The Death of Che Guevara (20 page)

There had been stories of such things. Men dragged out of bars by groups of Indian militiamen, their bodies found half burned. Why burned? Why them? No one could say why they had been taken, what law violated. Perhaps it was just the way they looked? What way? Who understands the darkness of the Indian’s thoughts, corridors of shadows you might be lost in, to emerge transformed, unrecognizable to yourself. (Half burned.) It didn’t bear too much thinking. (Is this what it meant for an Indian people to take possession of their city?)

But there were all kinds of stories.

In the late afternoon we left our cafe for the bar of the Hotel Austria, a fancy place with a good view of the Plaza Murillo and the Presidential Palace. This week the government would give out certificates for land to any citizen who would devote his life to farming. Thousands of Indians walked around us as we made our way across the plaza. They lived in the streets, waiting for the processing of applicants to begin, built their charcoal fires on the conquistadors’ stones, unrolled their blankets at night, and slept, village by village, in different areas of the hard wide place, a tribal quilt, a quilt of tribes. Each village even kept its separate feast days.

Around the high stone column in the center of the square, women sat in long wide skirts, piled one over another, red over blue, fold following fold. Heaped on blankets in front of them, like tiny ruins, were piles of cooking charcoal, coca leaves, little brown metal tins.

A woman with a round face grabbed my hand and pulled me backward. She wore a gray felt stovepipe sort of hat with an embroidered band around the crown.

“You have trouble breathing,” she said. Her lower lip was mottled, partly eaten away. She rose from her blanket, still holding my hand. Her hand was dry.

How could she have known of my difficulty? It had begun just that moment, as I passed her blanket, the smoke from the cooking fires choking me.

She held her right hand towards me. In the lined palm there was a small round tin, stamped with the comical-looking profile of a wigged man. It held my attention as a hypnotist’s object might (but my trance had begun the moment she had named me).

I opened my shirt, immediately, in the middle of the plaza. A few Indians smiled at me. The salve slid across my chest, a useless temporary warmth; I
still couldn’t breathe; I was still myself. My chest hairs stuck together in little clumps, like the beards of mussels. I looked up towards the sun.

“This doesn’t work,” I said. “It’s just some manufactured garbage, mentholated vaseline.”

She turned away from me when I spoke.

I touched her shoulder; I wanted to turn her towards my instruction.

The Indians near us, the other women by their blankets, grew suddenly still, a forest after a shot has been fired. My hand rested on the rough wool of her black poncho. I couldn’t move, pinned there by their eyes. It seemed as if a thousand people hushed. An anger beyond noise.

“Damn you,” Chaco said, “get your hand off her! They’re going to kill us!” His body shook again.

She turned her face towards me. “You don’t know who I am.”

I stepped backward, stumbling over Alvarados.

We retreated into the doorway of the bar. “Why did she say that?” I asked Ricardo. Her words had undone me. I felt faint from that condemnation.

“Say what?” he said. “It was Quechua, wasn’t it? I don’t speak Quechua.” He looked towards Fernando.

“Me neither.” Fernando looked worried about me.

“But she spoke Spanish. She told me I have trouble breathing.”

“No,” Ricardo said. “She spoke Quechua.”

There was no curse. There was no magic naming. It all never happened. I stood in the doorway, feeling my relief and my loss; my eyes adjusted to the darkness. This bar was a fancy place. Bow windows overlooked the square, but the topmost panes were frosted; the harsh light of the afternoon became something creamier, gentler. Red plush banquettes ran along the sides of the room. The bourgeois of the city, Austrian engineers (waiting for the mines to be returned to those who knew how to run them), Bolivian construction company owners, North American aid officials, UN personnel, talked quietly, drank.

We took a table by the window, ordered. A waiter brought us three cold bottles of beer on a round wooden tray, with a dish towel across it. “Nothing for you, sir?” the waiter asked me again.

“A glass of water.”

“Water?” the waiter said, his face expressionless. He was a mestizo in a short red jacket.

“He wants to drink,” Fernando said, “so he doesn’t. He doesn’t touch women, either. He wants to, so he doesn’t. Get it?”

Chaco looked at me queerly, his thin lower lip pushed out. “He’s one tough guy.”

“Water,” I said, smiling. I took pleasure in denying myself things, even mate; a small exaltation of willfulness. Fernando didn’t yet understand the joy of austerities. My chastities repelled him also. He allowed himself ironies.

The waiter snapped the caps from the beer, and foam gushed from the bottles. He clasped the froth in his hand and wiped it on his towel.

We sipped our drinks and watched the plaza. An old man walked slowly about, trading furs from a deep pile on his shoulders; a forest creature prepared for an awful winter; a line drawing from a children’s book, the young hero’s half-human grandfather, teacher. I wanted to hug him to me. The city was filled with snares against him. His life could be turned to infertile garbage by paper money, by bright evenly woven textiles, by manufactured shoes that would, by an infamous irony, be the death of his gods. Every few steps the old man stumbled. Fernando saw others in the plaza jerk forward a bit too as they walked, like mechanical toys whose gears mesh unevenly. A small mystery. It didn’t long engage my friends. They elaborated militant responses to Eisenhower’s demands.

My friends ordered three more beers. Chaco took two mangoes from his pants pocket. Fernando had two limes in the breast pocket of his Eisenhower jacket. We sliced up the fruit for lunch, a sweet tart flavor that tasted to me of chastity and health. The waiter came back with the bottles. The price had gone up.

“Why?” Ricardo asked. He was a serious man; each indignity, no matter how often repeated, must be questioned.

The waiter shrugged his shoulders. “That is what prices do, gentlemen. They’re like children. They grow up. You gentlemen can afford it?” He looked at me, my shirt still open, my chest hairs covered with a grease that had been totally lacking in magic. The waiter had a broad Indian face with dark brows. He stared openly, without embarrassment.

We didn’t look as if we could afford it. Chaco’s jacket and pants were all folds; he had slept in them for days. Fernando had peculiar shoes. Ricardo had dirty fingernails and gave off a rich acrid body odor. I wore wide brown pants, held up by a piece of rope, a stained nylon shirt, unmatched shoes, and a brown leather jacket, grime in its creases, strips of leather hanging from its sides. (An outfit emblematic of a vow.) The waiter’s eyes narrowed. (Not the place to explain about my vow.)

“Of course we can afford it. And we can afford waiters to open it for us,” Chaco said in a friendly way, as if his cruelty had been an accidental flick.

The waiter snapped the caps open. Chaco and Fernando both grabbed for the foam.

“Money will come to you,” the waiter said amiably to Chaco.

“But probably, alas, in bolivianos.” When Chaco talked he twisted his lips to one side, and squinched his eyes shut. One couldn’t decipher the inflection this was meant to give his words. Perhaps that was the point. This constant face-making said: “This is a world of buffoons (I know, I am one); it is impossible to be serious. And yet it is too painful a world not to be serious. So make of my sentences what you like.” Even at rest Chaco’s puss was grotesque. His nose extended at least five centimeters into the air in front of him. His ears, too, were large, triangular. The frame of his face, supporting all this stuff, was narrow, with little chin. And his hair was very thin, wispy. (He was vain about it, though. Once, when he thought no one was looking, I saw him rub a tin of President’s Cream into his hair, to make it seem thicker.) His forehead was wrinkled, like a nut. The whole ensemble was by turns funny, charming, and hideous; a gnome, an animal, a clown, a dwarf. What kind of creature was he? How should one take his words?

“Why does beer cost so much?” Ricardo asked, slowly. Was still asking. Repartee with waiters didn’t interest him. Other thoughts didn’t intervene when he held a question. He would worry the question slowly, slowly, until the bitter taste was gone.

“I will explain,” Chaco said. “ ‘My first talk on the price of beer.’ A drama for two players, called: ‘Why Isn’t There More Beer?’ Or: ‘The Boozer’s Lament.’

“You ask” (he turned to Ricardo, and imitated him, talking slowly, in a deep voice), “ ‘Why isn’t there more beer?’

“Chaco says”—and here he imitated himself, exaggerating his facial tics —“ ‘Because in a revolution everyone wants a drink, and because this is a national revolution, the government thinks everybody should have a drink. So they give everybody money so they can buy something to drink. There isn’t more beer, only more money. So the price goes up.’

“So you say to Chaco”—and here he put his hands on the table, the way Ricardo would, and made his face motionless—“ ‘Chaco,’ you say, ‘why isn’t there more beer?’

“And Chaco replies, ‘Because there’s more hard currency to be made smuggling it into Paraguay than selling it here. So the beer goes to Paraguay. It’s the religious law of supply and demand. The law called, The devil eats where he can.’

“And you say—because you’re a goodhearted serious man, the likes of which I’ve never seen before—you say, ‘Chaco, you’re confusing me. Why do they send the beer to Paraguay, if people want it here?’

“And I say, ‘Ricardo, you goodhearted serious man, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, it’s because Paraguay’s currency is sounder.’

“And you say, ‘Why isn’t Bolivia’s currency sound?’

“And I say, ‘Ricardo, you’re making me dizzy. I told you, it’s because prices keep going up.’

“And of course you’re not content with that, and you say, ‘Why do prices keep going up?’

“And Chaco says, wearily, ‘I told you Ricardo, it’s because the government loves the people and wants them to have a drink, so they can toast the health of the democratic revolution.’ ”

Ricardo, the real Ricardo, stared at him. Ricardo and the waiter looked alike; they both had broad faces. Ricardo’s dark brows weren’t drawn together in puzzlement. He sat, indifferent to Chaco’s vaudeville. “Why does beer cost so much?” he asked. A placard for a slow march.

“I will explain,” Chaco said. He stood up by our table, weaving. At this altitude two beers could make you tipsy. “ ‘
MY SECOND TALK ON THE PRICE OF BEER
.’ ”

“How did you know before that there would be a second talk?” Fernando asked.

Despite myself, I smiled; for the moment Chaco delighted me.

“What?”

“Before, you said that that was your first talk on the price of beer, as if you knew there’d be a second one.”

“Oh. Well, this is an old story,” he said. “And no one ever understands a talk on economics the first time. They let their minds wander. And then it’s too late. This time be attentive.
You
especially.” He leaned towards me admonishingly, bringing his tapir’s nose close to my face. Prehensile thing; he should be able to pick up silverware with it.

“Now certain manufacturers,” he said, “friends of the government, and their friends, and their friends’ friends, are given a special right, called a ‘cupo.’ The cupo is magic. With it you can not only turn straw into gold, but shit into North American dollars. The holder of a cupo can exchange bolivianos for U.S. dollars at the rate of 190 bolivianos per dollar. The market rate, out in that square, is 13,000 per dollar. Get it? No? Well, follow me. I take a dollar out into that square, and I get 13,000 bolivianos. I take my bolivianos over to the national bank, and give them my name. They consult a ledger, and find I hold a cupo. Lucky me! They give me 68 U.S. dollars. I take my 68 dollars out into that square and get 884,000 bolivianos. I take my wheelbarrow of money over to the bank, they’re not even surprised to see me—maybe I’ll remember them come Christmastime—and they give me 4,652 dollars. Your eyes glaze, Guevara. But it’s too late. It’s already happened. The price of beer has gone up. You can check my figures. They’re correct. I run through them at night
on the floor to put myself to sleep. Now, why does the government give cupos? Are they crazy, like Chaco? No. It’s to allow a subsidy from the government to promote national industry, so the manufacturers can buy the machinery they need inexpensively, from North America. National industry should develop. But it’s more profitable just to manufacture inflation. And instead of machinery they buy luxury items, science-fiction cars, and television sets where there’s no television station. If they do produce any beer or silk or bread they smuggle it into Paraguay, where they can get a good price in a sound currency. Your eyes glaze again, Mr. Guevara. I knew they would. But too late. The line for the few remaining food items forms at the right. It’s already happened.”

“That explains nothing,” Ricardo said. He put his large fists on the table, like the character in Chaco’s play, and spoke with consideration, judiciously, slowly.

“Yes,” Fernando said. “That just explains
how
it happens. Not why. Not really.”

“Why does beer cost so much?” Ricardo thought he would sound the depths of the universe if only he held to his simple question. How could he be denied?

“I don’t know, Ricardo,” Chaco said. He looked exhausted, and sat down. “Perhaps we speak the wrong language.” He jerked his head at something behind him.

At a table nearer the center of the room four men in business suits were talking in English to each other. They were officers of the Department Bank, or the International Cooperation Administration. Or the Economic Commission for Latin America. Or the Export-Import Bank. Or the International Bank for Reconstruction. Or they were lawyers come to negotiate leases for the international oil companies. Or agents of the mines come to determine repayment schedules more acceptable to the former owners. Ricardo looked down. His silly question would be answered with per-capita production figures amortized over the life of, and renegotiation rates for, recapitalized loans. Or with indifferent silence. The bitter taste would just go on, no matter how long he chewed it. In Bolivia the price of beer goes up because the price of beer goes up.