by Tom Pow
But Melanie nods an understanding that is tinged with sadness. “I’m tired,” she says. “Good night, Maria.”
“Good night.”
Day Twenty-One
A day of surprises! We have a visitor. Miguel brings him in, his arm around his shoulder, both of them grinning. It’s the guide from Island Adventure, the small worried-looking young man with the jaundiced skin. It’s clear that the climb up here has exhausted him. After each laugh he stops and puts his hands to his sides to take deep breaths.
“Slimy bastard,” says Melanie.
“Can’t disagree with you there,” says Carol.
“Eduardo,” says Rafael, and Eduardo stands back to watch over us, while they gather around the guide. The young man wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, then lifts a satchel over his damp T-shirt. He pulls a newspaper from it. Rafael grabs it. His hands tremble as he reads. Then he passes the paper to Maria with a smile.
“Ah,” says Eduardo. “Gabriel has delivered the papers.”
“Huh, Gabriel—yes, I remember. So what good news does he bring us?” says Jacques.
“You will soon know.”
“And Gabriel, how did you persuade him to join you?” I ask.
“That is a question you do not have to ask if you have eyes and ears in this country.”
For a moment I’m reminded of one of my most arrogant pupils, who talks back without any thought or deference to me. Rafael leaves their group and comes over to us with the newspaper in his hand.
“You see,” he says, “there you are.” It is the photograph of us taken at Julia’s on the front page of La Corriente, the daily paper. “It says, Fears for Tourist Hostages Grow.”
“Great,” says Melanie.
“Yes,” says Rafael, “it’s good. Very good. It also says that tourist numbers go down and there is fear for the dollar.”
“But nothing of what you really want,” says Jacques.
“Oh, I say half. They will begin to feel the pressure now.”
“I want to believe you,” says Melanie, “but falling tourist numbers is one thing; getting Quitano to change his mind is quite another, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” says Carol. “You can’t know how he’s going to react.”
“Oh, I think we can. We know our enemy,” says Maria, who has joined us. She glances at Rafael. “For, you see, General Quitano is Rafael’s uncle.”
* * *
Martin remembered the first jolt of the revelation—the astonishment on all their faces—and once again he was baffled by how his father had arrived at his editing decisions. At every stage, every word, the diary opened up great vistas inside his own head that it didn’t explore. Moments that cried out for expansion, explanation—more color than either his father or his editor seemed to favor. Many of these memories Martin held back—not allowing them to surface, not till he was ready: not till he could control the truths that must come out. But here, at least, he thought his father might have fleshed out rather more of what they learned from Rafael that night about the main protagonist in this whole affair—the one who was making everything else happen.…
* * *
General Quitano began as a good man, they had been told, a well-meaning and educated man. When he took over the government, after the years of instability, he had appeared almost reluctant to accept power. But he promised he would make everything calmado again. The workers would go back to work, the land would yield, the peso would be trusted to hold its value once again.
It was in the first optimistic days of power that Quitano, pleading the desperation of inexperience, persuaded his brother Abel, Rafael’s father, to leave the city university, where he was a professor of philosophy, to become his minister of education. Abel took to the post like it was his mission. “Education is the key” was his mantra. He criss-crossed the countryside, talking to teachers, to local bureaucrats, to parents, and to children about his vision for the future—a land of educational opportunity for all.
But then he’d sit with a smattering of uniformed generals and dull-suited yea-sayers around a shining oval table in the oak-panelled room of the Government Palace, and his requests for finance, for changes to the educational requirements for all children, would be stalled, overruled, or consigned to the oblivion of the next meeting.
“Yes,” Quitano once said, putting his arm round Abel’s shoulders at the end of one more budgetary freeze, “I know how close these changes are to your heart, but let us remember what the first duty of government is—to establish stability and the rule of law.” Then he’d leaned his head towards Abel and hissed, “There is still dissent in the land. It cannot be tolerated.”
“But what has that to do with education?” said Abel.
“Ah, my dear innocent, there is a choice—teachers or policemen. We keep the children locked up in school all day or we control insurrection in our streets. And I think,” he said, smiling, “we have very happy children.”
“Yes,” said Abel, “and most of them are begging.”
“Abel, remember who you are talking to!” said Quitano, his face clouding.
Martin remembered how Rafael’s handsome face had responded to the story he was telling. How his face had darkened at Quitano’s threats; and how, when he said, “Education is the key,” Maria had nodded to herself: “Sí, la educación es la llave.”
There were many times when Abel wished to tender his resignation, but who would then speak for the children? Who would then trumpet: “Education is the key”? Certainly none of the other gentlemen sitting around the table. New medals seemed to grow on their chests at each meeting, their cars grew longer, sleeker, their mistresses—minor starlets—more bejewelled. Haciendas began to spread on the outskirts of the city, behind high walls and electric fences. Soon no one knew in which one Quitano lived; he moved like a medieval monarch around his palaces.
“Here,” Quitano said to Abel one day, “here is a present from the government.” It was the keys to an estate on the far side of the island.
“No,” said Abel, who had just seen his budget increase by a miserable two million pesos. “I cannot accept.”
“Oh, come on. This is not the people’s money. No one is taking it from your precious education.”
“Well, where…?”
“From friends of this government.”
“And who are they?”
“United Nickel. Yes, a big American company is our friend. Our best friend, Abel. Our best friend for a future.”
“Yours, I think.”
“‘Do not dare to accuse me.” Quitano’s voice echoed down the corridor.
* * *
All this time, of course, Rafael was enjoying a privileged lifestyle. But it wasn’t enough to blind him from the poverty, illiteracy, and lack of opportunities that lay outside the hacienda’s walls. And what he did not see, Maria gave him eyes to see, so the lines of his poetry became cleaner and sharper. He had freed himself of his family name, preferring instead to publish under his mother’s name, Portuondo. Perhaps, he thought, well-chosen words would be able to cut through the tangled mesh of interests that bound his father.
Rafael and Maria were not the only ones to see how Abel had aged in his ministry and how betrayal was beginning to show in his eyes: how genuinely sorry he seemed to be that he could make nothing happen. Yet still he travelled through the countryside; still he spoke with passion—and with apology—to teachers, parents, children, and to community leaders. Often his wife, Mercedes, accompanied him now. She had been a teacher herself once and, whereas teachers and parents could admire the fervent belief Abel had for his cause, children loved Mercedes for the unaffected warmth of her concern. “You should be the politician!” Abel said to her more than once.
Word began to spread of a good man trussed up in a corrupt situation.
But word also spread to Quitano’s sharp ears of this paragon who was gaining popular support. Worse, that his ponce of a son, Rafael—“The ungrateful wretc
h who casts off the family name as if it is something to throw in the gutter!”—was involved in student politics and that Abel was making no effort to curb his enthusiasm. The universities, he thought, needed watching more closely.
But Abel was not the innocent Quitano took him to be. He was aware of the danger he was in and would have been careless if it were a danger he faced on his own. Putting his family in danger was another matter entirely. He made arrangements for his wife to leave the country for the safety of Miami. It was ostensibly a holiday, but Quitano’s contacts told him of the long-term lease taken on a property. It was the excuse he wanted. He had Abel arrested on charges of corruption and political intrigue—that should tarnish the troublesome saint. Word reached Rafael that he and Maria should immediately go into hiding. He dropped his literature studies.…
* * *
There is a silence after Rafael has spoken while we try to come to terms with this fresh information. Maria lays a hand briefly on Rafael’s shoulder, but her face is expressionless.
“So, is your father still in prison?” I say at last.
“Shot ‘while trying to escape,’” says Rafael. “A typical Quitano cliché.”
“But this man, Quitano,” says Melanie, “he’ll never agree to anything. Oh, shit, we’re screwed.”
“Ah,” says Rafael. “He wants to hold on to power above anything. If the United States put him under pressure, he may not be such a good friend to United Nickel. Those mining licenses would dry up or even be withdrawn.”
“So the Americans could eventually be your friends, eh?” says Melanie.
“The world,” Rafael answers, “is a complicated place. And this ‘game,’ as you call it, is held in a delicate balance.”
“Yeah, our lives, you mean, hanging by a thread,” says Melanie.
“I hope not,” says Rafael, “but we will see, yes?”
* * *
“So how will you kill us?” Martin looked straight into the mirror. It was the brazen way he wished he could have looked into Rafael’s eyes at that moment. It had been the question uppermost in his mind. But it was the one he had not dared to ask.
[CAPTIVES 4]
THE BLOODY END
Day Twenty-Two
Bit by bit, we find out more and more about our captors. They’re good stories they tell, but we must remember, no matter how they present their case to us, that we’re being held here at gunpoint and that the threat of death hangs over us every day. Still, what’s strange is how much, at times, they’re prepared to reveal to us—Rafael’s background, for instance. It’s no surprise to find out it was a privileged one—though it’s still hard to follow the journey he made from student poet to revolutionary. But if we get out of this, identifying him will be very straightforward. This morning I ask him, “Now that we know all about you, don’t you fear what will happen to you once all this is over? If you plan to release us…”
“I have always said that is my wish, if circumstances permit it. For the other matter, I have friends. Your concern is touching, but needless. And remember, this is merely a skirmish—a call, if you wish, to all who are oppressed by Quitano and his puppet masters. It awaits an answer.”
Of them all, it is Eduardo who remains most distant from us. He keeps on the edge of things—a dark, shadowy figure. Since the first interpreting he did for Rafael, we’ve had little to do with him. Even so, too often I see him hanging around Louise, if ever she’s trying to find what passes for privacy in these circumstances. She smiles uncomfortably and I sense her unease in his presence.
Not surprisingly, Jacques and Melanie worry about her and about what advantage may be taken of her. For this reason they take comfort, as we do, in the growing friendship between Louise and Martin. Though he says nothing, you can tell by his mood that he thrives in her company, that he pretends to be casual when Eduardo is around—threesomes are hard enough to negotiate, but when one of the three is armed and dangerous, well, my heart goes out to the boy. I know Carol’s does too, but we’d do better, I think, not to dwell on what lies so close to our hearts—powerlessness only weakens us further.
These are not ordinary times we’re living through. Carol and I, Jacques and Melanie have each other. Why should Louise and Martin not support each other too? And why should we, as parents, not turn a blind eye to matters that in normal circumstances we might have some say in? If it helps them to spend time in a shelter of their own, I can see no problem with that. Still, there’s an uncomfortable moment when Jacques learns what’s afoot.
“Louise…” he says, and his jaw clenches. Even beneath his tan you can see his face flush. There’s a moment when we half expect the return of the old Jacques, but he simply turns and heads for his shelter.
* * *
There was a knock at the door, then it squeezed open a crack.
Nick stood in the doorway, darkening it. Since Martin had been in captivity, it was as if Nick had filled all his space. Martin returned to school to find Nick had become like a mascot to his friends, a favorite of teachers who congratulated themselves on his “progress.”
“Can I come in?” said Nick.
“Door’s open.”
Nick was eight months older than the boy who’d watched the back end of a lorry kick up dust and seen the rest of his family severed from him. He was almost as tall as Martin now, but grown like a sapling that has overshot itself. Hair that had once been cropped short had grown and, gelled into careful disarray, it made him appear softer, somehow younger, than he’d looked the year before.
“What d’you think, then?” Nick asked.
“’Bout what?”
“Dad on TV.”
“Oh, that. He didn’t lose a leg.”
“Eh?”
“He didn’t make a fool of himself. He looked OK.”
“Think it was OK about the French people?”
“Yeah—uh—look, I don’t know. It was a long time ago, for Christ’s sake. It’s over.”
“OK, it’s over.”
“Yeah…”
“Mum says it might snow.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“But Dad says it’s too cold for snow.”
“Exciting. Place your bets.”
Nick smiled.
“So what film did you watch?” asked Martin.
“Something set in the future—about a family.”
“Sensitive or violent?”
“Mum chose it.”
“Ah. Subtitled or not?”
“Not.”
“Sounds good.”
“Mmm, wasn’t really.”
“Tough shit.”
“Good night, then.”
“Yeah, good night.”
But Nick hung around the door frame—why did people do that with him? When it’s time to go, for God’s sake, go.
Then, “Good night,” Nick said again, and closed the door behind him.
Sometime, Martin thought, he would get around to asking Nick what it had really been like for him—from the moment when that blur of a face had peered into the taxi, seen an old couple and a child, and dismissed them with a curt wave. The lorry. The dust. The silence. The media attention back home, the gentle questioning from all those government agency people and then the long limbo of hope. Ask him, like, in a real conversation. Till now it had been easier just to tell Nick what everyone had tried to tell him. “It’s over, Martin. It’s over—we’re back—we’re safe—we’re lucky—we can move on—put it behind us. It’s over.”
And it almost had been, till the fuss over the diaries. But the story they told—the story that engaged him now—clearly was not the story he had to tell himself. For months, that had been gnawing in the pit of his stomach and it didn’t let him think about anything else.
Day Twenty-Three
Contact with the outside world! We haven’t been forgotten. There’s a distant thrum that breaks our forest silence. You can’t hear a bird or the buzz of an insect anymore. The helicopter’s only the size of a dra
gonfly when we first see it at the head of the valley. Miguel and El Taino force us into our shelters. Their agitation is clear when Miguel thrusts his barrel into Jacques’s back.
“Hey,” says Jacques. “Easy, eh?”
After the days up here more or less “rubbing along,” it’s an uncomfortable shock to be so harshly treated again. But we all remain calm—though I think each of our hearts beats with expectation.
“Not long now,” I say. “Not long. They’ll find us.”
“Do not be so sure,” says Jacques, and true enough, looking into the stillness of the clearing, I see that the shelters are barely visible. The palms show a brief flurry of activity, then the helicopter veers off and continues to climb. The silence that reasserts itself is more imposing than before. It leaves us gasping for air.
“What now?” says Carol.
“Nothing,” I say. “Best just stay till they call us out.”
“They’re looking for us,” says Melanie later. “Glory be. We’re gonna get out of this hell-hole.”
“That helicopter’s certainly spooked them,” I say. “Look.”
Out in the center of the clearing an argument is taking place. Rafael is pointing up at the distant mountains, but Gabriel, our deceitful guide, shakes his head and points in the other direction, down towards the coast.
“You see how alike Gabriel and El Taino are,” says Melanie. “The same sallow skin, the same cheekbones. They could be cousins.”
“Maybe mulattoes,” I tell her. “You know, mixed black and white blood.”
“You don’t have to tell me what a mulatto is. I’m American, remember. One thing I know about is race.” She glares at me and I wonder whether civility among us can last much longer.
Gabriel’s holding both hands before him and, in a shunting motion, gesturing fiercely. Eventually Rafael nods and claps him on the shoulder. Gabriel’s triumph is marked only by a muted half-smile.