Exceptional Circumstances

by Bartleman, James;

  “Would you call yourself a Christian Marxist?” I asked. “Like the worker priests of France a few years ago?”

  Rojas may have thought I was showing off by displaying my knowledge of recent Church history and didn’t answer. Instead, he led me back to the pew and asked me how he could best help me understand the revolutionary struggle. I quickly proposed he let me visit him in his camp in the hills. I could come on a fact-finding mission, I told him.

  “Why not,” said Rojas with the assurance of someone who trusts others easily. “Fidel welcomed journalists to his camp in the Sierra Maestra during his campaign to liberate Cuba. Their reports built support for his cause internationally.”

  “I remember them,” I said. “The Toronto newspapers carried the same stories and the students in my high school were all hoping Castro would win.”

  “Yes, let me think about it. But before deciding, I’d like to ask a question.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, “I’ll give you an honest answer.”

  “What do you value more than anything else in the world?”

  “Ambition and the love of family.”

  “I like that,” he said. “You’re not afraid to admit you’re ambitious.” He then punched me playfully on the shoulder, indicating I had passed some sort of test. “You’re a decent person,” he said, “someone I’d be proud to welcome to my camp. And don’t feel you have to come on a fact-finding mission. Come as a friend of the revolution and to experience the hospitality of the ELN. I guarantee it would be something you’ll never forget — something to tell your grandchildren someday. Even though we’ve just met, I feel I’ve known you forever.”

  “What’s the next step?” I asked. “Do you have to clear your decision with your men?”

  “I don’t have to get anyone’s permission,” he said. “The others trust me just as I trust you. As long as you know how to ride a horse, it will happen.”

  I should have asked him why excellence in riding should be a condition for making a fact-finding mission, but I didn’t, not wanting to give him a reason for changing his mind. Instead I told him horseback riding had been one of my favourite sports as a teenager, and he slapped me on the knee and said he thought that would be the case. “Now just be patient,” he said, “I’ll be back in touch with you through Rosario within the month.”

  The next morning, so early only the Colombian cleaning staff was around, I went to my office, closed the door, prepared a pot of coffee, and began writing the report I would send to Longshaft. By the time the other Canadian staff arrived for work, I had finished.

  I have the honour to report that I met for six hours last night with Rojas in a secure location in the vicinity of the shelter for homeless children described in my recent message. Following are the highlights of our discussion:

  We established an excellent personal rapport.

  Rojas revealed an astonishing knowledge of Canada and its history ranging from the activities of the Jesuits in seventeenth-century New France to the Quiet Revolution in Quebec today.

  His models for revolutionary action are Ignatius of Loyola, Pope John XXIII, Karl Marx, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and Abraham Lincoln.

  Rojas is man of deep faith and political convictions who sees the face of Christ in the suffering people.

  Rojas, like his friend, Rosario Lopez, blames the Devil for the evil committed by man in Colombia.

  He recently received a visit from members of the FLQ seeking his advice on how to change Quebec from an oppressive capitalist province dominated by a racist English-speaking minority (as they characterized it) to an independent communist country run by and for the francophone majority. Most interestingly, they informed him they were planning to conduct a major terrorist operation in Quebec but provided no detail on target(s), timing(s), or location(s). The reason he provided such information to me, he said, was because he did not believe the people of Quebec were oppressed, and was concerned Canadian authorities would learn of the FLQ visit to Colombia and blame the ELN for the upcoming actions of the FLQ in Quebec, setting back his plans to garner international support for the ELN cause.

  Rojas was open to allowing me to make a fact-finding visit to his camp, but wanted time to think about it. The visit, if it were to occur, it would not happen before mid-January 1970.

  I should be grateful for your instructions.

  After reading the draft over for the last time, I added a final paragraph saying I was confident an invitation to visit Rojas at his camp would be forthcoming. I signed my name at the bottom, and delivered it by hand to the ninth floor communications centre. I was sure Longshaft would be pleased at my evening’s work.

  He was. The following is his answer, received three days later.

  The Task Force read with great interest and not a little admiration your most recent report. You are to be commended for your initiative in arranging to meet Rojas and your skill in extracting pertinent information from him on matters affecting Canada’s national security.

  The information he provided on the elements that that led him to a life of terrorism will be shared with our American and British friends to augment data bases they maintain on roots of the phenomenon. His belief that the Devil lies behind unjust actions of Colombian oligarchs is of particular interest. On one hand, such a view reflects an irrational and gullible personality disorder that incorporates superstition into its worldview. On the other hand, if it is ascertained that other adherents of Liberation Theology are of same opinion as Rojas, our American and British friends could incorporate finding in their psychological and misinformation warfare strategies to discredit terrorists and their sympathizers among potential sympathizers.

  The Task Force is, as you might expect, most interested and disturbed by report that FLQ representatives have been to see Rojas. We have long suspected they have contacts with terrorist organisations in Latin America like the ELN, in the Middle East like the PLO, and in South Africa like the ANC. Our concern is that FLQ will contact Cuba, if this hasn’t already happened. Should Havana decide to provide material and training support to FLQ, the terrorist threat to Canada would increase immeasurably.

  The Task Force would have preferred you to push your interlocutor to provide more information about the visit of the FLQ, for example by asking for names and descriptions of delegation members and pressing him to give you an indication of when and where terrorist operation would be carried out. It is important therefore that you continue the dialogue with Rojas, who apparently holds you in high regard. To this end, we authorize you to make a fact-finding visit to his camp in which your primary goal will be to obtain more information from him on FLQ intentions and plans.

  7: Heather Sinclair

  Time passed slowly as I waited for word from Rojas. To escape the daily visits from the ambassador, I sought out things to do outside the office. I called on Señora Lopez to tell her I had found the money in the embassy aid budget to pay for the expansion of the shelter, and handed over the first instalment of my own conscience money to use as she saw fit. I felt ill at ease when she thanked me, kissing me on the cheek, and telling me I was an angel sent by God to do his work in Colombia — when that was utter nonsense. I also paid a visit to a shop, not far from the embassy, distributing used clothing to the poor of downtown Bogota, managed by a CUSO volunteer. That was where I met Heather Sinclair.

  She had the pouty lips and big, bold eyes of Brigitte Bardot and the voluptuous body of Marilyn Monroe — the sex symbols of that era. I waited until she finished serving a customer and introduced myself. She told me to sit down, closed the door, and came to join me. I asked her questions about the operations of her centre, but she answered in monosyllables. I tried to talk aid policy but she said she was tired of the subject. I invited her out to dinner at a nearby restaurant, and she accepted.

  When the meal was over she said, “Let’s get to know each other better.” And for Heather, that meant coming back to my apartment, drinking Chilean Underraga Tint
o wine, smoking cigarettes, discussing existentialism, and making love throughout the night. We met again the next evening after work for a meal and returned to my apartment for another night of conversation, love-making, and this time some sleep. She told me she was from Winnipeg, born just after the war when her father returned home after four years in the Canadian army in Europe to take up a position as branch manager for one of the big Canadian banks. She said that while vacationing at the family cottage, the summer before entering first year at the University of Manitoba, she was listening to an album of songs by Bob Dylan and suddenly realized her parents’ life wasn’t for her. She didn’t want to marry young, raise two children, teach Sunday school, go to potluck suppers, drive a station wagon, join a service club, spend her summers at the lake, and take a holiday in Florida during March break. She didn’t want to lead the usual comfortable life of the middle class, only to wake up when she was old to find she hadn’t done anything in life she had really wanted.

  She left home to attend the University of Toronto where she embraced Flower Power, the New Left, marches and rallies against the Vietnam War, Women’s Liberation, and Third World causes. She went off as an exchange student at the Sorbonne in Paris for a year where she developed a taste for foul-smelling Gauloises cigarettes, cheap red wine, and onion soup. She said she was one of the groupies who hung out with Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hoping to be chosen to share their bed. “For obvious reasons,” she said, she was often the lucky one. Sartre and de Beauvoir concentrated on sex while she tried to discuss existentialism with him and women’s rights with her. I didn’t want to believe her.

  She asked me if I was French Canadian, saying Frenchmen made the best lovers. I said, “Not exactly. I’m a French-speaking Métis.” She asked me where I came from, and I said Penetang. I added that I had graduated from the University of Ottawa in the spring of 1966 and joined the Department a few months later. She said she really wasn’t interested in my life story and was just making conversation and I told her nothing else. She told me her favourite authors were Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and quoted at length from Howl and On the Road.

  I didn’t like her taste in literature, but in an effort to appear interested, said I did. When she asked me to name my favourite book, I took my revenge by saying I didn’t have one, but a series of favourites, written by priests in the seventeenth century, called the Jesuit Relations. I thought she’d laugh at such an outrageous choice, but after asking me to describe the plot, she said she’d borrow it from the library on her return to Canada, if only to read the torture scenes.

  I went to the office that week as usual but walked around in a daze unable to think of anything but her. When she suggested I accompany her to a bring-your-own-booze party being thrown by a member of the American Peace Corps by the name of Charles Bullock on Friday night, I agreed. The evening got off to a bad start. We were making our way through the heavy evening traffic when Heather nonchalantly remarked she had been seeing a lot of Charles since her arrival in Colombia. “Something I thought I’d mention in case he acts jealous,” she said, reaching over and stroking the inside of my thigh. “Just because he sleeps with me, he thinks he owns me.”

  It took a few seconds for her words to register, but when they did, I shoved her hand away and pulled over. “Are you still sleeping with this guy?”

  “Not since I met you,” she said. “But if he was to ask me to spend the night with him, and I was free, I probably would. I like him.”

  “Then being together this past week meant nothing to you?”

  “Now you’re behaving like Charles.”

  “Don’t you think I have a right to be upset?”

  “Look Luc,” she said. “Don’t pull that male chauvinist bullshit on me. I already told you I’m a liberated woman. I like you, but I like other guys too. I’ll sleep with anyone I want.”

  “Then get the hell out of my car. You can walk to your friend Charles’s.”

  “I can’t believe this. Do you know what would happen to a woman alone on the side of the road after dark in Bogota? I wouldn’t last half an hour before I was mugged or worse. Just take me to Charles’s. We can discuss our relationship some other time.”

  I put the car in gear and carried on, determined to see no more of her after the end of the evening. But she took my hand and told me she really liked me. “But you got to understand,” she added, “I feel as strongly about my principles as you do about yours. Show a little flexibility. We can work this out.”

  By the time we reached Charles’s, I had calmed down. Frankly, I couldn’t have cared less about her views on Sartre and existentialism, Women’s Liberation, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac — or for the gaggle of draft-dodgers I was about to meet — but I didn’t want to lose her. We might not have shared many interests, but I was lonely and she filled a void in my life at the time. After parking the car, but before going in to join the others, I took her by the hands, drew her to me, and told her I was sorry for my behaviour in the car. “It’s just I’ve never met anyone like you before. I’m still a small-town guy at heart but I’m willing to learn.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” she said. “You’re cute and funny — or at least you say funny things — and you’re good in bed.”

  I put my head close to hers and whispered, “I thought back in the car you were telling me our relationship was over.” She laughed, freed herself from my grip and looked at me sardonically. “Don’t overdo it,” she said before throwing her arms around me and thrusting her tongue deep into my ear with the consequences that can only be imagined. She then pushed me away and laughed again. “You’re an animal just like me,” she said. “We’re going to get along just fine because we understand each other. Now let’s go in and meet my friends.”

  The party was even worse than I had expected. With Heather leading the way, clutching our contribution to the evening’s festivities — a bottle of Bacardi rum I had bought at a duty-free shop — we entered a dimly lit, rundown apartment building filled with the sounds of dogs barking and children laughing and calling to each other in the stairwell. The earthy smells of rice, beans, pork, yucca, and plantains, cooked for dinner earlier in the evening by the working-class residents, lingered in the air. Children appeared out of the shadows to run up to Heather, calling out her name and asking if she had brought them candies. To my surprise, she produced handfuls of them from her coat pockets, and distributed them to her young friends to squeals of delight.

  We trudged up four flights of stairs to the rooftop apartment Charles shared with three other Peace Corps volunteers, went in without knocking, and stood just inside to get our bearings. Candles stuck in empty rum bottles provided a dim light and the air reeked with the skunky smell of marijuana and cheap cigarettes. A dozen or more people — men and women about my age or a little older — were clustered together in the centre of the room engaged in earnest conversation and smoking pot. Two oversize posters of Che Guevara covered the opposite wall. In one, he was the guerrilla warrior, wearing a black beret with a red star and pointing a pistol at an unseen enemy. In the other, he was the martyr, his eyes filled with pain and suffering and his body punctured with holes from the bullets of his executioners after they killed him in Bolivia a year or so before.

  “Wait right here while I go to the kitchen to find some glasses and fix us some drinks,” Heather said. Fascinated by the juxtaposed images on the posters, I walked over to examine them more closely. Staring hard at Che the warrior, I saw him change into Rojas, the avenging angel, brandishing a bloody sword over a fallen enemy. When I switched my gaze to Che the martyr, he morphed into Rojas the Christ nailed to the cross crowned with thorns with blood dripping from his forehead and from the wounds to his hands and side. I looked away, aware that my imagination was playing tricks on me, but at the same time, filled with a premonition of what the future held in store for the defrocked priest.

  I then heard the soft voice of Buffy Sainte-Marie singing �
�Universal Soldier” coming from a gramophone somewhere in the room. She was telling me, in the mood I was in, that Che Guevara, Diego Rojas, and every other revolutionary who took up arms to fight for justice were but pawns in the hands of divine providence and their efforts to bring about a better world were doomed to failure.

  “Here’s your drink.” Heather was tugging on my sleeve to get my attention. “And snap out of it,” she said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I was listening to the Buffy Sainte-Marie. She’s a favourite of mine.”

  “That’s another thing we’ve got in common,” she said as she led the way, her drink in one hand and the bottle in the other, to join the nearby guests.

  “Why doesn’t the upper class in this country share its wealth with the poor,” a bearded volunteer, speaking with a heavy Swedish accent and smoking a joint, was asking. “Colombia is supposed to be a democracy, but the oligarchs get themselves elected promising reforms which never happen and simply share power among themselves. I know it’s not part of their culture, but the Colombians should start volunteering to help the poor, like people do in our countries.”

  “But some do,” I said, intervening in the conversation. I introduced myself, adding that I was Canadian. Heather did the same, saying she was a member of CUSO, but the others didn’t acknowledge our presence. Apparently it ran contrary to conventional wisdom in aid circles to admit Colombians might have social consciences.

  “As I was saying,” the Swede said, continuing his monologue, “civil society as we know it in Sweden doesn’t exist in this country or anywhere in Latin America for that matter.”

  I couldn’t let that pass. “I know a former nun who runs a shelter for gamines,” I said. “I’ve visited it and can attest to the good work she’s doing.”

  “Are you some sort of volunteer?” the Swede said, making a show of looking doubtfully at my neatly pressed slacks, clean white shirt, and cashmere sweater as if I didn’t belong in his company.