“You don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to, here’s my passport, I have nothing to hide. You can tell me where she went and nothing will happen to you. As soon as I know where she is I’ll go find her, that’s what her brother would have done. I promised him.”
Susana breathed in deeply, then took a long sip of her drink. “She went to Tehran with her Iranian bodyguard. They fell in love and he tried to pay her debt. They wouldn’t accept it and one day they disappeared. We never heard from her again. They kept me locked up for a month because of it.”
Tehran, Tehran, I thought. And what was the bodyguard’s name?
She thought for a moment, lit another cigarette, as if calling on her memory, and finally said: I don’t know his name, they called him Jaburi.
La Caverna closed at two o’clock, but we went and had a last drink at a nearby bar that was like a doll’s house, with a very low ceiling and a kind of little wooden balcony around each table. Japanese beer is very good. While we were in this second bar, we heard ringing. It was Susana’s cell phone. She spoke for a while with her hand over the receiver and when she hung up she said she had to go. I told her that if she was going to the Sheraton I’d take her. She laughed and said, no, cheeky, it’s another hotel.
It was already after three, so I called a taxi and gave Horacio a farewell hug, thanking him for the company.
The following day they picked us up early to visit the Buddhist temple of Asakusa, and then Kamakura. It was said the French writer and traveler Pierre Loti had been there, and he was an old traveling companion of mine (especially on journeys to Peking, but also to Jerusalem, Turkey, and Morocco). Displaying his proverbial racism, Loti says the Japanese smell of “rancid camellia oil.” All the same, his descriptions of the Buddhist temples are remarkable. I was so upset by what I’d heard about Juana that I barely noticed Kamakura. The temple of the great Buddha is beautiful and harmonious, and surrounded by a colorful garden, but to be honest, having seen the ancient city of Pathan, just outside Kathmandu, it didn’t strike me as anything much. What I liked most was the ride, and the fact that for most of the time we were held up by the heavy traffic on the way out of Tokyo.
That night, my friend Satoko Tamura, the translator, and her silent husband invited me to see the majestic view of the city from the tower on Rappongi Hills—an ocean of lights—and then to have dinner in the Ginza district, with its elegant commercial streets, luxury department stores, and buildings that are screens of liquid glass.
Back in my hotel room, already packing my bag to go back to Delhi, I asked myself why I had been so startled to discover that Juana was in Tehran, until I realized something incredibly obvious: Iran was one of the countries our embassy dealt with! so if, for example, she had requested a new passport or some other consular procedure, it would have had to pass through my hands. I myself would have signed it. I felt dizzy, thinking that I might be close. Unable to wait—it was Friday, I wouldn’t get to Delhi until Saturday—I sent Olympia a message asking her to look through the Tehran files for the name Juana Manrique and saying that we’d talk about it first thing on Monday.
When I got to Delhi, the heat was overpowering.
Every time I traveled anywhere else in Asia—perhaps with the sole exception of Kathmandu—I had the feeling when I got back that Delhi was a real slap in the face: its polluted air, smelling of smoke and kerosene; its streets filled with earth, garbage, and waste, its human anthills, the maddening noise of car horns and sudden accelerations; the permanent dust cloud and the sense that dengue and tetanus and malaria, in other words, everything that’s sickliest and most despicable, float in the very air you breathe; the fecal matter on the walls, the gobs of spittle, the humidity, the horrific diseases and deformities, all these counterpointed with the indolent look of those who survive, the absurdly insulting conspicuous spending of the rich in a country with eight hundred million poor, whose economy, roughly speaking, is based on the fact that two thirds of the population earns paupers’ wages, in short, all this became even more obvious on returning from a city like Tokyo where you don’t encounter unpleasant smells, not even in the fish market. Of course, its equivalent in Delhi is a place so dirty that the flesh of the fish is covered by a layer of several inches of flies.
I was tempted to go to the office on Sunday, but I wouldn’t have gained anything by it, because Olympia keeps her things under lock and key, so I spent the time organizing what I needed for the journey and in the afternoon went for a walk in Lodhi Gardens, a park that reconciles you with the city, being one of its few unconditionally beautiful and clean places, where you can lie down on the grass and listen to the cawing of the birds of prey, the parrots, the crows, the eagles, in other words, the birds of all sizes and types that are the real masters of the city.
By about seven on Monday morning, I was already on my balcony drinking a cup of strong coffee. Eagles were flying over the pines opposite and a group of workers was digging in Jangpura Park, converting what had been a very green lawn into a dusty stretch of earth. I couldn’t wait for Peter to pick me up and take me to the embassy, which, after a recent move, was now at 85 Poorvi Marg, still in Vasant Vihar but further back, far from the terrifying Olof Palme Marg and its crazed traffic.
As often happens in such cases, an element of suspense now crept in. Olympia wasn’t there, she had gone off with the chauffeur to deposit the monthly income from consular activities in the bank in Chanakyapuri, and wouldn’t be back until noon, so I went to the office to deal with other matters, such as studying visa requests and approving them—in the whole time I was there, I only ever denied one, to a Mephistophelian guru—answering mail, or discussing new cultural projects with my good friend Professor Aparajit Chattopadhyay of Jawaharlal Nehru University, a specialist on Neruda.
At noon, Olympia arrived and came up to my office, which was on the second floor of our three-story building.
“Look, boss, here’s your girl,” she said, and placed on my desk a passport renewal application from two months earlier, already signed by me.
I looked at it with genuine excitement. There it all was: telephone numbers, address, a recent photograph.
She had changed. Her hair was shorter. She was using her husband’s surname and was now called Juana Manrique Hedayat. Attached to the form was a request for a birth certificate and passport for a newborn child named Manuel Sayeq Hedayat Manrique, her six-month-old son. Everything seemed to be all right, so why had she forgotten her brother? when was she thinking of contacting him? Communications aren’t easy in Iran, but what was stopping her from sending an e-mail, a Facebook message, or making a long-distance telephone call?
All this was a mystery.
The form had the telephone number and a note that said: please call only between 9 and 11 A.M. I looked at the clock. It was after nine in the morning in Iran so I asked Angie, the secretary—the only member of staff with an international line—to call her and put her through to me in my office.
It isn’t easy to call Tehran, as I knew from having tried months earlier to send a batch of Colombian books to its book fair. Something as simple as talking to the person in charge of Latin America at the Foreign Ministry was impossible.
The telephone rang and I rushed to answer. I heard Angie say: “Madam Juana Hedayat? Please stay on the line, the consul wants to speak with you.”
“Juana?” I said.
At the other end of the line, through a storm cloud of electrical noise that sounded like a swarm of mosquitoes, I heard her say, yes, that’s me, is there some problem with my application?
“That’s not why I’m calling,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you about your brother Manuel.”
There was a silence that seemed even longer thanks to the heavy interference. I prayed that the line wouldn’t be cut off.
“Did you hear me?”
“Yes, Consul, what’s happened to my brother?”
“He’s in prison in Bangkok,” I said. “There was an i
ncident and he was arrested. He was on his way to Japan to look for you.”
“What?” Her voice broke and there was more noise on the line, and sobs. At last she recovered and spoke again. “Manuel in prison in Bangkok? he was looking for me? but … is he all right? how did he know … and you?”
I took a deep breath and told her everything, from the beginning: the journey, the arrest, the pills. The communications with Colombia, the fact that Delhi had had to deal with the case because of the post in Malaysia being vacant, my own journey to Bangkok and Manuel’s version of events, his pressing need to see her again after three years, the urgency of her coming to Bangkok, all in all, I spoke for about ten minutes without interruption, without hearing anything at the other end except that noise like a failing engine on the line. When I stopped talking I heard her crying. Not broken sobs, but sustained weeping, as if a muddy current had found an outlet.
I let her cry without adding anything. Then she asked, sobbing, are you sure he’s all right? I assured her he was, Manuel was strong and was being well protected, the lawyer was influential and knew the warden of the prison, but I insisted: it’s vital that you travel to Bangkok, he needs to see you.
“Yes, Consul, but I have two problems. My husband won’t let me leave Iran and I don’t have a passport. Or rather, I have an Iranian passport I can’t use and a Colombian one that’s out-of-date. And besides there’s my son. I can’t leave without him, and he doesn’t have a passport.”
I told her the passports weren’t a problem, we’d deal with them immediately. She had presented the forms and they were already signed.
“Can’t someone come to Delhi,” I asked, “like other Colombians who live in Iran?”
But she said that was impossible.
“I already told you I can’t leave, Consul, you don’t know my husband, he barely lets me go to the market. We don’t have an international line or the Internet. If anyone calls when he’s there I’m not allowed to answer. This is the only time I can receive calls, don’t you see? I depend on him for everything, he’s paranoid and jealous. The application for the passport and the birth certificate I did in secret, a Colombian friend helped me.”
“If you had the passports in your hand, could you travel?”
“Well, I could go to the airport without his knowing and get on a plane, but I don’t have the money for a ticket.”
I told her I’d think of a solution and call her again the next day, at the same time. Before she said goodbye, she thanked me and asked again, are you sure Manuel is all right?
“He’ll be better when you get here and he can see you.”
After lunch I called the lawyer. He told me there were no new developments yet, but that the police were still following a lead about the pills, and that we might be getting some good news very soon. He was sure of it. I told him I’d tracked down Manuel’s sister and made him write down her name, spelling it for him.
“Please,” I said, “let Manuel know that I’ll soon be coming to Bangkok with her. It’s very important. Get in touch with the warden and make sure the news gets through to him today.”
“Count on it, Consul. As soon as we hang up I’ll call Bangkwang. I already told you the warden was a student of mine.”
I hung up and joined Olympia. I told her everything. We couldn’t do bank transfers to Iran, and the passport couldn’t be sent by mail, so what to do? As in many other things, she had a ready-made solution.
“Organize a mobile consulate in Tehran, boss,” she said. “That way you’ll kill something like ten birds with one stone.”
A mobile consulate? and she said, yes, we take the books, the stamps, and the forms with us, and we attend to the community in the offices of the Argentine Embassy. The last time it was done was three years ago. It’s about time we did it again.
And she added:
“I know that kind of case well. In Tehran, there are a hundred and thirty Colombian women married to Iranians they met in Japan. They all went there to earn a living by sweat, but not the sweat of their brow, and ended up involved with Iranians, who are there as economic migrants and do all kinds of jobs.”
We drew up a letter to the Consular Department, saying there was an urgent need to take a mobile consulate to Tehran and pointing out that there were thirty-seven minors waiting for birth certificates and forty-nine of our countrymen and countrywomen who had applied to renew their passports and were waiting for an identification document sent by an office of the State, which was a constitutional right.
The problem with urgent communications between the consulate and the Ministry, as I said before, was the time difference: an exotic figure of ten and a half hours. I waited until nightfall and then called the Consular Department. Luckily they had already read my dispatch and were considering it. They would give me an answer by evening (Bogotá time), and I would receive it the following day.
That night I could barely sleep. It was hot, and I was anxious. Several times I got up to drink something cold and finally sat down in the living room, watching the moon come in through the window and cast strange shadows.
At moments I seemed to hear the voice of Juana, also at home, also unable to sleep, maybe embracing the child, watching over him in the darkness with attentive eyes. The voice was barely a murmur, a soft breath trying to cross the sky over Asia and reach the ears of Manuel, who must have been told by now and would be very attentive to her words. A young man in a damp, dirty cell in Bangkok, a woman lying next to a man she didn’t love, in Tehran, pretending to sleep.
Words, words, words.
Night prayers.
Those they had not said to each other and now were thinking, words that in their minds were heartrending screams, cries of anxiety and love. Two silent litanies, and me in the middle of that strange storm, near a planet created by those who never lived on it. Two fragile creatures who longed to be together and to be forgotten, and life, like a wall, coming between them.
When I got to the office the following day, Olympia said to me:
“Good news, boss, we’re going to Tehran.”
“Did the authorization come through from the Consular Department?” I asked, and she said, yes, I printed it out and it’s on your desk.
Again I asked Angie to put me through to Juana Hedayat. Two hours later, after many attempts, I was at last able to talk to her. “Your brother’s fine,” I said. “I spoke to the lawyer in Bangkok and told him everything. He already knows I met you and that you’re going to see him.”
I told her the strategy: I would go to Tehran the following week to catch up with all consular matters relating to the Colombian residents there. That same afternoon, a public announcement about the mobile consulate would be made.
“You have to be prepared,” I told her. “The ideal thing is for you to leave Iran with me.”
And she said:
“Oh, don’t worry, Consul, by the time you come I’ll have everything ready.”
I spoke with the Argentinian Embassy, which confirmed its traditional offer of lending us its premises for three days. I also wrote to the head of protocol at the Iranian Foreign Ministry announcing the journey and its purpose. We asked the travel agency for tickets. By the following Tuesday, everything had been prepared and we left on the Wednesday. We would attend to the public on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. The mission consisted of Olympia, the second secretary, and myself. We were received by a delegation from the Iranian Foreign Ministry, which put a car and a chauffeur at our disposal for the four days.
3
INTER-NETA’S MONOLOGUES
I won’t be in this story of split personalities and dreams either. And what grandiose, histrionic character will you adopt on this occasion, chère Inter-Neta? Wait, don’t be so impatient, remember what Rimbaud, your beloved poet of Aden and Harar, wrote.
Je est un autre.
My name is Beauty and I am dreaming. I dream and dream and while I do so I prefer to talk, to say what I see in my mind and pursue im
ages, which are also words and sometimes smells or fears. It’s what I have in my head, which is tantamount to saying: what I have in my heart.
As I said, my name is Beauty or Belle or maybe Bella, depending on where I am, given that the vast world is my bed. Who am I? Let’s take it piece by piece. I was deflowered for the first time—when the moment comes I’ll explain what “first time” means—at a Guns N’ Roses concert, in the back of a milk delivery van (it smelled of milk), by a man whose mouth gave off a strong odor of raw onion and sausage and who was certainly as drunk and probably as strung out on drugs as I was, nothing very strong, nothing injected into the veins, you know me by now, I love men but I hate needles.
Oh, God, it was a needle that started this long story, this rebuke, this strange coming and going that is my life, you must know my story, it’s very popular among children, let’s see, how does it go? There were some good fairies and one bad one, and of course a curse: my finger would be pricked when I was sixteen with a spindle and I would sleep until a prince kissed me, that’s pretty much the story, and for me the best part, the funniest part, is the bit about the prince. In actual fact, I wake up with a desire for someone to stroke my skin or talk in my ear (it doesn’t matter if it’s a prince, there are no princes anymore), I wake up and die of anxiety: the flower breathing inside me, its retractable sting, or that similarity to the Virgin that we women have when we’re born—our destiny is to lose that similarity—is reconstructed in dreams, the tissues come together again, the membrane is reborn and there am I, with eyes wide open, awake and filled with desire, oh, God, the world trembles, the universe turns to jelly every time a woman is seized with the desire that I feel, a ray that descends my spine and lodges between my thighs and buttocks, and there is nothing I can do but leave this bed in which I have lain for days and nights, while the miracle of reconstruction is performed, and go out into the world.
Night Prayers Page 16