Even Silence Has an End (43 page)

FIFTY-NINE

THE DEVIL

We arrived at a steep bank that dropped straight into the river. It was the dry season, and the water level was very low. We were at a meeting of two rivers. One small tributary came to join the main river at right angles. We could see only the gorge of the secondary river, deep and narrow, with a stream of water winding its way through. This was a regular feature. Wherever we went, the flow of water had decreased phenomenally. I asked the Indians among the troops whether this had always been the case. “It’s climate change!” they declared.

Gafas announced that this would be our permanent camp. I shuddered at the thought. Living as a nomad was hateful, but at least I could nurture the illusion that we were headed toward freedom.

Our
cambuches
⁶⁵
were constructed inland, a mile or so from the riverbank but very near the
caño,
⁶⁶
where a small dam was built, to provide for bathing and laundry. Lucho and I asked for palm leaves to use as mattresses in our
caletas
, and Tito, a little man with a lazy eye, took the time to teach us how to weave a carpet.

While he was working, we listened to the
panela
that was hanging from a nail in Armando’s
caleta.
We heard President Uribe making a proposal to the FARC, and this brought a halt to all our work setting up the camp. He said he was prepared to suspend Simón Trinidad’s extradition to the United States if the FARC would release the sixty-three hostages they’d detained by December 30. A feverish excitement overtook the camp, among jailers and hostages without distinction. It was a daring proposal, and the guerrillas liked the sound of it. They all thought Trinidad’s extradition would be a painful blow to the organization.

Pata-Grande came to discuss it with the military prisoners, and he claimed that the FARC leaders were considering Uribe’s proposal in a positive light. Months earlier the FARC had declared in a press release that “the time to negotiate had come,” but the leaders were asking for a demilitarized zone in order to proceed with the negotiations. Uribe would not budge. He didn’t want to make the same mistake that Pastrana’s government had—giving the FARC a huge territory, which it had then turned into a sanctuary to carry out criminal operations.

However, the card Uribe was playing now might indeed break the deadlock. Up until this moment, I’d thought the guerrillas were attempting to negotiate our liberation and that it was Uribe’s government that was causing such initiatives to fail. However, the offer not to have Trinidad extradited had me doubting. I wondered whether the FARC had simply never had any real intention of setting us free in the first place. In a way we had become the organization’s calling cards. They needed to keep us, because we were more useful to them as trophies than as bargaining chips.

Tension in the camp began to rise. The rivalry between Mauricio and Gafas had reached its peak. When I asked for some sugar for Lucho, I created a huge fuss. Mauricio came to see me with a large package that he handed to me in front of everybody. “I have brought you my personal supply of sugar, because Gafas refuses to have some delivered to you. You will have to speak about it to Cesar!”

Our relations with the guards were also becoming tense. Gafas had made our regime even tougher. The guerrillas who hoped to find approval in the boss’s eyes knew only too well that they’d be praised if they acted ruthlessly.

Watchtowers had been built at each corner of our compound. Young Mono Liso with the cherubic face was on duty one morning, his revolver in his fist, taking his job as sentinel very seriously. One of my companions went off to the
chontos
and forgot to inform him. In truth, it wasn’t even necessary, because the
chontos
were perfectly visible from the guard post. “Where are you going?” screamed Mono Liso from his perch. My companion turned around, thought he was talking to someone else, and continued on his way. Mono Liso pulled out his revolver, aimed at my companion’s legs, and fired three times.

The silence of the grave fell over the camp. Mono Liso was a good marksman. The bullets had grazed my companion’s boots but hadn’t wounded him.

“Next time I’ll wedge one in your thigh to teach you to respect the rules.”

My comrade was white as paper, and so were we. “We have to get out of here,” whispered Lucho.

Some of the guerrillas offered to supply us with the things we needed, in exchange for sewing, or radio repair, or cigarettes. Every time we needed something—and that was every day—we were obliged to offer something in exchange. In the beginning the guards had been willing to help us, but now they realized they had absolute power over us, and they became increasingly bullying and irritable.

Lucho and I suffered more than the others. The order had been given to isolate and humiliate us. The slightest request we made was systematically denied.

“It’s because we refuse to work for them,” Lucho warned me.

At one point there was an outbreak of leishmaniasis, first among the guerrillas and then among us. I had never seen the effects of the disease up close. Although we often talked about it among prisoners, I also had not realized how serious it was. It was commonly called jungle leprosy, because it caused a degeneration of the skin to begin with, then spread to other organs, which decomposed as if they were rotting in place. It would begin with a little pimple, which, as a rule, no one would pay any attention to. But the disease went on doing its dirty work inside. I saw the damage it wrought on the leg and forearm of Armando. He had a big hole in his skin, softened as if acid had been poured on it. You could place your finger in the hole without his feeling any pain. When Lucho showed me a small spot that had just appeared on his temple, I merely shrugged; I could not imagine for a moment that it was the dreaded
pito
.
⁶⁷

Our ignorance in jungle diseases contrasted with our knowledge of FARC tricks. When Pata-Grande came to inform us that there would be a Christmas celebration in our honor, Lucho and I sensed that they were setting a trap for us. We had seen Enrique in the
bongo
taking pictures. We talked about it with Bermeo and the others. Our companions, too, were on their guard, but the idea of a party was too tempting to turn down.

The guerrillas had built a rectangular space, set off by tree trunks that served as benches, and the ground had been smoothed and covered with sand. They’d put a crate full of beer in one corner, and all the
guerrilleras
were sitting in a row waiting for us. It looked just like a dance floor.

Sometimes you end up doing the opposite of what you planned to do. It happened to me that evening. The sound system was very loud. The music caused the trees all around us to quiver. The girls all got up at the same time and invited the military hostages to dance. It was impossible to refuse. When Angel came all the way across the camp, walked onto the dance floor, and offered me his arm, I felt stupid. I sought Lucho’s eyes. He was sitting with a beer in his hand, watching me. He shrugged and nodded. He obviously thought that if I refused, the
guerrillas
would take it badly. Everyone was staring. I could feel the pressure weighing heavily on me, and I hesitated for a few seconds. Finally I got up and agreed to dance. I had been around the dance floor twice at the most when I saw it. Enrique had a digital video camera, small and compact, aimed right at me. He was hiding behind a tree. The little red light that came on to show that the camera was filming betrayed him. My heart leaped, and I stopped dancing then and there. I let go of Angel and left him alone on the dance floor to go and sit down, turning my back on Enrique. I could have kicked myself for being so stupid. Angel had already left with a laugh, delighted that he’d done such a good job.

In the jungle my upbringing was a handicap. I refrained from being blunt out of a fear of offending other people. I told myself repeatedly that I must forget all the codes of courtesy, to survive in that jungle. Once my annoyance had dissipated, I took hold of myself. No, on the contrary, I decided. Each time I must try to be more polite. But Gafas’s trap caused me to reevaluate all my good intentions. I could no longer go on reasoning as if I could apply the rituals and codes of the outside world to my present life. I was kidnapped. I could not expect these women and men to behave any differently. They lived in a world where evil was good. Killing, lying, and betrayal were all part of what was expected of them. I went up to Lucho, who was beside himself.

“We have to talk to Enrique. He had no right to film us without our consent.”

The music stopped in the middle of the song. The girls disappeared, and the guards armed their rifles. They pushed us boorishly back to our camp. Our Christmas ended there.

Enrique came to see us the next day. Lucho had insisted on talking to him. The discussion turned sour. At first Enrique denied that it was all staged, but in the end he said that the guerrillas could do whatever they liked, which was tantamount to a confession. When Lucho said he was offended by his attitude, Enrique changed his stance and accused him of being a vulgar man and of having insulted Commander Trinidad. “You said he was a piece of shit.”

They parted on very bad terms. We concluded that we could expect the worst from Enrique. Sure enough, the guards were ordered to treat us ruthlessly. One morning Lucho got up, worried. “We can’t take this. We have to escape. If by December thirtieth the FARC has not accepted Uribe’s proposal . . . we’ll start to get ready to leave.”

On December thirtieth, the FARC remained silent. That afternoon, Simón Trinidad was put on board an airplane bound for the United States, extradited for drug trafficking. Long years of captivity lay ahead of us. We had to fill the day and not think about the future.

Fueled by anxiety, the cases of leishmaniasis increased. The little pimple on Lucho’s temple was not getting any bigger, but it hadn’t disappeared. We thought back to the night waiting for the
bongo
near La Libertad Guaviare—it was the perfect spot for the
pito
to bite. We decided to ask William his opinion, since he was an army nurse and the only one whose judgment might be reliable. His diagnosis removed any doubt.

“You have to begin treatment immediately, before the disease reaches your eye or your brain.”

Enrique took revenge on Lucho, refusing to allow him the necessary treatment. We knew the guerrillas had substantial supplies of Glucantime. They bought phials in Brazil or Venezuela; in Colombia the medication was embargoed, because of the war against the FARC. The army knew the guerrillas were the main consumers of the drug, because they operated in zones where the disease was endemic.

Gira, who was in charge of health care, was a serious, cautious woman. Unlike Guillermo, she had not transformed the distribution of medicine into a black market. She came to examine Lucho and declared, “It’s a lengthy treatment. You have to have at least thirty phials of Glucantime, at a rate of one injection a day. We’ll start tomorrow.”

The next day Gira did not show up, nor on the following days. She eventually claimed there was no more Glucantime, although we knew she was administering it daily to the other prisoners. I watched anxiously as the ulcer progressed, and I prayed. One evening when Tito (the guard who’d taught us to weave palm mattresses) was on duty, he came over and said, “It’s the
cucho
⁶⁸
who doesn’t want to authorize your treatment. We have crates full of Glucantime, and we’re waiting for some new ones. Tell Gira that you know there are phials in the pharmacy, and she’ll be obliged to discuss your case in
el aula
.”

We followed Tito’s advice and witnessed Gira’s embarrassment when we pressured her.

“This is a crime against humanity,” I declared, outraged.

“The notion of crimes against humanity is a bourgeois notion,” retorted Gira.

SIXTY

NOW OR NEVER

JANUARY 2005

I had begun to prepare seriously for our escape. My exit plan was simple. We had to leave the camp on the pretext of going to the
chontos
and get to the river. Lucho was not happy with the idea of swimming for hours. So I thought I could make life jackets, using the
timbos
we had finally managed to get. In the end I used two old oil containers that my companions had tossed out because they’d managed to get some brand-new ones.

I also succeeded in getting a machete. Tiger, an Indian who had taken an immediate dislike to us because we hadn’t wanted to give him Lucho’s watch in exchange for some herbs that were supposed to cure leishmaniasis, had left it lying around when he was building Armando’s
caleta.
Enrique threatened to apply severe sanctions if the machete was not found. I had hidden it in the
chontos
. They searched the camp from top to bottom, and I lived through torture, feeling as if all their suspicions were focused on me.

At the end of January, we were told, to our great surprise, that we would be going on an “outing”: Enrique wanted to take us to swim in the
cachiveras
upstream. Now that the level of the river had risen, the
cachiveras
had become an ideal swimming hole. The soldiers were all very enthusiastic about the idea. As for me, I feared that this was another strategy to get us away from our
caletas
to do a thorough search. The order was peremptory: Everyone must go. The days leading up to it were torture for Lucho and me. What would they do if they found us out? I believed it would be the end of the world.

My companions set off as happy as children. Lucho and I were wary. However, it turned out to be a useful exercise. I observed the lay of the land, the vegetation, the distance we covered in a given time, and I included it all in my plan.

We were allowed to fish, and they set us up with the necessary gear—some hooks and a bit of nylon line—and I watched how Tiger found bait and cast his line. I applied myself to learning, and I managed it with a certain degree of success. “Beginner’s luck,” said Tiger sarcastically. The main thing was that we managed to pocket a few hooks and a few yards of line, on the pretext that our original line had broken.

Tiger had found some tortoise eggs while exploring the rocks. He had swallowed two of them whole right there in front of me, ignoring my exclamations of disgust. I had done the same. They smelled strongly of fish but had a different taste, which wouldn’t have been all that bad if the texture of the yolk had not been unpleasantly sandy.

On the way back, I decided I would return the machete. The vegetation on either side of the river was not that dense, and we wouldn’t have to fight against walls of creepers or go through bamboo forests like those I’d seen elsewhere. I couldn’t go on living in this debilitating paranoia. To run away, and make our escape successful, we would need to keep our wits. The outing had put our situation in perspective: It was possible to survive.

It became all the more important not to run the risk of being caught because of Tiger’s machete. I chose a moment when the men were behind the
chontos.
They’d been ordered to cut as many palm leaves as possible to make a
maloka
.
⁶⁹
I left the machete where they were working. Angel found it and took it to Enrique, holding it up defiantly. To my great relief, that was the end of the matter.

It felt like a sign from fate when Gafas came to see me and asked me to translate the instructions, in English, for a GPS unit that he’d just received. It was a little yellow-and-black device with satellite reception, an electronic compass, and a barometric altimeter.

“Yes, of course I understand what it says,” I answered, “but I have to look after Lucho. He’s very worried about his leishmaniasis. It’s getting worse, and there’s no Glucantime for him.”

The next morning Gira arrived grinning from ear to ear. She had just received a new shipment of medication.

“That’s strange,” remarked Pinchao. “I didn’t hear any engines.”

We didn’t say anything. Gira knew to disinfect the skin with alcohol where she would apply the injection of Glucantime, a procedure that other nurses seemed to consider superfluous. The shot was particularly painful, because the medication had the consistency of oil, and on injection it produced an extreme burning sensation.

The illness had spread considerably, and Gira was dismayed. Intensive treatment was called for. She decided to inject some of the phial directly beneath the skin of the boil. The effect was immediate. Lucho lost consciousness, and above all he lost his memory.

When Enrique asked for the translation of his instruction manual, I accepted in the hope that it would be a way to get adequate food for Lucho. I knew the guerrillas went fishing every day. They had made
potrillos,
which are a sort of canoe hewn from the trunk of a balsa tree, whose bark is not unlike birch and known to float like cork. These canoes were ideal for moving down the river, and they could reach the deepest water, where the fishing was plentiful. There were tons of fish. But Enrique would not allow them to give us any.

When Lucho came around, he had lost not only his childhood memories but also, what was worse this time, the memory of our plans. William said it had been a mistake to inject the medication on his temple. I on the other hand wanted to believe that if we treated his diabetes, he would recover his entire brain and, most importantly, we would find all of him again.

Enrique sent some fish, and I set to work on his Garmin GPS. I had the device in my hands for an entire morning, and I noted the information it contained. In particular there was a place that had been recorded under the name of Maloka, with the following coordinates: N 1 59 32 24 and W 70 12 53 39.
Maloka
⁷⁰
could be the name Enrique had given the camp. I was surprised that he’d left me in the presence of this information, but of course they must have thought I did not know how to decipher it, which was true, except that I remembered the basic lessons of cartography learned at school.

Armed with my new knowledge, I went to speak with Bermeo.

We agreed that we had to find a way to get hold of a map with longitude and latitude on it. This secret information was essential for all of us. He recalled having seen one in a little notebook that Pinchao had, a tiny map of Colombia with a grid. Then I remembered that I myself possessed a set of world maps that were in the yearly planner I had on me when I was kidnapped.

I’d kept it to see the series of appointments I’d made for the days and weeks and months that followed my capture, appointments I’d missed. This same yearly planner became an essential tool against boredom. I had set about learning all the world capitals, their size and population. Sometimes with Lucho, to pass the time, we tried to make each other slip up on our geography. “What’s the capital of Swaziland?” “Easy: Banana!” replied Lucho playfully.

So I had a map of Latin America, with a little Colombia on it, the equator, and a few latitudes and longitudes with sketchy coordinates. Pinchao’s map was much smaller, but more clearly marked. In addition, along the edge there was a tiny printed ruler, and we copied it onto a pack of cigarettes to have the best estimate possible. All we had to do was divide the distance between two parallel lines to figure out where the second latitude was located. A little higher than the equator and we had a good idea of the coordinate 1°59’N. The lines of longitude ran from right to left, from 65 west, which went through Venezuela and Brazil, to 70, which was right on Colombia, to 75, west of Bogotá. So 70°12’ put us in a few millimeters to the left of the 70th meridian. Visibly we were in the Guaviare.

I spent hours mesmerized by Pinchao’s map. If our calculations were correct, we must be in a little horn of the department of Guaviare that followed the course of the river Inírida at the frontier of the Guainia department. This river belonged to the Orinoco Basin. If we were on one of its tributaries, the current would take us to Venezuela. I dreamed of it. With my makeshift ruler, I measured the distance between the imaginary point that we called Maloka and Puerto Inírida, the capital of Guainía, where we were bound to end up. It was a bit more than 180 miles in a straight line, but the river took a very winding course, which could easily triple the actual distance to travel. If we thought about it, Puerto Inírida was not the goal of our journey. All we needed was to find a human being along the way who did not belong to the FARC and who would agree to help guide us out of the labyrinth.

I felt like I was the master of the world. I knew where we were, and that changed everything. I was aware that we would have to prepare to last a very long time in this jungle. The distances were enormous. They had chosen their hiding place well. There was nothing definite for a hundred-mile radius, through the thickest of jungles. The closest town was Mitú, to the south, exactly sixty miles, but there was no navigable way to get there. The idea of marching through the forest, without a compass, seemed like a greater madness than what I sought to undertake. Was it possible to embark on such an expedition with a sick man? The answer was, I would never leave without him. We would have to learn to survive what we found and take the risk. It was better than waiting to be killed by our captors.

One day Gira’s boyfriend came to dig some
chontos.
He was a huge Indian with a deep gaze. I hoped to chat with him for a few minutes. But I wished I hadn’t. He said, straight out, “The FARC doesn’t like you. You are everything we are fighting against. You’ll only get out of here twenty years from now. We have all the organization it takes to keep you as long as we like.”

This reminded me of Orlando, talking about one of our fellow inmates:
Look, he’s behaving like a cockroach. They sweep him out, and he scurries back in again.
As I tried to befriend that Indian, I saw myself as a cockroach.
There is no greater stimulant to finding the determination to escape,
I thought.

The fish did wonders for Lucho. Two weeks later his memory was back in place. While he’d been absent, I’d felt as if I were talking to a stranger. When he became normal again and I could confide in him at length, telling him how I’d suffered to see him like that, he played at frightening me, pretending to have new memory lapses that panicked me. He would burst out laughing and hug me, sheepish but delighted to see how much I cared for him.

Everything was ready. We had even decided to leave and interrupt the Glucantime treatment. It was endless, and Lucho wasn’t getting any better. We could still improve our supplies, but we planned to find things to eat in nature, in order to travel as light as possible. We began to wait for the right moment: a terrible storm at six-thirty in the evening. We expected it every evening. In this tropical forest where it rained every day, the year 2005 was one of unprecedented drought. We waited a long time.