“Don’t mention the matter again, you bastards, nobody cry over it.”
Several of Enrique Quiroz’s acquaintances, active supporters of the revolution, had already gone into the mountains of Colombia to support the insurgents and follow in the footsteps of Che and Fidel, fine examples of manhood, Quiroz said to the group.
Rodolfo Puelles disagreed. In Bogotá, in the cafeteria at the National University, he had heard about another “execution” in the mountains, of two young members of the guerrilla forces: driven by hunger, they stole a block of cane sugar from the command stores. They were killed. The deaths of these hungry young men — were they an invention by the enemy oligarchy to discredit the insurgence, or was it all true? And he had heard, without being able to verify it, about the mistreatment of recently recruited university students, about the contempt they were treated with if they were seen reading, writing or — worse still — if they expressed their desire to educate the campesinos, or stumbled in training exercises, or tired during the terrible forced marches and collapsed. Revolutionary enthusiasm was a powerful force, the elation was immense, but the muffled messages issuing from the mountains gave rise to doubt: something bad could be going on, Puelles thought, something harmful about the way things were advancing, in how devotion and effort were being used or abused.
Puelles, who stayed with his uncle — a taxi driver by profession — when he went to Bogotá, had disappointing experiences. One of his earliest contributions to the cause was handing over the keys for his uncle’s taxi to three comrades who would carry out an “act of expropriation” on a small neighbourhood fruit and vegetable market. The night the keys were handed over, when the three revolutionaries (Ilyich from Cali among them) went off in his uncle’s taxi, they crashed straight into the lamp post on the corner. None of them knew how to drive: were they really intending to carry out a revolutionary act, or were they just planning to go out on the town? One Saturday at “rehearsal” in the church, Puelles ironically brought up that particular failure, the lack of preparation. Ilyich from Cali stood up for himself at the top of his voice, like he was barking. He had an extraordinary face: one eye blue, the other black. Sallow and skinny, it was Toña Noria who had given him a nickname that stuck: she said he was thin as a plate and from then on they called him “Platter,” although alongside his nom de guerre, Ilyich, of which he was so proud. He launched himself at Puelles to shut him up. Enrique Quiroz and the comrade from the plains pulled them apart. “That’s just what imperialism wants,” Quiroz said, “for us to kill each other. Are we going to oblige them?”
A meek silence followed his words.
Enrique Quiroz was not just the leader of the group, he was also the oldest: twenty-seven. And he saw, or felt as though he saw, the people surrounding him for the first time: they were very young, he thought, maybe too young, and he concluded that so much youth is a double-edged sword.
They studied Lenin, Engels and Mao together, carrying What is to be Done?, The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man and Five Essays on Philosophy in their pockets as standard issue, prepared to “triumph or die”—as they used to chant in emphatic voices at the beginning of each rehearsal. “Actually, to triumph,” Quiroz told them, “the ‘transformation’ is a matter of months away — two years, at most.” That is what he told them the morning of Saturday, December 31, because he was utterly convinced not only that they would still be young men when the revolution triumphed, but that they themselves would make it happen.
Nineteen sixty-six was over.
2
“Starting from today, we’ll be keeping Doctor Justo Pastor Proceso López under surveillance,” Quiroz told them. He said it slowly; it was more than an order. And, directing himself towards the poet Puelles, as if confirming who would carry it out: “You know where the doctor lives, don’t you? The doctor will lead you to the carriage. Here are the keys for the Vespa: follow him over the next few days leading up to Black Day, which falls on Thursday, January 5. Follow him until Thursday, but, listen, before White Friday, the day of the parade, we need to know the whereabouts of that reactionary float and destroy it to justly make amends to Bolívar’s memory.”
“And the artisans?” Platter Ilyich asked.
“Nobody mess with the artisans,” Quiroz replied. “A clout or two, at most, nothing major. As Christ put it, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
But why surveillance? — Rodolfo Puelles wondered. He did not hide his dismay. After the categorical “chat” about the policeman, which was not even a critical investigation, and in which only Quiroz’s judgement on sentimentalism was heard, the secret poet Rodolfo Puelles had realized he did not so much inspire respect among his comrades for his resolve on the night of the action in Bogotá, as exactly the opposite: rejection.
Rejection, he jeered himself, and rejection of the worst kind: revulsion.
It was hard to admit, but that was the way it was; he had thought his leading role was going to set him up as a man of action, at least earn him some credit. But, no. Revulsion. This was the conclusion he reached after examining the faces of his comrades, one by one, and their behaviour. Maybe — he thought — they saw I pissed myself when I fired the gun; but at least I fired it, chickenshits, he bawled at them, inwardly. And he already knew that shouting inwardly meant no-one would ever hear him, no-one would ever know of his troubles.
But, nevertheless, there was one person who did not feel revulsion towards him, and he knew who it was, of course: Quiroz. And for that very reason, Quiroz charging him with a job such as surveillance seemed to him an insult. Why not give the task to that halfwit brother of his? And the fact was, in any case, the secret poet Rodolfo Puelles, twenty-two years of age, could not care less about Simón Bolívar and Doctor Proceso and his reactionary carnival float; the only thing he wanted to do was get himself into a brothel during the Black and White Carnival without any of his comrades finding out, without anyone subsequently accusing him of involvement in crimes against humanity, in capitalism’s most characteristic blot on society: prostitution. Thinking about it, Rodolfo Puelles smiled in anguish; he had really determined to make the most of the Black and White Days to finally plunge into the brothel, to discover and smell and celebrate the sex of a flesh-and-blood woman, a real face, real breath, at last, to touch the moon, kiss her inside, deeper inside, much deeper. Now he would have to tail and trail a grumpy gynaecologist who, clearly, was not even a millionaire, as Enrique Quiroz had made out, and he had to tail him and trail him during the January celebrations no less, and follow the mission through to completion: to find out where a stupid carnival float was hidden. What a country. What was I born into? He would have preferred prehistoric times.
Enrique Quiroz was looking at him fixedly.
Rodolfo Puelles picked up the keys for the scooter, without arguing.