‘Have a beer.’ It was his ration. He’d been sitting there in the shadow drinking and thinking.
‘No thanks.’
‘Why not?’ He was not easily provoked, but there was something about her superior attitude that offended him.
‘I don’t like camp beer. It smells like halitosis.’
‘You’re so damned snotty,’ he said. All his good intentions dissolved in the face of her indifference to him, and this rejection of his friendliness. She was not even looking at him. He grabbed her by the upper arms and shook her. ‘Look at me!’ She was thunderstruck. Still holding her, Paz drew her to him and gave her a fierce kiss.
At that moment Singer opened the door.
Singer was quick on the uptake. He had spent most of his adult life in a clandestine world where quick thinking was necessary if a man was to keep his job. Or sometimes to keep alive. Singer’s brain worked faster than the brains of most men, and almost as fast as those of most women.
MAMista rules governing the behaviour of the guerrillas towards their female counterparts were rigorous and inflexible. It was the only way to run such a place without having discipline deteriorate to anarchy. Any man found inside the women’s compound, or making any kind of unwanted physical ‘assault’ on a female, was in danger of being executed.
‘Get out, you black Yankee bastard!’ But Singer didn’t get out. He saw the sort of opportunity that did not come often. He stepped forward, wrenched Inez to one side and hit Paz in the gut with the force of a pile-driver. Paz went flying. The table was tipped over. Paz gasped as he hit the floor with all the wind knocked out of him. Singer didn’t leave it there. He stepped over to where Paz lay sprawled on the ground, clutching his belly and doubled up with pain. Singer grabbed him, pulled him up in one huge black hand and punched him on the chin with the other. Paz went flying across the room with arms flailing. He fell against the wall and then slid down until he was full-length on the floor of the hut.
Inez threw herself at Singer afraid that he’d kill Paz, so fierce were the emotions to be seen in his face. He tried to shake her off but she tugged at him. By the time Singer had flung her aside, Paz was getting up and shaking his head. For Paz was far more resilient than he looked. He was light and wiry and he’d learned to fight and win in a merciless world of kicking and gouging. More importantly he got his hands on a tin plate.
As Paz staggered to his feet Singer closed upon him. Singer aimed another blow that did no more than hit the upper arm as Paz twisted and got in close. Paz brought the metal plate around edge-first to hit Singer’s throat. Singer turned his head to take it on the tautened neck muscles. He wasn’t ready for the knee that hit him in the groin. Singer gave a loud grunt of pain and reached out to wrap both arms round Paz so that the two men were locked in a tight embrace. Clinched, they waltzed around the room. Singer used all his weight trying to topple Paz, and in doing so tried to smash Paz’s head against the corrugated tin wall.
Paz did not wait for this to happen. He used his forehead to butt Singer in the face and was rewarded with a loud cry of pain. Then, swaying and twisting, the two men stumbled across the rickety old chair. They lost their balance and the pair of them went down with a loud crash, then rolled apart to sprawl amongst the smashed pieces of the chair.
Singer had hit his head and was dazed. Slowly both men got to their feet. As he put his weight on his foot Singer groaned with the pain from a twisted ankle. Paz recovered more quickly and was not going to leave it there. He closed in again. Inez grabbed him by the shirt collar. ‘Stop!’ she shouted. The old shirt ripped away in her hands. She reached out and grabbed his belt. ‘Leave him alone or I’ll have you executed.’
It was enough to make even Paz freeze. Hostile evidence from Inez was all that would be needed to see Paz disgraced and shot by a firing squad in front of the assembled parade. Such executions were not rare. Only the previous month a male cook had been shot for stealing food.
Santos was the first person to arrive at the scene of the fight. He guessed what had happened. He had the sixth sense that God provides to senior NCOs, and other men, who have to interpret commands from above to those who serve.
Santos lacked sympathy for any of this trio. His wife, and one or two very special whores, were the only females for whom Santos had ever showed even a hint of sympathy or regard. Women brought trouble. Educated women brought more trouble than most other sorts. Now he’d just been told that comrade Inez Cassidy was going to accompany his patrol on the journey north. And the madman Angel Paz was also included. Santos cursed his luck. This brawl was just the beginning of what was bound to happen when women and foreign pigs were permitted into their midst.
Santos did not allow such personal opinions about the wisdom of his superiors to influence his actions. A good NCO waits until those in authority realize that their orders are foolish: only then does he come into his own.
‘What’s going on?’ Santos shouted.
‘Comrade Paz was trying to rape the woman,’ said Singer, still sitting on the floor rubbing his ankle. ‘I came in just in time.’
Santos, a man who seldom revealed his feelings, showed signs of consternation. Rape meant a trial and then an execution. He looked at the woman. Her attitude would prove crucial.
‘It was a misunderstanding,’ Inez said.
‘You bitch!’ Singer bellowed. He was beside himself with rage. ‘You two-timing cow! You lousy, stupid good-for-nothing whore.’
Santos took in the situation with careful appraisal. They’d all been speculating on whether the English doctor was bedding the Cassidy woman. Someone must be; an attractive woman and so many men, it was inevitable wasn’t it? And now it appeared she was taking the young Yankee hothead into her bed too? Well, these women who went off to work in the big city always landed in the gutter. In his village it had been the same; such women had come back with the morals of alley cats. This one had gone to university: heaven alone knows what went on in such places.
‘Can you walk?’ the ever-practical Santos asked Singer.
Singer got up and tried. ‘It’s a sprain.’
‘We must take him to the doctor,’ Santos said. ‘If he is sick he cannot go north.’
‘If I don’t go north,’ Singer said. ‘There’s no point in anyone going.’
That was something Santos had already calculated. But he showed no impatience. ‘We’ll see what the doctor says.’
The state of Singer’s health, and therefore his fitness for the journey north, was a question to which Ramón wanted the answer. But Ramón, as ever, was devious. He was content to wait until that afternoon when Lucas treated his arm. Even then, Ramón did not broach the question of Singer immediately. He talked first about the patrol that would go north.
‘At this time of year it will be a difficult journey,’ Lucas said. He watched the kettle, waiting for the water to boil.
‘You have been listening to the cooks,’ said Ramón.
Inez looked up to see Lucas’ reaction.
Lucas smiled. He had begun to see the MAMista base camp in a new light. Much of the hostility that greeted him on arrival had now moderated to that sort of suspicion rustics always save for townsfolk. Despite the sickness and the squalor and the ridiculous military terminology, he’d come to admire the organization and the discipline and the morale. He admired the spirit in which they accepted his harsh and vociferous criticisms. He gave due credit to the energetic way in which they had burned off and cleaned up the ‘hospital area’ and tackled the foul task of re-siting all the latrines. Dared he hope that the chewing of wild coca leaf was decreasing? Some of their mumbo-jumbo faith-healing rituals were certainly less evident. They were even beginning to listen to his lectures about the undesirability of rats and lice and vermin.
Sardonically Ramón said, ‘I hear you met problems with the brewery?’ Lucas’ demand that the brewery should be closed down had created the biggest crisis so far.
‘Did you ever try to read the records k
ept for the beer rations?’
‘Not all of the men can write,’ Ramón admitted, ‘but they are all entitled to a beer ration.’
‘The brewing equipment must be clean,’ said Lucas. ‘You must have a proper water-filtration plant.’
‘The process of fermentation drives out the bacteria,’ Ramón said. ‘The men say a little dirt is what gives the beer its flavour.’
Lucas looked at him while deciding whether to argue about it. The present procedure was based upon a widespread belief that mules would refuse any water that was injurious to humans. Curiously enough the method seemed to work. ‘We reached agreement,’ Lucas said. ‘Each tub will be cleaned – thoroughly cleaned – in turn.’
Ramón nodded. It was good for the men to have someone inspecting the whole camp. Especially a martinet like Lucas.
Inez slid back the sleeve of Ramón’s shirt and then unpinned the bandage and began to unroll it. Behind her a guerrilla ‘nurse’ was watching and learning. When Lucas went away this young woman would be in charge of the surgery. Lucas wondered to what extent ‘medicine’ would then revert to prayers and magic. He was reluctant to forbid all ‘magic nostrums’. There was a foul-smelling brew made from the bark of a local tree. Judging by comparisons of the health of those who took it with the health of those who didn’t, it seemed to reduce bronchial disorders, tuberculosis and intestinal parasites. Lucas intended to carry a sample of it back to London for analysis.
Still thinking about Lucas’ fears of the jungle, Ramón said, ‘Take heart, Lucas. Some of us live here all year long.’
‘Living here is not the same as travelling through the jungle; and that is not the same as fighting in the jungle.’ Perhaps he should have reminded Ramón that he enjoyed the foundation of good health that was the legacy of an urban middle-class upbringing. None of the local people had such resistance to disease.
Ramón shrugged. ‘They are soldiers.’ Ramón was proud of his men, and of his women too. He was proud of the way they endured sickness, as he endured it, without complaint.
‘They are not soldiers,’ Lucas said. ‘I’ve told you that again and again. They are sick men, and your endless patrolling is killing them. I have been going through the war diary and the duty books. The men doing the reconnaissance patrols show a subsequent mortality rate four times higher than the rest of them.’
While Inez finished unrolling the bandage she watched Lucas from under lowered eyes.
Ramón took his time in replying, unsure whether this stranger would understand the answer. ‘We patrol to exercise our right to movement. We come and we go as we choose. The Federalistas cannot hinder us and it is important that everyone knows that.’ Inez positioned Ramón’s arm on the table so that the filthy piece of lint, and the boil it covered, was uppermost. There were other places on the arm where boils had been, and tiny pinhead spots that would become boils.
‘Why should they try?’ Lucas said. ‘They can leave you here to patrol and perish.’ With tweezers he lifted the lint to reveal a particularly ugly suppurating boil.
‘Batista said that of the Fidelistas.’
‘Fidelistas!’ Lucas repeated with great scorn. ‘You are talking of a past age. Fidel Castro’s Cuba is dead, unburied only because the economy can’t afford the funeral.’
‘Afford! Afford! All you think about is money.’
‘Hold your arm still. How often have I told you that the dressing must be changed twice a day?’ Lucas held under his nose the piece of lint, vividly coloured by pus. Ramón said nothing. ‘Disgusting!… And stupid too.’ Lucas dropped the dressing in the bucket and put the tweezers into a dish for boiling. The woman assistant removed it promptly. She looked up nervously and caught Inez’s eye, anxious that she might be doing something wrong.
‘Spare me your horror stories, doctor. If you talk to my men as you talk to me, then soon they will be as demoralized as you pretend they are.’
‘I tell your men what I tell you. Keep the wounds clean and dry. In these conditions everything goes septic, and when it does I have no proper medical supplies to treat it. Does that hurt?’
‘Of course it does when you prod it.’
‘And there too?’
‘No.’
‘Surely it hurts a little?’
‘A little,’ Ramón admitted.
‘Then say so when I ask. There is enough dirt in that to kill your entire army.’
‘Why do doctors and mothers use the same clichés?’
‘Because men become children in the face of pain.’
‘You leave tomorrow,’ Ramón said. ‘Tomorrow there will come a break in the weather. Some people are saying the rains will come early.’
‘There is still a lot to do here,’ Lucas said, but he didn’t put too much emotion into it. Medical supplies would not be purchased until he spoke with London and then arranged for the money transfer. Knowing the behaviour of banks they’d take as long as possible.
‘Inez will go too,’ said Ramón. He ran his fingers over his face in that nervous mannerism that he could not still.
Lucas looked at her but Inez gave no flicker of emotion. Lucas said, ‘From what I see of the map it will be a hard journey for the men.’ He was self-conscious about speaking of her in her presence but he continued, ‘She does not have the physical strength … It would need only an infected cut, dysentery or a touch of malaria to …’ He didn’t want to say something that Inez might call to mind at some future date when she was suffering such ailments. ‘It would slow us … carrying her would slow us.’ He tipped the enamel pan and indicated that Inez should fill it with more boiling water.
‘Always the voice of caution,’ said Ramón. ‘That is no philosophy for revolution, my dear doctor.’ Lucas waited for him to finish the sentence before bending over him again.
‘This will hurt,’ Lucas promised.
When Ramón spoke again, his voice was pitched a little high, and was unnecessarily firm. It was as a man might speak if he released breath held to stifle a gasp of pain. He said, ‘A general thinks of his casualties too early; the surgeon remembers them too long. Both distort a man’s good judgement, Lucas.’
‘Or refine it,’ said Lucas. ‘Ummm, I thought so. More pus underneath.’ Lucas believed that Ramón’s boils might be neurotic in origin, although he never hinted that he thought so. He lanced this one for the third time. The pus smelled foul. ‘Sometimes I think you deliberately reinfect them, Ramón,’ he said pleasantly.
‘Why would I do that?’
‘So that you can come and show us your unflinching reaction to suffering.’
Ramón lacked a sense of humour. ‘Nonsense. You invent such things to say about me. I am not frightened to show my true reaction to pain. Only a fool would be.’
‘I’m pleased to hear that.’
‘If I am afraid of anything, it is a fear of making the wrong decision. It is a fear of betraying the revolution, or betraying the faith the men have in me. These are my fears, Lucas.’
‘Scabies all right now?’
‘A miracle. No more itching.’
‘Good; but we are almost out of the sulphur ointment.’
They were almost out of everything. Lucas was concerned about the boils. He was able to remove the core of the largest one but without antibiotics they would keep coming. He glanced up at Ramón’s face, trying to decide whether this might be an indication of diabetes. He should check the sugar in the urine really. But, hell, half the army had boils.
It was only at this stage of the conversation that Ramón enquired about Singer. ‘Is the American fit enough?’ he asked casually.
‘To walk to Libertad?’
‘Yes.’
‘He has good general health but this morning he sprained his ankle. A few days with his feet up would be good for him.’
‘And the boy Angel Paz?’
‘Are you sending Paz too?’
‘Yes, I am. They will need him.’ Lucas looked at Ramón. He wondered why he was sen
ding Paz with the expedition to Tepilo. Was it because the young man was becoming a nuisance? Certainly Paz had proved a disruptive influence. Ramón saw these questions in Lucas’ face but did not answer them. ‘We must get Singer to Tepilo. Without that everything else goes wrong: the medical supplies; everything.’
‘Inez should not go,’ Lucas said.
‘She is tougher than you, Lucas.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And much younger,’ Ramón said provocatively.
‘Yes.’
‘Also she speaks the language of the Indians and half a dozen Indian dialects. Now that the government is trying to clear the Indians from the central provinces, there is no telling where you might run into them. Some of the tribes are very primitive.’
‘I’m worried about these boils, Ramón. They might develop into carbuncles.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means they would spread and incapacitate you. Cripple you.’
‘You both go tomorrow. Do you understand?’ Ramón stared fiercely at Lucas and then at Inez. Lucas dropped the scalpel into the tray so that it clattered. He felt Ramón’s arm flinch. He could withstand the pain without a tremor but his nerves were in a poor state.
‘Very well,’ Lucas said.
Inez put a new dressing on his arm. She used only a fragment of lint, and bound it with a frayed bandage that had been laundered to the state where it was almost falling to pieces.
Ramón watched the care with which she did it. She had implored Ramón to let her go with the expedition and her reasoning was sound. It was better that she went.
Ramón got up to go, clumping across the room with enough force to make the building echo. At the door he looked back at the pair of them. ‘Thank you, Lucas,’ he said.
‘You must keep taking the antibiotics.’
Ramón bowed graciously.
Inez sent the nurse away. She had her regular daily tasks to do as well as her work at the surgery. It was unreasonable, but all the women were expected to work twice as hard as the men, just as they were in the outside world. Marx brought no revolution for them.