Night Prayers

by Santiago Gamboa

  At the end of the whole thing there was a cocktail party at the convention center, and after it, when the top brass had gone and the Secret Service people were already flying back to Bogotá in their private plane, Andrés Felipe took me to a party in a very luxurious apartment in Bocagrande. There I met other advisers, all in security. The party really took off around two in the morning, with the arrival of a former Miss Colombia who really spiced things up, sang vallenatos, and excited everyone with some very pretty girls who were with her. I was surprised that she’d arrived on her own, I mean without a partner, but then I saw her sit down in the lap of the guy who owned the apartment, whose face looked familiar, an old actor or a former TV presenter. Pills were passed around, the glass ashtrays were filled with coke. At one point, I saw one of the advisers pass a pill on his tongue to his girlfriend, and then the former Miss Colombia snort a line of something, a coffee-colored powder that didn’t look like coke. I was surprised. I took whatever was going, but within certain limits. After a couple of hours, I told Andrés Felipe that I wasn’t feeling well and asked him if we could go, but he didn’t want to leave and he said, go to one of the bedrooms and lie down, princess, I’ll call you. I went to the second floor, walked along a corridor, and opened a door at random, but closed it again when I saw the owner of the apartment in bed with a young black guy. At that point I recognized him and told myself, of course, he was an old actor! Farther down the corridor, in a kind of living room, I found a couch and fell asleep.

  I don’t know how much time passed but when I woke up dawn had already broken and the atmosphere was very unreal. I had a headache and my muscles felt lethargic. A group of employees was just finishing taking a table of fruit, eggs, and oatmeal rolls onto the balcony, next to the table of drinks. There were people in bathing suits coming out of a swimming pool and a Jacuzzi at the far end. I didn’t see Andrés Felipe anywhere, but I didn’t care. I went and ate a dish of fruit. Then I did a line of coke, because someone was regularly filling the ashtrays, and walked toward the Jacuzzi. I lit a cigarette and felt a little better. The former Miss Colombia was there, in her underwear, with a black thong that was like a thread. She had a glass of gin in her hand and was talking to two guys. I took my clothes off and went into the water, which brought me back to life. How delicious, a Jacuzzi at that hour. People said hello to me. Someone said they had seen Andrés Felipe on the other terrace, but I just shrugged. I heard them talking from a long way away, with the warm water on my body and the still cool breeze of the morning. They asked me who I was and I said just anything, an invented name, and that I was studying sociology at the National. One of the guys offered me a line, but I said I’d snorted not long before. The three snorted their couple of lines and continued talking, saying how difficult it was to get credit because of the fluctuation of the dollar, and the worst thing, said the former Miss Colombia, was the damned revaluation of the peso, which has screwed us all up, right? You put your savings abroad and now it turns out exactly the opposite, the good thing is to have pesos. She had a modeling agency in Bogotá, and from what I gathered some of the girls at the party were hers. They talked about the reigning Miss Colombia, she said she was betting on her this year for Miss Atlantic, but Miss Universe was going to be difficult because, according to her, Chávez had it fixed, and then the two guys said, that clown, that son of a bitch, poor Venezuelans, I don’t understand how come the gringos haven’t brought him down, and the other one said: we should bring him down ourselves, what bullshit it is always to depend on the gringos, and the first one said, yes, but if anyone finds out, can you imagine? and the former Miss Colombia said, what a pity that here in Colombia the government doesn’t help beauty queens and models, we have to do it all ourselves, there should be subventions for beauty, I envy the Venezuelans in that way, because they’re protected there, and then one of the guys said, well, what is it you don’t have? and she said, me, nothing, thanks to the agency I have everything, my girls are the best and are in demand everywhere, the problem is that sometimes they get damaged, they get sent back to me with more weight on them or with vices, and one of the two guys, passing her the little mirror with the coke, laughed and said, what vices do they get sent back to you with? and the former Miss Colombia put one line in each nostril and said, with the worst of all, the vice of easy money, that’s the worst one in this country, the one that everybody has, including us here, on this terrace in Cartagena, in this delightful Jacuzzi, without having to get up early in the morning to work like other people, and one of the guys, indicating me with his eyes, said, well, don’t exaggerate, what will our guest think, we’re entrepreneurs, we already break our backs building a heritage, generating employment and critical mass, making a country, so we deserve a little enjoyment, don’t we? I laughed and said to them, of course you deserve it. I poured myself some aguardiente from a tray and said to them, cheers, this is my first of the day, and the three of them applauded and said, wait, we’ll drink with you, and they poured themselves three glasses and we raised a toast, and the former Miss Colombia said to me, you’re pretty, what are you doing, studying with those guerrillas in the National? I shrugged again, but she insisted, you should come to my office in Bogotá, you have a lovely body, let’s see, do you mind standing up a moment? I did as she asked and she said, look, with a month of going to the gym you’ll be perfect, I have teachers who can train you, would you like that? and I said, yes, of course, a thousand thanks, then she called somebody on her BlackBerry and soon afterwards a young girl came with cards and gave me one, seriously, you’ll call me next week? I said yes, and they continued talking, one of them said to her, listen, you’re the only one who works at parties and at this hour, but the former Miss Colombia said, that’s because the talent and beauty of this country won’t allow us to rest, you have to keep your eyes wide open, and they continued talking about politics, all of them wanted the President to be reelected for a third term, this country has never been better, they said, has it? and all of them said, yes, we have foreign investment, security, business is good, oh, we don’t give a damn about the constitution of ’91, why can’t we change it? and again they filled their glasses and filled mine, and they said, a toast to our beloved president! We knocked back the aguardiente, me choking of course, but keeping quiet, and one of the guys held out the mirror and we snorted some more, and because it was finished they called a maid, a black girl with an apron, like something out of the nineteenth century, and they said to her, do us a favor and prepare some more lines, and they toasted again, to the president who’s going to win the war for us! and another said, praise be to him! and if the neighboring countries kick up a fuss we’ll take a stick to them, Chávez is just asking for an invasion, and Correa in Ecuador too, let them know that we’ll enter their territory whenever we fucking feel like it to kill terrorists, that’s why we have half a million soldiers and policemen, let them come, we’re waiting for them.

  From one of the tables on the terrace, a group of guests turned to look at us, raised their glasses, and said, to the bravest president we’ve had! And those who were leaning out of the windows on the second floor, hearing the toast, also raised their glasses, as did those who were in the bedrooms and the terrace roof, all together; the servants put down their trays, from other apartments they leaned out and lifted their hands and cried in unison, long live our president!! a resounding, enveloping, all-consuming cry that was repeated from building to building, long live our president!! as if a storm had invaded the sky, something dark and electric, a storm cloud laden with omens. Then the cry drifted off through the air and faded in the distance, in a cloudy area where the sky merged with the sea and which to me, from that Jacuzzi, seemed liked the entrance to hell.

  Then I drank another aguardiente and the party went on.

  When I got back from Cartagena I called the former Miss Colombia’s number and went to see her. Her office was on Seventh and Eighth, below Eleventh. On the entrance door there was a plate: School of Modeling. />
  Oh, how good that you took the plunge, she said, remind me of your name, she gestured to me to come in and wrote something in a cheap diary, from next year, and then said, and what would you like me to call you? Oh, yes, I said, well, look, I’d like to be called Jessica, but she said, no, my dear, we already have three Jessicas, so I said, well, suggest one, like in Hotmail; we laughed, she looked at her notebook, all right, seeing you the way I saw you, seeing the brave and assertive person that you are, I’d give you a really cool French name, and the best one is Emmanuelle, you remember the movie? I said, yes, I knew everything about films, but then I said straight out, listen, I’m curious about something, do all the models have false names? and the former Miss Colombia said, well, that’s for protection, dear, because you know how men are, and I said, but is the modeling thing mainly about going with guys or what? and she cleared her throat and said, oh, my dear, we have to do a bit of everything here, the way things are right now, with the economic crisis and the revaluation of the peso, with the fall of Wall Street, if there’s any modeling work, then fine, but in the meantime, most of the girls take on what there is, obviously they’re well paid and they know who the client is, we don’t service drug traffickers or paramilitaries or guerrilla chiefs, none of that, just businessmen, sometimes foreigners, diplomats, highly placed people, the thing is, these days life has changed a lot, just imagine, at the party in Cartagena I took six girls and all of them were paid really well and were happy, because when you come down to it they’re paid to do what they like doing, which is having a good time, doing their pills and their coke, having their drinks, doing a couple of fucks almost without realizing it, they earned two million pesos, sometimes three, which was nothing in dollars, and I thought inside me, poor girls, three million? is that what they need those asses and those boob jobs for? Víctor gives me on average three thousand dollars per party, but of course, he’s middle-class, meaning he’s more generous, so I said to the former Miss Colombia, look, I’ll leave you my cell phone number, I’m not interested in modeling or any of that bullshit, just going out with really high-class guys, especially lawyers, I’m crazy about lawyers and they come in useful when there’s any problem, right? and the former Miss Colombia, who looked at me in surprise when I said this, replied, right, boss, right, and how much do we charge them? to which I said, five million, minimum, the rest is for your office, and she said, no, girl, that’s very high, so I said, okay, all right, four and a half, here’s my phone number, nice to have met you.

  Three days later I was in the cafeteria of the García Márquez Cultural Center, reading Juego de Damas by R. H. Moreno Durán, when my cell phone rang. It was her. My dear, I have your first client, and I asked, conditions okay? and she said, more than okay, are you presentable? and I said, that depends, who is he? And she said, he’s a very dear friend, sixty-six years old but as strong as an ox! I told him about you and he said he’d like to meet you, he’s a lawyer, this is the address; I went home, put on a black Punto Blanco thong and a pair of Diesel jeans, and changed my blouse; instead of the tennis shoes some low-heeled shoes, made myself up like a cat, and asked for a taxi. I looked at the address: it was in the Nogal building. Great. I didn’t know it.

  I arrived and he turned out to be a brilliant guy, a real old gentleman; he showed me into the library and there was something of everything, history books, literature, dictionaries of the cinema, he offered me a drink and as he was bringing ice for a whiskey I took down a book by Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, that was always on loan from the university library, he had it in Spanish and in French; when he came back with the glasses he said to me, are you interested in Lévi-Strauss? and I said, I’m sorry, I just wanted to look at this book, I’ve been waiting for it for months from the library, and then he said, you can have it, come and take a look, and he took out The Raw and the Cooked and also Tristes Tropiques, books that seemed in the realm of fantasy in the university library, and said, take them, they’re yours, I’ve already read them and I have them in French, these books are the kind you read and appreciate, it’s been years since anybody took out those poor volumes, it’ll give me pleasure to know that you’re going to read them and lend them to your friends, that’s what they’re for, to be read many times and by different people.

  We sat down on the couch and talked about literature and history, about the Escolios of Nicolás Gómez Dávila, the aphorisms of Lichtenberg and Elias Canetti; then he talked about life and read me a fragment of a poem by William Blake:

  That Man should labour & sorrow, & learn & forget, & return

  To the dark valley whence he came, to begin his labour anew.

  That’s what he was like, he said, trying to get back to a place, searching anxiously for it, but sometimes his valley was in his books or in his memory or in movies, he didn’t have much left. He told me he was a widower, his children lived in Europe, and for the moment he didn’t have a girlfriend. He was in recess. His verse from Blake had made me think of one by Mayakovsky, and he said, do you know it? can you quote it to me? and I said:

  Without drinking even a drop

  I have reached my soul’s aim. My solitary human voice

  is raised

  between cries

  between tears

  in the rising day.

  He gave me a hug, and suddenly I noticed that his eyes had glazed. It’s very good, and he talked to me about Mayakovsky, “the unhappy Mayakovsky,” as Sabato calls him. He said that in Moscow there was a Mayakovsky Museum next to the former KGB headquarters, a strange, elliptical, theatrical museum that tried to reproduce his poetry and his world. One day you’ll visit it.

  He started caressing me and kissing me, it was really nice and I was enchanted, Consul, I swear, and we had a great fuck; then he asked permission to put the TV news on and I said to him that I didn’t want to interrupt him, that it was already time for me to go, but he said no, stay with me, and we saw it there, lying naked in bed. Over our heads there passed that hurricane of horror contained in any of the news bulletins in that cursed place, with the massacres and the violence and the hypocrisy, and then those crazy women who present the final part, as if the news bulletin was about Disney World and not about a country with more displaced persons than Zaire and more executions than Liberia; reaching this point, Alfredo, that was his name, said to me, I can’t bear these idiots, and he switched it off, and then I said, it’s been really great to meet you, I have to go now, and he said, wait, he got out of bed and got dressed and as I was going out he handed me a roll of banknotes, but I said to him, don’t worry, Alfredo, the books are more than enough and I’m indebted to you, but he insisted, and I stuck to my guns, you and this house are an oasis, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, and he embraced me and said, I understand why you’re saying that, can I see you again? and I said, yes, and gave him my telephone number, call me whenever you like, it doesn’t matter what time, call me and I’ll come right away.

  I left with the strange sensation that I had touched something clean and unpolluted. Of course Monsieur Echenoz had been like that too, although in a way that was Luciferian and cynical. Not Alfredo, even though he was rich and from Bogotá. I walked northward along Seventh, glancing at the books by the light of the streetlamps, and when I got home Manuel wasn’t there, he’d gone to the movies, so I shut myself in to read and take notes, remembering Alfredo’s voice as he said: “It’ll give me pleasure to know that you’re going to read them and lend them to your friends,” which was precisely what I was thinking to do, and I fell asleep with a smile.

  A few days went by like that, going out from time to time with Víctor and with another couple of clients of the former Miss Colombia who turned out to be nothing special, until Andrés Felipe the adviser, as I thought of him, called me again. How’s it going, precious? and I said, I’m bored, I guess you forgot all about me, and then he said, no, precious, not at all, I’m actually calling you to ask you to go with me on a really nice jaunt, it’s to a ranch in
Antioquia, how does that sound to you? it sounds great, I said, and when is it for? and he said, now, right now, get ready and I’ll send someone to pick you up, give me an address. I told him at the entrance to the Andino mall and I went there with a hand case. A car came with official plates and took me to the Catam military airport, near El Dorado. Andrés Felipe was waiting for me on one of the runways with two men dressed in dark suits who I didn’t know; we got on a helicopter and took off; I was pleased because I’d never seen Bogotá from a helicopter, in other words, as the birds, the buzzards and the vultures, see it, and the truth is that as soon as the flight takes off and you rise into the air the city looks like a trough of sugar houses and winding paths; of course if you go further it already looks like a patch of vomit, next to the hills; then I started looking at the mountains and the rivers, those beautiful landscapes that the country has, and I imagined them full of guerrillas and paramilitaries, our beautiful fields, the paths and valleys filled with mines and bones and rifle cases, and so we continued, without anybody talking, until one of the guys, looking at a BlackBerry, said to Andrés Felipe, they’ve just sent the coordinates, sir, wait and I’ll give them to the pilot, and then the helicopter turned and gained speed and two or three hours later we saw a clearing opening in the middle of the greenery and as we descended a ranch house came into view, with two swimming pools and well-tended, symmetrical, brightly colored gardens. A group of people stood beside a tree, signaling to us.