Brief Encounters With Che Guevara_ Stories - Ben Fountain [83]
The Cubans got him, though not without some ugly bickering. I continued to follow the story in the newspapers, goaded by the notion that I had some sort of stake in the outcome. In any event, the discovery and subsequent reinterment of Che’s remains inspired a spasm of worldwide reflection on the Guevara legacy. Dozens of new books were published, and old ones reissued. Thousands of sordid CIA documents came to light. Fidel made a lot of interminable speeches, while tidal waves of Che merchandise swamped the world’s free markets. The global revolution prophesied by Che had yet to come to pass, though he would surely find the reasons just as compelling as ever. Poverty, injustice, oppression, suffering, these remain the basic conditions of life on most of the planet—whatever else has changed since his death, this hasn’t, but as life becomes more pleasurable and affluent for the rest of us, the poor seem more remote than ever, their appeal to our humanity even fainter.
I’m in my forties now, halfway to heaven, as they say—the years are going faster, gathering speed. Recently it occurred to me that I’ve spent a lot of energy and many years trying to learn a very few basic things, which may turn out to be mostly crude opinions anyway. There’s so little in the world we can be sure of, and maybe it’s that lack, that flaw or deficiency, if you will, that drives our strongest compulsions. The last time I visited Haiti, Ponce was harried and overworked as usual, embittered by the terrible working conditions. “I’m like a jet pilot without a plane!” he cried. There were more sick people than ever, and fewer doctors to cure them; what was left of the Haitian professional class was bailing out, liquidating their assets and heading for the U.S.
“Not me,” Ponce declared. “I’m staying. Everybody says I’m crazy, but I’m staying.” I told him I wanted to see Laurent, to get his thoughts on the final chapter in the Che story—it might be an interesting historical exercise, I said, though secretly I was hoping for some sign or clue that always seemed to be hovering just beyond my reach. Because his health had declined considerably, Laurent rarely left his home these days, but Ponce knew where he lived, and so one hot, sleepy Sunday afternoon we bought some sweets and rum to present as gifts and drove over to his house. Laurent lived in the old Salomon quarter near the center of town, close enough to the palace that he could still, if proximity counted for anything, sustain his dream of ruling the country some day. Ponce got lost in the tangle of eighteenth-century streets, made some random turns, swore, seemed to find his way again. Bands of sunlight and shadow tiger-striped the narrow streets; the old houses had the slumped, encrusted look of shipwrecks lying at the bottom of the sea. After some more addled swearing and driving around, Ponce pulled up in front of a crumbling wood-frame cottage. The sorry state of the house, the piles of trash in the yard, seemed to belie the fundamental human wish to cope. Two teams of wild-looking boys were playing soccer in the street, the match swirling around us as we climbed from the car.
“I’m sure he’s home,” Ponce said as we crossed the street. “He hardly ever leaves his house anymore.”
The afternoon light had a coppery, brackish tint. The dry weeds seemed to explode at the touch of our feet. “He might not recognize us,” Ponce warned as we crossed the yard. “He’s pretty senile, but maybe the rum will get us in.” We stepped from the sun into the cavelike shadows of the porch, careful to edge around the rotten floorboards. We knocked on the door, waited, and knocked again. I turned and watched the street for a minute, the shrieking boys absorbed in their game of soccer, the slow procession of Sunday passersby. The wall of sunlight tracking the porch’s shadow-line seemed as smooth and final as marble slab.
“Is he sick?” Ponce wondered out loud. “My God, has he died?” We knocked again, and we called, then we walked along the porch tapping all the windows, trying to rouse some