ANTHONY KERRIGAN
567
we opted for Havana, which was our eventual destination in any case and
where the anniversary of Fidel's
attentat-before-the-revolt,
the disastrous
and suicidal attack on the Cuban Army under Batista at the Moncada
Barracks, would be celebrated a few days after the Sandinista Anniversary
at Estell. My diva ("lover") was impatient to see the Havana of her
imagination, and of my youth. We wondered if the foundation which was
paying for us to look in on the twin Revolutions would appreciate the benefits
ofcounting on one's diva ("lover") for a visit to liberated countries.
When we returned to Managua after two weeks in La Habana, as our
tickets and visas required, we stayed again at the Intercontinental Hotel for
the night before taking the next day's plane back to Miami.
On that morning of our last day we made our way to the
Sala de De–
sayunos
and found our regular table. Our Bluefields-native looked hieratic,
distant in her dignity. We lingered over our last breakfast in Managua until
the place was near-empty again. And she approached in concentric circles of
heightened conspiracy. At length she found the right moment. She herself
seemed a revelation.
"The Indian chief, your Mandala man, is gone. He is no more. The last
son, Ruby, brought me a letter yesterday from his mother, and he told me
everything that happened, more than the letters ... Only some ten or
twelve days ago, my friend was visited late at night by two men she knew,
who are like
primos
to her. They told her to follow them, and took her by a
back route to avoid the soldiers, to a place from which she could see the front
of the Moravian church. They told her to watch the front door. Just before
the sun began to be light, two men, perhaps the same two, came with a large
sack they were carrying between them. They emptied it. She knew they
wanted her to see what they had put there ... After they went away, she
went to see ...
It
was the same sight she had seen before when she opened
her front door that time at dawn. Two arms, two legs, a head. A body
without the parts ... A chain with good stones was hanging on the church
door."
The woman from Bluefields at length paused.
"Venganza!"
She used the one terrifYing word, in Spanish.
"Her sons' honor! ... She heard what she thought was a patrol and
hurried back to her hiding place and watched from a safe place. Soon some
other people came and she saw them coming and going around the entrance .
. . As
soon as they left, she started home, after going by the front of the
church again, to take a last look ... Nothing was left but the chain on the
door ... And some blood ... The pieces of man had been carried away ...
Why did they leave the chain? She didn't touch it either ..."
Our Bluefields woman again paused, and, as she turned to go back to
her routine, she said slowly:
"Your Indian chief is gone. Perhaps some people in Bluefields could do
