Almost Mortal by Chris Leibig

Author:Chris Leibig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633931794
Publisher: Koehler Books
Published: 2015-01-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

SAM LEANED BACK INTO the chair on his balcony holding the unread pages of the journal. Two days? Easy enough. But he had been here before. In the position of having made an agreement that sounded, even seemed, wise and decisive at the time—but was, indeed, foolish. A dodge of the primary issue. Which, in this instance, was the need to control the client and do some damage control. By giving Camille two days before reporting what they knew, he had, in a sense, sold her out. No one would understand that decision later. And if someone else was killed. Well never mind.

JANUARY 15, 1958

Our ship chugs along, sometimes with the coast in sight, sometimes not. Paul and I, for the first time in his life, have begun to spend substantial time apart, exploring the ship and its inhabitants in our own ways. Paul is enamored with the vast upper deck, where the sailors jump about. For me, below deck, with its twisting passageways and odd personas, is the way of it. For I am learning that my real interest lies not in interpreting the mysteries of the outer world but the less-charted universe inside human souls.

Di Giorgio is a middle-aged art dealer who has quit his life in Buenos Aires to devote himself to the class struggle that will liberate South America. He is Italian by birth, Latin American by passion. Yesterday was the first I heard the term Latin American. Di Giorgio, who goes by no other name, has begun to educate me about the class struggle and the political identity of South and Central America versus that of the imperialists to our north. I drink with him as he lectures. He becomes increasingly passionate as he drinks, and I am thus able to prod and pry my way through his mind quite freely. He believes what he believes, or wants to believe it so badly the result is the same.

It is quite educational. My personal conflicts have thus far been small—like myself versus Miguel or Aguilar. The type of struggle that dominates Di Giorgio’s thinking—politics—strikes me as terribly mundane. To my natural way of thinking, a political battle is much like a war between opposing ant colonies as a flood approaches to wash them all away.

We discussed colonialism. England, Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the Belgian Congo, slavery, the American Civil War, and the Monroe Doctrine. Di Giorgio is no professor. He simplifies the topics to an almost moronic level. Di Giorgio’s central truth is that the evil, white capitalists from Europe and America oppress the valiant, earthy, brown-skinned southerners—a conflict which will culminate in a worldwide war that will set things right. His personal concept of right involves extensive brutal retaliation against the soon-to-be-defeated white capitalists.

Di Giorgio has served time in prison for a crime he says he did not commit (a lie). He suffered greatly there, though he did put his artistic abilities to good use by becoming a skilled tattooist. His flabby forearms tell the tale of his boredom over the course of his seven-year sentence.

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