Captives (13 page)

“Oh, Martin,” his mother said one day. “It's a mystery to your father and me, but I think Nick's turned a corner at last.”

“That's good.”

“Oh, isn't it? This trip could be the making of him, you know.”

*   *   *

“Hey, Martin,” Louise called from another part of the clearing. She wanted him to cut her hair with a pair of scissors she'd borrowed from Maria.

“Why not ask her then?” he asked.

“Come on, Martin, do you think she's here to do us favors?”

“Your mum?”

“Get real. Like, Mom thinks we
are
our hair. She'd never do it and I need it done. I just can't bear it up, down, or wherever. I want it off. What's your problem?”

“Nothing,” said Martin. “I'll do it. Here, sit on that trunk.”

Martin took a handful of her thick, rich hair. He knew the only problem he had was to stop his hands from shaking.

“How do you want it, madam?” It would be easier, he thought, to be in character.

“Just short. Be brave.”

The scissors were small, so it wasn't possible to cut the hair without lifting up lengths of it between thumb and forefinger.

Lift. Cut. Lift. Cut.

He was aware how his forefinger traced the slight undulation in Louise's scalp above her ears, the soft give of the ears when his fingers brushed against them. He cut where her hair grew from its crown and marvelled at the spring of it, the strength of it. He angled her head slightly and she responded to the slightest pressure. As the hair fell around her, neither spoke. Miguel, from across the clearing, watched.

Perhaps, Martin thought, he'd have his own story to tell once this was all over. He imagined the groups standing around him, on the fallen blossoms, as he told them about his girlfriend.

“Yeah,” he'd go, “half French, half American.”

“Cool.”

Martin tipped Louise's head down and lifted up the first hank of hair from the back of her neck. He cut it. He ran his hands through the hair that still fell over her shoulders and lifted another hank. He uncovered a mole the size of a pinhead. He cut till it was all gone. Down the back of her neck, briefly still lowered, trailed a line of golden hairs, so light only such a moment could show them.

“All done?” she asked.

“Almost,” he said, and circled her, evening up the roughest of his cuts.

Louise had sensed his concentration throughout. The silence was part of it, but so too was the way his fingers had lingered—oh, the tiniest length of time—on her scalp or on her shoulder; and how, when he had first gathered up her hair to reveal her neck, she'd noticed a discernible intake of breath. She had sensed him behind her at the swimming hole too; sensed the excitement he'd felt as their thighs touched when the photograph was being taken. She felt from him something she could accept or deflect, something constant that, in this place at least, she could trust.

“
Qué linda!
” It was Eduardo, behind them. For the first time Louise felt exposed and ran her hands over the thick pelt of her hair.

“What? Have you been spying on us?” said Martin.

“On what? On you and me?” said Louise lightly, and the intimacy Martin had felt evaporated in the warm air.

*   *   *

Martin felt exposed again when Melanie exploded at Louise, then turned on him for the “mess” he'd made of her “baby's beautiful hair.”

“Did you never think of consulting me about whether it was a good idea?”

“Never,” said Louise, and she stood in the clearing, with her cropped hair and her shoulders pulled back. Like a warrior princess, thought Martin. A warrior princess who had commanded him to act and he had willingly obeyed.

“Am I the sole parent in all this?” Melanie spat at Jacques as she turned from them all.

Every time he saw Louise over the next couple of days he felt the web of intimacy grow again, threatening to ensnare him, so that he had to fight his way out of it—though if he could remember the exact tone in which she'd said “You and me?” as if the idea were ridiculous, the threads broke at once. Because his powerlessness felt to him like shame, he avoided both Louise and Eduardo as far as was possible in the confines of the camp. It was the card game that brought Martin back to Louise and then brought the three of them together.

It had begun as the closest any of them had had to fun for many days. An even playing field at last. Only Rafael could have sanctioned it. But Louise had watched with a gathering horror as her father became a stranger to her. The pride she'd thought he carried for them all was revealed as mere aggression that until this moment had lacked the opportunity to express itself. The competition of the card game had stripped from Jacques an awareness of where they were and quite who they were dealing with. When he began pushing Miguel, Martin knew there could only be one possible outcome. Yet it had shocked Louise to see her strong father so humbled, retching on the ground like a sick dog.

Melanie had wanted more from her and called her disloyal; but her own displays of loyalty didn't appear to make Jacques feel any more warmly towards her. His shame was so deep, an arm of comfort was like salt in his wounds. He stayed in his shelter, nursed his pain, passed blood, and sulked.

Violence had entered the encampment. It was a time to lie low, to expiate. Martin's parents huddled over their notebooks. He and Louise drifted as far as they dared to the corner of the clearing, where Eduardo stood sole guard.

“Asshole. My father's an asshole.” Louise bared her teeth as she said it.

Martin shrugged. He wanted to tell her that there was something brave if foolhardy about her father's challenge, but he couldn't find the will to contradict her.

“And when he called Miguel a ‘big ape'—I couldn't believe my ears. Call him a thug, murderer—anything—but an
ape.
Jesus, that man's my father.”

“He's not so bad.” Eduardo's soft voice came with an undertow of sadness. “You should not be so hard on him.”

“And why not?” said Louise.

“It's like you said: He's your father.”

“Yeah. And who are you anyway?” Louise's question came with force, as if she had been saving it up for the first good opportunity to ask it. Martin looked at Eduardo and saw how his eyes met Louise's and did not flinch. Eduardo smiled slightly, lifted his head back and, as his body twisted, sang:

“I'm a Chicago mobster,

I'm a fairy queen,

I'm each godforsaken place

My guitar's ever been…”

“
Test Drive?
” gasped Louise. “You like Test Drive?”

“
Hombre
, I
love
Test Drive.”

“Martin?”

He shook his head. “I … em…”

“You really got to get into Test Drive,” Louise said. “They're pure energy.”

“Sure, I'll just nip down to the store now and pick up their latest.”

“Good one, Marty,” said Louise.

She laughed, but Martin felt a small bitterness at how his failing had excluded him. He turned to Eduardo: “Like Louise said, Eduardo,
who are you?
”

“I am Eduardo. I am a guerrilla.”

“We know the first,” said Louise, “but you'll have to explain the second.”

“OK,” said Eduardo, “I will tell you why…”

*   *   *

Both Eduardo's parents had worked at the university. They'd known Rafael's father there, but he was a number of years older and held a more senior position. Besides, his parents hadn't stayed long at the island university. They wanted to travel and both secured posts at a university in Chicago. There was a growing interest in the literature of the Conquest, and that was where his father had specialized. His mother, on the other hand, was more concerned with the developing literature of the island, particularly in emerging poets, like the young and talented Rafael Portuondo. Portuondo had only published a thin pamphlet, but with its mixture of sensual and political imagery it had created quite a stir. Island Lover, Eduardo remembered, had been his own mother's favourite poem and so had become one of his also.

“No one can impose a curfew on your beauty.

No one can send a police patrol around my heart.

And if they drive our love underground

Like a secret river

It will still be cool and sweet…”

Eduardo had attended the early years of high school in Chicago. He missed his grandmother and the close-knit intimacy of the island, but he marvelled at snow and at the easy availability of the latest PlayStation and the latest Test Drive CD. Test Drive had been formed in Chicago—its members had come from the housing projects Eduardo had been told to avoid. “There are many ways to find freedom,” his father used to say. Test Drive had certainly found one. Their music was the sound of walls breaking down. Eduardo and a couple of friends began to jam in the basement of his house—Test Drive numbers mostly, with a couple of their own raw compositions—and were aiming for a high school gig when his parents announced they were returning to the island.

“It's time to go back,” his father said simply. “There's a possibility for change, and your mother and I, and some time you, Eduardo, can play a part in the transformation of our island.”

Eduardo paused, respecting the memory of his father's words.

“And that is what happened. But their timing was bad. What they saw as opportunity was only a tiny seed of democracy. They returned just when the war got dirty.”

“The war?” said Louise.

“Yes, that is really what it became. A war carried out underground—its signs, blood-stained basements, and unmarked graves. A war fought by torturers and death squads. Within two months both of my parents had been ‘disappeared.'”

“Disappeared?” said Martin.

“Yes. Eliminated. Got rid of.
Liquidated.
”

“But how?” said Louise.

“About that I try not to think. But one thing I can tell you is that this small, dirty war will not be a secret from the world for much longer.”

Martin and Louise nodded. It felt strange for them to share such thoughts with one of their captors. Louise glanced up at the forest canopy and felt giddy.

“So that is who I am,” said Eduardo. “But I am also ‘a Chicago mobster.' I am Tony Kurlansky, and here I am with my band, Test Drive, for a one-off performance in the heart of nowhere. Is my lead guitarist ready?”

“Ready and
on fire,
” said Louise.

“Is my drummer in position?”

“I don't really know any—”

“Oh, come on, Marty, Test Drive's drummer's immense. Just get into it. Use your thighs or something.”

“A thigh-drum?”

“That's the one!”

“OK, Test Drivers,” said Eduardo. “We're going on a burn-up! It's a one and a two and a three …

“Everywhere I go

I feel you breathin'

Down my neck—

Baby, you're turnin' me

Into a paranoid wreck…”

Eduardo peeled his T-shirt off and waved it over his head as he scissor-jumped and then spun around with one foot rooted to the spot. His singing and dancing caused a couple of parrots to rise from their perches—pure blue and green patches fluttering above their heads.

“But baby, can't you

Feel my breath

Turned on you like fire—

These red-hot flames

Tell of my desire…”

Louise played air guitar as if her life depended on it. Martin lowered his head and drummed on his thighs, trying to lay down a beat behind words Eduardo would sometimes deliver like a punch and at others tease out till they broke into screams. He felt sweat pouring down the back of his neck and down the sides of his rib cage; but he drummed on till he was beating out a tune that was completely new. And somewhere, woven into this new rhythm, was the strangest thought:
Eduardo is OK.

To Maria they looked like the flustered birds in the forest, flailing around as if their senses had left them. But there was no space for ruffled feathers here: what could Eduardo be thinking of?

“Ya está bien! Están locos? Qué están haciendo?”

“
Disculpa,
” said Eduardo. “They are not
locos
—crazy—just letting off a little steam.”

“And you? What do you do, Eduardo? Leaving your weapon lying there on the grass. Like you're a child.”

Eduardo shrugged. He'd picked up his T-shirt and, breathing heavily, was wiping it over his face and his smooth chest.

“
Cuidado!
” Maria said. “Remember who we all are here, yes?”' Then to Martin and Louise: “To your shelters. Now.”

“Jesus,” said Louise. “I'm getting so pissed off with all of this!”

*   *   *

The next day they drifted to the same place. But it was a quieter, more composed Eduardo who stood guard now—back to the reserved interpreter of the first days. Louise trailed her frustration from the previous day.

“And our parents!
God, our parents.
My father just sits in the shelter like a kid, nursing his shame. My mother can't find the right words, as usual…”

“And mine seem barely here.”

“Exactly. So, Eduardo”—she stood up now and approached him—“what is supposed to stop me from walking right out of here?”

“You would starve to death.”

“I don't care.”

“Miguel would track you.”

“Miguel does not scare me.”

“He should.”

“Well, he doesn't anymore. None of you scare me anymore, so what's to stop me from walking?”