However, the signs that were getting through to us were not favorable. The United States government had reaffirmed its refusal to deal with the terrorists; its response to the abduction of its citizens had been to increase military aid to Colombia. When they had first been abducted, I’d hoped that their presence would accelerate the release of all the hostages, as Joaquin Gomez had suggested. I’d reacted the same way my companions had when I myself had been kidnapped. But over time we had to face the facts: Their capture had made the hostage situation even more complicated. We all suspected that they would be the last ones to regain their freedom, and each of us liked to think that our fate was in no way connected to theirs. This idea had taken hold. From time to time, one of my American companions would say, “At least you’ve got France fighting for you. But nobody back home even knows what has happened to us.”
Jo Rosano’s visit to Colombia gave them courage. Everyone agreed that she was the only one moving things forward on the side of the Americans. My mother and Jo Rosano had met, immediately falling into each other’s arms. Somehow or other they managed to make themselves understood, because Jo didn’t speak Spanish and Mom’s English was a distant memory from a stay in Washington with Papa at the very beginning of their marriage. But they were both of Italian origin, and that helped.
Marc came during the week, at dawn, and we sat down together to listen to the messages on La Carrilera, hoping to hear Jo, to no avail. What little information we had came from Mom—they’d had dinner together.
They’d met to plan their joint action. Jo had come away frustrated from her meeting with the American ambassador. He’d been curt and ill-mannered, she said. Mom told me in her message that she wasn’t surprised. “When I went to see him to ask for his support for the ‘humanitarian agreement,’43 he replied that it wasn’t a priority for his government, that for them the hostages were as good as terminally ill patients and there was nothing they could do except wait!” Mom was audibly outraged. Marc was next to me. We had our ears by the radio and listened together to what Mom was saying. But he didn’t understand everything, because she spoke quickly and Marc’s Spanish was still very basic. I was relieved, since I didn’t want him to understand everything I’d heard.
“Mom says that your mother came to have dinner with her, and they’re going to take joint action. Your mother saw the American ambassador.”
“And?”
“And nothing. She will surely call in on Saturday on Las Voces del Secuestro. It’s very long. With a bit of luck, they’ll be on early and we won’t have to wait all night.”
I dozed off between ten o’clock and midnight. I was terrified I wouldn’t wake up in time. Without a watch, I had gotten into the habit of using the preceding programs as a guide. I recognized the one that was just before our broadcast, an hour of tango music. So I knew then that I had to go on listening, and I pinched myself, hard, to keep myself awake.
That evening, like every Saturday, I roused from an uneasy sleep and switched on the radio. I hunted for the tango station in the dark, Marc had not come over yet. I thought I was awake. But without realizing it, I fell back into a deep sleep.
Marc arrived later. He could hear the whispering of the radio and thought I was listening to the broadcast, stretched out on my bunk, and that I would hand him the radio if his mother called in. So he waited, sitting in the dark, for hours.
I awoke with a start. They had just given the time on the radio. It was two o’clock in the morning. I had missed half the program! I quickly got up and gave out a cry when I saw Marc quietly waiting. I was confused.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“But I thought you were listening to the program!”
“We must have missed all the calls.”
I was so angry with myself. We sat back down, dejected, our heads close together and the little radio in the middle. The messages followed one another every two minutes. I listened attentively in the hope of finding a way to determine whether Mom had already called in. The program was slow, and participants complained that some families would hog the broadcast as if it belonged to them. Herbin Hoyos, the director of the program, apologized profusely and asked those who were waiting to prepare telegraphic messages to make the broadcast go faster. He named the people still to come: Mom and Jo were at the head of his list!
Marc was drowsy. He’d been waiting for so long that he could hardly keep his eyes open. I squeezed his arm. “Hang in there. They’ll be on in a few minutes.”
And sure enough, Mom’s voice came on, with a lot of interference but still comprehensible. She was emotional. She informed me of an upcoming trip to Holland, where she would be receiving a prize in my name. Then the message was interrupted and someone else began to speak. We had to wait a long time until it was Jo’s turn. Marc practically fell asleep on his chair. I roused him when his mother came on the air. Marc took hold of himself, but his entire body was stiff with emotion as he clutched the radio. I took his other hand and caressed it. It was one of Mom’s gestures, and I did it instinctively to reassure him, to make him understand that I was there for him, to share this very intense moment. It was a gesture I’d also made with my children, and it helped me to concentrate on his mother’s words, to record them in my mind. We were listening so intensely that it created a bond between us. Our quarrels no longer mattered. I knew exactly what he must be going through. I remembered the effect Mom’s very first message had had on me—the sound of her voice, the timbre, her warmth, her mellow tone, all the physical pleasure I had in hearing the intonation of that voice I loved so much, the sensation of safety and well-being that had flowed over me. When she’d finished speaking to me, while I was still in the magical bubble that her voice had created around me, I realized I was incapable of recalling what she’d said.
I observed Marc’s expression while his mother was speaking, the pain of absence transformed now into bliss, the need to absorb each word like an essential nourishment, the ultimate surrender to immerse one’s entire being in an ephemeral happiness. When her voice vanished, Marc met my gaze with the eyes of a child. In that moment I understood that he’d been on the same journey. Then, as if he were suddenly waking up, he asked, “Wait a second—what did my mom say?”
I went over every moment of the message, one by one—the way she’d chosen to address him from a distance, the words of love she’d used to greet him, her entreaty to be strong and have courage in adversity, her own certainty that he had the strength to resist, and her absolute faith in God as she asked her son to accept God’s will, for this was a trial, a way to grow spiritually. God would bring him home, she said. Marc wasn’t listening to me; he was listening to his mother’s voice inside his head, as if it were a recording he could hear through me. For a few moments, he made the same journey once again. When I finished, his face lit up, but his memory was absent.
“Sorry, I know I must seem stupid—can you tell me her message again?”
I would have repeated it to him a hundred times if he had asked. I was in the presence of a founding experience: A mother’s words are magical and penetrate us intimately, even in spite of ourselves. Had I but understood this earlier! How much less demanding, how much more patient and reassuring I would have been with my own children. It was comforting to think that the words I’d said to them could have touched them in a way that was just as intense. During the week Marc asked me to repeat Jo’s message, and each time I felt the same happiness. I noticed, after that, that his gaze had grown softer—not only the one he turned on the outside world, but also when he looked at me.
FORTY-TWO
THE DICTIONARY
One morning Guillermo the nurse arrived with the big illustrated Larousse encyclopedic dictionary that I’d been dreaming about. He called me over, put it in my hands, and said, “This is from Sombra.”
He turned on his heel and went away.
I was dumbfounded. I’d asked for it incessantly. My best argument had always been that Mono Joj
oy had promised it to me. But I didn’t believe he would send it. I imagined that we were hidden in the far reaches of the jungle and that to get it here was unthinkable. So I could hardly contain my joy and excitement when at last I was holding it in my hands. The arrival of this dictionary transformed my life: It would alleviate boredom and allow me to make productive use of all the time I had on my hands and didn’t know what to do with.
I’d kept my notebooks from Andres’s camp, and I wanted to finish my research and track down lost information and learn. If I could learn, then I wasn’t wasting my time. It was this that frightened me the most about my detention: The loss of my time was the cruelest of punishments. I could hear my papa’s voice pursuing me: “Our life capital is measured in seconds. Once those seconds are gone, we never get them back!”
During my presidential campaign, he sat down one evening to help me do some planning and make an outline of the transformations I hoped to bring about. He got out his notebook, scribbled something, and declared, “You will have only one hundred and twenty-six million one hundred and forty-four thousand seconds during your mandate. Think carefully—you won’t have a single second more!”
I was haunted by his remark. Once I was deprived of my freedom, I was also deprived of the right to dispose of my time. It was an irreparable crime. It would be impossible for me to ever get back the millions of seconds that had been lost forever. The encyclopedia was therefore my best antidote. It became my university in a box. I would wander around inside it following my whims and finding the answers to all sorts of questions that had been on a waiting list my whole life. This book was vital to me, because it enabled me to have a short-term goal and cleared me of the underlying guilt inherent in my condition, that of squandering the best years of my life.
But my contentment made some of my companions jealous. No sooner did I have the dictionary than one of my fellow inmates came to inform me that since it was the guerrillas who’d brought it, it didn’t belong to me. I agreed with it in principle. When we were all waiting for the stewpot, I invited the rest of my comrades to use it.
“It will be available during the morning. I’ll use it in the afternoon. Just help yourself, then put it back in its place.”
Lucho warned me, “Be prepared that they’ll do whatever it takes to get it away from you.”
However, in the days that followed, there was less tension. Orlando offered to help me make a waterproof cover for the dictionary. Gloria provided the waterproof canvas from an old backpack she was getting ready to recycle, and everyone took turns using the dictionary. Just then Guillermo showed up again.
“Give me the dictionary. I need it.”
His tone left me puzzled.
“Yes, of course, how long did you need it for?”
“A week.”
“Listen, I’m working with it. Have it over the weekend if you like.”
He looked me up and down, then eventually gave in. He brought the book back the following Monday and said, “Don’t let it get ruined. I’ll come and get it again next Friday.”
The following week he tried a new strategy.
“The soldiers need the dictionary.”
“Sure, no problem. Take it and ask them to send it back to me with the receptionist, please.”
But this time he didn’t bring it back.
There was a new commander in the camp. He was an older man, over forty, with graying hair and a hard gaze. His name was Alfredo. Everybody thought that Sombra was going to be dismissed, but in the end they settled into a power sharing that seemed to function, despite obvious tension between them.
Commander Alfredo summoned the prisoners. I met with him, together with Sombra, for a whole afternoon, in what Sombra referred to as his “office.” I immediately broached the subject of the dictionary.
“I want to know if I can use the dictionary as I please. Guillermo seems to think not. In fact, he has it now, and he hasn’t given it back.”
Sombra seemed embarrassed. Alfredo was staring at him harshly, like a raptor circling its prey.
“This dictionary is yours,” declared Sombra, to make matters absolutely clear. I deduced he didn’t want to give any reason to Alfredo to report back to Mono Jojoy.
That was enough for me. The next morning Guillermo brought me the dictionary. He smiled as he handed it to me.
“Él que ríe de últimas ríe mejor.”44
His warning did not manage to spoil my satisfaction. I immersed myself once again in hours of spellbinding reading, seeking to find, to know, to understand, as if solving a puzzle.
FORTY-THREE
MY FRIEND LUCHO
AUGUST 2004
Lucho and I became inseparable. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him. He was a sensitive soul, very wise, with a sense of humor that could withstand anything. His intelligence and wit were, for me, as vital as oxygen. Moreover, he was the most generous person on earth, which made him a rare pearl in Sombra’s prison. I placed all my trust in him, and together we tried incessantly to think up ways to escape.
Orlando asked us about it one evening. He suggested we try to escape together. Lucho and I knew that this was impossible. We were convinced that Orlando would never dare, and we were not even sure that we ourselves would. Moreover, he was a big, heavyset man. We could not picture him making his way unnoticed through the chain-link fence and the barbed wire.
However, because we talked about it so much, we began to study the various options and to make plans. We concluded that it would take us months or even years to get out of this jungle, and that we would have to learn to live in it with no resources other than our ingenuity.
So we set to work making equipos, like the one Lucho had. Sombra had set up a leather workshop in the camp for making and repairing backpacks and the troops’ equipment. When we presented our request, we were fortunate that the timing was right—not only was the material available but also, if we were to be evacuated, we would need something in which to carry our belongings.
Our plan was to make two each: one regular size, to be able to carry everything in case of an evacuation, and then a much smaller one, which Orlando called a “mini-crusero,” for our escape. Orlando, who had done some leatherworking before, guided us through the basic techniques. Very quickly everyone in the prison joined in. Not only because we all sensed that sooner or later we would have to leave this camp (military planes were flying overhead on an almost-daily basis) but also because the opportunity to make a good backpack seemed to please everyone.
In the evening, Orlando would come and sit in my hut with a piece of wire that he’d taken from a corner of the fence and a big file that I’d lifted from a distracted receptionist. He wanted to make some fishhooks.
“This way we won’t die of hunger!” he said proudly, brandishing a sort of crooked, handmade hook.
“With that thing you’ll only be catching whales,” said Lucho, gently mocking.
I had managed to get a reserve of sugar from Sombra in case Lucho had a fit. We were also counting on this reserve for our escape. I worried about the shortage of sugar because we really had only very little, and I was obliged to use it because Lucho often seemed on the verge of another diabetic coma.
I had learned to recognize the symptoms long before he felt he was in danger of a relapse. It began in the afternoon. His face suddenly became gaunt, and his skin would go gray. I would tell him it was time to take some sugar. As a rule he would reply mildly that he wanted to go lie down and that it would pass. But when he reacted badly, shouting at me that I was bothering him and no, he would not take any sugar, I knew that any minute now he would drop to the floor in a seizure. It was a real struggle. I had to use all sorts of tricks to get him to swallow his dose of sugar. Inevitably, at some point he would swing from aggression to apathy. By then he was completely at a loss, and I could get the sugar into his mouth. He would sit there dazed for minutes on end, then finally he became Lucho again and apologize for not having listened to m
e.
We were dependent upon each other, and this was both our strength and our vulnerability. Because of it we suffered twice as much—first of all from our own sorrow and then, just as intensely, from the other’s afflictions.
It happened one morning. But I’m not so sure; it could have been at dawn, because sadness came upon us like an eclipse, and what I remember is a long day full of darkness.
We were sitting side by side, in silence, listening to the little radio together. It should have been a day like any other, but it wasn’t. We were waiting for my mother’s message; no messages for him, because his wife called him every Wednesday on Caracol, and this wasn’t Wednesday. When he heard his sister’s voice, his face lit up. He adored his sister, Estela. He was wriggling with happiness on his chair, as if to sit more comfortably, while his sister, in an infinitely tender, soft voice, said to him, “Lucho, be strong. Our little mother has passed away.” I had a sudden violent memory of the asphyxia I’d felt on discovering my father’s death in that old newspaper. Lucho was there beside me in the same overwhelming suspension of time, his breathing halted. His suffering reactivated my own, and I curled up on myself. I could not help him. He wanted to weep, as if to get his breath back, to get rid of his sadness and let it drain from his body, expel it. But he was weeping with dry eyes, and that was even more terrible. There was nothing to be done, nothing to say.
This eclipse of emotions lasted for days, until the prison gate opened and Arnoldo shouted, “Take just what is absolutely necessary—hammock, mosquito net, toothbrush! We’re out of here. You have two minutes.”
Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle Page 34