The Death of Che Guevara

by Jay Cantor

  No. Horse manure. He’s insane. Horse manure to be dried and used as fertilizer. But I longed for battle. If I do accomplish a brave act, I thought, it will be because I am led by a lunatic. I surrender my life now. (But, again, there was no one to accept my surrender.) We did not, I thought, have a chance of surviving his “plans.” And yet the schizophrenia I had first felt when I had met him and he drew his plans in the air before me was on me again; and on all the others. He is a madman, and we cannot possibly win. And yet that silence, that night vigil, waking on the forest floor to find him still squatting there looking off into the distance, that voice that came out of the dry place of our defeat, the loss of our weapons, the wreck of all our hopes, and then spoke of—victory! Impossible! And yet, I believed—or half believed, or half of me believed—that voice. Why? And why do the countrypeople believe him, believe us, help us?

  He spoke, according to my watch, for two hours more. I finished all of the Baudelaire, and was halfway through the Neruda poems I knew.

  1/11/57: Acuna, in the stillness of the woods, began to shout that he’d thought our camp would have plenty of food and water, and real anti-aircraft defenses. Now planes chased him, and he had nowhere to hide, no food, and no water. Almeida calmed him. But the next day the gap-toothed bastard sneaked off back to his home, taking his rifle with him.

  1/15/57: The countrypeople bring news of the deserter Acuna: He boasted to his village of his activities with the guerrillas, the battles we’ve fought, etc. A neighbor betrayed him. Captain Rosellos has beaten him, shot him four times, and then hanged him.

  As political officer, I spoke briefly this evening on the lesson of Acuna’s death: the value of cohesion, the uselessness of trying to flee individually what is now a collective destiny.

  Ricardo rose from the circle and clapped his approval. (But he clapped very slowly. Meaning?)

  1/16/57: The Magdalena River after two days’ march. Fidel ordered that I give target instruction. The attack will be soon.

  The men then washed while I lay by the side of the river, a lizard in the sun. I didn’t want to lose my sweat, not yet, before the battle. The smell of my body gives me a sense of security, comforts me. Marcos made a critical remark about my stink, and I said that the torrent would be too strong for me, the shock too much for my chest. “You could still wash,” he said.

  I stretched out in the sun and pretended not to hear. The overlapping sounds of the river, the single note become many, become one again, mixed with my body odor, and upheld me, as I floated towards the sky.

  1/17/57: We marched along a narrow rarely used footpath in the shady woods, following machete slashes that a peasant (Melquiades Elias) made for us. He has slashed the side of trees and broken the brush where the path was overgrown. It comes out on a hill overlooking the La Plata barracks and the river. Throughout the afternoon we kept the barracks under surveillance. The main building is a long one-story wooden rectangle, with a white zinc roof. Two small storage huts are on either side in front. Construction of more storage space is going on, piles of wood lie in front of the barracks, and ten or eleven men work without shirts, their chests exposed. A boat came into the inlet, soldiers landed, others went aboard.

  Somewhere between this hill and the barracks there must be guardposts. But where? There is only one way down to the barracks, and if we cannot keep them from giving the alarm it will be impossible to attack.

  We pulled back into the woods to let two soldiers on horseback pass. They had a prisoner, tied about the chest and waist with a thick brown rope; and they pushed him ahead of them with their rifle barrels. The peasant, a thin fellow in a dirty green sweater, cried that he hadn’t helped anyone. “I’m just like you fellows,” he said—and I remembered our comrade shouting this at the soldiers from the cane field. This was, finally, the most basic of pleas—that we are all the same, all embodied beings; held by or holding others; escaping or failing to escape. What horseshit! The scream of the misty inane, of idealism, “not the particular interests of the proletariat, but of human nature in general, without class, the man who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the realm of philosophical fantasy.” (I have been using the Manifesto for our political instruction classes.)

  The Rural Guard, thoroughgoing creations of Marx, were having none of the peasant’s immaterial philosophizing. “Shut up you shithead, or I’ll whip you.”

  “I’m just like you fellows,” the peasant repeated, sobbing.

  “I’m tired of this boring fuck,” one of the guards said. He shot the peasant through the head. The man fell to the ground, and one of the soldiers got down, undid the hemp rope. He took a piece of cord out of his pack and tied the corpse’s hands behind his back, though he wouldn’t be using them again until the Day of Judgment. He dropped the hemp rope next to the dead man, and left the body with its feet in the La Plata River, its face turned up towards the sun.

  We couldn’t bury it, since they might return.

  Soon after this, Ossario, one of the most notorious foremen of the region, a fat man in a wide white shirt, appeared on the path, riding an unhappy-looking mule. A young black boy rode behind him. Marcos shouted from the woods, “Halt in the name of the Rural Guard!”

  “Mosquito,” Ossario said in a slurred voice. (He has provided us with the password; now we need only find the guardpost.)

  Fidel came out of the woods, with Marcos and me. He told Ossario that he was an army colonel investigating the slovenly work of the Rural Guard. The rebels should long ago have been liquidated. Fidel’s uniform was torn and dirty, and I couldn’t imagine that the charade would work. Ossario said nothing, only stared soddenly at Fidel. His thick hand ran up and down the folds of flesh near his chin.

  Fidel was able to interpret Ossario’s gesture. Something was wrong with the picture: our unsoldierly beards. “I’ve been in the woods after them for weeks,” he said, explaining the hair. He kicked the corpse’s chest, pushing it a little farther down into the river. “The Guard is fucked up. Worthless.”

  Ossario agreed. He looked down at the path, to acknowledge that he spoke with a superior. He was so drunk that I thought he’d fall off the mule. The Guard, he said, spent all their time in the barracks. They were afraid to leave. They ate and farted but they did nothing but go on useless walks right outside their own quarters. Ossario got down off the mule, and took mincing unsteady steps around it in the dirt, peering between his fingers, to show how very meek the Guard were. All the rebels must be destroyed! he shouted. And he—Ossario—could do it himself in a few days! But the Guard couldn’t. They were useless scum. They didn’t understand the peasants. Since the rebels had come to the mountains the peasants were acting disrespectfully. He had had to beat two of them just this morning. But the Guard let the peasants talk back. Ossario stood with his hand on the mule’s flank. The mule was panting for breath. The foreman stared at Fidel, a worried look sliding slowly across the fat of his face. He was becoming suspicious again. Had he seen the men in the shadows of the leaves?

  Castro laughed at Ossario with rich appreciation. And then—perhaps carried away by his role (he so loved an imposture), or perhaps to quiet the drunk’s suspicion—he placed his foot on the dead philosopher’s nose, and crushed it with a crack.

  I thought Marcos would puke.

  Fidel went over to Ossario then and the two murderers engaged in a cannibal tête-à-tête. They talked of what they would each do to the rebel leader if they caught him, and I saw Fidel, quite unconsciously, I thought, touch his balls when he heard Ossario’s plan for them. The black kid smiled at all this. I thought from his expression he’d figured us out, but the smile was a wide warm one; he seemed to be enjoying the fat man’s final disgrace. He got off the mule nimbly and came over to me by the edge of the woods. He wore a large floppy hat woven from dried palm fronds; his pants were tattered in the leg. Ossario, busy making an imaginary feast of Fidel’s balls, didn’t notice the boy’s escape. The kid pulled my shoulder, and
I bent over so he could whisper in my ear. “I know who you are,” he said, in a high excited voice. I tapped my pistol in its webbing. “No. Don’t. I was on my way to you. I knew that Fidel was still alive, no matter what the radio said. They can’t kill him.” He said this with great satisfaction, as if he shared in Fidel’s immortality. “He has been sent by God to liberate Cuba. I want to join you. You must let me. I will be one of your bravest soldiers.” I put my finger to his lips to quiet him, and he grew instantly restless, like a bridled horse. He must love to talk.

  I heard Castro invite Ossario to come to the barracks with us, to take the soldiers by surprise, show the world how unfit they were. I saw Ossario point to a small thatched lean- to among some palms on a hill just below us. The guardpost! We hadn’t seen it in all our reconnaissance!

  Ossario laughed, thinking of the Guard’s humiliation. Here, Fidel said, give us your shirt. One of us will wear it. Look, we’ll tie you up so you look like a captured rebel. And the fuddled man allowed Marcos and me to tie him up, using the dead man’s rope.

  After we had his arms tied (there was just enough rope to go around his fat belly and do the job), I stuffed one of Marcos’s handkerchiefs in his mouth and held it in with a piece of cord, which I took from the philosopher’s hands. The tied twine cut into Ossario’s lips, and he whimpered. He looked up at me, surprised, a dim panic spreading through his rummy fog. He realized finally that he was a dead man. No doubt he wanted to say that he was just like us. “Terrible to die,” I said to Marcos, “with your mind so unclear.”

  Marcos shrugged, indifferent to the joys of ratiocination, the consolations of philosophy.

  Ossario’s scream was muffled and came out sounding like a fart.

  The staff withdrew to the woods to discuss whether to proceed with the attack on the barracks. I was in favor. Marcos was unsure. If we failed we’d be out of bullets. Was it good strategy to make an attack whose failure would finish us? I said that it was time to begin.

  “What would Bayo say?” Ricardo asked, smiling at me. He meant to mock me for being more precipitous than our teacher would have been (and I had been teacher’s pet).

  “He would say that we cannot win without firing a shot. You can’t balance these things forever. You have to choose a place, and begin.”

  “You just want to kill some soldiers,” Ricardo said. He put his arm around me from above, and stared down through his metal-rimmed spectacles. I was his semblable, his brother. “Well, so do I,” he added. “So do I.”

  “Yes,” Fidel said. “Che is right.”

  I was given Ossario’s broad white shirt with big pockets. It made me look like a boy, and it stank disgustingly from his sweat—nothing like my own sweet elixir. Deprived of my smell, my comforter, my protective shield, I panicked. We loaded the fat man on the mule behind me, and I rode down the rocky path towards the Guard’s hillock. The rest of the men walked in the forest. I could see them moving among the thick green foliage.

  “Halt!” It was a young voice.

  But I would never be able to deceive him. The shirt’s smell was making me sick.

  “Halt!” he repeated. Perhaps he was as afraid as I was, peeping through his own fingers.

  “Mosquito!” I squeaked finally. “I’m bringing a prisoner in.” I entered the little hut of palm fronds and held my pistol in the guard’s mouth. He began instantly to weep. Ricardo came from the woods and tied him up. (If the guard had been willing to sacrifice his head he would have saved the barracks.)

  The guardpost gave a good view of the barracks. We waited for night. There was a full moon. The ocean looked particularly peaceful and welcoming. One of the soldiers came out and took a look around. It was a hot night, and probably uncomfortable inside. The boy picked up some leaves and put them behind his ear—a pathetic attempt at camouflage; it made me fond of him. I was eager, but waited for Fidel’s beginning. The boy had a placid look on his face as he turned towards the river. Fidel opened fire with his automatic weapon, and the soldier fell shouting “O Mother!” Another soldier ran from the barracks, without his shirt, not towards his wounded comrade, but trying to get behind the building where he would be safe. I saw his legs and chest, but the overhanging porch roof hid his face. I hit him on the second shot. His rifle fell to the ground, bayonet first, and remained stuck there. All the men began to fire towards the building then, and I ran down the hill, as if the hill itself were carrying me forward, pushing us towards the soldiers, shooting my rifle as I ran. Were others running with me? Had an order been given? But the hill pushed me onward. Camillo was with me, and Almeida. We reached the flat area, and a group of palm trees. I hugged the sharp-edged bark, crown on crown, and panted for breath. Almeida shouted for the Guard to surrender, and someone replied from the window with a burst from an M-1. Crespo and I threw our hand grenades but they didn’t explode. Raul Castro threw a stick of dynamite, and this, too, didn’t go off. I took a can of kerosene from Crespo, and felt myself moving forward, certain of what to do, moving as if I were drawn by the fire I was about to set. What if a bullet struck the kerosene as I cradled it in my arms? I saw my hands explode in flame, and myself running forward, holding my burning hands up into the night as if they were candles. Marcos came with me, but he withdrew as the bullets from the barracks hailed down around him. Camillo, too, went back. The firing made an awful din, high sharp sounds. Benitez and I reached one of the outlying huts and threw kerosene on the pile of lumber. It ignited, and the upreach of the flames was my heart’s desire realized. One of the soldiers ran out of the barracks, and I shot him in the chest. Stupidly, he ran into the flames and fell there, making a disgusting smell.

  From behind the flames and through them we fired hundreds of rounds. The others joined us. The barracks was being wiped out by our bullets. Benitez noticed that there was no answering fire, and he and I entered the main barracks, firing as we went. The long wooden room was filled with smoke; my lungs fluttered. Soldiers lay on the floor screaming. Men stood with their backs to us, and their hand in the air, shouting their surrender in every direction, as if it were a prayer, and we were the angels descended to answer it. “Why wouldn’t you let us surrender?” one of them screamed at me angrily. “Why wouldn’t you let us surrender?” He said they’d been shouting it for half an hour.

  “We couldn’t hear you,” I said weakly, and I ran through the door into the moonlight and the better air. I had done my utmost. The fire had burned down. I wasn’t sure that I had told the soldier the truth. Had their voices been drowned out by the sound of our rifles, or the force of our desire, the blood beating in our ears?

  No casualties on our side. Four soldiers dead. Five wounded. Eight Springfields. A Thompson sub-machine gun. A thousand rounds. (We had used five hundred.) Cartridge belts, fuel, knives, clothing, some food. A few soldiers had apparently escaped by boat during the fight. The prisoners were angrier at them than at us.

  We set fire to the rest of the barracks and withdrew up the mountain, into the woods, carrying their wounded. Under Fidel’s orders I used up much of our medicine caring for their injured. Ricardo and Raul wanted to kill the other prisoners, but Fidel released them (except for Ossario, who had been executed by Raul when the battle began). A captured guerrilla, Fidel said, is always killed. A captured soldier is freed. Our men will never surrender, and the soldiers will know that they can always save their lives simply by surrendering. Morale will decide this war, not numbers.

  “And,” our new comrade, the young black man, said—not the least hesitant about offering his opinion in our council—“if we let them go like that, they’ll realize what total shit we think they are as fighters.” This view made many of the men suspicious of Walter. But he seemed to me an immediately likable fellow.

  I spoke more with him on the march back to the Sierras. His name, he says, is Walter Tulio, but perhaps that is a lie—or story; for his tales about his life all seem a little far-fetched. He has held more jobs than seem possible for someone his a
ge (and he is unclear about what his age is). But I felt that he only meant to entertain. I spoke to him about our politics, the goals of the revolution, and had another theological discussion, explaining to Walter the difference between Divine Election and the leader thrown up by the masses and embodying their will. He looked at me very seriously, though he was clearly uninterested in my abstractions. He said he couldn’t see the difference between our two views. When the people speak it with God’s big voice, he said, as if he were a university professor dialectically reconciling our positions with a Latin tag. He gave me a broad smile, pleased with his cleverness.