MAMista

by Len Deighton

  Upon emerging from immigration, Lucas looked round. The mourners with whom he’d travelled were being greeted by a dozen equally doleful men clutching orchids. All of them were dressed in three-piece black suits and shiny boots. Stoically enduring the stifling heat was an aspect of their tribute. All the airport benches – and the floor around them – were occupied by families of Indians in carefully laundered shirts and pants, and colourful cotton dresses. Their wide-eyed faces, and their hands, revealed that they were agricultural workers on a rare visit to the big city. Most of them were guarding their shopping: some pairs of shoes, a tyre, a doll and, for one excited little boy, a battery-powered toy bulldozer.

  ‘Mr Lucas?’

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  She smiled at his obvious discomposure. ‘My name is Inez Cassidy. I am directed to take care of you.’

  Lucas couldn’t conceal his surprise. It wasn’t just that the MAMista contact proved to be female that disconcerted him, it was that she was not at all the type he expected. She was slim and dark, her complexion set off by the shade of her brown shirt-style dress, whose simplicity belied its price. She wore pearls at her throat, a gold wristwatch and Paris shoes. Her make-up was slight and subtle. Anywhere in the world she would have attracted looks of admiration; here in this squalid backwater she was nothing short of radiant.

  Her face was not only calm but impassive, held so to counter the insolent stares and whispered provocations that women endure in public places in Latin America. She touched her hair. That it was a nervous mannerism did not escape Lucas, and he saw in her eyes a fleeting glimpse of the vulnerability that she took such pains to conceal.

  ‘Will I fly south directly?’ Lucas asked, hoping that the answer would be no. He too was something of a surprise, wearing an old Madras cotton jacket, its pattern faded to pastel shades, and lightweight trousers that had become very wrinkled from his journey. He had a brimmed hat made from striped cotton; the sort of hat that could be rolled up and stuffed into a pocket. His shoes were expensive thin-soled leather moccasins. She wondered if he intended wearing this very unsuitable footwear in the south. It suddenly struck her that such a middle-aged visitor from Europe would have to be cosseted if they were to get him home in one piece.

  ‘May I see your papers?’ She took them from him and passed his baggage tags to a porter who had been standing waiting for them. She also gave him some money and told him to collect the bags and meet them at the door. The porter moved off. Then she read the written instructions and the vague ‘to whom it may concern’ letter of introduction that the Foundation had given him in London. It made no mention of Marxist guerrilla movements. ‘Tomorrow or Thursday,’ she said. ‘Sometimes there are problems.’

  ‘I understand.’

  She smiled sadly to tell him that he did not understand: no foreigner could. She had met such people before. They liked to call themselves liberals because they sympathized with the armed struggle and tossed a few tax-deductible dollars into some charity front. Then they came here to see what was happening to their money. Even the best-intentioned ones could never be trusted. It was not always their fault. They came from another world, one that was comfortable and logical. More importantly they knew they would return to it.

  She read the letter again and then passed it back to him. ‘I have a car for you. The driver is not one of our people. Be careful what you say to him. The cab drivers are all police informers, or they do not keep their licences. You have a British passport?’

  ‘Australian.’ She looked at him. ‘It’s an island in the Pacific.’

  ‘I have arranged accommodation in town,’ she said. ‘Nothing luxurious.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be just fine.’ Lucas smiled at her. For the first time she looked at him with something approaching personal interest. He was not tall, only a few inches taller than her, but the build of his chest and shoulders indicated considerable strength. His face was weather-beaten, his eyes bright blue and his expression quizzical.

  She reached for his arm and pulled him close to her. If he was surprised at this sudden intimacy he gave no sign of it. ‘Look over my shoulder,’ she said softly.

  He immediately understood what was expected of him. ‘A horde of policemen coming through a door marked “Parking”,’ he told her. He could see the porter, waiting at the exit holding his bags. Beyond him, through the open doors, police vans were being parked. Their back doors were open and he could see their bench seats and barred windows.

  Head bent close to his she said, ‘Probably a bomb scare. They’ll check the papers of everyone as they leave the ticket hall.’

  ‘Will you be all right?’

  Keeping her head bowed so as not to expose her face she said, ‘There is no danger but it is better that they do not see us together.’

  Policemen passed them leading two sniffer dogs. She lifted Lucas’ hand and kissed it. Then, as she turned her body, he put his arm round her waist to keep up the pretence of intimacy. ‘I will be all right,’ she said. ‘I have a Venezuelan passport. Walk me away from the policemen at the enquiry desk: they will recognize me.’

  In that affectionate manner that is a part of saying farewell, Lucas walked holding her close, with her head lolling on his shoulder. They went to the news-stand, his arm still holding her resolutely. When they stopped she turned to him and looked into his eyes.

  ‘You must remember the address. Don’t write it down.’ She glanced across to where two policemen had taken control of the enquiry desk. Then she made sure that the porter was still waiting with Lucas’ bag. She leaned even closer and said, ‘Fifty-eight, Callejón del Mercado. Ask the driver for the President Ramírez statue. He’ll think you are going to the silver market.’

  As they stood together, half embracing and with her lips brushing his chin, he felt a demented desire to say ‘I love you’ – it seemed an appropriately heady reaction. There were police at every door now. They had cleared the far side of the concourse. Two policemen with pass keys were systematically opening the baggage lockers one by one. The one and only departure desk had been closed down and a police team, led by a white-shirted civilian, was questioning a line of ticket-holders. Some had been handcuffed and taken out to the vans.

  Lucas didn’t say ‘I love you’ but he did crush her close. She let her body go limp and put both arms round him to play the part she’d chosen.

  ‘The porter is paid already.’

  ‘I don’t like leaving you.’

  ‘Don’t pay more than the amount on the meter,’ she advised, gently breaking from the embrace. ‘They are all thieves.’

  ‘Will I see you again?’

  ‘Yes, later. And I will be on the plane when you go south,’ she promised.

  He held her tight and murmured, ‘I love you.’

  They say it’s the proximity of the Equator that does it.

  The policeman at the door glanced at him, his ticket and his passport and then nodded him through. The porter opened the door of an old Chevrolet cab and put the bags alongside the driver. ‘Take me to the statue of President Ramírez,’ said Lucas. His Spanish was entirely adequate but the cab driver was more at home in the patois. It took two more attempts before he was understood. Lucas was determined to master the curious mixed tongue. He said, ‘Is the traffic bad?’

  ‘Are you Italian?’

  ‘Australian.’

  It meant nothing to the driver but he nodded and said, ‘Yes, I recognized your accent.’ He sighed. ‘Yes: police blocks all round the Plaza. Checking papers, looking in the trunk, asking questions. I will avoid the Plaza. Traffic is backed up all the way to the cathedral.’

  ‘What is happening?’

  ‘Those MAMista bastards,’ said the driver. ‘They put a bomb in the Ministry of Pensions last night. They say people in the street outside were wounded. I hope they catch the swines.’

  ‘Your politics here are very complicated,’ said Lucas tentatively.

  ‘Nothing complicated about
tourist figures being down sixty-eight per cent on last year. And last year was terrible! That’s what those mad bastards have done for working men like me. Visitors down by sixty-eight per cent! And that’s the official statistic, so you can double that.’

  The taxi was making a long detour. Cabs did not usually bring tourists along this part of the waterfront. Here the militant residents of sprawling slums had declared them to be independent guerrilla townships. Painted warnings and defiant Marxist proclamations marked the ‘frontier’. Beyond that the police armoured carriers closed their hatches and, at night, watched out for home-made petrol bombs.

  The Benz government refused to admit that there were any of these spots that foreign reporters called ‘rebel fortresses’. Regularly they proved their point by sending in the army to do a ‘house-to-house’. Soldiers in full battle order brought tanks, water cannon and searchlights. They closed off a selected section and searched it for arms, fugitives and subversive literature. Sometimes the army took reporters along to show them how it was done. The last such demonstration had encountered a rain of nail bombs and Molotov cocktails: two soldiers and a Swedish journalist had been severely burned.

  But for many people in Tepilo the slums – and their rebel townships – did not exist. That side of town was not on the route to any of the good beaches or the swanky nightclubs. Even the people who had to drive that way used the elevated freeway that took them high above the barriada. Providing they kept the window closed, they didn’t even notice the stench that arose from it.

  But Lucas didn’t keep his window closed. He looked down and saw the beggars and the diseased, the cripples and the starving. There were hollow-faced skeletons wrapped in rags and hungry babies that never stopped crying. Sprayed on the rusty iron sheets, and broken pieces of dockyard crates, were revolutionary slogans. Here and there flew a home-made flag, spared from precious cloth to signal their anger. It was too bewildering. Lucas looked away. On each side of him Cadillacs and Bentleys, Fords and Fiats raced past, no one sparing a glance for that netherworld.

  When they reached the water the people strolling along Ocean Boulevard did not seem to worry about the people of the barriada. Neither did the shopkeepers in the cramped little alleys of Esmeralda where ramshackle slum tenements had been artfully transformed into a chic shopping district. Here the latest in Japanese video cameras, genuine furs of almost extinct carnivores and gold and enamel bracelets – ‘replicas of pre-historic Indian designs’ – could be bought tax-free for US dollars, Marks or Yen.

  The cab stopped and Lucas got out at the statue of President Ramírez, ‘indomitable founder of Spanish Guiana’s freedom’. There was a smell of damaged fruit and vegetables. The market square was empty except for men rolling up the sun-blinds and stacking away the market stalls, and a couple of nuns picking through a heap of discarded produce.

  The address he wanted was a callejón crowded with shoppers and tourists. Some had been taking photographs of the vegetable market. Some were coming and going between the much photographed statue and Tepilo’s notorious ‘sailor’s alley’, a dark little sidestreet of tiny bars, loud music and bright neon signs that had become a place where prostitutes plied their trade. Here were men, women and small children catering to all tastes. Other tourists were looking for the ‘silver alley’ where it was said noble families offered priceless antiques for discreet and immediate cash sale. Some wanted to see the military checkpoint that marked the extreme edge of the villa miseria that the guerrilleros were said to control.

  Lucas made his way along the crowded alley, pushing through the pimps, beggars and salesmen who grabbed at his sleeve and jacket. The archway at number fifty-eight bore a painted sign, Gran Hotel Madrid. Lucas stepped over the outstretched legs of a sleeping doorkeeper. On the wall a sign made from shiny stick-on letters said ‘privado’. Lucas went past the sign and into a cobbled courtyard at the rear of an old three-storeyed building.

  The sunlight in the courtyard was coloured green by a tree that reached higher than the roof. Around the courtyard fretwork wooden balconies jutted out at each level. Numbered doors indicated a collection of small dwellings. Everywhere there were big pots from which rubbery plants and glossy flowers came crawling up the rainwater pipes and hanging over the balconies. One would think a town perched on the edge of the jungle would have enough greenery without potted plants, thought Lucas. At ground level a black woman was emptying a pail of soapy water into the open drain. She stared at Lucas. This was not a hotel, nor a whorehouse, she told him. Lucas nodded amiably and she told him it was forbidden to take photographs here. He smiled. She stood arms akimbo and watched him ascend the narrow staircase to the third floor. She was still looking at him after he’d rung the doorbell and looked down over the balcony. He raised his hat.

  From inside came the sound of a heavy bolt being drawn. The door opened a little and a man’s face appeared in the gap. It was not welcoming.

  ‘My name is Ralph Lucas.’

  The man said nothing. Without haste he opened the door to allow Lucas inside, where Lucas noted the smell of cooking and, from somewhere nearby, the sound of a radio tuned to Spanish pop music. When the door was closed and bolted again, the hall became dark. Now the only light came from the dim bulb in a tiny plastic conch shell fixed to the ceiling.

  The man pushed past Lucas, opened another door, and led the way into a room that faced the front of the building. It was bright and sunny, its window providing a view of the rooftops and the cathedral. The room was furnished like a study. There were shelves of books and a desk upon which pens, inks, pencils and a large sheet of pink blotting paper were neatly arranged. In the corner a small refrigerator whirred loudly. Propped in the corner alongside it stood a folding canvas bed. Lucas regarded the bed with interest and decided it was where he would probably sleep that night.

  Another man was there: a slim tanned fellow, about twenty, with long wavy hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He wore jeans and scuffed tennis shoes. He seemed ill at ease and was toying with a glass of beer. Lucas guessed him to be another foreign visitor.

  The man who had let him in was powerfully built, dark-skinned and about forty years old. He was wearing white trousers, now somewhat wrinkled, and a red-checked shirt. His face was marked with the sort of scars that prize fighters – and street fighters – sometimes flaunt. Such men often had the same large lumpy hands that this man had, but they seldom had fingernails missing.

  Lucas guessed that he was a communist of the old style. The party liked men like this: battered Goliaths, diligent, humourless men who would provide bed and board to mysterious foreigners because some local party secretary – the girl no doubt – said it was for the cause.

  While rummaging in the refrigerator, the elder man said his name was Chori and, still without turning, introduced the younger man as Angel Paz. Angel of Peace: it sounded an unlikely name to Lucas, but some parents liked weird names. So Lucas nodded to Angel Paz and gladly accepted the cold beer that Chori poured.

  There was an awkward silence. The arrival of Lucas had interrupted them. Lucas could see that some sort of relationship existed between these two incongruous individuals. They were not homosexuals, he decided: perhaps it was a political secret. Communists needed secret conspiracy as fish need water.

  ‘Here we have no middle-class intelligentsia,’ said Chori, as if taking up a conversation that had been interrupted. ‘Or at least, very few.’ He waved his hands impatiently. ‘We are a workers’ movement. It is the workers who bring the revolution to the Indians and farmers in the south.’ He looked at Lucas as if inviting him to join the conversation.

  Angel said, ‘Historically that is bad. Marx said there must be a middle-class intelligentsia to theorize and support the instinctive revolutionary movement that the workers initiate.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Chori.

  Angel Paz did not continue with his lecture. He decided that it was too earnest, and too intellectual, for comrades such as Chori. But he thought none
the less of him for that. Nothing could upset Angel Paz today. He couldn’t remember ever being so happy. Today Tepilo was his home. This smelly broken-down little town was the place he’d been looking for all his life. Here were simple people who needed help if they were ever to throw off the shackles of the fascists who ruled them.

  The successful planting of the bomb, and more specially the impression he’d made on Chori with his technical abilities, gave Angel Paz a glow of contentment. What did it matter that Chori seemed to have no interest in political theory? When they got to the south, where the MAMista army leaders were by now planning an assault upon the northern towns, Angel Paz would have a chance to make known his strategic views. Thanks to his uncle Arturo – and his sleazy drug-dealing in Los Angeles – Paz had arrived here at exactly the right moment. So Arturo thought Karl Marx was dead. Well, Karl Marx and Lenin too would rise from the grave and smite all such capitalist racketeers with a terrible fury.

  Lucas – who was not in the mood for any sort of intense political discussion – took off his Madras jacket. It was limp with the wet heat. He hung it over a chair. Then he stood at the open window and concentrated upon his beer. The sun was sinking but the heat had not dropped much. These tiny apartments, without air-conditioning or even electric fans, trapped the humid air and held it even after the evening breeze was cooling the streets.

  ‘This is good American beer,’ said Chori, seemingly relieved to escape from Angel’s earnest political discussion. ‘There will be no more, if the rumours about devaluing the peseta turn out true.’