Even Silence Has an End (11 page)

SEVEN

FALLING INTO THE ABYSS

APRIL 3, 2002

Three days after our second attempted escape, we were back at the camp, being shoved forward by the two guards who had captured us. Clara’s feet were swollen, and she could barely walk. I was mortified, furious with myself: My reflexes were too slow. I had lacked foresight. I had been careless. I thought of Papa. I wouldn’t be with him for his birthday. I wouldn’t be there for Mother’s Day. My daughter’s seventeenth birthday was next. And if I still wasn’t released, it would be my son’s turn. I so wanted to be there for his fourteenth birthday.

The guards were pushing us. They were laughing at us. They had fired shots into the air when we got back to the camp, and the rest of the pack sang and cheered when they saw us. Young Cesar watched from afar, his eyes dark. He had not wanted to join in the celebrations our recapture had elicited. He motioned to the receptionists to take care of us. He was not the same man. I saw him in his
caleta
pacing around in circles like a wild animal in a cage.

The camp nurse came over to see us. She searched through our belongings and gleefully confiscated all the things we cared about: the little cooking knife, the effervescent vitamin C tablets, the fishing hooks and line that one of the boys had given us. And, of course, the flashlight.

She asked us a ton of questions. I remained as evasive as possible. I didn’t want her to deduce the hour or the path we had taken to escape. But she was clever. She made so many comments, slipping in trick questions here and there, that I had to concentrate hard and bite my lip not to fall into her trap.

Clara was injured, and I asked the nurse to take care of her. She sensed that her interrogation could not continue and stood up abruptly.

“I’ll send someone over to tend to you,” she said to my companion.

I saw her walk directly toward the commander’s tent. It looked as if she and Cesar were having a heated discussion. He was a tall guy, very slim, and probably younger than she was. He seemed exasperated by what she was saying to him. He did an about-face and left her talking to herself while he marched up the slope to our
caleta.

He arrived, a grave expression on his face. After a long moment of silence, Cesar made a speech. “You did a really goddamn stupid thing. You could have died in that jungle and been eaten by who knows what. There are jaguars, bears, and caimans out there, just waiting for prey like us. You put your own lives in danger and those of my men. You are not to step outside your mosquito net without the guards’ permission. When you go to the
chontos,
one of the girls will follow you. We will not take our eyes off you.” Then, lowering his voice, in an almost intimate tone he said, “We all lose people we love. I’m suffering as well. I’m a long way from those I love. But I’m not going to throw my life away because of it. You have children waiting for you. You have to be sensible. It’s staying alive that you need to be thinking about now.”

He turned on his heel and left. I stood there in silence. His speech was absurd. He could not possibly compare suffering like ours with his own, when he had chosen his fate and we had no say in ours. Of course he must have spent many dark hours living with the anxiety of being blamed for our escape by his superiors, or even of being put before a war council and executed. I was expecting him to be violent and ruthless like the rest of his men. But instead he was the one restraining them. The mockery that had been heaped on us by the guerrillas on the way back to the camp had dissipated in his presence. It was as if he had been more afraid for us than for himself. That evening they held another assembly in a clearing in the middle of camp. I could see them gathered in a circle. They spoke in hushed voices. Only the drone of their conversation reached me. But now and then someone would speak a little louder. I could tell things were tense.

A girl was standing guard next to me, leaning against one of the posts holding up the mosquito net. It was the first time that guards had actually been positioned inside the tent; the conditions of our detention had obviously changed. The moon was so bright, and we could see as in daylight. The girl was following the assembly’s progress fervently, more practiced than I was at listening from a distance.

She became aware that I was watching her, and, looking embarrassed, she shifted her rifle to the other shoulder and said, “Cesar is furious. They told the leaders too soon. If they had just waited, no one would have known. Now he’ll most likely be replaced as commander.” She spoke in a low voice without looking at me, as if she were thinking aloud.

“Who told them?”

“Patricia, the nurse. She is second in command. She would like to take his place.”

“Really?”

I was stunned. I could scarcely imagine there would be court intrigues in the middle of the jungle.

The following morning Patricia’s “associate”—in FARC jargon meaning her romantic partner—turned up at our tent armed with some heavy, half-rusted chains. He stood there a good while, playing with the chains, taking pleasure in the clanking noise they made as he jangled them between his fingers. I was not going to stoop to asking him what the chains were for. And he was enjoying the mortification that the uncertainty of our situation was producing in us.

He approached us, eyes shining, lips snarling. He was determined to put the chain around our necks. I wouldn’t let him.

He tried to impose it by force. I resisted, sensing that he was afraid of overstepping the mark. He looked behind him. He was alone. He shrugged in defeat and declared, “All right then, it’ll be your ankles! Your loss. It will be more uncomfortable, and you won’t be able to wear your boots.”

I was sick to my stomach. The thought of being chained up was nothing in comparison to the reality of it. I pursed my lips, knowing that I had no choice but to submit. From a practical standpoint, it didn’t make a great deal of difference. We had to ask permission anyway to make the slightest move. But psychologically it was devastating. The other end of the chain was attached to a large tree, and it was taut if we decided to remain seated on our mattress under the mosquito net. The tightness meant that the chain cut into our skin, and I wondered how we could sleep in such conditions. But most of all there was the dismay of losing hope. The chains ruled out escape. We would not even be able to dream up a new means of fleeing; the lead curtain had come down once again. Clinging to the irrational, I whispered to Clara, “Don’t worry, we’ll still manage to get away.”

She turned toward me and screamed, “It’s over! You’re the one they want, not me. I’m not a politician. I’m nothing to them. I’m going to write a letter to the commanders. I know they’ll let me go. I have no business here with you!”

She picked up her travel bag and riffled through it irritably. Then, at the peak of her anger, she yelled, “Guard! I need some writing paper!”

Clara was a single woman in her forties. We had worked together in the Ministry of Commerce. She had helped in my first campaign when I ran for Congress and decided after that to go back to the ministry. I hadn’t seen her for years. Two weeks before our abduction, she approached me asking to join the campaign team. We were friends, but I really didn’t know her that well before.

She was right. I could not hold it against her. We had reached the point where we had to face the facts: Our release could take months. Any new attempt to escape would be all the more difficult now that we had such little leeway. The guards were on the qui vive, closely watching whatever we did and severely restricting where we could go. They took the chains off only when we went to the
chontos
and at bathing time. But I suppose we had to consider ourselves lucky. One of the guards had wanted us to keep the chain around our ankles when we went to bathe, which would have meant dragging behind us the length that had been unchained from the tree. I was forced to appeal to Cesar, who showed clemency. But in every other respect, our situation had grown substantially worse. We had no access to radio. The guards on duty had been ordered to respond to all our requests as evasively as possible. That was the FARC way. They did not say no. They just put us off and lied to us, which was even more humiliating. It was the same for the flashlights. Whenever we needed them, they had always left them behind in their
caletas.
Yet they were always pointing them at us, shining the beams in our faces all night long. We had to remain silent. We could no longer use their machetes, even for the most basic of tasks. We had to ask someone to help us, but no one ever had the time. We would spend the entire day in boredom under our mosquito net, unable to move without disturbing each other. Yes, I understood her reaction. But naturally I was hurt by her attitude. She had turned her back on me.

She wrote her letter and passed it to me to read. It was a strange letter, because she had written it in legal jargon, as if it were addressed to a civil authority. Its formality seemed incongruous with the world in which we found ourselves. But so what? After all, these guerrillas had well and truly imposed their authority on us.

She insisted on handing the letter directly to the commander. But Young Cesar did not come. Instead he sent the nurse, who assured us it would be delivered into the hands of Marulanda. The response would take two weeks. Two weeks was an eternity. With a bit of luck, we would be released before then.

One evening, as Clara and I discussed the letter and the possibility of release, we explored the shifting sands of our hypotheses and fantasies. She was anticipating her return to Bogotá, certain that the leaders would reconsider their decision and give her back her freedom. She was worried about the plants in her apartment that must have dried out by now through lack of care. She was angry with herself for never having given a set of keys to her mother and was bitter about how alone she was in life.

Her regrets aroused my own. Overcome by a sudden fervor, I gripped her arm and said, with uncalled-for intensity, “When you are released, swear to me that you will go and see Papa immediately!”

She looked at me in surprise. My eyes were moist, and my voice was trembling. She nodded, sensing that I was racked by an emotion she had not seen in me before. I broke down, sobbing, clutching her arm, and spoke to her the words that I wanted to say to Papa. I wanted him to know that his blessing was my greatest solace. That I constantly went over in my mind the moment he had placed me in God’s hands. I regretted not calling him that last afternoon in Florencia. I wanted to tell him how much it hurt me not to have had more time for him in my life. In the whirlwind of activity in which I found myself at the time of my capture, I had lost sight of my priorities. I had been focused on my work. I had wanted to create change in the world, but in the end all I’d created was more distance between myself and those who were dearest to me. I understood now why he would tell me that family was the most important thing we had in life, and I was more determined than ever, the moment I regained my freedom, to change the way I lived. “Tell him to wait for me,” I implored Clara. “Tell him to hold on for me, because I need to know that he is alive in order to have the courage to go on living.”

My companion had listened to this tragic confession feeling like an intruder in a drama that did not concern her. She was indifferent to it; she had her own tragedy to deal with. She did not want to carry mine on her shoulders as well.

“If I see him, I will tell him you are thinking of him,” she said evasively.

I remember that night, lying on the edge of the mattress, my face pressed against the mosquito net, trying not to wake her with the persistent gulps produced by my irrepressible sobs. Since my childhood, Papa had always done his best to prepare me for the time when we would be separated permanently. “The only sure thing is death,” he would say, like a wise man. Then, once he was certain that I understood he was not afraid of dying, he would say jokingly, “When I pass away, I will come and tickle your feet underneath the covers.” I had grown up with the idea that even beyond death this unwavering complicity would enable us to communicate with each other. I resigned myself to the thought that whatever happened, God would allow me to be with Papa and hold his hand when it was time for him to cross to the other side. I almost considered this my right. When Papa had almost died a month earlier in the hospital, my sister Astrid’s presence had been my greatest recourse. Her fortitude, her control, and her assurance had made me realize that the strong hand helping him cross the Acheron was not mine but that of my older sister. In contrast, my own might hold him back like a weight, making his departure more painful.

I had not envisaged the possibility that I would be absent from his bedside on the day of his death. That had never entered my mind. Until dawn this very morning.

After coffee at breakfast time, the sun commenced its reign, piercing through the jungle in every direction. Nighttime vapors started to rise from the ground, and each of us tried to hang our laundry under its most powerful rays.

Two guerrillas arrived, their shoulders laden with recently stripped wooden poles, which they tossed at the base of our tent. Some of the ends were pronged, and it was with those that they began to work first. They drove them deep into the ground in each corner of an imaginary rectangle. They repeated the exercise with four more poles that they cut into much shorter lengths, and they dug those into the corners of another, more elongated rectangle. They had also brought vines, rolled into a spool, and they used them to bind sticks that they placed between the corner prongs. It was fascinating to watch them work. They did not speak but seemed to work in perfect unison, one cutting, the other pitching into the ground, one binding, the other measuring. An hour later there in front of our
caleta
were a table and bench, made entirely from tree trunks and close enough that we could reach them in our chains.

The guard gave us permission to sit there. Sunshine fell directly onto the bench. I scooted into it at once, seeking to rid my clothes of the jungle dampness. From where I sat, I had an unobstructed view of the
economato.
Toward eleven in the morning, guerrillas arrived carrying large bags of provisions on their backs. To our surprise there was a delivery of cabbages wrapped in newspaper. Vegetables were an extremely rare commodity, as we had come to realize. But even more extraordinary was the presence of a newspaper at the camp.