When Anzola emerged onto the street, he could still hear jeering. People surrounded Julián Uribe and Carlos Adolfo Urueta to show their indignation, and Anzola took advantage of the moment to walk on without having to give voice to his own. He went along the edge of the gardens and crossed the street and began to walk in the direction of home, but taking a long meandering route, to give himself more time alone. For a few moments the murmur of the crowd carried on simmering behind him. That was when he noticed that the same people had been walking in front of him since he left the theater. They were four men in fine ponchos and top hats, and they were talking animatedly about the projection they’d all just seen. Anzola was not in the mood to listen to other people’s conversations; when he tried to overtake them, however, he glanced their way, in case there was an acquaintance among them he should greet out of politeness, and he felt a stab of panic as he recognized Pedro León Acosta, who seemed to recognize him in turn, raising two fingers to the brim of his hat and nodding in greeting, but in such a way that his polite greeting was charged with hatred, more hatred than Anzola had ever seen on anyone’s face, a terrible and frightening hatred because it was displayed so calmly, because it was the hatred of someone who controlled it and managed it at will. He knows who I am, thought Anzola, he knows who I am and what I’m doing. He also thought, with the certainty of a sealed fate, that this man was perfectly capable of hurting him, that his hand wouldn’t shake nor would any scruples trouble him, and furthermore he had the necessary means at his disposal. In a second he imagined the dead bodies of Ana Rosa Díez and Alfredo García, thrown to the muddy bottom of the Bogotá River or tossed pitilessly over the Tequendama Falls, and wondered if a similar fate awaited him.
Anzola stopped walking. Pedro León Acosta was no longer looking at him: he had turned back to his companions, and they had walked a few meters away from Anzola when they burst out, in a sort of infernal chorus, into loud laughter. At that instant Anzola noticed that Pedro León Acosta was wearing patent leather ankle boots.
Anzola, standing in the middle of the street like a lost dog, let him go.
* * *
—
THAT AFTERNOON, when he reached home, he opened his drawers and looked for the newspapers from the day of the crime. He had kept them carefully, first as a sort of commemoration or ritual superstition, later as documents or memoranda of the task he was carrying out, and over time he had developed a taste for rereading them. The first he found was the four-page edition that La Republicana distributed the very evening of October 15. The headlines took up three noisy lines: half of the front page. First line: “General Uribe Uribe.” Second line: “Cowardly Attack on Way into Senate.” Third line: “Assailants Taken into Custody—Society Outraged and Suffering.” Under that began the text of the editorial, titled “Our Protest,” and in the middle of the text a box emphasized something that still moved Anzola: “Attempted Assassination of Gen. Uribe Uribe.” What a simple world he could still see in that page: a world where Uribe had not yet died, where his attack was just an attempt and not an accomplished murder, where the assailants had already been captured and society was outraged . . . How different was the world today, with the general dead and cold in his tomb, with those responsible for the crime hidden among rumors and confusion, and the assassins being paid in dollars to appear in the Di Domenico film.
Anzola took out the loose-leaf notebook he’d been using to take notes on the investigation. He looked for a blank page and began to write an opinion piece—an article with the tone of opinion pieces—on the negligence of the prosecutor Alejandro Rodríguez Forero, and the police commissioner, Salomón Correal. But every phrase came out as an accusation, and before passing to the next sentence Anzola realized he had no proof. Halfway through he lost his enthusiasm and began to play on the paper. He began to write delirious versions of the formulaic interrogations of the court. “It is true and I attest that the prosecutor is hiding information, has looked the other way when important facts were presented to him, and allowed a key witness to disappear out of pure lack of interest. It is true and I establish that we, the friends of General Uribe, have pursued the authorities ad nauseam, urging them to investigate the clues that could lead them to the true culprits, and we have come up against an insuperable wall of concealment and corruption.” No, it was not true: none of this could he actually establish. It was certain, very certain, but he could not establish it, and thus he put it in writing: “All this is true, but I cannot prove it.”
He sat back in his chair, shook his Waterman fountain pen, and continued:
“It is true but I cannot attest to the fact that the assassins Galarza and Carvajal did not act alone, and that this thesis is a tall tale of the conspirators. It is true but I cannot establish that Pedro León Acosta, the same man who tried to assassinate President Reyes and was pardoned, led and financed an association of tradesmen, along with other rich leaders of the Conservative world, all of them sworn enemies of Liberalism. It is true but I cannot attest to the fact that they had some sort of lottery in that association to choose who would carry out that long-standing Conservative wish: the disappearance of Rafael Uribe Uribe. It is true but I cannot establish that on the night of October 14 Alfredo García saw a group of influential Conservative figures talking to the assassins in their carpentry shop, and it is true but I cannot establish that one of them was Pedro León Acosta, who that night contracted with the assassins for General Uribe’s fatal destiny. It is true but I cannot establish—if only I could establish—that Pedro León Acosta was present at the scene of the crime on the fifteenth, freshly shaved and wearing a new poncho and patent leather ankle boots, which Señorita Grau saw and remembered. It is true but I cannot establish that after the attack he approached one of the assassins and said: “How’d it go? Did you kill him?” It is true but I cannot attest to the fact that the assassin replied: “Yes, I killed him.” It is true but I cannot establish that in this whole cloud of dust there are very powerful people involved who might go up as far as the president of the Republic, who has remained as mute as a sphinx on this subject. It is true, it is a truth like a cathedral, that Pedro León Acosta did not act alone, that General Hatchet is not alone, that the corrupt prosecutor is not alone. But who pulls the strings? I cannot establish, a thousand times I cannot establish! What I can establish, what is true and what I do attest, is that the conspirators have every possibility of getting away with it. What is true and I do attest to the fact, what I can establish every day, what I can attest to even when I’m asleep and dreaming, is that God has forgotten us.”
Then he scrunched up the paper into a ball, put it on the logs in the fireplace, and went to look for something to light the fire with before it was time to pray a novena.
* * *
—
THE FRENCH REPORTED more than eight thousand dead on the opposing side at Ypres and Armentières. The British cabinet was in crisis over the war’s calamities. The Germans had reached the heart of Russia and had taken control of Poland, and in the Balkans they had erased Serbia from the map and opened a communication route with Turkey.
Anzola read this news and felt that he too was losing a war, and then the thought struck him as unworthy and frivolous (although each person suffers by the measure of their own experience). But it was true, deep down. The investigation was not going anywhere: Anzola had reached the impregnable conviction that the assassination of Rafael Uribe Uribe had been a conspiracy of gigantic proportions, but his conviction had come up against the now obvious complicity of the prosecutor Rodríguez Forero, and there was no way to achieve anything. The whole situation had affected him. The Salón Olympia had canceled, by order of the censors, any further showings of The Drama of October 15; the film had been officially banned, and some said that the authorities had gone so far as to burn it; and Anzola thought that one could clearly see there the hand of the conspirators, who had made a crucial piece of evidence against the true au
thors of the crime disappear. But when he aired his paranoia in public—even if it were just the reduced and private public composed of his acquaintances and family members—he received the same answer: “You’re mad.”
Or: “What an imagination.”
Or: “You see enemies where there aren’t any.”
They told him he seemed different: more severe, quieter, more closed in on himself. He spent his days going over the dossier of the Uribe case, studying it until his eyes hurt or he felt a weight on the nape of his neck as if he were carrying a sleeping child, and he eventually knew by heart the witnesses’ statements and felt uncomfortably as if he’d known and lived with them. He frequently visited Julián Uribe Uribe to speak with him of his frustration and impotence. The general’s brother had become Anzola’s protector and adviser, someone who invites the illusion of providing us shelter, dissipating our disillusion, filling us with confidence. But this time he received him with an undecipherable expression.
“Do you remember Lubín Bonilla?” he asked.
Lubín Bonilla, yes: the former head of the police investigations. The man who’d been put in charge of the case the very day of the general’s assassination, and later, brusquely dismissed by Salomón Correal, accused of divulging rumors against the government. Bonilla, for his part, had always maintained that his dismissal had been due precisely to his efficiency: in a few short days of investigation he had come too close to certain uncomfortable truths. “I burned myself like a moth,” he had told Julián Uribe. “By getting too close to the light.”
“I remember perfectly,” said Anzola.
“Well, General Bonilla sought me out this morning after Mass,” said Julián Uribe. “And I think you’re going to want to speak with him.”
“General Bonilla is in Bogotá? I thought they’d transferred him to Arauca. To get rid of him.”
“Well, he’s here. I don’t know whether he’s only recently arrived or if he’s been here for a while. But he came back with an urge to say things, and I told him he should say them to you.”
“And how can I speak to him?”
“He’s going to be taking tea at La Gata Golosa,” said Julián Uribe. “If you stop in there, you’re sure to find him.”
It was past five when he reached Avenida de la República, but General Bonilla was still there, sitting alone at one of the most discreet tables, far from the windows as well as the large mirror. Bonilla seemed younger than he actually was. He had small ears and black hair so rigid it seemed painted on, and his low eyebrows imposed on his face, on the bones of his face, a certain angular discipline that Anzola liked. The cutlery lay on the table in perfect symmetry. One arrived to speak with Bonilla and immediately felt a kind of order: order in the person, on the table, in the whole place. “How are you, General?” said Anzola.
“Here I am,” said Bonilla. He raised his tired face, looked at Anzola. “Caramba. They told me you were young, but I never imagined you’d be so young. It must be true, as they say, that youth knows nothing of danger.”
“I didn’t know you were in the city,” said Anzola. “Hadn’t they sent you somewhere?”
“I was away for a while, yes,” he said. “But not because they sent me somewhere. I left because I thought they were going to do something to me.”
Over the past few months, Lubín Bonilla had been truly tormented. Days after fleeing Bogotá, looking over his shoulder and keeping an eye on every corner, he had arrived in San Luis, in Cauca, and even way out there the public prosecutor went looking for him. One day a telegram arrived at the mayor’s office demanding he present himself in Bogotá as soon as the required travel time would allow. “That order is illegal,” Bonilla told the mayor. “I am not a delinquent. If the prosecutor wants my testimony, he has to request that you take my statement.” Three days later he learned that a new communication came in, ordering his capture.
“They wanted to imprison you?” said Anzola.
“By order of the governor,” said Bonilla. “Effective immediately.”
“And what did you do?”
He went into hiding, what else could he do. He left town in the middle of the night and without taking his medications; a colleague helped him recover them, or what was left of them, by ruses and wiles. Bonilla had never led the life of a fugitive, but there, in the mountains, he had to do so: while his friends tried to discover what crime was being attributed to him and what consequences his eventual surrender might have, he spent several nights sleeping out in the open, sheltering from the rain under trees and against rocks, eating and drinking thanks to others who took risks to help him, and once in a while finding a borrowed bed in which to spend a few hours without the fear of being awoken by vermin. One night he was close to being captured by one of the foot patrols sent out by Puno Buenaventura, a police chief famous for his pitiless methods; the barking of some dogs saved him, but didn’t give him time to take his only blanket. Barefoot, almost naked, appealing to the charity of farmers to put something in his stomach, he arrived through the mountainous jungle at Ibagué. There he discovered that General Hatchet had offered a reward of three hundred thousand pesos to whoever caught him and handed him over. Then he was certain: if they wanted to jail him, it was not to accuse him of any crime, but so that he’d be found dead one morning at the hands of a hungry hit man.
That’s why he’d returned to Bogotá. He had heard that Anzola was carrying out a personal investigation for General Uribe’s family. Was that so?
“At the request of Don Julián,” said Anzola.
“Well,” said Bonilla. “And tell me, have you already talked to Eduardo de Toro?”
“Eduardo de Toro?”
“The one who was in charge of the detective college that day. The one who was with Salomón Correal when news of the attack arrived.”
“You weren’t with him?” asked Anzola.
“I arrived later,” said Bonilla. “But I learned things afterward. Or rather: he informed me of them.”
“Things like what?”
“Like about the cells, for example. Galarza and Carvajal were put in separate cells, and kept incommunicado, as is logical. Well, Salomón Correal changed their cells as soon as he could. Put them in cells next to each other, with only a thin wall between them. It’s as if he had given them written authorization to speak to each other and agree on their lies. And the assassins took advantage of it, Señor Anzola, they’re not that stupid. Each time one of the assassins went into an interrogation, it was as if he’d memorized a lesson. And I would call them back in and ask more questions, often the same ones over again. The first evening was exhausting. We were all tired. There was a lot of nervousness in the air, it was really unbearable. Galarza and Carvajal were nervous, in spite of the fact that they’d come in willingly. They asked to go to the lavatory every hour or so and the guards let them go in together. To urinate together! Forgive me. The doors to the cells were open and so were those to the yard. They could have escaped if they’d wanted to. And with all that as well they were nervous, as if they couldn’t stand so much questioning. And at the end of the first day, after an especially tough interrogation, Carvajal grew furious. They took him back to the cell and he said: ‘If they keep grilling me, I’ll denounce them.’ He said it loudly, so everyone would hear.”
It was the day after those interrogations when the rumor reached Lubín Bonilla that elegantly dressed and well-shod persons had been seen in Galarza’s carpentry shop in the days leading up to the crime. It was said there were meetings held there; people talked about an association of tradesmen and a police officer who guarded the entrance, allowed certain people in and turned others away. Bonilla insisted on finding out what was true in all that, for that officer, if he actually existed, could maybe give useful testimony. He appealed to Salomón Correal, because only the police commissioner could authorize the information Bonilla was seeking: the names and numbers
of all the officers who had served in that sector on the nights before October 15. “He fobbed me off,” said Bonilla. “What would I need that for, that was not where we needed to be looking.” But Bonilla insisted. “This was the afternoon of the Friday, I think. On the Saturday, first thing in the morning, I was informed of my dismissal.”
“You hit a nerve with those meetings,” said Anzola.
“I think so,” said Bonilla. “People of distinction meeting with tradesmen at night . . . That doesn’t happen in Bogotá, unless there’s a very good reason.”
“And you never found out who went to those meetings?”
“No. But I did find out that General Pedro León Acosta was seen with the assassins outside of Bogotá.”
“At Tequendama Falls,” said Anzola. “That was on June 14. Yes, I heard about that too.”
“I was referring to a different outing. Four or five days before the crime.”
“He was also seen with the assassins then?”
“In the Hotel Bogotacito. I even went there to confirm it, and they confirmed it. Later the witnesses retracted.” So Lubín Bonilla had continued investigating on his own account, in spite of being taken off the case. No wonder Correal felt threatened, thought Anzola, for Bonilla was one of those detectives by temperament as well as occupation: bloodhounds, they call them now. Outside night was falling; Anzola raised his eyes and saw that a black butterfly had landed in the corner of the ceiling, right above their heads. Or maybe it had been there since the beginning.
The Shape of the Ruins Page 31