"That girl. That tall one, the beautiful one that
I used to see you with at the meetings .... "
I pushed his hand away and let myself go down
and leaned on my arm with my head against the can.
.I could almost feel him looking down at my head,
with all the blood rushing there and making it warm
and aching.
"I found her dead-with her two friends-in the
prado near Domingo's land." He said it very quick-
ly, as if he did not want to say it but had to finish
what he had begun. "That's how it was I got caught.
I was going along down there trying to find a way
into the town ....
"
I let my head fall into the dirt without feeling
the dampness of it and the stones on my face and
when I tried to stop myself from crying my breath
came out suddenly and made the sound of a long
Aaah.
" ... and I walked right into that place and found
them on the ground, lying out on the ground there
-suddenly,
so quiet-and I jumped and got so
excited that I yelled right out, 'Hey
I
Hey 1 Hey,
someone
I'
before I remembered. Hombre, it was
terrible
I"
I put up my hand and he grabbed it suddenly.
Then I beat it, with his gripping it tightly, against
the side of the can, crying and saying, "Do me a
favor, hombre. Do me a favor. Stop! Stop
I"
"Heh?" he said.
I felt hands on my shoulders trying to lift me up.
It was Garcia who was over with us now and he
was saying to Villegas, "What were you telling
him ?"
"I didn't know. I did not think that he would feel
like that. You know how it is, Comrade Garcia. I
thought everything was done," Villegas said.
I did not want to listen to the talking but it came
into my head like thumps and made the blood seem
warmer. I was crying, but when I was hearing them
it made it seem empty and useless. Garcia was bend-
ing down over me and I could hear Villegas telling
him, "That's how I got caught. I ... " and then I
tried to pay attention to what Garcia was whisper-
ing to me and to feel only the taps on my shoulder
so that I could drown out the other voice, but what
Garcia was saying was only a low mumble and while
I was listening to it, concentrating all on it, I was
having the dream I used to have in the time when
we were getting ready for all this.
We were all sitting and talking somewhere, every-
body seeming happy and wanting to talk, and Lenin
was sitting with us and I was right next to him.
'''May I call you Ilyich?" I kept saying to him. "May
I call you Ilyich?"
"Yes," he would smile. "Yes," and he would nod
his head.
Now I dreamed of that again, but Lenin's head
was bloody. He did not smile and the blood kept
running down over his forehead and into his eyes.
14
He still nodded his head and kept saying, "Yes,
yes," slowly and weakly, and then she was standing
behind him and looking at me. She had on the dress
that she was wearing when I saw her the last time
and I stared at the dress. I kept staring at it and
thinking about it and suddenly I heard Villegas's
voice, sounding as loud as a thunderclap in the cell,
saying, "The dress was still pulled up. The fiends
must have left them just like that."
"Who will believe it, eh? Who will believe it?"
somebody whose voice I did not know said.
"They told them they could do that, you know,"
Villegas said. "They told them they could have the
women if they took the town. They told them that."
"Don't I know it?"
"I shit on them
I"
an old man said. "I shit on
every god damned priest in creation."
"I, too," said Villegas. "You have named the
right ones. They pushed the soldiers on. They told
the Africans the lies. They did it ("
"You have said it, Comrade."
I listened to them all. I was almost calm. Garcia
kept patting my shoulder and the ground felt cool
and soft and I could not smell anything. Villegas
must have been sitting up straight and tight again,
and then, after a moment, when it seemed as if they
would begin to talk again, we all heard footsteps in
rhythm coming down the,corridor. We listened and
heard the knocks of the hard boots on the stones
and we knew that it meant that there was a bunch
of them.
"They're coming for somebody," Garcia said.
"They've got the guns with them this time. I can
tell."
New Calendars
We turn to the kingdom of freedom, extend birth
to new calendars, watch the triumphant
path of history
carry the beautiful banner, those red ribbons of love.
For all our brothers, for the better life, to the warm
nights in later summers when lovers are unrepressed;
For all this we raise the banner, not selfish gain.
An old gentleman asked for the motive:
And I told him it is for horseshoe pitching contests,
for mothers happy in their children, s'eeing them mating.
It is for this man's power to perfect a better hydraulic brake
and for the scholar's new thesis on Greek tragedy.
For the absence of scrap iron and the greased bullet
and the dispossess and the syphilitic woman dying tenderly
and the, old man picking food from a rubbish can.
The motive is music in the factory and no picket lines;
in evening the son reading Hamlet to a happy father.
Out with graft in police courts, banish the whining beggar;
preserve the contribution of men of letters, and men in mmes:
From each his splendid power, to each his deserved need!
NORMAN ROSS
MAY,
1936
