566
PARTISA REVIEW
"I know you understand. I know from your jokes, you make fun ..."
Strange to hear this from her, who bore herself as gravely as an Ethiope
princess. "You are always touching each other, always touching ... with your
legs under the table ... You understand more than politics ... Not like the
other foreigners who come here, the
internacionalistas,
especially the ones
from your country. They understand nothing about life, and nothing about
this country ... Now I'll tell you quickly. I am from Bluefields, like the boy
you helped the other day on the street. He is the only son of my best friend
there, the only son left. There were two others. They refu ed to go
to
the
Army ... A month ago, one night, they were taken away. A patrol of sol–
diers came and took them ... In the morning, my friend, their mother, found
her two sons when she opened the door to go out and look for them ...
They were in pieces ... Their arms and legs were cut off as well as their
heads ... There was a note ... signed by the
Contras.
But it was not the
Contras
who killed them.
It
was the
Sandinistas.
They want us to believe,
everyone
to
believe, the people to believe that the
Contras
kill us ... I had
to tell you this. The boy you helped in the street, the last on, Ruby, is ri king
his life coming and going across the country ... He lives only
0
that people
everywhere will know the truth ..."
The waitress, whose face was full of interest and who gave the
impression of being strong-willed, seemed suddenly to lose her way.
"On the floor right above u the Sandinistas have stored hundreds of
guns and grenades ... It's a fortress. We live in fear ... for our lives, espe–
cially those of us from Bluefields. They hate us because we're part African
and not mestizos the way they are, or like most of the government, who are
all white. And because we speak English over there ..."
She went on in rambling detail, caught up in her frustrations, which in–
cluded a need for good soap. She hadn't had" a decent bath with good soap"
in such a long time ... She didn't ask us to send her any, as others had.
"y
ou know that American Indian chief you sometimes speak to ... He
never speaks to me, never has, although I'm the only one down here who
can speak English, and he doesn't know Spanish ... Now he's gone over
there ... "
The manager, the man in charge, to whom everyone else looked up
(was he a commissar, the man in charge of thoughts as well as of restaurant
details, was he the "brains" of the place?) was now walking over in an easy–
going way, to remind her, most casually and even cordially, that i was time
to clear the room. He might have been a Spanish headwaiter in Madrid:
very formal, "correct," but without malice on the face of it. The waitress did
not leave "in a flurry." She resumed her routine with her own tropical dig–
nity.
Time was passing, The Havana celebrations would be on us faster
than those at Estell.
As
the two National Fiestas to Revolution approached
