Even Silence Has an End (38 page)

FIFTY-ONE

THE HAMMOCK

We didn’t find out what happened with the soldiers’ boycott. A snake had shown up in our area, and when Gloria cried out, everybody went looking for it. It had disappeared behind the
equipos
that were right on the ground and might resurface during the night, curled up inside one of them. I felt uncomfortable watching them search. With the exception of trapdoor spiders, for which I felt no pity, I always took the side of the creature we were persecuting. I hoped that the snake would escape and manage to save its skin, much as I myself would have liked to escape from them. My attitude toward snakes surprised even me. They didn’t disgust me, and I was far from feeling the aversion that I’d witnessed in others, the need to annihilate them, to kill them. I just found them very beautiful. In Andres’s camp I had come upon a red, white, and black collar on the ground against one of the poles of the hut. I was about to pick it up when Yiseth had shouted, “Don’t touch it! It’s a twenty-four hours.”

“What’s a twenty-four hours?”

“They kill you in twenty-four hours.”

The FARC members carried antivenins on them, but those didn’t always work. They would make their own antidotes, drying the gallbladder of a rodent they called the
lapa.
They considered this homemade brew more effective than any laboratory serum. Maybe because I believed I felt safe knowing they had their antivenins, or maybe I thought some supernatural force was protecting me for whatever reason, but I could approach snakes without fear. Even the monster that the guards had killed in Andres’s camp, that they had caught while they were watching one of the female guerrillas at bath time, had fascinated me. After they killed it, they laid the skin out in the sun to dry, stretched with stakes along the shore in the open air—to the delight of thousands of greenbottle flies that swarmed around, attracted by the terrible smell it gave off. The skin stayed there exposed to the elements for weeks. Finally it rotted, and they threw it into the dump. I thought about all the luxury handbags that had been lost in their wasteful operation. I was then haunted by this thought, as the very fact that it had crossed my mind seemed obscene.

The snake that Gloria had seen was a
casadora,
a “huntress.” It was long and fine, an attractive apple green color. It came straight at me, terrified. Without giving it too much thought, I tried to pick it up so that I could get it out of there, out of sight of my companions. I knew it wasn’t a poisonous snake. Surprised by my touch, it turned around to attack me, opening its mouth wide and making a fearfully dissuasive rattle. I didn’t want to frighten it. I stopped moving so that it would become trusting again, which it immediately did, turning around to confront my companions, who had all gathered around, as if it sensed it was safe with me. The guard was laughing as he watched the show. I left the snake on the lowest branch of a huge tree, and we watched it disappear, slithering from branch to branch to the treetops.

I went back to my
caleta
to prepare a mix of sugar and powdered milk with a bit of water, just enough for two spoonfuls, one for Lucho and one for me. The march had been very hard on him. He was all skin and bones. I was afraid it might trigger a diabetic coma.

Two new guerrillas arrived with a long pole the next morning. I understood that the young lieutenant’s protest had worked. I was about to hand them my hammock so that they could set it up when Lucho stopped me.

“Take mine. It’s sturdier than yours, and yours will only get filthy and dusty,” Lucho said. “You won’t be able to sleep in it.”

“And you?”

“I can sleep on the ground. It will be good for me. I’m beginning to get a backache.”

This was a lie.

The guards set up his hammock, right against the pole. They put it on the ground so that I could slip into it. In no time the pole was on their shoulders and they set off at a run, as if they had the devil at their heels.

My bearers’ initial enthusiasm was put to a rude test crossing a succession of deep swamps with water that arrived thigh high. Miraculously, I emerged still dry, which only served to irritate everybody, the bearers to start with, who were angered by my comfort and forgot that I was sick; they felt humiliated, lugging a princess around. My companions—soaked to the bone, with blisters on their feet because our days spent marching were getting longer and longer—were also angry. Jealousy had returned to poison our relations. I heard one of them talking with the guards, asserting that this was all a strategy on my part to slow up the entire group. He claimed that I had confessed as much to Orlando, who allegedly had then told him.

My companions’ gossip worked like a meticulously distilled venom. Every day a new pair of men was assigned to carry me, and every day they would show up ever more inflamed against me. Finally along came Rogelio and a young guerrilla we all made fun of, because he seemed to think he was Zorro, with his flat-shaped hat with a string chin tie and pants that were too tight.

“We’ll be dancing today!” they said, winking at each other.

I could sense they did not wish me well, and before we left, I made the sign of the cross, expecting the worst.

The forest had become even denser, and the vegetation had changed. Instead of ferns and shrubs in the shade of gigantic ceiba trees, we were now going through a dark, humid region thick with palms and banana trees. The trees were so close together that it was difficult to weave our way between them; the pole was too long, which made it impossible to get around the bends in the terrain. The bearers often had to back up and try a different angle. Every step was a negotiation between the man in front and the man behind, and they argued, each one wanting to impose his opinion on the other. They got angry, sweaty, and tired. The trunks of the banana trees were swarming with ants of all kinds, big and little, red, yellow, and black. The appearance of human beings on their territory drove them crazy. As we were obliged to brush against the banana trees to push our way through, the ants would hurry onto the leaves to attack us, cling to us, bite us, or piss on us. Their urine was by no means the worst thing. They secreted a powerful acid that burned our skin and raised oozing blisters. Stuck in my hammock as if it were a capsule, I couldn’t move. I had to lie there with my arms along my body, and I suffered stoically the offensives of these creatures as they invaded the most intimate parts of my body. I couldn’t say a thing: The guys were suffering more than I was, with their naked torsos and their burden pressing into their shoulders.

After the banana trees came the brambles. We were going through a dense forest of bushy palm trees that protected themselves against the outside world by means of barbed spines wrapped all around their trunks. Once again the trunks were so close together that it was hard to not to bump into the sharp spikes that covered them. Rogelio was beside himself. He took his revenge by swinging the hammock more than was necessary, so that with each sideways motion I was projected against the spines that dug deep, first through the layer of protective cloth and then into my flesh. I came out of that palm forest looking like a hedge-hog covered with spines.

But that wasn’t all. Once again there were swamps to wade through, even deeper than the earlier ones, in which a particular vegetation covered in thorns was growing. My bearers waded through this lukewarm water, with the altered mood that any human being will feel after hours of being soaked against his will, feeling their way forward with their feet, not knowing what they would find at the bottom of this blackish water. Often they lost their balance and I would be half submerged in the swamp, thus becoming even heavier. Every time one of them stumbled, his reflex was to reach out for the nearest tree trunk. By the end of the day, their hands were gashed and bleeding.

We didn’t go quickly that day, or in the days that followed, or in the weeks that came one after the other. In the end we all lost track of the hours we wandered through that endless jungle, crushed by the mere effort of moving on, no matter what. There was nothing left to eat, or hardly anything. Guillermo came each morning with a pot of rice, less and less of it every day. The ration had to last until evening, and once the camp was set up, the rancheros had to dream up a new soup of water boiled with whatever they’d found along the way. The march stopped at around five o’clock in the evening. We had only one thought in mind: to build our shelter for the night and dress our wounds. We had barely an hour to put up the tents, fix the hammocks, take a bath, hang the clothes we would put on again the next morning, still dripping—and come back to collapse under the mosquito net before nightfall.

At dawn, when it was still dark and cold, we would put back on the heavy, soaking uniform we would wear for the march. This was a real torture. I had decided that if I had to choose between muddy, wet clothes and clean, wet clothes, I’d rather continue to wash my outfit every day, even though the effort to do so drained me.

There was no time for other people; it was every man for himself. Except for Lucho, who made a point of helping me with the tiniest things. My condition was getting worse. I begged Guillermo to give me some silymarin, but he said, “For you there’s no medication.”

FIFTY-TWO

SELLING HOPE

We were always woken before dawn. One morning our marching orders did not come. Speculation about our fate was rife. Some said that our group was going to be split up. Others claimed there would be some releases. We were moved into a clearing, where the trees were farther apart and a thick carpet of dead leaves was strewn across the ground. The sky was overcast. It was a sinister place. They ordered us to sit in a circle. The guards stood all around us, pointing their guns at us.

“They’re going to kill us,” said Lucho.

“Yes,” I agreed, “they’re going to slaughter us.”

My heart was beating wildly. I was sweating profusely, like all my companions, despite the fact that we weren’t moving, only sitting on our
equipos,
with our backs turned to the guards. I changed my position.

“Don’t move!” shouted one of the guards.

“If you’re going to kill us, I want to look death in the face!” I replied.

The guard shrugged and lit a cigarette. We went on waiting. We had no idea what was going on. It was almost noon. I imagined our bloody bodies on that bed of leaves. They say that before you die, your life flashes in front of your eyes. Nothing was flashing before mine. I had to go to the toilet. “Guard! The
chontos.
” Now I spoke the way they did, I smelled as bad as they did, and I was as insensitive as they were.

They gave me permission to go off to one side. When I came back, Sombra was there. He asked who among us could swim. I raised my hand. Lucho, too, but Orlando didn’t. Was he pretending? Maybe Orlando knew something. Maybe it was better to say that we didn’t know how to swim?

They had us line up, and we began marching again. Twenty minutes later we came to the banks of a huge river. They made us get undressed, down to our underwear and boots. A rope had been stretched between the two riverbanks. Ahead of me a young guerrilla woman was getting ready to go into the water with her
equipo
tightly wrapped in black plastic. I looked all around. There was a bend in the river just ahead, and after the bend it was three times as wide. Where we were now, the river must have been two hundred yards wide.

The guerrilla woman took the rope and entered the water, moving one hand after the other along the rope as she crossed. Soon it would be my turn. Going into the water was invigorating. It was just cool enough to refresh my body. Thirty feet out, the current was very strong. You had to be careful not to let it carry you away. I let my body float without putting up any resistance, and I made headway solely by moving my hands along the rope. The technique seemed to be working. Once I got to the other side, I had to wait for my clothes and my backpack, in a cloud of thirsty mosquitoes.

They used a small boat to bring across fat Sombra and the baby. It came back and forth but it almost sank under the weight of all the
equipos.
I spent the rest of the afternoon drying my things, and I tried to rescue the few remaining dry items for the night. I thanked heaven that Sombra had decided to set up camp right there and spare us more hours of marching.

We all set about repacking our backpacks and throwing out anything we could to make them lighter. Marc came to see me. He wanted to give me back my Bible; he was too loaded down. Clara too wanted to come into my
caleta
, but with the baby. She was allowed to have him for an hour. I laid out a plastic sheet on the ground and a towel to place him on. A fat female guerrilla with enormous breasts brought him over, nestled against her belly in the kangaroo pouch I’d made for Clara at his birth. The baby was smiling. He seemed quite alert as he followed our fingers with his eyes and listened attentively to the songs we sang him. He seemed to be in good condition, but his arm still hadn’t healed. Clara played with him for a while. After a moment the infant began to cry, and the guerrilla with the big breasts came over at once and took him away without saying a thing. That was the last time I saw Clara’s son in the jungle.

Night fell suddenly. I didn’t even have time to pick up the hammock Lucho had lent me for my transport, which normally I rolled up on top of my pack for the night, to avoid a termite attack. I fell asleep listening to the sound of a fine drizzle around me. My things would be soaked tomorrow, I thought. Never mind, I was too tired to move.

Around midnight the camp was awakened by the sound of Clara’s screams. A guard switched on his flashlight beam. Her
caleta
had been invaded by ants. The
arrieras
were devouring everything in their path—they were red and small and had protruding jaws that enabled them to chew through almost anything.

Clara’s hammock was in shreds, as were the marching clothes she’d hung up on a rope. A sea of ants covered her mosquito net. The guard did the best he could to get rid of them, but many had already gotten inside. Clara wanted to take down her hammock to shake them off, but the ground, too, was swarming with insects, and she didn’t have her boots. Then I realized, too late, that the sound of the drizzle was in fact the sound of the
arrieras
moving over the ground. They had invaded the camp and had already been through my
caleta.

Daylight revealed that we all had been attacked. The hammock Lucho had lent me was like a sieve. The straps of my
equipo
no longer existed. There was nothing left of Orlando’s jacket but the collar, and every tent had holes in it. We had to patch things quickly. I put my
equipo
back together as best I could and quickly repaired the hammock. It was time to leave.

A unit of guerrillas had come with supplies from a neighboring FARC camp, so we saw some new faces. They’d provided the rowboat for Sombra and the baby. We were all hoping that the end of the march was in sight. Despite better food, we were walking slowly. The guerrillas were complaining. Everyone was finding it hard to go on.

That day we stopped after two hours. Sombra was furious. He came up to me, fuming. “Tell those Americans not to take me for a fool. I understand every word they say. If they want to fuck around, I’ll chain them up, all three of them!” I looked at him, alarmed. Half an hour later, I saw Orlando and Keith arrive, chained together at the neck. Jorge followed after them with Lucho. The others lagged behind. Guillermo went ahead of them the moment he saw me.

“Go sit farther away,” he barked at me, to keep me from speaking to my companions. Keith was extremely nervous, holding both hands around the chain hanging from his neck. Orlando sat down next to me, crowding into the space Guillermo had allotted us.

He pretended to be playing with his feet, and said, “That idiot began kicking his backpack. Guillermo thought he didn’t want to carry his things anymore. He told Sombra that we were trying to hold up the march. Now I’m the one who takes the rap.”

While he was talking to me, Keith had gotten up and was speaking to Sombra with his back to us. Sombra began to laugh, removed Keith’s length of chain, and threw it over at Orlando.

“As for you, you can keep yours for a few days! That’ll teach you to try to be clever with me.”

Keith walked away, rubbing his neck, not daring to look at Orlando. Guillermo came back with a big stewpot filled with water. He shared it out with everybody, let us all drink, then screamed, “Line up, in marching order! Now! Get a move on!”

My companions jumped to their feet like robots, slung their backpacks on their shoulders, and headed down the path back into the jungle in single file. I had to wait for my bearers to come back; I would be on my own until then. Sombra hesitated. Then, deciding to leave me, he said, “Don’t worry about the dictionary. Where you’re going now, it will be easy to get you another one.”

“Sombra, you have to remove Orlando’s chains.”

“It’s none of your business. Think about what I just told you. The French are in the process of negotiating for you. You’ll be free much sooner than anyone can imagine.”

“I don’t know about any of that. What I do know is that Orlando has a chain around his neck, and that you have to remove it.”

“Come on, hang in there! It’ll all be over soon,” he said, scarcely hiding his irritation. He limped away and disappeared. My bearers arrived. There was a new one, because the man who’d been carrying me in the morning had dislocated his shoulder. He’d been replaced by the Indian, still smiling, still friendly.

The moment we were alone for a second, he said, “They’re going to release someone. We think it’s going to be you.”

I looked at him, incredulous. I hadn’t believed a word of what Sombra had said before. ”What? What are you saying?”

“Yes, some of them are going to the Sierra de la Macarena,
⁴⁹
and others are going to leave with the First Front. But you’re going to the leaders.”

“What leaders? What on earth are you talking about?”

“If you want more information, give me your gold chain.”

I burst out laughing. “My gold chain?”

“Yes, as a pledge.”

“A pledge of what?”

“That you won’t inform on me. If ever anyone finds out that I spoke to you, I’d be court-martialed and shot.”

“I don’t have a gold chain.”

“Yes you do! It’s in your
equipo.
”

I was startled. “It’s broken.”

“Give it to me and I’ll tell you everything.”

His teammate arrived. I slid into my hammock again, lost in thought. The chain had belonged to my grandmother. I had broken it, lost it, found it again miraculously, and hidden it carefully between the pages of my Bible. They’d made a
very
thorough search.

When we reached the site, while we were setting up the tents for the night, I mentioned it to Lucho.

“They’re searching through everything,” I told him. “You can’t go on carrying the machete.”

“What should we do?” he answered, nervous.

“Wait, I have an idea.”

The soldiers’ camp was once again right next to ours. I sought out my friends. They were chained two by two and had to coordinate their moves. They were happy to see me and served me some milk and sugar.

“I’ve come on a delicate mission. I need your help.”

They crouched down to listen attentively.

“I’ve been keeping a machete on me, because I’m going to try to escape. There’s going to be a search, probably tomorrow. I don’t want to just toss it out somewhere. Can you hide it in your things for a few days, only long enough until they’ve done their search?”

The men looked at each other in silence.

“It’s dangerous,” said one.

“Very dangerous,” said the other.

A guard was shouting. I had to go back. I looked at them anxiously. We had only a few seconds.

“What the hell, we can’t leave you in a fix. You can count on us,” said one of them.

“Take this towel. After your bath, wrap the machete up in it. You’ll give it back to us when it’s dark. You can say I lent you my towel and that you had to give it back,” said the other.

My eyes were full of tears. I hardly knew them, and yet I trusted them, totally.

I went back to tell Lucho.

“I’ll go and give it back to them. I want to thank them in person,” he said, deeply touched. We knew all too well the risk they were taking for us.

At dawn the next morning, there was a search. Our friends were starting their march, and they waved to us before leaving. We could rest easy. When it was my turn, Guillermo opened my Bible. He took the chain and toyed with it for a moment. Then he put it back between the pages and carefully closed the zipper of the leather case protecting the Bible.
He won’t dare!
I thought.

Once again the Indian was assigned the chore of carrying me. He clearly wanted to speak to me but was waiting for the right moment. As for me, I was more and more intrigued by his story. I was eager for good news. Even if it wasn’t true, I wanted more than anything to be able to cling to a beautiful dream. I said to myself that in any case, if Guillermo had his eye on my grandmother’s chain, sooner or later he would find a way to get it. So when the Indian approached me, I was ready to buy his lies.

The Indian sat with me, on the pretext that I mustn’t stay alone, because we were getting close to an area patrolled by the military. His teammate was only too happy to go off and haul his
equipo.

“I’m going to tell you everything. I’ll leave the rest to your conscience,” he declared by way of introduction. He explained I was going to be handed over to another commander, whose mission was to take me to Marulanda and that I was going to be released. “Mono Jojoy wants to have a big ceremony with all the ambassadors and a lot of journalists. He’s going to deliver you into the hands of the European envoys. Your companion will be sent to the First Front of the Eastern Bloc. Her child will go and live with a family of militia, who will take care of him until he grows up.” He declared that when Emmanuel was old enough, he would become a guerrilla. He would be sent to a hospital to have his arm operated on. Then the Indian added, “The Americans will leave for the Macarena. The others will be divided in groups and sent to the Amazon.

“There,” he finished, “you know everything. I hope you’ll keep your word.”

“I haven’t promised you a thing.”

“I told you everything. Now you’re alone with your conscience.”

I knew that the Indian was lying. I knew that among the guerrillas, lying was considered the sign of a good warrior. It was part of their apprenticeship, an instrument of war that they were encouraged to master. They knew how to go about it. They had acquired the wisdom of the shadows that is used to do evil.

But the Indian had started me dreaming. By pronouncing the word “freedom,” he’d opened a box that I’d kept double locked. I could no longer stop the flood of raving visions that submerged me. I could see my children, my bedroom, my dog, my breakfast tray, my ironed clothes. I could smell Mom’s perfume. I opened the fridge, I closed the door to the bathroom, I lit my bedside lamp, I wore high-heeled shoes. How could I shove all that back into oblivion? I wanted so badly to become myself again.