Even Silence Has an End (45 page)

I turned to Mary, imagining God was too far away to be reached. I prayed for a long time, with the force of despair. “Mother Mary, I beg you, you’re a mother, too. I have to see my children. Today it’s still possible, tomorrow it will be too late. I know that you are listening. I wish I could ask you to help me with something more spiritual—to become better, more patient, more humble. I’m asking all that of you, too. But now, I beg you, come and get me.”

Mom had told me in her letter that one Saturday, nearly losing her mind with pain, she rebelled against Mary. She was informed that the same day the guerrillas had sent my second proof of survival.

I no longer believed in coincidences. Ever since I’d been abducted, in this space of life outside time, I’d been able to look back over my life like someone who has too much time on her hands. I’d concluded that you had to be patient and wait for the purpose of things to become visible. And then coincidence ceased to exist.

I spoke to her like a madwoman for hours, using the most elementary emotional blackmail, sulking, getting angry, throwing myself at her feet again. The Virgin Mary to whom I prayed was not some idealized image. Nor was she a supernatural being. She was a woman who had lived thousands of years before me but who, through exceptional grace, could help me. Frustrated and exhausted by my pleading, I collapsed into a dreamless sleep, convinced I was still keeping watch. I felt someone was touching my shoulder; then, when I did not respond, whoever it was began to shake me. That’s when I understood I was sound asleep, because my return to the surface was heavy and painful, and with a disjointed leap I found myself springing back in time, to sit up, my eyes wide open, my heart pounding. “Thank you,” I said out of politeness. Nothing divine, just a sensation of a presence.

I did not have time to ask myself any more questions. El Abuelo had stood and was staring in my direction. I held my breath, because I realized he was fed up and had decided to leave. I didn’t move, banking on the probability that the darkness would not enable him to see that I was sitting up. He stayed there motionless for a few seconds, like a wildcat. He headed off, went around the walkway, then came back in my direction. “Mary, I beg you, make him go away!” He again inspected the surrounding darkness, took a breath; reassured, he cut through the woods to go back to his camp.

A rush of gratitude overwhelmed me. Without waiting another second, I left my mosquito net and crawled along on all fours, constantly murmuring, “Thank you, thank you.” The two other guards were standing behind the row of tents and hammocks where my companions were sleeping. They could have seen my feet if they’d squatted down to look, but they were just as I imagined, rolled up in their black plastic sheets, shivering with cold and boredom. It was 1:50 in the morning. We had only two and a half hours to get away from the camp. It was enough time for us to vanish into the jungle and lose them. But we had only ten minutes before the next change of guard.

I groped my way toward the soldiers’ tents. I took the first pair of boots I found on my way and crept up closer to the guards to get another pair. I knew that there were orders to keep a close watch on Lucho and me. The first thing the new guards would do would be to make sure that our boots were there by our mattresses. They would see the soldiers’ boots I had just put there and unsuspectingly go away.

I went up to Lucho’s
caleta
to wake him.

“Lucho, Lucho, it’s time.”

“Huh . . . what . . . what’s going on?”

He was sound asleep.

“Lucho, we’re leaving, hurry up!”

“What? What are you thinking? We can’t leave now!”

“There are no more guards! This is our only chance!”

“Damn! You want them to kill us or what!”

“Listen, you’ve been talking about this escape for six months,”

He was silent.

“Everything is ready. I even have the soldiers’ boots. They won’t notice a thing.”

Suddenly Lucho’s destiny was staring him in the face, and so was I. He transformed his fear into anger.

“You want us to leave, okay! They’re going to shoot us, but maybe that’s better than dying here.”

He made a sudden movement, and a pile of pans, bowls, cups, and spoons he had balanced against a post went flying in a terrible clatter.

“Don’t move,” I said, to restrain him in his suicidal recklessness.

We crouched behind the mattress, hidden by the mosquito net. A beam of light shone over our heads, then moved away. The guards were laughing. They must have thought we’d had a visit from a rat.

“Okay, I’m coming! I’m ready, I’m coming!” said Lucho, grabbing his two oilcans, his tiny backpack, his sun hat, and the gloves I’d made for him for the occasion. He walked off, taking large strides. I was about to follow, then realized I’d lost a glove. In my panic I groped my way back toward the soldiers’ tents.
This is stupid! We have to leave now!
I thought. Lucho was already climbing over the walkway, charging straight ahead, trampling all the plants in his path. There was a horrible rustling of leaves as they clung to the polyester pants he was wearing. I turned around. How could the guards fail to hear the deafening clamor we were making? And yet behind me there was total calm. I looked at my watch: In three minutes the other guards would arrive. They were surely already on the way. We had to jump over the walkway and run across the cleared terrain ahead of us to have time to hide in the undergrowth.

Lucho was already there. I was afraid he might head in the wrong direction. We had to take a sharp turn to our left to jump into the
caño
and swim to the other side. If he kept straight ahead, he’d end up on Gafas’s lap. I made the sign of the cross and began to run, certain the guards must have already seen us. I arrived breathless behind the bushes, just in time to catch Lucho’s hand and pull him to the ground. Crouching close together, we took a good look through the branches to see what was going on. The relief had just arrived. They were training their flashlight beams first on our boots and mosquito nets, then over our way, sweeping the empty space in every direction.

“They’ve seen us!”

“No, they haven’t seen us.”

“Let’s go. We’re not going to wait for them to come and get us.”

I put my oilcans in their cover, hung them around my neck, and tied them to my belt. They hampered my progress. We had to climb over a tangle of branches and bushes piled up there after the spot had been cleared to build the camp. Lucho grabbed me with one hand, his oilcans in the other, and he ran straight toward the bank of the stream. The plastic cans seemed to explode whenever they hit the dead trees, and dry wood cracked painfully beneath our weight.

We had reached the riverbank. Before sliding down the slope, I looked behind me. Nobody. The flashlight beams were still sweeping along the tents. One more step and I literally rolled over on top of Lucho to land on the fine sandy beach where we used to come every day to wash. It had almost stopped raining. The noise we were making wouldn’t be covered by the rain. Without another thought, we threw ourselves like stampeding cattle into the water. I tried to keep control over my movements, but I was quickly caught by the current.

“We have to cross, quickly, quickly!”

Lucho seemed to be drifting toward the other arm of the tributary, the one that led to Enrique’s camp. I was swimming with one arm, holding Lucho with the other, by the straps on his backpack. We were no longer in control of our movements; we were paralyzed with fright and were trying at best simply not to drown.

The current helped us. We were borne over to the left, to the other arm of the tributary, into a curve where the speed of the current increased. I couldn’t see the guerrillas’ tents anymore, and for a moment I had a sensation that this was possible. We headed deeper, farther, into the warm waters of the Amazon Basin. The
caño
closed around itself, thick, dark, noiseless, like a tunnel.

“We have to get out of the
caño.
We have to get out of the water,” I said repeatedly to Lucho.

We landed unceremoniously on a bed of thick leaves, which led to a passage between brambles and ferns.

This is perfect,
I thought to myself.
No traces.

I knew instinctively which way to go.

“It’s this way,” I said to Lucho, who was hesitating.

We plunged into increasingly thick, tall vegetation. Beyond a wall of young bushes with sharp brambles, we came upon a clearing of moss. I hurried onto it in the hope of decreasing the resistance of the undergrowth so that we could go more quickly, but I fell into an enormous ditch that the moss concealed like mesh above a trap. The ditch was deep, I was in moss up to my neck, and I couldn’t see what was below me. I imagined that all sorts of prehistoric monsters must live there, waiting for prey to land in their mouths as I had just done. Panicking, I tried to get out, but my movements were clumsy and I made no headway. Lucho dropped down into the same ditch and tried to calm me.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing. Keep walking, we’ll get out of it.”

A bit farther along, some tree branches helped us hoist ourselves out. I wanted to run. I could sense that the guards must be on our tail, and I expected to see them burst from the scrub to pounce on us.

The vegetation changed abruptly. We left behind the shrubs of bramble and thorns to penetrate into mangroves. I saw the mirror of water shining through the roots of the trees. A bit farther still, a beach of gray sand sloped to the rush of the river. There was a last row of trees caught in the flood of the river, and after that lay the vast silver surface, waiting for us.

“We’re there!” I said to Lucho, not knowing whether it was relief or the vision of our upcoming ordeal that was terrifying me.

I was hypnotized. This water flowing rapidly before us: This was our freedom.

I looked behind me once again. No movement, no sound, just the deafening pounding of my heart.

We ventured cautiously into the warm water up to our chests. We pulled out our ropes, and I conscientiously went through the gestures I knew by heart for having practiced them daily during the long months leading up to this moment. Every knot had its own purpose. We had to be firmly attached to each other.

We couldn’t use sliding knots, but they had to be ready to release in case of emergency. I meticulously checked our life jackets. They had to be placed on our chests in such a way that they would not rise up against our necks, which would hamper our movement in the water. Our little backpacks had to be firmly against our spines so that they wouldn’t pull us backward. One set of ropes had to be intertwined over our boots so that they would stay firmly against our calves and we wouldn’t lose them to the current. Lucho had trouble keeping his balance in the water.

“Don’t worry. Once we start swimming, you’ll get your balance.”

We were ready. We held hands to walk forward until we lost our footing. We let ourselves float, gently paddling until the last line of trees.

The river opened up before us, grandiose, beneath the vault of sky. The moon was immense, luminous, like a silver sun. I was aware that a powerful current was about to suck us up. There was no going back.

“Careful, it’s going to go fast,” I warned Lucho.

In one second, once we had gone through the last barrier of plants, we found ourselves rapidly propelled into the middle of the river. The shore went by at great speed before our eyes. Behind us I could see the guerrillas’ landing stage growing smaller and smaller, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of plenitude, as vast as the horizon that we had just rediscovered.

The river went around a bend, the landing stage disappeared for good. There was nothing left behind us. We were alone. Nature had conspired in our favor, putting all her strength at the service of our flight. I felt protected.

“We are free!” I cried at the top of my lungs.

“We are free!” shouted Lucho, laughing, his eyes in the stars.

SIXTY-TWO

FREEDOM

We had made it. Lucho was no longer struggling; he let himself be carried peacefully, trustingly, and so did I. The idea of drowning no longer seemed possible. We were in no danger. The current was very powerful, but there were no undercurrents. The river flowed quickly forward. There were a hundred yards or so to the bank on either side.

“How are we going to get to the shore?” asked Lucho.

“The current is strong. It’s going to take some time. We’ll begin by swimming slowly to the opposite shore. If they’re looking for us, they’ll start by inspecting their own side. They’ll never believe we could have crossed this river.”

We began to swim, a gentle, sustained, rhythmic breaststroke, careful not to get tired. We had to keep our bodies warm and work our way to the right in order to get beyond the pull of the current that was keeping us in the middle of the river. Lucho was slightly behind me, and the rope between us was still taut, which reassured me, because I could keep moving without looking at him yet know he was there.

I knew that the greatest danger in the water would be hypothermia. I had always suffered from it. I have memories of Mom pulling me out of the swimming pool when I was a child, wrapping me in a blanket, rubbing me vigorously as I shivered uncontrollably, angry that I had been interrupted in my childish games, surprised at my body’s reaction, which I had not noticed until that very moment. “Your lips are blue,” she would say, as if in apology.

I loved the water. Except when my teeth began to chatter. I would do everything to ignore it, but when that happened, I knew I had lost the struggle and that it was time to get out. When I went diving, even in tropical water, I made a point of wearing a thick wet suit, because I liked to stay at the bottom for a long time.

So it was the onset of cramps I feared. I wasn’t thinking about anacondas; I thought that in the water they stayed near the shore to wait for their prey. I thought that the
guíos
must have reserves of food that were more accessible than we were.

I was more worried about the piranhas. I had seen them at work, and I was unable to distinguish between myth and reality. Several times I’d gone to bathe in the
caño
when I had my period. Surrounded by men as I was, my sole preoccupation had been that no one notice my condition.

In captivity I had always suffered from the condescending attitude with which the guerrillas treated female needs. There was a far greater guarantee of shipments of cigarettes and their distribution than of the supply of sanitary napkins. The guard in charge of bringing them to me always shouted, to the amusement of his companions, “You’d better not waste them! They have to last!” They never lasted long enough. Even less so if we were on a march, because my companions raided my supply to put them in their shoes when their blisters were torturing them. When I prepared our escape, the thought of having to swim in this condition had compelled me to devise a form of personal protection, but I wasn’t certain it was working.

Now, in this dark brown current, I swirled the water around me, as much to make headway as to drive off any creatures attracted by our presence.

We swam, propelled by the momentum of our euphoria, for three hours. The luminescence of the moonlight-bathed landscape changed gradually as dawn approached. The sky was again cloaked in a black velvet. Darkness fell on us, and with it the chill that precedes daybreak.

My teeth had been chattering for a while, without my being aware. When I tried to speak to Lucho, I realized I could hardly say anything.

“Your lips are blue,” he said anxiously.

We had to get out of the water.

We came closer to the bank, or rather the foliage along the river. The level of water had risen so high that the trees at the fringes were completely submerged, and only the treetops were still visible. The bank had withdrawn inland, but to get there, we had to plunge into the foliage along the edge.

I hesitated. The idea of being engulfed by this secretive nature terrified me. What might there be beneath this silent greenery, that was impervious to everything save the powerful current? Might an anaconda be lurking, waiting for us there, curled around the highest branch of that half-submerged tree? How long would we have to swim toward the interior before finding solid ground? I stopped trying to choose the best spot, because there wasn’t one.

“Let’s go in here, Lucho,” I said, and ducked my head beneath the first branches resting on the surface.

The undergrowth was dark, but we could just make out the shapes of things. Our eyes adjusted. I went slowly forward, closing the distance between Lucho and myself so I could take his arm.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m okay.”

Sounds were muffled. The roar of the river had given way to the muted sound of quiet waters. A bird flew along the surface and just missed us. My gestures had lost, instinctively, some of their expansiveness, as if I feared bumping into something. And yet nothing I could see was any different from what I’d already seen thousands of times. We were swimming among the branches of the trees like the
bongo
thrusting its way, opening a course. The sound of water lapping told us we were near the riverbank.

“Over there!” whispered Lucho.

I followed with my gaze. To my left, a bed of leaves and, farther along, the roots of a majestic ceiba tree. My feet had just found the land. I came out of the water, heavy with emotion, shivering, so glad to be standing on solid ground. I was exhausted. I needed to find a place to collapse. Lucho climbed the gentle slope at the same time, and he pulled me over to the roots of the tree.

“We have to hide. They could show up at any moment.”

He opened the black plastic sheet he kept in his belongings and helped me off with my backpack.

“Hand me your clothes one piece at a time. We have to wring them out.”

I did as he said, only to be immediately attacked by
jejenes,
tiny little midges that are particularly voracious and move around in dense clouds. I had to do a war dance to keep them away.

It was nearly six o’clock in the morning. The forest was so dense where we were that daylight was taking its time to reach us. We decided to wait, because we couldn’t see what was around us.
My God, today is my sister’s birthday!
I thought, happy to have remembered. The light reached the undergrowth at that very moment and spread like wildfire.

We were not in a good spot; the roots of the huge ceiba tree—the “tree of life” as the aborigines called it—were the only dry place in the surrounding swamp. A few yards away, a round ball of dry earth hanging from the branch of a young tree reminded me of the time we’d been pursued by a swarm of hornets. It was a beehive.

“We have to get away at once and go inland,” declared Lucho. “Besides, when it rains, everything will be covered with stagnant water.”

Someone on high must have heard him, because it began to rain that very second. We cautiously took our leave of the nest and headed deeper into the forest. It was raining harder. We stayed on our feet, carrying our things, with plastic sheets over us as umbrellas, too tired to think of anything better. When finally a pause in the rain gave us a truce, I spread the plastic sheet on the ground and collapsed on it. I awoke with a start. Around us there were men shouting. Lucho was already crouched down, on the lookout.

“They’re here,” he murmured, his eyes popping out of his head.

We were in a clearing, easily visible, with very few trees around us. It was the only dry spot in the swampland. We had to find a place to huddle behind, if there was still time. I looked desperately for a hiding place. The best thing was to lie flat on the ground and cover ourselves with leaves. Lucho and I thought of the same thing at the same time. It seemed to me that we were making as much noise pulling the leaves over us as the men who were shouting.

The voices came nearer. We could hear their conversation distinctly. It was Angel and Tiger, and a third man, Oswald. They were laughing. I had goose bumps. I remembered the time the guerrillas had recaptured Clara and me, after the attack of the African wasps. Edinson had let off a volley of bullets into the air, roaring with laughter. For that’s what it was, a manhunt. Surely they had seen us.

Lucho lay motionless beside me, camouflaged beneath his carpet of dead leaves. I would have liked to laugh if I weren’t so frightened. And to cry, too. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of getting their hands on us again.

The guerrillas were still laughing. Where were they? Over by the river to our left. But the vegetation there was very dense. Then the noise of an engine, more voices, and the metallic echo of men boarding a boat, the clicking of rifles, the motor again, going away this time, and the silence of the trees. I closed my eyes to give thanks.

Night fell very quickly. I was surprised to feel at ease in my wet clothes, which trapped the heat of my body. My fingers hurt, but I had managed to keep my fingernails clean, and the cuticle that gave me problems so often was not irritated. I had woven my hair into a tight braid, and I had no intention of touching it for a long time. We had decided that we would always eat something before going back to the river, and for this first day we had one cookie each and a piece of
panela.
⁷²
They would start their hunt again at dawn, just when we left the river to hide among the trees. We had to leave at two o’clock in the morning, to have three hours on the river before daybreak. We wanted to be on shore with the first light of dawn, because we dreaded the thought of plunging blindly into the vegetation. We agreed on all of that, crouching among the roots of our old tree, as we waited for the rain to stop so we could curl up on our plastic sheets and get some sleep.

The rain didn’t stop. We dozed off all the same, curled up against each other, incapable of struggling against sleep any longer.

I was awakened by a resounding noise. Then nothing. Once again the sound of something twisting in the swamp, striking the water violently. All I could see was darkness. Lucho searched for the flashlight and switched it on for a second.

“It’s a
cachirri
!”
⁷³
I cried, horrified.

“No, it’s a
guío,
” said Lucho
.
“He’s taking his prey down into the depths to drown it.” He was probably right. I remember a
guío
killing the rooster in Andres’s camp. I heard it from my wooden house splashing into the river, taking its squirming prey down with it. It made the same sound.

We remained silent. In a few minutes, we would have to go back into that black water. It was already two o’clock in the morning.

We waited. A deadly calm reigned.

“Right, it’s time to go,” said Lucho, tying the ropes around his boots.

We went into the river apprehensively. I bumped against the trees as I moved forward. Once again the current took hold of us abruptly, grabbing us from beneath the dome of vegetation to project us out under the open sky in the middle of the river. It was even stronger than the day before, and we were swept ahead, whirling on ourselves uncontrollably.

“We’re going to drown!” cried Lucho.

“No, we’re not going to drown. It’s normal, it’s been raining all night. Let yourself go.”

We were moving so fast I felt as if I were spiraling downward. The river was winding, and it seemed narrower to me. The riverbanks were higher, and sometimes the line of trees gave way to a sudden steep embankment, as if a bite had been taken out of the shore. The bare, bloody earth opened like a gaping wound in the middle of the curling darkness of foliage.

When I felt my first shivers and the thought of leaving the river became urgent, the flow was less powerful and we were able to swim to the opposite shore, to the side where the vegetation seemed less dense. We hadn’t even reached the riverbank, and already it was broad daylight. Desperate, I struggled to go faster. We were easy prey for any posse out looking for us.

With relief we plunged into the greenery, sheltered in the gloom.

At the top of the incline, the terrain was very dry and dead leaves crackled under our feet.

I collapsed on a plastic sheet, my teeth chattering, and fell sound asleep.

I opened my eyes and wondered where I was. There were no guards. No tents, no hammocks. Carnival-colored birds squabbled on a branch above my head. When I managed to make my way through a labyrinth of scattered memories to place myself back in reality, I was overwhelmed by the happiness of a time gone by. I didn’t want to move anymore.

Lucho wasn’t there. I waited, tranquil, till he returned. He had gone to inspect the surroundings.

“Do you think there’s any civilian transportation on this river?” he asked.

“I’m sure there is. Remember the boat we saw just after we left the Maloka camp?”

“Should we try to intercept one?”

“Don’t even think about it! Odds are two to one that we’ll come upon the guerrillas.”

I knew the dangers of our escape. But the one I dreaded most was our own weakness. The surge of adrenaline at the time of our escape subsided once we felt we were out of danger, and we were letting our guard down. It was at times when we relaxed that the dark thoughts arose, and we could lose the prospect of the sacrifice we’d made. Hunger, cold, and fatigue started to become more insistent than freedom itself, because now that we’d regained our freedom, it seemed less important in the light of our urgent needs.

“Come on, let’s eat something. Let’s treat ourselves.”

“How much longer will our supplies last?”

“We’ll see. But we have our fishhooks. Don’t worry. With every passing day, we’re getting closer to our families!”

The sun had come out. Our clothes had dried, and that boosted our spirits. We spent the afternoon envisaging what we must do if the guerrillas came anywhere near.

We left earlier that day, in the hope of making better progress. We were nurturing the illusion that on our way we would find signs of human presence.