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Sport 7: Winter 1991

Tribute

Tribute

A young reporter is standing in front of a wall upon which months and years of political posters are pasted, inches thick. High on the wall is the photograph of two women in the uniform of the Liberation Army, they stand before the camera squinting into the noon day sun behind the cameraman's head. They are both dirty from combat; one is smiling broadly, her teeth a white gash in the dark of her face. She has her arm around the woman next to her, her hand cups one hip. Both are holding their AK47s, the unsmiling woman cradling hers like a baby. The Reporter is telling us:

'Rosa Gonzalez and Maria Maria Conchita Conchita Gottschalk were two of the People's finest soldiers. They had both ascended to the rank of Colonel in a phenomenal two years of jungle warfare, and have the respect of the factions in this most grim of political and economic battles for the survival of independent Leguama. This afternoon I had a chance to interview Colonel Gottschalk-the first such interview to be granted since the tragic death of her compadre Colonel Gonzalez. . .'

We see a jungle clearing in which stands a dilapidated house, before it scrawny chickens scratch at the packed yellow earth. The picture joggles up and down as the cameraman ascends the track toward the house; and then the reporter is before us again, gesturing toward the yard:

'This is the home to which Colonel Gottschalk has returned for a brief period before returning to combat. Here she has mourned the death of a friend and comrade in arms . . .'

When Colonel Gottschalk walks out of the dark of the house, she does not page 162 squint into the sun. She does not want to be seen to be affected by it. She is wearing the legs of her fatigue pants rolled up to the knee and a faded, once black, singlet. The camera traces one drop of sweat as it runs across the raised veins and sinews of her forearm to drip off the end of a ragged-nailed finger. She and the Reporter stand together in the camera's eye:

Reporter: Colonel, many of our American viewers wonder about your name—just exactly how did you get it?
MMCCG: I an named for my sister, Maria Conchita, who died before I was born. My parent's had their hearts set on calling me Maria Conchita, but they also had to keep my sister's name still living [she shrugs] so ...
Reporter: [visibly perplexed] Heh. I see. Tell me, how do you feel about the death of Colonel Gonzalez?
MMCCG: How do I feel? Me, I feel nothing. But my bed feels cold when I roll over at night and my gun is the only friend I have whose conversation I actually enjoy.
Reporter: So you think she'll be missed?
MMCCG: Oh, we won't lose the war, the earth will keep on turning—will dry up and blow away most likely—and we'll eat and drink and sleep but [she violently runs her hand through her cropped, dark hair] I will miss her, she kissed so well, even if her tongue was sometimes cold. And she made love like it was a matter of life and death, which, incidentally, it turned out to be ...
The Reporter has turned round to the cameraman, signalling a frantic 'cut' by drawing his finger across his throat. Nervously, he smiles at the woman before him.
MMCCG: You got some problem?
Reporter: Well, you have to understand that even the News at Ten has standards. We're not allowed to make—sexual allusions, if you see what I page 163 mean [signals camera to run again]—So, what would you say you were fighting for? What were the immediate motivations for yourself and Colonel Gonzalez?
MMCCG: Well, liberty, the overthrow of usurers; political equality—the usual things. And Rosa and me were particularly interested in being the best fighters around—hah! Better than the men, even! [She looks away from the reporter to the hills.] Rosa and I wanted to have a battalion of women, shit, we were fighting for a little bit of difference, you know? Once we'd become heroes and had cameras shoved into our faces and up our arses during the major battles it was clear that we were finally able to be ourselves, admit that the rumours on Democracy Wall were true. Sure, we used to get drunk and dance on tables; sure, we yelled poetry at the top of our voices; sure we were lovers, at home and on the field. I did those things, she did those things. We fought to be famous, to be able to do those things and say to the arsehole syndicated columnist from America: So what?
It is clear from her attitude that she knows the camera has been switched off. The Reporter has lowered the mike, and is waiting for her to finish.
MMCCG: One day I will be President, and I will have a statue of Rosa put up in every major city of this country. It will not be a huge statue, but it will be compelling. It will depict the scene of her death. You know, when she's just been shot all those times, and has fallen face first into the parched earth of the compound—the moment when I crouch beside her, and turn her over gently to kiss the blood from between her dusty lips, my hand on the hand that still clutches the gun. That will be our memorial, a tribute to her death and my long silence in the face of such indifference as yours—
She leans forward slightly at the waist and spits at the feet of the reporter before turning to walk back into the house. The young American watches the little pool of spit, like a miniature Aral Sea, drying inward from the rim.

*

So, what happens is that Sara leaves Ailsa and Rosa has to be killed off. The geography of the world shakes itself and changes: no more Leguama, just page 164 Wellington in the spring winds. Sara goes back to Ailsa and Ailsa then leaves her. This is curious and final, and everything is so severely changed that Sara can do nothing she used to do happily, she can't eat, she can't read, she can't play imaginary games in the room she still shares with her sister. All those stories of emotional telos, love triumphant at the end of the night as the lovers lie down together tired, unconscious of the past, of the future. And Sara listens to her sister sleep and would like to start the story over, like to change things here and there: Rosa doesn't really die (she was wearing a bullet-proof vest); thus Ailsa does not leave, she stays to say her lines. No. A grief-stricken Colonel Gottschalk leaves Leguama and crosses the border into the United States where she finds a basement apartment in the Barrios outside of Los Angeles. She starts a relationship with a temperamental punk musician called Esperanza Letitia Glass ('Hopey') who reminds her very much of Rosa, but without the gun.

No. Vlad, who has been writing poetry under a pseudonym, finds that his poetry has become famous—but the world, seeing only his work, has once again managed to overlook him. Discouraged, he walks down the beach at dawn in Veavane Bay in light not bright enough to see his own footprints. He walks into the sea to his waist, his chest, his neck, until, hippopotamus-like, only his eyes remain above the water.

No. Not at all. Time passes. Vlad dies the way Elizabeth fated he should, somewhere where I am not. Colonel Gottschalk finds a solid lobby for her presidency and devotes her time and money to patronage of the arts (neither am I there).

One hears all kinds of stories.

*

Vlad:

Everybody lies, I knew it, saw that it was an accepted mode of exchange, as if we were expected to take each others lies for food, like:

You will not die;
this is a game, a set of lessons
to learn by rote. You are loved; you are beautiful.
page 165 Someone has dreamed you, and waking, forgotten what they dreamed even that it was so.
That is why everything
is so propitious.
It must have been someone young who dreamed this;
someone who watched too much TV
and loved a tidy narrative
with beginning, middle, end,
Not what I wanted or believed, I could have scripted this
with more subtlety,
but no, there is hardly a market for subtlety
when the characters are rich, intelligent, beautiful
and immortal.