Chapter 6

Tossing Armando Through The Dining Room Window

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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

Armando switched to Spanish. And turned his attention to me. But only as a rhetorical trick. He was really speaking to Charly. He said to me, "Carlos, doesn't your friend know that what his country is doing to Vietnam is, in essence, no different than what it has always done to South America?"

I looked up, as if listening for jet airplanes flying overhead, looked out the dining room window, and made a show of listening very hard until he turned toward Charly and continued with his argument. "The United States will not bomb us the way they bomb Vietnam. That is too obvious. The Statue of Liberty appears on so many postcards sold in South America, after all. No, the United States will simply hold a gun to our heads while their corporations steal everything the Spaniards did not manage to get the first time around."

“Armando,” Mamina interrupted,” Could we please...”

“It’s for his own good, Mamina. Individual Americans are enslaved by the lies of their government.” Armando fed himself a forkful of food and chewed it to let his point sink in. He looked again at Charly. “Gringo, if you had been able to vote in 1968, would you have voted for Johnson or Nixon?”

“Johnson did not run for president in 1968,” Charly said flatly.

“You know why? Because it did not matter. Before 1968 Johnson would have sent you to Vietnam. After 1968 Nixon would have sent you to Vietnam. In either case, you would have gone to Vietnam. Your mother is a smart woman to pull you out of the country.”

Charly looked like he had been slapped in the face. I have lived in America for many years, now, and I can say with complete authority that among the many different kinds of gringos, two stand out. One is the gringo who climbs Mt Everest and says it was nothing. The other is the gringo who scratches his head and claims to have saved the world from an epidemic of dandruff. Charly, he was of the first kind. This first kind of gringo, you did not slap him in the face like a coward.

Mamina noticed and turned to Alessandra. "Hija mia,” she said almost pleading, "did anything wonderful happen to you today, perhaps?”

Alessandra did her best to sound lighthearted as she described lunch with her friends. While Alessandra talked, the rest of my family passed the condiments back and forth, and tried to enjoy their food. And Armando, well, Armando was not finished. He leaned forward and placed his forearms on the table, a piece of bread in one hand and a fork in the other. "What makes conquest by America particularly vile, more so than conquest by other villains, is the hipocricy. America destroys Vietnam to free it. Steals from Peru to improve our standard of living. So many guns, so many chains to guarantee our freedom, no? "

Mamina and Alessandra sighed and stared at Armando. Then they looked over at Papito.

Papito cleared his throat and glanced impatiently at Armando. He waited for the maid to take away his empty soup bowl, then put his hands on the tablecloth and leaned toward Charly. "Let me save you from the discomfort and the rest of us from the boredom. What my politically oversensitive son is trying to do is take up our entire dinner conversation with a lengthy criticism of your country."

Armando tried to argue, but Papito stopped him with a look. "It is the favorite topic of conversation at the university. Usually discussed while listening to American rock and roll. They engage in it to sharpen their debating skills. They don't mean a word of it, and you should pay no attention to it."

"On the contrary," Armando said, "He should pay attention to it. His American corporations, salivating with greed, plunder the wealth of the world behind American tanks and helicopters, all the while convincing ordinary Americans that they are protecting them from foreign aggression. It’s the worst sort of cowardice.”

That was the first of many times that I would see Charly get genuinely angry. The maids had served him an appetizing main course. He looked down at it as if it had turned into a pile of insects. He put down his fork. As the clink of the silverware against plates incrased, he began to turn red. Armando mumbled something about 'Americans,' and laughed derisively. Charly’s jaw tightened and he looked at Armando's shoulders. Armando was as tall as me, but more muscular. I didn’t know exactly what Charly was thinking, but I had an idea, because I had probably thought it many times myself, though perhaps without as much vigor.