“And her name? Do you remember it?”
“Valentina. Valentina, that was her name.”
At the other end of the settlement, Varas had thrown in the towel. Either nobody knew anything, or everybody was hiding something, and he was in no mood to guess which. He walked to Montenegro’s house and was lucky to find him at home. Varas told the old man everything that had happened since they’d last seen each other. As Montenegro was getting Varas’s forgotten keys, the reporter fell asleep. When he woke up, startled, he asked the time and found that only five minutes had passed.
“What’s wrong with you, Gonzalo?”
He liked Montenegro, the only person who had ever called him by his first name—only his mother and Montenegro, that is. With this good man, he felt safe enough to confess his fears. He’d spent too many days inside of them and getting nowhere.
“Don Jaime, I think I bit off more than I can chew. I’ve got no idea what’s behind all this. And I’m in it alone”—he lowered his head and was silent, then recovered—“well, one friend and I”—and then, smiling—“and a woman who doesn’t say a word, and a dog.”
“What about me? I’m not flesh and blood?”
“Okay,” Varas blushed. “The five of us, then.”
Montenegro handed him a glass of aguardiente. A tiny glass, like a thimble almost. “My daughter gave me these, they’re from Turkey,” he said before Varas could ask.
Varas realized he knew nothing about Montenegro. Confused, he was about to say something when the old man stopped him.
“Come with me, Gonzalo, I’ve got something to tell you.”
In the backyard were sheets of brightly colored translucent paper piled on an old wooden table.
“The kids across the street, it’s their birthday party tonight and I promised to make them sky lanterns. Do you know how?”
“No, I never learned. When I was a kid my grandfather made them, but I haven’t seen one in years.”
While Montenegro folded the papers with expert hands, he began to muse aloud, as if their previous conversation had floated away, and now they were in some timeless place.
“You know, Gonzalo, there’s a question that’s more for philosophers than for old men like me, but it keeps me awake at night. If you forget things, is it the same as if they never happened?”
When Montenegro finished making the balloon he plucked a piece of straw from the ground and lit it on fire, placing it under the diamond-shaped paper construction. He and Varas watched the lantern fill with hot air and rise up into currents that lifted it toward the clouds. When it was nothing but a speck, Montenegro turned to face him.
“Last night, in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep, I went outside. You know what I saw, in the street?”
The reporter didn’t answer. In the distance, a series of firecrackers exploded one after another.
“If my eyes and nose didn’t deceive me, Vinueza walked right by me. Surrounded by men with rattles on their legs and stinking to high heaven.”
PART TWO
AMAZONAS AND NACIONES UNIDAS
IX
Press Conference
The Salón Altavista in the basement of the Hotel Dann Carlton was packed with reporters. The few chairs set out in the small room had been commandeered by photographers and videographers aiming their cameras at a long table covered by a starched white tablecloth, behind which sat Vinueza and his five former kidnappers. The blind men’s beards had been cut short, and their long white manes were brushed backward and held in place by immense quantities of hair gel. They were clad in tunics a celestial shade of blue. Vinueza, meanwhile, was stuffed into a sea-blue suit at least one size too small for him. With his red hair the shade of horsemeat, he looked like a sausage produced by some fly-by-night butcher shop. He wore a yellow tie dotted with purple and displayed a cool disinterest in the goings on around him, though his breathing was irregular and even gasping at times. He’d been rushed to the press conference directly from the airport and was having trouble with Quito’s altitude, on top of everything else that had happened since his liberation. From the moment he’d left the subterranean prison to step into a midnight taxi taking him and his kidnappers to his gated residence in Samborondón, the most unusual things had happened. He’d toyed with the idea of having the blind men arrested, but first he’d gone straight to his study for a dose of illumination from his personal stash of heavenly powders. Then he’d realized the ancient men were his ticket to the Presidency. Once that idea took hold, he’d spent all his energy fleshing it out, right up to the time of the press conference the next afternoon. He’d called José María, the archdiocese of Guayaquil, his contacts in the electoral and constitutional courts, three Supreme Court justices, and all the TV channels. It had been three a.m. when he picked up the phone, but what did that matter to him?
Varas was worried. He and Benito had met up as planned and exchanged their latest discoveries: that the woman’s name was Valentina, and that Vinueza, no longer disappeared, was expected to appear on TV at any moment. The poet suggested buying a bottle to celebrate. Varas thought that what his friend wanted to commemorate was not what he’d discovered but his return from who-knew-what personal hell. Therefore he accepted the proposal. They pooled what money they had in their pockets to buy a bottle of Clan MacGregor, the only Scotch produced within the borders of Ecuador, better known for its marathon hangovers than for any exceptional flavor. Benito and Varas held their celebration in the Parque de las Iguanas. It was a very pleasant afternoon—mothers taking their children for walks, tourists snapping photos, old folks absorbed in daily confabulations—and the two of them drinking from the bottle disguised within a paper bag to avoid the attention of police. Despite the worry nagging at Varas, he’d never seen his friend so calm, so he went along with celebrating the occasion. At any rate, about the latest news, what more could he do than speculate? And after more than half the bottle was gone, his speculations had still not led to any conclusions.
“What do you think Vinueza will do?” he asked.
“What are you talking about, mamón? I’ve seen iguanas better looking and better behaved than that guy,” said Benito, who would have preferred another topic of conversation.
Varas pointed to an old iguana perched in a tree, looking more serious and dignified than any member of the national legislature.
“See?” Benito told him. “You didn’t have to look very far. The one who’s really good-looking, though, is Bella.”
“And who’s that?” Varas asked after taking another swig.
“The one who told me about Valentina.”
“I thought it was Valentina you were interested in,” Varas said.
“And get in your way? No thanks, güey. I wish you could see the expression on your face when you look at her.”
Varas didn’t answer. An iguana scooted across his leg, raising goosebumps.
But that was five hours ago. Now he was seated in front of the TV with Témoc, Valentina, and a terrible sense of unease. Where was Benito now, he wondered. The last thing he remembered was that, on parting, he’d told his friend not to look down when he got to his feet, because that might make him dizzy, and he’d fall. What was that about? Fall? Where to? And who was he to be giving this advice? A tightrope walker? An acrobat?
It took a while for the press conference to get going. The press and radio reporters crowded around the table that the organizers, showing poor judgment, had placed very close to the wall so that no one could get behind it. After a brief tussle, the TV reporters ended up winning, as usual. Their companies paid the government $365 a month for the use of their assigned frequencies throughout the country, and that bit of small change gave them complete control over the images and events that Ecuadorians got to see. It was no more or less logical than anything else in the country. They had power and didn’t hesitate to use it, just as they were doing now to crowd out their colleagues, elbowing past any who dared to block the view of the cameras an
d thus of the public. That public included Varas, the woman, and the dog. When they first turned on the TV, static interrupted the opening minutes of the broadcast. Once they could see and hear, there was Vinueza, microphone in hand.
“The country is in a terrible state, but we’re going to turn it around. 360 degrees.”
A barely audible question came from an unseen reporter: “You mean, you’re going to turn us in a complete circle and we’ll end up in the same place?”
Vinueza ignored this. “We’re at the edge of an abyss,” he pronounced, “and we need to take a step forward.”
“Off the cliff?” the same reporter asked.
There were sounds of a scuffle, a falling microphone, and then Vinueza’s voice again. His face had not left the screen.
“But before speaking, I want to say a few words . . .”
Feet could be heard shuffling, and someone coughed. Varas got up and went to the kitchen, came back with a mug of water, and began talking to the dog.
“Are you listening, Témoc? The number of stupidities per second? Don’t you find it hard to believe?”
“I have my own opinions, very strong ones, but I’m not always in agreement with them,” Vinueza said in answer to a question that the microphone did not catch. His gaze was lost somewhere in the infinite.
A few blocks from the Carlton, on Avenida Naciones Unidas near the corner of Amazonas, stood the department store Almacenes Japón. This was one of the darkest corners in the northern part of the capital. Although the televisions in the store’s display windows remained on, at that hour the beings who ventured out that way were few. They could be counted on the fingers of one hand and belonged, in general, to two groups. The first was composed of bewildered drunks who staggered out of the High Horse, the karaoke-disco-whorehouse hidden behind a nearby gas station. The second was made up of rats from the hordes that took possession of the area’s parking lots once the cars departed. Tonight there was a man with a gash in his forehead, barely able to stand. He had spent more than half his wages on whiskey and on Sun Yi, a Panamanian-Chinese-Ecuadorian teenager who had come to the capital from Quevedo to earn herself some quick money and whose favorite reading matter was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, a copy of which she had personally fortified so it would not come apart in her hands during many nighttime readings after her hours of hard labor. She had come to the capital to enroll in a course at Quito’s Og Mandino Institute, because her reading had taught her the importance of study as a means for getting ahead in life. Carnegie had persuaded her of the importance of specialization, too, and therefore she had chosen the path of “unusual methods.” She always traveled with a snake in her possession, a fer-de-lance from which, every morning, she milked a quantity of venom into a small glass jar that had once held honey. She used the viper, in an innovative way, to petrify her clients. When this failed, she had recourse to her other specialty, “the lollipop,” a term she’d learned from a friend who had traveled abroad. But the man now watching the press conference while clinging to a streetlamp to keep himself upright had not experienced any of the nymphet’s delights. When he’d entered her room and found a cot, a lamp covered with a red silk handkerchief, a chair, and the box where she kept the viper, he had burst into tears. Putting Carnegie’s teachings rapidly into practice, Sun Yi slid off his pants while the man mumbled something about the pointlessness of life and the girl thought how wrong he was, given what reliable sources said about the connection between time and money. When she started removing his shoes, more for aesthetic reasons than any other, the man took her by the arms and Sun Yi thought she was finally getting somewhere, but what he did was to seat her on his lap so he could put his head on her shoulder and fall asleep. The teenager began to get annoyed. When she took off her blouse and offered him a mouthful of guaitambo (which, she had been told by some girls from Ambato, was the local term for the peaches grown in the mountains, and, given her resolve to always have the right information at the right time, she had noted this on a pad where she wrote down all sorts of useful data for later memorization), the man called her pobrecita. Poor little thing. This unleashed a storm inside the room that continued down the hallway of the second floor of the High Horse.
“There’s nothing ‘poor’ about anything to do with me!” she screamed while pounding his head with the point of her high-heeled shoe before pushing him down the stairs, not without first emptying his wallet in just compensation, she thought, for the time and services bestowed.
That was how he’d landed in front of the display window of the department store. But he couldn’t hear anything or make any sense of the blind men on the screens of the twelve variously sized televisions before him—men who seemed to have stepped out of a bad 1970s version of The Ten Commandments— so he closed his eyes and fell asleep. Every so often he stirred enough to watch the silent press conference through half-closed eyes.
From the start of the conference, the blind men had not opened their mouths. No one had asked who they were or what they were doing there, but given the tenor of the answers coming from Vinueza, the TV producers were going to have to choose between ending the news flash or resigning themselves to the audience clicking it off with their remotes.
“What do you believe in? Why do you want to be president?” a reporter called from the rear of the room.
“I think that if one knows what he believes in, that makes it much easier for him to answer questions. I can’t answer your question.” Vinueza said, after taking a drink from his water glass.
There was no attempt at a follow-up. In the uncomfortable silence, someone had the presence of mind to ask about the blind men.
“These men with you, who are they?”
Vinueza straightened in his chair and seemed to take on a new persona.
“They are wise men who have led me to understand that God wants me to be the next president of all Ecuadorians.”
Just then some reporters who had barely taken part in the proceedings because they were trapped behind two Ionic columns characteristic of the hotel’s over-the-top décor decided to emerge from their prison. In so doing, they bumped into the knees of one of the cameramen perched on a chair. The man lost his balance and his camera tilted, which allowed the audience to see, for a few seconds, the blind men’s sandals and their strange ankle bracelets, composed of big seeds or the paws of desiccated animals. The director in the control room cut to a large sign advertising the hotel.
In his semi-conscious state, the drunk recognized the sign and, since the post he was holding onto did not make for the best of mattresses, decided to walk in that direction.
“I am aware of my weaknesses, but I trust in the power of God. I renew my vow to follow the path that He offers me, as a source of light for all Creation. He who lives in Christ is born again. For him, the ancient times have not passed, and a new world has arrived.” So Vinueza described his recent encounter with Jesus.
“How did you escape electrocution?” asked a reporter only a few inches from the candidate.
“The fires of hell and the sulfur that rose from the wooden stage and fell from heaven only purified my commitment to our countrymen who are most in need. I am selected by the grace of God because I truly believe that He speaks through me.”
“Why do you think you were chosen? It is known that there was a spike in voltage and, according to well-informed sources, a liquid conducted the current . . .”
“I will do all that is in my power to heal the human suffering that is so abundant and daunting,” Vinueza interrupted.
At that moment, the five men who had remained silent began to murmur, producing a sound like that of hundreds of crickets at dusk. The reporters fell silent and the blind men began to speak, one at a time but threading and echoing their words, reproducing in the small room the sense of infinity from the tunnels of Poso Wells.
“Verily, verily, we say that ye shall see the sky split open.”
“And the angels of God
will rise and descend with the Son of Man.”
“The ladder of divine Providence comes to Earth through the ministry of the angels.”
“The ladder is the sign of the Christ’s Reincarnation among the descendants of Jacob, who joined together humanity and the divine.”
“As Christ is the true God and the true man.”
From the moment the men began to speak, Varas saw, Valentina had become agitated. She kept on shifting in her seat, her pupils shrunken and her eyes locked on the screen. She lifted Témoc onto her lap and ran her hand up and down his back, over and over. Only when her squirming brought her to the very edge of the couch did she finally stand up.
“Are you suggesting that after the candidate came down the ladder from the helicopter, and after Señor Andrés Vinueza was saved, he became the incarnation of God?” a puzzled reporter asked.
At that moment the five men began to stamp their feet, causing such a racket that neither the reporters at the press conference nor the TV audience in their homes could hear above the jangling of their anklet-castanets. At this moment, Valentina began to scream and would not stop. Varas tried to comfort her but she brushed his arm from her shoulders. The downstairs neighbor began to pound his ceiling with a broomstick, and Témoc added to the confusion by starting up a howl. The woman moved closer to the television and finally touched her hand to the screen.
“It’s them,” she said in what was barely a whisper. “It’s them.”
The drunk had reached Avenida República de El Salvador and was preparing to turn the corner toward the hotel when five police cruisers roared by, sirens blaring, almost grazing his leg as they took the corner at high speed. Once he regained his balance, he followed the sound for four blocks until he got to where they were parked. A sizeable crowd was gathered in the door of the hotel, holding candles and carrying signs that proclaimed Vinueza’s divinity. The blind men emerged from the building in single file, walking toward a car with tinted windows waiting by the entrance. Vinueza had remained behind, arguing with someone with a face like an eel. Both men were yelling, but it was impossible to hear what they said. The drunk walked toward one of the bearded men and knelt down to touch his anklet rattles, which had been calling out to him like a bottle to a baby. When the blind man became of aware of his presence, he began kicking him, and the four others joined in. Vinueza came running out of the hotel and, with what agility his chubby body allowed, herded the blind men toward the car. The drunk lay on the curb, completely bloodied and unable to understand what had happened. In his right fist he clasped one of the rattles.
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