Chapter Three
The refectory in the University
of Central-America, Managua 1.30 p.m. Friday 20th January 1967 The bearded student with the Fidel
Castro T-shirt mashed his cigarette into the tin ashtray on the refectory table.
He seemed to be considering what he had just heard and he tipped his
metal framed chair back as he did so, balancing on its back legs until he could
carefully ease his hands clear of the table top.
It was something he was expert at and Rafael watched him.
Suddenly the student moved his weight and the chair crashed back onto its
four feet. To add to the effect the
student slapped his hand down onto the Formica table top and cried, "And
what the fuck do you know about politics anyway?" Rafael instinctively moved back in
his chair. "I'm entitled to my
opinions, just as you are." The circle of students around the
table watched the argument with interest. Gustavo,
the bearded one, was well known as a radical around the university.
He called himself a Marxist but the quiet man with the glasses who sat
next to him reckoned he was more in line with Trotsky.
Not that it mattered to most of the youngsters who were crowded round. They all called themselves Marxist Leninists.
Or Social Christians. Or
Communists but they didn't know. The
quiet man's name was Daniel. He'd
been studying Law here at the Universidad Centro-Americana for four years since
his 18th birthday and he'd seen a lot of people like Gustavo come and go. The Marxist had warmed to his
subject. "But where do you get
your opinions, Señor ... I'm sorry, I've forgotten your surname?"
He looked around at his audience enjoying the moment.
Everyone there knew Rafael's family name.
"Oh, yes," he seemed to remember.
"Villanueva. Would that
be the same Villanueva as in Villanueva Motor Holdings SA, or perhaps it's the
Villanueva who owns Villanueva GMC Trucks SA?" Rafael fought back.
"Just because my father has his own business doesn't mean I've had
my brain removed!" he cried. "I
read the papers. I know what's
going on in this country just as well as you do!" Gustavo raised a hand triumphantly.
"Of course. Let me
guess. You read La Prensa,
Pedro Chamorro's rag." Rafael
tried to think of another newspaper but the only one his father had ever taken
was indeed La Prensa.
"I was right!" Gustavo
gloated. "Capitalist crap! You're
the Capitalist son of a Capitalist shit and you think you can sit there and tell
me about politics!" Rafael almost had hold of Gustavo's
shirt front before his friends pulled him clear.
Suddenly everyone was on their feet.
Sergio Martinez, a tall young man of Rafael's age who had become a close
friend in the three months they had been at University together, stood between
the antagonists, his back to Gustavo, and pressed the palms of his hands against
Rafael's chest. "Leave it,
Rafael. Let it go." Rafael watched the bearded man over
his friend's shoulder. "No!
He called my father a shit. I'm
going to stuff his teeth down his throat!" The man called Daniel watched the
younger students with interest. "If you want to know about
politics," Gustavo called, "be outside the Presidential Palace on
Sunday. Then you'll learn about
politics the hard way!" Sergio leaned against Rafael,
moving him backwards, and the crowd yielded to let them move away from the
table. "Ignore him.
He just gets excited. He's
had it pretty tough, man. Just
leave it." Rafael allowed his friend to steer
him away from the fight and the refectory went back to its business of serving
lunch to students. As they cleared
the swing doors out into the corridor Daniel caught them up and fell in beside
them. "Gustavo's right," he
said. "You should come." "What?"
Rafael asked They walked in silence till they
came to the lift, then he turned and handed each of them a leaflet.
"Rattle Somoza's cage a bit!" he said and left them to their
thoughts. "What the hell's he talking
about?" Rafael asked and
Sergio scanned the hand-out. "The Conservatives are
arranging a protest march on Somoza’s palace," he read.
"They're calling on everyone to be there." There was a movement behind them
and Gustavo leaned over Rafael's shoulder.
"Better stay away, rico.
It'll be no place for Somocistas!" Rafael bridled but Sergio laid a
hand on his arm. "Piss off
Gustavo," he said and the Marxist shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn
you." The lift arrived and a throng of
students carried the two friends on board.
The doors slid shut. * After lectures, Rafael and Sergio
waited in the gathering twilight of the evening for Sergio's sister Anna - a
third year student. Anna was much
shorter than her brother, but two years older at twenty-one.
She had shining black eyes and thick black hair, which she'd died with
henna that gave it a red light in the sun.
She wore shawls and ponchos woven in the intricate Indian designs of her
home town of Masaya. Though Rafael didn't know it, the ponchos were Anna's defence
against the wandering eyes and explicit remarks of men and boys who found her
spectacularly curving figure too inviting.
Rafael knew she was from Masaya, the stronghold of Nicaraguan Indians in
the south, and if her brother hadn't had straightforward Hispanic looks, he
would have thought Anna was pure Indian. It
was funny how brother and sister could be so different. There was a shout and she appeared
from the road that led to the car park. "Hi, guys!" she called.
"I'm in the car park, but my car won't start."
She was close enough to them now for her to say, "You know about
cars, Rafael. Can you give me a
hand?" He shrugged.
What happened under the hood was as much a mystery to him as it was to
the girl, but he didn't like to say so. "Sure,"
he replied. Anna's beat-up Ford sullenly
refused all attempts at life-support, even when the boys decided to push start
it across the emptying car park The
girl jumped into the driver's seat and they put their shoulders to the vehicle
and eased it forward. It gathered
speed and Anna pulled the gear shift into 'Drive'.
There was a groan as the transmission took up the strain but the engine
remained unmoved despite their efforts. The
lads pushed until their lungs were bursting but the net effect was zero.
Eventually the car jerked to a halt against the kerb at the far end of
the car park and they collapsed across the trunk. "Can you push start an
automatic?" Rafael wheezed and
Sergio shrugged. "It was your idea," he said.
"I thought you were the man with the garage." "No idea," Rafael panted,
hands on hips, bending down to get rid of the stitch in his side.
"I'll ask the old man when I see him!"
He walked slowly round to Anna's door and leant in through the open
window. "Leave it here, I'll give you two a lift."
He brightened. "At least no-one can steal it!" She opened the door and got out.
"I'll get my father to come and look at it tomorrow," she said
and flung her Indian shawl over her shoulders.
"Thanks, Rafael." Rafael led the way across the
darkening car park to his Chevrolet pick-up truck, but at the door he hesitated.
"Let's leave this here for a bit and walk over to La
Piñata," he suggested. "It's
Friday after all. We can have a few
beers..." He switched from
Spanish to American. "Shoot some pool," he said.
La Piñata
was the bar just across from the campus where it all happened on a Friday
night - booze, dancing, the odd fight. Anna shook her head.
"No, I want to get home, I'm hungry," she said. "Somewhere to eat, then?" Sergio patted his pockets.
"No money," he said and Rafael clapped him on the shoulder. "I'll pay," he grinned.
"That's the price of being a Capitalist shit!" He looked at Anna and she smiled,
but she didn't get the joke. She shook her head. “No, Rafael. But
thanks anyway.” “I insist!” Rafael cried and
she looked to her brother. "Sara's then," Sergio said.
"And if you're lucky you'll be able to meet Gustavo again.
That's where all his type go." "Fuck Gustavo," Rafael
replied and clambered up into the truck. "Where
am I going?" "The Martha Quezada,"
Sergio said and the rear wheels shrieked as Rafael floored the throttle.
Smoke and shredded rubber covered the car park tarmac. Rafael reached down and turned the
tape player full up. "Hold
tight!" he yelled. "We're
gonna have some fun." He
turned to look at the girl, wedged in the middle of the three-seat cab.
"You all right, Anna?" he
asked. The girl clung to the grab handle
and lurched against him pleasantly as he negotiated the exit onto the main road.
He couldn't hear what she said so he just nodded and wound down the
window. "Good!" he yelled
and she smiled. Boys!
she thought and fell against him again as he weaved past a turning car
and powered the big truck down the dual carriageway towards the Barrio Martha
Quizzed, where Sara's bar was famous
for its spicy nacatamales and its
fiery politics.
The evening traffic was heavy, being rush-hour and the weekend.
Gaudy shop fronts flashed their endless exhortations as the pick-up truck
swung off the main drag and became bogged down in the city centre traffic. "Go right here!" Sergio
shouted suddenly. "Right!"
He was waving his arm at the driver of the car jammed close up on his
right-hand side and gesticulating wildly. "Move
over you fat bastard!" he yelled at the hapless driver and Rafael blasted
the big truck into the next lane. They
gained a couple of car lengths and stopped.
As ever, the road past the Grand Hotel was solid and Rafael notched the
truck into 'Park'. It rocked on its
suspension and he turned the tape player down.
He grinned at Anna. More of
a leer than a grin, as if to say "There,
that's how you do it!" He
scrabbled in the glove box but didn't find what he was after so he swung round
and reached over the seat-back behind her.
She looked puzzled until he said, "Get us a beer, Sergio."
He could get his fingers to the six-pack but couldn't quite pull it free. Anna squeezed across and Sergio
pulled the cardboard container out from behind the seat.
He tore a couple of bottles free and passed one to Rafael.
It was warm. But it was
beer. "You want one?"
Rafael asked the girl as he put the truck back into gear, but she shook
her head. They moved on, stop-start,
stop-start for another kilometre or so and then Rafael swung onto a side street.
One of Managua’s many working class barrios, Martha Quezada was old with streets so narrow that the
overhanging balconies of the stuccoed houses were close enough together to
string washing lines across, which they usually had, or – on feast days -
flags that fluttered in the narrow space between road and sky while intricate
pictures made up of coloured sawdust decorated the cobbled roadway beneath. "Stop here," Sergio
called and Rafael bounced the nearside wheels of the truck onto the pavement.
Anna put a hand out to brace herself and, inadvertently she was sure, it
landed on Rafael's thigh, which felt good under her fingers.
Their eyes met for a second before she removed it.
Rafael stepped on the parking brake and swung open the heavy door of the
truck. "Lock it up,
Sergio," he called. "The
old man'd ground me for a year if I lost it!"
The truck was barely six weeks old - a present for his nineteenth
birthday. The clientele of the bar was mostly
students, so the place was ill-lit and noisy, which is how they liked it, with
cigarette smoke layered up on its rough plastered ceiling.
Posters decorated the walls and carafes of cheap house wine decorated the
tables. Everywhere, everyone was
talking. The newcomers squeezed
into the heaving space and Sergio made a tactical alliance with people of only
slight acquaintance to gain three chairs at a crowded table. "What do you want?"
Rafael signalled to Anna over the noise of the room. "A Coke," she called back
and he raised a hand to attract the attention of a girl who worked as a waitress
when she wasn't studying engineering. "One Coke, two beers," he
signalled and the girl pressed back into the crowd to get to the bar.
"You're not in a hurry, I hope." he said to Anna, leaning close
to be heard, and she shook her head, the thick red-black hair swinging about her
handsome face as she did so. "This must be why politics in
Nicaragua is such a confused subject," Sergio motioned around the noisy
room. "No-one actually hears
what anyone else is saying!" Rafael nodded and followed his
friend's eye around the room. There
were people of every type and shape, even an older couple in sombre clothing
eating pasta. They must have got in
by mistake. As his gaze swung
around it fell, on a Fidel Castro T-shirt.
Sure enough the face above it was bearded and working hard at being
persuasive. "You were right," he
called to Sergio, indicating he’d seen. "Gustavo." The food, when it eventually
arrived, was good and Rafael and Sergio switched from beer to wine then, as the
night wore on, to coffee and fiery Nicaraguan rum but Anna had only a couple of
glasses of red wine. It was pleasant, Rafael thought in
a moment of comparative silence, to have made such good friends as these two.
The guys from his all-boys private school were OK and he mixed with them
a lot, but these two were different. They
enjoyed life without being loud about it and they were straight forward.
He had only come to know them since starting at University.
Their father, Señor Martinez was enormously proud of Sergio and Anna,
having had little formal education himself.
He worked long hours in the tax department to give them what he had never
had. Despite leaving school at ten,
he had taught himself to read from books and newspapers till he was familiar
with every subject from politics to art, encouraging even his youngest children
in lively discussions around the dinner table.
Being a frequent visitor to their flat, Rafael was often involved in
these debates, his opinions being sought and challenged by all members of the
Martinez family, except Senora Martinez who stayed apart from these things.
Like her husband, she worked all hours to make ends meet, yet every time
Rafael called round he was offered food and she would tell everyone to shuffle
round the table to make room for him, sharing their dinner or lunch, no matter
how little there was. It can't have been easy for her, he
thought. Five children and two
adults in a three-roomed flat. She
would leave home before dawn to do a manual job somewhere, leaving Anna to get
her younger sister Francesca and the kids off to school before she and Sergio
travelled to the University in her battered Ford.
Despite his lowly background, Señor Martinez had brought the children up
to be honest and thoughtful, teaching them to question what they heard and read.
Rafael was often aware of his own naivety as he listened to the family
discussing politics. A hand fell on
Rafael's shoulder, drawing him back to the smoky restaurant.
"Señor Villanueva," said the owner of the hand with some
humour, and Rafael turned in his chair. It
was the quiet student with the glasses. The one from who'd given him the leaflet about the
demonstration. "Can I join
you?" He assumed the man had just arrived
and was simply after a chair, until Daniel reached over and took Sergio's hand.
"Sergio, how are you doing?" he asked, and Sergio shook the
man's hand. He leant across and
kissed Anna on both cheeks before he pulled up a chair from another table. "So, you've brought a new
recruit?" he asked and smiled at Rafael.
"But I can't call him Señor Villanueva all night, can I?" Sergio waved a hand.
"Sorry, Daniel, this is Rafael.
Rafael, this is Daniel." Daniel took Rafael's hand and shook
it warmly. "Welcome, to Sara's
hotbed of revolution!" he said and Rafael instinctively looked around him. "Don't worry, we're all
friends around here," Daniel said. "Except
him," he pointed to a man at the bar.
"And him," he pointed to another man nearer the door.
"They're orejas!" Rafael craned round to look at the
man by the door. He knew that
people made money working as Somoza's 'ears' as he called them.
He leant forward and said more carefully, "Informers?" and the
newcomer waved a hand expansively. "Maybe.
Maybe not. Who knows!"
He laughed and waved a hand to the waitress.
"Maria!" he called and she moved towards them.
He looked at the boys. "What
are you drinking?" "I'll just have a
coffee," Rafael said and Sergio nodded.
"That'll do me," he agreed. Daniel looked across to Anna who
nodded. "Four coffees,"
he said and the waitress went off to get them.
"So, do you think you might come on Sunday?" he asked without
preamble. "I don't know," Rafael
said. "Could do."
He looked across at Sergio. "I
didn't know anything about it till this afternoon.
What's supposed to happen?" Daniel removed his glasses for a
minute to wipe the sweat from around his eyes.
The restaurant was certainly very hot.
"If Pedro Chamorro is to be believed," he began, "they are
going to distribute weapons and throw the dictator out."
He gave a sad smile. "Like
Eisenstein's storming of the Winter Palace, but without the battleship!" Rafael held up a hand.
"I thought you were talking about a demonstration, not a war!" Daniel's smile disappeared.
"But," he continued more quietly, "as I say that is if you
believe Señor Chamorro. Personally I don't." "So what do you
think will happen?" "I don't know, that's why I'm
going. We want Somoza out, but I'm
not sure that Chamorro is the man to do it."
He paused while the waitress brought their coffees.
"But if he's going to act, he has to act now, in January.
By February or March it will be too late.
By then Tacho will have got the National Guard all geared up for an
old-style Somoza electoral campaign." "Tacho?"
Rafael was puzzled. “You
mean Luis Somoza, the older brother.” Daniel tasted his coffee and shook
his head. "No.
Luis won't stand for President again in April, he's dying.
The good days are over, such as they were.
We'll be back under the jack-boot of the young Somoza, Tacho. That's why the Conservatives need to move now.
Once his electioneering machine swings into action they're lost." "You mean the press will be
muzzled?" Sergio asked but
Daniel snorted in derision. "With the National Guard
running the ballot, Somoza won't need to worry about what the papers say."
By now the four students were instinctively leaning closer together - and
not just to hear over the hubbub of the cafe - it was not healthy to talk of the
Somoza brothers this way in public. "He
will be like his father. Anyone who
speaks out against him will be found next day on a street corner with their
throat cut." Anna raised a finger.
"I don't know,” she said. “Even
Tacho has to pay lip-service to a democratic election.
If he upsets the Americans they may cut back on some of the aid deals
they've put together with Luis. They
liked Luis, they've worked well with him and he's been careful not to tread on
their toes." "But, Sunday?"
Rafael asked, bringing them back to his original question.
"What do the Conservatives hope to achieve on Sunday?" "Oh, a little
sabre-rattling," Daniel said. "Try
to persuade the General Staff of the National Guard that they're a viable
alternative to the Somoza regime, that they have enough popular support to form
a government." "And that would suit
you?" "Me?"
Daniel asked. "Swap one lot for another?
Not really. What this
country really needs is to throw the whole lot of them out, like Castro did in
Cuba, and set up a Marxist state." "Oh, that's a good idea!"
Rafael cried. "Have you
been to Cuba lately? Castro can't
trade with anyone except the Russians because of the Yanqui
embargoes. The place is
bankrupt." "And Nicaragua isn't?"
Daniel asked looking at his watch. "Hey,
I've got to go. We must talk some
other time." He looked around
the room, then back at Sergio and Anna. "So,
are you two on for a little bear-baiting on Sunday?
Like the fairy story. Remember?
The little guy who was sent out to kill the giants.
He got them both so mad they killed each other and he marched home
victorious?" Rafael looked at his friends.
It all seemed a bit heavy to him but Sergio said.
"I'm on." He
looked at his sister. "Anna's
busy." All three men turned to Anna as she
began to speak, but Sergio cut her short. "She
won't be able to come," he said emphatically. Daniel stood up.
“OK," he said. "I'll
see you there!" He shook hands
quickly with Rafael and Sergio before kissing Anna.
"Ciao," he said and
was gone. As he left, Rafael turned to speak
but Anna got in there first. "How
dare you, Sergio!" She was
angry and her face was flushed as she spoke.
"What do you mean, Anna's busy?
You had no right to say that!" Sergio said quickly, "I'm your
brother, Anna." "So?" "So I'll decide what's safe
for you and what isn't, OK?" "Oh, you will?" "Yes."
Sergio was adamant. "It'll
be no place for a girl." "It's OK for you to go but not
for me then, is it?" "Yes," he said, flatly
and turned to Rafael. "You on
for it?" Anna stood up.
"Oh, I see. All boys together. I'm
two years older than you Sergio and I've been working with Daniel all that
time." The cafe had fallen
quiet as people focused on the drama in the corner. "And
I'm not going to have my younger brother telling me where I can and can't go!"
Anna finished in the silence. "Bravo!" a slurred voice cried from the back of the room and
Rafael found himself looking into the eyes of Gustavo the Marxist.
"You tell him!" the man called banging his beer bottle on the
table. Sergio lowered his voice.
"Anna," he argued. "You
know Papa won't let you go..."
"And you'll make sure of it by
telling him I suppose? "If I have to." "I thought you were above
being a macho prig!" Anna cried
and turned on Rafael "Will
you take me home?" Rafael looked from her, rigid and
angry, to her brother. "He's
right, Anna. If there's fighting,
it'll be no place for a girl." "And you know, do you?
You've been an activist for two years, have you?"
She stopped and looked at him the same way Gustavo had looked at him in
the refectory. "This isn't
even your fight, Rafael. Your as
much a Conservative as Pedro Chamorro." "That's not fair!"
Rafael hissed but Anna's blood was up. "This is my country Rafael," she said too loudly in the stillness of the
cafe. "As much mine as yours
or Sergio's and when the revolution
comes, it'll be women doing the fighting, just as much as men.
We're the ones who really know
about oppression, we've been suffering it for years!"
She stopped for breath. "What's
more!" she added, witheringly. "At
least I'm old enough to vote!" "Bravo!" Gustavo
called again. He hoisted himself
unsteadily to his feet and raised his beer bottle in salute to the girl.
"To the revolution," he cried.
"Somoza's a thief, his brother's a murderer and their father was
both. I say we burn out the whole Somocista snakepit!" Rafael hardly dared breathe.
You can't say things like that in
Managua, he thought. The man at
the bar, the one Daniel had said was an oreja
was watching him like he was the only person in the room.
Jesus!
Rafael thought. He turned to
Sergio. "Let's go!" he
hissed. He threw two
hundred-Cordoba notes on the table and hustled Anna forward.
The restaurant was still in shock as he called, "Come on, Sergio!
For fuck's sake, let's go!" * The three students sat in heavy
silence in the truck cab as Rafael threaded the vehicle through the narrow
streets to the highway. He watched
the rear-view mirror, driving as fast as he could without becoming conspicuous,
until they were on the open road. God
knew what might happen after Gustavo's outburst in the bar. At last they were away from the
barrio and on the dual carriageway and he allowed the truck's speed to rise to
twenty kilometres over the speed limit. No-one
was following them and he began to relax. The
street lights flashed by until they were near the Martinez's own district, where
he slowed and turned into their street. At
last he stopped and silence fell on the three friends. He turned to Anna.
"See you on Monday?" he said and she nodded automatically, her
face still hard with anger. "Yes, Rafael," she said
stiffly. "Thank you for the
meal." She waited in silence
for Sergio to get out and let her slide across and out of the cab. Rafael looked at Sergio and
shrugged. "Night, then,"
he said. "See you over the
weekend, maybe." Anna spun angrily to look into his
eyes, her face only inches from his. "So
you are going on this demo then?" He raised his hands.
"I don't know, Anna. I'm
not really into all this stuff." She watched him, remembering the
ease with which he had thrown hundred-Cordoba notes around in the café.
Her mother worked a week to earn that sort of money.
It was nothing to him. Sergio had got out onto the
pavement and she slid across the seat after him. As she turned to shut the door, her eyes lifted up to
Rafael's. "I should stay at home on
Sunday," she said through the open window. "People get confused.
You might get taken for a Somocista
yourself." The door closed with finality and
he was alone. "Hey!" he cried but she
walked away from him. "Shit!" he hissed as he
banged the truck into gear and powered away from the kerb.
"Somocista!"
He blew his horn angrily at a car that pulled out in front of him, and
accelerated round it. He'd never done anything to give Anna cause to call him that.
He was always careful not to make any reference to the money difference
between his family and hers. He
respected her family. They worked
hard. Her father was a civil servant.
He banged the steering-wheel. Old
Man Martinez worked for Somoza, for God's sake, but she wouldn't call him
a Somocista.
He banged the wheel again. "My
old man has made some money. He's a
businessman, but that doesn't make me a Somocista."
He remembered Gustavo's words. Thief, murderer.
Being well off didn't mean you were a Somocista.
It just meant you were good at your job! * The electric gates of the
Villanueva house swung open automatically and Rafael pulled the truck to a halt
beside his father's sedan. It
rocked on its springs as he jumped down from the cab and slammed the door.
The lights around the house were on but he knew the front door would be
locked so he walked down the foot-lit path around the side of the house.
The cold glow from the illuminated swimming pool gave the patio a blue
glare as he ran up the ornamental steps to the wide-open glass doors that led
into the back of the house. His
father was relaxing on one of the leather sofas, a glass in one hand and a
newspaper, carefully folded, in the other.
He put the paper down and took his reading glasses off.
"You're late," he said as he sat up. Rafael ignored the remark.
It was his father's usual greeting.
He swung past and into the kitchen where he opened the refrigerator,
glancing inside it with the idea of something to drink.
He changed his mind and slammed the door shut, aware of his father behind
him. Angrily he turned around.
"What?" he snapped and he pushed past back into the lounge. "Don't speak to me like that,
boy!" Rodrigues barked and
Rafael stopped, his back to the older man.
He took a deep breath and walked out onto the patio. His father returned to the sofa and
picked up his newspaper. Over his
half-moon glasses he watched his son. Rafael tired of looking at the few
leaves that lay on the bottom of the pool and reappeared at the glass doors. "I want to go to a rally on
Sunday," he announced. His father sighed.
He was aware of the differences between them and often found the boy
difficult to understand but he was fond of him, for all that.
He rattled the paper as he put it down and chose a conciliatory tone of
voice. "A rally?" "In town." "This nonsense on
Sunday?" he asked and Rafael nodded. "What
has put that into your head?" Rafael shrugged.
"Everyone's going." Rodrigues put the glasses down.
"I'm not going." "No well, you wouldn't." "And what does that
mean?" Rodrigues asked. "Well," Rafael didn't
want to say because you're a Somocista because
he knew it was untrue and his father would be stung. But it was true that Rodrigues Villanueva himself had nothing
to gain from a change of government. On
the contrary, he had a lot to lose if people like Daniel got their way and the
country descended into anarchy. He
sought the right words but couldn't find them.
"Because you're a businessman." "And you, on the other
hand," Rodrigues supplied, "are a student."
He stood up. "Rafael, you know nothing of politics.
You may think you do, but you don't.
A lot of hot-headed trade-unionists and left-wingers have incited a crowd
of people, who wouldn't know their arse from their elbow, to go and make a
hullabaloo outside the President's palace.
It is an irrelevance!" "They're not
left-wingers." "No?" "No.
The Conservatives are organising it.
Pedro Chamorro will be there!" "Then he should know
better," Rodrigues said. "He
is living in the past. His father
and the President's father fought over the country forty years ago and Emiliano
Chamorro lost. Pedro Chamorro has
never forgotten that. If he is
involved in this, it is for his own reasons and none of them are your
concern." Rodrigues Villanueva
turned from his son. "I am
going to bed and you are not going on
some left-wing demo. Good
night." Rafael waited till the house was
quiet before lifting the phone. The Martinez's phone was answered
almost immediately. "Hullo?"
It was Sergio. Rafael had
known that his friend would be up. Sergio
always watched the baseball replays till all was blue on Friday nights. "Sergio, can you talk?"
Rafael was whispering as he spoke into the cupped receiver. "Yeah." "I want to come on
Sunday." "OK," Sergio said.
Was
that it? Rafael thought.
OK? He had expected
more. "To the demo." "Yeah," Sergio replied
then he cried, "Yes!" Rafael
could hear the crowd's roar even over the phone line. "Sergio!" he hissed.
"Are you listening to me?" "Yes, sorry, Rafael.
Sure. You want to come on
Sunday. That'll be great." "What time does it
start," Rafael asked. "About eleven." "Do we all meet
somewhere?" There was a pause.
"I don't know," Sergio said.
"I've put the leaflet down somewhere.
Why not come over tomorrow and we'll talk about it?" Rafael thought about it.
He was supposed to go down to the finca tomorrow and help his brother,
Miguel, bring back the speedboat. Miguel
had decided it needed a service. "I
can't, I'm busy. Why don't I come
over to your place on Sunday morning, about ten?" "OK," Sergio said.
"See you then." Rafael replaced the phone and
listened. The house was quiet -
except for the thumping of his heart. His
father wouldn't even know he had gone to the demo.
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