On and on it went, through several more verses, and by the end, most of the men were weeping. They felt it so profoundly. It stirred them, deep in their Cuban souls.
They were not radical students or intellectuals, members of any elite or vanguard. They were just men. Most were factory workers, agricultural workers, shop assistants. There was a watchmaker, a teacher, a taxi-driver, a doctor, a dentist, a bookshop assistant, a chimney sweep, three carpenters, a butcher, an oyster seller and a nurse.
They came not because of him, but because of it. It was Cuba. They felt it. He was only the instrument of will. He made it happen by conceptualizing it, by focusing on plans much discussed but always lacking behind them the necessary force, and by supplying that force. What he stood for, they didn't know; what his programs were, they didn't care. He may not have stood for anything. He was just the one who had appointed himself the leader, and by reputation he gathered them. They didn't even know him, they didn't care about him; he was just the man who'd made it happen over the past month.
Having talked this over a thousand nights in coffeehouses and over chessboards and cigars and after rallies, he knew who to call. He had begun to make phone calls-thank you, Mr. President, for the wonderful Cuban phone system, the best in the Caribbean-from the town of Artemisa, ten miles east of Santiago, on the plain that separated the mountains from the seas, as was this farmhouse where they were now meeting. He made phone calls to men he knew and trusted, who in turn made phone calls to men they knew and trusted, who then…and so forth and so on, and now there were eighty or so of them, gathered here in their shabby khaki uniforms, with their shabby weapons, a few American M1s or carbines, a Winchester.44 lever rifle, but mostly.22 hunting rifles or old double-barreled shotguns used for doves. They followed him because there was no one else to follow. They followed him because whatever was said of him, this much was true: he had a big set of balls.
"Companions," he said, "fellow crusaders. Tonight is the night of nights. Perhaps we die, perhaps we triumph. But we will not pass without having made the ultimate attempt. Companions, brothers, long live freedom! Long live Cuba!"
He was best at moments like that. Perhaps his true gift was the ability to put into simple, rugged language those things they all felt, and by doing that, become the vessel of their emotions.
They raised their rifles and cheered by the light of campfires in the barnyard, and then there was nothing left to say. They went to their cars, twenty-six in all, rickety old vehicles, some barely drivable, and climbed in three or four to each one, and off they went.
He was in the second car. He drove. Nobody talked, though some men smoked. The convoy, obeying rules of traffic, not politics, accordioned this way and that, expanding and contracting as it went over the dusty roads, found the slope, passed through the outskirts of Cuba's second largest city, rotated around the traffic circle, and headed down the Victoriano Garzon for Avenue Moncada and the future, whatever it might bring.
He worried that the man ahead would lose his way. He worried that the cars would lose contact with each other and wander, the whole unit breaking down into nothingness. He worried that he would be a coward. He worried that nothing would go as planned, that he would be captured and the legendary Ojos Bellos, whom all knew of and all feared, might cut his eyes out and make him sing a song of defeat and surrender and betrayal. He worried that he would die a forgotten nobody, and all his dreams and all his convictions of destiny and change and power would disappear for naught.
They drove through streets sleepy but not as sleepy as he had imagined. He thought that by now everybody would be drunk or in bed with a new partner. Yet it was still surprisingly crowded. Now and then a soul would notice this strange parade of beat-up old vehicles rumbling through the streets and watch, wide-mouthed, wondering at meanings. Still, no alarm was given, no commotion created. If the assemblage confirmed certain rumors, the cars outraced them to their destination.
They rolled onward into the night.
In the way that time collapses when that which is anticipated and seems forever away is suddenly upon you, they turned right off of the central thoroughfare of Victoriano Garzon and down the Avenue Moncada, passing the military hospital on the left, then a number of small wooden officers' houses, buried in trees, and finally, at the intersection, arrived at Checkpoint 3, access to the barracks. The building itself loomed ahead at the oblique, the castellated ramparts visible in the night, so that it looked like something the great Don Quixote himself would charge, lance ready, heart athrob. Its yellow-and-white color scheme stood out in lighting from the porch that ran along its front. A low wall surrounded it, a parade ground lay to one side of it, and only a gate-house marked it off from the rest of the world. It housed a thousand men, but tonight, or so the plan assumed, they would all be drunk.
The plan was simple, and at least it was a plan. The first car sped ahead, opening a distance between itself and the rest of the column. As it went, Castro prayed to God in his heaven that the advantage of surprise-his only advantage-was to be protected.
He slowed to a creep, the speed of a man walking, as ahead, the first car reached the checkpoint, and six men leapt out in the best of the uniforms.
"Make way for the general!" shouted Guitart, their leader, "open the gate for the general."
It worked, almost magically. The three guards snapped into a present-arms in honor of the general and as they froze, their old rifles locked in place vertically against their chests, they were overcome and disarmed. Guitart and his party shoved them ahead and went inside to open the gate.
And then, just as magically, it fell apart. Castro saw chaos and disaster emerge in the form of three men, two soldiers with American submachine guns and a sergeant with a pistol at his belt. They shouldn't have been there, but they were, and so it goes in the affairs of men and revolutions. They were evidently on some sort of perimeter patrol, and stopped abruptly and just stared at what they could see and no one else could: a line of twenty-five cars creeping along, lights out, jammed with men.
He had no choice but an act of sudden, stunning violence. He had no hesitation. He veered savagely, running up onto the pavement, bouncing over the curb, turning on his headlights and pinning the three in the glare. They panicked, but it was too late, and he rammed into them, knocking them asunder, felt the ragged jolt as the car crushed against them. Weapons flew, bodies flew.
But not the sergeant. He alone was quick enough or sober enough to react, and rolled to the right, just a hair, and the charging vehicle did not hit him.
Castro leapt out; the sergeant had to be stopped.
But he was gone, except for the sounds of his pistol, which he had drawn as he fled, firing off seven rounds as fast as he could and screaming "Assalto! Assalto!"
He was the hero, not Castro, for in that moment the entire complexion of the event changed.
Castro, out of the car, saw that he was too late, but still thought that if the column moved quickly it could penetrate the barracks, bring fire on the soldiers, overwhelm them with fear, cajole them into dropping their arms, and therefore take over the city.
But he turned now and saw chaos. When he leapt from his car, that was the signal-he had forgotten. All the other cars halted, and the men now poured from them, rifles and shotguns at the ready, hungry for the battle that now seemed destined not to occur in the barracks itself, but here on the Avenue Moncada at a kind of forty-five-degree angle to the barracks.