Open Pit (27 page)

She got up a moment later and left the room, wandering through the common space of the guest house to a desk where there was another phone for visitors. She dialed Carlos. She needed to tell him, needed a better ending to their conversation than the one she'd had earlier. A woman answered his cell, sounding groggy.

“
Está Carlos?
”

The woman — his wife? girlfriend? — hesitated, but a moment later Carlos came on the line. “
Sí?
”

“
Carlos. Habla Aida.
”

“Aida. It's
1
:
00
.”

“It's just — the kidnappers. They're going to kill someone. Thursday. No matter what — unless the mine lets the exhumation go on indefinitely. It'll be Danielle. I know it. I don't know what to do. I wish I was home right now.”

Aida heard Carlos walk somewhere with the phone, then a faint click as a door closed. “In Toronto,” he said. “Maybe this is a good idea.”

“What? No. I didn't really mean —” Aida felt idiotic. How had she ever imagined she could call a near stranger in the middle of the night for comfort?

“I'm only saying that if you decide to go home, you'll be safer. You'll have more support. Whatever you do, let me know. And tomorrow, please do not attend the Committee's demonstration. My police contacts tell me it could be dangerous. I would be very concerned.”

Aida held the phone tightly. “I'm planning to be there,” she said, which became true as she uttered the words. Carlos just wanted her gone, didn't want to have to listen to her read him old letters or babysit her anymore.

“No, Aida. Going will be a mistake.”

She hung up on “mistake.” She walked back to Sylvie and Benoît's room, where she found the others descending into their blackest mood yet.

Now, continuing to walk through the crowd, Aida tells herself she made the right decision. Benoît's anger and Sylvie's crying, Ralph's restrained disappointment, and Neela's endless phone calls would be too much to endure.

“
No a la mineria! No a la mineria!
” a group of students chants as she passes. Aida mouths the words, just to see how it feels. But a call of disapproval follows, emerging from a different group of people to Aida's right. “Booooh! Baaahh!” The students lose their rhythm and go silent a moment, then start back up with verve. “
NO A LA MINERIA!
” The second group chimes in again, and it's a mess of voices and calls.

“
Buenas tardes,
” says a man's voice over the crowd, interrupting them. Someone is testing the microphone on the cathedral steps. “Good afternoon,” he says again, and the microphone squeaks. One of Marta's committee members. “We are very happy to see so many of you. Welcome! We have had word that there are some individuals in the crowd today who represent forces working against us, and against our committee.”

Aida looks around. Only some of the people nearby are listening. The students are bunched together, rehearsing a new chant. Others are laughing, enjoying the get-together. Still others are readying banners and drums.

“Do not react if someone tries to provoke you. I want everyone to remain calm. We are going to keep our program short, and then we ask that you please disperse. Now, I want to introduce our only speaker today, whom we are very happy to have among us: Marta Ramos —” his voice is nearly drowned out by a loud cheer.

So she's out. Aida checks herself and finds that she is mostly relieved. She strains to catch a glimpse of her host.

“Thank you,” Marta says, her voice a little shaky. “I want to acknowledge your presence and to tell you that I appreciate your support. My arrest yesterday morning was unwarranted. Another instance of the reverse justice that still predominates in this country, where the people who work for democracy are persecuted, and those who oppose it walk free.” The crowd makes a variety of noises. “This is why tomorrow we will not be gathering here.”

Aida is surprised. Many nearby are booing. Is Marta giving up?

“But wait! I said we will not gather
here,
where the police can harass us, and where people hired to do so can provoke us. We reject these tactics of NorthOre. We reject police brutality. But we will meet! At a different location. One with great symbolic value. The
Río Rico
has fed our land for a millennium. Currently, it is being poisoned by NorthOre and the
Mil Sueños
mine. This will be our gathering place. We do not exist only to shut down mines, as our critics will try to make people believe. We support clean water, clean air, healthy soil, healthy futures.”

The crowd erupts in a roar of cheers. But there are nearly as many heckles, and Marta is forced to stop speaking for a long while. When the yeas and nays finally settle, she picks back up. “We've arranged for buses to leave from the
Estación del Oriente
tomorrow at
6
:
00
to take people to the mouth of the river, one hour north of here. Our committee members will contact the various organizations in the next few hours to determine how many will come. And now, all of you, do what is safe and go home. And Aida Byrd —”

Aida freezes.

“— please make your way to the east side of the cathedral, beside the steps, so we can take you back.”

Aida is at once self-conscious and happy. She checks around her; no one recognizes her as the object of this address. They're too busy with one another. The mood is changing. A restlessness has gripped people. Aida looks for an easy path. Despite her tough self-talk, she suddenly wants to go exactly where Marta has suggested. She starts in a beeline east, but an older man puts out his arm to stop her. “
Señorita
. There's a fight that way. Don't go.”

“But,” Aida begins, trying to explain. Before she can, everyone around them seems to get the same message and they turn like a wave, forcing Aida to either squeeze through or be swept along with them. She decides to let herself go with the flow and double back at a distance. A few steps on she turns to see that a scuffle is indeed spreading to where she just was. Several men jostle one another and a tense line has formed between the students and hecklers. “A thousand nightmares for a thousand years,” say the students, in a play on the
Mil Sueños
name. “
Viva El Salvador!
” say the others, less imaginatively.

Sticking close to the older man Aida makes a left towards the centre of the plaza's garden, but five paces along she narrowly avoids being punched by a man who's just taken a wide swing at another, who receives the hit directly on the left eye. His hat goes flying, and Aida marvels as someone else manages to catch it and quickly lower their arm, claiming it. She stands in shock watching the punched man fall to the ground in a heap before tearing herself away.

“Everyone,
por favor,
” Marta is saying, but it's becoming more difficult to make out her words over the racket. Aida starts to hope Marta will use her name again. “Please leave in an orderly fashion.

Please do not —” And then Marta's voice is lost and the world slows considerably as Aida hears an entirely unfamiliar sound: a
phhooomff,
a whistle in the air, a sharp plonk, a rattle and a hiss. A puff of silver smoke appears, maybe forty feet away. Aida tries to retreat from it, but the smoke moves at tremendous speed and is quickly around and beyond her. She stops, her toes tightening in her sandals. An intense burning sensation comes over her, buckling her knees, and she's down, the bare skin of one of her kneecaps smacking hard earth below the grass. There's gas in her mouth and her ears, her eyes and her nose. She gropes at the damp blades, unable to breathe.

Suddenly, two people, women, pick her up by the arms so firmly Aida grimaces. They drag her along, she doesn't know which way. But she's willing. She's grateful. She'll go anywhere that the smoke isn't. Wherever they want to take her. Aida asks herself how a single scuffle turned into tear gas. It seems disproportionate.

Eventually, they get clear of the thickest smoke. Aida hacks and coughs, but is able to keep up, to inhale enough air. That's when she looks over and sees them: riot police, advancing, slapping their batons against their shields like in a movie.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The two women just stare. “
Vamos,
” Aida says, and encourages them to retreat with her. They press past people in the direction Aida first came from after the taxi dropped her off and are nearly at the mouth of a side street when another set of sounds —
phhooomff, whistle, plonk, rattle, hiss
— sends a huge cloud of gas up into the air just behind them.

Aida is momentarily paralyzed. Her stomach folds over itself and she throws up, her eyes burning, her lungs feeling like they're being fried inside her chest. Only when she's finished heaving does she realize that the women have gone on running without her. She calls after them, stumbling around, eventually coming across several people sharing splashes of bottled water. Still bent over, Aida reaches out her hand and she groans with relief when she feels her palm fill with liquid. She brings the water to her eyes, catching a small amount in her mouth.

Many others stumble as she does, through clinging silver wafts of gas, hurriedly tying scarves or t-shirts around their noses as they scatter, each carving their own path, but everyone with the same goal: to leave behind the emptying canisters that Aida now understands are being lobbed from the tops of the buildings lining the central plaza. But what about the riot police? Why aren't they helping? How will she get home? Where is home? Marta's house? Her host's paranoia about the police returns to Aida now as a warning she has been too stupid to heed. And this, in turn, makes her doubts about Marta waver dramatically. Nothing seems as clear as it used to.

Aida has never been more aware of how unprepared she is to face real violence. She cries unabashedly for defying the others, for leaving that taxi, assuming things would remain in control, as they always have for her until this week, for wearing these clothes — an impractical skirt and flimsy sandals. The skirt is splattered with the blood of that man who was punched earlier; one of her shins is cut where she's fallen. Aida is filled with the sudden knowledge that if anyone really looks at her now, instead of just bumping into and streaming past her as they are, they'll see something truly pitiable: a fake, a war orphan.

“Marta! Marta!” Aida screams out Marta's name because she has no one else to scream for. But now her eyes widen at a new sound and her pupils burn for it. An echoey rat-tat. Gunfire. Aida hits the ground like everyone else around her. People scream. She can tell that the chaos is more intense closer to the cathedral, and she wonders how Marta got out — whether she got out. Aida is suddenly convinced that she will be shot. She clasps her hands over the crown of her head.

An arm grabs her shoulder. Aida lifts both hands and turns from the ground to protect herself, or to accept help if it's the same two women as before. But it's Carlos she sees. Carlos Reyes.

“
Vente!
” he says, and with the sound of bullets firing not far away they run towards one of the old yellow school buses Aida saw earlier. When they get to them, they round one, Carlos puts his arm over her and they press against the side of the vehicle. Ahead of them and behind, others also take shelter this way.

Carlos turns Aida's head left, then right to look her over. Behind him, people are running. He wipes her mouth with his hand and Aida realizes she must still have vomit there. Carlos pulls out a handkerchief and, using a small bottle of water, wets it and ties it around her face, covering her nose and mouth. “When I say so, we are going to get up and run to that street corner — over there.”

Rat-tat. Aida jumps.

“They're not aiming this far from the cathedral,” says Carlos. “They're mostly scattering them. Take a few more breaths,” he says, and nods at her as if answering all the questions she might come up with.

Aida looks more closely at him. Carlos is dressed incongruously again, this time, in a collared shirt and thin sweater. He doesn't fit. Doesn't want to.

“
Vamos!
” he says, and takes her hand.

Aida goes with him, but there's a catch, something off about the way it feels to hold Carlos's hand — the one with the scar. The feeling is so strong she momentarily lets it go. “I have to get to Marta,” she says, turning back to see what's happening at the cathedral, if Marta is still on the steps. But it's hopeless. There are too many layers of people and clouds of smoke.

Carlos finds her hand again and pulls. On they go, stopping and starting, out of the plaza and down the same set of streets Aida came in on, all of which are packed. They move around people, ducking flying objects (people are breaking glass, it seems) and hiding briefly in doorways. “
Vamos,
Aida.
Vamos,
” Carlos says every so often, and Aida does her best not to lag.

And then they're at a locked door and Carlos is banging loudly, saying his name. They wait, listening as a helicopter makes a huge racket flying low along the next lane, moving towards the crowd. Carlos has just put down his fist and is turning to leave when the door opens a crack.

A moment later it's over. Aida is in the same café where she and Carlos had their first meeting. Rows of clean glasses behind the gleaming bar. Two clients crouching in one corner below window level, puffing nervously on their cigarettes. The thick door closes and the sounds beyond it, of the helicopter and approaching sirens and people yelling, are muffled. The person who's let them in, a big man, brings a large bucket of water and a rag, and Carlos starts washing Aida's face and her neck. But she pulls the rag from him and finishes the job herself. Then she drinks some water that the big man offers her before he goes to check on his customers. Tears pour involuntarily down Aida's cheeks.