The Informers

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  "We were in Colombia, an ocean away from Germany, and one fine day we woke up and weren't Germans anymore. You don't know what that means until your passport expires. Because then, what are you? You're not from here, but you're not from there either. If something bad happens to you, if someone does something to you, no one's going to help you. There is no state to defend you. Wait, I'm going to show you something." There is a pause in the recording, while Sara looks among her papers for a letter my father wrote to her from Bogota dated with the inscription: 1 Av 5728. "The Jewish date was another gesture typical of that pedant of a father of yours," Sara said. "There was no way to explain to him that religion had also gradually disappeared from my life, and never came to exist in those of my children. I don't even remember what month that was, or what year."

  "Can I keep it?" says my voice.

  "That depends."

  "Depends on what?"

  "Are you going to put it in the book?"

  "I don't know, Sara. Maybe, maybe not."

  "You can keep it," she said, "if you don't put it in."

  "Why?"

  "Because I know Gabriel. He would not be amused to see himself in a book without anyone asking his permission."

  "But if I need . . ."

  "No, no, none of that. You can take it if you promise. If not, the letter stays with me."

  I decided to keep it. I have it here.

  If I were you I wouldn't worry too much [my father wrote to Sara]. A person is from wherever they feel best, and roots are for plants. Everyone knows that, don't they? Ubi bene ibi patria, all those ready-made sayings. (Still, ready-made by the Romans, so they can at least qualify as antiques.) Speaking for myself, I've never even left this country, and sometimes I think I never will. And I wouldn't mind, you know. Lots of things are happening here; more than that, here is where things happen; and although I'm sometimes disappointed by the provincialism of the South American Athens-in-its-dreams, I tend to think that here human experience has a special weight. It's like a chemical density. Things people say seem to matter here as much as what they do, I suppose partly because of a reason that is quite stupid when looked at closely: everything is yet to be constructed. Here words matter. Here you can still shape your surroundings. It's a terrible power, isn't it?

  I've read it several times, I'm reading it now, while I write, and I read it that night, just before Sara called me to warn me that my father's fall from grace was just starting. My father, the man who had never left this country and who never would, the man who seemed to give as much importance to words as to deeds. What would he have thought if he had seen what I was seeing on television? Would he have regretted what he wrote on 1 Av 5728? Would he have forgotten it on purpose? For me, innocent reader of that letter, it was obvious that my father, when he wrote it, must have thought of Deresser, and that would undoubtedly be one of the many inventories that I should draw up, starting with the contributions of Sara's testimony: every phrase spoken by my father, every offhand and seemingly trivial comment, every reaction to someone else's comment, would soon be on a list, the list of moments when my father was thinking of Deresser and, especially, of what he'd done to him. It's a terrible power, isn't it? Yes, Dad, it's terrible, you would know, you were remembering what you'd done, what your words had caused. (But what words, and how spoken? To whom in exchange for what? In what circumstances? How had my father played his part as informer? And I'll never know, because there were no witnesses.) And now, publicly, you are paying for your words.

  So it was on television. It wasn't by means of a written interview, as Sara had believed at first and had made me believe, that Angelina was going to begin the task of bringing down, with the collaboration of the people of Bogota's hunger for sensationalism, my father's reputation; it was not a magazine that required her services, but one of those programs of rigorously local interest, of intense, late-night journalism centered on Bogota that are now so common, but in the year 1992 were still a novelty for the citizens of the illustrious capital. Some of my colleagues, I should admit, succumbed to these first programs, real journalists who managed to acquit themselves decently with a keyboard, good investigative reporters and acceptable writers, who instead ended up perpetrating little theatrical pieces for two actors (a presenter and a guest), filmed with a couple of cameras (to keep costs down) and in front of a black backdrop (to accentuate the dramatics). They were a mixture of forensic interrogation and show-business interview; the guests could be--in fact, had been--a con gressman accused of embezzlement, a beauty queen accused of being a single mother, a race car driver accused of using drugs, a city councilor accused of links to drug traffickers: all from Bogota, originally or by adoption, all susceptible to being recognized as symbols of the city. That was the program: a space to debate unproved accusations, to debunk more or less sacred figures, which, as everyone knows, is one of the Bogota viewing audience's favorite pastimes. If my father were alive, I thought, he would occupy the place of the guest: a moralist accused of betrayal. In his place was Angelina Franco, ex-lover and witness for the prosecution, the woman who had attended the fall. The dramatic plot--from glory to disgrace, all that and romance, too--was quite clear; the journalistic potential would have been obvious even to a novice, and you could almost feel the waves of the electromagnetic spectrum vibrating with Bogota's thrill at the prospect of the haughty being dishonored, the arrogant brought down a peg or two.

  Angelina was sitting in a swivel chair, facing the presenter and separated from him by a modern office table, an inelegant slab that might have been particleboard or simply covered plastic; the presenter was Rafael Jaramillo Arteaga, a journalist known for his aggression (he would say his frankness) and for his lack of scruples when it came to making damaging revelations (he would say exposing hidden truths). The set was designed to intimidate: the illusion of mysterious, hidden, illegitimate things. There was Angelina, confident and complicit, dressed in one of her bright, straining blouses--this time it was fuchsia--and a skirt that seemed to be troubling her, because all the time she had to keep adjusting it, lifting up her hips and tugging at the hem. The camera was focused on the interviewer. "Not everyone remembers one of the most unclas sifiable, most paradoxical episodes of our recent history," he said. "I'm referring to the Proclaimed List of Certain Blocked Nationals, regrettably famous among historians, regrettably forgotten by the wider public. During the Second World War, the U.S. State Department issued blacklists with the aim of blocking Axis funds in Latin America. But everywhere, not just in Colombia, the system lent itself to abuses, and in more than one case the just paid for sinners. Today we present the story of one of those abuses. This, esteemed viewers, is the story of a betrayal." Cut to commercials. When they return, a photo of my father appears, the same one that had appeared in El Tiempo with his obituary. A voice off-camera says, "Gabriel Santoro was a lawyer and prestigious professor here in our capital. For more than two decades he devoted his time to teaching techniques of public speaking to other lawyers as part of a program at the Supreme Court of Justice. Last year he died in a tragic traffic accident on the Bogota-Medellin highway. He had traveled to the city of eternal spring to spend the holidays in the company of his lady friend, Angelina Franco, native of that city." Then Angelina's face appeared on the screen with her name in white letters. "But as soon as they arrived, Angelina Franco realized that her companion had not told her the whole truth. She has now found out the truth and is here to tell it." And that she did: she told. She told without stopping, she told as if her life depended on it, she told as if there were someone under the table pointing a gun at her. Among the things that came out of the speakers--that dialogue between the sniper and his own rifle--there was a lot of rubbish, I supposed, a lot of barefaced invention, but there was nothing that would not help me devise a portrait of my father's lover, because even lies, even a person's rudest inventions with respect to herself, tell us valuable things about her, perhaps more valuable than the most honest truths. Transparenc
y is the worst deception in the world, my father used to say: one is the lies one pronounces. Any journalist learns that after conducting two interviews, any lawyer after two cross-examinations, and especially, any orator after two speeches. I thought all these things; nevertheless, during the elongated hour the program lasted, the sixty minutes, including the advertisements, of the beating and careful defenestration of the memory of my father, my perplexity did not cease for one second. Why was she doing it? While Angelina told what she was telling, while she looked occasionally toward the back of the set, fascinated by the blue neon lights that formed the program's name, I could only concentrate on that question: Why was she doing this to my father?

  I would have liked to have known then what I later found out. Nothing new, nothing original: it happens to us all, and it happens all the time. To understand that little piece of theater, the fall from grace of a semipublic figure, the disenchanted physiotherapist's impromptu, I would first have to understand other things, and those things, as often happens, would only arrive later, when they were less useful or less compelling, because life is not as orderly as it seems in a book. Now that I know what I know, my question seems almost naive. The reasons Angelina had for doing what she was doing were no different, no more elegant or subtle or bookish or sophisticated than anyone else's, by which I mean to say that her motivations responded to the same concerns we all have, no matter how elegant and subtle and sophisticated we consider ourselves. My formulation had been, Why was she doing this to my father? but I could have asked, simply, Why was she doing this? She was doing it because a man (an anonymous man, whichever; if it hadn't been my father, it would have been whoever took his place) came to embody for her everything in her life that was dreadful and odious, and she wanted revenge. She was doing it out of revenge, a posthumous revenge, the benefit of which only Angelina could perceive. She was doing it because my father condensed, involuntarily, every little tragedy Angelina had suffered in her life. How do I know? I know because she told me herself. She gave me the information, and I, out of some sort of already inevitable addiction, agreed to receive it.

  But first I had to put up with more blows: these came from the screen, from the interviewer and the interviewee. I have reconstructed them as follows.

  Was she aware of Gabriel Santoro's reputation?

  No. Well, when Angelina met him, Gabriel was tucked up in bed like a baby, and that doesn't enhance anybody's appearance, even the president would look diminished and common reduced to pajamas and bedclothes. Angelina knew, however (or rather in time she gradually came to know), that her patient was a very cultured person, but cultured in a good way, able to explain anything with great patience. With her, in any case, he had a lot of patience: he would explain things to her two or three times if necessary, and in this Angelina saw the mark of a good teacher. Of course, he had already retired when they met, but one never stops being a teacher, or at least that's what he said. But prestige, local fame, she'd only found out about all that after he died. Gabriel didn't talk about those things; when they spent a whole evening together in his apartment, for example, Angelina would snatch up those prizes they'd given him one by one and ask him for explanations. And what's this one for? And this one? That's how she found out about the Capitolio speech, that's how she heard about all those strange things Gabriel said about Bogota. That's how she found out who Plato was and that Bogota was four hundred and fifty years old. That's how she found out many people had thought that speech was very good and that Gabriel could have been a very important judge if he'd accepted the offers. Anyway, that didn't mean he was an important person.

  But she did know that Santoro was going to be decorated?

  Yes, but that didn't mean much to her. She didn't know what sorts of people got decorated, or why. For her, the medal was something that happened at his funeral, one more ritual, something false that everybody agreed to take as true. Just like the things the priest said.

  How did they get romantically involved?

  The same way anybody did. They were both very lonely people, and lonely people are interested in other lonely people and try to see if, with other lonely people, they can be less lonely. It's very simple. Gabriel was a very simple person, when all was said and done. He was interested in the same things everybody was interested in: being recognized for what he'd done well, being forgiven for what he'd done wrong, and being loved. Yes, that most of all, being loved.

  How did she find out about what he'd done in his youth?

  He told her all about it himself. But that was in Medellin already, when everything seemed to be going well, when it didn't seem likely that telling her old stories could affect the relationship they had. And it did affect her, of course, although right now Angelina couldn't explain things step-by-step, who can do that, see the chain of decisions that end up tipping a relationship into the shit? It had been like this: Angelina had invited him to her city, she wanted to show it to him, take him around, partly out of the impulse lovers get to entrust their old life to the other, and partly because Gabriel very rarely got out of Bogota, and in the last twenty years hadn't been farther than four hours away by car. In a cultured person, that seemed almost an aberration to Angelina. And one day, after they'd been going out together for several weeks--they said going out although the scene of their encounters was never outside but divided between his apartment and hers, two shoeboxes--Angelina came up with the idea and presented him with a gift-wrapped manila envelope adorned with a red fake-taffeta bow. In the envelope was a suggested itinerary: the thick stroke of a black felt-tip pen that roughly imitated the road, marked with perfect round points set out as a Tour of Colombia. Stage 1: Siberia traffic circle. Fill up the car and have a kiss. Stage 2: Medellin. I show you my parents' house and we have a kiss. Gabriel accepted immediately, asked his son if they could borrow his car, and one Friday in December, very early, they set off. At a prudent speed and making all the stops that Gabriel's health required, it took them less than ten hours to get there.

  What happened in Medellin?

  At first everything was going fine, with no problems. Gabriel insisted they stay in a hotel, as long as it wasn't too expensive--after all, what good was his pension if he couldn't treat them to a bit of luxury every once in a while--and the first night they crossed the street and ate dinner in a tourist restaurant decked out like a mule drivers' canteen: consciously down-to-earth and chaotic. The next day they crossed the city to look for the house Angelina had left at the age of eighteen, and found, on the first floor, where the living room used to be, a shop selling woolen stockings, and on the second, where the room she'd shared with her brother had been, a secondhand clothing storeroom. There were three little alleyways formed by long aluminum tubes that served as racks, and hanging from the tubes were sweaters, coats, jackets, sequined dresses, overalls, frock coats for hire, and even fancy dress cloaks, smelling of dust and mothballs in spite of their plastic covers. And so, talking about empty clothes, blouses stiff with so much starch, coats hanging like carcasses in a butcher's shop, they returned to the hotel, tried to make love but Gabriel couldn't, and Angelina thought of the normal reasons, the combination of age and fatigue, but it never occurred to her that Gabriel might be nervous for reasons that had nothing to do with his physical state or hers, or that by then his anxiety (anxiety about what he had planned) was so intense as to spoil a few minutes of good sex. That was when he talked to her of Enrique Deresser. He didn't call him that, because she, of course, couldn't care less about the name of this long-ago friend of the sixty-something man lying in bed with her, naked and now revealing secrets she hadn't asked to know. Gabriel told her the whole thing, told her what had happened forty years before, of his obsession to be forgiven; and so, with a politician's ease, talking the way most people breathe (but he was breathing with difficulty and pain), like someone shooing a fly away with a hand (even if it was an incomplete hand), he told her that his friend Enrique lived in Medellin, had been there for more than twent
y years, and he, out of cowardice, had never decided to do what he was doing now: contemplating the possibility of leaping across forty years to talk to a man whose life he'd ruined.

  What did she feel at that moment?

  On the one hand, curiosity, a frivolous curiosity, quite similar to what anyone would have felt in her place. What was in his friend's head? Why hadn't he got in touch with Gabriel in all these years? Was there that much hatred, that much resentment? The reasons the reverse hadn't occurred were more obvious: according to what Gabriel had told her, at the beginning of the 1970s, when he found out his friend was in Medellin, he felt an urge to look him up, but he was scared. His wife was still alive then, and his only son was about ten; whether it was reasonable or not, Gabriel felt that approaching Enrique was the most dangerous thing he could do, something like staking the lives of his whole family on a game of blackjack. Of course he wasn't betting on anyone's life, but rather on something as personal as his own image. But she couldn't judge him for that. A person gets used to the way other people look at him--and everything contained in that look: admiration or respect, commiseration or pity--and doing something to change that look was impossible for ninety percent of humanity. And Gabriel was human, after all. Well anyway, at that moment and after those explanations the naked man said to her, "I've never dared to do it, and now I'm finally going to do it. And it's thanks to you. I owe it to you. You're the one who gives me this strength, I'm sure of that. I wouldn't do it if I weren't with you. This is what I've been waiting for all this time, Angelina. I've been waiting for your support and your company, everything no one else could give me." Yes, Gabriel said all that, he foisted those responsibilities on her.