So there was hope. They had gone out less than an hour ago. Eloise was still alive less than an hour ago. She could still be alive now.
‘Where do you think they’ve taken her, sir?’
Everything depended on his being able to answer that question.
‘Look like they were goin’ on a picnic, if you arsk me,’ said the woman.
‘A picnic? Why do you say that?’
‘Well, one of them was carrying this big pie. Leastways I think it was a pie. It was a big round tin. I don’t know what else you would put in it if it warn’t a pie!’ A burst of gin-scented laughter erupted from a mouth of high gums and sparse teeth.
Macadam climbed into the driver’s seat after cranking the engine. ‘Where to now, sir?’
‘That wasn’t a pie, was it, Macadam?’
‘I would say it was not, sir.’
‘A reel of film perhaps?’
‘My thoughts exactly, sir.’
‘What might you have in mind if you are carrying a reel of film?’
‘It could be that they intend to show the film?’ suggested Macadam.
‘And to show a film, you need …?’
‘A projector?’
‘Very good, Macadam.’
‘And for a projector, you might be advised to go to …’
‘A picture palace?’
‘Quite so. But if you wanted to show the film somewhere quiet, somewhere where you might not be disturbed? Let’s say you had other ideas in mind. Ideas of a criminal bent.’
Macadam didn’t answer the question, except to nod his be-goggled head decisively.
FIFTY-FOUR
‘Should I get your uncle? Should I get Diaz?’ There was a desperate edge to her voice now, the necessity of fear at last making itself felt.
But before Inti could answer, if indeed he had any intention of answering, a beam of swirling light shot out from the back of the auditorium.
She was compelled to watch. There was some simple physical law at work. If you cast a luminous image into the darkness, people near it will look towards it. They will feel their heart enlarged by the potential for drama and escape that it promises. Until the horror of what you are showing dawns.
The opening shot was of a sign: La Escuela Santa Maria de Iquique. This cut to a wider shot, which showed the same sign in the centre of a low, strung-out building. A stream of people were converging on the school, and filing in through the main entrance. The sequence continued for some time. The people kept arriving, and disappearing inside the school. The men were all hatted. Some appeared dressed in their best clothes, as if for church. Though many, the majority in fact, were covered in little more than rags, some even bare-chested. Their wives and children were with them.
Now the camera was looking down from a higher viewpoint, presumably from the roof of the school, on to a huge, massing crowd packed densely into an enclosed square. Eloise could make out the hatted heads of men in the crowd, bobbing and stirring. There was an air of expectancy. Movement was limited and everyone seemed to be facing the same way, as if they were waiting to be addressed.
The film cut to a different camera angle. Diaz was down on the ground now, among the crowd. Faces looked resolutely into the camera. No one was smiling, but they were not dejected. There was a patient dignity to their stance, which even the children shared, for, yes, there were children there too. Some, the smallest, ran heedlessly between the adults’ legs. But the older ones stared with the same calm defiance into the lens. She looked to see if she could recognize Inti among the crowd, but then remembered he would have been a lot younger. Diaz had told her last night that he was ten when the film was made.
A sequence of shots emphasized the vastness of the crowd. There must have been tens of thousands of people jammed into that school yard. They were penned in like cattle.
The camera angle changed back to the original high viewpoint. There was a stir of agitation in the crowd. The boaters on the heads of some of the men bobbed more rapidly. A flow of bodies began, away from the direction they had been looking, but had nowhere to go. The movement became frantic, and frustrated. It was like watching a pan come to the boil. The camera shifted slightly on its tripod, revealing the entry of a detachment of soldiers, led by an officer on horseback.
The soldiers were armed with machine guns. A cannon was wheeled in behind them.
The soldiers drew up in formation and raised their sinister black guns towards the crowd. A small ball of death was tipped into the barrel of the cannon.
If the crowd was meant to disperse at the sight of this threat, it was difficult to see how they could. Diaz’s establishing shots had made it clear that there was nowhere to go. The soldiers were blocking the exit. The land they were on was enclosed by buildings on every side.
There was, of course, no sound with the film. But it was clear when the soldiers began firing. The people began to fall.
They fell, not one by one, but in groups, tens at a time. In a few short minutes, the field of people was devastated. Bodies lay everywhere on the ground. Those that had not fallen ran, in a blind, desperate panic. Some continued to fall. Whether because they had tripped over the bodies on the ground or because the soldiers were still firing, it was impossible to say. At any rate, they did not get up. Or move.
The film ran out. The empty beam continued to cut through the darkness.
Eloise struggled to breathe. The auditorium seemed suddenly to be devoid of air.
There were footsteps. Diaz was at her side, speaking. ‘At this point, I could crank the camera no more. I packed it up and ran off before the soldiers saw me. It is impossible to know how many of the miners and their families were killed, because the authorities did not acknowledge their deaths, not a single one. Some say three thousand. It is a figure I can believe. The soldiers gathered up the bodies and threw them into a mass grave under cover of darkness. Among the dead were Inti’s father – my brother – and the rest of his family, his mother, two younger brothers and a sister. Inti only survived because he pretended to be dead. He too was thrown into the pit with the dead. He lay there among the corpses and waited until the soldiers had gone before he climbed out. Our government ordered its own soldiers to fire on its people to protect the interests of a few foreign nitrate companies.’
‘I am so sorry.’
‘You are not responsible. But your friend, Herr Hartmann … he must bear some responsibility. And that is why … Inti …’
There was a stirring in the darkness. The sound of something being sloughed off. A sudden merciless glint curved up from the boy’s hand.
‘He saw what no child should ever have to see. He saw his family gunned down. Those dearest to him. The ones he loved. How can we imagine what this felt like for a child of ten? It is a wonder his eyes were not poisoned by the sight. He lost everything that day.’
‘I will speak to Oskar. He will—’
‘He cannot put things right, if that is what you were going to say. There is no way to put this right, my dear lady.’
‘He will help you finish your film. The world will know about this. I know Oskar. He is a good man. He would not have wanted this. He would not have allowed it, if he had known. He will help you.’
‘I am not a fool. People here are not interested in my film. They are not interested in the deaths of three thousand miners seven years ago in a far-off land. The film will not make them interested. War is coming. They will need nitrate for their bombs. They do not care about the men who toil under the baking sun to dig it out of the ground. They do not care that the men were paid in tokens, not money. That they can only use those tokens to buy expensive commodities from the company shops. That the companies refuse to pay for half the nitrate they dig up because they say it is substandard, but they still use it because all they have to do is refine it a little. People do not care about any of this. They will not watch my film. They will not take notice.’