Текст книги "Red Jungle"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

THREE

September 1, 1973

San Francisco

They say you shot a man,” Montgomery Price said. Isabella’s ex-husband was a tall, blond Protestant from a good San Francisco family, with a fabulous career as an IBM executive in front of him.

He had won an award—in fact, it had been presented to him by J. P. Smith, the grandson of IBM’s founder. It had been the proudest moment of Montgomery’s life. He had sold more mainframe computers than any other salesman on the West Coast. Only the New York office had outsold him.

The award was an important milestone in his career. The day Montgomery won the award, he knew he would have to divorce Isabella. He was smart enough, at 31, to comprehend the extent of his mistake in marrying her. He was still young enough to fix the one thing wrong with his life. He’d simply married the wrong damn woman; it hit him as he went back to his seat, award in hand, and glanced at Isabella who, contrary to his wishes, had worn a mini skirt. (She had bought it in Paris, with her own money.)

Isabella had been a mistake. Some of his colleagues had stared at her. With the right woman by his side, he knew he could work his way into management. There would be no end to the possibilities, his boss had told him . . . but his boss had also suggested that Isabella was not an IBM wife. Not even close. She was simply too Latin, too flamboyantly feminine, and too young and sexy.

She made men uncomfortable. She was an embarrassment. She had parties where liquor was served in abundance, parties where she danced and got drunk in public. She had homosexual friends who called other men “honey.” There was a rumor that she used marijuana, which in fact was true.

“Is that true? Did you really shoot someone?” he asked Isabella.

He gave her a peck on the cheek. He thought she looked terrible, and was too thin. Since he’d never been to Guatemala, he had no idea what the place was like, other than the people he’d met—principally his wife’s family. They all seemed to be —over-everything, over-emotional, over-wealthy, over-fun loving, and lazy. He didn’t believe any of them ever really worked (Protestants of his ilk associated style with the devil and laziness). Isabella didn’t get up until ten in the morning. When she did get up, it was simply to give orders to the maid, Olga, who seemed strangely fond of her mistress, and vice versa. He thought their relationship “unhealthy,” and had told Isabella so.

“Yes,” Isabella said, and turned away. They were standing in a suite in San Francisco’s Clift Hotel, on Geary Street.

“Good God! And the baby was with you?”

Isabella turned for a moment to look at her husband. He was handsome in the way she expected of American men: healthy, tall and strapping. Many of them were a disappointment in bed. Montgomery had been the kind of man who clutched at her, and heaved. Heaving had been his idea of love making. After the disappointment, he would roll over and talk about his office. But it was the heaving that had left her feeling like an animal instead of a wife.

He wasn’t a bad man, and she’d been in love with him because he was what her long stay in the United States had taught her to want—a strapping, well-employed, blue-eyed man who looked like Troy Donahue.

She sat down by the window. Below, she could see Geary Street, and a theater marquee advertising “Man of La Mancha.” She had shot and killed a communist at the gate of her plantation, with her father’s pistol, while Olga, sitting next to her, clutched the baby and screamed. Afterwards she’d driven the three of them to the capital.

“Well, I always said that country was no good. Rotten, isn’t it. I’m certainly glad I never went. It’s in the papers all the time, the war news. Frightening. How can anyone do any business? I’m glad you’re leaving the boy with me. The right thing, of course. . .” Montgomery said. He finally saw the pain in her eyes and stopped talking for a moment, not knowing what to do. “. . . I mean, for everyone concerned.”

“It’s temporary,” Isabella said. “You understand that, Monty.”

“Of course. To be honest with you, I don’t know how Sally will do with Spanish. I think she studied it in high school—or was it French? Does the boy speak any English?”

“A little,” Isabella said. She was dying for a drink. Since she’d shot the man, she’d started to drink more.

“Well, we’ll change that,” Montgomery said. “Can’t live in today’s world and not speak English. Most of my clients from Mexico speak it better than I do!” Monty spoke to her as if she were one of the boys. “You know I’ve gotten a promotion.”

Her ex-husband, in the traditional IBM blue suit and white shirt, went to the opposite end of the suite. It was a suite that her father and grandfather had always used, whenever they were in San Francisco. “Latin America all the way to Punto Del Fuego. Quite a territory for a man my age. Really, I think it was because of you. I suppose they thought I understood the Latin mind.” Monty sat on the orange chintz-upholstered couch, put his hands on his knees, and looked at her as if she might give him an award. I suppose I do, he told himself.

She realized he was a fool, and was surprised that she’d never seen that until now.

He’d come during his lunch hour to pick up his son. He had hired a nurse to take the boy home and provide for him until his wedding. He was engaged to a girl who had just graduated from UCLA, who, he told Isabella, would make an excellent mother for the child. He was betting on her the way you might on a horse to win a race. He told people, in fact, that she was going to “go the distance.”

“As soon as things calm down, I’ll take him back,” Isabella said. “You understand. It’s impossible right now with the war, and I have to make the plantation work somehow. It’s all that Roberto and I have. Would you mind if I had a drink? Would you like one?” Her ex-husband shot her a disapproving glance.

“Sorry. It’s a Thursday, and quite early at that. I have one on Saturday night.”

“Well. It must be the time change,” she said, and went to the servi-bar for a gin. She called Olga to get her a glass from the bathroom.

Olga came out from the bedroom. Monty stood up. The two had never said more than “good morning” and “good night.” Monty, for whatever reason, was afraid of Olga– probably because she reminded him of the wild Indians he’d seen in the movies. Olga politely came to Monty’s side, called him Don Monty, then turned to get Isabella her glass.

“Does he have everything, Olga?” Montgomery asked. “Clothes and things?” Monty always forgot that Olga spoke no English. He waited for an answer as she walked towards the bedroom.

“Yes. He has his clothes,” Isabella said, looking at the little bottle of gin in her hand. She was afraid of the bottle, and she loved the bottle. It was like most things in her life, a bit of a mystery. When the man had jumped on the jeep to stop her, she had mysteriously fired her father’s gun at him. The barrel of the thing drove into the man’s brown stomach. His rifle slung over his shoulder, he’d never expected a woman to shoot him. But she had: She had shot him well, as the plantation workers said later.

For the workers, Isabella had taken on almost mystical powers after that. They viewed all outsiders—including the guerrillas—as a threat. After the shooting, she got the kind of respect her grandfather and father had enjoyed. The workers believed the Cruzes had magical powers and would protect them from the communists.

“I hope Robert is helping you with the place. Is he still playing polo? Or whatever it is he does all day?”

“They’ve killed all the horses,” she said, cracking open the bottle. “It was quite horrible, really. Seeing them like that in the stalls, dead. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink, Monty?” She realized then that Monty was a boy and would never be a man, if being a man meant that you weren’t afraid. He was afraid of everything. He’d been afraid of her in bed. He was afraid of his boss and of his company.

This moment was to be the first impression, and memory, Russell was to have of his father. He would recall later that the man was tall, and looked down at him as Olga brought him out from the bedroom where he’d been napping. There was a lushness that he would always remember about life with his mother. She sank down beside him, her long hair falling over her shoulders.

“Mí querido, hoy te vas con tu papá. My dearest, today you go with your papa.” She said it in both languages. Isabella rubbed his hair and held him tightly for moment.

Nothing would ever hurt her as much as that long moment. Not being alone on the plantation later, with the constant threat of death, or the loneliness of her affairs, or her addictions, or even the dreadful pain of missing her mother and father.

“He’s a big boy,” Montgomery said, walking towards him, speaking a language that Russell couldn’t really understand. Isabella wouldn’t have cried, but Olga started, and then Isabella couldn’t stop herself. The boy, not accustomed to the two women in his life crying, looked at his mother for an explanation. None, unfortunately, was forthcoming.

He was taken from his mother exactly a half hour later by a “nurse” who smelled of Listerine and called him Russ. The first word he learned in English was “Mother.” Russell once heard his father tell his stepmother that Russell’s mother was a drunk.

The first thing Russell remembered about life—about being alive—was the gunshot that had saved them. It had been very loud. His mother had shot well. Everyone at the tennis club in Quatepeque said so. The guerrilla had intended to kill them, people at the club said, because he hated the rich.

FOUR

The price of commodities throughout Latin America had collapsed completely, leaving strangled economies unable to breathe. Guatemala’s currency, the quetzal, dangled by IMF machinations and a prayer. Violent crime in the country had reached absurd, Hieronymus Bosch-style levels.

The free markets were at work, just give them time, urged his newspaper’s editorial writers. But they were in London, and even to Russell—who believed in the system—their opinions on the crisis seemed hopelessly out of touch.

Come to Carl’s Party in Antigua, the email had said. The invitation had come to Russell’s office computer in Guatemala City, the Thursday after he’d returned from Tres Rios. It gave an address and a long list of people, some known to Russell, who were planning on coming. He scanned the list of names. It promised a good time and he immediately wrote back, saying he planned to come.

He called Katherine Barkley, an American girl, asking if she’d like to go to the party with him. She answered her cell phone from somewhere out on a coffee plantation, building housing for poor families.

Barkley was the opposite of the wealthy Guatemalan girls he’d been dating, girls whose main preoccupations had been their hair and their breast size. Katherine worked for a UN-affiliated NGO called “Houses for Humanity.” She was serious, intelligent and completely unimpressed by his big job with the Financial Times, which she considered an “establishment rag.” At the party where they’d first met, they had argued about the IMF’s role in the life of the country. She was, she’d said, an anti-globalist. He thought her position ridiculous, and told her so. He’d told her that capitalism would make the world richer, but it would take time.

He honestly believed that. It’s what he’d been taught at the University of Chicago, and like any neophyte, he believed what he’d been taught with passion. It was a harsh Darwinian system sometimes, he agreed, but it was better, far better, than anything else. Leave it to Adam Smith’s invisible hand. It was the only way, he’d told her. If it worked in America, it could work anywhere. Weren’t people all the same? He told her he thought it racist to think only white people had a right to prosperity.

They’d agreed to disagree, and he was surprised when she’d given him her number and told him to call her. On the way home that night, he began for the first time to silently question his beliefs. Stopped at a traffic light, he’d looked at the pedestrians as they crossed in front of him. He couldn’t help but see the pain in their faces, really see it, as they stood waiting for buses, holding a child’s hand. Their faces were marked by suffering, really stamped by it now. He’d seen it clearly—anyone could—a shared frantic look that said there were limits to patience before people exploded. The communist insurgency had lasted thirty years, and now this strange new enemy, an economic war with unseen generals and unseen armies but real casualties, was being visited upon them.

That Saturday afternoon, Katherine Barkley picked him up in her UN-issued Jeep, and they drove past the groomed concrete collection of shopping centers on the way out of the capital to the party. A red diesel-glow hung over a free trader’s dream of a skyline, bristling with gaudy bank buildings and Big-Business towers. Guatemala City was the biggest city in Central America. The diesel-smoke skyline was the carcinogenic byproduct of secondhand American school buses that had been shipped here, and were ubiquitous. Brightly painted, the “chicken buses,” as the tourists called them, spewed a rich black sulphur exhaust one could literally taste.

They passed the American-style strip-malls adorned with corporate logos: Papa John’s, Nike, IBM, Gap, PriceSmart. HBO posters hung neatly at every bus stop, telling passengers to enjoy Band Of Brothers. “War the way it should be,” Katherine joked.

They passed a huge green maquiladora with Korean script, saying only a Korean knew what. The prison-like factory was anonymous. The tops of its high walls, wrapped in concertina wire, looked ominous and terrifying. Above the wire, the iodine-colored sunset was fiendish and hysterical.

They listened to a pop station whose DJ kept saying, “We got your hot mix,” in bad English. “And there’s a shadow in the sky and it looks like rain,” Nelly warned everyone from Pop Land. They left the buses-crawling highway at San Lucas. It was cooler up there above the city, the little shanty towns dismal and uninviting.

They took the turnoff to Antigua and started to descend on a modern three-lane highway. Katherine smiled at him, her body language seeming to invite him to kiss her. She was dressed in jeans and a white blouse. “We got your Hot Mix.” It was verging on dark, but they could see the outline of the Volcan de Agua suddenly hulking by the road, a bad actor in this country’s play. She was talking about her work in the countryside, and all he could think about was taking her clothes off.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash came on, more “We got your hot mix.” It was a beautiful evening despite everything. He was randy; it had been weeks since he’d slept with anyone.

They passed the last of the handmade furniture places at the bottom of the hill, just before getting into Antigua proper. Now the wan, polluted light had gone dull, like dark water pooling on a stone. A few samples, handmade desks and chairs, were being carted in by young skinny kids pushing against the twilight’s swift angles. The boys looked like crude skinny cherubs come to life. Maybe you’ll sell tomorrow, Russell thought. Maybe tomorrow someone will buy them all. He had his doubts, though. Lately he couldn’t stop the doubts pouring in. Was he changing? Like all men, he hated change. Had his professors been wrong? It had seemed impossible when he first got here, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d been two weeks in Argentina the year before, and what he’d seen there had scared him. He’d witnessed the complete collapse of a society.

There were red taillights and cars, and the sudden confusion of Antigua’s narrow colonial-era streets. The walls of houses and buildings, very close, still glowed from the sunset. The buildings’ warm colors felt soft and welcoming. Young shop-girls walked with their black hair pinned up. The town’s colonial architecture was a blessing of another century, before the ungodly cheap modernity and buck hysteria of the capital.

They stopped for a drink at the Opera Café. They sat in the back and talked about how it was to be a foreigner in a country, how they never, no matter how well they spoke the language, quite understood all the nuances. The language had its little side streets, didn’t it? Katherine said.

He didn’t tell her he wasn’t really a stranger to the country. Even his colleagues at the paper didn’t know about his mother. Or who his family was.

They drank Chilean white wine, good, cold, and expensive. He was not one to save money. If he had it, he spent it. Sometimes he would spend it all just to feel broke, something he’d never understood about himself. To have nothing but his job and the beer in his refrigerator and the wax on his floors. He didn’t want to collect things—he’d learned they could disappear as quickly as they’d come. He’d wondered if this sense of futility was what might be wrong with him emotionally. If he wanted things, he could have taken another trading job in Paris or London—not become a journalist in Guatemala. Things—TV, new cars, clothes—were somehow silly here, and beside the point. Here you lived by the minute or by the hour, but no more than that.

Somehow, in the tropics, the idea of the future seemed ridiculous—and yet it wasn’t enough. He wanted money. He wasn’t even sure exactly why. Now, thinking about what he’d done with Mahler, he had no explanation for his decision. He knew it was the adventure. It wasn’t the money, not really, he decided.

He liked to look at the movie posters and the cool people who came to the café, mostly young couples drinking coffee. He liked the red of the walls and the photos of famous singers. It was his kind of place, elegant, clean, sophisticated, with something extra, something that made him relax, took him away, a mixture of the right light and the black and white tile floor and the waitresses—in Indian garb, corte—who were very professional, never botching things.

They had only one drink, then decided to walk on to Carl’s place for the party. They might have been in a café in New York or San Francisco, except there were a few men with pistols strapped on just under their jackets sitting at the café’s bar. They were rough-looking. They stared at Katherine as they walked out the door. Dope, Russell thought. Real killers.

FIVE

Major Douglas Purcell U.S.A.R.

Blackwell Academy

232 White Blossom Road

Palo Alto, California 96601

April 2, 1988

Mrs. Isabella Cruz Price

Plantation “Las Flores”

Colomba, Costa Cuca

Guatemala, Central America

Dear Mrs. Cruz-Price,

We are in receipt of your letter of 15 January, which included full payment for this school year. Thank you.

In answer to your question: Yes, we have spoken to Cadet Russell about the results of the intelligence test he recently took, and we are aware of his concerns. As you may know, because so many of our graduates go on to the various private high schools that feed the United States service academies, we have, as a long standing policy, administered the military aptitude test, which is a prerequisite for entrance into these schools.

I’m happy to write that your son tested very high, and that we were pleased and gratified to report the results to both parents of record. We feel his long stay here at Blackwell has proven of real value to Cadet Russell and will hold him in good stead in the future.

However, I must take this opportunity to express my concern about Russell’s negative attitude towards both having to take the test, which he at first refused, and his troubling attitude towards the results themselves. It seems that he doesn’t believe the results—in fact, he says he’s quite stupid. Furthermore, he has stated to members of our staff that the test is a “gimmick to make him feel good about himself.” These attitudes are certainly unfortunate and of concern to us, as Russell has maintained a sterling record both academically and otherwise, until very recently. Perhaps there is something wrong at home?

I must also inform you that Russell has been involved recently in quite a few fights and that this behavior cannot be tolerated indefinitely. I’m sure you understand. One incident was quite serious, and resulted in his being removed from the pistol team when he was accused of pointing his weapon at a fellow cadet. Should this event have been witnessed by a staff member, it would have led to an immediate dismissal from Blackwell. As there was no proof that this event took place (the other boy involved has subsequently left Blackwell) – and as Russell has been with us since the second grade – we have decided to speak to him about his recent behavior and warn him that he is on probation.

I must also ask you to write your son and warn him of the consequences of any further inappropriate behavior. All of us here agree that Russell is a very fine boy – a boy we feel will make a great soldier – who is very much liked by the staff. We all consider Russell a great asset to both our football and baseball teams, and I’m sure he will get back on the right track!

Lastly, all of us here at Blackwell Academy hope that the Communist insurgency you and your country face will be quickly defeated. Russell has spoken often about your struggles out there in Guatemala. God bless you in your fight against this menace to free people everywhere. We are all praying for your safety. Rest assured that your son is in good hands.

God bless you.

Sincerely yours,

Major D. Purcell

Commandant

Las Flores

Sunday April 3

Dearest Russell,

Querido, I’ve just had a letter from the major at your school and he assures me that you are doing fine and that your chances of going on to a good high school are excellent. (I would like it to be the military academy in Virginia that your grandfather went to, if possible.) Do you still want to go to West Point? I think it would be lovely. We could go to the Army-Navy game and I’ll wear something very Gatsby! I have written to your father and he promises me he will contact his congressman at the right time. But it’s still a little soon, dear.

Your aunt says that we need military men here, and that you should come home as soon as you are able, to help us defeat the Communists! Right now she is living in Miami and I miss her very much, as I spend a great deal of time alone here working with no one but Olga to speak to. Your uncle Robert has gone to live in Paris—He is producing films!– so I don’t have any help. I wish you were all with me here. Maybe someday. But none of us can live without someone from the family being here on the plantation and seeing things are done properly– war or no war.

Dear, about the test they gave you. I really don’t think things like this should upset you. Of course you aren’t stupid. Why don’t we just forget the test. I know that you have always done well in school, and that’s really all that is important. As far as pointing the gun at the boy, I’m glad you wrote me and told me the truth about what happened. I don’t want my son to be a momma’s boy, and if that boy was bullying you, well, here it would be understood completely. God knows your grandfather pointed his pistol at more than one man! (I’m afraid to tell you the stories!)

Always stand up for yourself, my love, and know that your mother loves you and hopes that we can be together here someday. I love you and think about you everyday.

The guerillas came to the plantation two nights ago, but I was visiting a friend and they couldn’t find me so they left. They said they wanted our family to pay a war tax! Anytime the communists get close, workers from the ranchos come up to the house to warn me and I hide with them! Everyone here is very loyal to the family– thank God!

Besos y Abrazos

Tu Mama.

PS: Coffee prices are wonderfully high, 106. So I’ve sent along some extra spending money. Antonio and I saw Elizabeth Taylor in Acapulco last month at the Villa Vera, where she was staying too. She and I had a conversation about our children, sitting by the pool. She’s actually very, very kind, and not at all like they say on the BBC.

•••

Like jails, military schools are run in part by the adults, and partly by the students. Several boys had come to him about the Greek, as he was called. The Greek was an asshole; the Greek was a bully, but worse, the Greek was buggering the younger boys at night, and it had to stop.

The Greek’s father was important. The students didn’t know what he did, but it had to be big, because Major Purcell was scraping and bowing like an Ottoman house slave every time the Greek’s parents showed up in their limousine. Someone had suggested the Greek’s father was a gangster; others that he was a congressman, or senator. The Greek wouldn’t say. (Russell learned later that the Greek’s father owned an independent oil and gas company in Louisiana.)

There had been a vote in study hall. Russell was a lieutenant now, and the younger boys looked up to him. This respect was given not because he’d been at the school since he was in the second grade, but because he was a sports star. And because, as officer in charge of the pool during the weekends, he didn’t allow towel snapping in the showers. Younger boys had been terrified of the showers until they’d put Russell in charge.

The towel snapping had stopped. Towel snapping with a well made “rat tail,” wet at the end, could leave terrible welts, and worse. It was like being hit with a leather whip. The older boys had hit Russell plenty with the rat tails when he had first come to the school, and Russell remembered how painful and humiliating it was. (Of course, if you spoke to any of the staff about it, just as in prison, it would only make matters worse for you.)

Later, Russell only smiled when people asked him why he’d spent hours in the gym getting strong. As he had learned in his military tactics and history class: superior and overwhelming firepower wins battles. (The rest, said his teacher who’d fought at Guadalcanal, was horseshit.)

The meeting had been called before lights out. Everyone was in pajamas and robes. It was dark. Russell remembered sitting on his bed, looking down at the house next door. He often spied on the family who lived next to the school: two girls, a mother and a father. He loved to watch them have dinner, but didn’t often get the chance.

Russell felt as if he knew the family. He had shared birthday parties and many holidays with them, if only from the window of his room. The girls and he were about the same age. The parents were kind. He could tell that. The father was a tall, thin man, and he would speak to his daughters while they did their homework at the kitchen table, as he helped or did the dishes. The four of them would spend the evenings there in the kitchen. Russell liked to imagine their conversations. Sometimes providing dialogue for the family (a habit that would later help him as a journalist and writer), he would stare in amazement at their world, free from loneliness or the threat of physical violence.

Right now the girls had finished their homework, and the parents were alone in the kitchen. Russell had a great desire to be adopted by them, but knew it was crazy. One Saturday he had almost knocked on their door to tell them that he was their son of sorts, their son of the third floor window. Their son of the school next door.

This was the first time he’d had a strange and obviously bizarre thought. He would have many as the years went by and he was always able to control them, but barely. He’d started to act out in strange ways, mostly on the football field at first. He loved the violence of the sport. Then he began taking dares, any dare, any challenge. Lately, it had been shoplifting. He’d stolen records by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, even though he could have paid for them.

“We’ve come to see you about the Greek, Lieutenant,” a PFC, maybe nine years old, was speaking for the whole first floor. The younger boys of this floor had elected him to speak for them. Four other boys had come up to the third floor dormitory where the oldest boys lived.

Russell put down his book, closed the curtain, and slid his feet over his bed. The boys were standing near the door.

“Close the door,” Russell said. One of the smallest boys closed the door behind him, and they all came closer.

Officers had the best rooms, and only one roommate. Younger boys lived four to a room.

“At ease, gentlemen.” There was, despite everything, a true military order to the boys’ lives. They respected the Lieutenant deeply, as Russell had when he first arrived. The boys didn’t really relax. “What’s the problem?” Russell asked. The PFC stepped forward, a real tow-head who wasn’t afraid of much and who would one day die in Lebanon. (Several of Russell’s schoolmates would die in the armed forces.)

“The Greek’s coming down onto the first floor at night, sir. He tries to do stuff . . . to the younger boys.” He spoke as if he wasn’t one of them.

“What kind of stuff?” Russell asked. He knew what kind, or at least he suspected that he knew, but he had to be certain what he was dealing with.

The boy turned away and looked at his friends. No one who hasn’t been through it understands what happens to children who are forced to leave home at an early age. They mature and they make new bonds, bonds that may be even stronger than the familial ones they’ve been forced to break (this break is very profound). Ironically, this new family was what would make them good soldiers later. The military was their mother and father.

The boy looked Russell in the eye. “He . . . you know, wants to touch.” The boy started to turn crimson. His friends looked everywhere but at Russell.

“I get it,” Russell said. He held his hand up.

“We’ve spoken to the house mother, Mrs. Crimp, but she hasn’t done anything about it, sir. She’s always asleep when he comes down.” Russell watched the boys nod in unison.