Night Prayers

by Santiago Gamboa

  One weekend, I went back to Soacha to see the women who had been demonstrating. Things had changed and it was now common knowledge that the young men had indeed been murdered. The army was announcing a purge. I met with Señora Martha again, the one who had seen me cry the previous time, and said to her, how can I help you? but she said, there’s nothing to be done, they’re going to put some of the soldiers on trial, but everything is slow and difficult and we’re already getting threats, they say we’re with the guerrillas. My voice shook, and my hands shook, and again I felt full of hate. That day I could have killed someone. I went back home on a crowded bus and enjoyed the smell of the students, the poor crowd: those who had to cross the city for a job and then run to a night class and have the strength not to fall asleep over their books. Poor people. Only hope and probably imagination gave them the strength to bear that shitty life. When did something pleasant ever happen to them? Almost never. I was going to be their avenging angel.

  The next step was to get involved with the State and its yuppies, with its security apparatus and that gang of macho men, oh so macho behind their rifles and their checkbooks of public money and the complicity of the great alpha male, the supreme asshole of the nation.

  Now they would see, the sons of bitches.

  I sought them out, Consul. I infiltrated the Secret Service, and how did I do it? I became their whore. I was their whore because I wanted it. I preferred to sell my body rather than my soul, which is what everybody sold in that horrible country. Everybody except me, I did the opposite. I gave them my body. Look at me, I’m pretty and I can be a really attractive chick if I put on high heels, a miniskirt, a low-cut top, and hey, presto. I was told about a bar where people from the Secret Service hung out, so I went there and hooked one of the top guys, whose name was Víctor. He’d go around with a roll of dollars, a bottle of Blue Seal whiskey, and a bag of coke in his car. It all comes from the seizures, sweetheart. We fucked first at the Paracaídas motel, then at the Calera, and then at those in the north. He didn’t like to stick to one in particular, for security reasons. They may be following me, he would say. Evil never sleeps, that was his motto. We often went out with a guy called Piedrahita who was his boss in the Narcotics division, and the parties would end up at the VIP room of the Francachela motel. It was always on the house, thanks to the owners of the motel, they never paid. They hired other whores to do striptease and played around with them, but in the end Víctor would have sex with me and Piedrahita with Mireya, a girl from Choco who looked like a transvestite, and he was crazy about her, in love with her, because he liked them black. Melanin and frizzy hair, that’s how he put it. The parties would last three or four days, until they got a call from headquarters and went off to solve a case. When things went well they’d come back with fresh supplies for the party. We did coke, drank high-class whiskey, ate paella, and watched porn movies; Piedrahita, who must have been around fifty, would get very drunk and sometimes he’d go crazy and do ugly things, he’d give the whores hundred-dollar bills to perform cunnilingus on Mireya right there in front of him, and if one of them refused he’d take out his revolver and slam it down on the table, what’s the matter, girls, don’t you like her? don’t tell me you’re racists? racism is against the constitution! Don’t be like that, darling, Mireya would say in his ear, let’s go to the bedroom, and she’d drag him away. One day a shot went off that ended up in the ceiling and Víctor had to go out with his Secret Service badge to calm the neighbors.

  Another night we were in the bedroom and he came and knocked, calling to Víctor: come on, brother, hurry up and get dressed, duty calls, this fucking country won’t let anyone fuck in peace. Víctor went out into the corridor. Wait, let’s get high before we go, Piedrahita said, and prepared four lines of coke, which they snorted. Now, girls, don’t cry for us, when you’re a public servant you have to make sacrifices, I’ll leave you to enjoy yourselves but none of that dyke stuff, all right, my beauties? and he put half a bottle of whiskey, a roll of dollars, and what remained of the coke on the table. Mireya came to the couch and we talked. How is he in bed? I asked. She poured herself some whiskey in a cup of coffee and lit a cigar. What he likes is for me to jerk him off from behind; he takes tons of Viagra but it doesn’t work for him; in the year and a bit that we’ve been together he’s only stuck it in me about ten times, can you believe that? A girl always misses that. But if he finds out I told you he’ll shoot both of us.

  Víctor was married with three children. He wasn’t a bad person, but I hated him. He told me he could share the stresses of his work with me, but he never talked to his wife about the atrocities he committed, out of respect for her. Son of a bitch. One night he arrived covered in blood. They had nabbed some dealers in a house in Modelia, young guys, on a tip-off from a former paramilitary who’d turned himself in. They found twenty kilos, three submachine guns, ten pistols, and a bag with two hundred thousand dollars. Piedrahita was high on coke and started slapping one of the guys around, asking him about the stash with the big money, where was it? He’d been told there was a lot more. Víctor tried to calm him down. That’s enough, boss, let’s hand some of it in and we’re done, but Piedrahita went crazy and shot the dealer in the head, and then there was nothing else they could do, he had to shoot the others. There were five of them. Five young guys. Three Secret Service officers took them down to a garage. Víctor was shaking and Piedrahita said to him: let’s load them in the van. He went to speak on the telephone and came back saying, nothing happened here, I’m going to send them to a buddy in the Lanceros battalion, they need them more than we do, and he turned and said to Yesid, the youngest officer, son, take these guys to Commander Suárez, I already talked to him and he’s waiting for them, but be quick about it, and then call me, son, this is just between ourselves, okay?

  That night Víctor arrived with rolls of dollars in his pockets, and when I told him he was lucky to have such well-paid work he replied, the hell I am, I can barely enjoy the money, just give it away or waste it on drink, not even buy a house because I’ll be grabbed by the tax people, or put it in the bank, just buy gifts for my wife and kids, but only little things, and send it to my mother, but not too much, and that was really bad, one of the unfair things about life, according to him, after so much sacrifice. That day he was very drunk, and I asked him, what do the soldiers do with the dead bodies? do they bury them? and he said, no, sweetheart, they make money with them, but don’t ask too much, it might put you at risk. You don’t know the really ugly things that have to be done to protect this fucking country.

  I played dumb, but I was thinking: I already know what you people do, you asshole, I don’t need you to tell me, what comes out in the newspapers is true, you’re killing people, it’ll be your turn next.

  I went out with him two or three times a month, whenever he celebrated a good arrest. The rest of the time I studied, read, went to the movies. Things happened and I sensed others about to happen. Life was passing like a wind that set my teeth on edge, gave me the shivers, soaked me. Everything was happening very quickly. One day a friend from the faculty invited me to a bar in the north of the city. Politicians go there, she said, really cool people, guys with money. I was afraid I might meet someone from the Secret Service, but it was an exclusive place, only people with style went there. By the time I’d had three glasses of rum, I already had a friendly man fluttering around me, smiling and winking at me. At last he made up his mind to speak to me. He invited me to do coke and I accepted, a long line. Shall we dance? He was an adviser to a senator, I can’t remember which one. From there we went to an apartment on the beltway to continue the evening. A swanky place, belonging to a girl who had come with them. The strange thing was that I didn’t go as an escort, since nobody had offered me money, but I had the feeling it was the same thing. The bozo’s name was Juan Mario and when he asked me, what do you do, where do you study and that kind of thing, I told him at the National, and he laughed, seriously? oh, wow, really? he said,
and I said, yes, I study sociology, and he said, wow, sociology at the National! you’re not with FARC, are you? That’s what my father thinks, I said, but I regretted having told him that because after a while a friend came, they hugged drunkenly, and Juan Mario said to him, hey, man, let me introduce you to this girl, let’s see if you can guess where she studies? and the guy said, no idea, I don’t know, I mean, where could it be, at Los Andes? and Juan Mario laughed and said, no, man, not even warm, it’s incredible, at the National! and the other guy said, and what’s so funny about that, it’s cool, the National’s a cool university, what’s so funny? I liked that and I said, and what’s your name? and he said, Daniel, wait, I’ll give you my card, he took it out and I read, “adviser, Congress,” so I said to him, what do all you people advise about? He laughed and said to the other guy, you see, man, the people at the National are cool, well, we study projects, we suggest the subjects to be proposed, we study the constitutionality of it, I’m a lawyer, of course, when you come down to it, those guys are really a pain, you do all the work and then the congressman comes along and finishes it off, and sometimes he fucks it up, or rather, he usually fucks it up, that’s the way it is, and how is the National? Wow, it’s amazing, I’m a big fan of Mockus, seriously, my dog’s name is Antanas, a very intelligent Labrador, I swear to you, then he asked me for my cell phone number and I gave it to him, and a sixth sense told me that if I wanted to hook him I had to leave the party; I called a taxi and went home, but the next day, sure enough, the guy called me, hi, we met last night, do you remember? you left very early, didn’t you like the party? well, to be honest, it was boring, a real drag, right? listen, do you remember me? I’m the adviser, no, the other one, the second one you met, Daniel, are you in class? will you call me when you finish? and so I started going out with him, kind of on the sly, because he had an official girlfriend but he told me I was a lot better, that he could be natural with me, say what he thought, so I asked him, and what kind of things do you think? and he said, I don’t know, the kind of things I tell you, I like you a lot, babe, with you I can talk about movies and books, and I said to him, doesn’t your girlfriend like movies or what? and he said, no, I mean yes, but only romantic movies or comedies, she spends her time watching YouTube videos and chatting, can you imagine? the other day we were talking about something and you know what she said to me? look, I can’t stand talking with you, let’s chat instead, can we do that? or else, how are you doing, darling? oh, shall we chat? and the worst of it is that she is right, we get on better when we’re chatting, do you want to see her? and he showed me photographs of the girl on his BlackBerry, a pretty girl, he even had a photograph showing her backside in a nice little thong, and how’s the sex? I asked him, good? and he said, yes but she’s a hysteric, if I give her a hug she says no, it has to happen naturally, she doesn’t like me to go close to her, wanting her, she says she feels dirty, and so I say to her, but, babe, if we don’t get close how’s it going to happen? and she says, it’ll happen naturally! it should come from the two of us, not just you, as if we have to fuck, as if it’s an obligation, no, we should just let things happen, and I said, okay, but I don’t understand how they’re going to happen if we keep miles apart, but anyway, that’s how it is, and a second later she’s already fallen asleep, she’s always tired because she’s always busy, and when we fuck, I don’t know, I tell her, or rather, I think, that it’s a new form of anal sex, you know, she looks such an asshole when we fuck, with the faces she pulls, for it to be okay you have to give her a whole bottle of wine, she’s such a bore, that’s why I like you, you don’t make such a fuss about it, and I can talk to you and say the things I think seriously, that’s what I like about people from the National, I love Mockus, did I tell you that?

  We fucked in his apartment in La Cabrera, and I didn’t charge him because what interested me was the Congress, finding out things, getting information. I asked him questions as if I were a silly girl, a student, who is this senator? why does that other guy have so much power? and he’d say, well, look, babe, that one is a hard man, the hardest of the hard, and so he’d come out with things and I’d put them together, and I’d tell myself, through this son of a bitch I’d get to others, I was patient and that’s what happened. One day he said to me, how would you like to come to Buenos Aires with me, babe? there’s a meeting of the Latin American Forum for Public Administration, do you know Buenos Aires? no? it’s a great place, you’ll love it, there are a million bookstores and people who are really intellectual, just the way you like it, babe, will you come? I traveled with him and there I met other advisers, among them the adviser to the presidential private secretary, and I said to myself, that’s what you’re after, the big fish. The opportunity arrived very quickly because Daniel’s meetings finished late and he always arrived at the end, so one day I met the presidential adviser at a cocktail party at the hotel, a very elegant place in Recoleta, and I approached him, acting dumb, a woman knows how to draw attention to herself without being noticed, and the guy fell in the net, he saw me in the line at the drinks table and stepped forward, what would you like? and I said, a glass of red wine, and he said, Malbec? and I said, yes, it’s my favorite, so he picked up two and said to me, my name is Andrés Felipe, I’m adviser to the presidential private secretary, and I said, yes, I know, Daniel has told me about you, and he said, have you come with Daniel? I said yes, but it was one of those women’s yeses that mean: “yes until I find something better.” The guy realized that and said, oh, what a pity, how sad, how envious I feel because I’ve come alone, so I said to him, alone in such a cold city? I don’t believe it, with all those beautiful Argentinian women you see on the streets, and he said, you know something, my dear, they may be very pretty, but what I like is the national type, why look outside when we have such beauty inside, am I right? look at you, for example, and he pointed at the mirror I was reflected in, and I laughed, and just then Daniel came in through the door, looking for me, and I saw him in the mirror, so I told Andrés Felipe, it’s been great, I really like people from the northwest, what room are you in? and he said, 711, come whenever you like, princess, 24-hour service.

  Daniel arrived, looking tired, hi, babe, what are you drinking? oh, Malbec, great, wait while I get one for myself, have you already met Andrés Felipe? and I said, yes, he’s very nice, and he said, yes, he’s a really powerful man, highly educated, with a good agenda, and protected by Uribe, obviously, but I’m going to tell you something, babe, in Bogotá we’re tired of all these people from the northwest! there’s no room for any more in the Palace, anyway, there’s nothing to be done, and I said to him, well, you people should have thought of that before, shouldn’t you?

  The next day, at eleven in the morning, I called room 711 and Andrés Felipe answered, hello, my dear, I got out of a meeting today because a little bird gave me a word of advice, it said, look, stay if you can, stay and something good will happen to you. I told him I’d be right there and a minute later we were kissing on the carpet; we fucked on the couch and sitting on the washbowl and finally on the bed, which most people say is the best place to fuck; he told me he was married, that he had two children and they were the only reason he didn’t separate from his wife. His wife was a hysteric, and I said to him, seriously? and why is that? and he said, we almost never make love, whenever I want it she says, don’t pester me, I want it to happen naturally, so I said to him, oh yes, I know that, and in the end she falls asleep, right? he laughed and said, exactly, she falls asleep, and you’re left lying there, none the wiser.