Emerald mining, the noisy, dirty, destructive digging for the glowing stone, seemed to attract the wrong kind of people, noisy and dirty themselves—the bullying mining companies, the secretive geologists, the opportunistic excavadores who hung around the mines and hacked for the stones, and gangs of violent men intent on intimidation in the hope of thieving the best chunks of host rock or quartz in which the emerald crystals were embedded. And there were the children, almost antlike, scratching in the darkness, deep in the mine. The work itself was tedious, the drudgery in tunnels, the sluicing of mountainsides, the sifting of broken rock, and there were always too many men involved. I disliked the stone for its attraction of ignorant admirers, and for its flaws and inclusions, though the quality of the color outweighed the veins and spots, the clouds and cracks, and it was the deep green that gave it value.
After almost a year in Colombia, I was prepared to leave. It was obvious that the country was unstable, and this instability gave rise to gangs, to vigilantes, and to an aggressive military. In the peasant economy, coffee growing, the drug trade, there was also illegal mining of gold. I missed the routines of law-abiding Australia, I was not prepared for the chaos of Colombia, even though the chaos meant greater profit for me, lack of regulation allowing more money to slosh around. Most of all, I was distressed by the large number of children in the mine.
In the beginning, I’d taken them for very small men, a native race of diligent dwarfs. But I soon saw they were boys in their early and mid teens, scrambling on the hillsides with shovels, or spraying water from hoses, or in tunnels hurrying along the passageways, while I was bent double bumping my head on the crusty ceiling.
“Just one month more, Cal,” the mine foreman said. “We need to know whether to extend the tunnel. You know about sediments—you can do the cores, you’ll be able to tell whether it’s worth digging farther.”
This English-speaking foreman, Manolo, was from Spain but had lived in Colombia for years, married to a woman from Bogotá, and seemed unfazed by the corruption, or else he was resigned to it. He’d been fair to me, honored the terms of my contract, and knew that I was determined to go back home. But a great deal of money was riding on the decision to extend the operation, and there was heavy competition for emeralds around Muzo.
I was now past thirty, and I felt I needed (after all my travels) to find a house somewhere in the United States. My inclination was to use the money I’d saved to buy a house and create something resembling a home. Not Mother’s house—at this point I still thought of it as Mother’s house and considered it mine only as far as a name on the deed—and not with an urge to settle down—far from it. I believed that with the stability of a home, I would be able to range more widely. My abiding belief was that a true traveler was not a wanderer, looking for a place to live, but an efficient person who owned a house, secure in the knowledge of having a place to return to. Tower House, the house on Gully Lane, didn’t count. I could not imagine living there as long as Mother was alive.
The money I’d saved was parked in a bank; how much better to spend it, to invest in a house I could live in, to buy chairs I could sit in, pictures I could admire, an office and a desk, where I could make plans.
I told Manolo this. As a Spaniard, living in Colombia, enriched in his exile, he claimed not to understand. It was his way of defying me.
“Okay—one month. Then I’m done,” I said.
I’d already given my notice at my rental in town. Sighing, feeling thwarted, I relocated to a hillside nearer the mine where I found a small house to live in, and with regret—because I wanted to hop on my bike and speed to Bogotá and fly home—I began the daily burrowing in the tunnels to test-drill cores, to assess the viability of extending the mine.
I had a scare. In a central gallery, where I was able to stand upright, I lingered to catch my breath, stretching the stiffness out of my arms and the crick out of my neck, when I heard a whisper. It seemed ghostly, a hoarse, skeletal voice, seeming to warn me, cautioning me to step back. I heard it again, now like an angel’s wingbeat, and backed away from the gallery into the refuge bay of the tunnel, crouching under the low ceiling heading to the refuge bay, and as I did, the entire carved-out dome of the gallery collapsed before me with a deafening crunch, sending out a choking gust of fine particles. Had I not heard the warning sounds, had I remained, I would have been crushed to death. Was the “voice” a cracking of stone? Perhaps. But it is rare for a mine collapse to convey a warning. In every case I knew, it was sudden and devastating.
This hastened my desire to leave Colombia and this mine. I’d been alone that day. But usually I was in a group, walking hunched over in the dust and airlessness of the tunnels, attended by workers, some with lamps, others carrying drilling equipment, and all along the way I’d passed miners I’d once taken to be undersized workers, whom I now knew to be children, laboring in the darkness of the tunnels, chopping rock, filling wheelbarrows.
One day, exhausted, trudging, a whole hour into the tunnel from the main shaft and still far from the face where the digging was in progress, I came upon a cluster of these small diggers blocking the way.
“El techo es muy bajo aquí,” I heard behind me—the ceiling’s low here.
I called out “Cuidado!” to the diggers blocking the way and took the lantern from one of my men and swung it.
I wasn’t angry. I was impressed by the concentration in the young faces in this dismal place, uncomplaining, seeming intent on solving a problem. It was hot and dirty and dark, and yet when I went closer I could see they were using a flashlight to study a document, which I took to be a chart of this section of the mine where—as I saw—the tunnel split in two, a sort of crawl space to the left, branching from the main shaft.
They murmured among themselves and jostled to clear room for us to pass.
Without thinking, I said, “Sorry,” in English as I brushed by them.
Then, in the half dark, a piercing voice, “You’re interrupting a very important discussion.”
An American voice, a woman, seeming to mock me.
I said, “Hello. I’m Cal. I’m headed to the end of the tunnel. Can I help you?”
“I’m Vita. Yes, I’d like to follow you.”
“What about your important discussion?”
“Siento, pero me tengo que ir,” she said to the children.
I understood that, “Gotta go,” and they said goodbye to her.
And so I continued walking, but much happier with this unexpected woman following me. And as we walked through the narrow dripping tunnel, Vita close behind me, breathing beautifully, her shoes crunching gravel, I began to desire her.
Farther on, I slowed down from time to time and called out, “You all right?,” and she piped up, “Fine,” or “I’m good.” And it seemed to me we were walking through this dark wet tunnel as a close couple. It was the ideal I’d always had of the greatest romance, meeting someone who’d be a true partner, my equal in all ways, heading into the unknown with me, unafraid.
So far I had not seen her face. She was a shadow, walking just behind me, not trudging as I was, but—being shorter—striding upright.
At the limit of the tunnel, where miners were chipping at the rock, I crouched and unrolled my chart of this sector of the mine and spread it on the stony floor.
“Have a look,” I said and stepped away so that she had room to see the whole of it.
But it was a simple ploy. I wanted to see her face. I could tell she was slightly built; her hard hat gave her an air of authority, and she carried a flashlight, but mine was more powerful. When she knelt to examine the chart, I caught her face in profile under the visor of her hat.
Intent on studying the chart, her attention gave her a kind of radiance—dark wide-open eyes, her pretty lips pressed together in concentration, a lock of black hair drooping from under her hard hat and brushing her cheek, a slightly receding chin giving her a childlike face, and for me the most enchanting aspect of her features, a smudge of dust on her white cheek. She was beautiful.
“So I guess we’re right here,” she said, tapping the chart with a slender finger.
I said yes, barely glancing at the chart. I could not take my eyes off her lovely face. Her thick vest and yellow work boots and blue jeans made her more desirable. She was not stylish and breakable; she was strong without being tough, with delicate features and wearing miners’ gear. I thought—it was a fanciful lover’s wish—I will always want you by my side.
The core drilling went quickly, I was smiling the whole time, eyeing her as she watched me work. And at the end of the day, as we climbed to the pithead into daylight, I looked up at the blue sky and saw a flock of brilliant parrots streaking overhead, yellow and green, a swath of them soaring into the forested mountainside. The sight of them added to my sense of exhilaration, which was like an uprush of hope.
“Will you join me for a drink?” I asked.
“I’d love to.”
We sat in the late afternoon drinking beer at an outside table of the company’s cantina, and that was when I watched her remove her hard hat. She shook out her dark hair and tossed her head to arrange it, like a mare swishing its mane.
I had not been mistaken in the tunnel: she was a beauty.
Seeing me staring at her, she said, “You must be wondering what I was doing down there.”
“Not really. There are some women geologists in this company. I worked in Australia with lots of them, and they were just as competent as the men and easier to get along with. They also worked harder than the guys.”
“I like you for not wondering,” she said. “That’s how life should be—no surprise to see a woman miner, or airline pilot, or brain surgeon.”
“Which one are you?”
“Writer,” she said. “I’m doing the annual report for this company. They sent me from Miami—the firm I work for got the contract. The idea is that it’ll be a big glossy report, with photos of eco-friendly mining operations and diligent miners and glittering emeralds.”
“I look forward to it.”
She leaned closely and said, “You’re an employee?”
“I’m on a contract,” I said. “I was scheduled to leave but they begged me to stay an additional month.” I lowered my voice saying, “Frankly, I’m sick of this company, this country, and the whole business. I can’t wait to leave.”
I had not spoken of this to anyone, and I surprised myself by blurting it out—I could hardly believe that I was being so indiscreet. But something in this woman inspired my trust and made me want to be absolutely truthful. That honesty, too, was an aspect of love.
“But don’t put that in your report,” I said.
With a slight sideways move of her body, and inclining her head, making her long hair twitch at her shoulders, she seemed to be preparing to say something important.
“There won’t be a report,” she said softly. “At least, I’m not writing it.” She sipped her beer, darted her tongue out, and licked froth from her upper lip. “They send children into these mines to work. And they expect me to write a report glorifying it?”
To her beauty and her strength and her easy companionship, I discovered new traits—sympathy, kindness, and a sense of justice.
“I admire you for saying that.”
“But it’s inconvenient,” she said. “You find out something like this—the proof of child labor—and you incur an obligation. What to do about it?”
“You’re a writer. Write about it.”
“I’m a technical writer. I do annual reports and copy for brochures. Hotels and resorts. Press releases. Human rights horrors don’t fit in those things.” She sipped her beer. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this. I don’t even know you.”
“I’ve been candid with you about hating the company. I feel I do know you.”
“Really?” She started to laugh, then seeing my expression she said, “God, you’re serious.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Or is that a line? Because if it is, it’s a pretty good line.”
She said two other things that evening that struck me. One was “So I guess we’re alike in one respect—we’re both quitting our jobs.” And the other, an earnest plea just before we parted: “I like you, too. Please don’t turn out to be weird.”
I saw her the next day, and the day after that, and every day for another week, before she left for Bogotá, to fly back to Miami. On one of those nights I made a pass at her—kissed her and held on.
“Don’t think I’m being una coqueta,” she said, stepping away. “I know what you want.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Because I want it, too.”
It sounded bold, her saying that with such assurance, and it was as though it had already happened, that we were lovers. That was all I wanted for the moment; more than a hope, it was a promise, not lust but purer and deeper, something like a betrothal.
“Give me a little time,” she said. “I have some unfinished business.”
She left for Miami, I completed my contract and was paid my bonus. In my last memo I advised the company against hiring children, using an argument that would persuade them—children were less productive and more careless, so more accident-prone.
On my way back to Littleford I stopped in Miami and spent a long weekend with Vita. She’d finished her business, she said—a boyfriend, as I’d guessed. She introduced me to her parents, Cuban-born father, Ernesto; Italian-American mother, Gala. I took them all out to eat, Saturday lunch, a wonderful meal that inspired the sense of being part of a family. And when I showed Gala a small wad of cotton, and plucked it open to reveal a shimmering emerald, and presented it to her, the woman shrieked, and then began to cry.
The night before I left, Vita and I made love. She was not expert—that reassured me. It was not a night of bliss. It was something better, two people getting acquainted, unembarrassed, looking to the future.
I had not been home for almost four years. Mother was grayer and seemed vague, and more severe. Frank was fatter and better dressed, but unchanged in being his old overcertain self.
A meal at the diner. I told him I’d met someone special.
“Don’t do anything yet,” he said and snatched at my hand, as though yanking me from a ledge. “We need to discuss this.”