American Chica_ Two Worlds, One Childhood - Marie Arana [45]
There were, some ingenieros admitted later, people there they’d never seen before, skulking around the edges like hyenas around a kill. But the music, the food, and the rum were working for W. R. Grace that night. Ay, ay, ay ay! Canta y no llores! Papi was making the rounds, slapping backs with one hand, wielding drinks in the other. Before long, Cartavio was full of belly-bouncing laughter, a roaring, squealing bacchanalia. When Mother looked out into the bobbing mass, she saw Flavio, drunk as a skunk, hopping through the night on one foot.
For a while labor relations were better. A party glow buzzed over Cartavio like a sputtering neon halo. But it didn’t last long. When the strike did come, it was fast and fierce. Because of Flavio’s intelligence reports, however, the company gringos knew about it and were prepared. They called for the Peruvian government to step in and keep the peace. Cartavio’s Peruvian managers, many of them confirmed anticommunists—some of them sons and daughters of the forty-family oligarchy that ruled Peru—found themselves in the nervous custody of the police and the military. Papi was put under house arrest.
He wasn’t there for long. The police teniente in charge, Pepe Canales, turned out to be a former student from Papi’s engineering classes at Lima’s police academy. The moment he saw him, he gave him a hearty abrazo. Then, when an army colonel was sent in with troops, he turned out to be a pal from the Club Regatas—a drinking buddy from the monkey-and-anteater days. Papi was told he could do whatever he pleased.
The head engineers walked into the abandoned factories, started up the machines, and kept the production lines going, doing the labor of a hundred peons.
But the climate changed when Papi went into Trujillo to report on the strike to the prefect of the province of La Libertad. Police teniente Canales paid a visit to my mother. He was trembling, jittery as a macaque as he marched up to us in the garden and left the gate wagging behind. Flavio had already told Mother the most recent news: The morning before, the teniente had risen from his comfortable bed, pulled on his brass-buttoned uniform, had a good breakfast, and headed out for his car. There, he found a slashed tire and a note slipped under his windshield wiper. The note told him to take a good look at the rubber. Unless the policeman left Cartavio, the next slash would be in his throat.
“Buenas tardes, señora,” he said as he approached us. His hands were jammed deep in his pockets, jangling their contents with the impatience of a crap-game croupier. I could see through the gate to his uniformed men outside.
“Everything all right?” he said. “How are you and the children?”
“Fine, Lieutenant,” my mother said dryly. “We’re fine.”
“Don Jorge is not here, is that right?”
“No. He’s in Trujillo.”
“And the servants are holed up in the village, I suppose?”
“Yes. No one has come,” my mother lied.
“Ah, ya,” he said, and dropped his eyes to where we sat in front of her, our hands idle in our laps. We stared at his uniform, the shiny medals, the raised lettering on his shirt pocket.
“And look who’s here!” he said with false jollity, bending down toward George so that we could see beads of perspiration spring onto his brow. “Mi compadre! Mi amigo! Cartavio’s shortest police officer! You want to come with me, Georgie? You want to do the rounds with my men? Ride in my car? It would make your father so proud, no?”
Mother’s mouth dropped open.
George jumped to his feet, eyes shining with the vision of himself behind the steering wheel of the lieutenant