The Death of Che Guevara (77 page)

Che stopped for a moment, brought down by the mad chatter, or the indifferent audience. The boy stopped, too. Che and he faced each other, though I don’t think they could have seen each other’s faces. The boy smiled towards Che, drawing his lips all the way back savagely, a dead man’s grin.

Che spoke of the people helping the miners now, in their time of need, by helping the guerrillas fight the army. If the army wasn’t stopped they would slaughter the miners, kill them to protect the North Americans’ profits, profits that should be spent for the good of the Bolivian people. The people of Bolivia must make sacrifices now to defeat the Imperialists’ army and build the nation. We must cut off the hands of imperialism in Bolivia.

The boy said that the army had blood on its hands, the blood of—and then there was a garbled sound that I thought was a name, maybe Christ’s.

The people nodded.

The army, he shouted, had bloody hands. But he had the truly bloody hand, the hand with the true blood on it.

He held his hand in the air and waved it about.

He had a bloody hand. He was a bloody man, he had a bloody hand, and he would have revenge.

Che stopped again. Could he hear what the boy muttered in the back? Should I stop the boy? I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that! I felt somehow as if it were a deeper profanation than Camba’s tongue if I were to restrain this boy, if I were to lay hands on him. There was a forceful circle around him. And besides, I think I wanted to hear what he would say. But I came to my senses, and started to move towards him.

“No,” Che shouted, and I thought he meant me. I went back to the wall. Maybe he thought it would make a bad impression if we expelled by force someone that the town took care of.

Che spoke again of their having an army and a government of their own, one that served their needs instead of oppressing them.

He was having trouble breathing—he is desperate for medicine—and thrust his chest forward to ease himself. Cruelly, the boy thrust his own chest forward, and imitated Che’s sound, for Che’s lungs were making an awful metallic racket. But it sounded almost musical from the boy’s mouth.

“If we want our liberty we must take it, we must fight for it with our own hands!”

My young friend shouted his mad poem, he was a bloody man, he had a bloody hand, and he would be revenged.

The boy spat into his own hand, and held it up. I guess that was supposed to be blood. Nobody but Che and Inti and I looked at him.

We must not let the Imperialists steal the wealth that belongs to all Bolivians. We must not let the Imperialists steal the tin miners’ lives.

Che paused, trying to suck up air. The boy no longer talked along with Che, but listened to Che’s breathing. Then he shouted that they were poisoning the air.

Che looked rapt, entranced.

The boy went on talking, saying that he was the way.

Che looked at the peasants and said, “You are the way!”

I felt the whole world shake, the walls become liquid, for I felt Che was
playing
with the mad boy.

The boy went on muttering to himself, conjugating redemption, I am the way, he is the way, they are the way, we are the way. Who made the world?

“Imperialism,” Che began with a grinding sound. It was painful for him to speak so loudly, such an expense of breath.

The boy wailed at that response, making a high meaningless sound, less coherent than an animal’s cry.

Che stopped. “Thank you,” he said to the Indians.

I thought I heard the boy shout, “Leave me alone!” But it might have been something in Quechua.

On the way out the villagers bowed in front of the boy and held his hand to their foreheads. Maybe he isn’t crazy but some kind of holy thing. Or maybe they think crazy boys are holy. Sometimes the boy spat on his hand before he touched it to their foreheads.

Anyway, we did leave him alone, moving back towards the east. I had some things I wanted to ask Che, but he didn’t want to talk.

7/4/67: Morroco. My friend Paulino has been returned to his village by the army, over the back of a mule. I asked his mother to show me his grave, so I might put something on it, but she refused. Anyway, what words could I have said over his grave? Poor Paulino, his curiosity, heedlessness, and friendliness reminded me of … me. Poor Paulino, poor us. Poor
me
.

Calixto offered us some pork, a bribe to keep us away from the village. When Che moved towards his house anyway, Calixto began to sob. He got down on his knees and grabbed Che’s legs.

We took the pork.

As we walked off Calixto shouted after us in a whining voice, “You must not judge us too harshly, sir!”

“No medicine. No men,” Che said to me.

Camba overheard. “No Paulino,” he said. “No wedding.”

7/6/67: We moved along the rocky shore of the Florida River today, and were forced to climb a steep cliff that overlooked the river in order to move forward at all. The cliff had a narrow overhang that others before us had used as a path. It was smooth with their steps.

Benjamin, as usual, fell behind. He was the skinniest of my comrades. Lately he had grown dizzy on the marches and held us up. Three days ago we found him sitting by the side of a path, resting his head on his arm. And two days ago he wandered off, dazed, and stood a few feet into the brush. Today, by the time we noticed him he was far back down the cliffside, senselessly fooling with the cloth ties of his knapsack

Ricardo shouted at him. Benjamin’s head jerked upward, moving with a loose snap, like a puppet’s head. He made his way towards us with infuriating slowness. I wanted to kick the son of a bitch, for I knew that Che didn’t like being near the river.

Che sent Benjamin ahead of us, so we could keep an eye on him.

Benjamin nodded with empty eyes. We pressed ourselves against the cliff-side, and he made his way to the point, in front of Willy. Each day Benjamin, walking with trembling, jerky, unnatural steps, looked more and more like a cloth construction. He had to will each movement. I admired him for the
effort, though I didn’t like him. Anyway, there was nothing I could do for him. I didn’t have any food to give him.

Che had Willy carry Benjamin’s knapsack. Willy, a miner, is stocky and strong, and walks with a roll, in a stiff-legged way, like a sailor on the earth. I watched Che take him aside two days ago, and tell him to keep an eye on Benjamin. But Willy and Benjamin hadn’t cared for each other. Benjamin was very proud, and complained less than other comrades, but his distance, and his arrogance, made Willy dislike him. So Willy was always rolling ahead of him, like today.

Che let Benjamin get about fifty meters up the path in front of Willy before we started after. We walked along for a while like that, picking our steps very carefully, moving upward. I was afraid. The path was narrow. And it was dangerous to be exposed this high up against the side of a cliff.

Willy was telling us—telling Che, really—the story of his life. I’ve heard this happen many times before, here and in Cuba: during the march one of the men would walk with Che, telling him something embarrassing, some failure, some terrifying regret. Always they spoke in a quiet, urgent, yet slow way, like our progress along the cliff. Che is of us, and yet outside us, like a confessor or an artist—anyway we thought he would know what to do with our sorrows. I suppose Che is the way his own father was; he is our judge. We could leave him confirmed in our own lives—as if we’d read our own biographies, and the author, even if he hadn’t thought we were good people, had at least come to a just estimation of our sufferings.

—I must ask Che if he noticed this, too. (
I never did.
)

Willy was talking about his father. (Everyone but me has a father to talk about—an endless subject for stories.) Willy’s father was a union leader in the mines. “I was a little bastard,” Willy said.

“Me too,” I said. Che looked over his shoulder at me, and wrinkled his brow.

“I mean,” Willy said, “that my father and mother weren’t married when they made me.”

“Me too,” I said. I lied. I didn’t want Willy to feel embarrassed; I wanted him to go on with his story.

I needn’t have bothered. Willy wasn’t listening to me. I looked down past the edge of the path at the broad rolling river beneath us. I felt dizzy then, and squatted for a moment. Ricardo kicked me. I stifled a scream, and it came out like a peep—insofar as I am capable of a peep. I looked up; we had much higher still to go along the cliff.

Willy’s mother was an Indian. His father was part Indian, part Spanish,
and part black. Willy thought that the more races you had in you, the more different kinds of misery you could have.

“One is enough,” I said. For misery, I meant. But Willy wasn’t listening to me.

Willy’s father hadn’t wanted to marry his mother. She had tricked him with her pregnancy with Willy. Willy didn’t know where his father had thought he was going! But his father had thought he had something better in him than being a miner. Willy’s father would hit Willy and the other children casually, but he beat Willy’s mother more seriously, all over her body—because she had trapped him. He acted like she was the reason Bolivians were poor! Or like Willy was—it was his fault for being born!

Willy’s father had lived long enough to see his son go into the mines because he was a union official and he didn’t have to go down the shaft as much as the others. But when the strike came Willy’s father became the loveliest man alive, and he gave all his extra life back.

Willy turned to Che, so I could see his face, sweet and sad. He looked like he wanted to stroke Che’s cheek.

I knew from that mild sweet look that Willy’s father wouldn’t live till the end of the story. (Besides, this was Bolivia; most stories have a lot of doomed characters.)

During the strike, Willy’s father had gone everywhere, talking to meetings, keeping up people’s spirits, seeing that food was shared, organizing the militia units, even helping to drill them. And what did he know about drilling a militia? Nothing! His father was a little guy. Willy was himself half again as tall as his father. And he was shorter than Che, and Che wasn’t that tall, was he? But his father had been strong then!

Willy turned to us again and smiled. We inched along the side of the cliff. I put one foot down slowly and placed the other one in front, in a nice straight line. There was no room for error!

Willy’s father had been lightning, darting everywhere. He had a large head, like Willy’s own, with curly black hair, and his father’s head bobbed up and down when he was excited, like a crow’s. The small birds try to peck at the crow’s eyes, and he snaps his head back at them. Well, Willy’s father had been like that when someone at a meeting raised an objection to what he said. He snapped his head at him and tried to smash his words. The man’s words were an annoyance, a danger.

I was sure now that Willy’s father wasn’t long for this story, because Willy sounded too sweet about the son of a bitch. Dying makes a person lovely. I had even remembered my uncle as a witty man for a while after he died—for about thirty seconds.

I looked down at the river, and at the rocks on the other shore. The trees were thick just beyond. If you jumped into them they would certainly catch you and hold you up! What if soldiers appeared out of those trees down near the rocks? We were like a series of targets strung out along the side of the light-brown cliff. The scouts said that couldn’t happen, there was no sign of the army in the area. (But the army had helicopter transports now, huge buglike things. We had seen one lay soldier eggs onto the hunting plain near the Nancahuazu.)

Vertigo pulled me towards the edge again, and I squatted for a moment, but I got up before Ricardo could walk over my back.

The miners had been destroyed, without a fight. All the drilling with the militia and the prehistoric guns was a joke. They never fought. They couldn’t leave their homes their wives their children. (Willy had no wife, no children. He wasn’t going to let happen to him what had happened to his father! He was
chaste
. I saw why it was a necessary discipline to bring about the Day of Change.) The army starved them. For a long time there was only a little dried meat that the Indians gave them. But no milk for the children. And no cough syrup. Che could imagine what it was like for the miners without cough syrup!

That was true, I thought. Che could certainly imagine that.

The men called the cough syrup “oil,” because their lungs wouldn’t work without it, so that they just coughed and coughed and ripped themselves open from the grit, until they bled. No one knew where to go, or what to do, and every time they took a breath they started a cascade of coughs, ripping pieces of the lung away. Little flakes of flesh mixed with the blood and speckled their lips, like chipped paint.

The Party had said they would settle things, and Willy’s father had repeated the Party’s words. And that was wrong. When Willy had gone to jail he had hated his father for that. But what was the right thing to do? Until he had heard about Che’s plan Willy hadn’t known what to do, either. Anyway, his father had paid for his mistake.

First the planes were small in the sky, and harmless-looking, but they grew with their sound, until the roaring filled Willy’s head until he couldn’t think anymore. The army had bombed the miners’ barracks. Bombs are furious things! Willy had been terrified. His father had everyone hide in the mines because he knew the army couldn’t risk destroying them. But Willy had been so scared that he had run about outside, not knowing what he was doing, just screaming up at the sky, and the earth and the rocks and the wood from the barracks had all leapt up at him! It was a miracle that he hadn’t been killed!

As soon as the army had let them, the miners had surrendered. Then the helicopters landed outside the mines and spewed out soldiers. The soldiers fired
into the mines and dragged the miners’ families out of their hiding places. Willy’s father was taken into an open muddy field outside the barracks, where they pushed him to his knees and shot him.

Willy was arrested because he’d been everywhere with his father. He had had to watch the executions. A lot of men had been shot, union leaders, and miners, and people who had had nothing to do with the union. Most of them had been shoved into a big hole, still alive, and all the soldiers fired into the hole. The miners looked like a bunch of maggots on a piece of meat, crawling all over each other covered in blood. But
they
were the meat!