He grew angry. Fuck them, he said, they can go fuck themselves. But I wondered if he would prefer me … more obscure.”
Walter smiled. “No. He’s thinking of what to do with you. He knows there’s a use for everything. Especially a piece as valuable as you. He’s figuring what that use is. He’ll support you. It’s only your name that can unite the guerrillas on the continent. Yours or his. If you leave Cuba you will be the great rebel, the adventurer. He’ll be the stay-at-home, the housewife. That’s hard for him.” This was a very long speech for Ponco. There were flecks of blood around his mouth. Of jam, I mean. “But in the end he’ll back you. Once, in the mountains, when I first joined, Fidel said to me,
‘I
am all the names of rebellion in history.’ ”
I laughed gleefully.
Ponco stared at me. “Are horns growing from my head? Is milk pouring from my ears?”
“No. He said that to me, too. The first time we met, in a kitchen in Mexico. I thought he was crazy. I told him so.”
“
I
thought it was beautiful. I was sixteen. I’m that type. You see? He doesn’t
waste
anything. He had held on to the remark for three years. It didn’t work for you. Okay. A middle-class doctor. Wrong sort. He had to find the right sort of character. He waits till he finds the right use for things. He knows how to wait.” His voice became raspier as he spoke, but he continued. “The Russians will be angry. One Vietnam is enough, they think. No one becomes too upset. The United States loses a little territory, but it gets rid of its crap. Two Vietnams! Unthinkable! But he will support you. Your arguments are good. And what kind of rebel is he if he is afraid? He’ll come round. You should work on your writing. It would be interesting to read.”
“I’ve lost the taste for reflection. I taught myself to think only of what must be done. I know now what must be done. Where do I begin?” We were two men speaking in whispers, in gasps, at a table, on an island in the ocean. It seemed funny to me, our weak voices, rasping, two breaths barely exhaled, in pain.
“At the beginning. Here. Once upon a time there was a prince on an enchanted island where prisoners changed into young Communists.” Ponco looked thin and nervous. His body bent over the table. It was my mother.
“You sound like my mother,” I said.
“You’re seeing things again.” He drew back from the table. “You know,I’m jealous of your childhood. Stupid.” As he stood up he mimed crying, a silent waah. “No one to read me stories. No one knew how to read. No stories. I like stories. You should write me a story. Many people would like to know the story of your life.” He picked up his book from the chair by the door. “No more talking now. My voice hurts.”
I went in to lie down on my cot. Images floated before me, fully colored, and were replaced by other images, as in the moment before sleep. My mother reading to me at dinner. The smoky light of my childhood dining room that makes Ponco jealous. The dank and bad-smelling air that began when I began and that follows me everywhere. An attack. Careening down the hall of my parents’ house. The foot of my parents’ bed, where I have fallen.
Argentina, 1928
My Asthma
When I was a child I choked on the air; I coughed; I tried to spit my pain out into my hands in hard knots of dark slippery sputum. My asthma began before my memory begins, and so I can never know its root. When my father and mother were arguing—and they often were, for they were both proud, spirited people—my father said that my asthma came from her, that it had come to me because my mother was a selfish woman, she cared for her pleasure more than she loved her own son. She had been careless with me. (She had to do whatever she wanted, had to go swimming when no one else would, when a storm was about to begin, when it was criminal to expose a child to the wind.) One overcast chilly day, when I was an infant, my
Walter smiled. “No. He’s thinking of what to do with you. He knows there’s a use for everything. Especially a piece as valuable as you. He’s figuring what that use is. He’ll support you. It’s only your name that can unite the guerrillas on the continent. Yours or his. If you leave Cuba you will be the great rebel, the adventurer. He’ll be the stay-at-home, the housewife. That’s hard for him.” This was a very long speech for Ponco. There were flecks of blood around his mouth. Of jam, I mean. “But in the end he’ll back you. Once, in the mountains, when I first joined, Fidel said to me,
‘I
am all the names of rebellion in history.’ ”
I laughed gleefully.
Ponco stared at me. “Are horns growing from my head? Is milk pouring from my ears?”
“No. He said that to me, too. The first time we met, in a kitchen in Mexico. I thought he was crazy. I told him so.”
“
I
thought it was beautiful. I was sixteen. I’m that type. You see? He doesn’t
waste
anything. He had held on to the remark for three years. It didn’t work for you. Okay. A middle-class doctor. Wrong sort. He had to find the right sort of character. He waits till he finds the right use for things. He knows how to wait.” His voice became raspier as he spoke, but he continued. “The Russians will be angry. One Vietnam is enough, they think. No one becomes too upset. The United States loses a little territory, but it gets rid of its crap. Two Vietnams! Unthinkable! But he will support you. Your arguments are good. And what kind of rebel is he if he is afraid? He’ll come round. You should work on your writing. It would be interesting to read.”
“I’ve lost the taste for reflection. I taught myself to think only of what must be done. I know now what must be done. Where do I begin?” We were two men speaking in whispers, in gasps, at a table, on an island in the ocean. It seemed funny to me, our weak voices, rasping, two breaths barely exhaled, in pain.
“At the beginning. Here. Once upon a time there was a prince on an enchanted island where prisoners changed into young Communists.” Ponco looked thin and nervous. His body bent over the table. It was my mother.
“You sound like my mother,” I said.
“You’re seeing things again.” He drew back from the table. “You know,I’m jealous of your childhood. Stupid.” As he stood up he mimed crying, a silent waah. “No one to read me stories. No one knew how to read. No stories. I like stories. You should write me a story. Many people would like to know the story of your life.” He picked up his book from the chair by the door. “No more talking now. My voice hurts.”
I went in to lie down on my cot. Images floated before me, fully colored, and were replaced by other images, as in the moment before sleep. My mother reading to me at dinner. The smoky light of my childhood dining room that makes Ponco jealous. The dank and bad-smelling air that began when I began and that follows me everywhere. An attack. Careening down the hall of my parents’ house. The foot of my parents’ bed, where I have fallen.
Argentina, 1928
My Asthma
When I was a child I choked on the air; I coughed; I tried to spit my pain out into my hands in hard knots of dark slippery sputum. My asthma began before my memory begins, and so I can never know its root. When my father and mother were arguing—and they often were, for they were both proud, spirited people—my father said that my asthma came from her, that it had come to me because my mother was a selfish woman, she cared for her pleasure more than she loved her own son. She had been careless with me. (She had to do whatever she wanted, had to go swimming when no one else would, when a storm was about to begin, when it was criminal to expose a child to the wind.) One overcast chilly day, when I was an infant, my
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