Even Silence Has an End (46 page)

“If we could find a boat, we could sail all night without getting wet,” said Lucho.

We found a spot to shelter that seemed promising, because the riverbank was visible through the foliage and stretched along a beach for thirty yards or more. We had arrived at dawn, and we chose it because one of the trees that reached far out into the water had branches that grew horizontally, which would enable us, we thought, to take turns keeping watch on the river.

The sun from the day before had put us back on our feet, and it looked like today would be hot again. We decided to try to do some fishing, to boost our morale. We would have to last for a long time—weeks, perhaps months.

While Lucho was looking for a good branch to make a fishing rod, I focused on finding some bait. I had noticed a tree trunk that was rotting, halfway in the water. I gave it a good kick, the way I’d seen the guerrillas do, and split it open. Inside, a colony of purple, sticky worms was writhing. A bit farther along, there were bird-of-paradise plants in abundance. With the smooth, fresh leaf from one of them, I fashioned a cone that I filled with the unfortunate creatures. I attached the nylon thread and a hook to Lucho’s fishing rod and conscientiously hooked the bait, telling myself that what I was doing was very cruel, to be pinning this poor creature, still alive, to a hook before tossing it into the water. Lucho looked on, disgusted and fascinated at the same time, as if the ritual I was performing made me the keeper of occult powers.

I hadn’t had time to take a step, and already I was pulling from the water a fine caribe—which is a more reassuring name for a piranha. I found a branch to use as a stake and planted it next to me, then impaled my catch on it, confident that after such good fortune luck would continue to smile on me. Beyond all my expectations, the fishing was miraculous. Lucho was laughing wholeheartedly. We had three stakes of fish in no time. All our anxiety vanished. We could eat our fill every day until we managed to find our way out.

We were unaware that we’d begun talking loudly. We heard the engine only after it had already gone by. A heavily laden boat, sitting low on the water, with ten people or more crowded in a row—women, one of them with a baby, men, young people, all of them civilians wearing colorful clothes. My heart leaped. I cried for help when the boat had already gone by, and I realized they could no longer see us, or even hear us. For a few seconds, they had been so close to us. We saw them motor by before our eyes; paralyzed by fear and surprise, I remembered every detail of this apparition. Our best opportunity to find our way out of the jungle had just eluded us.

Lucho looked at me, his face like that of a whipped dog. His eyes welled with tears.

“We should have been watching the river,” he said bitterly.

“Yes, we’re going to have to be more vigilant.”

“They were civilians,” he said.

“Yes, they were civilians.”

I no longer felt like fishing. I took my nylon line and the hook to put them away.

“Let’s make a fire and try to cook the fish,” I said, looking for something to do to hide our disappointment.

The sky had changed. Clouds were piling up overhead. Sooner or later it would rain. We had to hurry.

Lucho gathered a few branches. We had a lighter.

““Do you know how to make a fire?” asked Lucho.

“No, but I don’t think it is very difficult. We need to find a
bizcocho,
⁷⁴
that’s the tree they use in the rancha.”

We spent two hours trying to get it started. I remembered hearing the guards say it was best to peel the wood when it was damp. We had scissors, but despite all our efforts it was impossible to remove the bark even from a small branch. I felt ridiculous: With my lighter and all this wood around us, and yet we could not kindle the tiniest flame. We didn’t talk about it, but we were in a race against time.

Sooner or later Lucho’s sickness would recur. I kept a close watch for any of the warning signs. So far I hadn’t seen anything alarming, other than his expression of sadness when the boat went by, because sometimes before a diabetic crisis he would lapse into a similar state of affliction. In those cases his morose mood had no specific cause; it came on as a symptom of the deregulation of his metabolism, whereas the dejection I had just noticed had an obvious cause. I wondered if the disappointment that had overcome him could be enough to trigger his illness, and the thought of it tortured me more than hunger or fatigue.

“Right, listen, it’s not a problem. If we can’t light the fire, we’ll eat our fish raw.”

“No, never!” cried Lucho. “I’d rather starve to death.”

His reaction made me laugh. He went off at a run as if he thought I’d be in hot pursuit, to force him to swallow the caribes raw, with their sharp little teeth and their staring, gleaming eyes.

I took the scissors, and on a leaf from the bird-of-paradise plant I cut little fillets of translucent caribe flesh and meticulously lined them up. I was careful to toss the scraps into the water, and they were instantaneously fought over in a splashing of voracious fish.

Lucho came back, wary, but he watched me, bemused.

“Mmm. It’s absolutely delicious,” I said without looking at him, my mouth full. “You’re wrong not to try it. This is the best sushi I’ve ever had!”

On the leaf there were no more dead fish, just finely sliced strips of fresh meat. The sight of it reassured Lucho, and, driven by hunger, he ate a first one, then a second, and finally a third.

“I’m going to throw up,” he said in the end.

I was already reassured. I knew that next time we would eat it without a problem.

This was our first real meal since we’d run away from the camp. The psychological effect was instantaneous. We immediately started to get ready for the next leg of our journey, gathering all our little things, making the inventory of our treasures and our supplies. The day ended on a positive note. We had saved two cookies, and we felt good.

Lucho cut some palm leaves and wove them together at the foot of the tree, spread the plastic sheets, and put our bags and the oilcans down on them. We were about to stretch out when suddenly the storm was upon us without warning. We barely had time to take up our things and cover ourselves with the plastic sheets, only to watch with resignation as all our efforts to stay dry were foiled by a pitiless lateral wind. Defeated by the gusts, we sat on what was left of the rotten trunk, waiting for the rain to stop. It was three o’clock in the morning when the storm finally subsided. We were exhausted.

“We can’t go into the river in this state. It would be dangerous. Let’s try to get some sleep, and we’ll leave tomorrow on foot.”

A few hours of sleep restored us. Lucho set off ahead of me with a determined stride.

We came upon a path that went along the riverbank and that visibly had been cleared years before. The shrubs that had been cut on either side of the path were already dry. I thought there might well have been a guerrilla camp somewhere nearby, and this worried me, because I could not be sure that it had been abandoned for good. We were walking like robots, and with every step I said to myself we were taking too many risks. And yet we kept on going, because our desire to get somewhere prevented us from being reasonable.

On our way, I recognized a type of tree that Tiger had shown me once. The Indians would say that if you brushed past it, you should go back and swear three times to avoid the tree cursing you. Lucho and I didn’t respect the ritual, we felt it did not apply to us.

At the end of the day, we stopped on a tiny beach of fine sand. I cast my lines and pulled in enough fish for a decent meal. Lucho ate the raw fish with some effort, but eventually admitted that it wasn’t bad.

The moon came back out and gave enough light for us to react when an ant farm suddenly began to attack us.

That night another plague lay in wait: the
manta blanca.
It covered us like snow, spreading over our clothes and into our skin, inflicting painful bites that we could not avoid.
La manta blanca
was a compact cloud of microscopic pearl-colored midges with diaphanous wings. It was hard to believe that these fragile things, so clumsy in flight, could inflict such painful bites. I tried to kill them with my hands, but they were insensitive to my efforts, because they were so tiny and light that it was impossible to crush them against my skin. We had to retreat and take the path to the river earlier than planned. We plunged with relief into its warm water, scratching our faces with our nails to try to free ourselves from the last relentless insects chasing us.

Once again the current sucked us out to the middle of the river, just in time. Behind Lucho I saw the round eyes of a caiman that had just surfaced. Had he decided we were too big to be prey for him? Had he decided not to leave the riverbank behind? I saw him swing his tail, then turn around. Lucho was uncomfortable, trying to adjust his floating plastic bottles to find better balance; the waves in the current were constantly pushing him over. I didn’t say anything. But I decided that next time I would leave the shore equipped with a stick.

For hours the current swept us this way and that. It was hard not to roll on top of each other, and the rope that tied us together often tangled on itself capriciously as if trying to strangle us. After a bend the river became wider, flooding the land to a frightening degree. It was as if tall trees had been planted in the middle of the river, and I was afraid that an awkward maneuver might send us crashing into one of them at the speed of the current.

I did my best to head toward either shore, but the river and Lucho’s weight seemed to be pulling in the opposite direction. We were going faster and faster and had less and less control.

“Do you hear that?” asked Lucho, almost shouting.

“No, what?”

“There must be waterfalls here somewhere, I think I can hear the sound of rushing water!”

He was right. A new sound had joined the familiar roar of the river. If the acceleration I’d noticed was due to the existence of some
cachiveras
downstream, we had to get back to shore as quickly as possible. Lucho knew this, too. We swam energetically in the opposite direction.

A tree trunk came hurtling along in the current, dangerously near. Its branches, bleached by the sun, stuck out of the water like sharp iron stakes. It was rolling and pitching with rage, coming closer to us by the second. If our rope got caught in its branches, the rolling of the trunk would be enough to sweep us along and cause us to sink. We had to do whatever we could to avoid it. Somehow we managed to, only to go crashing into a tree right there in the middle of the river. Lucho ended up on one side and I on the other, held together by the rope that straddled the trunk.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “it’s nothing. Let me take care of it. I’ll come over to you.”

I managed to make my way over to Lucho by pulling on the rope, which had somehow gotten twisted and knotted around one of the submerged branches of the tree. We couldn’t let go of each other to try to free it, since the current was too strong. I had to duck underwater and follow the rope’s path backward, in order to untie all the knots.

By the time we were free again, it had been daylight for a long time. Luckily, no boats belonging to the guerrillas went by. We managed to get ashore and hide again. Only then did I realize that I had left my fishing hook back on the beach where the ants were.

SIXTY-THREE

THE CHOICE

This was a hard blow. We didn’t have many hooks. I had one left, just like the one I’d lost, and another slightly larger one, and half a dozen very rudimentary hooks that Orlando had made back in Sombra’s prison.

I told Lucho only when I felt sufficiently serene to announce it to him without getting upset. I added that we still had others in reserve.

We were on a little beach, hidden by mangroves that led to an elevated terrain. We immediately climbed up, well aware that in a storm this beach would disappear completely when the waters rose.

The elevated terrain opened onto a clearing of felled trees piled in a jumble in the middle, as if to open a skylight in the thickness of the forest, allowing a baking sun to concentrate its rays. The access to this sunlight coming straight upon us like a laser beam was a godsend. I decided to wash our clothes, rubbing them with sand to remove the smell of mold and spread them out in the implacable noonday sun. The bliss of wearing dry, clean clothes helped me forget the misfortune of my lost fishhook. As if to discipline ourselves, we sacrificed a day of fishing and fell back on the sugared powder they’d given us in the camp shortly before our escape.

We had daydreamed all afternoon, stretched out on our plastic sheets looking at the clear sky. We had prayed together, with my rosary. For the first time, we spoke of the risk of a diabetic coma.

“If that happens,” said Lucho, “you’ll have to go on alone. You’ll make it out of here, and if you’re lucky, you can come and get me.”

I thought carefully before I answered. In my mind I pictured the moment, with freedom in one hand and Lucho’s life in the other. “Listen to me. We escaped together. We’ll get out of here together or we won’t get out at all.”

Put like that, it became a pact. Our words echoed in the air, beneath a heavenly dome that wore the dust of diamonds sprinkled alongside the constellations of our thoughts. Freedom—such a precious jewel, one we were prepared to risk our lives for—would lose all its brilliance if it were to be worn in a life of regret. Without freedom our awareness of self deteriorated until we no longer knew who we were. But now, lying on my back admiring the grandiose display of stars, I felt a lucidity that comes of freedom so dearly regained.

The self-image that captivity returned to me had brought back all my failures. All the insecurities unresolved during my teenage years, insecurities that later shaped my failings as an adult—they all came back like a hydra, inescapable.

I had fought against it in the beginning, more from idleness than discipline, obliged to live in a cycle of time that was forever starting again, where the irritation of discovering that I was still there with all my petty little weaknesses, unchanged, drove me to strive once again for a transformation that seemed inaccessible.

That evening, under a starry sky that recalled faraway years of happiness in the days when I’d counted shooting stars in the belief that they carried the promise of a future grace to come, it dawned on me that I had just experienced one of those moments that allowed me to bring back the best part of myself.

We went back into the river beneath a shower of stars. The river had slowed, and this gentler movement of the waters led us to hope that the
cachiveras
were not so big after all, or might not even exist. On either shore entire swaths of earth had crumbled away, exposing the roots of the trees that had not collapsed but still clung to a scarlet wall only waiting for the next high water to give way, too.

We progressed without difficulty, carried along in the opaque, warm water. In the distance a couple of “water dogs”
⁷⁵
were frolicking near the shore, with their siren tails interlaced as they played their love games. I turned to Lucho to point them out. He was letting himself be carried by the current, his mouth half open, his eyes glassy. We had to get out right away.

I pulled him toward me with the rope, nervously hunting in my pockets for the bottle where I kept the sugar for emergencies. He swallowed the handful I put on his tongue. And then a second one, which he carefully savored.

We went ashore by the roots of a dead tree. We had to climb the wall of crimson clay to reach the riverbank. Lucho sat on a trunk, his feet in the water, while I opened a passage. Once we were both up there, I set about preparing to fish while Lucho rested.

I settled on my trunk, but the fish weren’t biting there. So I walked farther out. Right then Lucho called to me, and I heard an engine coming up the river. I figured I would have time to hide. But just as I was about to retrace my steps, the nylon line went taut. The hook was caught in the branches of the trunk below the water. We could not afford to lose another hook. Too bad. I dove in. I could hear the sound of the engine getting closer. I clung to my obsession of getting the hook, but it was solidly stuck in a tangle of branches. I tugged in despair and brought up the nylon line, a full quarter length shorter. The hook was missing. I rose to the surface, very nearly out of breath, in time to see a man go past me, standing next to his engine, in a boat filled with crates of beer. He hadn’t seen me.

Lucho was gone. I climbed up, anxious, and found him collapsed in the trance-like state that preceded his hypoglycemia. I took all the supplies of sugar out of my bag and gave them to him, praying that he would not lose consciousness.

“Lucho, Lucho, can you hear me?”

“I’m here, don’t worry, I’ll be all right.”

For the first time since our escape, I looked at him with the eyes of memory. He had lost a great deal of weight. His features seemed to have been etched with a penknife, and the twinkle in his eyes had vanished.

I took him in my arms. “Yes, you’ll be all right.”

I had made my decision.

“Lucho, we’ll stay here. It’s a good spot, because from here we can see the boats coming.”

He looked at me with immense sadness. The sun was at its zenith. We put our rags out to dry, and we prayed the Rosary together, watching the majestic river winding at our feet.

During our flight we often debated hailing passing boats, concluding that it was a risky option. The guerrillas dominated the region and controlled the rivers. There was a good chance that those who picked us up would be militia taking orders from the FARC.

We no longer had the option of continuing to go downstream. Lucho needed food. Our chances of making it depended, more than anything, on our ability to feed ourselves. I had only one hook left, and we had finished our reserves.

So we waited, sitting on the edge of the embankment, our feet dangling. I did not express my fears, because I could tell that Lucho was struggling against his own.

“I think we might have to retrace our steps to get the hook we forgot at the campsite with the ants.”

Lucho made a sound of acknowledgment and incredulity. The sound of an engine drew our attention. I got up so I could see better. Coming from our left was a boat filled with peasants on their way upstream. Some were wearing straw hats, others white caps.

Lucho was looking at me in a panic.

“Let’s go and hide. I don’t know. I’m not sure they are peasants.”

“They are peasants!” shouted Lucho.

“I’m not sure!”

“And I am. And in any event, I have no choice. I’ll die here.”

The world stopped. I saw myself beneath the dust of stars, like a wink from life taking me at my word. I had to choose.

In seconds the boat would be opposite us. It was crossing the river over by the far shore. We would have only one chance to make ourselves seen. After that the boat would move on and we would disappear from the occupants’ line of sight.

Lucho was clinging to me. I took his hand.

We stood up together, shouting at the top of our lungs, waving our arms energetically.

On the far side of the river, the boat stopped, maneuvered quickly, its prow pointing toward us, and then accelerated in our direction.

“They’ve seen us!” exclaimed Lucho, overjoyed.

“Yes, they’ve seen us,” I repeated. As the boat drew closer, I discovered with horror the faces beneath the white caps: Angel, Tiger, and Oswald.