Rapids Read Free

man was solid, solemn. Free trade is just the free transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, a young man explained. Loans are theft! It is criminal to ask for interest payments from the starving! It is lunatic to cut down the forests and burn more and more oil!
    People clapped and cheered. Everywhere they went throughout the week they were met by the same impenetrable line of riot shields and truncheons. Police vans blocked the entrance to a square. Helmeted men with tear-gas launchers sprouted from hatches above. The heat was oppressive. Thirty-eight degrees. On the Thursday they tried to force the cordon round Palazzo Marino as President Bush arrived. They assumed it was President Bush. Usually so calm, Clive heaved wildly behind a thick Plexiglas screen they had made to push against the police. He was beside himself.
Issa!
the Italians shouted. Heave!
Issa! Issa!
Scores of photographers were crammed into a specially protected paddock. Heave!
    The crowd surged. Some of the men had balaclavas, or motorcycle helmets. When the police counter-charged, two demonstrators were killed. That is: a barrier collapsed alongside the road and a dozen or so people were forced under the wheels of an oncoming tram. There was a chaos of sirens and scuffles. They had a policeman on the ground. That could easily have been us, Clive shouted. It could have been you! He was angry beyond anything she had seen before. They’ve fucked everything up, he kept repeating, everything. A rump re-formed across the street by La Scala. Multinational murderers! they chanted. No surrender!
    For perhaps twenty minutes the situation was out of control. Michela felt proud of her man. We shall not be moved, he sang. She pulled him away from the truncheons. Dozens were being dragged to police vans. That evening the dormitory was alive with angry debate till three or four in the morning. Thunder rumbled across the city. A teenager with a guitar sang a song: You can’t bomb your way to peace, Mr President. His amplifier was faulty. Clive bought some dope. To forget, he said. It was expensive in the strict economy of their lives. They still had equipment to purchase before heading back to the mountains. The jeep needed new tyres. Michela’s mother had offered no help. They were poor and in debt. Michela stroked his high forehead, his straggly hair. I am living intensely, she told herself. Let me stroke you, she said as he lay on his back, smoking in the dark. His body was rigid. He is crying, she thought.
    But this evening in the South Tyrol, Keith, the English group leader with the glassy eyes, the paunch, invited all the kayakers to say who they were and why they’d come on this trip and what they expected to get out of it. They were sitting in a circle on the hard dusty ground between pine trees and guy-ropes. Only one or two had seats. The others shifted on their hams. Starting on my left, Keith said. He was warm and avuncular. I know most of you know each other, but some don’t. He had a fold-up canvas chair with wooden arms. Come on, don’t be shy.
    I’m Amelia. This was a wiry girl with bony white legs. I live just outside Maidenhead. The accent was moneyed. I did my three-star paddler with Waterworld last month. I love kayaking and can’t wait to get some experience on white water. She seemed to have finished, then as if some explanation were required added. Oh, I’m fifteen. All right! someone cheered. Amelia forgot to say, Keith intervened, that she won the Girl Scouts Southern Counties Speed Kayaking competition last year. The girl looked at the ground. Aren’t we modest, Mandy shouted. Then her camera flashed.
    In a deadpan voice, rolling gum in her mouth, the fat, freckled girl beside Amelia said very quickly: Caroline, fifteen, from Gillingham, hoping to have a good holiday because I love the water and all.
    Name’s Phil, announced the gormless boy beside Caroline. His eyelids drooped. He too was chewing. Love playing on the water, like,