Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  Danielle’s heart rises and drops simultaneously. She actually wants to go, break up the monotony. But as she gets up, she hears at least one tongue click among the others, and she is miserable at the idea of whatever supply of goodwill is left being squandered through more suspicion.

  Pepe walks Danielle past the man’s small farmyard, in which bony, nearly featherless chickens dart around, straining their pink necks towards invisible specks of food. At a certain distance he tells her to sit down on the bare ground, under tree cover, as always.

  “When you take me away, they think I’m collaborating,” she says.

  “Be quiet.”

  Danielle reddens. What’s coming is inevitable. More horrific stories. More scribbling. There’s no arguing it away. But instead of pulling out pen and paper, Pepe reaches back and tugs out his phone — the one he so inexplicably pulled apart and put back together. Stunned, Danielle lets herself imagine that Pepe is about to give it to her. A reward for her help. He’s going to let her call home. She’ll be a hero to the group. She hears Aida answering: “Danielle?” (Aida only ever calls her by her first name.) “Is it really you?” But Pepe puts the phone down in front of him and stares at it wordlessly. His gaze is impatient. This is what he looked like that other time, too. He’s only waiting for a call from whoever out there works with him — for him. Out, Danielle thinks with sudden despair, in the world of people who move freely, who do whatever they want, eat and sleep what and where they want. And so the phone takes on a sinister aspect. It will lead nowhere except to more help for Pepe.

  “We’ll hear it ring soon,” Pepe says, speaking quietly. “I will listen first. Then you will talk. You will say you have a report. You will read this.” He shoves some papers towards her. Danielle is momentarily confused, then realizes this is the second report she wrote, that what she saw before was Pepe delivering the first one. Is it already published, then? She can’t know. Doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want any part of Pepe’s justifications to the outside world. The others are right to be suspicious. She’s becoming as much of an accessory to this kidnapping as whoever’s about to call. She shakes her head.

  “Yes, you will,” Pepe says and spits loudly to one side. “Or I will shoot one of them.”

  “You wouldn’t —”

  Pepe grabs Danielle’s wrist, wrenching it painfully. “Tell the caller to take down your report, that it should be signed in your name. They should deliver it to the media tonight.” Then he throws her wrist back at her like it’s contagious.

  To keep calm, Danielle tells herself his behaviour is the result of mental illness. First he thinks his phone’s bugged. Now he doesn’t want to use his own voice, making her his stand-in. It’s schizophrenia. Bi-polar disorder. Looney Tunes.

  But Pepe appears unsatisfyingly sane as they sit in a strained silence. Only after an excruciatingly long time does the phone finally begin to vibrate. Who can it be? The only image that fits is a stock character from a film noir, standing in a tipped fedora at a payphone on a foggy LA street corner. Pepe answers and turns away.

  Danielle waits, noting the construction of his head in profile, his eyelashes long enough to reach past the edges of the eyeholes in his ski mask, parting and closing at a furious pace, registering the intake of information like telegraph needles — a sign of bad news? Confirmation that things are going well? His hand presses the phone to his ear as if it’s a seashell and inside the secrets of the world are swishing around. Suddenly, he pushes the phone at her. “Ahora,” he says, and Danielle takes it, feeling its heft, the moisture where Pepe’s palm has just been.

  She wants to let it drop. He’s crazy. But Pepe tenses threateningly, and Danielle puts it to her ear. She hears a voice speaking Spanish. “. . . I am going to hang up now.”

  “No. No. Tengo un informe,” she croaks back across the line. I have a report.

  Her interlocutor, a man, sucks in his breath. Obviously it’s as unexpected to him as it is to her to be connected this way. What a tight operation her captor is running, everyone working on a need-to-know basis. Danielle receives no verbal reply, only breathing. She has an odd sensation she can’t identify, something not right about the moment, about the person on the other end of the line. It makes her free hand tighten into a fist. Anxiety. The madness catching. She launches into her text.

  By the time she finishes, she’s crying all over again at the story of Pepe’s family’s murder and at her knowledge that this report is going to be read by a lot of people, including Aida. She’ll be hurt. Her deadbeat mom’s name attached to such words. Danielle can’t do anything about it.

  Then the line goes dead and Pepe grabs back all his communications links — the phone, its invisible satellite, the papers full of her own words — leaving Danielle utterly empty-handed.

  August 30, 1980

  Dear Neela,

  Adrian and I are through. I’m going to tell him next time he’s in camp. I’m sure it bores you to hear about him all the time. It bores me. I didn’t come here to go gaga over some guy. But I can’t seem to focus on anything else anymore. We’re always saying goodbye. I end up feeling so desperate. I’m not going to do it anymore.

  Sometimes I just want to leave. Then what would he do? Come back here and find that I decided to get out early, that I followed one of those groups leaving for Honduras. He’d never see me again.

  To be honest, it would be a relief. People in the camps are so crude. They don’t seem to know it’s not normal to live this badly. It’s hard not to feel like they’re being used. It’s confusing though, because they seem to believe in the war more than anyone. I swear, we’re from different planets. I am sick to death of theirs.

  DB

  SATURDAY

  APRIL 9

  12:45 PM. San Salvador

  Aida is wandering around. There isn’t much else to do at this time of day after Pedro drops them at the usual spot and before the demonstration gets going. It’s her third afternoon in a row at the cathedral, and both the fear and the novelty have worn off. She’s pretty sure she won’t come again.

  The other families are trying to keep up their enthusiasm. Aida can see them a few feet off, Benoît and Sylvie huddled in serious discussion, likely parsing the minutiae of the news surrounding the kidnapping, Ralph beside them with a hand in his pocket, listening in, his dark sunglasses making it hard to judge what he makes of their chatter. Aida sighs. These are her people — for now. She bends to fix the strap on one of her sandals.

  “Hello again,” says a voice behind her, in English. Just like last time. Carlos Reyes.

  Aida bolts upright, surprised and excited. “Hello,” she says, then remembers her resolution to remain on her guard. “Hello,” she repeats, more seriously, and turns towards the others, as if to join them.

  “Would you be free to have a coffee?” Carlos asks, stepping closer.

  A coffee. The most interesting person Aida’s met since arriving in El Salvador wants to take her for coffee. But there are the others to consider. Aida promised herself in the morning to be extra nice. Though no one’s said anything, she can tell they’re upset by Danielle’s bizarre involvement with the kidnapper, this writing she’s done for “Enrique.” Aida has to work against the possibility that she’ll be excluded by the other families over questions about Danielle’s loyalties — or her sanity — if any more articles show up.

  “It’s going to start soon,” she says, smiling apologetically. She glances towards the steps of the cathedral. Marta should be up there somewhere by now. She’s not going to approve of more interactions with Carlos either.

  “There’s a place just across the plaza. It will calm you,” he says.

  Aida looks towards Sylvie, Benoît and Ralph, who have just been accosted by a reporter. Benoît immediately starts in about his son, but the reporter tries to steer the tape recorder towards the other two, eventually gluing it to Ralph’s nose. “They’ll want to interview you next,” Carlos says, taking Aida gently by the arm. �
�Come.”

  He leads her through the crowd and around the far side of the plaza. “There are so many people,” Aida says as they go, feeling like she has to fill the quiet between her and this near stranger. But it’s also true. She and the other families were amazed, on arriving, to see that the crowd is at least twice as big as yesterday. Aida assumed the opposite would happen, that reading Danielle’s stories about the kidnapper in the newspaper would turn people against “Enrique.” He’s a murderer, isn’t he?

  At the first side street Carlos veers right, and she follows without much thought. Normally, Aida analyzes her options in great detail before coming to a decision. Or she lets André make one for her. But the analytic rules of home have stopped making so much sense. She’s on some kind of adventure, almost like she’s left her normal self behind in Toronto and become someone else since reading Danielle’s letters.

  They make several more quick turns and end up in an uncharacteristically quiet lane where only foot traffic can pass, and where the vendors gathered on the sidewalks are less aggressive. “Here we are,” says Carlos, as they enter through a tall, colonial-style doorway. Inside, it might be the 1950s. High old windows let in the sun, which lands in diffuse streaks over a dark wood counter that runs the length of the narrow café. Below a mishmash of framed photos and artwork, two baristas with mustaches and short-sleeved white shirts slam grounds out of hand cranks while their espresso machines steam and sputter. It smells like roasted beans and cigarettes and Aida is transported back to Havana. She’s shocked to find anything like it in El Salvador, which, outside the central plaza, seems to be populated by greasy food stands and chain stores.

  “Lindo,” she says, amazed, walking along the bar. She gets smiles from the mostly older, male clientele, their newspapers laid out ahead of them. Aida wonders if anyone will recognize her from the photos that have appeared in the press.

  Carlos is gracious. He chooses seats at the bar and orders two coffees, pulling a napkin from a dispenser for her. He tugs at his cufflinks several times, alternating left and right, looking straight ahead at nothing in particular. Aida wonders why he’s brought her here if not for the reasons Marta has implied — for his career, or because he thinks she’s young and stupid enough to sleep with any middle-aged man who shows her some attention.

  The barista brings their order.

  “You speak good Spanish,” Carlos says to her, sliding a cup her way.

  “My grandparents lived in Central America. They wanted me to learn.” Aida enjoys invoking her grandparents.

  “You’re from a close family.”

  “Close to them, yes. They’re gone now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Aida doesn’t like the loaded pause that follows. “I have three languages, actually. French too. In Canada, the French is nothing special. Mine’s not as good as it should be if I’m going to live in Europe.”

  “You live in Europe?”

  “No no.” Aida decides to switch to Spanish. She’s eager, suddenly, to show off her skills. “Not yet. I’m likely to move to France soon.”

  “Ah! A very special country.”

  “You’ve been?”

  “Of course. France, Spain, North Africa. I’ve travelled a lot — less now.” He smiles. “I hate to fly.”

  Aida is puzzled. She can’t see how a guerrilla who lived in the mountains during a long war, as Marta says Carlos did, could be so cosmopolitan. When did he do all this travelling? She continues to struggle with the concept of what a “guerrilla” was. Carlos and Pedro, Marta’s driver, are such opposites, yet supposedly they fulfilled similar functions in the war. Aida has nothing to help her judge their sameness or difference. Could Carlos be making up it up? She gives him a look that says she’s impressed, while retaining a private doubt.

  “So. Have any of you had any problems yet — with the police, for example? Or your embassy? From anyone?”

  Aida, who’s sipping her coffee, stops abruptly.

  “Marta has spoken to you about me,” Carlos says, resting his face on one palm, like Marta’s cautionary tales tire him out. “She has told you to distrust me.”

  Aida blushes. She doesn’t want Carlos to think she adopts Marta’s views wholesale. But how can she ignore the warnings? Why does Carlos care about her embassy? It’s becoming more difficult by the minute to know what to believe. Aida becomes flustered trying to decide what to say. “She just told us it would be good for your election plans to get us on your side.”

  Carlos looks her square in the face. Above them, the clock strikes 1 PM. The demonstration is starting. The others will be worried.

  “Marta doesn’t believe in what our new political party is trying to do.” Carlos’s face has changed. Something hard has come into his eyes. “But we are not looking to sell El Salvador out. I am not looking to sell you out.”

  “I’m not that interested in politics, actually.”

  He seems relieved to hear her say this, and Aida relaxes. She’s already decided that Marta’s preoccupation with this man’s agenda is just another version of Neela’s tirades against the corporate world. Marta might even be worse. She’s paranoid, especially about the police. She literally scoffed when she heard that Hernández and the anti-kidnapping unit got the delegation’s bus driver to confess to being involved in the abduction. Like that’s so meaningless. And this morning Marta barely glanced at the police sketch in the newspapers showing the woman whom the driver claims hired him to betray Danielle and her group. For Aida, these developments are the only signs of hope so far. Marta was far more interested in Danielle’s stories in the newspaper. “In these situations, the person will use whatever they can to get their message out,” she said, hugging Aida. Marta is all about the message.

  The conversation shifts to Aida’s MBA, then to which global markets are predicted to grow in the near future. The coffee is delicious and comes with a small cookie that Aida enjoys. Odd for her, as she rarely permits herself sweets. She’s having a good time, she realizes. Her first really good time since arriving in El Salvador — maybe longer. She can practically forget the worry she’s causing the others, or even, for a minute, that her mother is being held against her will somewhere within these borders.

  “Our party sees the Central American republics as a lesson in unrealized economic potential, especially El Salvador,” says Carlos, referring to Aida’s claim that the European Union is a model for growth and integration. Aida isn’t sure why, but she hasn’t mentioned André as part of her possible future there.

  “But this country is so small. It seems like it doesn’t have what it would take to compete these days,” she says. “There are so many producers geared towards agricultural export — what would its niche be?”

  Carlos smiles wearily. “The World Bank talks a lot about niches, doesn’t it? With good reason, I suppose. But growth is much more complicated than that in countries on the isthmus. Not every place can follow the same formula.”

  Aida is annoyed, suddenly. “I haven’t studied Latin America specifically. That’s not my purpose in being here.” It’s like Carlos thinks she’s too immature to try her on specifics. He can’t know how hard it is to even be admitted to an MBA these days, let alone finish. She dabs her mouth and refolds her napkin in her lap.

  “Of course,” says Carlos. “You’re here for your mother.”

  “For her and for myself.”

  “Cierto. Cierto,” he says, reassuringly.

  But Carlos doesn’t probe into what Aida is getting from the trip. Part of her wishes he would. She’s had so few people to tell, to help her decide whether she might also be experiencing a period of growth.

  “I was sorry to read that whoever has done this forced your mother into writing those terrible articles.” Carlos goes on, his voice concerned. “It is not her fault, you know.”

  Aida nods, but her alarm bells are going off again: Carlos seems to know exactly what she needs to hear. Reading the second story by Danielle really was
awful. And not just because of the possibility of being rejected by the other families. The reports are giving Aida vertigo. Her emotions, which formed such a tight ball in Toronto, are becoming brittle, snapping regularly and painfully now. One moment she’s raging against Danielle for helping the kidnappers. The next she despises “Enrique,” convinced that every word of the articles is made up. That feeling is nearly always followed by intense foreboding: there’s just today and tomorrow, after all, before Enrique has promised to kill a hostage if Mil Sueños doesn’t close. He could easily decide that Danielle knows too much, that she will be the first to die. The prospect that Danielle truly hasn’t had a choice about whether to write for him lifts Aida’s spirits so much she suspects Carlos of trying to manipulate her. “Why do you even care about this case at all?” she asks, and she’s surprised to hear in her voice some of the bitterness she’s accustomed to experiencing around Danielle. She sips her coffee and feels childish. Down the way, one of the baristas lines up several tall glasses, pours foamed milk into them, drops smaller amounts of dark espresso into the middles, and takes them to three men at a small table near the doorway.

  “I am interested —” Carlos begins, but he hesitates, as if he’s waiting for an answer to come to him, “— for my work. As I’ve told you. Despite what Marta thinks, I have not decided to become a candidate for office yet. I still have a job monitoring the police. How they respond to a kidnapping with foreign hostages is directly relevant to my mandate.”

  Aida listens as Carlos describes the particulars of the Consejo Policial, which he helped establish after the war. He doesn’t go any further back in time than that, which only makes Aida more curious. Who was Carlos before? Marta said El Salvador owes him a debt. For what? What kind of soldier was he? Did the person sitting across from her actually kill people? What kind of people? Aida doesn’t dare ask. “Do you have kids?” she says instead.