The Colombian Exchange

Copyright

ISBN 978-1-7641630-0-2

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to all who made this book possible...

I'd particulary like to pay tribute to the late Tamar Karet, who acted as my editor and literary agent while I was living in England. Without Tamar's insight and editing skills,The Colombian Exchange would not be the book it has become

$10 from the sale of this book will be donated to UNICEF Australia, in support of their vital work for children affected by conflict, natural disasters, and other emergencies around the world. UNICEF works tirelessly to deliver life-saving aid, education, protection, and hope to the most vulnerable children - no matter where they are or what challenges they face. By purchasing this book, you are helping to make a real difference in the lives of children who need it most and I thank you for your support.

The taxi swept away from the hotel and the doorman carried our bags into the cool of the foyer.

'Señor Robertson-Nash, so nice to see you here again.' The manager flicked his fingers as soon as he saw us, and a porter appeared from thin air. 'Take Señor Robertson-Nash's bags to 507' he said. The double-barrelled surname sounded really funny in Spanish. 'Señorita Mitchell,' he handed me a key. 'Welcome to Nicaragua. You are in room 506,' he said, in English.

The hotel was an odd mixture of Spanish Colonial and American Chromium. The lift was all glass and you could look down on people's heads as you went up, but the architecture was marble and columns. The room, when the porter opened the door, had a huge bunch of flowers on the table in the middle and the whole wall opposite was glass, with doors opening onto a veranda that looked out into a sunset over Lake Managua.

I gave the bellboy a tip and never even noticed him leave the room. I just stood there looking out across the lake at the sun. The clouds were on fire. It was so beautiful. I watched every drop of colour drain from the sky into the lake until the room was almost dark. I'd forgotten how quickly dusk falls out here.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door, the door that connected my room to his. When I opened it, he was standing there, struggling with a bow tie that didn't want to tie.

'Can you do one of these?' he asked.

We fought with it for a while before he got it about right. 'I've got a meeting with some people in an hour,' he said. 'Then we're going out to dinner. I'd love you to join us. Could you make it?'

I panicked. 'How long have I got?' and he smiled.

'Lots of time. The meeting's at eight, but we'll not be dining till about ten.' He shrugged into his dinner jacket. 'How do I look?'

'Great.' I straightened his collar. 'You'll have to tell me where to go.'

'I'll book you a taxi for nine-thirty. Speak to Alfonso, the manager, when you come down. He'll have it all under control.' He turned and kissed me. 'I'll look forward to you coming.'

The restaurant, when I got there, had tables round a polished dance floor. And great chandeliers. I remember the chandeliers and the music! Sambas, endless sambas from this six-piece band on a stage in one corner; all very subdued, but so carnal, so Latin, ticking away like clockwork, winding you up without you realising it.

The men at his table were very formal. There was much scraping of chairs when I arrived and they all stood up and made little bows as he introduced them to me. Of course, I don't remember any of their names, but they were all important men from the city – maybe one or two of them were in the government, or perhaps the army. Anyway, they were very charming and the dinner went on till well after midnight. He chose for me - lamb with artichokes. It was wonderful, with some incredibly expensive red wine and, at the end of it, the men all asked me if they might smoke. It was unreal, like something out of pre-war Hollywood.

I didn't really know what their meeting had been about. They spoke too fast, except when they were talking directly to me, but they were spending so much money - in a city that was half in ruins. Just a mile from where we were eating, my taxi had driven round the edge of the earthquake zone, past fires - actual bonfires - outside shanty huts of wood and cardboard. The homeless were living in amongst the wreckage of office blocks while these people had everything. That's not how it's supposed to be, is it?

And as the daylight crept in over the lake, we had lain together in my bed at the hotel.

That was the first time he had made love to me, carefully to begin with, gently till I cried out and pulled him to me.

Later we watched the sun light up the crater of Mount Masaya and drank fruit juice and strong coffee and watched the new day.

I don't think he even went to bed after that. He just got dressed and went back out.

In the darkness, the girl feels the sharp prick on her face as another mosquito draws blood from her cheek. She slaps listlessly at it. The insects no longer anger her; they have become as much part of her life as the filth of the room she is imprisoned in. She does not consciously notice them, any more than she consciously notices the sweet stench of her own clothing or the reeking bucket in the corner of her cell.

But, despite the lethargy that drains her, she is angry; angry to find herself awake again, returned by consciousness to the squalor of this place.

She rolls onto her back on the hard, metal bed and stares at the invisible ceiling, listening. Something moves in the darkness, high up in the corner.

She relaxes. It is her friend, the only one of God's creatures that cares about her in this tropical nightmare. It is the tiny green-grey gecko that shares her prison. Every night it patrols the dripping walls, hunting for the mosquitoes that plague this coast of Nicaragua.

Another insect is moving over her sweating skin. It has crawled out of the bedding. The girl snarls and throws off the coarse woollen blanket. She rolls clumsily out of bed, her bare feet on the earth floor. The gecko is gone, frozen into silent immobility by her unexpected movement.

In only underwear and a khaki shirt that bulges over her pregnant belly, Tanya Mitchell scratches at herself in the darkness and listens for the sounds of the jungle outside, but all the creatures have fallen still, as though they too have been frightened by her sudden action.

In that moment, a piercing shaft of soundless lightning etches the bars of the high window and, for an instant, she sees the lizard dwarfed by its own huge flat shadow. Then it is gone.

The girl flinches in the total darkness as thunder explodes round her tiny prison, then incandescent light sears the air again and the storm arrives, starting with the staccato drumming of drops of rain on the corrugated iron roof. It grows to a violent crescendo and she drags the rickety chair up, under the high window. As she always does when a storm comes, she stands on the chair and presses her face against the bars, thrusting her arms out into the cleansing rain. She draws the wet hands across her face, drinking the clear water, scrubbing at the filth, running cool fingers through her dank hair, once bleached by the Caribbean sun, but now matted and dark with sweat.

Under the hammering of the rain, a waterfall gushes from the roof, cascading to the ground, turning the earth to mud. The girl drags off her soiled shirt and holds it in the torrent - gathering water. The cold, wet cloth caresses her face, her arms, her breasts, her naked body.

Suddenly her hands stop on the swell of her belly, distended with her unborn child. My baby will be born in this God-forsaken room! She touches her body, feeling the foetus move within her. I don't want this child! Oh God, I do not want this baby. Not here. Not like this.

The rain forgotten, she throws the shirt down on the earth floor and drops exhausted onto the rough bed.

Rage wells up inside her, overcoming fear, feeding defiance till she is on her feet again, staggering across the black room, groping for the invisible walls until she finds herself crashing bare hands against the hard wood of the door, shouting for someone to come. Anyone. Someone. For God's sake, is there nobody? Finally, she sinks to her knees on the hard ground, begging, pleading but there is nothing. Only emptiness.

Even the storm has become subdued, growling away across the forest, leaving only dripping trees and the returning black of night.

The gecko moves again across the room and slowly the girl fumbles in the blackness on her hands and knees, feeling blindly on the floor for her shirt. When she finds it, it is muddy with the foul earth. She pulls it over her bare shoulders.

In a moment of clarity, she knows exactly how long she has been in this prison. There is a record, scraped on the white-washed walls. She feels the scratches with her fingers. She cannot see them in the darkness, but she knows them off by heart. It would be nearly two hundred days, when the dawn light comes. She had not started carving the marks at first, when she had thought they would let her out - take her somewhere else - send her back to England. But now, when she remembers, she marks one every day, just after the wizened native woman brings the pitcher of stale water and bowl of peas and rice. If she is lucky, she sometimes finds some pieces of fish in amongst the rice. She bears the Indian no ill will. She is only doing what somebody pays her to do - bring food and empty the stinking bucket.

There was a time, it must have been two weeks ago, when she hoped she might die. During the fever, she had not ticked off those days. They had passed in a shivering nightmare. The old Indian had nursed her, in her simple way, with wet cloths and a small gourd of bitter medicine. The girl had thought that the soldiers would move her then, but the moment had passed and they had done nothing.

Eventually the shaking had left her and she had waited to see if the baby would still move within her body. Then when it did, she started to eat the food again, to watch the sun moving across the wall, to scratch the marks in the white-wash. Nothing had changed.

Father O'Brien looked accusingly at the silent telephone receiver and placed it slowly back on its cradle. He had been left hanging on the phone so long that the switchboard operator had disconnected him. It didn't surprise him, most of the time he had been in Managua seemed to have been spent waiting to be put through. But then charity seekers were never high on anybody's list of people to talk to nowadays.

His eyes drifted over to the window, where the grime of the overcrowded city was being scoured from the glass by torrential rain. He knew that, outside, the sudden arrival of the rains in the Nicaraguan capital had greatly worsened the plight of the city's poor, sweeping away the shanty huts pitched on the earthquake ruins of the former financial centre. Even now, two years after the earthquake of 1972, nothing had been rebuilt. No flashy limousines cruised these streets, no office blocks rose elegantly to the tropical skies. The area was the preserve of the homeless, of those with nothing more than their lives to lose if the ground gave way beneath them.

Even though the land was worth nothing, St Anthony's Catholic Mission to Nicaragua could only just afford the rent on this dilapidated office, on the edge of the ruins, which served as their base of operations in the capital. From here, every day of the week, he and Bob Cody fought with the watchdogs of bureaucracy to get relief for their desperate flock.

O'Brien stood up and eased his old bones. He had been sitting still too long - alone in the office - cajoling, liaising, organising, trying to squeeze a little more from a system that looked on poverty like a disease, something you either had or didn't have. He moved across to the window to look out onto the busy, rain-slick streets below. How different Managua was from everything he had grown up with back in Ireland. Not that he minded. Not at all.

Suddenly he looked round as a big, bearded man with unruly brown hair rattled a dripping umbrella in the doorway. Father O'Brien's voice still hinted at the soft mists and flowing streams of his native Ireland as he said, 'If only this rain would wash away some of the suffering out there, eh Bob? It would be helping us for a change.'

In contrast to O'Brien's accent, Cody's was pure New England. 'Which is more than the government of this country is prepared to do!' He hung up his umbrella and dripped across the bare wood floor.

The priest understood the young American's frustration. At twenty-five, Bob Cody had at last arrived amongst his fellow man, to do – as best he could - the work of Christ. But O'Brien wondered if five years at Seminary College was the best education for the job. If St Thomas's College in Boston was anything like Dublin had been, it would be very correct, with hushed and dusty corridors filled with an air of purposeful self-improvement, steeped in philosophy and buttressed by the unswerving rules of the Roman Catholic Church. But what had that to do with this?

He looked at Cody's crumpled white shirt and faded jeans, strange clothing he was sure after the greys and blacks of a Catholic boys' school and St Thomas's College. What could such places teach a young man about the noise, the chaos, the simple struggle to exist that faced the poor of a third world country every day of their lives?

Cody saw the old man's concern and glanced at his reflection against the dark sky in the rainy window. Unconsciously he ran a hand through the unruly brown hair. He ought to have had it cut, he thought - same thing with the beard - but somehow there were always more pressing things to do.

He also saw the exasperation on his face. 'I'm sorry, Father, but it makes me angry to think that I can't get hold of something as simple as plastic sheeting to help the families in the slums.'

'I've run out of patience, Father. I've had enough of the games these people play. We all know that there's foreign aid money available.' He laughed bitterly, 'Or there would be if President Somoza wasn't siphoning it off into his own bank account. That money was sent to help the children – our children. To keep them alive!'

Cody's voice shook with emotion. 'Don't you think so, Father Joseph? Don't I have a right to get angry when I see girls sold as prostitutes, boys beaten to death for stealing a piece of bread?'

'Of course you do!' O'Brien's eyes were on the young man's face. 'You think I don't feel the same? Anyone with an ounce of humanity in their heart would be angry, but anger is not the answer.' He put a thin hand on Cody's arm. 'Believe me! I have been working in Latin America for twenty years. I know what I am talking about. You will never bulldoze your way through their systems. Look for ways around them, use your head, Bob, not your heart.'

'I am. You're young Bob. I am old. It took me many years to learn this. And it was hard.' He changed the subject abruptly. 'But! I have something else for you. How long have you in been Nicaragua, now?'

'And you've not been over to the East coast, in all that time?' The old priest crossed to his grey metal desk and shuffled amongst some papers.

'Then there's something I want you to do for me.' O'Brien turned, smiling and added, 'And I think you will do an excellent job of it. Sit yourself down.' He pulled up one of the hard, upright chairs. 'I was telephoned yesterday by Sister Maria-Theresa of the Convent of Our Lady in Bluefields. She wants me to go down and see some poor woman who has fallen foul of the authorities over there on the East coast, but I think you should go. It's time you had a change of perspective.' He cast a glance at his young protégé. 'Do you know why they call that part of Nicaragua the Moskito Coast?'

'Right.' O'Brien replied. 'There are more mosquitoes than there are trees and there's no shortage of either.' He grinned. 'It'll be a unique opportunity for you to see more of this beautiful country. Mind you, there's not a lot over there these days, but Bluefields used to be a busy enough port when the British ruled there a hundred years ago.' He drew something from the envelope and passed it across the desk. 'I've got you a ticket for the bus. You'll have to get down to Managua Airport at dawn tomorrow. The bus leaves from there and you'll ride it as far as Rama, across the mountains. From there, you'll take the ferryboat down the Rio Escondido for ten hours. It's a wonderfully scenic day out, my boy, and Sister Maria-Theresa has arranged for you to stay at the Hotel San Cristobal.' The old priest smiled roguishly at the young man from New England. 'I believe it even has a bath.'

He took back the ticket and carefully returned it to its envelope. 'God-knows why, but your lady-in-distress is incarcerated in some place a dozen or so miles outside Bluefields, a tiny coastal village called San Blas. How you'll get there, I am not certain, but Sister Maria-Theresa's work takes her there from time to time, so I'm sure you will be safe enough in her hands.' The priest smiled again, as though perhaps he and the good Sister went back a long way together.

'Oh, you'll need to go steadily, Bob,' Father O'Brien said whimsically, one hand on his tall friend's arm. 'The lass is in the family way and we don't want you having to assist at a birth, now do we?'

Cody's face paled and O'Brien laughed. 'Don't look so worried.' He turned for his umbrella. 'Didn't they teach you about these things in that Seminary College of yours?'