tell me about your relationship with Fernanda Rivas, who at one stage was Comrade Two. Living together so long, I imagine you became very close—intimate friends, even.” Major Romero lights a cigarette. I make sure not to let on how the smoke irritates me. I can’t show even the slightest hint of weakness.
“In the revolution we have comrades, not friends,” I cut him off short.
“A matter of putting different names to things,” Romero counters with a small smile that can’t conceal his satisfaction at having annoyed me. He lets out a lungful of smoke that blears the room.
You’re not going to find out a thing. If you know as much as you say you do, Major, then why ask? You don’t need to know that Fernanda and I met a few months before the debacle in that sand-swept place. We had gotten bad news. We didn’t get the funding for the community projects after all. The engineer shook his head slowly, eyes on the floor and not saying a word, thoroughly downcast; the blueprints he’d drawn up without charging a cent lay on the table, ruffled by a dry breeze that blew into the room. One of the blueprints rolled up and fell to the floor. No one picked it up.
I bit my fist out of sheer rage. I was sick to death of false promises. Marcela, it’s just one project, if no one funds it now we’ll find other ways to do it, Fernanda said, mystifyingly serene. I could only work my jaw in fury. So much red tape, so many plans and promises. The sandy patch would go on being a no-man’s-land. Words count for nothing, I said to Fernanda, my voice almost breaking. Another frustrated project with no funding or government support. One more, one of so many. I had lost count. Who cared, anyway? Who cared about us? You’re mistaken. Words have more power than you can imagine. How could Fernanda believe in the power of words? How was that possible?
You’ll also never know, little Romero, that I saw Fernanda almost every day. We worked together in the poorest parts on the outskirts of the capital, organizing projects for communities. At the Teachers’ Union rallies we were always together. So many times the police’s water-cannon trucks flung us to the ground with their blasts of water, but we kept pushing forward and resisting. And you’ll never know, Major, that while Fernanda was very hard on herself and said little, her generosity was boundless. She was a workhorse, tireless when it came to organizing. Politics and revolution: that was all she talked about. Focused. Her mind centered on it. The perfect militant, ready to give her all for others. I watched her rise to the highest ranks of the armed struggle, to the peak of the Guiding Thought. The revolution made flesh.
I know what I’m talking about. Hold fast to your rage and hate. Keep them burning within. Hate will pave the way to great things. Come with me to the Federation’s auditorium next Friday and you’ll find out what I’m talking about, Marcela. You’ll see what words can do. That’s where it all started. Words are just hot air, but since you ask, I’ll come. You know nothing, Romero, and will never understand the heroism of Comrade Two.
The auditorium was teeming with workers, teachers, and students. Seated at the center of the table was a man with thick tortoiseshell glasses that offset a calm, neutral expression. He had a teacherly air about him that made me imagine it would be a long afternoon. So much to do and here I was at a talk. I got comfortable beside Fernanda. Her expression had changed, had transformed, perhaps. I’d never seen her look that way at anyone. What was it? Her body stayed straight in her seat while her expectant pupils filled with light. What was happening to her?
When the professor with the thick glasses stood, his fluent delivery made me forget everything else. The things he said and the vigorous way he said them didn’t fit with his academic bearing, and the brilliant way he weaved together ideas and connected them to reality was unsurpassable. A man who knew what he was talking about. The tapestry kept growing in a dance of ideas: class struggle, revolution, starting in the countryside, Mao, Lenin, Marx, Communist Party, no stopping until power is gained. His voice echoed in my head. The fundamental objective is power. Lenin said it, comrades: “Everything is illusory except power.” Power. No stopping until it’s ours. Believing in projects financed by others, in unions, in rallies, was illusory. Nothing but illusory. Power was what was real. Was that what shone in Fernanda’s eyes?
Applause announced the end and I dared to ask a question.
“Leaders of the group Red Nation say that we women will be in charge of feeding the troops.” A few laughs ricocheted around the hall. “What I want to know, professor, is this: What role in the revolution does your party offer us women?”
He raised an eyebrow and adjusted his glasses, fixed his gaze on me and cleared his throat. The incorporation of women into the production process, coupled with the deepening of the class struggle in this country, necessarily poses the central problem of the politicization of women as an integral part of the people’s war. The State, increasingly reactionary, denies women the future. The only possible path for professional women is taking up the role that history demands of them as intellectuals: participating in the revolution. I saw it all, as if a beaming light coming out of his throat had pierced the center of my chest and radiated within me to dispel any speck of darkness. His was the only path possible. His words could change the world, could write history. Women fully included in the revolution. Now I understood the sparkle in Fernanda’s eyes.
“I have to meet him.”
“No problem, Marcela. What about the three of us have dinner together?” Fernanda continued in a conspiratorial tone, “We’ve got plans we want to share with you.”
“You know him?”
“I never said because it wouldn’t have been wise then. He’s my husband.”
Another yunza and then a few more. Gaitán came closer. You ran, Modesta, making your escape among the balloons, the dancers, the chicha drinkers, and the streamers. Another yunza and your cousin left your thoughts. Gaitán practiced swinging the ax. Some trees fell, others stood strong. Gaitán came with streamers in hand and wound them around you. You adjusted them; their colors were bright. You wanted to leave your parents’ house, Modesta, you were impatient for a house of your own. Months later, the community comes together again to dance around the tree. Gaitán decides to take up the ax once more. Look, look, don’t stop looking, your mother says, jubilant. The community dances at that never-ending yunza. The presents thump to the ground and the tree topples after just one ax blow. The circle dissolves as everyone rushes to gather up something, except you. You stay right where you are, beaming at Gaitán.
You breathe deep the strong scent of Gaitán above you. His neck smells of mountain deer. His chest, of dry earth. Ay, Gaitán, my sweet Gaitán. You put your hand on his back to pull him to you. Closer. Inside, Gaitán moves. It hurts a bit. Ay, you say and pull him toward you again. Ay, and he keeps on moving. His neck, his ears, and his shoulders sweat. A rod of hot iron down there inside you. Gaitán breathes hard. Ay, right there, keep going, it ignites and makes you open your legs wider, Modesta, he keeps on and you shift below him to feel him more. So good, that, there. Keep going, Gaitán. A vigorous puma running the length of the valley. Inside you, so good, parting you in two. Keep going, Gaitán. Your legs trap him. He thrusts, desperate. Your breasts press against his chest. Split in two, four, a thousand. You tremble, sweat; a moan escapes you. Gaitán navigates your river, which forms a torrent when it surges with his own. Your skin bristles. You tremble in the light of the moon and your body stretches toward the snowcap of the Apu, melting it. Modesta and Gaitán.
