by Helen Young
The familiar, comforting scrape of metal instruments against brickwork met him even before he had entered the site. When the workmen came into view, the scene exploded into one of industry. It looked as though there were twice as many men as the previous day, as though each man from the day before had hired another. They crawled like ants over the scaffold mounts, watching the supervisors who watched them, as though to beat the next man to an extra day’s pay come Monday.
‘Got to get things moving.’ Karl Draper was at his side, his grin serving to frame a cigar stub clamped between his teeth.
‘Things were moving, Karl, and safely.’
Karl frowned. ‘Christ, Luke, don’t talk to me about safety. When have rules ever helped anyone? This is work, that’s what it is. And done in half the time.’
‘And time wouldn’t have anything to do with the Pan-American project next year?’
‘Bingo.’
‘OK, Karl, I understand there’s a bigger prize in the offing…’
‘Good, good.’
‘But this has to be respected. This village, La Merced, has to be completed as planned; as we imagined it.’
‘God, Vosey, you really are a pro, aren’t you?’ Karl slapped him on the back. ‘Ha! I actually hired someone worth hiring.’
‘So, you’ll let me run it with no interference?’
‘Yes, yes. I see you took my advice and brought in extra security.’ Karl gestured towards a man standing watch over a large stack of roof tiles.
‘They’re checking everyone who comes in and out.’
‘Good. We can’t be too careful. People will take anything, even the seat from the john.’ He laughed. ‘That happened to me on another project. Damned humiliating, squatting like an animal to shit.’
‘I suppose it can’t hurt, if we can afford it. More men means we’ll finish faster,’ Luke said, contemplating the walls of a red brick garage that was taking shape before them. ‘I wonder if any of them can draw?’
‘Draw? Hang on, hiring men and women, hey?’
Luke turned. A group of men had forced their way through the security block and, led by a single woman, were heading straight for them. These weren’t people who worked for him, he was sure of that. They had that look about them that said things were better taken by force than worked for.
‘Are you Señor Vosey?’ the woman asked.
‘I am.’
‘Isidro Gallego is my husband.’
The injured foreman. Luke looked at the men at her back. ‘And these are?’
‘His brothers.’
‘All of them?’
‘They’re his brothers in the cause,’ she said.
‘I’ll be in your office,’ Karl whispered.
Luke watched him leave. Around them, the workers closest by had stopped what they were doing to stare.
‘Señora, will you come with me?’
She shook her head, planting her feet in the dirt.
‘Bring one of your companions if you like.’
She turned her back on Luke and spoke low in soft, coaxing tones as though these brothers, whoever they were, needed soothing towards diplomacy. When she turned back, one of them was at her side.
‘The rest of you can wait here,’ Luke said, nodding at the security guards who’d been overpowered at the gate. The pair had run over not long after the group. They had their clubs ready. They wanted blood and he understood it. The need to show you could be forceful too. Luke didn’t want fighting, not here. Not when there was an arsenal of bricks and chisels to hand. He led the foreman’s wife and the brother after Karl. It would serve Karl right if he walked right into his office with these two. Wouldn’t do, though. Karl was his boss and that had earned him the right to some cowardice. Instead, Luke took them to the foreman’s old office on the floor below his and invited them to sit. The man refused. He was the kind of man who didn’t look comfortable being invited to do anything. Isidro’s wife sat down in the chair Luke offered and fanned out her skirts. Luke leaned on the corner of the desk, which seemed a good middle ground between the two strangers. He didn’t want to get too comfortable, if things were to go that way with the brother.
‘How’s your husband?’ he asked her.
‘He’s unable to work, señor.’
‘I understand that.’
She made a show of removing a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. ‘The doctors say he will not walk for some time.’
‘And the company will pay his salary and medical bill for the next two weeks. His family were told this. You were told this.’
She looked back at the brother.
‘Did you know he was in a union?’ the man asked.
‘What kind?’
‘The kind that looks after its own.’ The brother lit a cigarette. ‘We don’t care what his family were told. The union sent us. We’re to take his place.’
‘You mean the six of you?’
‘We insist.’
‘You don’t have the right to do that.’
‘You people think that,’ the brother spat. He seemed to grow taller, but really he had just moved fast so that he was standing over him. Luke could smell the unwashed perfume of him, a stale sweetness lost inside the burn of fresh tobacco.
‘We just want what’s right,’ the woman said, rising to guide the brother back to her side. ‘The work is there, we can see it with our own eyes.’
‘I’m not used to being threatened,’ Luke said. It was a lie, of course, but it was what you said in such circumstances.
‘It isn’t a threat,’ said the brother. ‘If it can’t be arranged today, it can be tomorrow, or the next day. We’ll keep coming. We’ve been encouraged not to stop.’
Luke thought about asking who had sent them, or what idea perhaps. It was like one of those protests the liberals encouraged the people to take part in. The ones that saw them erect obscene banners in Plaza de Bolívar and pelt raw eggs at politicians when they didn’t agree with policy. He’d read about them in El Tiempo but never imagined they’d find him here. He’d always been fair, he thought.
‘Today we are six brothers, perhaps tomorrow we’ll bring his cousins. He has a lot of cousins.’
‘All right,’ Luke said. ‘What if I take two men and no more?’
‘They all want to work,’ the woman said. ‘Take three.’
‘I can’t.’ He thought of the army of men Karl had already employed without his knowledge. Could they afford more?
‘It just went up to four,’ she said.
Luke smiled. ‘I’ll take three, and if you go on insisting, I’ll ask for references too.’ He rose. ‘Decide amongst yourselves who it is to be.’
‘We’ll have to speak to the others,’ she said, rising too. She had stopped crying or forgotten, in the exchange, that she had begun.
‘This is his,’ said the man, taking up a jacket and hat that could have belonged to the foreman from a hook on the wall.
‘Take it,’ Luke said, leading them to the door and then back onto the street.
He waited while they discussed the outcome with the others. None of them looked alike and he wondered afterwards if the foreman was actually married. He’d never mentioned a wife but what did it matter now. Part of who he was respected what they were doing. He watched as the men split into those who would stay and those who would leave. The woman had taken ownership of the foreman’s jacket and hat and he realised then that she’d arrived with neither of her own.
After they’d gone, Luke went in search of Karl, finding him in front of the window of his office. Karl’s thick limbs stopped most of the morning light from entering the room. He’ll never go without, Luke thought. He went over to his desk and retrieved a new bottle of whisky he’d bought on the journey into work that morning, promising himself it was more to have should Karl drop by than to drink himself. He found two glasses. Telma hadn’t been through with the morning post yet. She had been right about yesterday’s, there wasn’t a good draughtsman anywh
ere in the pile. He’d checked. What had begun as a promising day was starting to slip. At least there was the journalist to look forward to.
‘I must say, Vosey,’ Karl eyed the whisky. ‘You handled that well. I’d have run.’
Luke smiled. He poured and handed over one of the glasses. ‘Is that why you hired me?’
‘I didn’t hire you.’
‘Who did, then?’
‘The board.’ He raised his glass and Luke followed. ‘Knowledgeable men with an eye for talent. You’re famous.’
‘Salud,’ Luke said, taking a deep draught.
‘Only question is why you came?’
‘Is that why you’re here today? To get to know me better?’
‘Of course not! Christ, Luke, you could have come to fuck all the whores in Bogotá for all I care.’ He grinned. ‘Perhaps you have? Cigar?’
Luke shook his head and sat down at his desk. Karl sat across from him.
‘As I said, the Pan-American Conference is coming next year. Lot of money to be made then. That gives us a little under four months.’ Karl lit his cigar. ‘All eyes on us. A man with your talent could benefit, if you take my meaning.’
‘Four months for what exactly?’
‘To get going. There’s a lot of cash pouring in. Trying to modernise the place. More than a lick of paint, you know.’ He slid his empty glass across to Luke. ‘If what I hear is right, wouldn’t surprise me if a few more of these building projects went up before the rest of the Americas, including our friends in the States, descend. All this nonsense with the socialists, crying out for the land to go back to the people. When was it ever theirs? Fat chance, not when Osorio and his pals own most of it. Nothing but commie whingeing, I say.’
‘Perhaps it’s their desire for a fair chance, or the suffering that follows when it’s denied,’ Luke said. He thought again of the woman and men who had begged to be employed. He thought of the boy and the streetcar.
‘Suffering? Don’t get involved with any of that, Luke. They’re in for a bit of a clean-up as well, Gaitán and his righteous lot. Can’t have the reds making trouble when the conference comes.’
‘And you think this Gaitán will?’
‘He’ll try. Half the country listens to him.’
‘And the other half?’
‘Sense.’
Karl stopped and looked at his empty glass. Luke poured.
‘You won’t join me, Vosey?’
‘Not this time.’ Why did men like Karl work in binaries?
‘The place needs bringing up to speed, inside and out. There was talk of some big architect, someone you’ve heard about of course, coming here to redesign the city. I forget the name. Doesn’t matter. You’re here now. Osorio wants you for the job.’
‘Camilo?’
‘Who? Come on. Gabriel Osorio, you met last night.’
‘Of course, El Lobo.’
‘Better lay off the drink, Vosey,’ Karl joked.
‘And why does Gabriel Osorio want me?’
‘Truth of it is, I’ve been lying to you.’ Karl rose and went over to the window again. ‘I said I didn’t know about you when we met, but I did – I mean, I do. I know what you’ve lost.’
‘What I’ve lost?’
‘Is there an echo in here? Yes, what you lost. It can’t have been easy.’
Luke poured himself another drink. ‘It wasn’t.’ He thought of Catherine. As much as he tried, hers was always the first face he saw when he looked back.
‘And in the way you did? I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. No, you’ve got principles, Luke.’
Luke watched him, waiting to see how far Karl might go.
‘I know something about it myself.’ Karl rose and went over to the window. ‘I had a horrible little brush with the law back in ’42.’
‘You’re talking about my profession?’
‘What else?’
‘I came off lightly,’ Luke said.
‘But your career, it was in shreds after the trial, wasn’t it? So public as well. There was no need for that. Doesn’t give a man a chance to make himself up again afterwards. You know, once the game’s done.’
‘War isn’t a game.’
‘You’d think it was, talking to some of that lot last night. Did you hear them? So many victories. You’d think they’d all made General.’
Luke looked up at Karl and squinted. Framed by the sunlit window, he was nothing more than a charcoal outline of the man who had promised him a fresh start. Karl, in his management role, hadn’t asked questions in London. Why was he asking now? They were far from the Strand, though, and Karl operated differently here, it seemed. He appeared different too – his suits were brighter and his hair shinier. In fact, everything about him had been dialled up a notch. Luke looked at his empty glass; his second. Karl picked it up and filled it again.
‘All I’m saying, Vosey, is that this is a chance for you to step back onto the world stage.’ He handed the glass to Luke. ‘Osorio sees potential. Christ, so do I.’
Luke nodded.
‘I’m arranging a little get-together, next week. We’ll talk more then.’
7
Camilo didn’t show that day. It didn’t bode well for the newspaperman, Luke thought, considering how easy it had been to ignore him the first time, and he really didn’t want to ignore him. Something about El Lobo left Luke keen for the arrival of the nephew. He wanted to know more about the man who called himself The Wolf. The man who, according to Karl, wanted to hire him. He needed to understand it, this new Pan-American project that was supposed to be greater than La Merced. Without the certainty of some future success, the past still had a way of bleeding into the present. Despite his best efforts, there would always be someone like Karl, with knowledge of the past, to remind him.
He couldn’t just wait. Sleep was a nightmare. It was always the same scene drawn up and repeated; whole cities crushed and people too. And, some mornings when it was time to rise, he woke screaming to be free of them. It had become normal, almost, and not just for him. Señora Rojas had arrived early one morning and heard him. Afterwards, she’d said nothing, keeping her head down and her eyes on her work as though there were worse things he could have brought into her life. It was another week before Camilo appeared again.
‘The newspaper boy’s here,’ Telma said, standing in the entrance to his office.
‘Thank you, show him up.’
She didn’t move.
‘Has something else happened?’
‘It’s tonight, you know, the lecturer I told you about,’ she whispered, ‘and now the boy is here I’ll need to stay late. Not that I’m one for politics. Work has no party and all that. I just wanted to hear Gaitán speak…’
‘Enough, please.’ Luke held up his hand. ‘Tell Señor Osorio to come up and you can go to your meeting, or whatever it is.’
‘I knew you would understand,’ Telma said, smiling and stepping aside to reveal Camilo Osorio behind her.
Luke gestured to the seat across from him. Camilo took it and produced pen and notebook from his bag.
‘You know you’re late,’ Luke said. ‘By a week.’
‘Late? I was here the next day. Didn’t she say?’ Camilo jabbed his pen back towards the closed door.
‘Of course.’ Luke smiled. Telma hadn’t said a thing. There were things he wanted to know though, about Gabriel Osorio. He’d be polite and sacrifice a few details from his past if needed. ‘Shall we pick up where we left off?’
Camilo opened the notebook and frowned.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, flicking through the leaves. ‘Much news since then.’
‘Perhaps I can ask you a question? About your uncle,’ Luke said. ‘There might be some coffee, if you want it too?’
‘No coffee, thank you.’ Camilo placed the notebook down on the desk. ‘You must mean Gabriel Osorio?’
‘We met last week.’
‘He’s my father’s brother, but I don’t know what I can tell you.’ C
amilo sat up and reached into his pockets. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
‘Please.’ Luke rose and opened the window.
Camilo lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Would you be shocked if I said he despises me?’
‘Why would he do that?’ Luke asked, leaning against the frame. ‘I imagine it would be useful to have a nephew in the press.’
‘I wrote something about him once which he didn’t like. Now I’m an outcast of sorts.’
‘And if I asked what it was you wrote?’
‘I’d tell you, it’s no secret. Something that implicated him in a deal he didn’t want made public. Unseated a couple of his friends from office when it did,’ he laughed. ‘But the details would be boring, Señor Vosey, to you and to me! Now, where shall we start?’
‘Well, I could start by saying that I’m an outcast too.’ With Camilo it was easy, like talking to an old friend. ‘You can write that down.’
Camilo smiled and stubbed out the cigarette he’d just lit. ‘And why are you an outcast?’ he asked, picking up the pen instead.
‘I’m here, aren’t I? Far from home.’
‘Where is that?’
‘England. A place called Liddington, actually. It’s a small village somewhere called Wiltshire where nothing much has changed in over three hundred years.’
‘Unlike here,’ Camilo replied, nodding towards the scene outside.
‘Yes, unlike here. Everyone seems caught up with it.’
‘Yes, they are,’ Camilo said. ‘But it should be the right change. Not only this.’ He gestured to the window. ‘Something greater, real social movement – to see the people rise and not the skyline.’
‘That’s very well put. Not something your uncle would go in for, I bet?’
‘Not in the slightest. Anyway, they’re not my words, rather those of the people I write about. There isn’t an original thought in my head.’ He smiled. ‘Are you hungry? I mean, if you’re not too busy?’