Of Love and Shadows (25 page)

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Sitting in the cave, Francisco Leal remembered his own emotions the only time he had ever held a firearm in his hands. He had passed his adolescence without major emotional disturbances, more interested in reading than in political militancy—a reaction against his father's clandestine printing press and inflamed libertarian speeches. Nevertheless, after he graduated from high school, he had been recruited by an extremist group that attracted him with their dream of revolution. Often he had searched his memory to discover why violence held such fascination, what the vertiginous attraction of war and death could be. He was sixteen when he went south with some novice guerrillas to train for an unlikely rebellion and a Great March somewhere. Seven or eight boys who needed a nursemaid more than a rifle had formed that ragged little band commanded by an officer three years older than they, the only one who knew the rules of the game. Francisco was not motivated by their goal of implanting Maoist theories in Latin America—he had not even troubled to read them—but by a simple and pedestrian longing for adventure. He wanted to escape his parents' tutelage. Eager to prove that he was a man, he left home one night without saying goodbye and with nothing in his knapsack but an explorer's knife, a pair of wool socks, and a notebook for his poetry. His family looked everywhere for him; they even went to the police, and when finally they traced his steps, they were inconsolable, feeling they had been betrayed. Professor Leal sank into silence and melancholy, wounded to the quick by the ingratitude of a son who would leave without so much as a word of explanation. Francisco's mother donned the habit of a nun of the Order of Lourdes, appealing to heaven for the return of her favorite son. For Hilda, who was always careful about her appearance—following the styles in raising or lowering the hems of her skirts, in adding a tuck here or removing a pleat there—this was an enormous sacrifice. Her husband, who at first had been prepared to put his pedagogical experience into play and calmly await his son's voluntary return, lost his composure completely when he saw his wife in the white tunic and blue girdle of Lourdes. Absolutely beside himself, he tore off her robes, vehemently denouncing all such forms of barbarism, and threatened to march out of the house, out of the country, out of America itself, if he ever saw her in that ridiculous garb again. Then he overcame his misgivings, called upon his better nature, and set out in search of his missing son. For days, he wandered the burro trails, investigating every shadow that lay in his path, and while he walked from village to village, from hill to hill, his anger steadily mounted, and he made plans to give the boy the only real thrashing of his lifetime. Finally someone told him that down in the woods they sometimes heard rifle shots, and that filthy young boys emerged once in a while to beg for food and steal hens; in truth, no one thought they were witnessing the first sketchy outlines of a revolutionary plan for the entire continent but, instead, the followers of some heathen sect inspired in India, like others seen before in these parts. That was all the information Professor Leal needed to find the guerrilla encampment. When he saw them in their rags, filthy and uncombed, eating canned beans and stale sardines, drilling with a rifle left over from the First World War, stung by wasps and all the insects of the forest, his rage evaporated in a flash to be replaced by his perennial compassion. A disciplined political militancy had persuaded him to consider violence and terrorism as strategic errors, especially in a country where social change could be effected through other means. He was convinced that such tiny armed bands did not have the ghost of a chance for success. All they would achieve was to be massacred by the regular Army. Revolution, he always said, must come from an awakened people who become aware of their rights and their strengths, and then march forward demanding liberty—but never from seven bourgeois boys playing at war.

Francisco was kneeling beside a small bonfire, heating water, when he saw an unrecognizable figure approaching through the trees. It was an old man with a three days' growth of beard and unruly hair, dressed in a dark suit and tie, covered with dust and thistles, carrying a small black suitcase in one hand and a large stick for support in the other. Francisco rose to his feet, amazed, and his companions imitated him. Then he realized who the man was. He had always thought of his father as a large, sturdy man with flashing eyes and an orator's booming voice, never as this melancholy, shabby, stooped creature limping toward them in mud-covered shoes.

“Papa!” he managed to say before he choked on a sob.

Professor Leal, dropping the crude staff and small suitcase, opened his arms. His son leaped over the bonfire, ran between his friends, and hugged his father, proving in the act that he was too old now to find shelter in those arms, because he was not only stronger but half a head taller.

“Your mother is expecting you.”

“I'm coming.”

While the boy ran to collect his belongings, the Professor used the occasion to deliver a brief speech to the other boys, arguing that if they wanted a revolution they would do better to proceed by following standard methods, not by improvising.

“We don't improvise, we're Maoists,” said one.

“Then you're mad. What works for the Chinese won't work here,” the Professor stated categorically.

Much later, those same youths would spread through forest, mountain, and jungle distributing bullets and Chinese slogans in villages forgotten by American history. But this the Professor could not suspect when he took his son from their camp. The boys watched them leave arm in arm, and shrugged their shoulders.

During the train ride home, the father sat in silence, observing Francisco. When they reached the station, he put into a few words everything that was in his heart.

“I trust this won't happen again. In the future I will give you a stropping for every tear your mother sheds. Does that seem fair?”

“Yes, Papa.”

In his heart, Francisco was content to be home again. Shortly afterward, cured forever of the temptation to become a guerrilla, he submerged himself in psychology textbooks, fascinated by the game of illusions, of ideas contained within other ideas, and they, in turn, within others, in a never-ending challenge. He also lost himself in literature; seduced by the work of Latin-American writers, he realized he lived in a country in miniature, a spot on the map, buried in a vast and marvelous continent where progress arrives several centuries late: a land of hurricanes, earthquakes, rivers broad as the sea, jungles where sunlight never penetrates, where mythological animals creep and crawl over eternal humus alongside human beings unchanged since the beginning of time; an irrational geography where you can be born with a star on your forehead, a sign of the marvelous; an enchanted realm of towering cordilleras where the air is as thin as a veil, of absolute deserts, dark, shaded forests, and serene valleys. Here all races are mixed in the crucible of violence: feathered Indians; voyagers from faraway lands; itinerant blacks; Chinese stowed like contraband in apple crates; bewildered Turks; girls like flames; priests, prophets, and tyrants—all elbow to elbow, the living as well as the ghosts of those who through the centuries trod this earth blessed by seething passions. These American men and women are everywhere, suffering in the cane fields; shivering with fever in the tin and silver mines; lost beneath the water, diving for pearls; surviving, against all odds, in prisons.

Hungry for new experiences, when Francisco completed his training, he decided to perfect his knowledge by studying abroad; this disconcerted his parents somewhat, although they agreed to help finance him, and were sufficiently restrained not to utter dire warnings about the perversions awaiting young men traveling alone. Francisco spent several years outside the country, at the end of which he had gained a doctorate and an acceptable command of English. To keep body and soul together, he washed dishes in a restaurant, and from time to time photographed the revels of lesser celebrities in the barrios.

Meanwhile, his country was in full political ferment, and the year he returned a Socialist candidate was elected to the Presidency. In spite of pessimistic prophecies and failed conspiracies—and to the stupefaction of the North American Embassy—this candidate was sworn into office. Francisco had never seen his father so happy.

“You see, son. We didn't need your rifle.”

“But you're an anarchist,
viejo.
Your party isn't represented in the government,” Francisco teased.

“Details, details. The important thing is that the people have the power, and now it can never be taken from them.”

As always, his head was in the clouds. The day of the military coup, he thought the takeover was the work of a few reactionaries whom those in the armed forces loyal to the constitution and the republic would rapidly subdue. Now, several years later, he continued to hope for this. He fought the dictatorship in outlandish ways. At the height of the repression, when stadiums and schools were being pressed into service to confine thousands of political prisoners, Professor Leal printed one of his broadsides on his kitchen printing press, climbed to the top floor of the Post Office Building, and scattered them into the street. A favorable wind was blowing and his mission was unexpectedly successful: a few copies landed on the Ministry of Defense. The text contained certain opinions that to Professor Leal seemed appropriate to the moment in history.

The education of the military, from the boot soldier to the highest-ranking officer, inescapably transforms them into enemies of civilian society and of the people. The uniform itself, with all the ridiculous embellishments that distinguish the regiments and ranks, all the infantile nonsense that occupies a large part of military life and would make all soldiers seem like clowns if it were not that they are always a threat—all this separates the military from society. The garb they wear and the thousand puerile ceremonies in which they waste their lives, with no object other than training to kill and destroy, would be humiliating for men who had not lost the last shred of human dignity. These men would die of shame had they not, through a systematic perversion of ideas, converted those symbols into a source of vanity. Passive obedience is their greatest virtue. Subject to despotic discipline, they end by feeling horror toward anyone who acts with freedom. They wish to impose by brutal discipline the stupid order of which they themselves are victims.

One cannot love the military without detesting the people.

—Bakunin

If he had given it a second thought, or consulted a more expert opinion, Professor Leal would have realized that this text was too long to be launched from the air, because before anyone could read it through, he would be arrested. But his admiration for the father of anarchism was so great that he had said nothing about his plan. His wife and children found out twenty-four hours later when the press, radio, and television published a military proclamation, and the Professor cut it out to paste in his scrapbook.

M
ILITARY
P
ROCLAMATION
N
UMBER 19

1. The citizenry is hereby informed that the Armed Forces will not tolerate public demonstrations of any kind.

2. Citizen Bakunin, the author of a slanderous pamphlet attacking the sacred honor of the Armed Forces, must present himself voluntarily at the Ministry of Defense before 4:30 p.m. today.

3. Failure to report will signify that this Bakunin has chosen to ignore the directive of the Junta of the Commanders-in-Chief, with readily foreseeable consequences.

That day, the three Leal brothers removed the printing press from the kitchen, hoping to prevent their father from falling into the trap of his impassioned idealism. From then on, they tried to give him few causes to be uneasy. None of the three told him of their activities in the opposition, but when José, along with various priests and nuns of the Vicariate, was arrested, they had not been able to prevent Professor Leal from sitting in the Plaza de Armas holding a placard that read:
AT THIS VERY MOMENT, MY SON IS BEING TORTURED.
If Javier and Francisco had not arrived in time to pick him up bodily and carry him away, he would have doused himself with gasoline like a bonze, and set fire to himself before the eyes of any who had gathered in sympathy.

Francisco became a part of a group organized to help fugitives escape across one border and to slip members of the opposition into the country across another. He collected funds to help survivors in hiding, and to buy food and medicines; he compiled reports to send outside the country, hidden in the soles of priests' shoes and in dolls' wigs. He carried out several almost impossible missions: he photographed parts of the confidential files of the Political Police, and recorded on microfilm the identity cards of torturers, believing that one day the material would help to see justice done. He shared this secret only with José, who did not want to know names, places, or other details, because he had already had a taste of how difficult it is not to talk in the face of certain pressures.

There, in Pradelio Ranquileo's grotto, feeling the bond of their complicity in the opposition, Francisco thought about José. He regretted not having asked earlier for his brother's help. If Pradelio had disappeared into the silence of the mountains, they would never pick up his trail; and if he had gone down to the valley seeking his revenge, and was arrested, there would be nothing they could do to save him.

Francisco shook off his weariness, splashed water on his clothing to cool off, and began his descent with the heat of early afternoon weighing on his head like a physical burden; at times he was blinded as brightly colored dots danced before his eyes. When finally he reached the grove of trees where he had left the motorcycle, he found Irene waiting for him. Worried, she ran to Francisco's arms. She had been too impatient to stay at the Ranquileo home, and had flagged down the first farmer who passed and asked for a ride in his wagon. She led Francisco to the welcoming shade of the trees, where she had removed the rocks and made the ground smooth. She helped him lie down, and while he rested, wishing he could control the jerking of his legs, she wiped the sweat from his face with her handkerchief. She split open a melon Digna had given her, and fed it to him, biting off pieces and then transferring them to his mouth with a kiss. The fruit was warm, and too sweet, but it seemed to Francisco that each mouthful was a miraculous restorative, capable of nullifying his fatigue and fending off his dejection. When there was nothing left of the melon but the tooth-marked rind, Irene wet the handkerchief in a puddle and cleaned their faces and hands. Beneath the merciless three-o'clock sun they renewed the promises they had whispered the night before, kissing and caressing with new awareness.