Even Silence Has an End (15 page)

The moon would move between the thick foliage. It was always late, always capricious and unpredictable. I forced myself to rethink carefully what I thought I knew about it but had never truly grasped—the moon’s dance around the earth, its phases and its power. Absent, the moon intrigued me even more.

On the nights of a new moon, a spell was cast on the forest. In the total darkness of its privation, the ground would be lit with thousands of fluorescent stars, as if the sky had been scattered on the ground. At the beginning I thought I was delirious. But later I had to admit that the jungle was enchanted. I put my hand under the mosquito net and picked up the phosphorescent nuggets that were strewn across the ground. Sometimes I brought back a stone, at other times a twig or a leaf. But as soon as I touched them, their supernatural light disappeared. And yet I only had to put them back on the ground for them to regain their power and light up again.

The inanimate world emerged from its torpor, and life held its breath. On such evenings the sounds of the forest were magical. Thousands of jingling bells would start to chime cheerfully, and this mineral noise seemed to eclipse the call of the insects. As strange as it seemed to me, there was a melody to this nocturnal chiming, and I could not help but think of Christmas bells, in mid-July, and wept bitter tears at the thought of lost time.

On one of those moonless nights, I could hear voices carried far into the distance and whispered conversations of my guards as if they had been speaking in my ear.

That was how I overheard one of the guards tell Yiseth that we had almost succeeded in escaping. At the end of the road of rotten bridges there was a
caserio
, a small village. Soldiers had recently moved in there and were starting infiltration operations for the army’s intelligence services. My remorse was even greater; we should never have stopped by the side of the road.

I also heard them say that they would spy on us while we were bathing. I demanded the very next morning that Andres put up some cabins beside the river to block off the view; he replied that his men had “better things to do than look at an old hag.” Nevertheless, he had a cubicle built the following day.

During another of those sleepless nights, I heard one of the guards say, “Poor woman. By the time she gets out, her hair will be down to her ankles!”

The comment startled me. I couldn’t believe that such a thing was even conceivable. I had made a huge effort to be patient and accept that we would have to wait for negotiations to go through before we could be released, but the more time went by, the more complicated the elements leading to our release became.

TEN

PROOF OF LIFE

One morning, El Mocho Cesar, the front leader who had captured me, returned. Even though we couldn’t see what was happening, the guerrillas’ nervous comings and goings, along with their turnout in full uniform, signaled that a leader was on site.

I was sitting cross-legged under the mosquito net, barefoot, with the large chain attached to my ankle, starting some new work. I was aware of how distorted my sense of time had become. In “civilian life,” to borrow from the FARC terminology, the days had gone by with staggering speed and the years had passed slowly, giving me a sense of accomplishment, of leading a full life.

In captivity my perception of time was the exact opposite. The days seemed endless, stretching cruelly and slowly between anguish and boredom. In contrast, the weeks, months, and, later on, years seemed to accumulate at breakneck speed. My awareness of time irreparably wasted stirred up an agonizing feeling of being buried alive.

When Cesar arrived, I was still trying to flee those demons by focusing my mind on threading a needle.

Cesar looked at my feet, swollen from the numberless bites inflicted on me by invisible bugs. His gaze embarrassed me, and I hid my feet under my buttocks, which set off shock waves of pain as the chain cut into my skin.

“Why did you escape into the jungle like that? You could have been attacked by a jaguar. It was madness! In fact, it was goddamn stupid. What would I have had to do? Send your corpse to your children? I don’t understand. You know you don’t stand a chance.”

I looked at him in silence. I knew he didn’t like seeing the state I was in; deep down I think he felt ashamed.

“You would have done the same thing. Except that you would have succeeded. It is my duty to regain my freedom, just as it is yours to prevent me from doing so.”

His eyes shone with disturbing brightness. He stared at me, but it was not me that he was seeing. Was it memories he was watching unfold before his eyes? He suddenly aged a hundred years. He turned around, his back bent, as if overcome by enormous fatigue, and before leaving he said to me in a deep voice, as if talking to himself, “We’re going to take the chains off. I won’t allow them to be put on again. I’ll send you some fruit and cheese.”

He kept his word. At dusk a young guerrilla came to remove the chains. He made a constant effort to be pleasant, trying to start a conversation that I always managed to avoid. I hadn’t recognized him at first, but he was the guerrilla sitting in the back of our vehicle’s cab on the day of our capture. He opened the padlock carefully; my skin was bruised from the chain.

“You know, this gives me more relief than it gives you!” he said, smiling broadly.

“What’s your name?” I asked, as if I had just awoken from a dream.

“My name is Ferney,
Doctora
!”

“Ferney, please call me Ingrid.”

“Yes,
Doctora.
”

I burst out laughing, and he ran off.

The fruit and cheese also turned up. Cesar sent us a large box full of at least thirty green and red apples and some big bunches of grapes. When I opened the box, I automatically offered some to Jessica, the commander’s
socia,
²⁰
who had delivered it. She tightened her lips and replied, “The instructions were to take fruit to the prisoners. We can’t accept anything from you!”

Puffing out her chest, she turned on her heel and left. I realized that it could not be easy for her. I knew only too well by now that fruit and cheese were a rare luxury in a FARC camp.

Cesar reappeared a week later.

“I have good news for you!” he announced.

My heart started to race. The hope of imminent release preyed on my mind constantly. As nonchalantly as possible, I said, “Good news? Now, there’s a surprise! What is it?”

“The Secretariado has authorized you to send your loved ones proof that you are still alive.”

I wanted to weep. Proof we were still alive—that was anything but good news. It confirmed the prolongation of our captivity. I thought secret negotiations might have been initiated with France. I knew the guerrilla movement had been damaged by the inclusion of its name on the European Union’s list of terrorist organizations, and I imagined that FARC would have sought negotiations to have its name removed in exchange for our release. These hopes had just been shattered into a thousand pieces.

The presidential elections were imminent: Within two months Colombia would have a new government, and Álvaro Uribe, the extreme right-wing candidate, had the best chance of winning. If the FARC was eager to produce proof we were alive a few days before the first round, it was a sign that nothing was being done about our release and that the guerrillas were getting ready to pressure whoever won. If it was Uribe . . . well, the FARC hated him as much as he hated them. And yet my spirits rebounded at the thought that it was easier for hardened enemies to negotiate. I thought of Nixon reestablishing diplomatic relations with Mao’s China and de Gaulle leading a policy of reconciliation with Germany. I believed that Uribe could succeed where his predecessor had failed because as the FARC’s fiercest opponent he would not be suspected of the weakness or secret bargaining that had undermined the previous initiatives.

I asked Cesar how much time I had to prepare my message. He wanted to tape me that same afternoon.

“Put on a bit of makeup,” he said.

“I don’t have any makeup.”

“The girls will get you some.”

I realized then why we’d been given the fruit and cheese.

They set up a table in an open space where we normally hung out our laundry and where the light was better. The session lasted twenty minutes. I resolved not to let my emotions get the better of me. I wanted to present my family a calm face, a determined voice, and gestures that would reassure them that I had lost neither my strength nor my hope. When I mentioned Papa’s death, I pressed the pencil deep into my hand until it bled. I had to focus on something else to stem the flood of tears streaming down my face.

I’d wanted to speak on behalf of the other hostages, who, like me, were waiting to return home. On the trees next to our
caleta,
the bark was gouged in a very strange way. Years earlier there had been a prison at this very spot where other hostages had also been chained to trees. I didn’t know these hostages, but I’d heard that some had just completed their fifty-seventh month in captivity. I’d been shocked, unable to imagine what that represented, not knowing that my own torment would end up lasting considerably longer. By refusing to speak of our situation and condemning us to oblivion, it seemed to me, the Colombian authorities were throwing away the key to our freedom.

In the years to come, the government’s strategy would be to let time pass, hoping that our lives would become less valuable, forcing the guerrillas to release us without obtaining anything in return. We were being given the heaviest sentence that could be inflicted on a human being, that of not knowing when our captivity would end.

The psychological weight of this revelation was crushing. The future could no longer be viewed as a time for things to be created, battles to be won, and goals to be achieved. The future was dead.

El Mocho was visibly satisfied with his day. Once they had finished taping the proof of life, he insisted on speaking with me, sitting astride the tree trunk.

“We’re going to win this war. The
chulos
are powerless against us. They are too stupid. Two days ago we killed dozens of them. They rush after us like ducks in formation. We just hide and wait for them.”

I said nothing.

“And what’s more, they’re really corrupt. They’re bourgeois, only interested in money. We buy them, and then we kill them!”

I knew that there were indeed individuals within the Colombian army for whom the war was an unlimited source of dishonest earnings. In the Colombian parliament, I had denounced the inflated price of arms contracts that allowed for the generous distribution of bribes. But Cesar’s comment hurt me deeply. In civilian life I’d felt that the war did not concern me. I was opposed to it out of principle, and I did not see the Colombian army as necessarily in the right. I had information on the relationships of some generals with the paramilitaries and had concluded that the army was an obstacle for change in Colombia. Now, having just spent months in the hands of the FARC, I saw that the situation of the country was a lot more complex. I could see what the FARC really was. I could no longer remain neutral. Cesar could criticize the armed forces, but they were the ones who confronted the FARC and limited its expansion. And they were the only ones who were fighting to rescue us.

“Everyone is interested in money,” I said, “particularly the FARC. Look at how your commanders live. And yes, you kill, but you get killed, too! Who knows if you’ll still be alive at the end of the year!”

He looked at me surprised, incapable of imagining his own death. “That would not be in your interest!”

“Yes, I know. That’s why I hope you live a very long time.”

He squeezed my hand in both of his and bade me good-bye, adding, “Promise me you will look after yourself.”

“Yes, I promise.”

Two months later El Mocho Cesar was killed in a military ambush.

ELEVEN

THE LITTLE WOODEN HOUSE

One night, under a full moon, we received the order to march. We ended up at a road where a large, brand-new truck was waiting for us. How was it that in the middle of nowhere there was a road and this vehicle? Were we close to civilization? The driver was a nice guy, around forty, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. I’d seen him a couple of times before. His name was Lorenzo, like my son. Andres and his companion, Jessica, sat in the back. The rest of the troop followed on foot. I had the impression we were traveling north, turning back on ourselves. I was excited at the thought of retracing our steps. What if a settlement was in the works? What if freedom was imminent? I became talkative, and Lorenzo, who was outgoing, gave free rein to his spontaneity.

“You created problems for us!” He glanced over at me as he drove, keen to gauge the effect of his words. “They’ve gone and put us on their list of terrorist organizations, but we’re not terrorists!”

“If you’re not terrorists, then don’t act like terrorists! You kidnap, you kill, you gas-bomb people’s homes, you sow terror. What do you want to be called?”

“That’s all part of war.”

“Maybe so, but your way of waging war is sheer terrorism. Fight the army, don’t attack civilians if you don’t want to be called terrorists.”

“It is because of you! It’s France that has included us in the list of terrorists.”

“Well, if it’s because of me, set me free!”

We reached an immense prairie beside a river. A pretty little wooden house looked out across the landscape. Its attractive wraparound veranda and brightly painted balustrades lent it a Colonial air. There was no mistake: I recognized this house. We’d passed by it a few months earlier during a tropical storm that broke out just after we’d spotted the famous
marrana,
the army’s reconnaissance aircraft.

For the first time in months, I could see the horizon again. My heart contracted at the feeling of magnitude. I filled my lungs with as much air as they could hold, as if in doing so I were taking possession of the vast space before me, which stretched as far as the eye could see. It was an interlude of joy, a joy I’d known only in the jungle, a sad, fragile, fleeting joy. A summer breeze swayed the lonely palm trees that had so far been spared by man to stand proudly along the riverbank, faithful witnesses to a war against the jungle that man was winning. They made us walk to the landing stage, which was nothing more than an enormous gnarled
sangre toro
²¹
tree used for mooring pirogues. I would like to have stayed in that pretty house on the banks of this tranquil river. I closed my eyes and imagined my children’s joy at discovering this place. I imagined my father’s expression, ecstatic at the beauty of this tree whose enormous branches spread six feet above the ground like gigantic vines. Mom would already have started singing one of her romantic boleros. It didn’t take much to be happy.

The roar of the outboard motor snapped me from my reverie.

Clara took my hand and squeezed it in anguish. “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay.”

As I got into the boat, I checked the direction of the current. If we went downstream, we would be heading even deeper into the Amazon. The driver of the boat lined up the craft with the current and moved off slowly. I was immediately overcome with nausea. The river narrowed. Now and again the branches of the trees on both banks would interlace above our heads. No one spoke. I made an effort not to succumb to drowsiness; I wanted to observe and memorize what I saw. After hours I was startled to hear the sound of tropical music. Just around a bend, three wooden huts were lined up on the riverbank, as if waiting for us. In the center of one of them, a lightbulb swung gently from an electric wire, casting myriad sparkles across the surface of the water. The driver turned off the engine, and we let the current carry us in silence, to avoid attracting any attention. I kept my eyes firmly on the huts in the hope of seeing a human being—someone, anyone—who might spot us and raise the alarm. I stayed like that, straining my neck, until the huts disappeared from sight. And then nothing.

Three, four, six hours. Always the same trees, the same bends, the same unremitting roar of the engine, and the same despair.

“We’re here!”

I looked around. The forest seemed to have been cleared at the point where we’d stopped. A small, dingy-looking wooden house stood in the middle of the empty space. Voices came out to greet us, and I easily recognized some of the group that had gone on ahead of us.

I was tired and on edge. I dared to hope that our captors would allow us to spend the rest of the night inside the little house. Andres quickly disembarked. He issued instructions for his bags to be brought into the hut and designated guards to take us “to the site.”

We set off in single file, our path lit by a large flashlight at the head of the line. We crossed the garden of the house, then what had to be a vegetable patch. We passed a cowshed that I gazed at wistfully, and suddenly we entered an enormous cornfield, with stalks over six feet high bearing ears ripe for the picking. I heard Mom’s voice from when I was a child, forbidding me to go near them: “They’re full of snakes and trapdoor spiders.” I clutched my bag against my chest with one hand and used the other to chase away the bugs that were jumping on me, their legs and wings getting tangled in my hair, millions of giant grasshoppers and owl butterflies fleeing in fright. The plants were so close together that I had to fight my way through with my elbows and knees. I tried my best to protect my face from the green corn leaves that were as sharp as a razor.

Suddenly, in the middle of the cornfield, we stopped. They had cleared a square area with the machete and had put four posts in the ground to support our mattress and the mosquito net, which was unfurled as a canopy. The insect population, attracted by the strange construction, had completely colonized it. Glistening red crickets, larger than a man’s fist, seemed to be ruling the roost. The guard chased them away with the back of his machete, and they soared laboriously into the sky, emitting a high-pitched screech.

“You’ll be sleeping here.” The guard was ogling us, clearly reveling in our distress.

I slid under the mosquito net, trying to stop the breathless creatures from getting in, and I looked up at the open sky above my head, heavy with black clouds, before I sank into a fitful sleep.

They had started to build the camp in the
monte,
²²
beyond the cornfield and behind the coca plantation that surrounded the house. While crossing the plantation, we filled our jackets with limes picked from an enormous lime tree that towered majestically over the coca trees.

They had brought a chain saw with them, and from morning to night I heard them relentlessly felling trees. Ferney came to help us get set up and busied himself with building us a small shelf to put our things on. He spent the afternoon peeling the bark off some posts, proud to be doing such “meticulous work.”

Ferney left as soon as he had finished his task, forgetting his machete, which lay concealed under the wood shavings. Clara and I both noticed it at the same time. My companion asked permission to go to the
chontos.
When she returned, she stopped to exchange a few words with the guard, giving me more than enough time to pick up the machete, wrap it in my towel, and hide it in my bag.

Possessing the machete made us euphoric. Now we could venture again into the jungle. But we could be searched at any moment. The following morning we were put to the test. Ferney came with four of his comrades, and they combed the area without saying a word to us. We were sitting cross-legged under our mosquito net. Clara was reading aloud a chapter from her copy of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,
which she had thrown into her bag before leaving Bogotá. We had agreed to take turns reading pages aloud. In that hour, while they searched, we read out loud mechanically, without absorbing a word. We were both focused on following Ferney’s team, doing our best not to appear concerned by their movements.

Finally one of them turned toward us and snarled, “Did you take Ferney’s machete?”

A surge of adrenaline blocked my brain.

“Why?” I responded obtusely.

“Ferney left his machete here yesterday evening,” he retorted, his tone threatening.

I stammered, not knowing what to respond, petrified that Clara might be interrogated as well.

It was all too obvious that I was frightened. I knew they were going to search us, and I panicked at the thought.

Then Ferney came to my rescue.

“I don’t think I left it here. I remember taking it with me. I think I left it where we were cutting the wood, when I went to fetch some planks. I’ll take a look later. Come on, let’s go.”

He had spoken without even looking at me and turned on his heel with his companions following, delighted to be relieved of their chore.

My companion and I were drained. I took the book from her trembling hands and tried to resume reading. But it was impossible to focus on the page. I let the book drop onto the mattress. We looked at each other as if we had just seen the devil, and we burst into nervous laughter, bending forward so the guard couldn’t see us.

As ridiculous as it seemed, that evening I felt the stirrings of guilt for fooling the too-trusting Ferney.

The chains were not put back on. We could move freely around the
caleta.
However, we spent most of the day sitting in the five-by-five-foot space of our mosquito net, because we were used to it. The veil separating us from the outside world formed a psychological barrier, protecting us from the contact, curiosity, and sarcasm of the other side. For as long as we were under the mosquito net, they didn’t dare speak to us. But the feeling of being able to leave “our
caleta
” and walk a hundred feet in front of it if we so chose was a freedom we appreciated all the more now that we understood how easily it could be taken away from us. We used it sparingly, for fear that they would detect how thrilled we were and might use it as an instrument of blackmail.

Little by little I was beginning to detach myself from both the small and the big things, for I did not want to be subjugated to my desires or my needs, because having lost the ability to satisfy them only made me more a prisoner in my jailors’ hands.

They also brought us a radio. It was so unexpected that we weren’t even pleased. El Mocho had sent it, in all likelihood because in our last conversation I’d said that I no longer knew what was going on in the world and, to my astonishment, didn’t care. In fact, since I’d learned of Papa’s death, the outside world seemed foreign and distant to me. Back then the radio was a nuisance.

It was a large Sony that the youngsters called “the brick” because it was black and shaped like one. It had a powerful speaker, so it was popular among the guerrillas, since they could listen to the latest pop music at full blast all day long. When Jessica brought it to us, it was immediately obvious that she did not approve of her commander’s gesture. Worse still, she was outraged by our indifference.

“This is as good as it gets around here!” She took our reaction as a sign of contempt, believing that in civilian life we were used to much better. She could not understand that in our mental state all we were interested in was freedom.

She took revenge in her own way. The following day she came to look for the penknife El Mocho had given me before he left. When she came to get it on the pretext that Commander Cesar had asked for it, I knew very well she was going to keep it for herself. She was the commander’s girlfriend. She could do whatever she wanted. I gave it to her reluctantly, arguing that it was a gift, but that only added to her pleasure.

Gradually the radio became a source of friction. At the beginning Clara and I would take turns following the news bulletins during the day. The radio was temperamental, and you had to move it around like a radar gun, turning it in all directions before finding the most effective angle and the best reception, which was always full of interference. What I found surprising was that in the
caleta
next door they had exactly the same “brick,” but theirs, in contrast, had perfect reception. I discovered that they tampered with the sets by “poisoning” the circuits and inserting pieces of cable to increase the reception. I asked if they could “poison” my brick. They sent me to Ferney.

“Of course, I’ll take care of it. We’ll do it when you move into your new house.”

I was stunned. “What new house?”

“The wooden house that Commander Cesar ordered to be built for you. You’ll be very comfortable there. You’ll have your own room, and you won’t have to worry anymore about people peeping on you!” he said.

That was the least of my concerns. A wooden house? They were going to keep us prisoner for months! I would not be home for Melanie’s birthday, or for Lorenzo’s birthday—he was turning fourteen. He wouldn’t be a child anymore. It broke my heart to miss that, too. My God, what if this went on until Christmas?

Unable to rid myself of the anguish, I lost my appetite completely.

Once the planks were cut, the house was built in under a week. It had been constructed on stilts, with a roof made of woven palm leaves that had been assembled with astonishing beauty and skill. It was a simple rectangular structure, with wooden walls six feet high on three sides and the fourth side completely open and facing the camp. In the left-hand corner of the space, they had erected two interior walls to create a bedroom with a proper door. Inside, four planks resting on trestles constituted the bed, and pieces of wood in the corners provided shelving. Outside the bedroom were a table and a small bench for two people.

Andres was eager to show us our new lodgings. He was proud of his team’s work. I could barely hide my distress. The door would be locked with a huge padlock at night, and it was hard to see how we would escape. I tried my luck.