Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar

by Virginia Vallejo

  I have never been inside a prison, but this one is the opposite of what I had imagined: it looks like a boarding school dorm, with happy people going up and down the stairs. There are almost no guards—just some smiling and well-dressed lawyers—and there’s salsa music playing everywhere. In the Cali jail, Prisoner Number One is nearly as powerful as the pope in the Vatican, which means that no one asks my name, or stamps my hand, or opens my bag, or searches me. An officer leads me straight to the warden’s office and withdraws.

  “Our Lady of Mercedes has come to say hi to the ex-Extraditables!” I exclaim, like Scarlett O’Hara when she goes to visit Rhett Butler in jail, wearing that dress made out of the velvet curtains from the house at Tara.

  “Ohhh, my queen, what is this vision come down from heaven?” cries Gilberto Rodríguez, giving me an affectionate hug.

  “If it gets out that you’re in jail here, half the country is going to line up to get in! This hotel is stupendous! Do you think they’d let me spend six months here once I manage to save an illegal fortune the size of yours?”

  He laughs with a certain sadness and tells me I haven’t changed a bit. We sit across from each other at a long table and start to talk. He tells me that though he’s lucky to be back in his own country and on his own turf, the years in the European jail were terrible, hounded as he was by the thought that the Spaniards could turn him over to the gringos any day. After many negotiations between the governments of Belisario Betancur and Felipe González, he and Jorge Ochoa managed to get cases opened against them in Colombia for minor crimes so that national justice could claim them before the Americans did. That was what saved them from being sent to the United States.

  “Here they bring me food from home or the restaurant of my choosing, but in Spain things were different. One gets used to being spoiled, my queen, and you can’t imagine what it’s like to have to eat unsalted spaghetti every day….And the sound of those bars slamming morning, noon, and night, an infernal racket that won’t let you sleep. But the worst part is thinking all the time that your woman is two-timing you.”

  “But who is the Beast going to cheat on you with? I’m sure she’s a faithful beast!”

  “No, no, my love, I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about how you and I had…Paris, remember? Did you forget already?” he asks, not hiding his sadness.

  I could never tell him about what Pablo did to me when he found out about Paris. That terrible episode is one of our most intimate secrets, and in any case, I made him pay dearly. The debt is settled, and the pain almost completely forgotten. Plus, I’ve sworn to myself I won’t ever talk about that with anyone. I decide to ignore the bit about “your woman.” I look at Gilberto affectionately, comment that in those three years I only got one letter from him, and ask when he’s going to get out. He tells me he’ll be free in a couple of months, and that he would like to see me again. He admires my hair and suggests launching a shampoo with my name. I thank him for the compliment and tell him that what I’d like to launch, instead, is a line of makeup and skin care products, but I don’t have capital. He promises that we’ll talk about that when he gets out. To change the subject I ask him about the murder of Hugo Valencia, who owed a lot of money to a jeweler acquaintance of mine and to my friends at Raad for several cars.

  “Huguito didn’t pay his bills, and he made some very rough enemies in Medellín. Thank God, here in the Valle del Cauca such horrible things don’t happen….But let’s not talk about that, I don’t know anything about that business, because I’m retired. Really! You don’t believe me?”

  I tell him I believe that he’s in forced retirement…and a provisional one. I realize that he no longer laughs easily, and he seems to have lost much of that malicious likability he used to have. But I think that compared to men who seem invulnerable, those with a temporary air of defeat hold a special charm for almost all women. I insist that he should consider himself the most fortunate man in the world, and he repeats that the years in jail marked him deeply and nothing will ever be the same: the stigma of a very well-known criminal passes on to his children. I tell him that’s the price of inheriting a billion “stigmatized” dollars, and that his children should feel very grateful for the sacrifices he’s made for them. With profound nostalgia, he explains that now he’ll never be able to leave Colombia, because of the risk that another country will arrest him at the request of the American government and extradite him to the United States. Which means that not even with all his money will he be able see Paris again. We talk about his studies and readings in jail, about Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and about Stefan Zweig, his favorite author, and how he would have liked to be an orchestra conductor. I know it’s true, and when we say good-bye a couple of hours later, he promises that he’ll come see me the day after he gets out. When I get back to Clara’s house, I pass by the velvet case that contains some cold diamonds and emeralds—which could be worth cents or millions—and I tell myself that “God works in the most mysterious ways.” And, like Dinah Washington, I sing happily:

  “What a difference a day makes, twenty-four little hours…”

  *

  —

  ARMANDO DE ARMAS proposes that I direct Hombre de Mundo, but I turn it down, because I know he doesn’t treat the editors in chief of his other magazines well, and that with me he would be merciless. And since everyone around me seems to have an empire of some sort, I get to work designing my own: I study all the biographies of Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden, and Estée Lauder, and I decide it’s time to create a Latin American brand with practical beauty products, colors that match the skin tones and features of Latin women, and economical prices, because the high prices of cosmetics only come from advertising and packaging. I ask Hernán Díaz to take some new photos of me and I find that, at thirty-seven years old, my face and figure look better than ever. I know that with a minimal investment from Gilberto, and with his enormous distribution chains, I could create a really successful business. After all, I can convince women to buy everything I advertise, so how about those creams that erase razor cuts and those vitamins that cure syphilis and AIDS? I buy all kinds of products to study them in detail and figure out which ones can be imitated or improved, and I think that, sooner or later, I will also launch products for men. I think I’m ready to start, and I count the days until my potential partner is free. But I decide not to talk to him about my plans until I’m sure he shares my enthusiasm. Some weeks later, we talk again.

  “I’m about to get out, but in this business the problems never end, reinita. Now your gentleman friend from Medellín is threatening us with war, because my partners and I don’t want to do him a favor. I can’t tell you what it is, because these are matters for men. And you should be careful, because he’s going insane…and he’s capable of having you killed.”

  I tell him that’s a crazy idea, because even though Pablo and I aren’t together anymore, he still considers me his best friend and he cares a lot about me. I propose he let me try to smooth things over, because now that Luis Carlos Galán has joined the official Liberal Party and is going to be the next president, he and Pablo need to think about creating a united and peaceful front against extradition.

  “And I don’t want to see you two kill each other or be extradited. We’ve all suffered enough as it is….Stop this—the both of you are breaking my heart. Let me try for an armistice, okay?”

  He tells me he’s skeptical, because the mood is already pretty hot, but he doesn’t mind if I communicate his willingness to reach an agreement to Pablo.

  What I don’t know at this point is the kind of favor Escobar is demanding from the Rodríguezes. Gilberto and Miguel have two main partners: “Chepe” Santacruz and “Pacho” Herrera, one of the few narcos who prefer young boys to beauty queens. Pablo is demanding that they turn over Pacho—his archenemy—in payment for a favor he did at the beginning of the year for Chepe: cut Hugo Valencia to bits. It’s the kind of thing they don’t do i
n Cali, but they do in Medellín.

  Several days later I meet Ana Bolena Meza at the beauty salon. The answer that sweet girl gives me is a lesson in dignity that I will never forget. We only exchange a few polite words, but her enormous blue eyes tell me more than she can express in words. In the depths of my heart I feel a profound relief at my failure, mixed with a strange and furtive feeling of joy: there are still people left in the world who can’t be bought.

  *

  —

  GILBERTO RODRÍGUEZ has told me he can’t wait to see me; he got out of jail yesterday, and today he’s already in Bogotá. It’s five in the afternoon, and I’m in my living room making sure everything is perfect: the champagne, the music, the flowers, the view, the book by Zweig that he hasn’t read yet. I hear the elevator door open and I’m surprised to hear laughter. When two men impeccably dressed in navy blue make their entrance looking radiantly happy, I can’t believe my eyes: Gilberto Rodríguez has come to flaunt Alberto Santofimio in front of me, and Pablo Escobar’s candidate has come to flaunt his rival. They inform me that they can only stay one hour because they’re going to ex-president Alfonso López Michelsen’s home; he’s waiting for them there with Ernesto Samper Pizano to celebrate Gilberto’s return to freedom.

  I have spent my entire life in front of a camera and survived years of public insults, and I think I manage to hide how I feel about Santofimio. When the two of them say good-bye, I know that the Rodríguezes are going to finish Pablo. But I also know that first, Escobar will finish off half of humanity. If in the whole world only he and Gilberto were left, I think I would choose Pablo: he’s pitiless, but with him you know what to expect. Like me, Escobar is carved from one piece. In five years I’ve called him maybe half a dozen times, and never to tell him I miss him or want to see him. But today I decide to follow my heart and do just that, for the first and last time: we have to meet urgently to talk about Cali, and I am going to travel in a commercial plane. I don’t tell him or Gustavo that I’m going to say good-bye to both of them. And that this time, it will be forever.

  In the past five years I have gradually become an impotent spectator of the designs wrought by all those men. Tomorrow I will do the impossible to try to dissuade Pablo from war, because the things gestating in his mind horrify me. I have just realized that I am witnessing the beginning of the end of two formidable newcomers to the world of power, and that once he and Gilberto have destroyed each other and the establishment has given them the coup de grace, nothing in the country will have changed. The same mean intellects as always will reign for another century with their pockets full of both men’s money. Tomorrow I will see for the last time the only man who has made me completely happy, who has always treated me like an equal and never underestimated me, the only one in the world who has made me feel pampered and protected. I look at myself in the mirror and tell myself that in just a few hours I will say good-bye forever to all that he and I shared. I look at myself crying in the mirror, and behind the reflection, for an instant I’m reminded of Munch’s The Scream once more.

  A Diamond and a Farewell

  EXTRADITION FELL MONTHS AGO on procedural grounds, and Pablo has gone back to working in his office. When I arrive, I’m informed that he and Gustavo are in meetings, and they’ve asked me to wait a few minutes until they are free. I think about it being the first time that I’ve made use of Pablo’s waiting room and, thank God, it will also be the last. While I wait, one of their bodyguards or sicarios—the name now given in Colombia to the Mafia’s hit men—looks at my legs lasciviously and comments to his companion, in a voice loud enough for me to hear every word, that my successor definitely doesn’t have my “class.” Since I did the ad campaign for Di Lido pantyhose, many men stopped looking at my face and now don’t take their eyes off my legs, because simple people always have more faith in what the media tells them than what their own eyes are seeing.

  I look at those boys with their evil eyes and obscene tongues who don’t hide their contempt for society and for women, and I think it’s going to be a relief to say good-bye forever to that elite of an underworld that is ever more sinister, ever more powerful. Last night I decided that, for the first time since I met him, I am going to ask Pablo to give me money. Over these five years, and on my dozens of trips abroad, he has always sent me considerable sums for my expenses, which I accepted as tokens of his love and generosity. But, since he paid the debts of my television company in exchange for advertising time in January 1983, it hasn’t occurred to me to ask him for anything, because I have always had enough from my work. I’ve never aspired to accumulate property or riches; for fifteen years, I’ve been one of the most sought-after professionals in Colombian television, and I never would have thought that at my age I could end up out of work. All this is to say, simply, that my savings are enough to live on for some twelve months.

  Yesterday I’d been looking forward to talking calmly with Gilberto after his three years in jail, but the visit with Santofimio made alarm bells go off, and my instinct tells me I shouldn’t expect any encouragement from him about the cosmetics business. That’s why I have decided it will be better to ask Pablo for help, so I can go study languages in Europe and work in what I’ve always dreamed of since I was a child, until my marriage and later television got in the way. But first of all, I plan to do everything in my power to try to stop what seems to be an imminent war between the Medellín and Cali Cartels. That is, between their two top leaders: Pablo Escobar and Gilberto Rodríguez.

  The door to Pablo’s office opens and he comes out accompanied by a woman. She’s around twenty-seven years old, and she’s wearing a Colombian-made red wool sweater, a gold chain with a large medal of the Virgin Mary on her chest, and a black skirt. Although she is quite attractive and has a good figure and her hair is blown out, she could never be a model or a beauty queen. She has the look of a cosmetics salesgirl or an employee in a home-decor store. He introduces her as his girlfriend, and I congratulate him for having such a pretty girl at his side. She looks at me sweetly and without the slightest hint of envy of my expensive red Thierry Mugler dress, which gives me an hourglass shape and attracts everyone’s eyes when I enter a Bogotá restaurant. I’ve chosen it from among more than 150 designer dresses from Milan, Paris, and Rome, because somewhere I read that the memory we conserve of a person is that of the last time we see them. And much as I still care about Pablo, I have decided that today I will say good-bye to him forever. Not just because we have stopped loving each other, but because our friendship has been turning into an inexhaustible source of problems, suffering, and danger for someone as visible but unprotected as me. I say good-bye to the girl with a smile and some polite words, and I say to him, “I’m going to ask your girlfriend to excuse us for a few moments, because I came from Bogotá just to bring you a message from Gilberto Rodríguez. And I think I should give it to you immediately.”

  And I head for his office without waiting for him to invite me. Pablo and the girl exchange some brief words, and he enters behind me, closes the door, and sits down at his desk. I can tell that he is seething with rage. The day before, I had said the word “Cali,” and in punishment, he hadn’t hesitated to expose and embarrass me in front of his “salesgirl.” And, on seeing that woman, who can’t be very important to him or me, the celebrity who sacrificed everything for love has not hesitated to respond with the name of his worst enemy. Pablo looks at me, and in a fraction of a second those eyes of a grizzly tell me everything: everything that awaits me for the rest of my life. The rest of my life without him. Without him, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  “Let me warn you, I only have a few minutes, because my girlfriend is waiting for me. What did you want to tell me?”

  “That Gilberto and Samper are going to massacre you, Pablo. But I can’t explain how in just a few minutes, because finishing you off isn’t so easy. And either you respect me or I’ll go back on the next plane.”

  He looks at the floor, an
d after thinking for a few seconds, he looks up and tells me, “All right. I’ll send someone to the hotel for you tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. and we’ll meet at ten. And don’t look at me like that. These days I get up very early. That’s right, at nine! My day is full of meetings, and I have become a very punctual person. Gustavo is waiting for you. See you tomorrow, Virginia.”

  His curiosity tells me everything: a man who has paid $250,000 in emeralds for a weekend with one of so many beauty queens, but at the mere mention of Cali displays that “salesgirl” as his girlfriend, is losing his sense of proportion and is highly vulnerable. Together, the four big bosses of the Cali Cartel have more power and more resources than he does. And he’s now alone, because his partners don’t share his visceral hatred for Cali, and in particular for Gilberto Rodríguez. With a cool head, Escobar is a human calculator; with a hot one, he loses his sense and obeys only his wild passions. I have always known that he has the fiery soul of a warrior and that his rival has a soul of of ice, like all bankers. And I know Pablo Escobar’s strengths and weaknesses like no one else. I know that while he has the courage, pride, and tenacity of the exceptionally brave, he also suffers from the impatience, arrogance, and stubbornness of those likely suicidal men who one fine day decide to attack all their enemies not only at the same time but also prematurely. I feel a deep compassion—for him and for us—and the deepest and most painful nostalgia for what could have been and will never be. This fierce, unique being has not yet turned thirty-eight, and I once believed he was destined for great things.