In half a dozen successive calls, Pablo tells me he wants to offer me the best business deal in the world: a unique opportunity that we can only discuss in person and in the most absolute privacy, and about which he can’t tell me anything now. He says that for his own peace of mind he wants to secure my future definitively, because it made him terribly sad to hear me say my career had gone down the tubes because of him. I thank him for the offer and tell him I’m really not interested in getting rich. The next day he calls again to insist that he wants to make up for what I lost, once and for all; he asks me to imagine what will become of me if for some reason I separate from Rafael tomorrow and no one will give me work and—God forbid!—the doctors can’t save my sight.
“Do you realize that if you had accepted that offer from the channel in Miami, you wouldn’t have that whole happy life you’re living? Imagine if you add what I’m going to offer you on top of all you have now. You could remove the thorn in your side from what they’ve done to you and secure your future! It’s now or never, my love, because next week…I could be dead. Promise me that before you go back to Cartagena you’ll stop by and see me. Don’t make me suffer, it’s for your own good…and your children’s…because you told me you want to have kids, right?”
“I don’t know….You’re going to set up a TV channel, and you want me to work there! That’s it, right?”
“No, no, no! It’s something much better than that. But I can’t tell you anything now.”
“All right. I’ll go, but if it’s not something worthwhile I’ll never talk to you again as long as I live, and I’ll renounce being your biographer. Let those beastly journalists write your story and say that you’re nothing but a psycho with giraffes.”
“That’s the way to talk, my love! You should write how you know better than anyone that I’m a soulless psychopath so people will respect me and be even more afraid of me.”
*
—
THE DOCTORS INFORM ME that they can’t operate, but that my condition isn’t serious. I think it’s a shame to have to go on wearing contacts, and I can’t wait to be back with Rafa, who calls me daily to tell me that he misses me. On the way back to Cartagena I stop for a few hours in Medellín to fulfill my promise to Pablo, who has sent a trusted aide to coordinate the details of our meeting. Once I’m at the apartment, he calls to tell me he’s been delayed, and he begs me to wait a couple of hours; when two become four, I know he is forcing me to spend the night in Medellín. When he arrives, he excuses himself with the argument that every time he’s going to see me, he has to wait until he’s completely sure that “the coast is clear.” He informs me that because of the material that was sent to me anonymously, he’s had to bug my other phone again, the one that everyone has, but he couldn’t tell me until we saw each other in person. He justifies himself by saying that if I were ever kidnapped, the identification of all those voices threatening me could lead to my location and rescue; but I wonder how long Pablo Escobar is going to keep exercising so many subtle forms of control over me. I decide that unless this business he wants to propose is really worthwhile and compatible with my new life, when the moment comes I’ll tell him that I’m engaged to Rafa and that we can’t see each other anymore.
He asks if I want some weed, because he’s going to take a few hits. I’m surprised, because he’s never smoked in front of me. I reply that I’d be happy to accept if marijuana produced any interesting effect on me, but it just makes me tired and I fall deeply asleep until the next day. He asks how I know, and I tell him that my Argentine husband smoked often, and I had tried it a couple of times without much success.
“That old ché? Now, that’s a shocker!”
I tell him that “the Stivel Clan,” maybe the most brilliant and important group of actors in Argentina, had undergone collective psychoanalysis with LSD in the seventies, under the supervision of a shrink who was crazier than all of them put together. I also tell him LSD is the only drug I’d like to try, to open the doors of perception, as Aldous Huxley says. I talk to him about my admiration for the British philosopher, disciple of Krishnamurti, and of his studies of peyote and mescaline, and I tell him how when Huxley was on his deathbed he asked his wife to inject him with LSD, because he wanted to cross the threshold to the other world with a total absence of pain and the absolute clarity he had glimpsed before, when time, space, and matter disappear. I ask him if he could get me some lysergic acid so I could try it once and save a little for the eve of my death.
“Are you suggesting, then, that I become an importer of hallucinogenic drugs? What a scandalous proposal, Cleansoul! I’m shocked!”
From that day on, Pablo will call me Cleansoul every time he wants to tease me, or mock what he describes as my “quadruple moral” when it comes to drugs: a visceral hatred for cocaine, crack, and heroine; a deep contempt for his adored cannabis; my interest in the peyote and yagé rituals of the Mesoamerican and Amazonian tribes; and my secret fascination with the idea of crossing the mythical river Styx en route to Hades: that something could help me replace pain and fear with absolute comprehension and a feeling of floating in a light and diaphanous ether, beyond all pleasures. A sublime delight, as described by Huxley, that would transcend all rational experience.
Pablo asks me if people do a lot of drugs on the islands, and I tell him that everyone except Rafa smokes and snorts by the ton. He insists on knowing whether I now love Vieira the way I used to love him, and to avoid giving him the answer he wants to hear, I explain that there are as many forms of love as there are of intelligence. I offer as proof the fact that things as exquisite as snail shells have been designed and built by primitive creatures based on the golden ratio, 1.618033. The same number is used in great Renaissance masterpieces, and is a recurrent pattern in the most successful works of architecture and the most impressive views in nature, including many human faces. I add that I have always been fascinated by the idea that minds as diverse as God’s, geniuses’, and mollusks’ could, rationally or instinctively, apply the same proportion to rectangular compositions to make attractive geometric shapes.
From the bed where he is lying down, Pablo listens to me in silence, sunk into what seems to be a feeling of utter peace. From the same chair where he’d once blindfolded me and caressed me with a revolver, I coldly observe the king of drugs under the effect of a hallucinogenic he didn’t produce. Suddenly he gets up and comes toward me as if in slow motion, and he takes my face in his hands, gently, as if he were going to kiss me and he didn’t want to scare me. He studies me carefully and says that maybe it’s the divine ratio’s proportions that inspire the fascination he’s always felt for my face. Uncomfortable, I tell him that had never occurred to me. Trying to wriggle free, I ask what he wanted to talk to me about. He caresses my cheeks and says he would like to know whether I talked to other very wealthy men about Irish curses and geometry. Surprised, I tell him no, that I had only learned things from those men. Staring at me hard, and without letting go of me, he asks if I feel any affection for those tycoons. Since we had talked before about the biggest financial groups, but not other men in general, I say I feel nothing for any of them, and I insist that he tell me once and for all why he made me come to Medellín. He asks if I would like to squeeze a lot of money out of those stingy old men, and when I laugh and say that the mere fantasy would bring a mental orgasm to anyone, he crows triumphantly that that is precisely what he wants to talk to me about:
“I am going to kidnap the richest men in the country, and I’m going to need your help. I’ll offer you twenty percent…twenty percent of hundreds of millions of dollars, my dear.”
So Armando de Armas wasn’t lying!
Pablo had come into my arms still a child, and since at that age I was already a woman, I got used to taking care of him. He still doesn’t know those men the way I do, and incredulous, I ask him, “Why do you need to kidnap those poor guys with two or three or five hundred million dollars, when you have three
billion or more? You’re richer than all of them put together, and if you become a kidnapper, your enemies are going to say that you are not only crazy but also poor, and they’re going to eat you alive! Whatever you smoked isn’t Samarian Gold, it’s Hawaiian Platinum, Pablo. Holy Christ: How rich do you want to be?!”
“I’ve only taken three hits, and if you keep talking like that, I won’t offer you any more good deals, Virginia. Look: I need liquidity, because the laws against money laundering have turned our lives into hell, and almost all the money from the business is held up outside the country. We can’t bring money in appliances like we used to. Botero can’t paint a picture a day, De Beers can’t mine any more diamonds weekly, and no more Ferraris will fit in the garages. Extradition will fall, it’s true, but the moment the gringos open cases against us in the United States, they are going to put a price on our heads, especially mine. And so, for the war that’s coming, I need millions of dollars here in Colombia, not billions abroad. And there is nothing more expensive than a war. My friends in the M-19 taught me everything I needed to know about kidnapping, and with you I have an expert in the four richest men of the country and one of the few people I have total trust in. I have always thought you were a genius, and you could have phenomenal success in my world, if only you didn’t impose so many scruples on yourself. Do you want to hear the plan, or are you going to be Cleansoul?”
Pablo seems not to have realized that he, now, is also one of the moguls of my past. With my best smile I ask what kind of partnership he proposes we form, and he, excited, falls into the trap.
“My first targets are the two bottlers: Santo Domingo is several times richer than Ardila, and I would kidnap him in New York, where he goes without bodyguards, or on one of his trips. You were seen getting out of a plane with him and your British friend…about a year ago, remember? Carlos Ardila has the advantage that he can’t get away, because he’s confined to a wheelchair. Luis Carlos Sarmiento answers your calls and gives you appointments…and I’m sorry for listening to your conversations, my dear. Then I’ll look at Carlos Haime, the Jewish owner of the oil and soap corporation, who is a close friend of Belisario Betancur. Since he’s your neighbor, I’ll need you to let me use your apartment while you’re in Cartagena, so I can track him down.”
As he goes on giving me details of how he plans to kidnap the four richest men in Colombia, I start to see that Pablo has a perfectly orchestrated plan for me. I explain to him that the Santo Domingo, Sarmiento Angulo, Ardila, and Gutt families have armies of at least a hundred men just as tough as his own, trained in the United States and Israel for one single thing: to keep the guerrillas from kidnapping any members of their families or taking a single cent from them.
“That terror is one of their favorite conversation topics, especially after Juan and Jorge Born were abducted in Argentina, and Camila Sarmiento, Gloria Lara, and Adriana Sarmiento were kidnapped here in Colombia. So far, the superrich haven’t decided to hate you, because although they would never admit it in public, in secret they applaud the founding of MAS. If you kidnap a single one of them, they’ll all forget any little quibbles they have among themselves and they’ll unite against you. And you can’t even imagine what Carlos Ardila’s praetorian guard is like, or the kind of lifelong enemy that Julio Mario Santo Domingo can be! In front of a lot of people, he killed a caged viper just by spitting on it three times. To finish you off, it would only take four or five, Pablo!”
“Woooow…poor little snake! But don’t you hate them? They never gave you a thing, and now they’ve had you banned from working and left you to die of hunger!”
“Yes, but it’s one thing to detest them, and quite another to want to hurt them. When it comes to Luis Carlos Sarmiento, you should be thinking of meeting with him instead: he knows more about banking in Latin America than anyone else, and you could figure out a way to solve that little problem of your ‘excess millions.’ You put your army at his disposal when his daughter was kidnapped, and it’s better business to have him on your side than as an enemy: Don’t you realize that it’s better to legalize one billion dollars than to squeeze him for fifty million? And since you listen to my conversations, you’ll know that he had no problem giving an appointment to Gilberto Rodríguez.”
His eyes flash.
“Well, unlike that jailbird, I don’t like banks or credit cards—I prefer the smell of hard cash! And I hate taxes almost as much as Santo Domingo does; that’s why he, the FARC, and I are the richest in the country. Let’s forget about your ex-boyfriends, because it seems like you want to protect them….Let’s go to the next level: you know the Echavarrías, the sugar manufacturers of the Cauca del Valle, the flower exporters of the Bogotá savanna, and all those rich people who used to be your friends. Their wives turned their backs on you because of our relationship…and I only want to serve up on a silver tray the chance to pull out those thorns, my dear: one by one, all of them! And then there’s another little gold mine: the Jewish community.”
I tell him that at a moment when he has the U.S. government on top of him, plus the Colombian state and the press, he can’t go after anyone with wealth or resources, at any level, above all the rebel groups that haven’t messed with him since they abducted Martha Nieves Ochoa:
“You are Pablo Escobar, the richest magnate in Latin America, founder of Death to Kidnappers! You’re not Tirofijo, and kidnapping is the FARC’s business! How would you feel if Tirofijo got it into his head to become the new Czar of Coke?”
“I’d break him the next day! Don’t you doubt that for an instant, my love. But you have to accept that kidnapping is so profitable that the FARC is richer than me. And I am not a magnate, understood? I’m the biggest outlaw in Latin America, and I think, speak, and act as such. Don’t confuse me with those miserable bloodsuckers. I was born with different values!”
I try to make him see that no one, brave and fearsome and rich as he may be, can simultaneously face the gringos outside the country and everyone inside it, because it would be suicide. And when I run out of logical reasons, I tell him, simply, that his death would break my heart, that I loved him more than all my ex-boyfriends put together, and that I would shoot myself on the day when, between them all, they finish him off.
He looks at me in silence and caresses my face with the tenderness of old times. Suddenly, he hugs me and exclaims happily, “I was testing you, Cleansoul! Now I know that even if you stop loving me completely, and you even detest me, you would never conspire with anyone to turn me over to the gringos for all the money in the world the day they put a price on my head!”
He pulls me up with both arms, and with his hands on my shoulders, he adds, “In any case, I want to remind you that…there’s only one way to test a person’s loyalty: telling them something that no one, no one else in the world knows—whether it’s true or not. And if the secret comes back to you, one month later, one year later, twenty years later, it was because that person betrayed you. Don’t ever forget that lesson, because I care a lot about you, too.”
I can only reply that if someday I told a single person about our conversation, not only would they lock me up in a mental asylum, but all my friends, family, and even my domestic help would go running, and I’d have to live the rest of my days not on Rafa’s island but on a desert island. Before we say good-bye, I tell him, “You’re very creative, Pablo, and I know you’ll find a way to bring the money in without going after the rich and the guerrillas at the same time. For the love of God: ‘Go in peace and sin no more.’ We had enough with that incinerated criminal record!”
“I always know what’s going to happen…and you are not going to live the rest of your life with Tarzan, or have children with him. I can’t offer you anything, Virginia, but before three months are up you’ll be back here with me. And though you don’t want to, you’re going to have to see my face and hear my name every day of your life….”
On the plane to Cartagena I think to myself that it wasn’t
true that he was testing me: though he seems to have desisted from the idea of kidnapping the heads of the largest financial groups in the country, I know that sooner or later Escobar will become a kidnapper, and an incredibly efficient one. I was the one who once taught him that “he whom the gods love dies young,” like Alexander of Macedonia. And although I couldn’t swear it, I think Pablo is planning to risk his life, either at Russian roulette or in a very carefully planned way, for something that goes far beyond his fight against extradition, and much further than the control of an empire. But, above all, far beyond his time.
How Quickly You Forgot Paris!
I’VE BEEN SWIMMING through a school of jellyfish for two hours; there seem to be hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions. If they were moon jellyfish, I would be dead, but thank God, they are only the inoffensive kind, the ones with little brown dots. Here and there I see one of the moon species, but I can dodge them. Today for the first time I have put on the wetsuit I brought from Miami to avoid the recurring problem of those stings, and I am also wearing my watch with a compass, indispensable to have in the ocean. I had left the house at 9:00 a.m., and though it’s already noon, I still haven’t reached the island that is my destination, which in the past I’ve reached in around three hours.
I must be feeling the effects of not sleeping a wink last night…and I shouldn’t have left the house so late. So many relatives of Rafa’s who came to spend Christmas on the island! And I’m tired of those tourists who come into the house to snoop around…they always want photos, and when I say no, they tell me I am conceited. As if I didn’t know why all those men want to take photos with me in a bikini….Not even my ex-boyfriends have photos of me in a bathing suit. But how many millions of jellyfish are there in the Caribbean Sea, my God? Well, I’m almost there…today is Sunday, and I can ask one of the tourist boats to take me back….But I’m not tired, and that would be giving up. I must be careful the engines don’t chop me into mincemeat….
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 28