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Show The Great Escape • 18 cars with flowers, Arturo, and his wife, in that order, and a yellow UCOT bus behind for the infirm, through busy streets past passersby and watcherson on sidewalks and in balconies through windows in cars waiting patiently with no recourse but to wait, probably wondermg, but not enough to find out, Who? But this one, a fireman in a heavy poncho standing guard outside the barracks across from the Plaza de los Treinta-y-Tres, he knew, or suspected, and stood at attention saluting as the cars inched past, and no one turned to look at him. In front of me two women talked. "Oh, the times he'd go to work with el Bebe." A man behind me shouted, "There's enough homeland for everyone!" Ahead I saw three kids spray painting graffiti on the side of a bank: shocking pink "Arturo, you live on in each-"; purple "He who dies fighti-"; red "Life overcoming-"; they were still writing, retracing then lines, as I passed. They kept it up the rest of the way, sometimes where I could see them, mostly before I got there, defacing mostly defaced walls, sometimes interrupted midway through a Tupamaro T-m-star, sometimes repeating, sometimes expressmg the syrupy sentiments of loss and longing that live independent of language or culture: you live on in your companeros; he who dies fighting never dies; your memory will always be with us. 0 David Campora, an old friend, tells of Arturo in his book Manos en elFuego ("Hands in the Fire"): After every session in the machine, you could hear him-"44, 45, 46,"-doing calisthenics under the admiring eyes of a big officer who ended up sharing his mate with him at night. Once Arturo called out: "Captain!" "Hey, what's up?" It was the captain who always sent him through the machine. "I'll make you a deal, captain," says Arturo. 'Yeah, what?" "I'll trade you five submarines for a double brandy." |