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Show The Great Escape • 20 This would be the first time they had to risk even fourteen pesos against a man's life. Until then, and for a long time afterward, with so many people, they didn't risk even that. There was a long silence after that unexpected challenge, according to the officials, who later told the story to many, and Arturo won the battle. Nobody knows why even today, it was truly a miracle, but the officials ordered the brandy, which Arturo guzzled, and men they ordered that nobody touch that man in those barracks from that day on. 0 What is going on here? Two versions of the same story? Two different episodes? A conflation? An aggrandizement? A memory grown two different directions? The birth of a legend, pitted against graver odds and given a more improbable outcome? I asked David Campora, author of the first version, who replied: "That version of the brandy story Arturo himself gave me. He occupied the cell next to mine m the Florida Battalion. He wasn't close to death. In fact, while he waited for them to take him to the hole, he started doing exercise, push-ups, to get warmed up." But it doesn't matter, or it's interesting either way, or both ways, because the lesson is, for those present, and for those who hear the story or read it, that Arturo was a graceful, gruff hero, who once tunneled through dnt and stone to freedom, courageous, unyielding, able to withstand tremendous tortures with his soul intact, able to stand tall in the face of his oppressor, to see him as a fellowman, to reduce the machine to a game or a commodity for trade, to share a drink with his enemy, and to keep on fighting, perhaps hoping not to kill but to convince. 0 Then two mumcipal workers in navy jumpsuits got on a fork lift with the casket and rode it up a few feet to the second-level locker along the east wall that was to be Arturo's final resting place. Everybody started clapping, a slow, deliberate clap, with a rhythm, but also outliers, not applause exactly, not a cheer. I couldn't see the inside of the locker, but from the way the workers were maneuvering, I guessed there must be another casket in there already. This would not be uncommon. They jerked the |