The Death of Che Guevara (95 page)

I think that some men, like Che, feel their death inside them all the time, and to bear it they have to make it outside themselves somehow, stalking them, not themselves against themselves, but an enemy that they can see, something they can give a name to, like the Bolivian Army, like Imperialism. (Not that
such things don’t exist, mind you. They’re what make the implacable ones so necessary.) And if the ones like Che succeed in putting their death somewhere else—on the whale’s back—then they have a momentary respite, free for a while of the rat’s teeth that otherwise gnaw constantly in their chests; they’re released into the world—to enjoy a swallow of hot coffee.

Towards morning he let Camba go. I saw them get up while the men slept, and walk a little ways down the ravine, talking comfortably together, like old chums out on a stroll by the ocean. Che had attained that inhuman unforgivable calm of his last days, riding the tossed coin down. And not only because the army was near, was all around us. He had sheared himself from himself—if you can imagine such a thing—given up the burden of his personality to the Indians, for their stories. He had put himself in their keeping, in a way, as we were in his keeping. He didn’t have to make himself known, declare himself, express himself, who he was, because he was (he had decided) whatever they said he was. He didn’t speak himself anymore; they spoke him. No longer belonging to himself; already dead; given over; he had submitted. He had fulfilled his father’s dream, as the old man lay on the floor of their living room, in corpse position: Che was
nonattached
to himself. It was as if he had two bodies, or as if one body (this one) were constantly leaving the other body (also somehow this one) at every moment.
He
was the story others made of him; and so he was always in the place “he” was meant to be, a figure being used by the impersonal cosmic drama.

Excuse me, please, if I do take it personally:
he let Camba go—to betray us—and he left me in the rear guard, to die
.

Che clambered down the long side of the ravine, holding on to the gray wiry vegetation to keep his balance. In the light of the red rising sun I saw that he was alone. When the men awoke Che didn’t say anything about having released Camba; and no one suspected that he could have done such a thing.

Camba had left his knapsack behind, and later that morning, when the situation was already desperate, Che gave me Camba’s journal, a black German-made diary, a few pages of which, here and there, were covered by Camba’s small scribbling. Che didn’t glance at the entries himself; no curiosity and no time; he didn’t ask if I wanted the book; there was no ceremony when he gave it to me; he just shoved it into my eager hands, and I tucked it into my knapsack, with Coco’s diary and my own. It was just another thing he couldn’t carry. By that time the soldiers had already taken up their positions above us, on both sides of the lips of the ravine.

I think that Che knew that Camba would go to the army
—or fall into their hands—and that he would give our position in Churo ravine away. Camba was not a likely man to stand up to the mildest physical persuasion, or even the threat of it. He was a milching little coward.

And I think that our death in those mountains was part of the story, an ending that Che wanted written. He chose Camba to betray us because he was crazy already—Camba, I mean—and so he would be able to bear the mental costs; or, anyway, he didn’t have much to lose in that department.

So he let Camba go on his mission, and the rest of us—the rear guard especially—were left behind, to end in the ending he had written.

Start again.

Afraid, always afraid now, we marched the last night under a full moon. I made up superstitions—I was a tribe unto myself—about the clouds that sometimes cross the face of the moon. If a cloud went over the moon it meant we would get away. And if it didn’t … I was terrified for a moment and then made up a new kind of omen. And if it did go across the moon, I was reassured … for a moment … and made up a new kind of omen. If my foot came down on a rock, it meant … If I heard the sound of a bird in the next ten seconds it meant … And all the time I prayed, prayed with each step, ceaselessly, over and over,
Dear God, please save our lives
.

At two that morning we stopped to rest. Everyone had been complaining on the march, in low whispers, about fatigue and lack of water. El Chino, who was courageous enough during the day, was a great problem on night marches, even with so much lovely dangerous moonlight. He could only see the most shadowy figures in the dark, and I had to lead him by the hand. He stumbled often, dragging me down, and shouted, terrified by some apparition, thinking it was a soldier.

“He’s a regular old woman,” Che said to me, mildly—though Che was showing a meaner streak sometimes, since R.’s death, it was without fury.

Chino overheard us, and laughed. He had a pleasant laugh. He wasn’t a bad sort, Chino, though when he would stumble, making me fall into a net of sharp branches, or when he would cry out, terrifying me, and maybe giving away our position, I wanted to rip his tongue out and make him swallow it.

We made camp near a little creek at the bottom of a wide ravine—Churo ravine—so wide and deep it was almost a canyon. The creek was a clear thin rivulet that disappeared during daylight and returned at night, the stuff of parables once again, like the “flora and fauna” of the jungle. But once again
none of us had the energy for parables. A fig tree a little taller than a man grew near the stream, and we camped by its base. We risked a small fire, and scooped a little water out of the creek to brew coffee.

And we shared it all around in a tin mug. I don’t remember what it tasted like. But in the mountains at night it was very cold, my hands were numb, and I would have liked to have held the cup for a long time, forever, and never passed it on.

Before we slept, Che hung from the branches of the tree by his hands, and Camba beat him on the chest. Then Che lay on the ground—in corpse position—by the roots of the tree, and Camba—it was always Camba for the job, it was his new dance rhythm I guess, the Camba—beat on Che’s chest some more, making him into a drum.

Then, while the others slept, Che led Camba away. I think.

When we awoke we saw troop movements, parts of the soldiers’ arms and legs, rifle barrels, even some faces at the height of the ravine. There was thick scruff, and some trees all along the bottom of the canyon and halfway up the sides, but it thinned out as it went up—so we could see them, while they couldn’t yet make us out. Camba was gone. I thought for a moment of Che’s return alone, with the sun tinging him red. Had I dreamed it? Had Che finally found Camba as much of a burden as the rest of us did, and given him his release by killing him quietly, throttling him to death, as I had sometimes imagined doing? But then Inti thought he had seen him among the soldiers, waving at us—
the little prick!
—a crooked smile on his face. I was glad Che hadn’t done what I imagined. And it was only later that I realized the far worse thing that he might have done.

Che said that we still had a good chance to get away, moving down the length of the ravine, to the Rio Grande. The wiry vegetation along the bottom and sides would provide cover. If we didn’t exchange fire with the army until four o’clock we could hold out against them until dark, and make our escape.

He called for five volunteers to give covering fire to the rest of the group, as it moved down the ravine towards the river.

Everyone volunteered, each and every man.

But Che chose Dario, Inti, Urbano, Aniceto, and me. He gave each of us a hug. As I held him, half holding him up, I felt the continuous rattling tremor of his body, the tremor that
was
his body now. I was going to die to save this walking corpse!

But at the time I felt exalted. I had wanted him to choose me. I lived in them, in all of them, but most of all in Che, who had willed us there, and whose will supported us as the earth did, and kept us alive, like the flow of blood in
our veins. His will seemed like the fruitful force of the earth itself. I wanted to do this thing, to sacrifice myself if necessary, as if that would weave me into the very molecules of my comrades’ flesh. I would live forever in their bodies, and through them in the earth’s vitality itself, in its recurrent transmutations; I would extend forever into the future if I gave myself up now. It was a way out of my fear.

I would live in the Giant!

Later, after we escaped, I didn’t feel that way anymore.

Che gave us each a hug. I felt his beard against my cheek, and snuffed up his stink as if it were perfume—though his smell wasn’t much different from my own.

If we were separated we were to meet again near Ispaca’s house.

My group took up positions behind large reddish-gray rocks, and the others started off down the ravine, leaving us to die.

The rest I know mainly from newspapers:

No.
He was my friend
. I owe him more than that, a more dignified and appropriate death, something less absurd—
even if he left me to die
.

No more today.

Dearest Che, please forgive me! How could I have been so blind to the obvious, to your kindness and love and mercy?

He gave me Camba’s journal
. He had said before that I was to be his
archivist. Would he have given me the documents for his story if he were about to leave me to die?
He wanted me to live—me particularly
. In a precise serious voice, each word with its breathy halo of pain, he said that those who covered his retreat stood little chance of surviving, and he knew that if he said that we would all volunteer, for we all wanted to be heroes, worthy to live in the Giant that is our continent, and that is somehow Che’s own body, the god he spoke for.

But really Che knew that what he said about the dangers was a lie, the complete opposite of the truth. For he knew that when he and the others went down the ravine they would certainly run into army patrols and be captured. And he knew, too, that when the army captured him they would go slack. They would have the red kerchief! The game would be over!

Then we in the rear guard would be able to make our way through the encirclement and escape.

But then why didn’t he give me his journal? If it hadn’t been for the Bolivian Foreign Minister—unable to live with his guilt, his offenses against the Bolivian people and nation, and the heroes who had tried to liberate it—we wouldn’t have his pages. Che didn’t care what happened to the journals.
His giving Camba’s journal to me didn’t mean anything!

Wait a minute. Let’s look at this calmly, rationally. Che couldn’t simply hand me his notes while the others watched, for then they would have seen that we five had been chosen by Che to be the survivors, and they were walking towards their certain death. So he couldn’t give me his journal; it would give the game away.

That must be true
.

Time for dinner. Tonight I want—and will have—a spicy chicken dinner, a Ghanaian recipe, like a thick soup, with lots of red pepper and peanut butter; a “heavy soup,” they call it. I must keep up my strength for the work he has left me.

The firing started at ten-thirty in the morning, and it came from all along the length of the ridge. Machine guns, as continual in their din as the roar of a saw, made a rapid staccato ringing that formed itself into one high-pitched tone that I thought would drive me mad. My group lipped the dirt or pressed ourselves like fossils into the rock. Mortars cratered the ground behind us and shook the bones of our heads to dust. The mortars splintered the reddish rocks
into our faces. Things didn’t want to stay together anymore. Most of the firing seemed to be coming from behind us, in the direction in which Che’s group had retreated.

Towards noon the firing became less intense, as if a switch had been thrown. Isolated rounds clicked off, as if at particular targets. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed now as if all the firing was coming from above, and there was no return fire anymore from elsewhere in the ravine. The rest I know only from others.

They say
that Che and Willy climbed up the side of the ravine, holding a screen of dry brown branches in front of them, a pathetic attempt at camouflage. Che had been wounded in the left leg, and had his arm clasped tightly around Willy’s shoulders. Willy dragged the barrel of his sub-machine gun along the ground with one hand, and caught hold of the brambles with the other, pulling the two of them upward.
They say
that Che wheezed so loudly that the soldiers at the very top of the ravine could hear something coming—something that sounded like an old train engine—and knew that it was Che.

“Surrender!” the soldiers shouted. “Or we’ll kill you!” They almost laughed with relief, the soldiers, for now the whole thing had become like a game for them, one without danger.

Che shouted upward at the faceless heaven of soldiers, up the long sloping rock and dirt wall that was the height of the ravine, “I am Che Guevara.”

He didn’t say, “
I surrender
.” He didn’t say,
“Don’t shoot. I’m like you.”

Captain Prado, accompanied by two soldiers, clambered down the sides of the ravine, loosening rocks and dirt. The soldiers kept their rifles pointed at Willy and Che. Prado ordered the prisoners’ hands and legs tied tightly with leather thongs.

One of these men, Prado thought, looked something like Che Guevara. But his cheeks were sunken, and his face emaciated—it gave a wolfish look to his jaw.