Even Silence Has an End (24 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

IN THE HANDS OF THE SHADOW

SEPTEMBER 1, 2003

I was blindfolded and tied up. I lost all confidence, and an instinctive fear paralyzed me; I didn’t know where to put my feet. Two men took my arms on either side. I made an effort to stand up straight and walk normally, but every two steps I stumbled and found myself being held up by my watchers, making headway despite myself, dispossessed of my balance and my will.

I heard Lucho’s voice just ahead of me. In the hope of reassuring me, he was talking loudly so that I would know he was not far away. I could also hear Giovanni’s voice somewhere off to my right. He was talking with someone and was not pleased. I thought I heard him saying that he had to stay with us. Then there were more shouts, and orders coming from all sides. There was a muffled sound. I ducked my head into my shoulders, as if I expected to receive a blow or to bang into something.

We were out on the road. I could tell from the gravel under my feet and the immediate heat of the sun on my head. An old engine was throbbing nearby, belching fumes of acid that stung my throat and nose. I wanted to scratch, but the guards thought I was trying to take off the blindfold. They reacted violently, and my protests only managed to irritate them further.

“Hurry up! Load the cargo!”

The man who’d just spoken had a thundering voice that pained me. He must have been standing right behind me.

A moment later I was being hoisted into the air and thrown onto what I supposed was the back of a truck. I landed on some old tires and tried to get comfortable. Lucho joined me within a few seconds, as did Clara and half a dozen guerrillas who pushed us back into the truck. I groped around for Lucho’s hand.

“Are you all right?” he breathed.

“Be quiet!” shouted someone sitting opposite me.

“Yes, I’m okay,” I whispered, squeezing his fingers, clinging to him.

Someone covered the back of the truck with a tarp, a door was closed fast with much creaking and clicking, the vehicle grunted before lurching forward as if it were going to fall apart for good, and then it headed off at a crawl in a grotesque din. The air was very hot, and the exhaust from the engine filled our space. The stinking fumes got stronger, asphyxiating us. We were overcome by headaches, nausea, and anxiety. After an hour and a half, the truck stopped with a squeal of brakes. The guerrillas jumped down and, I believed, left us alone under the tarp. We must have been in a little village somewhere, because I could hear music coming from what I imagined to be a
tienda,
a sort of makeshift café where you could find all sorts of things, drinks in particular.

“What do you think?”

“I have no idea,” replied Lucho, shattered.

Trying to cling to one last hope, I said, “And what if this was the meeting place with the French envoys?”

“I don’t know. What I can tell you is that I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit.”

The men climbed back into the truck. I recognized Giovanni’s voice. He was saying good-bye; he would be staying in the village. He had come part of the way with us. The truck started up again and went through the village. The voices of women and children and young people playing soccer grew fainter and finally disappeared. All that was left now were the explosions of the engine and the horrible fumes that attacked our throats straight from the nearby exhaust pipe. We went on like this for over an hour. The uncertainty of not knowing what was going to become of us gnawed at me. Eyes blindfolded, hands tied, I tried to drive away the signs that our captivity was about to go on indefinitely. What if our release had just been aborted? How could this be? They had all assured us that we were on our way back to freedom! What had happened? Had Mono Jojoy intervened to derail the negotiations? Taking political figures hostage to obtain the release of the guerrillas was a strategy that he had conceived, defended, and imposed upon his organization. When we left behind the Southern Bloc under the aegis of Joaquín Gómez to move to the Eastern Bloc, we had fallen into the web that Mono Jojoy had woven around us from the day of our abduction. He wanted to have us under his thumb, and now it was done.

The truck stopped abruptly on a slope, nose downward. They removed our blindfolds. We were once again by the edge of a powerful river. Two motor canoes moored to the riverbank were pitching impatiently on the rough water.

My heart leaped. If we were about to board a boat again, it must be the sign of the curse that was pursuing me. A little man, with a barrel-like stomach, was already sitting in one of the boats. He had short arms and a butcher’s hands, a toothbrush mustache and a copper complexion. There were heavy bags full of supplies piled at the fore of each canoe. He gestured to us to hurry and shouted authoritatively, “The women here with me! The man in the other boat!”

All three of us looked at one another, the blood draining from our faces. The thought that we were about to be separated made me sick. We were human wrecks, and we clung to one another to keep from sinking. Because we had no idea what was going on, we felt that no matter what lay in store for us, if we could share it, it would become less painful.

“Why are you separating us?” I implored the man.

He looked at me with his round eyes, and as if he suddenly understood our torment, he said, “No, no! No one is going to separate you! The gentleman is going on the other boat so that we can divide up the weight. But they’ll be next to us during the whole trip, don’t you worry.”

Then he added with a smile, “My name is Sombra. Martín Sombra. I am your new commander. I’m very honored to meet you. I saw you on television.”

Sombra: the shadow. He reached out his hand without getting up from his seat and shook ours energetically. Then, turning to his troops, he shouted instructions. There were fifteen men or so, all very well built, all very young. These were the troops of the Eastern Bloc. They were the FARC’s elite troops, the pride of their revolutionary youth. Martín Sombra treated his squad roughly, and the young men hurried to show their obedience.

In less than two minutes, we were heading downriver, deeper and deeper into the Amazon jungle.

Martín Sombra didn’t stop asking me questions during the journey. I paid careful attention to all my answers, trying to avoid repeating the same mistakes I’d made in the past. But I also wanted to establish the sort of contact that would ease communication with the man who would be our commander for the coming weeks, perhaps months, or—who knew?—even years.

He behaved cordially with me. But I had also seen him at work with his troops and knew that he could be nasty. As Lucho pointed out, we should be wary of the ones who seemed nice.

Under a baking sun, the boats stopped at a bend in the river, in the shade of a weeping willow. The men stood at the edge of the boat and entertained themselves by seeing who could piss the farthest. I asked if I could get off to do the same, only more discreetly. The jungle was denser than ever. The idea of running off and getting lost did cross my mind. But of course that would have been sheer madness.

I tried to reassure myself by thinking that the time would come for my escape, but I would have to prepare it, down to the smallest detail, if I were to succeed. In my belongings I was dragging around a rusty machete that El Mico had mislaid near the landing stage after going fishing, a few days before we left Andres’s camp. Thinking that I was about to be released, I’d wanted to keep it as a trophy. I had wrapped it up in a towel, and so far no one had discovered it. But this new group did not look as if they’d be easy to deal with. I would have to take more precautions. Just thinking about it made my heart beat wildly.

I came back to the boat, still anxious. Sombra was handing out soft drinks and cans that opened with a metal ring, containing
tamal,
a sort of full meal consisting of chicken, rice, and vegetables, typical of the Colombian department of Tolima. Everybody dug in, famished. I couldn’t even open my can. I could not bear the thought of food. I gave my ration to Clara, who opened it, delighted. Lucho was looking at me. He would have liked me to give it to him, but he was too far away.

We continued on our journey, one boat behind the other, down a river that changed with each bend, becoming impossibly wide in some places and very narrow at others. The air was heavy, and I did not feel well.

Among the bushes blocking the riverbanks, I saw an enormous royal blue barrel bobbing on the water, caught in the mangroves. It was one of those used to transport chemical products for the cocaine laboratories. So there must be people somewhere around here, I surmised. Farther along we came upon another, identical one that also seemed to be lost in the water, and so it went—every twenty minutes we would see a barrel drifting. I scoured the banks in the hope of seeing some houses. Nothing. Not a soul. Only royal blue barrels in this green world.
Drugs are Colombia’s curse.

We must have gone nearly a hundred miles, zigzagging along with an endless stream of water. Sombra stared straight ahead, looking at each bend with a trained eye.

“We’ve just gone over the border,” he said knowingly to the captain.

The captain answered with a grunt, and I got the impression that Sombra had tossed out this piece of information to mislead me.

We went around another bend, and the boat’s engine stopped.

Ahead of us was a FARC camp. It was built at the water’s edge. Small boats and pirogues were bobbing gently, moored to a massive mangrove. As far as you could see, the camp was submerged in a vast pond of mud. The troop’s incessant comings and goings had turned the ground into a mess.
They should create a path with boards,
I thought. The boats glided prow-first to the shore. Girls in camouflage uniforms, their black rubber boots filthy up to their knees, emerged from their tents one by one when they heard the sound of engines. They stood in single file, at attention. Sombra quickly got to his feet, stepped over the prow of the boat, and with his short legs jumped to the ground, splattering mud on the women who had come to salute him.

“Say hello to the
doctora
!” he ordered.

They replied in unison, “Hello,
Doctora.
” Fifteen pairs of eyes were trained on me. In my heart I prayed,
Dear Lord, please don’t let us stay here too long!
as I looked around at the sinister place, mud covering everything. On the ground were two huge, badly washed stewpots, and some pigs trotted over to them, their snouts protruding aggressively with every intention of rummaging around in there.

In contrast to the sheer filth of the place, the girls all displayed impeccable hairstyles—thick, cleverly woven braids that hung like gleaming black bunches of grapes on their shoulders. They were also wearing brightly colored belts with geometric patterns that immediately caught my eye. The belts were made with a technique I did not know. In the depths of this hole, the FARC girls had created fashion trends. They gathered in small groups to whisper and look at us, giggling at our expense.

Sombra shouted again, and their gossiping evaporated, as each girl went off to take care of her own business. We were made to sit down on rusty gas bottles that were rolling around in the mud and were brought some food in enormous bowls. It was fish soup. I had an entire fish floating in my bowl, its dead eyes staring at me through a film of yellow fat, its huge hairy fins hanging over the side of the bowl.

Sombra ordered us to prepare our
caletas
for the night. Two girls were moved elsewhere temporarily so we could use their mats. As for Lucho, they set him up in the middle of the mud. Two gas bottles for a base and two wooden planks placed across them served as a bed, with a canopy stretched overhead in case of rain. The mud was simmering from the heat in the ground. Gases from food and fermentation broke through pockets of mud and rose to the surface. The unhealthy buzzing of millions of mosquitoes filled the space, and their vibrating drilled into my temples like the painful warning of a fit of madness. I had arrived in hell.

TWENTY-SIX

SOMBRA’S SERENADE

The next morning before dawn, the camp was bustling with activity. Thirty or more well-armed men set off before daybreak in the two motorboats that had brought us here. All the women stayed at the camp, and Sombra ruled over them as if over a harem. From my mat I could observe the way he sprawled across an old, torn mattress and the
guerrilleras
served him like a sultan.

I meant to go and say good morning to him, but the girl who was on guard duty stopped me. I could not leave my
caleta
without Sombra’s permission. I asked her if I could speak to him, and my message was relayed to him. He made a gesture with his hand that was easy to interpret—he was not to be disturbed. His answer followed the same path back to me: “Sombra was busy.”

I smiled. From where I sat, I could see him perfectly. He was indeed very busy with a tall brunette with Chinese eyes whom he held on his lap. He knew I was looking at him.

I could see no open space in the camp to house us. Unless they built the
caletas
on piles, just where the pigs lived, in the swamp to the left of the camp. This seemed unlikely. And yet that is what they did. Three girls, assigned to the job, hurried onto the slope with shovels and furiously dug into the earth to create a wide enough ledge to accommodate our caleta, like a balcony overlooking the pig pond. They packed us off to our new shelter before the morning of our first day was out. Whiffs of putrefaction came to us in waves.

My rapport with Clara was tense once again. Clara was suspected of having taken the straps from the backpack of one of the
guerrilleras.
We could be subjected to a search. My companion knew I was hiding El Mico’s machete and that if they went through our things, I would have a hard time explaining where it had come from. When I mentioned this to her, she had a fit.

Sombra came to see us. He made a show of checking our setup and inspecting our belongings. I was relieved that I had taken my precautions. Then, in an authoritarian tone, he declared, “You have to get along among prisoners. I won’t tolerate any dissension!”

Clear enough. Someone must have told him about the tension between my companion and me, and he had come to get involved, pleased to play the role of peacemaker. “Sombra, thank you for your interest, and I’m sure you’ve already been well informed about our situation. But I feel I have to tell you that any differences between my companion and me are our business. I ask that you not interfere.”

Sombra had stretched out on Lucho’s
caleta.
He was in uniform, his shirt unbuttoned halfway down, unable to restrain his huge stomach. He was looking at me with his eyes partially closed, not letting a single expression show through, weighing each of my words. The girls who were on guard duty were following the scene closely. The tall brunette with the Chinese eyes had come to listen and was leaning against a young tree a few yards away. The silence began to weigh.

He burst out laughing and came to take me by the shoulders. “No need to get angry like that! All I want to do is help you. Nobody’s going to get involved in anything! I tell you what, just to make you feel better, I’m going to give you a serenade. It will relax you. I’ll send someone to get you!”

He set off in a good mood, with his retinue of young women around him. I was speechless. A serenade? What was he thinking? He was making fun of me, that much was clear.

A few days later, when Lucho and I had already concluded that Sombra was talking nonsense, we were surprised to see a squad of girls arrive, inviting us to follow them to the commander’s
caleta.

Sombra was waiting for us, stretched out on his tattered mattress, his huge, round stomach squeezed into a khaki shirt, its buttons ready to pop. He had shaved.

Next to him stood Milton, a guerrilla of a certain age whom I had noticed the day we arrived. He was a skinny guy, with prominent bones. His pale white skin was permanently affected by rosacea. He was sitting uncomfortably on one corner of the mattress, as if he were afraid of taking up too much room, and between his legs he held a fine, well-varnished guitar.

Sombra gave the order to bring some empty gas bottles for us to sit on. Once we were settled, as if on pews in a church, he turned to Milton. “Okay, go ahead.”

Milton took up his guitar nervously with his dirty hands and black thumb-nails that grew like claws. His hands were suspended in the air, his eyes rolling in every direction, waiting for Sombra’s signal, which didn’t come.

“Well, go ahead, begin!” barked Sombra, annoyed. “Play anything! I’ll follow you!”

Milton was petrified. I didn’t think he could get the slightest sound out of his instrument.

“Ah! What an idiot! Come on, play the Christmas tango! Yes, that’s it. Slower. Start over.”

Milton was trying his hardest, scratching at the chords of the guitar, his eyes riveted on Sombra’s face. He played surprisingly well, using all of his swollen, scaly fingers with amazing dexterity. We began to encourage Milton and congratulate him spontaneously, which didn’t seem to please Sombra too much.

Exasperated, he began singing in a deep taverner’s voice. It was an infinitely sad song about an orphan who would have no Christmas presents. Sombra used the pauses between the verses to shout at poor Milton. The scene was truly comical. Lucho made a superhuman effort not to burst out laughing.

“Stop! Enough! You’ve played enough!”

Milton stopped abruptly, petrified once again, his hands in the air. Sombra then turned to us with a satisfied expression. All three of us hurried to meet his expectations, applauding as loudly as possible.

“Right, that’s enough.”

We stopped applauding.

“Milton! Let’s sing the one the girls like. Go on, hurry up, for God’s sake!”

And off Sombra went again in his powerful bass voice, singing false notes, ready to hit poor Milton on a whim or out of irritation. It made a hilarious show: one of them unrelentingly playing the guitar while the other sang at the top of his lungs as they both sank slowly into the mud. They looked like Laurel and Hardy.

Behind the ogre who frightened everybody was a man I could not possibly take too seriously yet who moved me. I could not be afraid of him. I knew perfectly well that he could be abusive and remorseless. But his nastiness was his shield, not his deeper nature. In this world of war and violence, he could not afford to be taken for a fool.