The Death of Che Guevara (64 page)

“The priest said he spoke to them about Christ, his love and his mercy. The Indians listened attentively and ignored Christ completely. They think Christ must have been an Indian. Because the Jews—that means rich whites with tails—crucified him. They don’t care what the priest says, they can’t see the value of praying to Christ, the sweet powerless bastard couldn’t keep himself from being nailed to the wall. They only worship the saints, who are store dummies they’ve got dressed up in their idea of rich people’s clothing, lace tablecloths and dried fruits on a string for necklaces.”

“But the saints they worship are still white people,” Coco said, not combatively, but trying to think the thing through.
“Rich
white people.”

“In the churches they are, yes. But when the saints come to them in their dreams they don’t look white. They look like Indians. They speak Indian languages. And the saints told them to put my friend the priest in a deep hole
with some dry turds and only give him enough corn and water for a week—enough to keep him alive. And, of course, they did it. But the police can’t find out who did it, because the whole village did it, nobody did it, the saints told them to do it. It may not sound like much.…”

“It doesn’t,” I said. My lungs had begun to ache. I had a hard time getting the words out. “It sounds like mumbo-jumbo, or practical jokes. They’ll have to leave all that behind if they’re to understand their position and become revolutionaries.”

“It got to the priest, though,” Tania said. “My friend couldn’t stand it anymore, the silence most of all, because he knew that as his words fell through that silence they were twisted, bent to the Indians’ needs.
That
was their rebellion. And what was that ungodly need? My friend abandoned his church to the Indians after the turd treatment. They could do whatever blasphemous thing they wished there. He said they drank real blood, menstrual blood, on the altar. But he was a little odd by then. He went there twice a year, to say Mass—because the Archbishop made him do it. Why syringes? he wondered. They made everything barbaric, ugly, dark. ‘You can’t make savages into Christians,’ he said, ‘you only make Christianity savage.’ He was leaving right after Mass.”

“Tania,” Ponco croaked, “don’t you see? We’re the priests, this time. We’re the white people.” And he wheezed an unhappy laugh. For if they thought white people were devils, what might they make of him?

“For the moment we’re the priests,” I said. “Till they join us.” I could feel that Ponco had spoken against his own will, from a presentiment he could not deny.

“Yes,” Tania said, “for the moment. The main thing is that
they will join
, for their spirit is already bent to resistance. They need only be shown how to rebel, how to fight for their land.”

Later, in camp, I took Walter aside to speak to him about morale. It is all right to speak critically with Tania and me. But he must be more careful that others—like Coco and Camba—don’t hear such talk.

Isle of Pines, May 1968

Can I change things? I review his words, our talks about his own writing. He made his brothers and sisters disappear, his father die of cancer. Because it
felt
that way. Can I change things—depending on how
he
felt to me, how I felt about him?

What about
history?

Can I change his words? I know how to mimic his style.

He took
me
aside to speak about morale—I’ll leave that in. It was very unfair and I felt the world a little unsteady underneath my feet, a hole had opened, for I had just been speaking as he sometimes did. But I’ll leave it. People will know that I’m giving an honest account if I put in something so wounding to my vanity.

Do I want to hurt him?

I spent a very bad night, playing with my blanket edges, but not sleeping. Not eating, either. (Weight remains at about ninety-eight pounds. Maybe that’s why I sleep so much.) I am
sure
I don’t want to
hurt
him. (I’m keeping him alive. I’m giving up my life to keep him alive, telling his story. Isn’t that enough?) The only change I’ve made so far is this: once he said “jerking off,” and I have taken it out. It wasn’t
like
him. Sometimes, I think, we are invaded by the souls of other people, the ones around us, and our voices sound like theirs. (When I was with him it was easy to make myself sound like him.) But it isn’t really ourselves then, and the true picture of a man would leave it out. (Of all the people I have known, he was the one most himself all the time, as if he were protected against our migrating souls, behind some glass.) Not much will have to be changed. He wanted to have his gesture pure, have it ring out clearly.
I could help him
. I’ll show what’s already there more clearly. I read somewhere: the statue is already
inside
the stone.

No. I have no right to alter anything.

Bolivia, 1967

4/3/67: My feet, and those of a couple of comrades, have begun to swell up. Edema from malnutrition, Che says. I poke at them sometimes at night. My finger sinks right in. Ponco showed me his feet, and they’re the same. “See,” he said, “watery flesh, fleshy water.” We’ve worn through our boots, they’re just scraps of leather.

I walked with Ponco. I think I have a lot to learn from him, but he doesn’t talk much to me, or to anyone, I think, except Che. He asks me questions about my past, and listens very intently. And when he does speak he’s very funny, very sharp. His voice is raspy, a low growl. They say he was operated on for cancer. He has known Che for more than eleven years, and they seem very close. He is the only one who talks alone with Che, and once I even heard Ponco shout at him. I wish he would talk more to me about his experiences. But he doesn’t like to tell stories about his life.

Today the sun was so hot it was cracking stones. I don’t think I could have gone on if it weren’t for Che’s example. He is suffering from asthma, but he doesn’t complain.

4/4/67: Four of the men have come down with malaria.

4/5/67: We will continue to move southeast towards Gutierrez.

4/6/67: Tania is sick with fever. Malaria. A bad case. I can see it not only in the puffiness and redness of her face, but in its unformed quality. In the time before her illness her face would have this unformed look also, just after waking—as if she had to shape it by an effort of will, remind herself of who she is, what she is supposed to be like; sometimes I felt she could give it any shape she wished. It reminds one that she is an agent. But now her face has that look
all the time; slack; her muscles are weak; her will is weak. The heat is hard on all of us; it is impossible for her to bear.

And Debray is scared. He skitters about. He demands (not asks) to be taken into the guerrilla as a combatant. Half an hour later he talks of how useful he would be on the outside; the necessities of struggle demand that he return to Cuba; he describes a safe route. At each turning he has precise reasons of great clarity and insight. Perhaps his mind can work at the service of any goal. (What provides the goal, then?) He must go. He has a journalist’s credentials, and there are few soldiers near Muyupampa. If he hasn’t been betrayed, his cover should keep him safe. A necessary risk. Bustos will go with him, with messages to Argentina. Tania is another matter; she is too valuable; we must find an absolutely safe route for her. But we have to get Debray and Bustos out before more soldiers arrive in the zone. And Tania and the other sick ones are slowing down the march.

4/9/67: I walked with Joaquin. He moves slowly, but stands upright though he has a fever. Debray is very thin. Each day he seems to grow thinner. He walks with a stoop, though he is not carrying a full pack. We were all silent for a while. Then Joaquin spoke very rapidly. “Don’t you see Regis? It didn’t start out for me as an idea. When I joined Fidel I had few ideas except trying to survive. There wasn’t much to eat. I looked after a few cows. I knew Fidel’s men would kill us if we collaborated with the army. The army would kill us if we helped Fidel. Some days the army would come and take some of my cattle. Some days Fidel would come and take some. I wanted to live. Sure, I despised Batista’s men. But it wasn’t just Fidel’s speeches that made me join the Movement. It was also the feel of the weapon Ricardo handed me, the wooden stock slapped against my shoulder, the recoil of my weapon, and the way it shook my chest. It was the possibility of doing something about my feelings. I had no words for it.”

“Later there were words, Joaquin, don’t forget that. Or how would you have known whom to point the rifle at?”

“Yes, that’s true, Grandfather. Later there were words, oh my, were there words! Around Fidel there are always plenty of words. But you’re right. I came to understand what the feelings I had meant in my world. There’s room for words. There have to be words, too. But that isn’t the way it started for me. When I listen to you, I don’t know. Can it start out as
thinking?”

I didn’t say anything. I thought of my father’s house in La Paz, the big
dining room with its carved wooden furniture, the portraits. It had begun as thinking for me.

4/11/67: Near Iripita. Set up an ambush on both sides of the river. The ambush was eight men from the rear guard, on both banks, and a reinforcement of three from the vanguard. The soldiers tracking us advanced with little caution, exploring the edges of the river. A few of them walked into the wooded area, and ran into Braulio and Pedro, before reaching the main body of the ambush. The firing lasted a few seconds. One dead, three wounded, four escaped back down the river. El Rubio was found wounded. His gun was jammed, and at his side was an unexploded grenade with its pin pulled. Inti, who found him, said his legs were still twitching. He was unconscious by the time they brought him to camp. I knelt by him in the dirt of the clearing, and put my hand hard against his chest. He was still alive, breathing faster and faster, shallower and shallower, his heart moving more quickly, his body giving off heat. It is the way a lamb feels, or a horse, the rapid respiration, the life coming and going, going so rapidly beneath my fingers, as if, as he died, he were moving backward from man to animal to matter.

Later, Debray, moved by the event, asked again to be incorporated into the guerrilla. He meant well. But I couldn’t take any more of it. “You have no experience. You have little endurance. Ten city intellectuals are worth less to me as guerrillas than a single peasant from the region. The peasant doesn’t know dialectics but he knows geography.”

“Well, until you have a little more success in recruiting peasants, perhaps a few city intellectuals will have to do.” He must have been very angry at the way I’d spoken to him, to come so close to criticizing me.

“You have your point.” I was jumpy about El Rubio’s death. Debray’s eyes showed that he did not mean what he was saying. Or so I think. He would change his mind in a few hours. I wanted to make it easy on him to leave. I wanted him to leave.

“You have your point. As always. But it wasn’t criticism of you that I meant. The peasant wouldn’t be any use to me in the city. There are messages that I must get to Fidel about the Bolivian Party. I need you to set up support committees for the Bolivian Revolution. Speak to Sartre and Russell in my name. It will be difficult enough for you getting out of here.”

“In any case, I should stay with the guerrillas. Every man matters now.”

“But do you want to?”

“My personal preference doesn’t matter.”

“I am putting an end to this discussion. You will return to Cuba. Give my messages to Fidel. You can have the child you’ve been talking about with Elizabeth.” El Rubio’s death had made Regis think of that; for the last few hours we had been talking about my children, about his desire to become a father. “You’ll make a good father. You’ll give them clear standards to measure themselves against. Let’s not talk of it anymore.”