EVOCACION - ALEIDA MARCH (CHE'S WIDOW)

An intimate memoir of Che Guevara by his widow is making the rounds of New York publishers this week as the 40th anniversary of his death approaches.

Aleida March tenderly describes the man behind the revolutionary icon in her manuscript, "Evocation." Her book details her experiences falling in love, marrying and raising four children with Guevara, who was killed in Bolivia at age 39.

March, the second wife of the Argentine-born rebel, was convinced to finally tell her story by respected Italian filmmaker Alessandro Cecconi.

She reveals that after a romance that began when they were guerrilla comrades in the Cuban revolution, Che wanted their 1959 wedding to be small and private. But Raul Castro found out and threw a big party. Unfortunately, he neglected to invite his own brother, Fidel, who was miffed.

"Nobody told Fidel, because of the clandestine way in which the party was planned, and he arrived complaining that nobody had invited him," March writes. "He left soon afterward."

Che gave his bride a bottle of Flor de Roca perfume by Caron, "which, of course, I never forgot," she reminisces. But Che wouldn't let her keep the many gifts sent to them, giving them away to the poor.

"On his trips, he would receive gifts from his hosts, some of them very expensive," March writes. "He would get presents for me as well, and he would give them away if he considered them too ostentatious."

She was given a color TV only to see Che pass it on to a factory worker. "And back then, it was sort of an unimaginable item," March says, adding: "Once, after a trip to Algeria, he received a barrel of an excellent wine. When he arrived home, he told me to give it to the army barracks near our home. I would not always unconditionally obey his mandates. Knowing that wine was one of the few treats he allowed himself, I kept five liters."

Che had a dry sense of humor, she writes, adding that he once teased her in a postcard from Morocco, "I was planning to stay faithful to you, but you should see these Moorish girls!"

One of the most heart-rending stories March tells is how Che dressed in disguise to visit his own children before a secret trip to Bolivia to foment revolution there. "When the kids arrived, I introduced them to an Uruguayan old man, 'Ramon' [Che], a 'friend' of dad's. They never imagined this 60-year-old man could be their daddy," March writes. "For both Che and me,it was an extremely painful moment.

"The kids played with 'Ramón' all day. Then, Aleidita [then 7] hit her head after running wild, and Che [a physician] took care of her. Soon afterwards, she came to me to tell me a secret he could overhear: 'Mommy, this man is in love with me!'

Che was captured by CIA-led Bolivian soldiers on Oct. 9, 1967, and killed the next day after telling his executioner, "Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man."