by Hector Abad
Echeverri and Santamaría were in-laws and associates. They were merchants and sons of merchants who had come to have a couple of clothing stores in Medellín’s Plaza Mayor. They dealt in gold dust, among other things, which they purchased from panners for tomines, adarmes, castellanos, or sterling. They were known to be converted Jews, especially the latter, who was definitely a marrano. It can’t be ruled out that they might have been smugglers, especially in their early lives, taking melted gold to Curaçao without declaring it to the colonial treasury, and returning with goods to sell here, of which they’d declare half, bringing them in by mule train, and then bring in the second half with the same papers as the first, that is, as contraband, at the same time, but by a different route. In any case, the lands in the Southwest were something else, another kind of deal, perhaps also involving cunning, but not illegality, rather conjecture. What they had done before receiving these lands was to give credit of provisions and supplies to soldiers, officers, and battalions of the Rebel Army during the Wars of Independence, betting that they would be the victors one day and govern.
Since the patriots had no money, they bought the supplies and things with bonds and titles payable when they took power. The colonels and generals signed anything in order to have provisions and equipment. Trusting in an uncertain future (if Spain won they would lose everything), but betting on the insurgents and against the Spaniards, Echeverri and Santamaría had exchanged rice, sugar, corn, tobacco, hats, ammunition, riding gear, horseshoes, nails, bolts of fabric, waterproof material, boots, reins, and ropes for the Liberators’ promissory notes. Those promissory notes had accumulated and accumulated until turning into a pile of papers that seemed worthless, but which they kept conscientiously locked in an English strongbox at the back of the store. In Medellín everyone made fun of “Echeverri and Santamaría’s bonds,” which in the opinion of most had as much value as the faded yellowing paper of old newspapers, only good for ripening avocados and starting fires.
The old men, Don Alejo Santamaría and Don Gabriel Antonio Echeverri, however, kept those papers in their safe and said: “He who laughs last, laughs best.” Time seemed to prove them right when the Spaniards finally fled in defeat with their tail between their legs, and the Republic was installed in Bogotá. Every revolution leaves a country broke, and the first few years were times of poverty and uncertainty, with a new government that had no resources to consolidate the newborn nation. Furthermore, with the quantity of dead left by the battles, there was no workforce to undertake any enterprise whatsoever, neither private nor public. Patience was required. They had to wait for the next generation of children to grow up. For a long time those papers seemed impossible to redeem, for the State’s coffers were empty after the war and when anything was collected in taxes or exports there were much more urgent matters to resolve. But after many visits, much waiting and insistence with the provincial governors of Antioquia and with successive Treasury ministers, the central government decided to get those Antioqueño merchants off their backs by offering them some distant, forested, inhospitable, and apparently useless lands on the left bank of the River Cauca in exchange for the bonds. Those papers, they resolved, could be redeemed as title deeds to uncultivated lands, state property, in the southwest of the department, in the jungles on the western banks of the River Cauca, down toward the Chocó Valley and the Pacific Ocean. Depopulated lands, densely wooded, with abrupt and entangled mountains, where there were barely a couple of refuges for the much diminished Chamí or Katio Indians – decimated long before by the plagues of illnesses or massacred violently by the white conquistadores – and where not even hermit monks, runaway slaves, thieves, lunatics, or fugitive murderers had gone to hide.
After many comings and goings, those two related merchant families (daughters of one married to sons of the other), the Echeverris and the Santamarías, had come to receive useless land in exchange for the debts. Let’s make the best of a bad situation, they said: something’s better than nothing, since the government couldn’t pay cash for the bonds. In those dense woods on the other side of the Cauca, there was nothing but trees, wild beasts, birds, rushing torrents, bushes, snakes, butterflies, streams, and mosquitos. The climates were so variable that in the highest parts of the sierra the surprising frailejón or espeletia of the high plains grew, with its soft fur for the cold, and in the lowest parts grew cacao, source of the most delicious drink in the world, which used to be sipped only by gods before some local Prometheus stole the blessing for mankind.
EVA
I raised my head very slowly above the surface of the water, trying not to make any noise. My open mouth began to take deep gulps of air, over and over again, as fast as I could. Two, three, five, seven breaths. My heart pounded in my chest, like the biggest drum in a village band. I heard voices and insults coming from the house. Several beams of light swept over the lake. I ducked down again. I didn’t count anymore. I thought I should get as far away from the house as soon as possible and head for the other side of the lake. I couldn’t see anything under the water, even if I opened my eyes: a slimy, black, cold barrier that due to my rush to flee felt like a soup of oil through which my arms and legs made me advance very slowly, even though I was moving them with all my might. I pushed the water frenetically with my hands and feet. Again I was running out of air, in a few seconds, but I forced myself to stay under a little longer. I’ve exercised all my life, it’s been one of my passions, and I learned to swim in this very lake, and in the Cartama River, when I was five years old and Cobo taught me how. I thought it best to conserve some sort of order, and began to swim with broad arm sweeps and wide kicks, like a frog, rhythmically, with my best stroke.
If they had arrived through the backyard, then they must have come up the rails from the road. They’d left their cars below so they wouldn’t make any noise. They wanted to surprise me, but they hadn’t counted on Gaspar’s sensitive ears. Oh, if not for my dog, for the life of my dog, I wouldn’t have had time to get away. How many of them were there? Who? They had to be those Músicos who said we had to “sell or sell” La Oculta. I couldn’t manage another stroke, I’d faint if I didn’t take a breath. I broke the surface again. The air entered my body almost with a snort, like a death rattle. A beam of light flashed on my shoulder, and I ducked under as fast as I could, I heard a shot, but I didn’t feel any bullet nearby. I veered to the left, to mislead them, my heart throbbing in my temples, in my whole body, from the tips of my toes to the crown of my head. Another three dives and it would be more difficult for them to catch sight of me, but I had to fly, fly under the water. At least the beams from the flashlights let me know which direction I should escape toward; I had to flee from the light toward the darkness. Flee from all brightness, toward the blackest darkness.
I surfaced again for air, out of breath. I looked behind me. They’d turned on the lights in the house. Two men were standing on the dock and sweeping their flashlight beams over the surface of the lake, a bit haphazardly. “Old bitch, I hope you drown!” said one, loudly. I ducked underwater again. Now I was swimming with a more orderly rhythm, with the same technique as breaststroke, but underwater, letting the inertia of the kick propel me. I was going at a good rhythm and now I felt confident that I would reach the far shore without being seen. Even though the water was freezing, every once in a while I found the consolation of big patches of warm water, residues of the sun from the previous day. I could feel my blood pumping all through me, as if my whole body was a giant heart. I was tense from the fear and the effort. But that same beating heart was a message telling me: you’re alive, alive.
I thought of Gaspar, my dead dog. I’d had him for four years and loved him almost as much as one loves a child. He seemed intelligent, seemed to read my thoughts, and always adapted to my mood: cheerful if I was happy and melancholic if I was sad. Fierce and frightened if I was scared. That had been his last gesture of solidarity, the one that had saved me. They’d made a mistake by killi
ng him. He was a dog who barked, but had never bitten anybody. Also, Gaspar always swam with me, chasing me when I dove into the lake. If they hadn’t killed him, he would have followed me into the water and would have trailed me with his golden head always above the surface. I came up for air again. I was far enough away from the house. They were arguing and shouting at each other. Three more shots went off, a little further off, by the foreman’s house. I thought of Próspero and pressed my eyelids in horror. I began to swim, strongly, but silently, without letting my arms or feet break the surface, without stirring up any bubbles, trying not to leave a wake, the way turtles swim, almost imperceptibly, with their heads level with the water, lifting their mouths for an instant to breathe. The disorderly flashlight beams were now very weak by the time they reached where I was swimming, increasingly far from the house and closer to the weeds and guadua bamboo on the other side. The darkness was almost total, but I could see a couple of white posts in front of me at the edge of the water. I heard a fluttering of birds above me. I realized the cormorants and egrets that nested in the ceiba tree had been startled by my presence. I was nearing the edge. I let my feet hang down but I couldn’t touch bottom yet, the muddy, slimy bottom of the lake that had always seemed like a dark and disgusting, repugnant gelatin to me, but which tonight I wanted desperately to feel. I wanted to reach the edge, get out, run.
I couldn’t take any risks and I swam underwater again. I was very tired and wouldn’t have lasted half a minute. I tried to count to thirty. I had to come up for air at sixteen, exhausted. I saw they were walking around the edge of the lake looking for me with flashlights, but they’d gone the other way, the longer way around. The lake was elongated and it would take them a long time to get all the way around it. Besides, they’d run into dense vegetation by the shore of the lake. It was impossible to get through without a machete, you had to cut down thickets, thorny stems, lianas, and branches.
Finally my bare feet felt the muddy bottom; the shore was near. I had to feel my way, from the water, until I found the big rock where I sometimes went to sunbathe. From there a path rose through the guadua grove that would lead me to the dirt road that went up to Casablanca, our cousins’ farm. The cousins weren’t there, they hadn’t been back for months, out of precaution, but Rubiel, the foreman, would be there. Maybe I could ask him to hide me. I found the big, tall, round rock. I swam around it, climbed up one side and got out on the other, on dry land. I was shivering with cold, trembling with fear, breathing anxiously. The shouts and voices were very far away now. The beams of light were now illuminating the men more than the lake. There were people moving nervously on the porch of the house. The ones searching along the lakeshore had reached the edge of the thicket and kept shining their flashlights across the surface of the water. They didn’t see me. Thank goodness no one knows this lake better than I do. Thank goodness they tell so many stories about the people who’d drowned in it, and everyone’s frightened of its deep and dark waters, even in daylight, never mind at night. I felt the same spirit of the drowning victims of the lake protecting me. Those men couldn’t see me and hadn’t been able to bring themselves to dive into the water. I stepped on the prickly roots of the guadua bamboo and the pain in the soles of my feet rose to the nape of my neck, like an electric current. I wanted to yelp with pain, but I held it back. The branches and thorns tore my wet shirt, the thorns cut my arms and the leaves scraped my bare legs. I got as far as the wire fence and scooted beneath it. A barb ripped my shirt, in the middle of my back, but I didn’t notice that until much later. I reached the road and began to run uphill.
ANTONIO
The new owners of the mountains of Southwest Antioquia had no idea what to do with them. They were burdened with these enormous, empty lands that they couldn’t take any advantage of. First they looked for mines and salt deposits, without any success, for in that rough wilderness there didn’t seem to be an abundance of gold or silver or salt or coal. Nor did they find Indian tombs of much value, since all they contained were clay pots and bowls, with no metallic treasures, except occasionally a little idol so rusty it couldn’t be gold. The odd tomb raider, it seems, had found pieces worth plundering, but they’d just melted them down themselves, without telling anybody, to extract whatever gold might have been in the alloy. As for the ceramic bowls or clay idols, they lacked the beauty and mystery of those of other indigenous cultures, and besides, in those years almost nobody thought them of any worth, and indigenous graves were desecrated without the slightest consideration. The tomb raiders would just smash them, as if they were the devil’s work and might bring disgrace or bad luck, which is what they said about those idols, which were there to guard the eternal rest of the bones of the dead beside their few buried treasures. Sometimes, in the rocky ravines they would find mysterious inscriptions, the last signs of an intelligence razed by the whites, and finally erased by the sun, rain, and the elements.
They couldn’t get the wood off to market either, because there were no roads to transport it, and tracks were so difficult to create, since the land was all so rough, with its abrupt mountains, almost impenetrable, torrential rains for much of the year, and turbulent rivers full of stones, impossible to navigate. A single downpour was enough to turn any attempt at a trail into a bog. The government had no budget to invest in building roads that didn’t lead to a town, so they couldn’t count on any help there. At the same time, the proprietors, more merchants than landowners, had neither the means nor the knowledge of how to establish farms in those mountainous jungles. Furthermore, there was nowhere to contract farmhands or day laborers since nobody lived out in those solitudes.
If the inhabitants of Medellín used to mock Echeverri and Santamaría’s worthless papers and war bonds, now they laughed at their useless, good-for-nothing lands, which brought them no return whatsoever, producing only cicadas, heat, snakes, jaguars, and mosquitos. They were vast and fertile areas, but completely wild. All that land combined with a shortage of muscle power was the same as not having anything, and it wasn’t easy in Medellín to get anybody to leave the Villa de la Candelaria (which was starting to fancy itself a city, while still a miserable little town) for the inhospitable jungle. The city dwellers, rather than wielding a pickax or swinging a machete or digging with a shovel, preferred to watch the sunsets.
But the next generation of Echeverris and Santamarías was not ignorant. They knew they’d inherited the titles to great expanses of land, and a plan was ripening in their heads that would impose on the jungle terrain the much discussed notion in those days known as civilization. By the time their fathers died, without having received any real benefits from the lands they’d been granted, the next generation of Echeverris and Santamarías had come up with a plan that more resembled a dream. Often, on horseback and by mule, they had traveled over parts of their property. They had opened up some pastures and half marked out some trails up into the hills. They knew of the limitless beauty and saw in those empty, inhospitable mountains a potential future. Antioqueños tend to be prolific and it wasn’t unusual to find families of twelve, fifteen, or eighteen children, all fed on beans, rice, arepas, aguapanela, eggs, and a bit of bacon. The first thing they had to do was to attract young settlers to populate the uncultivated land; but those young people had been born in the republic and didn’t want to be subordinates or servants; they already had the consciences of free citizens and confidence in the dream of being able to progress thanks to their own efforts, without giving the strength of their arms to others. They had self-respect: they might be humble and poor, but they weren’t stupid, submissive, or obedient. If they were going to leave the little cities it was to have their own land, not to go and work as farmhands, sharecroppers, or tenant farmers for others. The slaves had not yet been freed, but their wombs were liberated, and black children born free could not now be enslaved; they were already talking of manumitting all of them.
PILAR
I never doubted that Alberto was and woul
d forever be the love of my life. The first and only. He lived in the same neighborhood as us, Laureles, three blocks from our house, and we met one Easter Week, in the afternoon, when we were in the middle of the Holy Thursday procession and we got caught in a downpour. I don’t know why, but whenever something important is going to happen in my life there’s always a downpour. I was twelve and he was fifteen years old. We went to the processions not to pray but to flirt; some boys did too. I was with a big group of girlfriends, and some of them, as we walked along behind the statues of the saints, poked the boys with a long file they had in a lace kerchief. Not me, I never poked anybody, I just watched and laughed. At that age and in those years masses and processions were places to meet friends and find a boyfriend; religion was also a pretext for all of us to get together.
Toño says that Alberto and I were engaged ever since our first communion. Such an exaggeration! It’s not true, but almost. When it started raining hard all of a sudden, some friends and I ran to take shelter under the eaves of a house, so we wouldn’t get wet. Some boys came running up to the same place and he squeezed in beside me. I didn’t know his name, but I looked him over from head to toe. Even though we were neighbors, we’d never seen each other before that day. He was handsome, tall and well built, the kind of boy who plays soccer and rides a bike and runs around. He was wearing a suit and tie, which was the style then, I can still see him. The suit was gray, and you could tell he was very strong because of the lines of his muscles in his shoulders and arms. He had lovely hair, a sort of sun-bleached blond, combed up in a high, striking hairstyle, a bit like Elvis Presley’s. The usual thing was to wear new clothes during Easter Week, but I didn’t have a new dress that time, plus I’d gotten rained on in the downpour. Since Mamá hadn’t been home I’d put on a little white dress with red edging, which wasn’t suitable for processions, since it wasn’t what you’d call discreet, much less when it was wet. But he, that boy, wasn’t looking at me. He was looking straight ahead, distractedly, as if thinking about the rain. He didn’t even notice me. I on the other hand couldn’t take my eyes off him, like someone looking at a statue in a museum. I whispered in the ear of the girl beside me, Libia Henao: