard your voice: Is someone dying here? I’m a doctor. Can I help?—as if you were bewildered, set down in a strange place. (The street faded from me, and I fell inward to our private theater. There were only our voices now.) You saw what was happening. You became angry. By what right is this thing done, Ernesto? This Indian has thoughts of his own, a family, a small pain perhaps in his back from his fall. He wants to learn to read the newspapers. He has a history of his own, Ernesto, a way of seeing things, particular, and so invaluable. You’re like a fatal disease to him, son. Is that what you want to become, is this the grand career you dreamt of, that you left me for?
I listened to you; my thumb flicked the safety catch from blue to red, back and forth, click-click-click (where would it stop?). I couldn’t let you take this opportunity from me. For it seemed then a chance to declare myself finally, beyond any possibility of second thoughts. I felt, Father, that I must act, that I could, if I acted, silence your voice, all that obstructed me. I could, by doing this, make myself single, become this action only, beyond your commentary. I could break through the grief that sealed me off from the world. (For I miss you terribly, Father. I mourn you constantly.) So I begged you to help me. You, I pleaded, must help me now to silence your voice. You knew that I was a knife, Father, and that I could never become a doctor in your way. You must accept that now. But with your help I could be a small story in the fall of the city, a tale that might one day awaken another. (A book, she had said laughing, you’ll make a story out of yourself!) I stammered to you then, broken sentences! A story. The fall of a city. The continent needs. A surgeon’s knife.
“Don’t, che!” Chaco shouted into my reverie. He didn’t sound scared. He, too, was angry. Something awful was being done. He had found courage, my Chaco. He had transformed himself. I envied him, Father. “Dear che, no! Only more blood will come of that! Only more violence! Only more death until the end of time! Please please please please stop now!”
But what did he know of blood? He, or any of them? We might stop, Father, be nonviolent warriors. But they would then kill us all indifferently. They would never limit their greed until we destroyed them utterly, crushed their heads. I slammed my foot down on the pavement, smashing one underfoot, and not blood but a milky-white juice ran from it, like sperm. My chest shook. A harsh wind took me over and made my body tremble. No, you said, you must not tremble. Remember The Hindu Science of Breath Control!
I brought my other hand up to steady the pistol. Count to eight, you said helpfully. You became my ally, Father, in the death of your voice, your moralism, your hopes for me. Count to eight, now gradually let out your breath as you squeeze. Make that tin can dance, Ernesto! Remember how we did it? Well, make it hop now! The man we were going to kill passed near the front of the cathedral’s high stone pillars, the huge molded bronze door with its reliefs of suffering bearded saints. I felt a warm flush on my skin, like a blanket. My back and chest were covered with sweat.
I could see his smile now.
Why should he live, Father, when you are dead?
The trigger jammed against my finger, and that small halted gesture jolted my body. The safety was on. I flicked it off. (I had an intense feeling for that small piece of metal. I felt as if it were in my mouth, on my tongue, like a sweet involving taste.) The sweat made the ball of my thumb slip over the flange. This small necessary motion required enormous concentration.
Was the safety On or Off? Is someone dying here? I fell towards him in sudden discontinuous clicks, as if our two images were coming together. Are they only words, I thought, as I pulled the trigger through, Death, dying
Dead. The man grabbed his chest, scrabbled at it, as if to pluck his heart out, and fell down. His hands went to his sides, already empty; in corpse position. I wanted to go forward now, to comfort him, to care for him. Poor man! The other soldiers formed a circle around his body, blocking him from view, their rifles pointing towards us. And then, Father, the strangest thing happened to me (perhaps you have heard of such a case?): the world lost all its colors. It was black and white, like a piece of newspaper held to a window, or a film negative held to the light. I was terrified! I looked this way and that, as if there were someone in the crowd who could help me. Hilda and Chaco stood near me. They too had been drained of color. A hysterical symptom, I thought, trying to calm myself with the magic of clinical names. The magic failed. I panicked, certain that I’d driven myself mad! I tried to run forward to the wounded man. I knew that if I touched him I could return the color to the world. I wanted knowledge, the knowledge that should come to me from killing him. And to gain that I needed to touch him. I had to go forward before the soldiers walked away and the body disappeared.
But Chaco held me back. He pulled at my shoulder, dug his fingers into my upper arm, and his grip was surprisingly strong. One of the mercenaries fired towards the crowd, sharp rapid high sounds, ping! ping! ping! The students scattered down side streets, back towards the gates of the university. Some screamed as they ran. Hilda stood behind me and yanked on my shirt. She was crying.
Chaco shouted, “Damn you che!” and flung his arm from me. He held his hand towards my face. He had been shot in the hand, a bullet that would have opened my shoulder. Blood covered his beautiful lined palm, dripped slowly off his thin nervous fingers. That blood on his hand was a suddenly vivid color in my black and white world. The other hues trooped back, organized themselves around that sight, like cloudy chemicals forming in a developing tray. Chaco screamed. “I can’t move my fingers che!” The high sound was like the beginning of one of his silly songs. He put his arm around my neck for a moment, patting me, gentling the pony. My neck felt sticky, wet with blood from his hand. Then he slid to the ground. He’d been hit again in the side of the head.
I knelt to him. With the corner of my white shirt, I wiped the blood from his cheeks, as he had once gently wiped the vomit from mine. I wanted to ask him what it felt like to die. His pain belonged to me! There was so much blood! My shirt was soaked with his blood. It should have been my blood!
His body twitched for a moment, like a momentary convulsion, and was still.
Chaco Gives Up the Ghost
“He’s dead, Che,” Hilda said, quietly. “There’s nothing more to be done.” She pulled me up by the arm and towards the side streets. “He was right!” She laughed hysterically as we ran, a series of trilling sounds broken by sudden gasps. “He was right! You are a dangerous
man!”
It was so hard to breathe! My lungs scalded, tearing at themselves. My friend, the one who could give me my injection, was dead, and I was responsible for his death. My legs wobbled. I wanted to fall down, but Hilda held me up, her arm under mine. We ran down the dark side streets, though no one pursued us. I had become a pilgrim, an exile, a refugee like the others. I needed a place to hide.
Well, Father, good-bye. I have moved into a world so strange to you that your moralism won’t reach into it; I can’t conjure up your response within me. You helped me in this, Father; when I called on you, you sacrificed yourself. I’ll mourn for you always, for our walks, for your instruction, for your ruined work on me. But I must take leave of you. I can’t go on talking to no one, Father, and I no longer hear you.
We are not one family. Imperialism has corrupted the national bourgeoisie beyond the hope of final redemption. They will always turn against democratic nationalist governments, as they deserted Arbenz. The very best elements of the national bourgeoisie may begin, but they can never fully carry out the transformation of our society. For that would cause conflict with the imperialists. To struggle with imperialism they would have to call on the people. And the people, once united, might want an end to the privileges of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie becomes Bonapartist; impure; a contradiction that cannot maintain itself. They lure the people forward with empty promises, and then stab them in the back for the imperialists. So, the struggle against the Yanquis and the oligarchies must be direct, total. We must not hide our goal, the final defeat of imperialism! If the Communist parties are not ready for that conflagration, they will be destroyed in it!
I must sleep now. Thirty of us share the floor here. We’re on a list of Argentines wanted by the new Guatemalan government, a very comprehensive list put together by maddened cooks, and with information bought with cigarette packages. Person has granted us asylum, and the ambassador has very kindly found blankets for us. Strange world, where Peron protects me (as the police kept the crowd from attacking Celia). But one must use what allies one can in the fight to build socialism and destroy the United States’ power. (So long as Peron opposes the United States the workers will trust him!) This is a world sharply defined indeed, but not by your moralism or Mother’s trompe l’oeil dialectics that tear up everything. (That is just breaking glass.) This is the world of politics.
I embrace you, old man,
your son,
Ernesto
Isle of Pines, July 1965
JULY 12
Ponco emerged from his room, walking with a rapid determined stride, his eyes on the floor, a man with a mission. He shook his head from side to side. But I already knew the bad news.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he intoned metronomically, each click coinciding with a turn of his small head. He sat down at the scarred table, his lips pursed around a sour taste, and made a show of not looking at me as he squared up his papers, my chapter, tapping their edges with the tips of his fingers. We didn’t speak for several minutes. I sipped some lukewarm mate.
“I knew him,” he said.
I nodded agreement, and looked down at my hands. I felt as ashamed of what they’d written as of many of the other, more spectacular, things they’d done. The hide-and-seek feeling was gone, the game over. I was a furtive little boy caught out in something dirty.
“An amiable old man. A decent old man. A good old man.”
I nodded. What a fine time the prosecutor was having!
“A little quiet, though. We met in the office in Havana. True?”
I nodded. “True” in Walter’s voice was bedrock, irrefutable.
“He was a little portly. He had shaved his beard. Just a gray mustache left. True?”
I nodded. He’d got his man.
“Your own father, Che!” He paused, meditating how to make the crime more horrible for the jury. “I liked him.”
Walter’s father had run off during his childhood. And mine (I had always felt) was the quintessence of fathers, the principle of patriarchy itself. The very thing missing in Walter’s life. Of course he would be drawn to him.
“You go too far. Your father. He lives.”
Perhaps Walter was right; I had gone too far. And yet it had come to me, one sentence following another, with the clarity of the intuitively right, like love or a winning strategy. But how could I justify it? That I couldn’t snap the thread, had to follow it, the unbroken skein of words a sign of the story’s Tightness? His death was just there, the next piece of the story. But that wasn’t justification, only tautology. We’re here because we’re here.
“Che! I know what you’re going to say. It felt that way. You took leave of him by your action. Of his world.” Walter still hadn’t looked at me. I watched him do some more headshaking. His cheekbones are high and prominent. His skin is stretched very taut. I felt that if I scratched it with my fingernail I would tear it, like a piece of fine thin paper. “Good-bye,” he said. The harshness, the minimum possible sound, words made out of pain; they were a poem on the word’s meaning: farewell. Walter’s voice was made for saying “truth,” for saying “good-bye.” “And I know what you might not say. You wanted him to die. You. Wanted. You wanted to have done with him.”
“He had cancer,” I said. “He was operated on. I didn’t return home. We had died for each other. He survived the cancer.”
Ponco placed his hands on his temples, and vised his head—our mime for psychoanalysis.
“But Freud had it wrong,” I said. “And so do you. I didn’t kill the mercenary instead of my father. I killed my father inside myself so I could kill the mercenary. You see?”
Ponco shook his head no, but wouldn’t look at me.
“Freud had it wrong,” I tried again. “We don’t see the state, the enemy, as our fathers. Our fathers, inside us, the family, they work for the state, you see? We must uproot them first.”
Ponco shook his head some more, slowly, his head half turned towards the door, away from me.
I gave up, and stared at my hands on the wood.
Ponco looked over at me finally, but I looked away before our eyes could meet.
“What audacity!” he said to the wall.
It is a favorite word of Fidel’s. My genius, he would say of himself in exalted moments, is the extent of my audacity. Revolution is audacity and more audacity. The word is his most effervescent praise for others, for an inspired stroke, for an imaginative attack.
I looked up at Ponco. He had turned towards me, smiling broadly, welcomingly. We laughed, and there was all collaboration in our laughter. We’d once been cellmates. We were in on the big joke. I remembered the evening in Fernando’s tool shed, among the thousand mismatched shoes. We chimed together.
And I did not yet know how deeply collaborative we were.
“There’s a problem,” Ponco said, taking one of my sheets out. “Not with your patricide. Worse.” He placed the sheet on the table between us, and pointed to one of the paragraphs. “Remember, Che. He’s a …” He placed a long thin finger against his cheek. “… a sensitive man.”
I read:
We had heard by now bits of Fidel’s speeches from every epoch—for Nico knew by heart pages of this wordy man’s remarks. What heat, we wondered, did Nico find in this fat rhetoric? It was difficult for us to imagine warming ourselves there. This, Chaco and I agreed, was not literature, was not the sublime poetry of a true, an inspired leader. It was rant. How could someone be moved by it?
I looked up at Ponco. He stroked his lip with the back of his thumb. “I see what you mean,” I said. “But I change my mind later in the story.”
“Sure,” he said, smiling at what he found to be a weak obtuse defense. “But put something in there. He’s a very sensitive man.”
“All right. I’ll think about it.” I started to take the piece of paper up.
“No. Wait. Consider this.” He took out another sheet and placed it next to mine. There was a paragraph in the center of the page, neatl
y written out in tiny block letters:
(I know the answer now: we could not feel it because we had not heard him speak. We had not seen him before an audience, in the plaza, in the kitchen of a sympathizer’s house, sitting in his caravan of jeeps, in the middle of a dirt path, with countrypeople gathered around him. We hadn’t seen him take their gestures, their doubts, the hesitations and secret thoughts they expressed by the movements of their bodies, the looks on their faces, the unspoken words of their hands, and give them voice. The moment suddenly transformed, a communion in his words—for one’s anxiety marked a desire, and that desire, if one had the courage, was lawful. He was voice. He was permission. But we hadn’t been there, yet. We didn’t know.)
I was stunned. Words fled from my mind. (Into Ponco’s?) I pulled on the edge of my beard, until it stung, to take possession of myself again. “Did I write that?”
Ponco smiled, and there were, I swear, new depths of delight in that smile. My astonishment, my bafflement, was immaculate praise. What virgin fields of joy did he see opening before him? A new career? A different, more intricate sort of lying?
“No,” I said. “Of course not. You wrote it. Of course. I meant that it is very good. Very good indeed. It sounds a great deal like me.”
He stuck his lower lip out in a silly disappointed pout.
And I was lying. It didn’t sound a great deal like me. It sounded, I thought, exactly like me. It was uncanny. He had stolen something from me—my soul? my style?—and so I felt I had to cheat his accomplishment slightly, in order to keep a patent on myself. (I heard my mother’s witchy voice, as if it were coming from Ponco’s small black face, “It was like a strong wave buoying me up, buoying you up, because I felt I was you. “) Funny business. Ponco’s words made me anxious, as if Ponco had inhabited my skin, guided my hand. No, I mean as if I had guided his hand. (Quite a collaboration! As deep as killing a man!) I gasped for breath, in short wheezes. “Yes,” I said, trying to sound judicious. “Very good indeed. Almost me. Perhaps I’ll use it.”
