Butler blew out his breath and looked at me. My father once remarked that as they die from the hunter’s wound, big game animals go through startling changes of expression. I saw Butler look wicked, woeful, merry, terrified, then pleased with himself over the next twenty seconds. “Hubbard,” he went on, “I lifted him out of his chair, manhandled him into the john, held his head over the toilet bowl which—don’t shy from this, Hubbard—I had not flushed, no, by anticipation and design, not flushed—I am a calculating case officer—and I said to Chevi, ‘Tell me now, or you can taste the truth.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘didn’t do it, Dix baby, believe in Chevi.’ Now, I wasn’t going to force the issue. The threat, I recognize, is invariably greater than the execution—I, too, am witting of Clausewitz—but the force of something that I would call the force of completion came over me, and I shoved his head into that stinking bowl, and rubbed it around there. I was shrieking away: ‘Cuba, sí! Yeah? Castro, sí! Yeah?’”
The bartender came over, “Keep down the Castro talk, can you, gentlemen, there are a couple of Cubans here, my regular customers,” but, seeing the look on Butler’s face, added, “thank you,” and decamped.
“Next time,” said Butler to me, “he better come back with a length of pipe.”
I was silent. I was usually silent around Butler. “Did he confess?” I asked at last.
“No,” Butler said. “Every time I lifted his head, he kept saying, ‘What I keep in me, you will never get.’ He was phenomenal! ‘What I keep in me, you will never get!’ I finally had to throw him into the shower. I actually got in with him. I started to scrub him, and he went berserk. It was like catching a raccoon in a garbage can. I jumped out of the shower. I was laughing. But I wanted to cry. I loved Chevi Fuertes then. I love him now.”
“What!”
“Yes. I am shit-face drunk. But he was shit-face then. By externals. Through coercion. I am shit-face from the misery of having done it to him. Because I enjoyed doing it, and I enjoy suffering remorse, and now, Hubbard, I feel a lot of disquiet. Because he has disappeared with his lover in the DGI. For all I know he is in Cuba, and I am on my way to Indochina. A taste for combat is the only gift God ever gave me.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
“Was I right or wrong with Fuertes?”
“You know what I will answer.”
“But what if he did betray me?”
“What if you were wrong?”
“Your anger sits up there above your belly button. It’s in your mouth,” said Butler. “So I don’t care how you judge me. Up or down, no matter. I did what I did to Chevi because I decided to. Hubbard, you will never believe this, but I would like to become a calculating case officer like you.” He began to laugh. “Believe that, sucker,” he said, “and I will export opium to Hong Kong.”
I managed to get him home without an episode. That is the only credit I will take for the night. When I returned to my apartment, an envelope had been slid under the door.
the 18th November
Dear Peter (alias Robert Charles),
Can we say I knew you when? One of the first American expressions I learned was “I knew you when.” Yes, I knew you as a decent fellow in Montevideo, Peter, ignorant, astonishingly ignorant on nearly all world matters were you, Peter, but then no more ignorant than your colleagues in Miami—the ignorami cowboys of the CIA. I have had enough. As you read this, I will be in Cuba where I belong, although said decision has dragged me through a personal pilgrimage of disillusions with myself and the seductions of your world, to which I overadhered. You understand? I used to despise Communists because to them I first belonged and knew they were spiritual hypocrites. I could feel all the honesty dying in me while in their company, which in Uruguay was closer to me than always and forever, and I despised their spiritual hypocrisy. They never did anything with a simple understanding that it was for themselves, no, they didn’t enjoy a good meal because they were gluttons and liked being gluttons, no, they ate the good meal because it was their duty to keep up morale for the sake of the cause. Bullshit. Avalanches of bullshit. My wife in Uruguay, the worst. Power, propriety, righteousness. I hated her enough to hate all Communists. I kept wishing I was back in Harlem where I lived with a Negress prostitute. She was greedy, she had a straight line to her stomach and to her pussy. If a man talked in a loud voice, she liked him better than a dude with a nice quiet voice. She was simple. She was capitalism. I decided that capitalism was the lesser evil. When you did something, you did it for yourself alone. And it worked. Minus times minus is plus. A world of greedy people makes a good society. Capitalism was surrealism. I liked that.
But now I have had many months of living under the thumb of a white capitalist, Dix Butler, who will be very rich one day for he is the stuff out of which the fortunes are made. What he does is always for himself alone, and I have come to the conclusion that is even worse. In the name of his principle, which is himself—“That which makes me feel good is the good.” Ernest Hemingway, correct? Subject to that principle, I found my head in a shit bowl. For further information apply to Dix Butler. Excuse me. Frank Castle. Tell Frank Castle the DGI knows his real name. Dix Butler. I gave it to them yesterday. And how do I know it? Because he told it to me when we were making love. Yes, I have had an affair with Dix Butler. Does that amaze you? I, who used to be one of the leading white man studs in Harlem, and totally in Montevideo, have lost the connection to my manhood. Yes, over the last few years, after working for you, in fact. But then I did leave Uruguay in a panic with my cock between my legs. Nothing but a treacherous son of a bitch. In Miami, I got so treacherous it was a daily habit. My asshole grew to have more status for my soul than my penis—why? That may be no mysterious matter. Virility is pride. And I was a bag of shit. What is the apple of the eye in a bag of shit? The asshole, señor. I tell you all this, Peter, I mean Robert Charles of the innocenti, because it will shock you. I wish to do that. You are so naïve. Prodigiously naïve, but you try to run the world. Arrogant, naïve, incompetent, self-righteous. You will judge me adversely for being a homosexual, yet it is you who is more of one than any of us, although you will never admit it to yourself because you never practice! You are a homosexual the way Americans are barbarians although they do not practice openly. They go to church. And you work for your people so that you will not have to scrutinize yourself in the mirror. No, you peek right through your two-way CIA mirror to spy on others.
I go to Cuba full of fear. What if the average Cuban Communists are as stupid as Uruguayan Party members? America is choicer country for shits. Even shits like me. And I worry that Fidel Castro has not matured out of his own wickedness and cannot admit to himself that he was wrong to accept the missiles. But I will find out. I will no longer be able to indulge both sides of my nature. Visualize it therefore as a personal sacrifice. Communism will triumph to the extent that human nature can swim through its own shit. I feel like a pioneer.
Suerte, good fellow. Know that I will always have love for you. Despite all, as the English say.
Adios,
Chevi
I finished reading the letter. Its contents were still boiling in my head when the phone sounded. Was it by some nuance in the ring itself that I knew Señor Eusebio Fuertes was calling?
“Where are you?”
“Across the street. I saw you come in. I was waiting. Have you read my letter?”
“Yes.”
“Can I visit?”
“Yes.” That was all I could manage. I had begun to shake. Once in Maine, on a rock face to the side of the Precipices, I had had a quivering in my knees that Harlot was quick to describe as “sewing-machine leg.” Now my hands were trembling. I knew why Chevi was here.
He looked merry coming through the door as if he had arrived at that freedom from consequence which is indifferent to the verdict. I would now have to make the choice. I could detain him, or give him my sanction to go to Cuba. Each of these options was intolerable.
?
??Yes,” he said, “I have come to say good-bye. All the while I was writing the letter, I did not think I would. I had contempt for you. I did not wish to see you in person. But now I am finished with all that.” He looked around. “Do you have an añejo?” He gave an evil smile. “A Cuban rum?”
I handed him a bottle with a Puerto Rican label and a glass. My hands, thankfully, were equal to the job.
“Do you know why I have come?” he asked.
“I think so.”
“May I add a thought? You have vices, Roberto, and many faults, but I still perceive you, now that I have emitted my resentments, as a decent man. Therefore, I cannot leave without saying good-bye, for that would violate your decency. That would violate mine. I believe an economy of goodwill exists in the universe. An economy which is not inexhaustible.”
“No,” I said, “you want me to arrest you. Then you can find a little peace. You will feel justifiably bitter. Otherwise, you wish me to give you my blessing. Then you will have all the pleasure of knowing that you were successful at last in getting me to . . .” I did not know how to say it—“ . . . in getting me to violate the confidence of others.”
“Yes,” he said, “you are my equal.”
“Just get the hell out,” I said.
“You cannot arrest me. I see that you cannot.”
“Go,” I said. “Learn all you can about Cuba. You will come back to us yet, and then you will be worth more.”
“You are wrong,” he said, “I will become the determined enemy of your country. Because if you let me go, I will understand that you no longer believe in your own service.”
Could he be right? I felt an intolerable rage. I may have been as physically powerful at that moment as my father. I certainly had no fear of Chevi other than the fear, true son of Boardman Hubbard, that I might kill him with my bare hands. Yes, I could destroy him, but I could not take him into custody. He was my creation. All the same, I could not rid my mind of a miserable marriage of images—as I looked at his dapper presence in my living room, I still pictured his head in Butler’s toilet bowl.
“Just get out,” I said. “I am not going to take you in.”
He swallowed the rum and stood up. He looked pale. Can I claim it was Christian to wish he was going to Havana with no more than half a heart?
“Salud, caballero,” he said.
I was cursing him ten minutes after he was gone. I had all the misery of knowing that I had delivered a new obsession to myself. I was full of dread. When I went up to Washington a few days later, the capital felt as heavy as hurricane weather in Miami, and that is not a small remark; Washington, whatever its vices, has never been renowned for haunted precincts or eerie moods. Yet, I found it so. I had betrayed the Agency. This sentiment grew so powerful that I entered at last into the mathematics of faith. Sin and penance met each other in the equations of my mind. I took a new vow that from this day on, no matter how halfhearted or quartered by anxiety, I would consecrate myself to the assassination of Fidel Castro.
34
ON THE DAY BEFORE WE LEFT FOR PARIS, CAL RECEIVED A SHORTWAVE radio message from one of his agents in Havana. It informed him that on the previous night, November 19, Fidel Castro had paid a visit to Jean Daniel’s hotel and spent the next six hours in an interview with the journalist.
While we were to have no sure notion what thoughts were exchanged between the two men until Jean Daniel’s two-part article appeared on December 7 and 14 in The New Republic, my father was not short of speculation on November 20.
“This meeting took place,” said Cal, “because of what Kennedy said in Miami two nights ago—‘This and this alone divides us.’ That is why Castro saw Daniel.”
When I did not reply, Cal added, “Are you as unhappy about all this as I am?”
“Well, the news does give a good deal of purpose to our trip.”
“Yes,” said Cal, “we won’t be gilding the lily, will we?”
Several weeks later, I would read every word Jean Daniel reported Fidel Castro to have said on November 19. By then it was mid-December, and I would find myself on the other side of my vow. I had to wonder then how I would have felt if I had known the contents of Daniel’s interview before I left for Paris. Would I have believed what Castro said? If I had, would I have been prepared to tell my father that I could not deal with Cubela in good conscience, and so, if he requested, would resign from the Agency? By December, I no longer knew how I would have felt in November, for every perspective had altered. Thoughts of resignation were by now no more than a dull woe. One does not quit a profession any more quickly than one amputates a limb.
THE NEW REPUBLIC, DEC. 14, 1963
BY JEAN DANIEL
In the “Pearl of the Antilles, rum-perfumed and steeped in triumphant sensuality,” as Cuba is described in those American tourist folders still lying about in the hotels of Havana, I spend three closely packed and intensive weeks, but thinking all along that I would never get to meet with Fidel Castro, I talked with farmers, writers and painters, militants and counterrevolutionaries, ministers and ambassadors—but Fidel remained inaccessible. I had been warned: he no longer had any desire to receive journalists, least of all Western newsmen. I had practically given up hope when on the evening of what I thought was to be my departure date, Fidel came to my hotel. He had heard of my interview with the President. We went up to my room at ten in the evening and did not leave until the following morning. Here, I shall recount only that part of the interview which constitutes a reply to John F. Kennedy’s remarks.
Fidel listened with devouring and passionate interest: he pulled at his beard, yanked his parachutist’s beret down over his eyes, adjusted his maquis tunic, all the while making me the target of a thousand malicious sparks cast by his deep-sunk lively eyes . . .. He had me repeat certain remarks, particularly those in which Kennedy expressed his criticism of the Batista regime, and lastly those in which Kennedy accused Fidel of almost having caused a war fatal to all humanity.
When I stopped talking, I expected an explosion. Instead, I was treated to a lengthy silence, to a calm, composed, often humorous, always thoughtful exposition. I don’t know whether Fidel had changed, or whether those cartoons caricaturing him as a ranting madman which appear in the Western press perhaps corresponded to a former reality. I only know that at no time during the two complete days I spent with him (and during which a great deal happened) did Castro abandon his composure and poise . . ..
“I believe Kennedy is sincere,” Fidel declared, “I also believe that today the expression of this sincerity could have political significance. I’ll explain what I mean. I have not forgotten the Machiavellian tactics and the equivocation, the attempts at invasion, the pressures, the blackmail, the organization of a counterrevolution, the blockade, and above everything, all the retaliatory measures which were imposed before, long before there was the pretext and alibi of Communism. But I feel that he inherited a difficult situation: I don’t think a President of the United States is ever really free, and I believe at present Kennedy is feeling the impact of that lack of freedom. I also believe he now understands the extent to which he has been misled, for example, on the Cuban reaction at the time of the attempted Bay of Pigs invasion. I also think he is a realist; he is now registering that it is impossible to simply wave a wand and cause us, and the explosive situation throughout Latin America, to disappear . . ..
“That may be the situation now. But over a year ago, six months before the missiles were installed in Cuba, we had received an accumulation of information warning us that a new invasion of the island was being prepared . . ..
“What was to be done? How could we prevent the invasion? Khrushchev asked us what we wanted. We replied: Do whatever is needed to convince the United States that any attack on Cuba is the same as an attack on the Soviet Union. We thought of a proclamation, an alliance, conventional military aid. The Russians explained to us their concern: first, they wanted to save the Cuban Revolution (in other words, thei
r socialist honor in the eyes of the world), and at the same time they wished to avoid a world conflict. They reasoned that if conventional military aid was the extent of their assistance, the United States might not hesitate to instigate an invasion, in which case Russia would retaliate and this would inevitably touch off a world war . . ..
“I am here to tell you that the Russians didn’t want and do not today want war. One only need visit them on their home territory, watch them at work, share their economic concerns, admire their intense efforts to raise the workers’ standard of living, to understand right away that they are far, very far, from any idea of provocation or domination. However, Soviet Russia was confronted by two alternatives: an absolutely inevitable war if the Cuban Revolution was attacked; or the risk of a war if the United States was refusing to retreat before the missiles. They chose socialist solidarity and the risk of war.