It was the last time I spoke to Angelina. At Christmas I received a horrendous card from her with a greeting in English and a Santa Claus surrounded by glittery frost. Inside the card was a single phrase, "With my best wishes for the festive season," and her signature, halfway between infantile and baroque. There was also a piece of paper folded in half. It was a newspaper clipping cut out by a meticulous pair of scissors: a color photograph of a flower-covered chair. On the back, carnations, daisies, geraniums, and hibiscus formed a figure, vague at first, which after an instant became clearer. It was the dead soccer player. Over his head, in three florid arches, was written:
HEAVEN IS FOR HUMBLE AND BRAVE LADS
LIKE ANDRES ESCOBAR.
And in the blank space in the margin:
A little memento of our last telephone encounter. 7.19.94. P.S. Let's see if we can see each other live and in person one of these days.
I was moved that she'd thought of me when she saw the photo, and also that she'd gone to the trouble of getting a pair of scissors and cutting it out and buying a card and sticking the photo in it and putting it all in an envelope and putting it in the post, the kind of everyday conscientiousness that's always been beyond me. Yes, I was grateful for the gesture; however, I never called to tell her so, nor did I ever make any attempt to see her live and in person, and Angelina disappeared from my life as so many others have: due to my inability to make contact, or to maintain it, due to my involuntary reluctance, due to that terrible ineptitude that prevents me from carrying on a sustained and constant interest--an interest that goes beyond the exchange of information, the questions I ask and the replies I expect and the articles I write with those replies--in people who appreciate me and whom I, in spite of myself, also appreciate. Only at a prudent distance can I maintain an interest in other people. If Sara hadn't died, I've thought on several occasions, we would have grown apart, too, little by little, the way the waters subsided in the civil code. It was one of my father's favorite articles, which he'd memorized as a student and tended to repeat--no, recite--as if the pomposity of Don Andres Bello, that nineteenth-century drafter of the code, was the best example of prose in the Spanish language; and now what is happening to me is that the gradual and imperceptible subsidence of the waters is so similar to the attachments in my life as to transform my life into the exposed land, which in the article is land gained by the proprietor, and in my life not so much. The gradual and imperceptible subsidence of the waters, that's the alluvium. Thus am I gradually left alone, thus have I been left alone.
Around four in the afternoon, after Puerto Triunfo and La Penuela and the smell of cement and the Cave of the Condor, I arrived in Medellin. In spite of the precise directions in the letter (the description of an Ecopetrol station, of a fried-chicken restaurant, of the shop on the corner), I had to ask people in the street a couple of times to find the gated community where Enrique Deresser lived. There were three or four gray buildings lacking any decoration whatsoever, as if the architects had decided that only ascetics would live there or maybe people used to spending as little time at home as possible. In reality they looked like prefabricated constructions: there were too many windows and too few people looking out of them onto the patio, because that's what was between the buildings, a patio, a patch of cement where a couple of little girls were playing hopscotch (the lines drawn in pink chalk, the numbers in white). Trying to guess which building might be Deresser's, and whether I'd be able to keep an eye on my car from the window, I parked in the street and entered the estate through a little waist-high gate, without any security guard or doorman asking me where I was going, or requesting I leave a document, or phoning up to announce me. There was a little hut, but there was nobody in it. One of its windows was broken in the corner, and someone had tried to fix it with newspaper and insulating tape; the door had disappeared. The girls stopped hopping to look at me, not sidelong, not trying to hide the fact, but staring straight at me, scrutinizing me as if my evil intentions were obvious. I felt, although I didn't look up to confirm it, that all the women peering out of the windows were looking at me, too. I found the building (or the interior, as it was described in the letter: interior B, apartment 501) and noticed that it had been a long time since I'd walked up so many flights of stairs, when I had to stop on the fourth-floor landing to catch my breath, leaning against the wall, doubled over with my hands on my knees, so as not to arrive at Deresser's door panting, so as not to greet him with a sticky and sweaty handshake.
And then, I don't know why, I began to feel like I'd come to take an exam and hadn't studied enough. Since anything at all might be waiting for me in Deresser's apartment, it was reasonable to assume that anything at all might be expected of me; I found myself wishing I had the folders of documents I'd relied on for the writing of The Informers in the backseat of my car. I felt vulnerable; if Deresser asked me a difficult question, Sara couldn't whisper the answer to me. Why did you write this, what's it based on, who are your witnesses, are you speculating? And I wouldn't be able to respond, because I had only written a report, while he had lived it: once again the superiority of living men over us, the simple talkers, the storytellers; we who, after all, devote ourselves to the cowardly and parasitic trade of telling other people's life stories, even if those other people are as close as a father or a good friend. When I was a child (I would have been about ten), I entered a story in a competition at school. I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember that we'd had to read Leaf Storm in Spanish class around then, and I thought it would be nice, or maybe just pretty, to put a dotted line under each paragraph in my story like in my edition of the novel, and that was enough to make the teacher accuse me of cheating and dishonesty for having entered a story in the competition that an adult had written. It took me many years to understand that the dotted lines had given the story an inadvisably professional appearance; that imitating the outward signs of literary artifice had made it more persuasive, more sophisticated, and all that together had provoked the skepticism of an embittered woman. But that wasn't the important thing, but rather the impotence--that wasted word--that overcame me as I realized it was impossible to prove my authorship of the story, since all the proofs were imaginary. I feared the same thing would happen to me with Deresser. For an instant I lost all memory of my investigations, and no longer felt sure of what I'd written. I thought: Did I make it all up? Did I exaggerate, manipulate, did I falsify reality and the lives of others? And if it was like that, why had I done it? Of course, not for my own benefit, since my father's disgrace, and that of my own name, had been confirmed in my book, although for me the confession had other and quite different effects. You're dishonest, Gabriel, a cheat. But what had been my crime? How would I be punished? Would the best strategy be to keep lying? What if Deresser read my mind? What if just by opening the door he became aware of the fraud?
But it wasn't Deresser who opened the door. It was a young man, or in any case younger than me--at least, that was what his adolescent clothes suggested: he was wearing a T-shirt, tracksuit bottoms, and running shoes, but it was obvious that he wasn't going jogging nor had he been--who shook my hand and made me follow him as if we already knew each other. He was one of those people able to skip over conventions and be at ease in a matter of seconds without seeming deferential or cloying. More than that: this man was curt, too severe for his age, almost hostile. He told me, in this order, to follow him and to sit down, that they'd been waiting for me, that he'd bring me a Coke straightaway, that they had no ice, he was very sorry, and that his name was Sergio, actually Sergio Andres Felipe Lazaro, but everyone called him Sergio, not even Sergio Andres, which would be normal in Medellin, where everyone used two names, so Sergio was his name and that's what I could call him, too. And after all this he paused to explain what was missing in his speech: he was Enrique Deresser's son, a pleasure, delighted to meet me. He was, however, obviously not delighted with my visit, far from it; meeting me did not actually give him any pleasure
whatsoever.
Enrique Deresser's son. Old man Konrad's grandson. Sergio went to the kitchen to get me a Coke while all the laws of genetics crowded into my head. He had black eyes, black hair, thick black eyebrows; but he also had the swimmer's shoulders and small, thin mouth and perfect nose I'd always assigned to my mental image of Enrique Deresser, the seducer of the Hotel Nueva Europa, the Don Juan of Duitama. What Sergio hadn't inherited, it would seem, was his father's and his grandfather's elegance: his diction and way of moving were those of a neighborhood boxer, rough and somewhat coarse, as frank as they were crass. He was not unintelligent, that was more than apparent, but everything about him (it was obvious just watching him move, bring a glass, put it on the table, and sit), down to the most banal gestures, seemed to say: I don't stop to think, I act. "So, you're Santoro's son, the one who writes books," he said to me. We were beside the window that overlooked the patio. The window was open but covered by wisps of curtains that had been white in better days, so the light entered as if through translucent plastic, except when a breeze separated the curtains; then we could see the gray buildings across the way and a chunk of blue sky reflected in their windows. The armchair where Sergio had sat down was covered in a white sheet. The sofa where I was sitting didn't have a sheet, or it had been removed before my arrival.
"Yes, that's me," I said. "I'm really looking forward to meeting your dad."
"Him, too."
"I was very pleased that he wrote to me."
"Me, on the other hand, not so much," he said. And since I couldn't think of a way to answer that immediately, he added, "Shall I tell you the truth? If it were up to me, I would have torn that letter up. But he sent it on the sly."
I wondered if it was hostility in his voice or just discourtesy. His tracksuit bottoms had zippers at the ankles; the zippers were half open and revealed the thin gray socks of an office worker. "Is Enrique here?" I asked. "Is your dad home?"
His head answered no before his voice did.
"He went out early. He wasn't sure when you were going to come. Well, the truth is I told him you weren't going to come."
"Why?"
"Because I thought you weren't going to come. Why else?"
His logic was impeccable. "And is he coming back?" I said.
"No, sometimes he stays out to sleep under a bridge. Of course he's coming back." Pause. "You know what? I've read your books, both of them."
"Oh good," I said in my friendliest voice. "And what did you think of them?"
"The first one I read for my dad. He gave it to me and said have a look at this to see what things were like back then. But he didn't tell me that lady had been a friend of his, or anything. The rest he told me after, so as not to influence me. At first it was as if it had nothing to do with him, you see what I mean?"
"No. Explain it to me."
"My old man's a fair guy, he weighs everything, you see? That's how he wanted me to read the book. And later he told me the rest."
"About the lists . . ."
"Everything. All that shit, didn't spare me any of it. So, is that true what you put in this new book?"
"Which part?"
"That when you wrote the first one you didn't know anything. Is that true or pure shit?"
"It's true, Sergio," I said. "Everything is true. There's nothing that's not true in the book."
"There is, don't exaggerate."
"I'm not exaggerating. There's nothing."
"Oh no? So what's all that shit about my dad living in Cuba or Panama and I don't know where else? That's a total lie, yes or no? Or do you think we're in Panama sitting here?"
"That was speculation, not a lie. They're different things."
"No, don't get clever with me, bro. All that stuff you wrote about my dad, all that about the wife and daughter, and how he fights with the daughter, all that's pure shit. Down to the last word, yes or no? I don't know why people do that kind of thing or what for. If you don't know something, go find out, don't make it up." He stared at me with his mouth half open, as if sizing me up, the way boxers or gang members size each other up. "You don't remember me, I can see that."
"Have we met?"
"Weird, eh? Me, I remember you perfectly. I guess we're not the same."
"That's for sure," I said.
"I notice people more," he said. "You, on the other hand, do nothing but contemplate your own navel."
It was him. It was Sergio Deresser, the son of Enrique and the grandson of Konrad (that genealogy was stuck to his voice and his image, his running shoes, his tracksuit bottoms). It was him. Seven years ago, after his father, unfortunately, had given him a book called A Life in Exile to read and had told him This book's about me, though the book didn't mention him a single time; after he'd talked to him about a story of private cruelties--because such extreme cowardice is cruel, such drastic disloyalty as what Gabriel Santoro put into practice against his best friend and, to be exact, against a whole family who loved him, in whose house he'd spent more than one night, whose food he had eaten--after having got used to the transformation of his own surname and beginning to look at his father's life with fresh eyes, after all that, he ended up catching the early bus to Bogota one day, and when he arrived he'd gone into the only phone booth there was in the station. After three calls he'd found out where the new Supreme Court was and the time of Doctor Santoro's seminar. And he went to hear him: he needed to know what the guy was like, if the treachery was visible on his face, if it was true, as his father said, that he was missing a hand; he needed to see whether his voice trembled when he spoke, if he seemed convinced, after the pathetic speech he'd spewed out in front of the most respectable people in the country, of being the great citizen everyone talked about. And when he got there, well, what he saw was a washed-up, pitiful old man exercising an authority he no longer had, saying things too big for him, moving around with the self-confidence of a con man, as if he weren't the same person who'd pushed a whole family over the edge. And then the washed-up old man had begun to fabricate his own life, was there anything more ridiculous, was there any more complete or more convincing form of humiliation? "You know the rest," Sergio said to me. "Or do you forget things, too?" I hadn't forgotten. I'd spent nine days, or perhaps more, visiting my father's classroom, seeing him without being seen, and one of those days, that simple thing happened: Sergio arrived from Medellin and sat a few seats from where I was, maybe despising me in silence, praying he could one day let me know, then notice and feel his disdain. No, Sergio Andres Felipe Lazaro, I don't forget things, they simply change over time; and we who remember, we who devote ourselves to remembering as a way of life, are obliged to keep pace with memory, which never stays still, just as happens when we walk beside someone faster.
"How did you recognize me?"
"I didn't recognize you, your book doesn't have a photo. I guessed, bro, I guessed. I didn't even imagine you'd be there. That occurred to me when your dad ran out, running as if he was shit-scared, as if he knew someone could stand up and say, All that's pure shit and you know it. I thought of doing that. I thought of standing up and shouting 'You old bastard, old traitor.' And it was like he'd read my mind. Did your dad know how to do those things?"
"What things?"
"Telepathy, things like that. He didn't, did he? No, he didn't, telepathy doesn't exist, and that's why you have to invent shit to write books instead of finding out the truth, and that's why your dad didn't know that I was getting the urge to shout, 'You old traitor,' at him. A person can't read another person's mind, bro. If your dad could, he never would have gone to give that lecture. But there he was. And of course, he went running out as if he'd read my mind, and that was when someone said that's his son, what a shame, poor guy. I went out after you. I couldn't resist the urge to see your face."
"And you saw it."
"Of course I did. You were shit-scared, too. Just like now, if you don't mind my saying so."
"Did you tell Enrique?"
"No. What for?
He wouldn't have liked that. He would have given me the same old sermon: there are things a real man never does," said Sergio, but he didn't say what things he was referring to. "We would have fought and that's not what I was after, right? I don't like fighting with my dad, I have respect for my old man, for your information. I can't say the same for you, brother."
"Can you get me another Coke?"
"But of course, all you have to do is ask. That's what I'm here for, to wait on you."
He went back into the kitchen. It had a swinging door, and through the little rectangular window I managed to see him setting the glass down on the Formica table and opening an old orangish refrigerator and taking out of the white light (the image was almost magical, Sergio transformed for an instant into a sorcerer from a fairy tale) a plastic bottle. He did everything so lightly that I thought: He's enjoying himself. He's playing with me, and he's having fun, because he's been waiting for this moment for a long time. If I could get close to his face, I thought, I'd see him smiling; if I could hear his thoughts, this is what I'd hear: A little while longer. Ten minutes, half an hour, a little while longer. I was easy prey; I hadn't tried to defend myself; maybe I didn't know how, and nothing could be worse in Sergio's hunting ground, that was obvious. I thought of telling him, I know what's going on here, you want to keep your rage intact, you don't want anyone to touch it, and if I talk to your dad maybe your rage won't be so justified. What if your dad and I end up as friends? What if he likes me? That'd be a problem for you, wouldn't it? These tantrums are important in your life. You're not going to let someone take them away, and that's why you're receiving me like this. You're a genetic case, recessive indignation. Then Sergio came back with my glass full to the brim (the surface of the liquid sparkled, bubbled, gurgled), sat down opposite me, and invited me to drink. "What's the matter, too much of a surprise? Well, at least you know who you're dealing with now. I'm no fucking coward, I meet you head-on, I answer back. That's how it is, get it? This has to do with me, not just with my dad. He asked you to come but not so you can start writing more lies. It's to clear up a couple of things. It's so you won't talk about what you don't know about."
The Informers Page 25