“I miss you lots, John. Call Mum. She hates it when you don’t call.”
Tina’s done. Pepe must understand enough to know, because he straightens up and looks expectantly at Danielle, who repeats back Tina’s statement in Spanish. How horrible! Reiterating these kids’ personal messages has felt like spying. Martin, just before Tina, cried so hard Danielle could barely make out his words about how he still believed God would protect him. Antoine spoke to his parents with achingly straightforward affection. Pepe has listened closely through it all, his dark, almond-shaped eyes unwavering. Now something about them stirs a memory. Pepe reminds Danielle of someone she knew many years ago. But no. Not him. She tries to shake away the disturbing connection. More likely what she’s remembering is just the choking atmosphere of violence.
Pepe sends Tina off. Danielle knows her turn is coming. She’s going to have to say something to her daughter. She won’t try for anything too lovey-dovey. That always backfires with Aida. But Pepe chooses Pierre instead. Wasting no time, Rita takes him by the arm. Rita, with her small head and tufts of bushy, dyed blonde hair that stick out from under her mask near chin level. She has a jerky way of moving and a meanness about her that seems to go beyond her role here. But she feels it again as Rita conveys intense pleasure in hauling Pierre up as roughly as possible. The cigarette he’s been smoking falls to the ground. The kidnappers have been plying them with smokes — as pacifiers, presumably. Danielle gets it all too well. She sees herself crawl over to pick up Pierre’s, brush it off, inhale. She quit a decade ago, but a slow, unhurried cig is still among the most desirable things she can think of. Fear keeps her glued to her spot beside the camera, of course, and Pierre doesn’t try to reach for it either, even though it’s practically begging to be rescued, right at his feet. Instead, he angles his head towards Antoine, trying to look like he’s above it, then yanks his arm back from Rita so hard she loses her grip. Rita only snorts, content to clamp down doubly, but the interaction provokes a discernible spike in Danielle’s anxiety.
Pierre comes to sit on the decayed log that faces the camera. Filling out the shot is a green tarp like the kind they all slept on. The kidnappers have strung it between low branches. Behind that, above the trees, Danielle can see the range of mountains that she remembers well, that mark the border between El Salvador and Honduras. A long, long way from Toronto.
When Pepe gives her the signal, she begins rereading the statement. “Start with your na —” but Pierre doesn’t wait for her to finish.
“Elvis Presley,” he says expressionlessly.
Danielle forces a smile, like he’s joking. “Your real name.”
“John Lennon.”
Danielle’s palms moisten. She glances around. The others all seem confused, except Antoine. The fingers of both hands are crawling up his face towards his temples as if he’s scared, expecting something bad from his friend. The other kidnappers, Rita and Delmi, along with Pepe’s gangly sidekick, Cristóbal, exchange quizzical looks.
“No tengo patiencia para burlos,” says Pepe without looking up from his screen.
“He’s getting impatient, Pierre. Just say your name, please.”
“Pierre Charbonneau, of Québec.”
“Now repeat . . .” Danielle reads out Pepe’s script before pausing, waiting for Pierre to talk. He squints at her.
“C’est d’la merde.”
Danielle tries to understand. Could this be pride? Neela said Pierre is active in the Quebec nationalist movement. So he thinks he’s a rogue? Sees himself as a grownup playing by his own rules, maybe. Her heart beats faster: she has been abducted alongside a man-child with delusions of difference.
“Qué, cabrón?” Pepe is standing straight now, addressing him.
Pierre looks right back at him. “Me — erde,” he repeats. “I’m not going to say his words.” He turns to Danielle. “What’s he going to do? Shoot us — every one? How’s he going to get his million, or whatever he wants, if we’re all dead? I’m here for El Salvador. For the people. To learn. Do they even know? Why we came ’ere?”
Pepe looks towards Danielle too, his eyes glowing with interest. He’s waiting for the Spanish. But Danielle can’t produce it. Why is she here? Not for the same reasons as Pierre who, for all his bluster, probably really has come on this observational delegation because of his idealism and for its stated aim of seeing how rural Salvadorans live, listening to their stories about the trouble a foreign mine is causing them. Danielle’s own agenda goes so far beyond this her tongue cannot form words for it. Which might be reasonable enough, except that Pepe is reaching for his gun — his second, smaller one. As he untucks it from the belt of his fatigues, Danielle flashes back to the moment on the bus, just after Pierre pissed his pants. His eyes weren’t only red and scared. They were vicious. He was humiliated, belittled. He looks exactly like that now, as Pepe rushes him. He’s still wearing the same pants.
“I am not a tourist,” Pierre yells. “You have to listen.”
Pepe picks the young man up by the collar with one fist. Pepe is shorter by nearly a foot, but he has heavy, muscular legs and those big, dense arms that Danielle knows firsthand are capable of applying crushing pressure. He pushes Pierre backwards, towards a tree, which the young man thumps against hard.
Antoine steps forward, as if to help, but Tina has the good sense to put a hand to his chest before any of the kidnappers can react.
“Daniela!” says Pepe, raising his voice to Pierre but addressing her.
Right. Translation. Danielle stutters out in Spanish everything Pierre has said about the delegation coming to El Salvador for the people, that they aren’t tourists.
Taking in this information, Pepe still seems relatively calm, like he’s confident that he can intimidate Pierre out of whatever notions of bravery have gripped his immature mind. He doesn’t even raise his voice. “Tell this desgraciado puto that if he’s ready to die for El Salvador, to say one more word.”
Danielle translates through sudden tears.
“Tell him I think he’s bluffing,” says Pierre, seething.
“No, Pierre! Don’t do this,” Danielle says, but immediately regrets it. Her words sound chastising, parental. She imagines Aida hearing them, crossing her arms. “Just stop, please,” she implores. “Stop talking.”
“Why should I? He has to listen — to you especially. You’re the one who wrote abou —” Pierre catches himself, changes tack. “You’re supposed to be the leader!”
But it’s too late. Pepe pins Pierre by the neck and turns to Danielle, his laser eyes finding hers. “What did he say?”
“He says. . .”
“Tell me!” Pepe yells, and Danielle can see that his calm is breaking, ready to splinter like a homemade bomb. His gun is pressed directly to Pierre’s head.
Danielle knows that they are all going to suffer for Pierre’s big mouth. For her past, too. She wishes she’d burned those letters. Then she wouldn’t even be here. She and Aida could’ve gone on like before. “He says you should listen to us.”
“He said ‘wrote.’ What about writing? Who wrote?” Then, though he seems already to understand, Pepe repeats at the top of his lungs “WHO?”
“I did,” says Danielle.
“When?”
“I came to write about la guerrilla.” She’s scrambling again, needs to rescue herself. “It was just a student newspaper, and they took — I lost my notes. The articles never got published.”
Danielle knows the others might be able to pick up stray words from her Spanish: guerrilla, or estudiante, or publicados. Will they guess the rest? She can feel them trying to weave together a meaning. Only Pierre really knows. He got the basics about her past, back in San Salvador, when he pressed her on why she was leading the delegation instead of Neela. Danielle was forced to confide how, back in the dinosaur age, in her last year of university, she’d applied for permission to live with one of the five guerrilla factions that were starting a war against El Salvador’s
oligarchy. She instinctively left out everything else. These omissions have now morphed into a dark mystery Danielle can feel the others trying to probe as much as Pepe. She can practically hear them asking themselves who this old woman in front of them really is. Rita, who has stepped in closer to the group, is listening intently with the energy of a vulture as she, too, probes the mystery, her gun pointed.
“Where were you?” says Pepe, still addressing Danielle.
“Here. In Morazán.”
Pepe’s eyes widen ever so slightly, their steadiness shaken. Then, suddenly, he swings back towards Pierre and puts so much pressure on his neck that the boy begins to choke. “Listen to me, hijo de puta. I am going to squeeze the life out of you in front of your friends. And then I’ll leave a bullet in your skull so you understand. How much will it count for then, your devotion to El Salvador?”
Pierre, who clearly has only the vaguest idea of what is being said to him, tries to articulate words between gasps. No one makes them out. But just as abruptly, Pepe lets go, raises his chin, pulls back his shoulders and returns to his position behind the camera. “Tell him he has thirty seconds to talk or I’ll shoot him,” he says, bending down to adjust the LCD screen. He might as well be talking about the weather. The bomb has been abruptly defused.
Danielle numbly repeats these words. She watches Pierre pull his t-shirt collar away and rub his neck. He wobbles as he gets to his feet, looking smaller, rumpled, the cult leader dethroned. When he gets to the stump he puts down a hand, steadying himself before sitting.
Danielle can’t stop crying. Stupid, stupid, she thinks, angry with herself for it — for everything. “ ‘I urge the government to do whatever is necessary to secure our release by Monday, April 11th, 2005,’ ” she says. “ ‘Otherwise, these people will take our lives one by one.’ ”
Repeating the statement, Pierre’s voice is a clash of squeaks and croaks.
“Now something for his family,” says Pepe, not moving his eyes from the camera.
When Danielle echoes this in English, Pierre just shakes his head. Danielle worries that another, worse explosion of anger will result — a mushroom cloud no one can survive. But Pepe mustn’t care much either way about the personal stuff because he presses a button to end the recording.
“Now you,” he says to her, as Cristóbal leaves the campsite, returning with a length of rope and a blue bandana. He pulls Pierre to one side and starts tying.
Pepe is putting the video camera back into its case.
Cristóbal approaches. “Listo.”
Pepe glances back at the hostages to assess whether Pierre’s hands and mouth have been adequately bound. He gives the camera to his cousin. “Pack this away. And tell Rita to go easy on them.”
Cristóbal tilts his hat, letting in some air. “Sí,” he replies, but he keeps his eyes averted. He takes the case and turns it over absently.
“Your wife could be dangerous for us if she overreacts.”
Cristóbal shakes his head. He knows Rita can put up a fuss. That’s her way. Unlike Delmi, who has no spine, who will do whatever Rita or Pepe tells her.
“She will be,” says Pepe, insisting.
Cristóbal still doesn’t look back at him, and the men stand, just a foot from one another, in an edgy silence until, in a sudden move, Pepe lifts a fist towards Cristóbal, who flinches, his hand going up to protect himself. But the fist slows, coming to land with a light touch across Cristóbal’s left bicep. “If she’s hard on you, it’s okay,” Pepe says teasingly, and uses his knuckles to grind into the arm muscle.
Cristóbal smiles, relieved. Rita is their one source of conflict. Pepe has openly debated several times whether it’s been a mistake to take advantage of her eagerness to be in on the plan, but Cristóbal always reminds him that it was better to include only people they know. His wife and her sister are both hard workers. And Cristóbal is as eager as Rita for the money Pepe is going to pay them. They’ll use it to buy passage into the U.S. The best coyotes charge $8,000, and Cristóbal won’t chance it on the cheaper kind, the ones who might leave you stranded halfway across a swollen river. He hopes Pepe will join them in Los Estados. But everything depends on Pepe placing a small amount of trust in Rita.
Pepe holds up the camera’s memory card. “If Rita did her job, this will get to San Salvador.”
“She did.”
“We’ll see.” Pepe walks off. “I have to take the call. Don’t wait. Pack up.”
Cristóbal watches him leave and sees Pepe catch Delmi’s eye. Cristóbal knows Rita has encouraged a relationship between the two. “He either fucks my sister or he’ll end up fucking one of the foreigners. Which is easier for you?” she said, and Cristóbal conceded because he knew she was right. But he and Pepe have never discussed it. Delmi simply went to Pepe at some point, and Rita looks after the money. She’s always thinking of money, but Cristóbal believes she’s doing it for them, for their future.
As far as he knows, Pepe doesn’t have any relations with women except paid ones. At least it’s been that way since the war ended. That’s when the cousins ran into one another at a construction site in San Miguel. “Missed a spot,” said a man standing behind Cristóbal as he was washing his hands in a bucket. Turning around, Cristóbal couldn’t believe his eyes. There was his childhood companion, José Molina Domingo, Pepito, smiling, teasing as he always had. They became inseparable. “Puro Indio,” Pepe always calls him. And it’s true. Cristóbal looks Indian. But he doesn’t know anything about the Lenca, the ancient people Pepe says they’re descended from, and he always worries that Pepe is insulting him. Cristóbal only did a few years of school and doesn’t read the way Pepe does — especially not the news, which Pepe has an insatiable appetite for. Pepe is much more capable than he is, but they manage to get along anyway. Better than manage. Cristóbal attributes this affinity to shared blood.
As Pepe disappears from the campsite and Cristóbal tucks the camera back into his large canvas bag, he remembers those early days after the war, when Pepe was still drinking. He’d get into fights. One time Cristóbal knew just from the face of the man challenging his cousin that he wanted to murder Pepe. The wounds from the war were still so fresh. People acted on impulse. Pepe took the first punch like he wasn’t planning on doing much to stop the next, or the next. Like he wanted to see how many the man had in him. Cristóbal broke it up, but in the commotion Pepe hit him in the head several times. Later, Cristóbal couldn’t tell whether it had been even partly accidental. A lot of ex-militants have calmed down in recent years. Not Pepe. His turn to violence is like a tap valve popping off. He doesn’t need a reason.
Last year, when he asked for Cristóbal’s help, Pepe said there’d be no turning back once they talked details. He required a full commitment. But Cristóbal knew right away that he would do it, and not just for his share of the money Pepe had accumulated by means Cristóbal has never asked about, or even because he missed life as a guerrilla soldier so very much and wanted any chance to recreate it. He’d do it because he and Pepe have a bond.
6:30 PM. Community hall, Los Pampanos
“One at a time, por favor.” Marta is hollering to be heard, something she’s very good at. People must sense that tonight will be different. Attendance has tripled and everyone is clamouring to say their piece. “Please!” she repeats, then points to a raised hand several rows back. “You. Go.”
A chair scrapes as a man in a too-big t-shirt and work pants stands. “Compañeros y compañeras, I fought in the war against the imperialistas.” Someone passes him a microphone attached to a long extension cord, itself plugged into one of only two outlets in the hall. “I worked in the refugee camps to keep our people positive.” A hum of approval from the crowd. “I came back and helped rebuild this community when the government wished we would disappear.” More approving sounds. “And since 1996 I have been fighting this mine.”
Onstage Marta feels a creeping impatience. She doesn’t like to interrupt speakers. The wh
ole point here is to encourage community participation. But there is always one man who can drone on forever. “Compa. What is your comment tonight?”
“I have fought against this mine,” the man reiterates, “and now I think we need to support our brother who has taken a step to close it down.”
“Thank you, Compa. And what about the women here? We never hear enough from our sisters. Yes — you!”
A shy-looking woman seated nearer the back, directly under one of the tube lights that run the length of the hall’s peaked tin roof, takes the mike. Several news crews, who’ve made the trip from the capital city for the first time in ages, crowd around her. Despite everything Marta knows about the media and their distortions, she is delighted. The Committee needs the coverage.
“Compañeros y compañeras, I don’t support this abduction because I think it will bring a negative image to the fight against the mine, and the message of Jesus Cristo and Monseñor Romero was to use violence only when there is no other choice, and today is not like that, even though the mine is poisoning our water and my cousin has skin rashes from it and some people think this is reason enough to resort to violence, but I think they’re wrong, and we need to continue our work of closing the mine down, but we should not support violence, which is bad for the struggle.”
“Good,” says Marta, “Thank you.” She paces her plywood stage. People tilt left and right to see her. Many stir the heavy air with paper fans. “So. We’ve heard many views tonight. Some of us are worried. Some of us want to fight. But brothers and sisters, we also have to think strategically, no? Whether or not we support the person who is demanding that the mine be shut down temporarily — and I repeat, temporarily — we still have an opportunity to use the media who are naturally being drawn to this case, as you see.” She sweeps an arm towards the cameras. Lenses whir, tightening their focus.
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