"Viva!"

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.