Beyond the Ties of Blood (11 page)

Brush, cloth, and bucket forgotten behind him, he stood up and moved closer. Giant dustballs flew up as he struggled to dislodge it, but it seemed glued to the spot. Coughing and sneezing, he pulled at it for a while, but his fingers kept slipping on the accumulated dust. Finally it burst free, and when his eyes stopped running he used the brush to get some of the settled grime off the cover, enough to glimpse the familiar title. It was different from his own thumbed-through, well-worn copy, but it was the
Communist Manifesto
without a doubt. The design was from an earlier time and it looked like it was written in German, not Spanish. He could just make out the title cobbling together familiar letters. The authors' names were the same in any language, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Grandpa's original copy, from Odessa, all those years ago. So this was what the world-historical movement for socialism looked like.

At least that's what he told Armando, the Young Socialist from the university, when he came by the school to leave off a fresh bundle of leaflets. Armando seemed impressed when Manuel showed him the booklet. He held it gingerly.

“Wow,” he said. “This was behind the old man's sewing machine? What did you say his name was?”

“David Weisz. He was my grandfather.”

“Wow. I don't know the name, little
compañero
, but that doesn't mean anything. I'm not originally from here, you know. I'll ask some of the old guys at party headquarters if they ever heard of him. This is quite a family heirloom, my friend.”

Armando reported back on his next weekly visit. “There's one old guy who knew your grandpa,” he said. “They worked together further north a long time ago. Says your grandpa had just been thrown off a farm he was in charge of, because he sided with the little guy. Mainly he remembered the stories your grandpa told him about the workers' movement in Russia. They set up a group together in a town named Angol, where it seems David Weisz had a dry-goods store.

“Back then, there was no Socialist or Communist Party in Chile. The old Democratic party had the only credible organization, so they started talking with the bigwigs in the local branch. But they got frustrated pretty quickly. Seems there was a feud with the anarchists in the coal mines, and folks spent their time infighting instead of working for the small fry who needed them most. Not long after, your grandpa sold his store and moved to Temuco to open a tailor shop, so the two guys lost touch. But you come from good stock, my friend.”

He wanted to tell Grandma Myriam about the old codger in Armando's central office. But when he dropped by for tea the following Friday, the shop was closed. In panic, he stumbled back through the alleyway and pounded on the old door of the Weisz residence. He thanked the nurse who opened the door and ran down the hallway into the patio full of orange trees. She was sitting in her wicker rocking chair, a shawl over her legs, warming herself and napping in the afternoon sun. It was the first time he had truly noticed how she much she had aged since Grandpa David's death.

After that, he tried to stop by every day and help her drink her soup. She talked about Moldavanka, her old neighborhood in Odessa, and how she knew everyone from the boys who shined shoes to the shaggy man who pushed his cart down the street, calling on his whistle for the ladies to bring out their kitchen knives to be sharpened. “
Ach
, Manolito,” she repeated over and over, “sometimes, when Temuco smells of wet smoke, I think I'm back in Odessa.”

By the beginning of twelfth grade, Manuel was chain-smoking black tobacco cigarettes, the unfiltered kind. He grew his beard long to match his hair, and found that his thick red curls made him look very revolutionary. The popular girls at his school gathered in groups near him, giggling and whispering among themselves when he passed by. Occasionally, before or after class as they all milled around near the school building or along the exit gate, he singled one of them out. He would greet her by name as he came up close to her, leaning slightly sideways with his right arm against the wall or fence behind her in an inviting, yet casual, pose. He relished her quick intake of breath as he brushed lightly against her, the way his belly burned in response.

“I could have any of them,” he boasted one day to Armando, by now a perpetual student at the university, like many other activists. “It's amazing what a bit of revolutionary beard, plus the smell of black tobacco, can do.”

“You're right, little
compañero
,” Armando answered. “But why do you want one of those bourgeois greenhorns? They're so boring, and still wet behind the ears. The revolutionary
compañeras
at the university, they're the ticket. All grown up, you can talk politics with them. Plus they've already been broken in, if you know what I mean. No complications, no crying to mama. They can teach you a trick or two between the sheets. I'll take you over there one of these days. They'll really lust after that red-haired Che Guevara look of yours.”

Yet when Armando invited him to a university party a couple of months later, Manuel begged off. He wasn't exactly sure why, but the whole socialist youth scene was beginning to get on his nerves. It had been so exciting at first, fitting in with the popular crowd. Girls he'd never dreamed would give him a second look said hello to him in that breathless way of theirs. But then he started to notice that some of his
compañeros
, like Ricardo, seemed to be in it only for the girls. And as the presidential campaign began to heat up and Salvador Allende, the old-time socialist with the hornrimmed glasses, began to catch people's imaginations, it seemed to Manuel that a lot more was at stake than intellectual posturing and seducing women.

At first he was hesitant about this guy, this Allende. He was such a stereotypical politician, with his fancy suits and silk ties, giving inspirational speeches in the same old pompous language they had all heard time and time again. But the more Manuel saw him on TV, wading into crowds, jacket off, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie long gone, the more he began to think that, maybe, this time might be different. He wondered if the guy had more to him than his image. If he would really live up to his rhetoric.

“I know the Socialists signed on to the Popular Unity platform, and our demands about land reform and workers' rights are in there,” he told Armando one afternoon when they were sitting in the old tea house near his school. “But I don't see how he's gonna get it all done. I think maybe he's been in the system too long.” A heavy winter rain was pounding up against the windows. Clouds of pungent cigarette smoke surrounded their table, refracting the light from the antique standing lamps.

“I know he's an old-style politician,” Armando admitted, “and he's been at it thirty years. Can't even remember the times he's run for president. But he's a member of our party,
compañero
. And the way we see it at the Temuco office is, if he wins, it's not the end of the struggle. But it'll make it a little easier, that's what we think, to have someone from our organization in the presidential palace.”

Manuel shifted in his seat and poured himself another bit of tea from the pot that sat on the warmer in the middle of the table. He lit another cigarette from the end of the one he'd been smoking and leaned back in his chair, letting the smoke out through his nose. “How much longer do people have to wait for what belongs to them?” he asked. “You think just another election will make the difference for them? The guy's not suddenly gonna turn into a
barbudo
, like the bearded revolutionaries who marched into Havana, if he gets to the presidential palace. You can bet on that.”

Armando sat forward, and as he continued talking he began tapping his open hand on the table for emphasis with every phrase.

“Come on,
compañero
. You know how these things work. Is there another candidate who can get elected who would be better for us? The people are going to vote for him, even some of the Christian Democrats whose party is now in power. They promised so much after winning the last election, unions for the workers, land reform for the peasants. And then they couldn't deliver even half of it! People started demanding more, and they still are! And once our candidate's in the presidential palace, that's when we strike,
compañero
. That's when things heat up, mark my words.”

Salvador Allende was elected in September, a month and a half into the second semester of Manuel's senior year. He joined Armando in the street celebrations, thousands upon thousands of people with horns and drums, clapping and singing through the center of Temuco. As the two of them were carried away in the human crush and adrenaline rush, Manuel wished Grandpa David had lived long enough to see this, getting one of your own elected president, and peacefully at that. He knew this had not happened to the workers' movement in Odessa—or any other place, for that matter.

It was easy to believe that things would be different, and by the end of the evening Manuel was sure of it. Armando took him to a party at someone's house. They were playing the Rolling Stones on a scratchy record player, and Manuel began to dance with a tall university girl, long black hair in a loose braid down her back. She was not wearing a bra, and when they danced close he could feel her nipples against him through his cotton shirt. She'd been drinking. When the music stopped at the end of the record, she took his hand and led him toward the back of the apartment. They found an empty room and lay down on the bed.

He lost his virginity to a dark-haired revolutionary beauty, on the same night his country elected a socialist president. If that isn't poetic justice, I don't know what is, he told his friends, though he left out the part about it being his first time. Besides, he added, when I asked her for her name she refused. We will always remember this night, she whispered. Let's not mess it up with names. Okay. So that last part was an exaggeration. Afterwards, while smoking the best cigarette he'd ever had, he asked her name. But she shook her head, said something about free love, revolutionary sex, no strings. He couldn't quite remember. But it sounded better when he told it the other way.

Late on a spring evening, when the newly-elected socialist was just getting settled in his office at the Moneda, Manuel was up studying for his academic aptitude test. A series of clicks sounded against the window of his room. His parents were asleep, but he quickly opened the window and leaned out, finger to his lips. It was Armando. Manuel motioned him around to the kitchen door and tiptoed down the stairs. They whispered in the soft spring air.

“What's up,
compañero?
I wasn't expecting you to show up tonight. Weren't we supposed to meet tomorrow?”

“This is different. Come with me right now, I'll explain on the way. You'll need a sleeping bag, a flashlight maybe, a good supply of cigarettes, a little cash. Oh, and just in case, your identity card.”

The mention of the identity card set off an adrenaline rush. He would only need it if he were arrested, so this could only mean one thing. Some kind of illegal action.

“Wait here. I'll be right back.”

He ran up the stairs as quietly as he could. Hands shaking, he groped around for his wallet and took out his identity card and a couple small bills. He put them in the pocket of his jeans before placing the wallet on his night table. Then he jammed two packs of cigarettes, some matches, and his keys into his jacket, grabbed a flashlight, his sleeping bag, and his beret, and hurried back down the stairs. He joined Armando outside the kitchen, fumbling for his keys to relock the door. They moved quietly through the still, moonlit night. Neither of them spoke until they were a block from the house.

“So where's the takeover tonight?” Manuel asked. Armando laughed softly.

“You definitely got the message,
compañero
. It's that group we've been talking to, about twenty families right now, nobody can find a place to live they can afford, even now after Allende's election. They're taking over that stretch of municipal land on the southern edge of the city, by the river, and asked us to help.”