MAMista (13 page)

The smell of rotting vegetation grew almost overwhelmingly as they followed the track through the undergrowth. When they came to where Blanco lived it was a riverside hut. Here was his cultivated patch on the edge of a clearing. His family – spindle-shanked hollow-faced Indians – were burning scrubland for cane. They wore torn jeans and Beethoven T-shirts and were coloured grey by the smoke.

The Indian did not stop. He led the way on a well-beaten track that followed the water's edge. Soon, almost concealed by the dark jungle, Lucas saw another hut, its door secured by a large padlock. Beyond it lay another small clearing.
At the water's edge there was a well-built landing stage and a collection of cans and oildrums.

Lucas stopped and was glad of a chance to catch his breath. Then Paz arrived. He put down his load and inspected the hut. He pushed it so that the whole structure creaked. ‘One good kick would bring it down,' he said.

‘Where is Inez?' Lucas said.

‘There is a fight about the cargo.'

‘What kind of fight?'

‘The woman says there is a crate missing but the pilot hadn't signed for it, so she probably made a mistake.'

‘Guns?' Lucas said.

‘Dried fish.'

As they spoke, they heard the engines of the Beech. They came up to full power for take-off. At this place the river became varicose, its bends almost ponds. One of them, a hundred and fifty yards across, provided the Beech with space enough for the take-off. But only just enough space. The sound increased as the plane came over the treetops, but only when it was halfway across the water did they see it. It lurched through the air and cleared the trees on the higher ground with only a fraction to spare. As the ground fell away Thorburn banked and came round steeply. He circled once, gaining height in the purple evening sky, and then headed north again.

‘Dried fish,' said Lucas. ‘I see.'

Paz said, ‘A crate of dried fish could keep a family alive for a year.'

‘Stop trying to become a veteran overnight,' said Lucas. ‘Let them work it out. You make me nervous pacing up and down.' Lucas regretted it immediately. He didn't often lose his temper; it must be a sign of age.

Paz spat in the river.

Lucas said, ‘Be glad of time to do nothing if you want to be a soldier.'

Paz was not pleased to be patronized in that way. He
sat down on one of the oildrums and watched the evening sky reflected in the water. He took the Luger from its holster and toyed with it, putting the magazine in and taking it out again.

‘It's a magnificent gun,' Lucas said.

Paz passed the pistol to him. Lucas felt the weight of it and sighted it at the water. Then he looked at the magazine, slammed it back and put a round into the barrel. ‘It's a good weapon,' he said, pointing across the river with it. Above the trees the thunderclouds loomed. In the uncertain light the river was brown and scummy like a cup of coffee left overnight.

‘What's that?' said Paz, who was watching the place at which Lucas pointed.

Something moved in the shadow of the far river bank. What looked like a swimmer moved slowly through the weeds and, caught by a current, more quickly. It seemed to raise an arm. Then, as it came out of the shadows, Lucas could see that it was an animal. It was the bloated carcass of a dog that waved one whitened bone at them as it turned again and drifted back towards the far shore. As it gathered speed, Lucas sighted the pistol carefully and fired twice.

The pistol shots sounded very loud. The skin deflated with a loud sigh and slowly sank. Lucas returned the gun to Paz.

‘Now I will have to clean it,' said Paz.

Lucas nodded. It was a spectacular demonstration of marksmanship given the fact of the unknown gun and poor light. Both men knew it.

When the girl arrived she asked about the shots she'd heard. She was not pleased to hear that it was Lucas practising his aim. ‘We are not here to play games,' she said. ‘The moment you are left to yourselves you behave like children.'

The two men didn't respond. They watched her unlock the door. There was a scuffle of rats as she opened it. Inez
unhooked a tall oil lamp from an overhead beam. She removed the glass chimney, lit the wicks and adjusted them to provide a bright yellow light.

The hut had provided shelter to many but home to none. It reflected the variety of men who had passed this way. Some had patched the rotting timbers with flattened cans, some had scratched their names and dates into the wood, others had carved into it neat slogans about life and liberty. Someone had torn out the cross-pieces to feed into the stove; someone had nailed a broken plastic crucifix above the door.

The walls were lined with posters. All of them government propaganda with powerful anti-revolutionary themes. Here were depicted dead policemen killed by guerrillas, weeping wives, a rural electricity station become a burned-out shell. Here an idealized portrait of Admiral Benz smiled benignly upon the Bishop of Tepilo. There was no way to be sure if it was all meant as a joke or whether it was no more than heavy paper to seal out the mosquitoes and the cold night air.

They dragged their baggage inside. Half the space was occupied by two double-tiered metal bunks. Draped over them was a mosquito net. It was torn and stained and spotted here and there with the smeared remains of squashed insects. There was a tiny oil stove with a chimney that snaked to the roof. A rickety table stood in the corner, supported in part by the walls. Upon it Inez put her precious portable typewriter. Bisected oildrums made uncomfortable seats.

Soon Blanco arrived. His teenage son was carrying a pot of beans and some ragged shreds of dried beef. It was divided into three small portions and put upon enamel plates. The enamel had gone grey and crazed, and in many places chipped to reveal patches of black iron. The beans were hot and filling. The beef was difficult to chew and when swallowed was heavy in the stomach. Even so it was a gift which Blanco could ill afford.

Blanco waited for his plates. His son examined the newcomers as if they were visitors from another planet, and even the old man stared as much as his courtesy would allow. It was the first time that Paz and Lucas had encountered the urgent curiosity that the peasants showed for the guerrillas. A guerrilla was a person who had elected to live the life of the fugitive. Nocturnal, hunted and excommunicated, their lives were not much different to the jungle animals. Guerrilleros fascinated these half-starved, penniless, uneducated peasants because they were the only humans they'd heard of who were lower on the social scale than they were.

Lucas scraped his plate and licked his fingers. Inez attacked her food more delicately; Paz had not yet fully recovered from his flight. Thanked for the food, Blanco bowed like a grandee. But after the two peasants left the hut, Blanco's voice could be heard berating his son and telling him what a miserable and socially inadequate trio they had just fed.

Inez said, ‘Every family here lives in terrible dread that their sons and daughters might join the armed struggle. One pair of hands less means a longer working day here. For old Blanco the loss of one son would sentence him to hard manual labour until the day he dies.'

‘Yet you go on recruiting them,' Lucas said.

‘Yes, we go on,' said Inez firmly.

‘What do you think we should do?' Paz asked her with dangerous simplicity.

Inez immediately regretted her remarks. Paz was not the only one who might interpret such asides as a lack of resolution. She got out her matches and tried to light the little oil stove.

‘Why should he not give his son to the revolution?' Paz persisted. ‘Are we not offering our lives to make him free?'

Without looking up from the stove, Inez nodded. Paz
was an ardent idealist. Perhaps such uncompromising resolution was exactly what the movement needed right now.

There was the sudden stink of half-burned kerosene as the stove flared. From her bag she got a jar of instant coffee and a bottle of water. She boiled it up and made coffee. Powdered coffee was an incongruity here where the beans were grown but it was convenient. Paz tried out one of the metal bunks, settling his weight upon it gingerly, fearing it might collapse under him. Lucas thankfully stretched out his legs.

Inez turned down the oil lamp so that only a glimmer lit the room. Then she sat at the table and drank some coffee. She offered the dented mug to Paz. He waved it away with a sleepy gesture. Lucas took it and was glad of a hot drink.

‘Don't forget to take your tablets,' she said. Her voice was muffled. She was resting her head upon her folded arms.

Neither man responded. Paz had no trouble in dropping off to sleep. Lucas watched Inez for a few minutes and then succumbed to the toil and stress of the day. Soon he was sleeping too.

The sound of the thunderstorm closed upon them, its rolling drums echoing along the valley. But like so many threats and promises in this land, the rain did not fall. Inez had dozed off and snored softly. Lucas heard Paz shift his weight on the bunk. The thunder had wakened him. ‘Are you there?' Paz whispered.

‘Yes.' From outside came the sounds of chattering and shrill laughter.

‘Listen to that jungle; like drunken whores at a convention,' said Paz.

‘If you say so,' Lucas said.

‘Animals coming down to the water, I suppose.'

‘That's right,' Lucas said.

‘We are very close to the village. Did you see it from the plane?'

‘Lousy road.'

‘But not too rough for a police four-by-four. Will they have sentries posted?'

‘To protect us? I doubt it.'

‘They say the guerrillas control the roads after darkness.'

‘That's what they say.'

‘Tracked vehicles could get through, but I don't imagine we merit a tank.' It was as near to a joke as Paz was able to get.

‘A very old tank maybe.'

There was a shriek and the thump of something hitting the tin roof and then running across it. Inez awoke and stiffened in the way that people do when listening carefully. On the table in front of her Lucas could see something that glinted. It was an M-3 submachine gun. She'd not had it on the plane; she must have got it from Blanco. She said, ‘It's just a monkey landing on the roof. Go back to sleep.'

Whatever had made the noises departed and left them in peace. One by one they dozed off to sleep. It was almost two hours later that Lucas came awake again. Inez was already awake and standing by the door, head craning to catch a distant sound. In her hand she had the ‘grease gun', its butt retracted so that she could hold it like a pistol. Then Lucas heard it too. It was a car engine labouring as it negotiated the pot-holes and mud of the river track.

‘What is it?' Paz asked. He got his glasses from the pocket of his shirt, put them on, and then swung out of his bunk.

‘The police – the army?' asked Lucas.

‘No,' said Lucas. ‘Blanco would have sent someone to warn us by now.'

‘So why the machine gun?'

She smiled. ‘In case it is the police or the army.' Still holding the gun she stepped outside. A vehicle was coming down the track, its headlights dipped as the driver picked his way over the ruts and roots. ‘It's all right,' she told
Lucas, although there was doubt in her voice. ‘Take this and cover me.' She passed the gun to Lucas and then confidently moved off through the jungle, keeping away from the river track.

‘She should have given the gun to me,' said Paz. Lucas passed it to him without speaking. ‘Is it on safety?' he asked as he took possession of it and cradled it in his arms.

‘Close the ejector cover.'

‘Right. I remember now.'

‘And keep it away from me,' said Lucas.

‘I know what I'm doing.'

‘Point the bloody thing at the ground.'

They waited for the jeep to get nearer. Inez was now walking alongside it. In the back seat, crammed alongside the radio set and its long curved antenna, there were two men. They were cuddling like two teenagers in the back seats of a cinema. The jeep stopped at the edge of the clearing. Its lights and then its engine were switched off. The driver got out of his seat very slowly, like an exhausted swimmer dragging himself out of the water. In his hand he had a bottle and he smelled of brandy. Along the track other men could be seen: silent men from another jeep, spreading out to guard the area.

Inez brought the newcomer to the hut. He went inside and sat down heavily. Lucas and Paz followed. Inez reached for the lamp to turn up the wick.

The newcomer waved her away. ‘I'll do it,' he said, but he didn't do it.

‘Coffee?' she offered him.

He nodded. He wanted coffee less than he wanted the time it would take to boil the water. She turned up the lamp and made coffee. She placed his before him on the table with exaggerated respect, as an offering might be made at a shrine. The others would have to help themselves.

Now there was light enough to see the newcomer. He was revealed as a man of about forty: clean-shaven, balding
and going to fat. He was the sort of man that TV commercials cast as reliable householders; loving husbands who need margarine instead of butter and deserve obsessively white shirts to wear at the office. He wore a camouflaged combat jacket and trousers with American jump-boots. His web belt held a pistol magazine pouch and military-style dagger. A black beret was tucked under his shoulder-loop. On his arm he wore the distinctive red and green armband lettered MAM:
Movimiento de Acción Marxista
. The two men knew that this must be the fabled Ramón, its leader.

Inez sat at the table and took the cover off her typewriter. She inserted a clean sheet of paper and waited with fingers poised. Ramón straightened his shoulders and began to dictate. His voice was low and strong and confident, like an embattled company president answering a well-founded complaint from a consumer association.

‘MAMista units under the direct command of General Ramón …' He paused and the machine-gun fire of typing stopped. ‘… yesterday attacked a military convoy transporting political prisoners to Presidio Number Three. The ambush took place in the suburb of Misión. Two battalions of the revolutionary army operating as an independent battle group …' Ramón's voice petered out. He got up and went to the door. It was dawn. He looked at the jeep. The two men were still seated in it. One of them raised a hand in salutation. By the first light of the sun Lucas and Paz could see Ramón in the doorway more clearly. He was handsome until he turned so that light fell on the side of his face that was ravaged by the scars of smallpox. He rubbed his face as if to wipe away the tiredness, then he ran his fingertips over his cheek as a doctor does to test for feeling. In such times of anxiety Ramón always found himself touching the scars on his face.