The Death of Che Guevara (71 page)

Marcos, too, I thought, sang an old song.

The woman no longer looked at Marcos, but at the high fields over his shoulder. “When all truly want it,” she said, “then this world will end. There will be a Day of Change. Those who are lost now, the hidden ones, will be first then. And we will all have our proper places.”

Their singing, Marcos and this woman, didn’t mesh into a harmony—not one I could hear anyway. If they had both sung at once they would have canceled each other out (maybe canceling us out at the same time) like cross-hatched lines. Their two voices speaking at once would have made a blackness, a silence.

Marcos took a step backward into the lean-to, away from the final inexplicable unarguable assertions, away from the sun of her anger and misunderstanding, which was making him sweat so. He took a handkerchief from out of his jacket, and brushed the sweat from his forehead. The handkerchief was smudged and soiled. Marcos needs a Day of Washing, so it all can begin again, each day with its own evil. Each of Marcos’s linens is a memorial to a hard day’s march, or a battle. (If only we had the eyes to see, his pocket linen forms the record of our campaign.)

“Who is the lost monarch?” I asked one of the other women, one who I thought had a nice round face and mockery in her brown eyes. “The hidden one.”

She stared at me. Maybe it was my color, or my odd voice. She shrugged her shoulders under her sweaters and shawls. “I don’t know, sir,” she said, looking at the ground. “What is a monarch?”

“A king,” I said.

She went on looking at the dust by my torn and shredding boots. “Could you tell us about kings, sir?”

I had the feeling she didn’t really know what the word meant—this thing that they all waited for! “A ruler,” I said. “One not chosen by the people. He forces them to follow his orders.”

“He will wear a fringe of red wool,” Coco’s dietary adviser said, for the rest of the countrypeople had come up around us. “He will wear it over his forehead.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Because he does. He is afraid of nothing. Their horses don’t frighten him.”

“Whose horses?” I said. “Why would he be frightened?”

“I don’t know,” the man said. His hand rubbed his leg. “And I told you, he
isn’t
frightened.”

“He is not a living man,” Inti’s friend said. “He is different. He can’t die. He is already dead. He is a man wrapped in white, hidden away, already dead. His head is like gold.”

“And he will become our ruler,” the woman who had fought Marcos to a draw said. Usually women weren’t so outspoken. “After he has fasted for three hours.”

“For three days,” another woman said.

“For three months,” the small man said.

“You must come barefoot and bear a load if you want to see him,” the battler said.

“A load?” I asked. I knew then that they were speaking of Christ, but they had made him over as an Indian.

“To show you are his servant. On your back.”

“No,” the man with the bulging eyes said. “On your head.”

I was sure they were making this up as they went along! They couldn’t agree on anything. I looked at Che and each word seemed like a poison added to the air. The upper part of his body made a small circle.

“You must fast a month before you see him.”

“For three months!”

“A year!”

“He has a coat made of the soft skin of vampire bats.”

This
didn’t sound like Christ!

“And a coat of hummingbird feathers that shine in the sun.”

“For a month before he becomes our King there will be a great feast. We will drink for a month.”

“For three months.”

“He will see that llamas are given us. For eating.”

“He is very even-handed with his gains.”

One of the men kissed his two small fingers and flung them up at the sky.

“Why do you do that?” Coco asked.

“I don’t know.”

The others went on speaking, adding to his glory, whoever
he
was. It gave them pleasure to multiply his luxuries.

“He has a huge house, made of stone, not like our houses. He and his sisters live there.”

The women laughed, and looked at the ground. (I thought for a moment that there was something suggestive in their laughter. But that was impossible.)

“When he goes out men from his clan bear him in a huge chair, its legs covered in gold. Or they run with him cradled in their arms.”

“We have come,” Inti said, slowly, deliberately, sadly, “to put an end to kings. You work now to feed the rich, your lives are wasted in work so that the rich might have gold legs on their chairs.”

“Then kings are bad things?” one woman said, suddenly docile, confused, yanked from her reverie.

“Yes,” Inti said. “You yourselves must rule.”

She looked around her at the small man, the other women, then turned away from us all, disappointed.

I watched Che during all this noise. He looked worse than Marcos, as he huffed and puffed, his eyes narrowed with anger and strain. “You’re the King,” I said. “Sometimes we carry you.” He, too, turned away, disappointed.

They gave us some corn and directions to the river.

6/5/67: Again their directions were wrong! The truck overheated on a dirt road to nowhere, and we hadn’t any water for it. Camba, without speaking, got up next to the engine, pulled down his pants, and, standing on his toes, urinated a tiny stream of drops into the radiator.

Ponco applauded this striking improvisation.

But none of us had more than a few drops of urine. We all added a little, plus two canteens of water.

We marched farther north, until the truck ran out of gas.

“Can’t piss gas,” Ponco said.

Isle of Pines, May 1968

There were other old men who stared at Che, in other villages (and he stared back). “The old man had a maze of broken blood vessels around his nose.” “The old man’s lower lip was eaten away by the coca and limestone disease.” “A senile tremor on the right side of his face, which looked like a message, something obscure, contradicting his words.” “Glaucoma. He pressed close, but he couldn’t see my face.” And: “I’ve seen him before. That cold look. He would have spat at me—if he dared.”

What if I combined them into
one
, the one who held Che by the shoulders, and walked off with the two young men (the last young men we would see for a while)? Sometimes they seemed like one person, like they had one thing to say, one song, and they had scattered the parts up and down the mountains. A song called: “Please please please sir leave our village.” Or: “We can’t help you sir.” I wrote some of it down, and some of it I remember:

When we fought, in the Revolution, we thought we were getting something. But when we looked down there was nothing in our hands
.

I have many enemies. Why do I have to go out and look for someone to kill me?

You hear that whining? I saw a man once pushed into the blade of a big saw. You hear that whining? You want to push me into the saw
.

The army came. They wanted my sons to be soldiers, so I’d be all alone. I had to hide my sons
.

All you can hear is your own blood in your head, your own life
.

I kill you, you kill me. That’s history
.

He meant that the old man with the cold look reminded him of No Legs, from his childhood.

I am the only person in the world who knows
that
, and if I died, the knowledge would die with me—
the thing that he wanted to say
.

No Legs—the beggar who spat on him as a boy. I could
show
that. I could say that the old man who held his shoulders “had a maze of broken blood vessels around his nose, and something worse than winter in his eyes. He would have spat at me—if he dared.”

I could …

Can I?

I can’t spend forever balancing this. I have to make a choice. I have to get back to my work.

But it would be
right
to make it one speech. It felt that way by the end.
One single speech from all their lips: One word:
No
. Or:
Farewell
. (They, too, had a voice to say farewell in!)

After Inti spoke Che stepped forward. “Now is the hour of decision,” he said to the thirty people, mostly old men and women. “Bolivians have a chance to make history. The whole world is watching what happens here in Bolivia.”

This received the usual deep well-like silence, the silence which we might all drown in. The silence that fertilizes the grass growing over our graves. An old man hobbled forward, clippety-clumpety. He was very thin and pigeon-toed—the perfect recruit. He wore one of their dirty sweaters, woven from dust, and the usual felt hat. He held Che’s shoulders and looked up and down Che’s thinning body. He had a maze of broken blood vessels and something worse than winter in his eyes. Then he said:

“I kill you, you kill me. That’s history.”

No.

Then he said:

“Look, I’m missing a finger on my hand. See? I was drunk one day and working in a mill. You hear that whining? No? All you can hear is your own blood in your head, your own life. I saw a man once pushed into the blade of a big saw. You hear that whining? You want to push me into the saw.”

No.

“I’ll tell you what history is. You talk so much. Sometimes they come and kill a few of us. Once we went off and killed a lot of them. They had rifles. The miners helped, they had dynamite. We blew the soldiers up. That was good! I liked that! It made me feel better. Then we worked our land. After a while the soldiers came back in new uniforms, and they killed us and made us leave our land. We didn’t like that so much! When we fought we thought we were getting something. But when we looked down there was nothing in our hands.

“Look, I’m missing a finger on my hand. See? I was drunk one day, and working in a mill. Most men lose something working—even their lives. My wife died after she gave birth to my youngest son. My first son died from a fever. Most of the children don’t grow up. Now you want them to go off and kill soldiers. Do you think the soldiers won’t fight back? You want my children to make history. I kill you, you kill me, that’s history. Why do my sons have to go out to look for someone to kill them? Can’t they find someone here?

“It’s hard to stay alive, impossible to stay in one piece. See? Look! See? I’m using all my wits to stay alive. I’m thinking all the time. I watch my step. I try not to make enemies. I try not to let my enemies catch me off guard. I saw a man once pushed into the spinning blade of a big saw by an enemy of his. The sound of a big saw makes your guts flutter up and down, it makes you want to run away. It gives you a headache, like someone turning a nail in your head. It becomes everything inside your head. You don’t have any past. You don’t have any name. Just that sound in your head, like an ache. You can’t reason with it! What screeching! My friend forgot where he was, and his enemy pushed him into the saw.

“I don’t want to be sawed up, so I use my willpower. I try to remember my name, even though the saw makes a big noise. I control my anger. I figure out when it’s a good time to plant. I try to say the right things when the soldiers come. I use my brains. God gave me a good brain, so I use it. They wanted my sons to be soldiers, so I’d be all alone. I had to hide my sons, I had to find good places to hide them, and make good excuses for where they’d gone.

“When I was young, like the boys with you, we were at war with Paraguay. They wanted some of our land for cattle. I didn’t like them taking something that belonged to us. I went and fought them. We killed a lot of them every which way. They killed a lot of us. I don’t know who won the war.
I don’t have any cattle
. That wasn’t using my brain. That was stupid.

“You hear that whining? You don’t? That’s because all you can hear is your own blood in your head, your own life. That whining is the saw. Someone is always happy to push you into the saw, to get land for cattle, to win freedom, for the honor of our country. Someday they’ll defeat me. My will will be too weak for me to go on. Someone like you or the soldiers will want to push me and my sons into the saw and I won’t have the strength to resist. The saw will have sharp blades. It will cut us in half like that, rip us to pieces! All we’ll hear will be the whining. Eeeeiiieee! you won’t even hear us scream. Little animals will come and lick our blood. We won’t mind. Good for them! But I’m not going to go off and walk into the saw, say, Here Mr. Saw, why don’t you cut off my legs, or make a nice meal of my head. That would be stupid! I’m not stupid. That’s why I’m still alive.”

Then he raised his skinny arm, gestured to two young men—the only young men there—and they walked off into their hut.

I had a nice dinner tonight of chicken with rice. Not too spicy. Spicy foods don’t agree with me anymore (and I’m afraid of airplanes). But I could eat it.

I think I’m meant to help out in the writing, help say the things he wanted to say.