The Death of Che Guevara (29 page)

For I wanted this trip. The Inca runners had moved from village to village on their mountain roads, roads zigzagged for grading, roads changing to small steps, stone stairways in the places of near impossible ascent. Their feet bled. They brought messages from the Inca. The trucks now formed the bloodstream of the villages. This fat man in a leather vest had plumes for me;
he was an Inca runner. There was, I said to Soto, nothing to worry about.

But Soto babbled on, not reassured, as the truck slowly, shakily, rocking from side to side, ascended a mountain out of La Paz. The driver, he screeched, was a maniac. He geared down, for no reason, when we were going up for Christ’s sake. And look at the terrain! I stood, pitching from side to side, and looked over the edge into deep rocky valleys. Soto had a point; Fernando and I had never been in mountains or on roads like this. Perhaps they were the Inca’s own! Built for a single running man! The drops were sheer, down cliffs littered with unused parts, huge stones left over from the week of creation, sharp slabs like the teeth of a prehistoric monster. We moved along the edge of a gorge with a jumble of stones at the bottom, a river of rocks. (A small animal, the size of a kitten—probably it was a pig or a pony—walked all alone along the rocks at the bottom.)

The turns of the road around the mountain went at acute angles; the driver should have inched around them, and even so he might have sent a back wheel into space. But he wasn’t inching.

“Nothing to worry about,” I had said to Soto, who was too scared, fortunately, to look himself. He lay with his legs out in front of him, pressed into a bag, bracing himself, his arms spread to each side, gripping the slats. The guy was certifiably crazy, Soto said. He speeds up on turns! He stops suddenly when there’s no one there! He would tip us over like that, would drive too close to the edge, the wheels on one side would slip over, we’d fall down into the gorge like a boat smashed up against the rocks. “Shut up, for God’s sake,” Chaco said, not laughing, the muscles of his lips frozen into a wide circle.

After a while Soto drew his knees up in front of his face, relaxed his grip. But now, after those bodies had given a name to my fear, I heard his voice. His stupid panic was mine. I looked towards the indifferent, darkening sky. I wasn’t chosen for a special fate. There were no special fates. The truck rocked a sack against my legs, like a leaden blanket, and I kicked it away as if it stifled me. The peasants’ eyes had closed, oblivious of the danger. “God would take them when he wished”—the moronic will-less fatalism of the poor! Every time the truck shook I knew that it would oscillate farther, that it was about to tip over. I braced my legs as Soto had. I looked between the slats at the rocky slope of the mountain opposite us; there was not a meter of road between us and the edge. I looked back to the stony dark faces. I was being absurd! I counted my breaths to calm myself. This lacked all dignity, I was ridiculous. No, everyone else was stupid, we should get off, walk the rest of the way! I rose; I would bang on the cab, make him slow down. A jolt knocked me backward, and I jammed my arm reaching out behind me to break my fall, I went on falling, I couldn’t stop imagining our fall, the truck upside down in the gorge,
yet still hurtling downward, rocks raining beside us kicked loose by our wheels, our bodies spilling out like bags.… Relax! I remembered the breathing exercises from
The Hindu Science of Breath Control
 … I couldn’t relax. I tensed my leg muscles to hold myself in the world.

I turned to Fernando. “Their silence drove me crazy. It’s like a strange smell. It panicked me. I feel like I’m being buried alive, shouting to get out. But no one can hear me.”

“A strange smell,” Chaco said. I had hoped
he
wouldn’t hear me. “Doesn’t that panic ponies?”

Fernando nodded gravely towards me. He could hear how seriously upset I was.

“Their silence was severe,” I said. “That’s what I meant about a smell. It was present, palpable. It was as if they were
saying
that silence. I felt like I was going to die. And now every time this damn truck sways to one side I think it’s about to tip over. I think it’s because there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve got no control over things. I know that’s crazy.”

“Not that crazy,” Chaco said. I couldn’t see his clown’s face, fortunately, his nervous lips making flickering shapes. “Soto was right about this guy, don’t you think? He’s a maniac racing some phantom no one else can see. And trucks go over all the time, you know. I heard about it in La Paz when I told people at the cafes we were going to take one. And you saw that one we passed with the four little tombstones behind it. They’d already buried the bodies.”

“Shut up Chaco.” Fernando spoke on my behalf, across my body.

But Chaco had more to say. “Guevara’s a funny guy.” (Was I dead? They spoke for me. They spoke about me.) “Shooting off his mouth to guys who might have
us
shot doesn’t scare him. Trucks scare him. Trucks don’t scare me anymore, Fernando.
He
scares me.” He pointed his bony finger at my nose. “
He
wants us all to die—as a sign of our nobility. I think it would be safer, for his friends anyway, if instead of being nonviolent he just took out a pistol and shot the people he didn’t like.”

Fernando turned towards me, as if Chaco hadn’t spoken. We had our cheeks pressed against the worn wood, facing each other. “That sounds like you,” he said. “About control I mean. You like to be in charge, don’t you. I mean like your football team of dangerous characters? And you find it hard to trust other people. But this guy has driven a thousand times through these mountains. I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“You’re right,” I said, hoping to reassure myself.

“I mean, their silence to all those questions was eerie. I felt it too, listening to you and Soto shouting at them. But it doesn’t mean anything. We all think the world is talking about us, that it means something about our personality.
It doesn’t mean anything. They just don’t speak Spanish.” Fernando had studied psychiatry. Behind his words I felt the sodden weight of certain clinical terms.

“Yes. My place in the scheme of things isn’t that big. I feel all right now,” I lied.

Chaco climbed over me. The three of them pressed together for warmth.

I put my leather jacket over my V-necked gray sweater, the one you and Mother gave me for my birthday, and I put my sports jacket, my largest item, over that. It split the seams. I hugged myself and repeated another verse of Gandhi’s prayer, “I will conquer my fear.” I imagined Gandhi walking towards the ocean. I must conquer my fear. Fear makes us slaves of the imperialists. Overcome your fear of death, and no one could rule you. He walks twelve miles a day, beginning far inland, to announce his teaching. (My heartbeat slowed.) Barefoot, dressed in a loincloth and a prisoner’s small white cap, he has little knobs of knees, knots in a stick, too frail for his business. He will make his body submit to his will. (It calmed me to think his image, walking towards the ocean.) He walks away from the already known, from titles, from political parties, from the lying words of this world. He throws himself upon the Indian masses, and if they do not respond, he will die. The veins in his temples stand out as he waves to the people along the side of the road, fluttering his fingers like Chaplin. Parents come from their huts, sprinkle water on the road, smooth the path with long green branches. Some feel compelled to join him. They want to share in this gay inevitable progress, this defiance. And I, too, am drawn to him, as you are, Father. I feel more courageous in his presence. His figure moving forward delights me: Chaplin prancing down a city street, eluding the police as if by accident.

The symbol that will rouse the peasants is, I see now, not a thing made out of words, the deceitful speeches of impotent politicians. The Bolivian bureaucrats, the stinking opportunists of the democratic Left, are too craven for leadership. Our continent requires a leader’s fearless actions; the will calls to the will, arouses it; an action will make these men and women—these rocks—rub their eyes in wonder and rise up and follow it, follow him, towards the ocean. This action

The time I can keep my hands out grows shorter.

These Indians, wrapped up warmly among sacks (and easily confused with sacks) wait not for a voice, an order, but for an action. His weak body walking; the will asserting how little the body, or life itself, matters. A people needs a call to a great sacrifice, to test itself to the utmost. I am more sure than ever of Gandhi’s way, calling our people to a final suffering. They must suffer greatly
(and they want to, even to die) in order to become a great people, single in purpose. They will die for an action, not words. But it must be something the leader does for
himself
first, by himself. Gandhi didn’t preach defiance of the Salt Law, he violated it. He didn’t recommend austerity like an MNR poster; he ate no better food than the masses, wore no better clothes. An action is true, you taught me, Father, if you can prove it on your own body. Only that action will compel belief in others. Paz Estenssoro, Betancourt, Chavez, Prio Soccaras, Bosch are men without courage, afraid to act themselves against imperialism. The democratic left is just talk, plans for others. The people lose faith, grow apathetic, cease to respond. The words, the deeds, the people live in separate houses. Where is the man whose actions could call them together?

I stopped for a moment to warm my hands, and fell asleep.
An Indian took a piece of paper and a ballpoint pen out from under his poncho. Chaco was right! He drew something on the paper and gave it to the man next to him. They passed it around the truck. I was afraid they wouldn’t let me see it. But it was intended for me! Everyone looked towards me. He had drawn a picture of a hut, but with no doors or windows. A voice came from the house. A woman’s voice, a woman moaning
—I woke with my heart pounding, afraid that it was Mother’s voice. I could see her face, the moment before I woke, as I’d seen it looking down from my bedroom window the time you took her to the hospital. She squeezed your beard in pain. One of the Indian women moaned. My head and eyes ached. (Mother is right—a short nap, a dereliction of duty, and one loses the rewards.) I shook Fernando till he woke up.

“Are you all right?” I asked the woman. She sat near the cab, with two burlap sacks leaning against her shoulders. She had taken off her blanket and wore only a dark poncho. Her hair, in a long black braid, came from under her bowler hat. She rocked back and forth in pain. “Can we help?” Fernando said. “We’re doctors.” He pounded on my chest, put his ear to my heart. (I.e., “Doctors.”) The woman moaned, ignoring us. Her face was lined all over, but not twisted as Mother’s had been. None of the other people looked towards her. They had pulled their caps down over their eyes during the night.

Chaco woke when Fernando moved, and watched our mime. He smiled, raised an imaginary enema bag over Soto, and performed a charade irrigation. Soto slept on—the secret of such good digestion of life—his head slumped forward, shaken to one side sometimes by the truck’s bumping.

“She’s singing,” Chaco said. “She doesn’t need a doctor.”

He was right. The moaning had become a cadenced sound. Her song was a few notes in a narrow range, repeated over and over. She had a deep voice. The sound moved forcefully through the cottony feeling in my head. The
accent of her chant moved forward, or around, depending on where it fell. She rocked slightly back and forth, like a Jew at prayer. The truck too rocked, and wind whistled lightly through the slats; it all accompanied her song. The sun must have been at the horizon. I could see huts through the slats, as we came off the mountain, and hear roosters screaming shrill obbligatos. Her song buoyed me up, eased the strain in my neck and shoulders. A mournful tune, the few notes chanted slowly, the accents changing gradually. My body swayed against the potatoes in the sack. Chaco and Fernando smiled.

The sound, the light that washed over us now like a pale transparency, woke the others. Perhaps that was her task. They freed their hands from under their blankets, pulled back their caps from their eyes. They, too, swayed to her song. This motion wove us all together. The others joined her, the same low moan at first, the same few notes over and over, their bodies rocking back and forth. Sometimes the accents fell as hers did, sometimes not. It was a rushing river; you felt you could follow one voice as it moved forward in eddies, around rocks, over branches; but the sound of them all together was unchanging, changing always. Perhaps it was a saint’s day. Chaco, ignoring all protocol, moaned too. One of the Indians smiled at him. (Impossible! What did
he
know about them?)

I turned to Fernando. “It’s like the music for the dance we saw in La Paz, the same few notes, a simple thing, a chant.”

“A few notes? No, it’s not. That’s the way you hear it. They’re both really pretty complicated tunes.” Fernando, too, began to sing. He smiled at me, encouragingly, tauntingly.
I
would think it was a tango. If I sang they would stop, their mouths dour. My limbs felt stiff. I hadn’t had enough sleep. My mouth tasted foul, and the bitter stench of these people on an empty stomach, along with the constant rocking, made me nauseous. My body returned; enclosed me. I looked towards the road, the silver of tree trunks going by.

They sang the sun back into the sky. The sun I wait for, the leader I’ve written you about, will be, by his courageous action, the guarantee of the truth of the words of revolution. In his person the masses form a unity with the world, joined through his presence, the sun in their sky. His actions are the sign that cowardice will not shatter our unity; our world coheres, our work, our words will reach their objects; his acts weave the connection between the people, the words, and our deeds. I will find this man, this work.

My head really throbs. I wonder what you will make of all this!

An embrace from your
tired, hungry, cold, loving son,
Ernesto           

Isle of Pines, July 1965