Even Silence Has an End (21 page)

TWENTY

A VISIT FROM JOAQUÍN GÓMEZ

A few weeks later, as I was beginning the fourth belt in my project of weaving a belt for each member of my family, I heard the sound of an engine, which usually meant our supplies were being delivered. The chaos that had suddenly erupted in the camp—everyone trying to tidy up, put on uniforms, comb hair—made me realize that along with the normal supplies some big fish must have just arrived.

It was Joaquín Gómez, the chief of the Southern Bloc and adjunct member of the Secretariado, and as such the most important authority in their organization that these guerrillas had ever seen. He was born in La Guajira and had the dark-colored skin of the Wayuu Indians of the north of Colombia.

He was taking great strides through the camp, his back bent in the manner of men who carry very heavy responsibilities, and he spread his arms as he walked toward me before hugging me for a long time, like an old friend.

I was strangely moved to see him. The last time we’d met was during the televised debate for presidential candidates, in the presence of government negotiators and members of FARC, during Pastrana’s peace process, in San Vicente del Caguán, two weeks before my abduction. Of all the members of the Secretariado, he was my favorite. He was relaxed, always smiling, affable, even funny, and he possessed none of the sectarian, sullen attitude that was typical of the hard-line FARC commanders.

He had two chairs brought over, and he sat with me behind the cage, in the shade of a huge ceiba.
²⁵
He took a box of cashew nuts from his pocket on the sly, and without a fuss he placed it in my hands. What a treat! He laughed to see my delight and, as if to impress me still more, asked if I liked vodka. Even if I hadn’t, I would have said yes—in the jungle you don’t refuse anything. He gave instructions to one of the men to go and look in his equipment, and a yellow-labeled bottle of lime and lemon Absolut eventually ended up in my hands. This was a promising beginning for conversation. I used it sparingly, wary of the effects the alcohol might have on my weakened body.

“How are you?”

I shrugged my shoulders in spite of myself. I would have liked to be more courteous, but what was the point in replying to something so obvious?

“I want you to tell me everything,” he continued, sensing that I was holding back.

“How long will you be staying here?”

“I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. I want to have time to arrange some things in the camp, but above all I want us to have a talk.”

We got down to business immediately. He wanted to know why France was interested in me and why the UN wanted to get involved in negotiating our release.

“In any case we’ll have nothing to do with the UN. They’re gringo agents.”

His remark surprised me. He didn’t know anything about the UN.

“It really would be in your best interests to accept the UN’s gestures. They’re an indispensable partner in any peace process.”

He retorted, “They’re spies! Exactly like the Americans we’ve just captured.”

“Who are they? Have you seen them? How are they?”

I had heard the news on the radio. Three Americans flying over a FARC camp had been captured a few days earlier.

“They’re doing great, they’re big sturdy guys. A little stay with us will do them a world of good. To guard them, Comrade Jorge has assigned the smallest men we have. Just a lesson in humility to remind them that size is not proportional to courage!” He burst out laughing.

The sarcasm in his words hurt me. I knew that those men must be suffering. Joaquín must have sensed my restraint, because he added, “In any event it will be good for everybody if the Americans put pressure on Uribe to obtain the gringos’ release, and you’ll be out that much faster.”

“You’re wrong. You made a mistake with me. You’re doing a huge favor to all those people who found me too much of a troublemaker in Colombian politics. The establishment won’t budge even a little finger to get me out of here.”

Joaquín looked at me for a long time, his gaze so melancholy that it ended up making me feel sorry for myself. I had begun to shiver despite the heat.

“Come on, then, let’s go for a little peripatetic walk!” He took me by the shoulders and led me over to the jogging track, laughing with a mischievous air.

“Where did you get that? ‘Peripatetic’!” I asked in disbelief.

“What? Do you think I’m illiterate? My poor child, I have read all the Russian classics! Just remember that I went to the Lumumba!”
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“Well, tovarich! We have Aristotle to thank, then, because I want to talk to you frankly. But that’s impossible with all the guards around.”

We calmly moved away, following the sandy path to the athletic track. We walked for hours, going round and round the same track until twilight. I told him everything we’d been enduring at the hands of these often cruel and insensitive men—the constant humiliation, the scorn, the stupid punishments, the harassment, the jealousy, the hatred, the sexism, all the everyday details that poisoned our lives, with the number of things Andres forbade us to do increasing by the day, the absence of all communication or information, the abuse, the violence, the meanness, the lying. I even told him stupid details, like the story about the chicken coop Andres had built opposite our cage to taunt us and the fresh eggs they ate each day, and the smell that came from the
rancha
to tease our nostrils in the morning, yet there were never any for us.

I told him everything, or almost. For I found it impossible to evoke certain things.

“Ingrid, I’m going to do all I can to improve your conditions here. You have my word. But now you must tell me sincerely, why do you refuse to let us record your proof of life?”

Joaquín Gómez came back to get me at my cage the following morning. He had given the order to kill the hens, and at the
rancha
the cooks were busy preparing them “in the pot,” which made my mouth water all morning. He wanted us to have lunch all together, with Fabián Ramírez, his second in command, whom I’d seen very little because he had dealt only with Clara. I had already met him when I spoke with Manuel Marulanda before my capture. He was a young man of average height, blond, with milky-white skin that visibly suffered from the continual exposure to the region’s implacable sun. I concluded that he must not live under the forest canopy as we did, that he was probably always on the move on a small motorboat along the innumerable tributaries of the Amazon.

When Joaquín came to see me, he seemed preoccupied. “Has your companion spoken to you about the request she made to us?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. In fact, Clara and I were not communicating very much.

“No, I don’t know anything. What’s it about?”

“Listen, it’s rather delicate. She’s claiming her rights as a woman, talking about her biological clock, saying she’s running out of time to become a mother—in short, I think we should talk about it before I submit her request to the Secretariado.”

“Joaquín, I appreciate what you are trying to do. But I want to be very clear about this: I have no opinion in the matter. Clara is a grown woman. Her private life is no one’s business but her own.”

“All right, if you think you have nothing to say, I respect that. However, I want her to repeat to both of us in person what she said to Fabián. So I’ll ask you to come with me.”

We sat down at a little table, and Fabián went to collect my companion, who was still in the cage. She sat down next to me, opposite Fabián and Joaquín, and she repeated word for word what I’d already been told. It was clear that Joaquín not only wanted me to be informed but also wanted me to be a witness.

Clara’s request surprised me and left me puzzled. I decided I had a responsibility to talk to her. And I asked myself what my father’s advice would have been if I could have consulted him. I spoke to her as sincerely as possible, wiping the slate clean of our everyday difficulties, to offer her some thoughts that might help her evaluate the consequences of her request. We had both been cornered, burdened with a terrible fate. We had each, independently, called upon whatever psychological resources we had at hand in order to survive. I drew from an enormous reserve of memories, feeling thankful for the incredible store of happiness I had accumulated over the years and for the strength I’d found in my children. I knew that because they were waiting for me I would never give up my struggle to return home alive.

Clara’s situation was different. I could understand that she felt there was nothing holding her to her past or projecting her into the future. But I truly thought her plan was senseless. I made an effort to choose my words carefully, to find the right tone. I did not want to hurt her feelings. I listed all the reasons I could think of to deter her from her request, telling her she could adopt a child once she would be free. I evoked the difficulties for a baby born in such distressing conditions, and the uncertainty of not even knowing if the FARC would free the child with her when the time would come. I spoke to her in desperation, the way I would have wanted someone to speak to me or to my daughter. She listened carefully to my every word. “I’ll think about it,” she concluded.

Joaquín came back to see me at the end of the afternoon. He was worried about the proof of life. I could tell he was under pressure. His organization must have a plan that required other people to know I was alive.

“If you can guarantee that my entire message will be transmitted to my family, that you’re not going to cut anything, then we can discuss it again.”

“Right now I can’t promise anything. What I can tell you at this point is that there are some rules. You won’t be able to mention any places, you won’t be able to give the names of those who are guarding you, you won’t be able to make any references to your conditions of detention, because the army’s intelligence could find out where you are.”

“I’m a prisoner, but I can still say no.”

I saw something devilish in his eyes. Of course they could film me without my consent. I immediately understood what had occurred to him, and I added, “You wouldn’t do that. It would be in very poor taste . . . and it would end up backfiring sooner or later!”

He embraced me affectionately and said, “Don’t worry. I’m watching over you. As long as I’m here, there are things that won’t happen.”

I smiled sadly. He was too distant and too high up in the hierarchy to really be able to protect me. He was as inaccessible to me as I was to him because of both the distance and the stubbornness of his subordinates. He knew this. He was already heading out again, the way he had come, his back bent. He was about to disappear from view when suddenly he returned. “In fact, I think what would be best is if I have them build a little house for each of you,” he said. “What do you think?”

I sighed, because this meant that our release was not coming anytime soon. He read my thoughts, and before I replied, he said gently, “Go on. As Ferney would say, ‘At least you’ll have some peace!’”

Dear Lord, I was happy to have news of Ferney. My face lit up. “Please say hello to him for me.”

“I will do, promise!”

“He’s with you?”

“Yes.”

As Joaquín had promised, he had two separate houses built, a reasonable distance apart, not facing each other. The model was identical to the previous wooden house but smaller. I had a room with a wooden door that I could close and that was never locked. I could go there in privacy and not feel like I was in prison. Clara and I shared a porcelain toilet, set up in a shed covered with palm leaves and closed with canvas from a rice sack. There was also a large plastic tank that they filled with water from the river, thanks to a motorized pump, which allowed us to wash privately, away from indiscreet gazes and whenever we felt like it.

At last I had some peace. Joaquín came to see the house once it was finished, and he said to the guards there before me, “This is Ingrid’s home here. None of you has the right to set foot in this house without her permission. It’s like an embassy—she’s protected by extraterritoriality.”

My life changed. I found it hard to grasp how the guards could be kind and then nasty, as if to order. And yet that is what I was witnessing. The transformation applied to every detail of our daily life, and even if I was well aware that their attitude toward me was far from spontaneous, I could rest and use this lull to advantage. I endeavored to regain my emotional stability. Gradually I began to sleep again, several hours a night, and above all to take longer naps that did me a world of good.

I was seized with the idea of asking for an encyclopedic dictionary. I had no idea how much of a luxury this was. Very quickly I was hooked on it. I spent my mornings sitting at my worktable with my impregnable view of the river, and I would travel through time and space as I turned each page. In the beginning I did this more or less in a whimsical fashion. But gradually I established a methodology that allowed me to do research into a predefined topic, following the logic of a treasure hunt. I could not believe my good fortune. Time no longer dragged. When they brought me my plate of rice and beans, I ate everything, still lost in my scholarly deductions as I finalized the next stage of my exploration. Art, religion, medicine, philosophy, history, aircraft, war heroes, women in history, actors, statesmen, monuments, countries—I was interested in everything. And since all the information was by definition distilled, my curiosity was all the keener to go and look elsewhere for the missing details.

My solitude became a sort of liberation. Not only because I was no longer exposed to the whims and mood swings of my companion but also and most of all because I could be myself again, I could order my life according to the needs of my heart. After my intense reading in the morning, in the afternoon I subjected myself to a grueling physical workout. I closed the door to my bedroom, raised the real bed that Joaquín had gotten them to make for me against the wall, and I transformed the free space into a gym. I practiced the acrobatics I had learned as a child but abandoned as an adult. One after another, as the memories of the movements returned to me, I overcame my fear of risk and learned once again to push back my limits ever further.