Necropolis

1. THE OSLOVSKI & FLØ VARIATION (AS TOLD BY EDGAR MIRET SUPERVIELLE)

This story begins one night in a bar in Tel Aviv, the Blue Parrot, and its main characters are two elderly immigrants, one from Wadowice, Poland, and the other from Gothenburg in Sweden. Their names are Ferenck Oslovski and Gunard Flø. I shan’t say which is which, as I assume a certain degree of education in my listeners and have no wish to insult them. As I was saying, Oslovski and Flø were in the Blue Parrot, it was already very late, and between them on the table was a chessboard.

The Pole was drinking Smirnoff vodka and the Swede a nauseating apricot schnapps, one of those Nordic digestives that is sure to rot your stomach if you were not born somewhere several degrees below freezing point. The two men were both staring into the distance, and neither said a word, which means that they were good friends, friends who did not need to talk in order to feel together.

Suddenly Flø struck the table with his hand and said, I have it, I think I have it!

Oslovski, who was familiar with these outbursts, looked at him and said: All right, show me.

Flø arranged the pieces with three pawns on either side, king, knight, and bishop. Look, he said: pawn advances and blocks the king behind the rook. Oslovski sat looking at the chessboard for a while. He looked up and cried, waitress, another round! Then he looked down at the chessboard again, silent once more. The drinks were brought, he took a sip, then continued sitting there with his nose very close to the pieces. After two more sips of his vodka, he at last looked up again and said, no, Gunard: there’s a way out in bishop four, and no way to stop it.

Flø stared at the board and took his head in his hands. It’s true, he murmured, it’s true.

It was a position from the 1971 Interzonal in Buenos Aires, in which Petrosian and Fischer had drawn. Flø always maintained that Fischer could have won and had been trying to demonstrate that for some time now. It was not a totally irrational belief, but he felt it in the way that grand masters are aware of positions: as a series of luminous lines traced across the chessboard, like the routes of bombers flying across the Atlantic, trajectories that at first are merely flashing lights but then take on a shape and turn into known positions that have previously been played or studied.

To Oslovski, too, the rhythm of a combination was important. It might be a march rhythm, a concerto, a minuet, or a rondo, not to mention the effect of the silences, that beautiful instrument called silence, which means so much in both music and chess.

Oslovski recalled the epitaph of the composer Alfred Schnittke in Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow, a pentagram carved in marble with the words silencio fortissimo prolongado, equivalent to the moment when a player moves away from the chessboard and comes out of himself so rapidly that he is left depressed and alone, feeling lost in the world, and longing desperately, as Spassky used to say, “for another chess player.” And so it was with Oslovski.

But let us continue with the story.

Oslovski and Flø had met in difficult circumstances, behind a wall riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Oslovski was a lieutenant and Flø a captain, although in different companies, and both had been involved in an operation to take a refugee camp where the ringleaders of a rebel group were apparently hiding, an operation that had meant advancing a few feet at a time, knocking down houses as they went, under covering fire from their own tanks and artillery.

During the advance, Oslovski had jumped through a window and fallen into a courtyard filled with broken glass. Blinded by the smoke of the artillery fire, he ran toward a doorway and did not see a huge hole right in the middle of the courtyard. He stumbled, tried in vain to hold on to the sides, and fell some fifteen or twenty feet, making a great deal of noise as he did so. It was a clandestine well, quite small in diameter, which was why when he fell in the water at the bottom, which did not cover him, he found it difficult to turn and aim the barrel of his rifle upwards.

He crouched and waited a few seconds, cursing his luck or his lack of foresight, until he saw a head appear at the top, wrapped in one of those colorful cloths that made the enemy so easy to recognize, so he fired several shots, then said to himself, I’m defenseless, in a few seconds I’m going to join my ancestors. He took out his torch and shone it at the walls of the well, and his spirits lifted when he saw that there was a side gallery. He retreated into it, the water around his waist. As he did so, he heard voices at the mouth of the well. Seeing some rocks and bricks, he piled them in front of him to protect himself. As he finished, he heard a whistle, followed by a gurgling sound. They had thrown a grenade down, but it had fallen in the water and the fuse had not exploded.

What luck, he thought, but it would not last, they would soon think of something, so he retreated farther into the side channel, realizing after a while, to his horror, that it was getting ever narrower. It doesn’t lead anywhere, I’m a dead man. He heard a loud explosion, and the gallery filled with gunpowder and smoke. To protect himself, he got down on his knees and put his head in the water, but was unable to keep it under for long without breathing. He was getting very anxious now. On the other side of the stones, he saw beams of light and heard voices. The echo of voices he could not understand. The air was full of smoke and brick dust, provoking a coughing fit that must have been heard by those above, because a hail of bullets immediately lashed the water.

He retreated, and saw this time that, a few feet farther along, the passage widened again and the water was colder, which might mean something. He washed his face and tried to think. He remembered that before he had fallen he had been walking ahead of a group of men, but had advanced very rapidly and had found himself alone. The enemy were here, but it was possible his own side would arrive soon. He just had to hold out. There was another huge explosion, and he felt the earth tremble. The stones that had fallen with the first explosion, plus those he had piled up, protected him, but then it occurred to him that the enemy were trying to bury him alive. Would they do that? In wondering this, he was not thinking about whether they could bury a human being alive, everybody did that kind of thing in war, but whether they would fill in a well from which they drew water, which was one of the most precious commodities in the region.

Where the hell were his comrades? Even way down here, he could hear the sounds of fighting. According to his calculations, they should not be long now.

With luck, he might be able to survive, so he tried to retreat along the channel, and found that he could, except that as he moved the level of the water kept rising and was already up to his chest. In a strange way, he felt safe, even though he was in the bowels of the earth, and in complete darkness. Another explosion made him think that they were indeed preparing to fill in the well. Too bad for him.

After all, they could always clear it later, if there was a “later.” His legs were numb, but he tried to walk as best he could, because the last explosion had again filled the narrow chamber with dust and smoke.

There won’t be a “later” for me, that’s for sure. He recalled a chess position that had no way out, and concentrated on that. As he did so, he had to touch his eyes to be sure if they were open or closed, such was the state he was in. He did not think he was seriously wounded. All he had was a graze he had received when he had knocked down a wall to enter a house, and the blow to his shoulder when he had fallen in the well. Not much if you took into account the magnitude of this war and all the bullets fired and all the bodies he had seen fall since he had first pressed the trigger.

He heard cries again, and it seemed to him that he could understand a few words. Somebody was saying something in Russian or Hebrew or even Polish. He went back along the passage, groping his way, and when he reached the open part he noticed that the cave-in had raised the level of the ground and the water. He saw the gleam of a torch, and a rope hanging down in the middle, and again heard the voice. He realized they were saying to him, grab the rope, and that was what he did. As they hoisted him up, he could not see what was happening, as not only was he blinded by the light, but his pupils were also filled with dust.

When he got to the top, he had an unpleasant surprise. Instead of his comrades, he found the courtyard filled with the enemy and a man speaking to him in broken Hebrew. They tied his hands, threatening him with rifles pressed to the back of his neck. Then they took him into a room off the courtyard, and he asked himself, why don’t they execute me immediately? and also, where are my men? The fighting seemed to have moved farther east, and he was alone. He was a prisoner. He said to himself: I was better off down there, in the darkness and the cold water and the all-embracing earth. That was the way he was.

They laid him naked on a rusty, rickety table full of holes, and started asking him questions. How many of you are there? What’s your objective? Which rebel chief are you after? What are your plans of deployment? How far are you planning to go?

The man who was asking the questions spoke Hebrew, and the first thing he did was to put out his cigarette on Oslovski’s stomach. Oslovski screamed in pain. Then came something rather more unpleasant with his nails. They removed the nail from his little finger with wooden splinters. Then from his ring finger and index finger. Oslovski writhed and twisted, but did not answer their questions, partly out of pride and partly because most of the things they asked him about he did not know. As long as he did not answer, he would stay alive. If he told them what they wanted, they would shoot him in the back of the head and throw him down a well. Not his nice, cool, maternal well, but a dry one full of dust.

One of the men stared at his testicles, then grabbed them with his hand and seemed for a moment to be weighing them. What was he going to do? The light glinted on a razor, black with dried blood, and Oslovski thought, the end is near, my comrades aren’t coming and it’s all over for me, and he felt a pain in his thigh.

Still holding his testicles, the torturer had made the first cut, a clean deep fissure in the thigh that made Oslovski see stars, although he was so tired, his body forgot it immediately. He was still alive, still had a few seconds left. He did not understand what they were saying around him, only what the man asking him questions said. He wanted to pee, but contained himself. He did not want to call attention to his member. What was coming next? The man with the razor let go of his testicles and a hand pulled his head back. The same man as before was now holding a pair of garden shears and moving them closer to his toes. The man asking the questions said: I’m going to repeat what I want to know and if you don’t tell me you’re going to lose your toes.

A young man who had been watching all this with a certain horror put a plastic bag under his feet. Oslovski made a calculation, if they’re going to cut off my toes one by one, that means they’re in no hurry. Where the hell were his comrades? They must have been repulsed and now he was alone. That was the situation.

At the far end of the room, a pregnant young woman was knitting a sweater. The image seemed completely out of place here, but he looked at the wool and remembered something. What was it? His grandmother had used the same stitch, three knits with one of the needles and six with the other, knitted back to front, and then, with his forehead bathed in sweat and his body anesthetized by the pain, he noticed that the woman was getting the sequence wrong, she wasn’t knitting the complete series and one of the sides would come out too long.

Without thinking, he said in a thin voice: you’re getting it wrong, it should be six with the right needle, otherwise one of the sides will be too long and your son will be uncomfortable. She stopped her knitting. One of the men hit him in the mouth but she made a placatory gesture, came toward him with her huge belly, and said, how do you know it’s a boy? Because of the color blue, he replied. Then she said, you think the knitting is wrong? He told her what he remembered and the woman compared the sides. You’re right, this one’s turning out narrower. I can still undo it and save the wool. Thank you. She turned and walked out.

They let him rest and gave him water, and later, with the sounds of fighting apparently getting closer, a man came into the room, untied him and said, your things are over there, your weapons stay here, now go.

Oslovski went out, feeling very confused. He walked through the shadows, one more shadow himself, lingering in the ruined houses and foul-smelling trenches, and thinking, trying to understand what had happened, afraid of advancing and being seen. He had no weapons. He decided to wait until nightfall, and when it came started retracing his steps. As he passed the well, he considered hiding in it, because they had left the rope, but it was better to take a risk, so he continued walking, treading carefully over the broken glass and the rubble, and was wandering through part of a field when he saw a tank coming. He fell to his knees, took off his combat jacket and waved it above his head, crying: save me.

The hatch opened and a fair-haired man emerged and said, come on, get in, you must be wounded.

It was Gunard Flø.

Later, in the mobile hospital behind the lines, after they had sewed Oslovski’s wounds and told him he would have to be immobile for a while, Flø said to him, I know what to do when we can’t sleep at night, and took out a chess set. They hit it off, and after a few games realized that they already knew each other. They had taken part in some of the same tournaments, and although they had never played against one another, they remembered each other’s names.

That was how the heroes of my story met.

I will add one more thing, which is that Oslovski had a curious experience some years later, in Berlin, He was at a crossing, waiting for the lights to turn green, when he saw on the other side of the street the woman from the torture room. She had an absent look on her face, and of course she was a bit older. She was holding a little boy by the hand. When the lights changed, they met in the middle of the street and he said to her, do you remember me? you saved my life in the refugee camp. She looked at him in surprise, uncomprehendingly. He insisted, remember, the knitting stitches that were wrong, it’s me, I owe you my life! The woman looked at him in terror, picked up the little boy, and broke into a run. Both of them disappeared into the crowd.

Now, in order to continue the story of my characters, it has become necessary to give a brief account of their lives.

I shall begin with Ferenck Oslovski.

His birth and early childhood are fairly irrelevant. Knowing that he was the son of a Jewish notary in Wadowice and a woman who had studied philosophy does not help us to understand very much about his gifts. Hundreds of human beings have had similar childhoods, just as anodyne or interesting, or even brilliant, and none of them, none at all, became champion of Poland.

He himself says that the first time he saw a chessboard was in a local tailor’s shop, Roth’s, where he had gone to collect a suit for his father. The tailor was playing a game with one of his employees, and let him stay for a moment to watch. Oslovski would always remember how glossy the polished ebony and boxwood of the classic Staunton pieces seemed. He looked at them with such rapt attention that the tailor, a friend of the family, said, would you like to touch them? go on, reach out your hand, move one. The boy chose a knight and slid it across the board.

What he felt in his fingers was so agreeable, so soft, that he was overwhelmed, conquered forever by a pleasure that he would soon learn all about, because the tailor invited him to come whenever he was free to watch him play, and between one game and the next started teaching him. This pawn moves like this, the knight jumps there, the queen can move forwards, backwards, and diagonally.

The boy would watch him in silence, not telling him that he had already watched enough times to know the moves perfectly and absorb all the different openings. One day, after a few months had passed, the tailor said, sit down and start with white, and so that we’re evenly matched, I’ll play without the queen, and that was what they did. After twenty moves, the tailor performed a classic checkmate, which left young Ferenck on the verge of tears. Then the boy ventured to say: Mr. Roth, can we play another game with all the pieces? The tailor was touched, and said, of course, if you prefer I won’t give you any advantage, but it’s going to be more difficult.

The game began well, and after thirty-one moves the boy delivered an astonishing checkmate, much to the surprise of the tailor, who had not seen it coming, and when he tried to figure out what had happened, the boy said, Mr. Roth, you were already done for six moves ago, look, and he started manipulating the pieces at great speed, explaining the position. They played four more games and the result was always the same: the tailor, who was not a bad player and had even taken part in tournaments, was checkmated every time. Never again was he able to beat the boy, which convinced him that he was dealing with a case of precociousness that was worth investigating. So he took him, with his father’s permission, to the chess club run by Ozer Miller, an experienced player who had been local champion and who gave classes and played with other former players and enthusiasts.

Ferenck’s appearance in Miller’s club was quite a milestone, because in the eleven months he was there he never lost a game, not even with Ozer Miller himself. Miller decided to take matters in hand and introduce him into other clubs, of greater standing and quality, such as the one run by Sam Edenbaum, where the boy at last found his level.

Sam Edenbaum earned his living selling fabrics, a profession close to that of the tailor Shlomo Roth. They were two links in the same chain, which had created a bond between them that verged on the fraternal. But there was more to the long-standing relationship between these two men, Edenbaum and Roth, than a business connection, and here I hope you will allow me a short digression, because I think it is true to say that they owed their lives to chess.

They were both part of that much-reduced Jewish community in Poland that had survived the Holocaust, and in their case it was thanks to chess that they had survived. Both had been deported to Auschwitz but had been saved by the fact that one of the section commandants in the camp was a lover of chess and organized tournaments. For a prisoner, to lose a game could result in death. That indeed had happened to a number of Jews and one political prisoner, a Communist, whereas when an officer lost the penalty was typical of the military, like having to drink five glasses of brandy or walk between the huts in their underwear, the kind of drunken revel that bore no relation to the tragic outcome with which the others were faced.

Roth and Edenbaum always won, and although that exasperated the officers, it also kept them alive, because they would never send to his death a man they wanted to beat at chess, a consideration that only chess players would understand. The officers did not dare touch them. What they did was make them play against each other, which was somewhat macabre, because they had no idea what would happen to the loser. But to avoid trouble, they played a real game to the death, which Edenbaum won in fifty-six moves, to much acclaim from the officers. In fact, the officers were so pleased that both men were treated to canned chicken and brandy.

As they told it to Oslovski, Roth and Edenbaum never allowed themselves to lose a game. The system they concocted consisted of thinking about chess all the time, closing their eyes, imagining moves and analyzing final positions as they dug holes for fencing in the snow and rain. Thinking about chess and nothing but chess, conceiving the world as a succession of pieces moving across the board according to their own hierarchies, the ignominious reality in which they were immersed being merely the canvas on which they projected moves and planned unexpected advances: that was why, whenever the officers came into their huts and took them away to play, they were always ready, they already knew which openings they would use and how they would develop them, just like the protagonist of Stefan Zweig’s novella The Royal Game, which I am sure you will remember, whose life is saved by chess but who is later driven mad by it. Well, something like that happened in Auschwitz, although neither Edenbaum nor Roth went mad, only concentrated their energies in the brain and switched off everything else. Their survival depended on that one organ, the brain, and on their skill at playing chess.

This situation continued until the camp was liberated, and caused them a few problems afterwards. Edenbaum and Roth, who were in better physical condition than the others because of the food they had been given by the officers, were now denounced to the authorities, accused of having been collaborators or even spies. These malicious stories went no farther, however, because in those days of horror there were better and more useful things to do than try to pursue two Jewish chess players who had not only survived but even prospered.

But let us return to the education of young Ferenck at a time when Poland was slowly recovering from the war.

Edenbaum took his education in hand and, for a small amount of money, hired a former regional champion to train him in openings, which, according to Edenbaum, were the pillars on which the outcome of a game depended, and so Ferenck started devoting himself increasingly to chess. His father gave him special permission to leave school at noon and spend three hours on chess, a time judged sufficient to deepen his knowledge without taking him away for too long from the world and the things a boy his age needed to do, because, as is well known, most young prodigies develop a distance from reality that sooner or later destroys them, look at Bobby Fischer, a genius but quite awkward and even unpleasant when it came to other human activities, or Gary Kasparov, the prodigy from Baku, who never had a real adolescence and who, as an adult, had the same mental age he had had when his childhood was snatched from him. This did not happen to other grand masters and champions, such as Boris Spassky or Tigran Petrosian, who continued to be human beings as well as great chess brains, so it was important to his new mentor that young Ferenck should be a child like any other, and he made it a condition that his apprenticeship should not take precedence over his life. And he was successful, because Ferenck Oslovski spent his teenage years just like his classmates, going to the river to bathe and trying to win the love of girls — mostly without success, by the way, which contributed to his somewhat melancholy temperament — but by and large leading a healthy life and even developing another great passion: music. He learned musical notation and piano, both major tasks, which helped him to keep his eyes on the horizon and molded his spirit in the clay of the artist.

But the passion for chess is so strong that it may wipe out other vocations. Remember Marcel Duchamp, the man who destroyed the traditional concept of art when he presented an upturned urinal at the Salon des Artistes as his magnum opus. Duchamp gave it all up for the infinite spaces of chess, never again creating anything but combinations of pawns and bishops and kings on a chessboard.

And Oslovski was the same.

Before long, young Ferenck gave up the piano and musical notation to devote himself exclusively to the study of combinations and variations. In his first tournaments, he obtained some surprising results. At the Municipal Tournament in Wadowice he came third, but did not lose a single game, claiming 16 victories and 38 draws, which in points put him below two of his rivals, one of whom he had actually beaten. These small tournaments provided the young man with a great incentive to continue. What a chess player longs for above all is to confront a rival of his own, or greater, stature. The desire to follow an ascending curve kept him awake at night, studying variations, reproducing games by grand masters such as Tal, Capablanca, and Larsen, making notes and coming up with new ideas that he would discuss daily with Edenbaum, until something happened that would completely change his life, which was that in the middle of studying a position, as he was writing down his possible moves, Sam Edenbaum’s head tipped forward onto the chessboard, before his whole body collapsed noisily on the floor. An aneurism had burst in his brain, killing him outright, the expression on his face one of concentration rather than pain. As they say of Archimedes, death interrupted him in mid-thought.

So Ferenck found himself without a teacher, because although the tailor, Roth, was still a good companion and pleasant to talk to, he was not at the requisite level to train Oslovski. The young man drifted for nearly a year without a guide, until someone at last appeared to pick up the torch from Edenbaum, a Russian named Vasily Andrescovich, who had heard about the young man and his achievements and was looking for a pupil out of whom to carve his masterpiece. To him, Oslovski was like the block of marble to Da Vinci. The raw material for his great art.

The first thing Andrescovich did, when summer came and the school vacations began, was to apply for permission to go to Moscow, which he managed easily thanks to his contacts and an invitation from the Russian Federation. When he arrived, young Oslovski was stunned. Moscow was not only the capital of the Socialist world, but also a mythical city to chess players. Ever since Alexander Alekhine had snatched the championship from the Cuban, Capablanca, Russian predominance had been unquestioned: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, and even Viktor Korchnoi, who despite his talent never became world champion, as well as young hopefuls such as Anatoly Karpov and Gary Kasparov. Moscow was the cradle of chess, and he, a shy young Pole from one of the most obscure and forgotten corners of the world, was there to devour it.

With his hands in his pockets, sweating with the emotion and the heat, young Ferenck turned on to the tree-lined Boulevard Gogol, passed the huge bronze stature of the author, and a little farther along, on the left hand side, came to the great temple itself, the headquarters of the Russian Chess Federation. When he entered the hall on the second floor, he thought he was going to faint at the sight of the mirrors and the stucco and the meticulously lined-up tables.

Andrescovich told him that a series of games were being played that afternoon between Grand Masters in honor of Botvinnik, the so-called “Dialectic of Iron,” three times world champion and second longest holder of the title after Alekhine. Young Oslovski sat down in the room on the first floor where the games were commented on and waited for the beginning. With trembling lips he saw the white, cold figure of Karpov come in through reception and start up the stairs toward the hall where the tables were. The games began and Oslovski listened to the commentators, old players and Grand Masters, and after what seemed to him only a moment, although nearly two hours had passed, he asked if he might be allowed to make a comment. He left his chair and went to the chessboard where the positions were analyzed and there gave a rapid demonstration of a better play. The old men listened to his explanation, given in fairly correct Russian, thought about it and approved his hypothesis. Later, during a second game, they asked his opinion about another complex position and again the young man gave a brave and highly original analysis. By now, the wise old men were murmuring among themselves.

The next day, Oslovski played for the first time at the Russian Chess Federation. He felt his fingers tremble as they touched the pieces and slid them over the board and the afternoon sun made slanting lines across the floor. A week later, he played in a youth championship and came second. Then he took part in a number of amateur tournaments and won four of them.

From here things began to move fast, as often happens in the lives of chess players. He played in Leningrad, Prague, Kiev, and Odessa, won a tournament in Budapest and another in Athens. He was runner-up in the all-Poland championship and finally, at the age of seventeen, became national champion, which earned him honors and the possibility of traveling around the world.

Now begins a new chapter in the trajectory of Oslovski. By now he was twenty-three and many things had happened in his life. One of them was the death of his father, and another the illness of his mother, for whom, thanks to his position as Grand Master, he was able to secure the best possible care at Warsaw’s Central Hospital, in the ward for patients suffering from terminal illnesses, which in her case was nothing less than leukemia. In spite of these setbacks, Ferenck concentrated on chess, which was now no longer just a passion but a way of rising through the social ranks in Gomulka’s Poland, in pursuit of which he doubled his concentration and efforts.

He continued to work with his Russian teacher, Andrescovich, but something had started to go wrong with the mechanism. The young Polish master stopped winning tournaments. Instead, he would always come second or third. These were anxious years, and the history of Poland, which had always been sad, seemed to be somehow embodied in this young man full of dreams. And what happens to young men like Ferenck, when they gain a certain fame and their personal lives get in a mess? They generally start to develop a weakness for hard liquor, which they justify by stress, or nerves, or those baleful dusks when the sky of Warsaw fills with a purple light, as if tongues of fire were swallowing the city and the souls of its citizens, and then the glasses succeed one another on the bar counters, filled with transparent, highly concentrated liquids intended to counteract that complicated sense of abandonment in which the mind can find no rest, a glass, knocked back in one go, is followed by a second, then a third, and so Oslovski’s hours started to darken and black clouds covered his soul, presaging bad weather.

The storm lost no time in breaking, in the form of a wire from Warsaw announcing the news he had so feared, “Mother died during night, in her sleep. Come asap.” It had been sent by the director of the hospital and Ferenck received it six days later while he was in Odessa, in an elimination heat for a place in the Interzonal, a step on the road to the World Championship.

When he got to Warsaw, he had to go straight from the airport to the morgue, together with his teacher Andrescovich, to identify a body that was indeed his mother’s, although he could no longer recognize her. She was buried in a ceremony attended by only six people: two directors of the Polish Chess Federation, a nurse from the hospital, the doctor, his teacher, and himself.

It was after the funeral that Oslovski ran away for the first time.

He disappeared from the streets of Warsaw for three months, as if swept away by one of those icy winds from the far north that lash the squares of the city, or as so many friends and enemies of the government died, without anyone ever finding their bodies, and both Andrescovich and the directors of the Polish Federation searched everywhere for him, especially in the cities he most liked to visit: Moscow, Kiev, Prague. They checked the hospitals and the police stations, all to no avail, and remember that I am talking about the Communist era in Central Europe, when it was not so easy to disappear, because everything was under such strict control, and yet Oslovski managed it. After three months, in desperation, Andrescovich decided to make the disappearance public, which he had preferred not to do before in order to avoid a scandal.

And what he had hoped for happened. As soon as it was announced in the newspapers and on television that the chess master Ferenck Oslovski had disappeared, a call came in from the central police station in the seaside resort of Mie˛dzyzdroje to say that the player was staying in a hotel there. Andrescovich immediately traveled to the town and found Ferenck, looking gaunt, haggard, and sad. “I was taking a cure of silence,” was the only explanation he gave his teacher before setting off for the airfield and getting on a Tupolev to Wadowice, where everyone expected the former young prodigy to regain his spirits and return to the chessboard.

He did in fact manage to do so, although slowly, because the game suffers when it is abandoned for too long and the first moves are like those of a sportsman who has spent a whole season out of action. Timid, erratic steps, exaggerated calculations. That was how it was for Oslovski.

Three months later, he tried again and to everyone’s surprise won an international tournament in Athens, taking a substantial prize of ten thousand dollars, which made it possible for him to replenish his depleted savings, because those were still the days when chess players in Eastern Europe had certain privileges but did not earn very much unless they played in the West. He and Andrescovich returned to Wadowice feeling very pleased, but this vein of good luck was short-lived and soon afterwards Oslovski again reverted to his cruise speed, which meant he would always come third or fourth, or occasionally second. That seemed to be his level, and at least it guaranteed him a salary of three hundred zlotys a month, fairly high in comparison with the two hundred and fifty earned by a university professor or the five hundred earned by a highly placed Party official. From that position, he watched the history of the world and chess pass by. He saw the arrival of Spassky and his rise to the heights, he saw the coming of that young devil, the American Bobby Fischer, performing amazing feats and defeating everyone, including Spassky, and he felt angry at himself for admiring such a mean, self-centered character. From his room, following the championship in Reykjavik, he came to the conclusion that chess did not make people better, which again depressed him, so he closed the curtains and did not come out again for a long time.

There were further crises, and during those years he disappeared four more times, only now neither Andrescovich nor anyone else bothered to look for him. They knew that all they had to do was wait.

By now, fifteen years of work had passed and Andrescovich was starting to grow old. The list of misfortunes that had befallen him during that time, by the side of his disciple, included the following: his parents died, his son defected to the West on a journey to Sydney, he underwent three hernia operations, and his hair started falling out, leaving a smooth ball in the middle and wisps of gray at the sides. After a careful reading of all these signs, he decided to return to Moscow and live on his chess player’s pension, so one fine day he announced to Ferenck that he was leaving, which brought about yet another attack in the younger man.

After this, Oslovski woke up one day and saw that General Jaruzelski had been appointed prime minister of Poland. He also saw, from his window, that the street was covered in dirty snow streaked with weak black prints, and so he decided to close the curtains and carry on sleeping. He woke up again and now Jaruzelski was president, but the snow and the ice continued making the streets dirty, so he again shut himself away. When Lech Walesa was elected, Oslovski thought: they don’t deceive me, and again closed the curtains, until one day he had a brainwave and decided to go outside.

The trees were green and there were flowers everywhere. The sun was shining into every corner. People were singing and whistling, but it was too late for him, so he went and bought an airline ticket and a few days later arrived in Tel Aviv claiming aliyah, which would ensure him a modest but cozy apartment, Israeli citizenship, and help with finding work.

And so it was. He had an apartment on Allenby Street, not far from the beach, and a monthly salary that allowed him to cover the basics. Most afternoons, he went to look at the sea. He loved the outline of the old port of Jaffa to his left, and beyond it the horizon of the Mediterranean, that sea that had given and taken so much from the peoples of the Middle East and was so strange to someone from Central Europe. He would spend the hours making marks in the sand and analyzing positions on a little portable chess set, until he met Gael, a woman of thirty who had lost her husband in the Yom Kippur War. Gael served pizzas and fast food in a restaurant near his apartment called the Nightingale of Odessa, run by a Russian. Oslovski went there every day for dinner, and one night he asked the waitress, what time do you finish work? She looked at him angrily and said, I know what you’re thinking and I’ll only go with you if you’re serious, that’s not too much to ask of a Pole who’s as alone as his sad country.

Ferenck looked at her in surprise and said, I’m alone because I want to be, it’s my way of life, you mustn’t deduce from it that I’m desperate, or that I’m special in any way, to which Gael retorted, nobody likes living alone and if you do then you’re crazy, and Oslovski said, I’m not crazy, I carry my love in my pocket, and he took out the little wooden box with the chess set, but Gael, who was of Lebanese origin, said, if your only company is inside that little box then things are worse than I thought, and went to the counter to serve some beers. Then she approached and said, it was a joke, I know chess is something bigger than the two of us put together and bigger than the Nightingale of Odessa and the whole of Allenby Street and this little strip of land where someday we will all be free. Those words sufficed for Gael and Ferenck to make love that same night in the apartment where, three months later, they decided to set up home together.

Here I shall leave the story of Oslovski.

I leave him with Gael, in the apartment on Allenby Street, to head north, far north, to that mysterious North that is home to so many legends and was home, too, to Gunard Flø, born in Gothenburg into a rich Lutheran family, mine owners and shareholders in a number of shipping companies, who learned to play chess in a very exclusive club in the city, the Barajó, after being enrolled by his father, a lover of the game who had never reached more than a modest amateur level, but who sensed in the chessboard a kind of greatness that neither his money nor his political contacts could give him, nothing to do with fame or success, but with a certain indestructible solitude, a temple that would allow his son to undertake elevated enterprises of the spirit without stooping, daily, to the banality of human affairs.

So Gunard, as a small boy, received as an inheritance his father’s frustrated desire to be a chess player, and received it gratefully. From the age of nine, he devoted himself body and soul to chess, with results that went far beyond what his rich family expected of him. He won youth tournaments in Gothenburg and by thirteen he was the Olympic champion, which would be his greatest prize in chess. He would never again get that far, but that never bothered him. Quite the contrary. Unlike other chess players, defeat or the idea that his talent was a modest one never seemed to bother him. Rather, it gave him a great feeling of harmony, as if knowing that he was not called to great enterprises allowed him to enjoy the game more intensely.

And so it was. In whatever tournament he played, from the age of fifteen, he always achieved decent results, but never genius, never an ovation, never victory. His father was not worried, because with great wisdom he said to himself, I wanted a son who was a chess player and that’s what I have, aspiring in addition to his being a champion would be to tempt fate, may God bless him. In the Lutheran church, people do not long for things, and greed is punished. The only thing his father did for the young man was to give him the best teachers so that he could get as much enjoyment from the game as possible, while playing at a high level. One of them, Theodor Momsen, had even trained the Master Bent Larsen, although we should point out, for the sake of the truth, that the reason Momsen agreed to take care of young Gunard was not that he had seen a huge talent in him, but because Mr. Flø put in front of him a check with many zeros on the right hand side, which is where they count the most, at a time when Momsen’s career was entering what might be described as the final stage of a long, slow decline.

So young Gunard studied openings and variations. He fell in love with the more romantic aspects of chess and started using obsolete combinations such as the King’s Gambit, the Vienna Game, or the Bishop’s Opening, common at the time of Morphy and Anderssen, classic players whom Gunard admired and whose games he studied with delight. During his hours of study with Momsen, Gunard enjoyed the beautiful precision of the game and its rhetorical figures, the prosody of those pieces sliding across the board and, of course, he was especially delighted to play blitz chess with his teacher. Every time he achieved a good position, or indeed won, he celebrated it with a few flamenco or tango steps and a burst of wild laughter. He was a cheerful young man, and for his father that was the main thing.

He must have been about eighteen the first time he dressed in women’s clothes. The whole family was vacationing on the island of Capri, where they had a beautiful house, and that was where it happened. One afternoon, without making any particular decision, Gunard put on a green suit, with a degree of cleavage but with the skirt covering the knees. It was a formal outfit that belonged to an aunt who was with them on their vacation and was much loved by Gunard. His mother’s clothes, which were thicker, were excessively baggy on him, not to mention the fact that, although she was his mother, he had no very strong feelings for her. Gunard’s great love was his father.

It was actually his father who found him in the room, and on seeing him asked, what are you doing with that, Guny? The young man replied, I don’t know, daddy, I felt a irresistible urge to put it on, and now, with it on, I look at the horizon and the lights of the distant boats and feel as if my spirit had taken flight, and then his father said, well, I’ll leave you with your spirit, but don’t even think of going down to the living room like that. When you’ve finished put everything back where you found it, is it your aunt Adelaide’s? The young man nodded and turned again toward the sea, and a while later came down in his normal clothes. His father saw him and gave a sigh of relief.

Soon afterwards, while still on Capri, Gunard met Renate Schlink, a young Swiss woman who was spending her summer vacation there. They chatted one afternoon on the beach and she showed great interest in his stories about chess, which were the young man’s whole life. When night fell, as in a scene from a novel, they entered the sea holding hands, watched the stars come out, and kissed each other in the warm waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Renate had already had some experiences with men, and she it was who threw aside her bikini and rummaged in Gunard’s swimming trunks. Going with the flow, he penetrated her, stunned by the revelation of what a conversation with a woman could lead to. Then he felt a trembling in his pelvis and was about to withdraw, but she stopped him and received his seed, which much to the surprise of both of them reached its target. One afternoon three months later, as Gunard was analyzing a position in a game between Mikhail Tal and Botvinnik, he received a call from Zurich in which Renate said to him in an anguished voice, listen, you want to hear something strange? You’re going to be a father!

Soon afterwards, there was a hastily arranged civil wedding in Monte Carlo, and the two families, who knew each other from Capri, showed great understanding toward the two young people and were even happy, in spite of the suddenness of the whole thing and the fact that it had all come about by accident. Gunard’s father had an additional reason to feel happy. He was relieved to have this proof of his son’s masculinity.

After the wedding, Renate and Gunard settled in Gothenburg, in an apartment owned by the Flø family in the Ulmbjorg district — in a building that today houses the Hotel Osaka — but in spite of the rich, cushioned life they led, Renate Schlink, thanks to the dark, oppressive atmosphere of those far regions of the world and its obvious effects on the psyche of anyone born in more southern latitudes, went through a crisis and said, I don’t know what you think or want to do, but I’m going to have my child in Switzerland. Gunard, who had a conciliatory personality, left with her and soon afterwards their son was born in Zurich and christened Ebenezer.

Two months later, Theodor Momsen joined him and settled into an apartment on Heinestrasse, very close to the Schlink residence, so that he could continue the young man’s chess training.

Gunard would spend the day in his study facing the Lindenhof, studying games with Momsen, while Renate remained in her parents’ house with little Ebenezer. One night, coming back later than usual, the young woman went up to the study to say hello to her husband and gave a cry of horror. Gunard was sitting by the window, with the light off. He had put on one of her dresses and a blonde wig. What are you doing? she asked, on the verge of tears, switching the light on, but he said, please turn that off, I prefer the dark, I’m looking at the moon.

Obviously I’m not talking about that! she said, I want to know what you’re doing in those clothes! Oh, he said, it’s just that I feel freer this way, as if my spirit could fly all the way to the moon and sit down in one of its craters and think in solitude or think about how strange and miraculous it is to be alive while I travel those lunar valleys and linger before the vast depths, and Renate wept bitterly, and said, you’re going crazy, darling, chess is driving you crazy, you have to stop playing and live like other people, go shopping, look at what’s in the windows, meet friends, have a few beers, that’s what you need. Her tears turned into a nervous breakdown.

She tore the wig and the dress off him, which only made things worse, because she saw with horror that he had also put on her underwear — bra and panties — and Gunard said, you want me to be somebody else and go to bars, but I’m fine just staying here by the window, looking at the moon, don’t you see? I’m not harming anyone, not you, not little Ebenezer, and when he said this she replied, be grateful that he’s just a baby and doesn’t know anything, how do you think he’d feel if he saw his father dressed as a woman? Gunard looked at her and replied, he’d be curious and would ask me why I do it, and I’d answer the same way I answered you, I’d tell him the truth, and he’d have to understand, Renate, because he’s my son and he’d be happy to see his father at peace.

The next day Renate called her father-in-law in Gothenburg and told him what she had seen, and he asked, but do you have normal relations? She said yes, many times, she had no complaints about that side of things. Then Gunard’s father replied: it’ll pass, it’s something he’s had since he was a child and finds it hard to let go of, but it’ll pass, believe me, and by the time she put the phone down she was feeling somewhat reassured. From that night Gunard’s father and Renate sealed a secret alliance based on fear of something they did not dare name, which was the possibility that Gunard was a homosexual and was hiding it, or refusing to accept it.

Renate started taking precautions, like keeping her closet locked and collecting her used clothes every day. She also, very reluctantly, started not coming home at nights. The routine had been that she would spend the day with little Ebenezer in her mother’s country house outside Zurich and come back late in the afternoon. But now when the time came for her to leave, she would feel a great sense of unease, so she would call Gunard and say, I’m staying here, Eby has a cough and I don’t want him to be in the cold air, and he would reply, don’t worry, darling, I’m going to miss you, but I’ll see you tomorrow.

During this period, Gunard usually stayed up late studying games, alone or with Momsen, and now that Renate was staying away more frequently, three or even four times a week, he would sleep in the study and the next day the maids or even Renate would find him asleep over the chess table, a cup of cold coffee beside him. He has to give up this evil game, she would say, the damn thing will be the death of him.

She immediately launched a campaign against chess, deciding that she would never leave him alone but constantly create things they urgently had to do together, always involving little Ebenezer. When it was his time to study with Momsen, Renate would press him to go with her on some errand or other that, according to her, could not be postponed, and he would obey. But one night he said, Renate, I want to get back to chess, so don’t schedule any activities between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon. She lost her temper and said, it’s obvious you don’t care about our life, it’s obvious what happens to your son doesn’t interest you, it’s obvious I don’t matter to you. When she saw him looking at her in silence, without contradicting her or arguing, she lost her temper and said: what you want is to be alone so you can wear my clothes and my underwear! And she added, beside herself, God knows what you get up to with Mr. Momsen when I don’t see the two of you, do you act like a woman? does he like my panties? was he the one who taught you to dress like that?

Gunard said nothing, unable to think up any answer to such accusations. He merely shrugged his shoulders and looked at her curiously, until she burst into tears, struck her chest, and head and said, admit you’re having an affair with him, admit you’re a lousy queer and you love him, admit you’d give your life to be with him all the time and sleep with him and spend Christmas with him, admit it, monster, admit it now!

Gunard replied: I don’t know why you’re saying that, Theodor and I do nothing but study chess, that’s all I have to say, and he opened the front door. Before he could go out, Renate ran and threw herself in front of him. She traced an imaginary line on the floor and said, if you cross this you can’t come back, you’ll be gone forever and little Ebenezer and I will be on our own. Gunard hesitated for a moment, looked down at the line, and strode across it. Then he said: the field is clear, when you calm down you can come back, I’ll be waiting for you with the same love and concern I’ve always had for you and our child.

Then he turned and went out, and she watched him walk along Lindenhofstrasse and turn toward the Limmat. What hurt her most was that Gunard did not look back or give any indication that he was interested in what he was leaving behind. Quite the contrary. From the way he was walking, which she knew well, he seemed lost in thought, the kind of thoughts she had never been privy to, connected with that evil game, so she closed the door with dignity and, remembering an old movie, said to herself, he’ll be back in a few hours begging my forgiveness, groveling on the floor wanting to come in, an image that gave her back her pride. And she went upstairs to wait for him in one of his rooms.

The wait was in vain. Gunard did not appear that evening or night, or the next day, or any of the days that followed, so Renate, feeling desperate and guilty, decided to call Mr. Flø in Gothenburg and tell him everything. Gunard’s father was very worried and said to his daughter-in-law, leave everything to me, I’m on my way.

The next day he landed in Zurich, booked into the Hotel Eden au Lac, facing the lake formed by the River Limmat, and there he met with Renate, who explained the situation with tears in her eyes, all the while embracing little Ebenezer.

Stellan Flø, who knew a lot about domestic disputes, said, if I’ve understood correctly it was you who forbade him to come back, wasn’t it? and she replied, that was what I said that day to stop him walking out, to which Stellan Flø replied, it’s no good putting somebody as fragile as Gunard to the test and hoping he’ll react like any other human being, it was a mistake and we’re going to try to rectify it, that’s why I’m here, I’m on your side. The reason he hasn’t come back is that he agreed to your request not to do so, but I doubt that’s what he wants. Let me talk to him.

He went to see his son and found him in his study, analyzing a game with his teacher, Momsen. Gunard was very happy to see his father and asked him if he would like a cup of tea; then he said, look at this position, do you think there’s any way the whites can get anything more than a draw? His father looked at the pieces for a while and said, I don’t know, I have no way of knowing, but to be honest I can’t concentrate on chess right now, and the young man asked, is something wrong, father? Stellan Flø, with a mixture of indignation and affection, said, yes, what’s wrong is that my son is throwing his life away and that worries me, doesn’t it worry you?

Realizing that father and son were about to start a serious conversation, Mr. Momsen excused himself and left, and Gunard said, did Renate call you? His father told him the reason for his visit and asked him what he was planning to do, go back to her or separate and leave his son? Gunard avoided looking him in the eyes and said, Father, everything has been very complicated, she doesn’t understand my way of life, in fact she rejects it, she feels threatened by it. I can’t understand why, my desires are harmless and concern only me, they’re solitary pleasures that change nothing on the face of the earth, don’t you see that, Father? and Stellan Flø said, yes, I do, but you have to realize that to her it seems as if something isn’t working when she comes home and finds her husband in her clothes and underwear, can you at least understand that?

Gunard insisted that he was not harming anyone. Nevertheless, his father managed to persuade him to put on his coat and go out to the house, where Renate and little Ebenezer were waiting for him. Nothing especially unusual happened at the reunion. Renate acted with dignity, waiting for words of repentance that did not come, but in the end they gave each other an embrace that left Stellan Flø feeling very relieved, and he invited them to dinner at the restaurant of his hotel.

What happened later you can all imagine. The reconciliation was the first crack in a dam that was about to break, but the final impulse did not come, as many of you may already be thinking, from another of Gunard’s transvestite episodes, but from the entrance onto the scene of a Norwegian collector, Edvard Gynt, who was in Zurich to handle some financial matters and ended up seducing Renate. This time, it was Gunard who was forced to witness an awkward scene, coming back from his study one day and passing a car parked near the house. Purely as a reflex action, he glanced inside the car and recognized Edvard, with his pants down around his knees. Renate was leaning over him, her blonde hair bobbing up and down at a frenetic rhythm while the collector, with his eyes closed, was sighing and gripping the wheel tightly.

Gunard waited on a nearby bench and when he saw her get out he approached and said: I saw what you were doing. Renate burst into tears and rebuked him, it’s your fault, you abandoned me. He did not reply, not even with a gesture of anger or sorrow. This exasperated Renate, who said, you’re a closet queen, how do you think that makes a woman feel? He looked at her and said nothing, and she continued: you have sex with me, but only to conceal your true nature, you’re Momsen’s lover, I know you are, so don’t look at me like that, what you saw in Edvard’s car is normal in a woman whose husband has left her, and the judges will understand that if you’re planning to sue me for a divorce, what will they say when they find out you dress like a woman?

Gunard remained silent, looking at her without malice, and she said, don’t try to take the boy away from me in the courts, if you do I’ll report you as a homosexual and a pederast, and who do you think they’re going to believe? you or me? do you dare to find out? If that’s what you want, you just have to go and tell your lawyer what you saw in that car, and you’ll see how things will turn against you. If what you want is a court case you’ll lose everything and will even have to give me your damn chess sets.

Having said this, Renate calmed down and went to bed, and he shrugged, turned, and went back to his study.

Weeks later, attending, as an observer, a tournament at Zurich town hall involving Grand Masters such as Elmor Topkin and Constantino Reina, he met a 32-year-old woman named Cécile Roth, who came from a Lithuanian Jewish family and was married to the great Swiss banker and chess enthusiast Seymour W. Maeterlinck. Gunard had that absent expression that took possession of him whenever there were pieces moving across a chessboard, and that was why it took him a while to notice that Cécile could not take her eyes off him. When the games were over (ending in Topkin’s entirely predictable victory) there was a cocktail party thrown by the town council, at which the players were able to talk with the public. It was there that Cécile approached the young Swede.

They talked about the tournament, and Topkin’s victory (his fourth successive one in Zurich), and the strange final position, with two knights crossed and a bishop in the middle. By the second glass of champagne, Cécile’s cobalt-blue eyes had done the trick, and Gunard, with the same innocence with which he did everything, said, it’s a pity you’re married, I’d love to spend the night with you. Cécile replied, it’s true I’m married, but there are exceptions to everything. Then she handed him a piece of paper and said, write down the address of the place where I have to go so that you can have what you want, and then she returned to her husband’s arm.

Gunard went back to his studio feeling somewhat confused and without holding out any hope, but just before midnight there was a knock at his door, and there she was. She kissed him and said, quick now, this first time will have to be very quick. They made love on the carpet and when they had finished she leaped to her feet, adjusted her clothes and went to the door. I’m taking your telephone number, she said, I’ll be in touch very soon, goodbye. And she left.

Gunard sat on the couch in the studio, naked, unable to believe what had happened and with an angel in his throat, to quote Rilke.

For the first time, he felt there was something that could distract him completely from the world, from his own world, and so he sat naked on the couch for the next two days, waiting for Cécile, unwilling to get her smell off him.

She did not come. Instead, Renate showed up. Gunard opened the door without putting anything on, like some mad satyr. Renate looked at him with contempt and said, well, you’re making progress, at least you aren’t dressed like a woman, and he said, you don’t know who I am, and sank into complete silence. He refused to tell her if he was coming home or if he wanted to ask for a divorce. Nor did he speak when she asked him, as tactfully as she could, what exactly did you see that night in Edvard’s car? At last Renate left and he was able to return to his couch and his thoughts, which were all of Cécile’s body and her smell and the way she pronounced every syllable before she had left. He went over and over her words, “I’ll be in touch very soon”; he made an effort to see her as she had said it, analyzing her facial muscles, the way she pushed her lips forward in a smile, the kiss she blew him on her index finger, the noise of the door as it closed.

Two more days passed and Momsen, who until now had never given him any advice on anything other than chess, decided to help him, saying: Gunard, a man sitting on a couch waiting for a woman is a classic situation, what you’re doing now has been done at least once by most of our fellows, that’s why I understand you, that feeling of being at the bottom of an abyss, the rapid heartbeats, the loss of appetite, and the conviction that if that person doesn’t return, a slab of granite will fall on our head and we’ll be buried in a wave of grief and solitude, I know that, it stops us breathing and puts us in a highly sensitive state, any story reduces us to tears, the words of every song hurt us, we can’t go to the movies and concentrate, the whole universe is a metaphor for that person we’re yearning for, who doesn’t come, that’s the way it is, you’re experiencing something tremendously human that has inspired a great deal of poetry and art, because although it’s unpleasant to live through, once we’ve overcome it, it becomes a source of ideas, esthetic ideas, even scientific ones, and it’s the best inheritance we can leave ourselves, always remember, there’s nothing worse than the frivolity and foolishness of those who have never suffered, those whose fears are abstract concepts, no, my friend, what truly moves us men, what drives us to dig in the magma where what doesn’t yet exist can be found, what makes us search for what we lack or what we are not, is the fear of going back to those solitary hours, the fear of being unable to breathe, the fear of losing the certainty that the world, after a night in darkness, will return to the light because there is somebody close: all that is at the origin of creation, don’t forget that chess is an esthetic, use this experience to make yourself strong.

When Momsen had finished, Gunard said, I’m sinking, Theodor, I can’t help sinking, farther and farther down, I don’t want to avoid it, I’m not the one who chose to be like this, it’s the situation and it’s Cécile and it’s what grew in me after being with her, something inside me that’s alien, like an illness we can only cure with waiting and silence, because there’s no substance or bacteria that needs to be cured, the organism is healthy, I don’t want to do anything to stop the fig tree growing and choking me, why should I? the idea of death through love is something we only understand when we’re on the verge of dying for love, Theodor, thank you for your advice and experience, they’ve been very useful to me today.

After the talk with Mr. Momsen came the longed-for prize. There was a rap at the door, and when he opened it the world starting turning again, the planets resumed their orbits and their muffled noise, and night and day stopped being the two faces of a frozen sphere. Gunard’s heart swelled to the bursting point when he heard Cécile say, forgive me, my husband forced me to go with him on a ridiculous journey to Venice, but all I did was think about you, the surge of the canals brought me your voice, I demanded a separate room in the Hôtel des Bains to think about you in the middle of that vast ontological lagoon, I couldn’t stand being with him, I don’t want to be touched by anyone but you, touch me, kiss me, come inside me.

They rolled on the floor and made love as they had the first time, until night fell and they phoned out for something to eat, and sat on the couch, eating pizza and drinking Burgundy.

They stayed like this for three days until there was another knock at the door and Gunard heard Renate’s voice through the air vent, but he did not let her in. She wanted to know if he was planning to come back home, if he was planning to leave little Ebenezer, if he thought his marriage wasn’t worth the bother of an explanation, and added: I haven’t the slightest idea what you thought you saw that night in Edvard’s car, but it must have been a hallucination, the product of your obsession, don’t you think?

Gunard opened wide the door of his study, pointed to Cécile lying naked on the cushions, and said, let me introduce the new woman in my life. Then, turning to Cécile, he said, this is my ex-wife, I hope you get along well. Renate looked at him with eyes full of hatred and said, how long have you been screwing this whore? Cécile got in ahead of Gunard — although he had not in fact planned to answer — and said, madam, I’ve been here for three days and we’ve made love twenty-two times. Before these three days, only once, last week. Don’t worry, this is new, believe me.

Renate glared at her, turned to Gunard, and said, I don’t know how you’re going to justify this to your father, and then, much to everyone’s surprise, Gunard said, he already knows, my father already knows, and he fell silent again. Renate was terrified when she heard that and only managed to say: now I understand. Then she walked out, slamming the door, and Cécile and Gunard embraced.

The next person to arrive was the banker Seymour W. Maeterlinck. He had learned Gunard’s address by bribing his wife’s chauffeur and now here he was, in front of the two of them, accompanied by his lawyer. Maeterlinck came straight to the point, and said, very well, I see you’ve decided to make a new life for yourself, I shan’t stand in your way, I will only ask you to sign a few papers, Mr. Heep? The lawyer, Uriah Heep, handed her a folder of documents and said, madam, please sign here, at the bottom, next to your name.

Cécile looked through the documents, nodded in agreement, and signed them, until she came to one particular document, and said, don’t be cynical, Seymour, the house in Amalfi was chosen and decorated by me, to which the banker replied, indeed it was, my dear, but I paid for it, so sign, Mr. Heep thinks a monthly allowance of 25,000 euros will be sufficient, and she said, if Mr. Heep thinks that, then it must be right, although I would be inclined to go for double that figure myself. Then the lawyer Heep said, I understand, madam, but there is a problem, which is that if you don’t agree I’ll have to accuse you of adultery, there are many witnesses, not to mention the fact that you are here today, in front of us, half-naked. You’d also have to pay the legal fees, which seems rather pointless, so my advice to you is to stop arguing and accept the 25,000. Cécile thought it over for a moment or two and signed. Before he left, the lawyer Heep said, I wish you all the best in your new life, madam, and if at any time you have legal problems don’t hesitate to call me. Heep held out his hand to Gunard. It was damp and cold to the touch, like a reptile’s. That was the image he kept of the lawyer Uriah Heep.

Three months later, Renate and Gunard agreed on a divorce and the young Swede was able to devote himself to Cécile. But Switzerland, and in particular Zurich, was hostile territory. There were unexploded bombs beneath those sidewalks and squares and they contained too many disturbing memories. Where to go? Gunard would go to the ends of the earth in order not to be separated for a single moment from the woman he loved. Cécile, whose family had emigrated to Switzerland during the Nazi era, had never seen it as her country, the fact that she had been born in Zurich was purely fortuitous. What she dreamed of was a thin strip of land in the Middle East, a fragile space of which she had heard thousands of stories and to whose defense she always sprang with passion: Israel, the land of the Jews. That was the place Cécile suggested, and Gunard, who was not himself Jewish, said, all right, we’ll go where you say, the best thing is to get away from this city, and the shadow of these clouds and these mountains, and that was what they did. They sent their belongings by sea and flew to Tel Aviv and then to Haifa, the city of the gardens of Bahaullah, and settled in an apartment with a view of the port and of Acre, and there they began a new life, she as a rich immigrant receiving visits from a multitude of relatives and friends, and he devoted to chess, sitting on the balcony, breathing in the air of the Mediterranean and bathed in the golden reflections of the sun, because it was still September.

One afternoon when Cécile was out and he was contemplating the vague outline of Acre and the bay from his table, he felt something very deep, as if inside him a little goblin had opened a door and switched on the light of a grotto where antique objects and old masks lay, dusty and twisted but still there, intact. He went into the bedroom and opened Cécile’s closet. Twenty minutes later, he was wearing a purple dress and a pair of nylon stockings. He made up his eyes and lips and put a pin in his hair, which gave it a strangely volcanic effect, and sat down on the balcony in that costume to observe the swell of the sea, the slow movements of the boats and the clear air that appeared to shine on the water. He felt a disturbing happiness, a hurricane that was born in his chest and was struggling to come out, and so he gripped the iron bars of the balcony and cried out loudly, until the veins rose in his neck, and he cried not a word but a brazen lament, a song that was to split his life in two, this side, the side of the balcony in Haifa and Cécile and the view of Acre, being the part where he planned to stay for the rest of his life, leaving everything else behind. He was conscious that there were people he loved, like little Ebenezer, but that’s life, at times it can be cruel and incomprehensible.

Imbued in these thoughts, he continued observing the landscape, and a moment later what he saw had stopped being the horizon of the Middle East or the profile of Acre or the gardens of Bahaullah. His imagination had taken him to Orplid, the distant city of stalactites, but as he walked along one of its avenues, there came a tremor, and the air filled with smoke and dust, and when he looked at the ground he discovered that it was covered in rubble and the remains of corpses, with mutilated arms and legs and faces frozen by death in a desperate attitude, the infinite solitude of a corpse, and then, as he walked up the main street, lined with demolished palaces, he realized that he was not alone, that behind him a group of shadows was beginning to climb. He was at the head of a silent retinue of people dressed in cloaks and hoods, carrying long sticks and advancing with difficulty, and he continued his march, seeing the highest hills in the middle of the city, where a dome still glittered in spite of the fires. With great effort, he led the group and began the last ascent up a blackened staircase that crossed the remains of a garden of charred birches and a layer of ash where there should have been grass and flowers. As he reached the top and sighted the palace, and the group caught their breath before entering the temple to register its destruction, a deafening bust of gunfire coming from the darkest part of the night decimated them, and Gunard, faced with such sorrow, fell to his knees and raised his arms and looked down at his own body now torn to pieces, destroyed by shrapnel, and then heard a voice saying, what are you doing? why are you kneeling?

Cécile covered her face with one hand, hiding an expression of surprise. Her eyes filled with tears, she let out a fierce laugh, and said, what the hell are you doing with my clothes? Gunard was still recovering from his terrible daydream and could only reply, I’m sorry, it’s the way I have of getting close to certain things, ideas or premonitions, it’s the only way I can unravel them, and she said, you look very pretty, come help me make dinner, my God, the wind is starting to get cooler, don’t you feel cold? Cécile did not make any kind of scene on learning of his clandestine enthusiasm. It seemed not to bother her, in fact she found it amusing, so they continued their life in Haifa, she devoted to her visits and he joining a local chess club, starting to play again and, much to his surprise, winning tournaments, because the general level was lower than his.

He began to feel again that in order to enjoy life he did not need to go far, to be a Grand Master or gain prizes or anything like that. In the little chess club in the harbor area of Haifa he learned that, apart from Cécile, the one really important thing was to have time for his whims, a comfortable space in which to live quietly and privately, and a clean environment where he could breathe freely. Greatness, as it was traditionally understood, seemed to him a prison. So he devoted himself to simple things, which is another way of saying that he led a happy life.

Four years later, he applied for Israeli nationality, in order to join his destiny to that of this strip of land and to be even closer to Cécile. One condition, though, was that he undergo military training, which he accepted immediately. A year and eight months later, he was another man, weathered by the sun, with well-toned muscles, a strong man always to be seen on the beaches of Haifa or in the restaurants of the harbor area. He started to play in tournaments in Tel Aviv as an Israeli, because it gave him pleasure to think that he was sharing the life of six million people who had come from the four corners of the earth with the idea of a country of their own, such as he had found in Cécile and they both had in Haifa.

But happiness rarely lasts forever, as Gunard was to discover in the most brutal manner. In a fairly succinct e-mail, Renate informed him that little Ebenezer had died of meningitis. When she got home that evening, Cécile found him sitting in front of his Mac, as motionless as if a distant sniper had planted a bullet between his eyebrows. When she touched him she noted that he was freezing cold. In the emergency department of Beth Israel hospital, they said he had had a nervous shock, and when he recovered his first words were, my little Ebenezer is gone, I’ve been punished for leaving him alone.

They flew to Zurich and attended the funeral. Renate was cordial enough, although she looked at him with accusing eyes. She had been living for some time now with the Norwegian Edvard, which was only logical, and was devoting herself to non-figurative art and artistic happenings, in the style of Paul Hayse and Miriam Cunningham. She announced that she was planning to operate on herself, in order to create a work of sculpture out of her own body, as a way of expressing her grief over Ebenezer’s death in a permanent form.

They talked about this over a beer in the café attached to the funeral parlor, minutes before the cortege set off for the cemetery. Outside, it was raining. Gunard was surprised that Renate could use the death of their child for artistic purposes, however noble the idea; he found it hard to believe that her grief was not as strong as his and that she could only think about herself. But he said nothing, only listened to her and then stood up, paid for the beer, and went back to the room where the coffin lay.

His father had come from Gothenburg for the occasion. They embarked, which gave Gunard back his strength. Then they went for a walk and his father said, the death of a child is the worst pain a human being can suffer, but you mustn’t look for reasons and you mustn’t try to assign blame, any more than you can deny that it’s a terrible injustice and demonstrates that this world is not ruled by a superior being but by a murderous, drunk little tyrant who gloats over his creatures. Above all, don’t try to understand, be strong and wait, the pain will pass, remember the Chinese proverb, we have to be like the bamboo, which bends when there’s a storm and then rises again, let the storm pass, the noise of it will thunder in your head, but don’t do anything. It’s like the rain. You can’t stop it falling, you can only wait until it’s over.

He spent all night with his father and Cécile. The next day they buried Ebenezer in the Friedhof Fluntern in Zurich, in a grave on which Renate had had the following phrase carved: The rest of my life is written on the stones that lie at the bottom of the Limmat. Gunard made no objection, even though Renate’s need to transform the child’s death into something distinctive struck him as vain and ridiculous. The symbolism and metaphors concealed her imperious desire to play a leading role in the tragedy, to appropriate it for herself, thus demonstrating her extraordinary crassness and egotism. Gunard said nothing, and looked absent during the ceremony. Some of those present claimed they felt a great sense of cold when they gave him their condolences, as if something of that frozen North from which he came was in his eyes.

Ebenezer’s death marked the final break with Renate, and that gave him a feeling of calm. On the flight back to Tel Aviv, he looked out the window at the glistening blue expanse of the sea and remembered the night with Renate in Capri. My God, he said to himself, what begins so romantically, between two human beings, has a tendency to become corrupted and end tragically, in contempt and insults and humiliation, is it always like that? The proof of the contrary was Cécile, but he also said to himself, it’s too soon to draw conclusions. We’ll have to wait a few more years.

Some time later, when Gunard was on the point of abandoning chess, he was called into the army. His new country was getting ready to launch a military action outside its borders and needed all its reserves. Gunard joined a tank company whose mission was to transport the wounded as well as supplies. Cécile enlisted in a mobile hospital unit.

The combat began and Gunard became accustomed to advancing amid dust and rubble, lifting bloodstained and mutilated bodies full of holes. He became accustomed to shrieks of pain and the sharp crack of ampoules of morphine opened with the teeth, and other things too: the smell of charred flesh and the smell of gangrene and the bulging eyes of young men who were dying and knew it and having to stop bleeding by plunging his hand into hot wounds, yes, Gunard’s fingers, accustomed to moving delicate pieces of wood or ivory, were now exploring the insides of shattered bodies, suturing broken veins, and occasionally, only occasionally, finding bodies that emerged from the rubble and started to run, propelled by the force of life, an image that made him cry and forced him to hide his face, because the simplest actions had turned into something precious.

So it was that one afternoon, after a thunderous combat in a village, he saw a body emerge out of nowhere, and a man lifting his hands and saying, save me. Ferenck Oslovski.

They met at the moment of salvation.

Later, in the mobile hospital behind the lines, where they sewed Ferenck’s wounds and announced a slow recovery, Gunard said: I know how to spend the sleepless nights, and he took out a chess set. After a few games, they realized that they knew each other. They had both taken part in a tournament in Austria two decades earlier and although they had never played against each other, they remembered each other’s names.

When the war ended, they continued to meet.

Gunard would come to Tel Aviv and they would play on the beach until the orange sphere of the sun descended below the surface of the sea, seeming to sink in the water. The two men would talk and move the pieces rapidly. The lives of both men had drifted to that coast like a school of fish moving to warmer waters. Oslovski would say to Gunard: look at the sand, it’s made of tiny stones and crystals. When one of these particles sinks it’s covered by another, by ten more, a hundred or a thousand, and the same thing happens to us, don’t you think? When we sink others will come, hundreds of thousands, and the Earth will always be populated by people who will feel alone, but a hundred years may pass before two men again play chess on this beach, do you think chess will still exist? Yes, said Gunard, chess is deeper and more mysterious than all of us put together; it’ll exist until somebody manages to master it completely, and that’ll never happen, Ferenck, it’s impossible for that to happen. Oslovski looked at him in surprise, and said, at the end of the day it’s a question of statistics: we’ll keep getting better, more intelligent, more gifted, we’ll keep going farther. Soon the great men of the 21st century will be born, or rather, they’ll turn into adults, because many may already have been born, and then we’ll know about them. The Freuds and Marxes and Einsteins and Nietzsches of the 21st century must be going to school right now, or still playing with toy cars, or watching the fall of a leaf in a park, who knows? And apart from them, there’ll also be a young Kafka suffering then turning to literature as therapy, and there’ll be an aristocratic Proust, who’ll portray the decadent bourgeoisie of the early 21st century from within, and of course the new Rimbaud must already be walking the streets, a young man with his fists clenched with hate, struggling against the social forms, and the Bukowski of the 21st century receiving a thrashing from his father and discovering that alcohol dulls the pain, and of course some boy of seven or eight must be on the verge of checkmating an adult on a chessboard, because in humanity’s infinite pack, the cards are equal only on one side; when we turn them over we find that there are many twos and threes and sixes of spades, but far fewer aces of diamonds, do you see what I mean?

Gunard listened to him, looked again at the chessboard, and said, you’re right, not all of them are aces, but being an ace doesn’t always ensure a happy life; the six of spades may end up much happier. Ah, great lives! Usually they’re people who suffer, maladjusted creatures; some because their vocation was so overwhelming that it put an end to anything that didn’t serve its purposes, others because their longings were never satisfied; others because they pursued the vanity of fame and success fruitlessly; others because sometimes talent is associated with terrible defects and vices, serious shortcomings. .

Then the two men would fall silent and finish their game, and then spend a while analyzing the positions. When they could barely see their pieces, they would gather everything up and go off to a bar on the beach, near the walls of the port of Jaffa, and drink a few beers and continue talking about life and its curious variations, until at dinner hour they would walk to the Nightingale of Odessa where Gael would serve them pizzas with vodka and herrings in vinegar.

Sometimes Cécile came with Gunard and the four of them had dinner on the second floor of the restaurant, which was an uncomfortable space, a low-ceilinged mezzanine that filled with steam from the kitchen, but there they could sit down alone and chat: all this in spite of the fact that Gunard and Cécile were rich, rich in the best meaning of the word, that is, they did not have to work in order to live and enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle, but that did not mean that they closed the door to people of lower financial status, which was why they always preferred to meet in that cramped space and not in fashionable restaurants or hotels.

Although Gael and Cécile only knew each other through their husbands and were not obliged to become friends, they, too, developed a friendship that grew and put down roots. After a time, Gunard and Cécile decided to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv that would allow them to spend the weekends with their friends, a beautiful penthouse on Rothschild Boulevard, not far from the Allenby district.

The lives of these four friends went on like this, placidly, for six years until, once again, the fates got angry, or else grew bored and turned their gaze to them, and something very sad happened, which was that Cécile found a lump in her breast, a little ball just under her right nipple, and the subsequent tests determined that the cancer had spread to sensitive areas like the pancreas and the liver and that a swelling of the tissue of the lung was in fact emphysema. Radiation treatment began immediately and Cécile foundered, in spite of the efforts of Gunard, Gael, and Ferenck, who constantly invented new and extravagant ways to distract her, to make her feel happy and lucky.

Every human being has his limits, and seven months later Cécile lay dying. She weighed eighty-five pounds, her skin was the color of linen, and Gunard prayed for a quick, painless death. The gods heard him and a few hours later Cécile’s heart stopped. Oslovski and Gael were at the hospital and they were the first people to receive the news from the doctors. Gunard was so absent, it was as if he was under the effects of a drug. Of the following seventy-two hours, he retained only chaotic, disjointed memories. A sumptuous funeral, with Cécile’s family present, meetings with rabbis and lawyers to settle the inheritance, and then it was all over and Gunard decided to settle in Tel Aviv, near the only friends he had in the world.

Oslovski and Gael looked after Gunard as if he were their son. They took turns being with him, making him lunch and dinner, or going out for walks with him. Ferenck’s company was more beneficial, because with him he could descend into that deep cave that was chess, which took him away from the surface, where all the pain and absurdity was, where the memory of Cécile waited for him with its daggers and its hot irons, and so the two friends grew closer than ever, to the point where Ferenck would spend the weekend in Gunard’s apartment, and Gael would come there to sleep and be with both of them. On one of these weekends, Ferenck and Gael told Gunard that it was time to throw out Cécile’s things, and that they had found a charitable association that took used clothes and sent them to less fortunate countries. Gunard liked the sound of the association, but refused to allow Cécile’s things out of the apartment. They were his and he wanted to keep them. Ferenck and Gael shrugged, and that same night, after dinner, Gunard appeared in a striped dress, green nylon stocking, high-heeled shoes, and jewelry. Don’t worry, he said to them, I do it to find a bit of peace, I’ve always done it; Ferenck, who had already drunk a few vodkas, said, if you have to confess to us that you’re a fucking queer, do it now, nothing will happen, but he said, it isn’t that, Ferenck, this calms me down, not many people understand, but Cécile did.

Gael intervened to say, that’s enough, don’t say anything more, just let me tell you, that color really doesn’t suit you, you look like a madwoman in a beauty parlor; Ferenck, overcoming his initial rejection, finally said, it’s O.K., forget it happened. That settled the matter, and every night, after dinner, Gunard performed his ritual with Cécile’s clothes and chatted with them for a while, before going to the window of his room to look out at the night, which from there was mostly lights on roofs and buildings rising in the darkness, and ask it his many questions, his sad, disconsolate questions.

His participation in local tournaments, although increasingly sporadic, led a chess correspondent from the United States to take an interest in the case of these two players who had decided to live in anonymity. He researched who they were, and what struck him most was that neither of them had striven to reach the heights. They had both been content to break off careers that could have led farther. The journalist wrote for the Chicago Tribune and his name was Earl Coltodino. One afternoon, after a couple of fruitless calls, Coltodino went to the beach to look for them and found them near a terrace. They had a roll-up chessboard held down by stones and were analyzing a position, with bottles of Diet Coke that they kept cold in a bag filled with ice, plus chicken sandwiches that Gael had made for them that morning. In another bag was a thermos of hot coffee and a bar of chocolate. They were well prepared. At the bottom, ready for the end of the afternoon, was a quart of Smirnoff vodka.

Coltodino observed them from a distance and concluded, from the way they joked, that they were kindred souls. They reminded him of the uncomplicated friendships he had had as a child, back in the old neighborhood. He went closer, feigning interest in their game, and saw a complicated position from which his own knowledge offered no way out. He ventured to speak to them, saying he could not understand why the whites had given up.

Are you interested in chess? they asked, and Coltodino said, yes, very much, it’s my favorite game.

Gunard sipped at his drink and said, look, the next move is this, and then this, and that way you get to this. He explained it very quickly, and Coltodino did not even understand, but did not say so. He asked them if they always played on Sundays. Oslovski looked at him and said, we come to the beach to play in peace. Coltodino begged their pardon, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you, to which Oslovski replied, I’m not saying that because of you, if you’re interested in chess you have something in common with us, come, sit down, and so Coltodino was accepted that Sunday afternoon and was able to chat with them and ask them things, until he said, you both play really well, you must have won a few tournaments in your time, I guess? Ferenck and Gunard looked at each other and nodded, but Oslovski added, all that happened a long time ago, it isn’t worth remembering.

Coltodino drank his beer as he listened to them, and said, how is it that the two of you, who not only have a passion for chess, but also play it brilliantly, never wanted to take it farther? and Gunard said, there’s too much pressure to deal with. Oslovski confirmed his friend’s words, and added, what prize in the world is greater then this? Watching the sun set over the sea, playing with a friend, eating and drinking, eh? That’s life, friend, what a privilege it is to be alive, would you like a sandwich?

Eric Coltodino took many notes in the three days he was with them. Before leaving he confessed to them who he was and what he was planning to do with their story. Gunard shrugged and Oslovski said, at least offer us a few drinks, and that resolved the matter, much to Coltodino’s relief. He took photographs of them with different backgrounds, the port, the sea, and the walls of Jaffa.

The article was published two months later in the Chicago Tribune, under the title The Oslovski & Flø Variation, the name Coltodino chose to describe their approach to the game. It was a great success. Never before had he received so many letters or comments from readers.

I was one of those readers, my dear listeners, and I want to tell you, by way of conclusion, that until a very short time ago you could still see that couple of old men moving the chess pieces on the sand, drinking vodka and waving their hands as a sign of disagreement over some game, which was the greatest thing in their lives.

And that is the end of my story.

2. THE SURVIVOR (AS TOLD BY MOISÉS KAPLAN)

The events I am about to relate all happened to a man named Ramón Melo García, who lived in the town of La Cascada, in the department of Meta, in the Plains region of Colombia. Ramón was a good man, hardworking and honest. By the time he was twenty-nine, he already owned three auto repair shops, two in the town and another on the road to Granada, where he also sold soda, coffee, meat pies, and donuts. He had a total of twelve employees, working for minimum salary but with a percentage on outside repairs, Christmas bonuses, paid vacations, and health insurance. They all liked Ramón, because he wasn’t a boss who gave orders from his office, but a worker like them, with his greasy uniform and his fingers covered in cuts and blisters. The little finger on his left hand was missing: at the age of fifteen he had caught it in a fan on a bus. As he would say, God cut off the finger I used for cleaning my ear, which must have been a message to stop listening to so much crap. And he would get back to work.

In the evenings, after work, he would go to see his girlfriend, Soraya Mora, who was twenty-six, had studied IT and secretarial skills, and worked in an internet café called La Maporita at the corner of Calle Tercera and the Parque Boyacá. He would sit down at one of the computers, look at his messages, check his Facebook account, and sit there for a while, chatting, drinking soda, and showing her photographs of his friends. At eight o’clock they would both go to Soraya’s house for dinner; her mother, Doña Matilde, would make fish soup and pork and sometimes corn pancakes, because she was a peasant woman from Santa Fe de Antioquia.

After dinner, they would sit in the doorway and watch the people passing by, and Soraya would say, when are you going to ask for my hand, Ramón? you’re putting me to sleep with all this waiting, and he would say, calm down, Sorayita, you know I will. Of course I know, but when, next year? my mother asked me the other day, and so did my brother. Is your brother back? Yes, he just got back from Medellín, he’s working in an office. And what kind of work does he do? What kind of work do you think? office work, I don’t know, but it’s well paid, about a million and a half pesos, maybe even more, yesterday he brought Mamá a gold necklace, and some earrings for me. Tell him I’d like to see him, tell him to drop by the shop whenever he likes, and we’ll go have a few beers. Then Ramón would go home to sleep. He lived with his mother and an aunt, who were both seventy years old. At weekends, he and Soraya would go out dancing and drinking, almost always with his best friend, Jacinto Gómez Estupiñán, and Jacinto’s wife Araceli Ramos. Most times, they went to a nightclub called the Rey de la Pachanga, on the road to Cubarral, next to the bridge over the River Ariari, and there they would drink and dance until it was time to spend a while at the Llano Grande motel. Jacinto and he had studied at the teacher training college in Cubarral and then taken their higher certificate in Villavicencio. As both were only sons and their mothers close friends, they had grown up together. Jacinto had a farm near Lejanías and raised cattle.

But the situation in the region was becoming complicated.

The 39th Front of the FARC operated around La Cascada, under the command of Mono Jojoy, and in 2004 the Héroes de los Llanos, an urban paramilitary militia, arrived, led by a man known as Dagoberto, a former lieutenant in the army who had worked as a foreman on a farm growing African palms before taking up arms again. La Cascada had become a strategic route in the drug trade and the paramilitaries began extorting money from local businesses and asking for information about FARC members. About a week after they arrived, the first bodies appeared in ditches. One of them was the body of Braulio Suárez Acevedo, a waiter from the Brisas restaurant, and the other, Alfredo Mora Cañizares, an assistant at the Don Saludero drugstore. They had been tortured with candles, their testicles had been cut off, and each had been shot three times. They had signs pinned to their backs that said: I am a traitor to my country. The people who saw them did not dare approach, and the bodies lay there almost the whole day. Just after nightfall, the police arrived in a van, identified them, and took them to the morgue at the local hospital.

Ramón did not see the bodies, but he had known Braulio Suárez Acevedo, who, as far as he was aware, had no connections with the FARC. One of his employees said to him, no, Don Ramón, of course he didn’t have anything to do with the FARC, what happened was that he didn’t want to pay the paras, that’s all, anyone who doesn’t pay them, they say he’s with the guerrillas and they take him away, yesterday apparently they took Jesús Torres, the guy who works at the La Ceiba pool hall, who didn’t have anything to pay them with and didn’t want to give them the deeds to some land he owned, so they took him away, he’ll show up in a ditch, that’s for sure, nobody escapes those guys.

They hadn’t yet come to Ramón’s auto repair shop to ask for money, but he knew it was only a matter of time. A few days later, they did come, not to ask for money but to leave him two vans to be repaired. One had a blocked carburetor and the relay was missing; with the other one, he repaired the starting mechanism and the spark plugs and changed the brake pads. When they came back for the vehicles, Ramón handed the bill to the man known as Dagoberto, who looked at it, put it in his pocket, and said, thanks, I hope you did a good job, I’ve been told you’re the only reliable mechanic around here. Ramón looked at him without saying a word, turned, and continued with his work, which involved stripping a camshaft on a Chevrolet dump truck.

More or less once a week, they left him vehicles to fix. One day they brought him a Cherokee with seven bullet holes in it, and said, Ramón, let’s see if you can do a job on this piece of shit, look what a mess they made of it. Come back in a week, I’ll get rid of those nasty holes, it’s a nice car. They did not come for it after a week, but one of the men said to him, Dagoberto told me to tell you that he’s selling it, so keep it and you can pay him later. But I don’t know if I can afford it, it must be worth about thirty million, right? better if you take it away, I don’t have the money. The chief said we should leave it, if you don’t want it, talk to him about it. They went away and Ramón left it parked in back of the shop.

As it was Saturday, he went to La Ceiba to meet Jacinto, because Soraya had to stay at home to look after her mother. They had a few glasses of aguardiente and he told his friend about the car. This Dagoberto guy told me I should keep it and pay him later, but I don’t have the money, a pity, it’s a great car. But Jacinto said: if I were you I’d hold on to it, these guys have a lot of money, they might get themselves killed, and you end up with a car, so don’t be stupid, tell them yes, they haven’t even told you when you have to pay, so do it, if the worst comes to the worst you can pay them off by doing more repairs for them. No, Jacinto, I don’t like these people, I prefer to have things I bought with my own money, not like that.

The next day he told Soraya about it, and said he was going to give back the car that evening, but she said, oh, Ramón, you really are an idiot, why give it back if they’re giving it to you? I love that car, it’s really classy, it looks great, keep it, you won’t be sorry, you’ll see, in fact, why don’t you take me out now for a drive? No, Sorayita, if I use that car and something happens I’ll be in trouble. What’s going to happen? If something does happen, you can fix it, you’re a mechanic, aren’t you? go on, give me a ride, Ramoncito. O.K., darling, but only a short ride, come on.

On the Wednesday of the following week, one of the paramilitaries came to the shop and said to Ramón: Dagoberto wants to know when you’re going to pay him the thirty million you owe him, he needs it by the end of the month. I don’t owe him any money, I already told him I can’t buy the car, I don’t have that kind of money. What do you mean you’re not going to buy it? you already took your girlfriend out for a drive, didn’t you? Dagoberto wants the money by the end of the month. No, look, this is a misunderstanding, the only reason I took it out was to test drive it, because I also had to fix the electrical system, that’s why I gave it a spin, to charge the battery and leave it ready, it’s parked out there, you can take it away with you now if you like.

Another week passed, and nobody came until one day the police from Villavicencio showed up. They gave the Cherokee the once-over, checked the serial number of the engine, and told Ramón that the car had been stolen in Bogotá, was it his, if not, whose was it? Ramón said it belonged to a man he didn’t know, he didn’t even know the name. And what kind of work did you do on it? We fixed the ignition, the starting mechanism, and the condenser. I have it parked out there to see if they come for it, but I don’t know who it belongs to. The police towed away the Cherokee and took Ramón with them. As they left town he saw two of the paramilitaries in the Caleñita store. They both watched him until the police car disappeared around the bend.

He was kept in Villavicencio for three days, until it became clear that he was not to blame. He did not give them the name of Dagoberto or anyone else. About a hundred times they asked him who the car belonged to, and a hundred times he said, a man who isn’t from La Cascada, they left it with me and I repaired it, but I don’t know the man’s name, that’s the way I work. When he returned home, Jacinto and Soraya came to see him, looking worried, and he said, you see what a gift they gave me, the car was stolen, didn’t I tell you it’s better to have your own things honestly?

Three days later, a messenger came from Dagoberto, with two other guys. They arrived in a Toyota 4x4. Ramón was partly underneath a Hyundai taxi and did not bother to come out. He said to them: what kind of trouble have you gotten me into? the Cherokee was stolen. I didn’t tell the police anything, I didn’t give them any names, you can sleep easy, there won’t be any problems. But the guys said to him: what Dagoberto wants to know is when you’re going to pay him the thirty million you owe him, and if you don’t pay him, then give back the car.

Ramón took his head out from under the Hyundai and said, don’t you get it or what? the police in Villavicencio took the car away and they’re holding on to it because it was stolen, I don’t have anything to do with that and I don’t owe anything to anyone. The police took it away? The guys looked at each other. Well, what happened to the car is your problem, but you still have to pay the chief. We’ll be back for the money next Monday, got that?

Ramón watched them go. He felt very angry, but he didn’t say anything. That night, he said to Soraya: they got me into trouble and now they want me to pay for the car, can you imagine, and there was I, protecting them from the police, like an idiot, what I should have done was name names and let them go fuck themselves. Don’t talk like that, Ramoncito, the best thing to do is sort it out once and for all. Can’t you see, these people are really dangerous. Yes, that’s why it’s better to do things legally, Sorayita. On Saturday I’ll go to Villavicencio and talk to the police again and tell them everything, let these guys go to jail and leave me alone.

That Friday night, over a beer, he said to Jacinto, no, brother, I can’t go to the Rey de la Pachanga tonight because I’m getting up early tomorrow to go to Villavicencio. He told him this in a low voice. I’m going to talk to the police, can you believe it, those sons of bitches want to rob me, after I protected them, idiot that I was. Careful, brother, these people are tough. Yes, but the bastards aren’t going to bring me down, all I ever did was do them favors and this is how they repay me, it’s not right, it’s not how things should be done.

The next day Ramón got in his Land Rover at six in the morning, filled his tank at the Texaco station, and drove out toward Granada in order to come out onto the road that would take him to Acacías and Villavicencio. The same guys who had come to the shop stopped him on the bridge over the River Ariari, and said to him, where are you going so early, Ramoncho? I’m going to Granada to buy equipment. And to go to Granada, you had to fill her up? I thought you were going farther than that, Ramoncho. The thing is, I always like to have her well filled, you never know. Good, we were waiting for you here because we need you to come with us, Dagoberto wants to talk to you. Is it about the Cherokee? I don’t know, Ramoncho, I don’t know, I imagine it is, come with us and work it out with him yourself, that’s the best thing, come on now, Miguelito will drive your car, come on, get out.

He was tempted to accelerate suddenly and leave them in the lurch, but their Toyota was faster than his Land Rover and they would soon catch up with him and pump him full of lead. The best thing to do was gain time and go with them. He got out of the Land Rover and into the Toyota. So, Ramoncho, why are you up so early? The driver of the Toyota was Dagoberto’s bodyguard, whose name was Nelson. I’m not sleeping too well these days, that’s why I take advantage of the morning and do my errands early, but what about you, what’s the hurry? No hurry, the chief just wants to talk to you and as he’s an early riser, too, we decided to wait for you here.

Ramón preferred not to ask the question that was aching to get out. How did they know he was going to leave early? why were they waiting for him that particular day? who had told them? They had gone a couple of miles when one of the men in the back seat, who was well armed, said to him, Ramoncho, from here on, we’re going to do the journey in the dark, O.K.? They blindfolded him and tied his hands with wire. Why are you tying me up, I’m not going to run away, I just want to get this whole thing sorted out properly, you know I have money, there are my shops and my things, if you like we can sort it out here among ourselves, once and for all, what’s the point of making things worse, what do you think, guys? But the men said to him, shut your mouth, son of a bitch, stop talking crap, go to sleep, try to get some rest, you’re going to need it later, and so Ramón fell silent, still thinking, over and over, how did they know? how did they know? He had only told Jacinto and Soraya, and it was impossible, what could have betrayed him? impossible, impossible.

They drove for about five hours until they came to a farmhouse, where they at last removed the blindfold. It was one of those big old houses, surrounded by shady trees. They were received by a group of uniformed men who were playing parqués. He didn’t know anybody, but one of them stood up and said, take him to three-ten, downstairs. Without giving him any explanation, they shoved him into a cell in the basement of the house and left. It was a room about fifteen feet by fifteen feet, with a bed and a chamber pot. From the ceiling hung a bare lightbulb surrounded by insects. The walls were not plastered but were of pure stone, it was obvious that the house was an extension of an older one. There he spent the rest of the day, or what he thought was the day, because there were no windows and the lightbulb was never switched off.

He did not know how long he slept, but suddenly the door opened and they said, get up, come with us, the chief wants to see you. They took him to what must have been the kitchen, because it had white tiles on the walls and concrete tables. There they tied him up, and after a while Dagoberto came in. Ramoncho, I’m sorry I had to bring you here in these conditions, but you do have my money, right? Ramón looked at him without any fear. That car wasn’t yours, it was stolen, the police in Villavicencio kept me locked up for four days and I didn’t tell them anything, I didn’t give them any of your names, in order not to get you into trouble, didn’t they tell you that? Yes, Ramoncho, and that was a good thing to do, but I also found out that in order not to pay me for the car you were planning to report me to the police, you were going to Villavicencio to do that, am I right? Ramón never told a lie, so he said, it’s because you were very unfair, I protected you and you tried to ruin me, apparently I had to pay you for the car, but that car was never mine! Calm down, Ramoncho, let’s not get all excited now. The problem is, the price has gone up now, and I think you’re going to have to sign over the deeds to your shops, they’re drawing the papers up now and they’ll bring them in a couple of days, but there’s no hurry. We’ll talk when they arrive, O.K.?

Dagoberto went out and one of the three guys said to Ramón, oh brother, you’re really in the shit now and all because you’ve been mean, meanness never pays, here you are, in this shithole, instead of banging your woman at the Llano Grande, nice and hard, you must be very stupid and a real snitch. Ramón spat in his face and the guy punched him, twice, three times, threw him to the ground, still tied up, and kept kicking him and shouting, you’re a dead man, we’re going to kill you, understand? take this scum away before I kill him.

After two weeks, Ramón looked really haggard. They had hit him with rifle butts and tortured him and showed him photographs of the way they cut up FARC members into pieces to avoid making a noise shooting them. That’s the way we’re going to leave you for being a snitch. We’re going to cut you in little pieces so even your mother wouldn’t recognize you, we’re going to tear off your dick and send it to your girlfriend to eat.

After about a month, they arrived with some papers and Dagoberto appeared again and said, how have they been treating you, Ramoncho? well? Now the time has come to behave like a man because the deeds are ready to transfer your three shops, you see, here are the papers from the new owner, all you have to do is sign here, and here, and here, and the notary will do the rest.

Do you really think I’m going to give up the fruits of my labors, the only thing I can leave my children, to you people, no way, it isn’t fair, maybe I could give up one shop, but not all three, you’d be leaving me with nothing. The thing is, Ramoncho, debts have to be paid, and if a person doesn’t pay his debts he’s punished, haven’t you read the Bible? the man who does something pays, and the man who snitches gets fucked, that’s in the Bible, yes or no? and they all said, yes, chief, of course, the snitch dies squashed, the scum dies disemboweled, and Ramón said, no, you’re going to kill me anyway, so go ahead and kill me, but I’m not signing that thing, and so they hit him with their rifle butts in the balls and the penis, making him throw up several times because of the pain and because the air was sucked out of him. Take him away and let him think it over. Think about it, Ramoncho, sign this thing and you can go, of course you’ll have to leave La Cascada because nobody in the town likes snitches, that’s worse than being in the FARC, but I’ll let you go, I give you my word. There’s no hurry, man, in town they’re saying you went to Villavicencio to sell what you had in order to move to Antioquia, and there’s the testimony of Gil the guy at the gas pump who says you filled the tank of the Land Rover because you were going to Villavicencio. Nobody’s looking for you in La Cascada. There’s no hurry, Ramoncho, go back to your cell and think over what I just said.

A couple of days went by and Ramón said, what I have to do is see how I can get out of here. With a knife, he started to file around one of the stones in the wall, and he could see that the earth was falling and that it was more or less easy to open. When he hit it, it sounded hollow, which he thought was strange, because this was a cellar, so after his meal he continued using the knife on the stone until he felt it move. Am I dreaming? The stone moved until he was able to remove it from the wall, and much to his surprise, instead of more wall what he found was a kind of tunnel, a very narrow passage that a man could only just fit into, so he said to himself, this is for me, and he stuck himself into it, and moved like a snake through the passage until he found another stone that was loose. Light could be seen around the edges and he said, shit, I can’t shift it. He listened, but could not hear a thing, so he gave two little blows with the knife, to see what happened. After a while he heard, knock knock. Someone was answering him. So he said in a whisper, who’s there? There was a long silence. I’m Father Benito Cubillos, who’s that? Ramón Melo García, from La Cascada. He heard the stone move and the passage was filled with light. A hand pulled him through to the other side. Come on, man, come, nobody will look in at this hour.

When he saw the man, he was almost scared. His hair and beard came down to his belly, he had no teeth, and he was deathly pale. His eye sockets revealed the skull beneath the skin and his eyes themselves were the color of bone. I’m Benito Cubillos, parish priest of Usiacurí. Where’s that? Near Barranquilla. The paras took me four years ago and have been keeping me ever since, for helping the guerrillas, they say, but that’s not true, I was helping the Indians, which is different, I tried to protect them but I was kidnapped, are you from the police, Ramón? have you come to get me out? No, Father, if only! They had their eye on me, too, they want to steal my auto repair shops and my money, I’m from La Cascada. And where is that? Here in Meta, Father, don’t tell me you don’t know we’re in the Plains! How should I know that, they drugged me before they brought me here, they gave me burundanga.

Can I ask you something, Father, did you make this tunnel? Yes, of course, only when I saw it led to another cell I thought I’d leave it open to see if there was a way to escape, but it’s very difficult, I hollowed out a bit of space on the other sides, too, but there’s only gravel there, no way out. They heard a noise and Ramón rushed back to the tunnel, crawled to his cell and put the stone back in its place, smoothing the earth in such a way that nothing was visible. After a while one of the paramilitaries came in and threw him a bag. These things are yours, aren’t they? There was a photograph of Soraya in a picture frame, a notebook, a memory stick, a digital camera, a white iPod, the earphones for the iPod, a pack of Pielroja with two twisted cigarettes, a credit card wallet, a box with his own business cards that said, Ramón Melo García, Mechanic, La Mariposa, The repair shop you can trust. It was all the things he had had in the desk drawer in his office. Had they already taken over the shop? The paramilitary stood there looking at him and said, don’t be ungrateful, I brought you this without my partner knowing, to keep you amused, but if you like, I can take it away. No, leave it, leave it. Thanks, man, very kind of you. .

The guy left and Ramón started thinking. These bastards are clever, what they want to do is wear me down, they think I’ll see the photos and be even more determined to get out of here, but as soon as I sign those papers, bang bang, they’ll kill me, you can’t believe a word these people say. The noises had stopped, so he went back along the tunnel. He showed Father Cubillos the photographs of Soraya, Jacinto, his mother, a stroll along the banks of the Ariari, a trip to Bogotá. Then he told his story, in minute detail, and said, Father, you know people, who betrayed me? was it Soraya or Jacinto? it had to be one of the two, only they knew. Don’t torment yourself thinking about that now, Ramón, you mustn’t let yourself be consumed with hate, that’s the worst thing you could do. Think deeply about life and you won’t lose it, the Lord is not going to leave you in this hole, not if you’re good, that’s why it’s better not to be filled with hate. The thing is, Father, I’ve never been a believer, I have to admit that. They killed my father by mistake in Villavicencio. Then they apologized and tried to give money to my mother, but I said, there can’t be a God if such things happen. I used to go to church before that, Father, I’d always take communion with my mother. She also stopped believing for the same reason. My father was the most devout. He gave a tenth of what the shop made to the Church, and look what happened, they killed him, they thought he was someone else, someone who was giving money to a Mafioso, they shot him seven times in the back of the head. He was just coming out of the bank where he’d paid in the weekend’s takings, because he was a good man and didn’t spend his money on drink or women, nobody could have been more sensible than him, and look how God repaid him.

Oh, Ramón, there are things about God that we don’t understand all at once, but why should we understand, sometimes a person spends his whole trying to understand himself, doesn’t he? Yes, Father, he does. What happens, Ramón, is that God sees a person in the context of his whole life, whereas that person, when something happens to him, only sees the thing that happened, but God sees the whole person, from all sides, never forget that, and He knows why He does what He does, you’ll see, sooner or later you’ll understand.

Back in his cell, Ramón started thinking over every moment of the last few days before the kidnapping. On the Thursday night he had told Soraya that they had come by and asked him to pay for the car and that he had decided to talk to the police in Villavicencio. She had told him not to do it. On the Friday, he had worked until seven, when Jacinto had called him on his cell phone and told him they were going to the Rey de la Pachanga. He had refused and had suggested an early beer at La Ceiba. There, he had told him that he was planning to go to Villavicencio early the next morning. He remembered they had been at a table on the balcony, nobody could have overheard them there. Could Sorayita, in her desire to resolve things, have possibly said something to somebody, without intending any harm? or had Jacinto gotten drunk after that and, when they asked after me, said I was going to get up early to go to Villavicencio? That by itself doesn’t mean anything. The paras knew he was going to report them. With this he fell asleep, although the light from the naked bulb was like a skewer in the brain.

The next day, they took him from his cell and interrogated him in the kitchen. He had heard moans earlier, and now he saw blood on the tiles. They must have been putting the screws on someone, he thought, and it made his hair stand on end. Let’s see now, Ramoncho, are you going to cooperate with us today? It wasn’t Dagoberto interrogating him, but one of his lieutenants. Tell Dagoberto I want to see him, I’d like to talk to him personally and sort things out. Ah, it looks like Ramoncho has seen reason, all right, call the chief.

An hour later, Dagoberto arrived. He was wearing a combat jacket and boots and carrying an Uzi. What’s up, Ramoncho, are we signing or what? I’ll sign if you tell me one thing, who told you I was going to Villavicencio to talk to the police? There was a silence. Dagoberto looked at his men and burst out laughing. Oh, this Ramoncho really is a scream! Setting conditions now, are we? Ramón remained impassive. I’ll sign the deeds to all three shops, he said, if you tell me who betrayed me. Dagoberto walked in a circle around him, like a fly turning around the light, and said, I’m going to confess something, Ramoncho, you know what? I like you, you’re a good guy, a bright guy, ready to do anything to find out who snitched on you, that’s what I call a man, damn it. I’m exactly the same, which is how I found out you were going to snitch on me to the police, you see? I did the same, Ramoncho, that makes us equal. Ramón looked at him, as impassive as ever. It isn’t the same because you were robbing me and I’m not robbing you, and because you’re a murderer and I’m a hardworking man, so it isn’t the same; tell me who informed on me and then kill me, but don’t say we’re equal. Dagoberto looked at him furiously. We aren’t equal, I’m not a snitch like you, and I don’t have to tell you anything. Around here, nobody so much as farts without my knowing it, do you hear? I know all about you. I know you used to bang your girlfriend in Room 312 of the Llano Grande because from there you can see the church in Cubarral and she likes the reflection of the dome, and you like that room, not because of the church but because the TV has a big screen that’s better for watching porn movies, like the ones with that Italian actress who acts as if she has gunpowder in her crotch, you see how well I know the lives of everyone around here? What you don’t know, Ramoncho, is that Soraya also went to the motel with another man, I’m not going to tell you who, because I’m not a snitch. Oh yes, life is just one big shithouse, nobody has any principles, there are nothing but bad people. I’ll give you another week to think it over, I’m in no hurry. And he walked out.

Back in his cell, he thought about what he had just heard. It was all lies, Soraya couldn’t have had someone else, when would she have had the time? When he was in the shop they talked all the time, and then he went to La Maporita in the evenings. Impossible. If this was a TV soap opera, he thought, then Soraya would definitely have been making out with Jacinto, but this isn’t TV, a pity, he said to himself, because it means I’m going to be pushing daisies soon, but before that I want to know, I really want to know! There’s nothing sadder than dying without knowing.

That night he went to Father Cubillos’s cell, but was unable to tell him anything because he found him feverish and delirious. The old man was seventy years old and seemed to have reached his limit. In that damp cell, his lungs must have been affected. Ramoncito, the Lord already has my service record in his hand and is looking through it now. He’s already taken the decision to free the two of us, yes: a while ago, as I was dozing, I seemed to hear Him, He came to see me and said, get ready, we’re going to get out of here, you and your neighbor, I’m going to free both of you, and then He showed me an image of Usiacurí; I think it was Usiacurí, but in reality it could have been any of those sad little towns in Colombia, the houses had been razed to the ground, the central square was a sea of ash and rubble, the church was like a burning torch, the general store had been turned to smoke, and He or somebody like Him was there, in a tunic, walking in the ruins of Usiacurí or Bellavista or even La Cascada, the name of the town doesn’t matter, He had His head covered and He was leading a group of friars who were praying in silence, walking toward a hill where there was a cross, the only one not yet burned, and they started climbing, treading on rubble and the charred bodies of peasants and children, and when they had almost reached the cross there was an explosion and bullets came flying out of the coffee plantations or the orange groves or somewhere, and they all fell, riddled with bullets, and there was nobody left, and then everything went black; and then I saw His hand, Ramoncito, saying to me, let’s go, I’m taking you out of here, and your neighbor too. You must both leave.

He was delirious, and Ramón said, Father Cubillos, you’re leaving here for eternal life, how I envy you, but the priest looked at him and said, we’re both going, He told me how, come closer, bend your ear to me, and I’ll explain, He’s going to help us.

After the explanation, the priest said: help me take out this piece of cloth that’s sewed into the cuffs of my pants, let’s see, can you find it? on it are the directions to a chapel on the outskirts of Barranquilla, the place is marked, and there’s a key, can you see it? Yes, father, here it is, a small key, yes, I have it. Then the priest said: take everything you see there, take out the case that’s there and throw away the key and take everything and go. You will find out what to do. What’s in that case is yours, He told me to tell you so you’d understand, do you see, this life is very confusing, Ramón.

The old man was burning up with fever, and coughing so much he could barely speak. They said goodbye and Ramón went back to his cell, taking the piece of cloth with the map and the key. With Father Cubillos’s thread, he sewed it in his pants and started waiting. A couple of hours later he went back in the tunnel and, without moving the stone, heard voices saying, ugh, this guy kicked off a while ago, bring a bag and we’ll put him in it, and tonight Arnulfo’s men can take him and throw him in the river.

Later, they came and asked him if he was ready to sign the deeds and he said, almost, when the time Dagoberto gave me is over, I’ll sign what you want, I’ve had it up to here with all this crap. One of the paramilitaries said to another: this corpse is getting skinny, what he needs is rice, we’ll give him rice! Then Ramón asked them, who did you kill in the kitchen? I noticed it was covered in blood. Nobody, they brought someone in who was already dead but we had to remove his scars, so that he couldn’t be identified. We’ll do the same for you if you behave yourself, Ramoncho, we’ll make sure your corpse looks nice and pretty, how about that?

When he calculated that it was already dark, he got in the tunnel and crawled to the Father’s cell. They had put him in a waterproof black canvas bag with a zipper. He opened the bag, took out the priest and put him in the tunnel, pushed him with some difficulty all the way to his own cell, laid him down and covered him with the sheet, with his back to the door. Then he cut off a lock of white hair, went back to the Father’s cell with his things, closed up the tunnel, and got inside the bag. He left the ropes loosely knotted and within reach of his hand, and placed the lock of hair close to the zipper.

Soon afterwards, the door opened and he felt them loading him, first onto a handcart, and then onto the bed of a truck. He was worried they would discover Father Cubillos’s body before too long, but as it was nighttime that would probably not happen until the next day. What river were they going to throw him in? Hopefully a deep one, otherwise the impact when he hit the bottom might kill him. But he was also thinking, is it true that Soraya was cheating on me? who ratted me out? was it Jacinto? Three hours later the truck stopped and he heard them say: right, in the water with him, let’s weigh it down with those bricks, we want this dummy to stay at the bottom. Shall we shoot when he falls in the water, chief? Don’t be so dumb, can’t you see we can’t make any noise? Just throw him in and let’s get out of here, I don’t like being around here too late, my friend’s been waiting for me at the Tinieblas for half an hour now.

I’m in the Ariari, Ramón thought as he went in the water: the Tinieblas is the brothel in Puerto Lleras!

As he fell, he felt the coldness of the water. He sank slowly. The bricks were heavy but two of the four came loose from the ropes as the bag fell. He had taken a deep breath, and he was a good swimmer, so he put his hand out, untied the knot, and the bricks sank to the bottom. The bag rose to the surface a hundred yards farther along the river, filled with air, and served as a life preserver to help him reach the bank.

He stood up with his heart pounding and the adrenaline surging through his blood, and said to himself, what a good idea of God to get him out, maybe he would start believing in Him again. Now he had to get away quickly, because as soon as they realized they would be back. He walked and walked until he came to a shack that looked uninhabited. He looked through one of the windows and did not see anybody, so he entered cautiously; he found clothes, and a piece of bread. He changed and slowly ate, until he had calmed down. His heart stopped pounding and he went out again. He followed the path until he found a bigger one and then a road.

He was in Puerto Lleras.

At dawn he got in the undergrowth and started drying out what he had in the billfold: his Bancolombia card, a couple of cell phone recharging cards, his ID card, his driving license, his judicial certificate, he had all that. The only thing they had taken was his cell phone. They had never imagined he would escape so easily, that was why they had left everything in his pockets. He looked up and prayed a bit. For the soul of the priest who had helped him escape and for God, who had paid him back for his father’s death with this. Of course, he still had to get out of the area, but that now depended on his wits. He would have to find money, or steal a car, but he was not sure how he could do either, and he did not want to leave any trace, because they must have realized by now that he was gone. They could well be looking for him on the banks of the river: fortunately he had gotten rid of the bag, burying it in the undergrowth. But once again Father Cubillos performed a miracle for him, because as he walked, he came to a fence and saw that it was the airport of Puerto Lleras. He made up his mind to go in, he saw that a Cessna belonging to the Satena company was leaving for Villavicencio in forty minutes.

He decided to take a risk. He went to the Banco Popular ATM, and put his card in, and it worked, so he took out a million pesos. With that he bought a ticket and then went to the bathroom to wait until it was time to board the plane, because it was possible that the paramilitaries might think to check the airport. Again he was in luck: he got on the plane and as it rose into the air he felt a wave of tiredness come over him from all his aches and pains, but at the same time he realized that he was alive, and that he was not going to die as soon as he had thought.

In Villavicencio, he did not even leave the airport but got on an Avianca flight to Barranquilla, via Bogotá, and by nightfall he was getting off at Ernesto Cortissoz Airport, beside the Caribbean, thanks to the help and inspiration of Father Cubillos, may God keep him at His right hand. He took a room in a hotel in the Abajo district. He got in the bathtub and let the water stream over his shoulders, head, and chest, and closed his eyes. He had the map and the key in his pants, and he thought: tomorrow I’m going to see what kind of gift the father left for me in that case.

The next day he went out and walked to a shopping mall. He bought clothes, shoes, dark glasses, and a watch, and had a haircut. He went to Telecom and dialed Soraya’s number several times, but hung up when he heard her mother’s voice. Should he talk to Jacinto? call his shop? He did not trust anyone and if he dialed a cell phone they would know he was in Barranquilla, so it was better to wait. He called home and heard his mother’s voice, but decided not to talk, the paramilitaries were sure to question her and it was better if she knew nothing. He would call her or send for her later.

The map on the piece of cloth was half erased, but he knew it by heart, so he went to look for the little chapel, which was in the same district, Abajo. He would have to figure out a way to get into the sacristy, which was where the hiding place was located. For the moment he went in and huddled on one of the benches. It was a simple chapel, with an altar at the front, two prayer rooms at the sides and two rows of benches. A young man was sweeping the corridor and three women were praying. He looked around and saw a half-open door on the right, between the two confessionals. He walked toward it, but just as he was a few feet away, somebody closed it. Never mind, he would come back the next day. He went back over the next four days, studying the chapel. He found out that there was a fairly young priest, a sacristan, three altar boys who came in the mornings, and a woman cleaner who lived at the back. The priest did not live in the sacristy but in a residence.

He hatched a plan. It was quite simple: he would stay in the chapel after the noon service, get into the sacristy and go down to the cellar. This was what he did two days later. The door was locked, but he had a penknife and opened it without any difficulty. He ran down the stairs and came to a first room, which was a kind of prop room for the things used in the mass, and then a second, with a closet at the far end. Inside it was a smaller closet. He took out the key and opened it. The map said: below the closet, second tile. He stuck the penknife in at the side and saw that the tile was loose. He lifted it and saw a plastic bag with another one inside, then a third one, and finally, inside that one, a leather billfold. He put it in his belt, put the tile back in its place and closed the closet. On the way out he tried to conceal the fact that he had forced the lock, but it was impossible, because the wood was split. It was possible they would not realize, because they would not notice anything missing. He got back to the hotel with his heart pounding because of what he had done and had to lie on top of the bed for a while, before opening the billfold. He finally did so and found a couple of envelopes. In one of them was a sheet of paper that said:

“Father cubillos I know you dont aprove the way I earn my living but I am very grateful to you, and that’s why I want to give you this. you brought me up and the little education I have you gave me and when I was young I got in trouble and you helped me to get out of prison. thank you father cubillos. I prefer not to go and see you because maybe you will pull me by the hair and we will fall out and thats why I am sending you this with my little sister ester. I am leaving you fifty bills of a hundred dollars and a key with a number. that number is the number of a safety depozit box in the banco central of panama, in panama city, where you will find everything you need any time you have a problem or want to help somebody. its the way I want to give back to you all I got from you. thank you, father cubillos, you were the father I never had. Edwin.”

Ramón read the letter several times, then counted the money. There was five thousand dollars. Who was this Edwin? another para? a local drug dealer? It must have been something like that, although Father Cubillos had not gotten around to telling him. Almost certainly a para, well, with that five thousand dollars they were starting to pay him back for what they had taken from him. The next day he went to Bogotá and presented himself at the offices on Calle Cien, showed his ID card and asked for a passport. As he stood in line, he kept looking around. By the afternoon, he had his passport and he went to buy his ticket to Panama. He really wanted to call Soraya but he restrained himself, and what he did instead was say to a taxi driver, take me where the girls are, where are the girls here? Jacinto had been to Bogotá once and had told him that the brothels there were the best, that you could find women of all races, really amazing, gorgeous women, oh boy. The flight was not until the next day, so he wanted to go out for a few drinks anyway. The taxi driver looked at him in the mirror and said, how much do you want to pay? I want one that’s good, but not too expensive either. Right, boss, I know where. He took him to a place on Primero de Mayo called Luceros, he paid four hundred thousand pesos for a 22-year-old brunette and took her to the Paracaídas motel, near the airport. Everything was perfect. He could eat there, have a few glasses of aguardiente and enjoy the girl, who was really good. Jacinto was right, the girls in Bogotá were the best, even though this one was from Cali. That son of a bitch Jacinto, could it have been him? Better not to think about it.

The next day he gave the girl a hundred dollars as a tip and at eleven in the morning he set off for the airport. He had a feeling he was being watched, that somebody was walking behind him, but it was pure paranoia. Who could have followed his trail if he hadn’t dared to speak to anybody? Then something occurred to him that got him really worried: if his mother had reported his disappearance, then there was a strong possibility that the agents of the Security Service would grab him when he tried to leave the country. He walked anxiously to immigration and got in line. When it was his turn, he went to the window and, with his heart skipping a beat, handed his passport to the official. Of course he was from the Plains, which meant he was good at keeping a cool head, so he looked the official in the eyes and said, I’m going on vacation, one week, no more. The man put his name in the computer and a shiver went through Ramón. He had heard that the Security Service people were in league with the paras. But once again Father Cubillos protected him, because the official handed him back his passport and said, have a nice trip, next. He got on the plane and as it taxied along the runway it struck him once again that the kidnapping and all that violence were taking him toward something new, and he remembered the words of the priest when he had said, a person cannot understand the actions of God, because when God does what He does, He is taking into account the totality of a life. It was the first time he had left Colombia and he felt a mixture of euphoria and fear. Would Panama be safe?

In Panama City he took a taxi and as he only had a small case he went straight to the Banco Central. He looked at the avenue, the buildings, the cars, and the people. Just like Colombia, he thought, nothing special. The key had the number B-367. He went to the window marked Customer Service and when it was his turn he said, thank you, I need to see this box. One moment, somebody will go with you. A tall, sophisticated woman said to him, follow me, this way. They walked up and down stairs, past a reinforced door and then another and then an elevator to the second basement. B-367? this is it. She opened the cubicle for him and then left him alone and he took out an attaché case something like an airline pilot’s. He was stunned: brand new bundles of dollars. How much was there? A note on the bills, dated five years earlier, said: “Dear Father, by order of my client Señor Edwin I hereby deposit the sum of three million dollars. If you wish to open an account go to the Balboa Investment Bank and ask to speak with Señor Emilio Granada, who is in charge of offshore accounts. He will not ask you any awkward questions if you say you are a friend of Edwin’s.”

He took the case and went out on the street. To his surprise, the Balboa Bank was just opposite, on a corner. This must be the financial district, he thought. Señor Emilio Granada opened a numbered account for him and issued him with a card for taking out cash and making payments, and said, were you very close to Don Edwin? Ramón did not know what to reply, and said, I’m close to a priest he was fond of. If that’s the case, said the banker, let me give you my condolences, maybe you did not know that Don Edwin passed away last year, four bullets in the back. He crossed some men, and you know how dangerous that can be.

He still had about three thousand dollars left from what he had brought with him, so he did not make a withdrawal, but went to look for a hotel. He chose a Holiday Inn facing the beach, and that same night he sat looking at the ocean and telling himself, what a contradictory life this is, a few days ago I was dead and now I’m a millionaire, I’m here by the sea, I can do what I like. . But I’m alone. Which of the two was it? or was it both of them? or neither? were they bugging my phone? That could have been it, those sons of bitches have their noses in everything.

This is where the story of Ramón Melo García really takes off, because with that money he stayed on in Panama, first one week and then another, until he felt safe. When, after three months, he finally decided to call his mother, it was his aunt who picked up the phone and gave him the bad news. She said, your mother died, or rather, she let herself die, being left alone like that, and people here saying the guerrillas had kidnapped you and that you’d died on the road. Who said that? I don’t know, Ramoncito, that was what people started saying. That Señor Dagoberto came around a few times to talk to your mother. He told her he was going to do what he could to get you back but that she had to help him, keep him informed. Oh, Aunt, don’t tell anyone about this conversation, do you swear? Yes, sweetie, I swear, but where are you? A long way away, Aunt, a very long way away, but don’t worry, I’ll be back.

He preferred not to ask after Soraya, let alone Jacinto. The less he stirred things up, the better. He would have time to find out what had happened. Something had hardened inside him. He felt sorry about his mother but that was all. No tears came out. That was one more thing Dagoberto owed him. They had not seen the last of him.

The director of the Balboa Bank helped him to obtain a residence permit, as he had decided to settle in Panama City and invest. He rented an apartment in Paitilla and looked for premises to set up an auto repair shop, which was his line of work. He found it in the same neighborhood and started setting it up. When he had everything ready, he sat down to wait and the first customer turned out to be a Colombian in a Pontiac. Ramón got down under the car and changed the brake pads and by the time the man had gone, his hands were shaking, the fear had come back, would they come all the way to Panama? did he have to go farther? But he stayed and worked hard, and before the year was out, he already had two shops in the city. He was good at his job, and very reliable. None of his customers could have imagined that he had a fortune in the bank, but his life was here, surrounded by screws and camshafts and carburetors. He didn’t want to have a girlfriend who would ask too many questions, so every Friday he would go to a bar called the Púrpuras, where they had a show, and pick up whichever girl he liked the best, making sure she was not a Colombian.

He lived like this for more than four years, until one day he read in the newspapers that the paramilitaries in Colombia were demobilizing, that they were negotiating to hand over their arms and surrender to the authorities. He searched and searched but did not see any reference anywhere to Dagoberto or La Cascada, so he waited a little longer.

By that time Ramón already had a chain of auto repair shops. Six in Panama City and three outside, on the highways. He invented a slogan: Drive slowly and travel safely, why not? He was the one who introduced into Panama the culture of having one’s car serviced before going on a journey. It is a small country, and people travel a lot by car, which was lucky for him. By now he had already doubled the inheritance from Father Cubillos and had bought a better apartment, in Bella Vista, which was more like La Cascada, even though it was very different, starting with the climate, but he got used to it. He’d also gotten used to the solitude, to not having any friends or girlfriends. In his dreams, he would be back in the cell, feeling the fear when he heard the footsteps coming closer, seeing Dagoberto and the paramilitaries who were always with him, saying, you’re going to die, scum, you look like a corpse already. Sometimes, out on the streets, he thought he recognized them. His hands would start sweating, his heart would start pounding, and he would forget where he was. But he was a man of the Plains and all that psychiatric stuff was not for him. So he finally summoned up courage and picked up a Colombian girl from the bar and asked her where she was from. I’m a country girl, from Pereira. And how old are you, sweetheart? 22, how about you? Me? I’m already old, and how did such a pretty girl end up in Panama? I came here for work, because there was no work in Pereira, and in Bogotá it’s very cold, and besides, they pay better here. But you’re Colombian too, aren’t you, darling? His jaw trembled, but he said, yes, I’m Colombian. Where from? Villavicencio. Oh, a man from the Plains? that’s why you ride me so well, ha, ha, don’t worry, just my sense of humor. And why did you come to Panama? To work. What kind of work? My kind of work, girl, don’t ask so many questions. No, don’t tell me, are you a trafficker? don’t worry, darling, I love traffickers. No, girl, I’m not, come on, I’ll get you a taxi. That was how things were when he went out with these girls, but this one, this country girl, was one he chose several times and in the end she became a friend and he would call her on her cell phone or pick her up from her apartment. One time, he took her to the beach. Her name was Daisy. Let’s go to the beach, but no questions, O.K.? O.K., darling, but you’re funny, you know? what’s with all the secrecy? did you kill somebody or what? why all this hiding? No, Daisy, I never killed anybody, how can you even think that? It’s just that you aren’t normal, with such a nice face and all that money and living alone the way you do. . Where did you leave your wife? Look, sweetheart, I said no questions, why don’t you sing me a song instead, you have such a nice voice. Oh, you’re such a liar! but I feel good with you, you know, and that was how they spent their Sunday afternoons.

Every day he read the news from Colombia: that the paramilitaries were going, that they were not going, that they had already gone, that they were still there in the mountains, that they were rearming in the cities, that everything was a lie, that they had handed over their arms, that they were being extradited, but he never found any mention of his story, so he decided on a strategy. He started letting his beard grow and cut his hair very short and dyed it. As he could not make himself any taller or shorter than he was, he decided to fatten up a bit; every day, even though it disgusted him, he ate two or even three McDonald’s burgers; at first they gave him diarrhea and made him vomit but in the end it worked and he started to develop a paunch. He put on glasses with flat lenses, and bought himself some casual clothes and some smart office clothes. For about four months he prepared his return journey to La Cascada. The time had come. He had to know what had happened.

His friend, the director of the Balboa Bank, helped him to obtain Panamanian papers so that he could enter Colombia as a foreigner. The riskiest part of his plan was that he had decided to take Daisy with him, as a man on his own attracts more attention to himself. He said to her, look, sweetheart, you’re coming with me on a little trip to Colombia and I’ll pay you well, the only thing you have to do is be with me and keep quiet, we’re going to Villavicencio, do you know it? no? it’s nice there, I’ll put you in a really good hotel and you can spend your time in the swimming pool and go with me wherever I have to go, and the more you keep your mouth shut the more I pay you, O.K.? Daisy was really pleased and said, fantastic, I’m going to Colombia, I love my country, you are a trafficker, aren’t you? obviously you’re going there for that, but like I told you, don’t worry, darling, I won’t say a word, I grew up among those people, I’ll go with you and keep my mouth shut, I’m not stupid. It struck Ramón that it was better this way, with her thinking he was a drug trafficker, so he went along with her.

They arrived at El Dorado airport in Bogotá and waited for the shuttle to Villavicencio. They landed just after seven at night and went straight to the Hotel del Llano. In order not to attract attention, he did not ask for a suite, just a really good room with a view of the swimming pool. Daisy told him they should go down to the bar to dance and he said, okay, let’s go and have an aguardiente, but we won’t stay too late because we have to go out early tomorrow.

The next day he hired a car from the hotel, an Opel station wagon, and drove straight to Acacías, in the high Ariari. There was a good breeze and the smell of the Plains brought tears to his eyes. He held them back as his childhood passed in front of his eyes: those palms, those ceiba trees, that earth, and that air were his, or rather, he belonged to the water and the land and the trees and the grazing cattle. Daisy must have heard him breathing heavily but did not say anything. She kept her mouth shut. In Acacías, they had a bite to eat and Ramón kept looking around to see if he could spot anything strange. They drove farther into the Plains. They had lunch in Guaymaral and Ramón started to feel an itch in his neck, a tightness in his lungs, so much so that he left half the roast veal he had ordered. They carried on. The smell of the Ariari reached him as they turned off toward Cubarral, and he thought: I learned to swim in that river, and that was what saved me. Snapshots of that night came back to him and beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip. Very soon he caught sight of Cubarral, the church with its dome, the clouds behind it like cotton wings. He remembered Soraya and his stomach lurched. They came to the bridge over the Ariari and, with his T-shirt bathed in sweat, he saw the Rey de la Pachanga and, at the bend in the road behind it, the lights of the Llano Grande motel. Everything was the same as ever.

At four in the afternoon, they reached La Cascada and went straight to the Parque Bolívar. Let’s have a beer, Daisy, and I don’t want you to look at anything except me. He had told her to dress like a tourist, in sweatshirt and tennis shoes. He was dressed in the same style, in T-shirt and jeans. They had the beer and Ramón, behind his semi-opaque glasses, sought inspiration in Father Cubillos. Here I am, Father, I need you more than ever now, help me to solve this difficult dilemma, that’s the only thing I want. After the beer, calmer now, he got up and walked to the internet café, La Maporita, but when he got there he saw that it was not called that anymore. Now it was called Café Hilton and had better computers and decent furniture. He turned, grabbed Daisy’s hand, and went in.

A popular reggaeton tune was playing. Ramón asked for a computer and sat down. Daisy did not say a word for a second and only opened her mouth to say, darling, can I go on Face-book for a bit? There were three young girls working there but Soraya was nowhere to be seen. His fingers trembled as he tried to work the mouse. Daisy chatted for a while, then he paid and they left. He went back to the car and drove around the town. He passed his main repair shop, where he had had his office, and saw it open, and working. It did not look any better or worse than it had before. He slowed down a bit, hoping to catch sight of somebody, and there, at the far end, he thought he recognized Demetrio, one of his workers, but then a car came up behind him and hooted its horn and he had to drive on. He approached Jacinto’s house and did not see anything unusual, it was all closed up, as was Soraya’s. He could not do anything more for now, so he decided to go back to Villavicencio. It had been a bad tactic to show his face here like that, without a plan, and it was dangerous. He had to think.

The next day, he had a look around the center of Villavicencio and suddenly, on the opposite sidewalk, he saw a sign that showed him the way: Delta Agency, private investigations, and a telephone number. He took out a ballpoint pen and wrote it down at the top of a bill. That was the solution! Come on, let’s go back to the hotel, girl, I just had a brainwave. Aren’t you going to take me shopping? there are some nice things here. . Later, sweetheart, later, I have work to do now, let’s go, you can use the pool.

They got back to the hotel and he called the number. When they answered, he said: hello, I’d like to know something about the service you offer. Well, if it’s for a matrimonial matter there’s one rate; if it’s a work-related problem another; if it’s a family thing or something like that, we look at it on a case by case basis, may I ask why you’re calling us? To ask if you take on work outside Villavicencio. Of course, boss, we’re globalized, we go from Puerto Gaitán to the Guaviare, tell me where we have to go? I need a little job done in La Cascada, is that possible? Say no more. . what kind of case are we talking about? matrimonial? an affair of the heart? work-related? we also issue Facebook and Hotmail passwords, but they’re more expensive, are you interested? Not for now. I’ll send you a letter with the information and an advance. Then I’ll call you again. Sure, boss, and what’s your name? I’m the Poor Friend, remember that, the Poor Friend. O.K., boss, I hope when you say poor that’s just a metaphor, right? Ha, ha. I say that because if the case turns out to be complicated it’ll cost you. Don’t worry, it’s a metaphor, and what about you, detective? what’s your name? Oh yes, of course, I’m Marcos Ebenezer Giraldo, boss, at your service.

He mailed him the details that afternoon and called him the next day. This is the Poor Friend, did you receive my package? No, my friend, nothing at all. I sent it by mail yesterday. Ah, no. . That won’t arrive for another two or three days, the mail here is terrible! Never mind, we can wait, are you in a hurry? Only to help you, boss. Well, you’ll get the chance and I can assure you, if you’re discreet and do a good job you won’t be sorry. All right, boss, don’t worry, my motto is, our pleasure is in discretion. Or this one: our profession is an inside job. Seriously, friend, discretion is my middle name, I’m so professional they call me the invisible man, I make less noise than an Alka-Seltzer in a pot of yogurt, nobody even knows I’m there. Call me the day after tomorrow and I’ll let you know.

He spent two more days at the hotel, going out very little, like a businessman on vacation with his girlfriend. Daisy was as good as her word, she was cautious and kept her promise not to speak or attract attention, even with that terrific body of hers and everything, she was discreet. Ramón was starting to feel nervous about being there, as he assumed that the paramilitaries, who knew everything, might easily discover his presence. After two days he called the detective again. Did you receive it? Yes, boss, over and out. Perfect. I have the names of the two people, the address of the auto repair shop that has to be investigated, and the money arrived, too, by a miracle nobody robbed the mailman. And is it enough? Of course, boss, it’s enough to start the investigation, no problems, if it turns out I need more I’ll submit it and then you pay me, all fully invoiced, obviously. And how long do you think these enquiries will take? Two weeks maximum, boss, and everything will be sorted and ready. Good, then I’ll call you again in two weeks. Sure, boss, write down my cell phone number, in case you have any questions.

That day he went back to Panama, and to be honest, leaving the airport and driving to his house, he began to breathe more easily, and he felt free. His stay in the Plains had been an emotional experience, but it had revived the fear. He paid Daisy and thanked her. Without her, everything would have been more dangerous; he decided that, when he went back, he would take her again, as she gave him the perfect front. He tried to analyze his feelings and realized that what he had inside him was not pain, or anger, or even regret, but above all curiosity. His heart had become hardened. So much solitude and so many questions had led him to consider his misfortunes as if they had happened to someone else.

Two weeks later he called the detective on Skype, which was good because the call could not be traced, and asked him about his report. It’s almost ready, my friend, I just need to copy a final piece of information that I already have, of course as I said it’s a first step, if you want to carry on we’ll have to do another contract, won’t we? Yes, of course, said Ramón. Good, my friend, now when can you come for the report? No, I don’t have time to collect it, can you do me a favor and scan it and send it to me at this address, write it down, poorfriend21@hotmail.com, and for anything else contact me that way. All right, my friend, do you mind if I ask a question? Ramón did not say either yes or no. Is it because of the girl that you’re doing all this? There followed a silence. Ah, I thought so, I’ll send someone to the corner right now to scan it and then I’ll send it to you, boss, glad to be of service.

It was afternoon by the time the mail arrived from the detective with the document attached, and the photographs. Seeing all that, Ramón closed the shop, and sat down in the office with a bottle of rum. He drank five glasses, one after the other, before even daring to open the files. He left the photographs and started with the text, it would be easier to read first. There it all was:

Soraya Mora has been married to Jacinto Gómez Estupiñán for three years and they have a daughter, Gloria Soraya, who is eighteen months old. Soraya is a housewife and Jacinto is the owner of the restaurant Luna Roja, the bar El Feliz, and two auto repair shops, Su Motor, which he took over after his former partner Ramón Melo García was kidnapped and later killed by the FARC. Señor and Señora Gómez live in the exclusive residential community of El Paraíso, in the new part of La Cascada, and have a farm near Lejanías where they grow African palm and raise cattle.

Señor Jacinto Gómez Estupiñán is divorced from Señora Araceli Ramos, to whom he pays seven hundred thousand pesos a month in alimony. At the divorce hearing, she accused him of adultery and physical violence. After the divorce, Señora Ramos went to live with her mother in Villavicencio, claiming to have been threatened with death if she stayed in La Cascada.

Soraya Mora spends the day with her mother looking after the little girl, Gloria Soraya. In the morning, from nine to twelve, they go together to the kindergarten in the residential community where they live, then they have lunch and in the afternoon go shopping and visit the Häagen-Dazs ice cream parlor on Plaza de Bolívar or simply stay at home and cook, which is their hobby. The mother goes on Thursday afternoons to a choral group and Señora Soraya plays parqués with her friends from the gym on Fridays at the Escrúpulos tearooms.

Jacinto Gómez Estupiñán leaves home at seven in the morning and goes to the restaurant, then to the market to supervise the purchases of meat for the day, the specialty of his establishment being fresh meat, straight from the farm. At noon he drops by the main branch of Su Motor, on Calle Acacias, and talks with his partner, Arnulfo Solano Arango. Then he has lunch at home with his wife and mother-in-law, but takes his siesta at the house of Señorita Fernanda Osorio Timoco, in the Antioquia district, a young woman of twenty-seven with whom Jacinto Gómez has a relationship of a sexual nature, and for whom he pays the rent on her house, which is 280,000 pesos. Señor Gómez has his account in the Banco Ganadero.

He read the report several times in quick succession, one after the other, and one word surged up inside him: Revenge. . Revenge!

Religion says that we should forgive, but Ramón was not ready for that. Let the bastards beg for forgiveness! If they come to me humbly I may forgive them, but first I want my revenge. He was overcome with rage and something unexpected: a strange happiness within the rage, a dizziness that gave him a tingling in his fingers. In losing his illusions, he had become free. He drank the rest of the bottle and wept, of course, but also felt a kind of pleasure in imagining how it would be when he had taken his revenge. He did not feel up to looking at the photographs yet. He would leave them for later.

The next day he wrote to the detective:

Excellent work. Now I need you to find out a few more little things. Firstly, what is a paramilitary known as Dagoberto doing now, tell me if he is still operating in the area or if he is cooperating with the authorities. Tell me when you think you will be able to give me that information and how much it will cost. I will send you the money wherever you tell me to, without asking questions. Secondly, I need to know what connection there was between Jacinto Gómez and that Dagoberto and when it started. Thirdly, I want to know if Soraya Mora was already involved with Jacinto before his divorce, and when that started too. I need dates. I want you to find out how long Soraya had known Dagoberto and why she did what she did and in return for what. Fourthly, find out what happened to that ex-partner, Ramón Melo García, if it is known where he is, and since when Jacinto has been a partner in those repair shops.

The next day the detective replied:

Oh, my friend, what you are asking me is definitely going to cost a bit more, especially as asking questions about the paras in this region is more dangerous than shaving your testicles with a knife when you’re drunk, ha ha, sorry, I joke about everything. This is embarrassing, but I need to ask you for three million pesos, friend’s rate, of course. Send it to me by Western Union, made out to the Agency, and addressed to our office in the central market in Villavicencio. As soon as I receive the money, I’ll get down to work, boss, over and out, and one last thing, I know this is all very hush-hush, so I want to assure you, now that I’m on the case, you can trust me absolutely. Best wishes, XY.

He sent the money from a numbered account and waited, more taciturn than ever before, brooding on his plans, completely given over to his one obsession: revenge, revenge. He was gradually putting it together, one element at a time, like a bird building a nest branch by branch with its beak, confined to his apartment and his office, supervising his workers almost without speaking to them, without calling Daisy at all, given over body and soul to the task of hating, feeling anger, knowing that very soon he was going to feel that thunderclap that meant his revenge was complete.

Until he read the next report:

What I am able to tell you is that Dagoberto gave himself up to the authorities seven months ago as part of the new government accords; they have in him in custody in the prison of Cómbita, Boyacá. He admitted to six murders in La Cascada, Puerto Lleras, and Lejanías, which weren’t massacres, but said, in order to avoid being put on the list for extradition, that neither he nor his group had ever been involved in drug trafficking. Of course, there are witnesses in the town who say that the man was indeed a trafficker and was smuggling cocaine to Venezuela; that there are a number of mass graves filled with his victims and that he’s a major criminal. He’s represented by a very good lawyer here in Villavicencio who is advising him to stay and do his time in Colombia. They’re plea bargaining for a lenient sentence, six years maximum, which means he’ll be able to keep the business going through front men while he’s inside and reestablish himself in no time at all when he gets out.

Jacinto met Dagoberto through Soraya Mora’s brother Hernán Mora. It’s important to note that Jacinto was already having an affair with Soraya while married to his former wife, Araceli, and that was how he got to know Hernán Mora. Her boyfriend, Ramón Melo García, was a good friend of Jacinto’s, and the rumor in town is that the FARC took him away to protect him, because he was a Communist, but as he was also a small businessman and owned auto repair shops in La Cascada they ended up extorting money from him and then killing him. Jacinto was a good friend of the family and took over the shops, but then Ramón Melo García’s mother died, so that Jacinto was left with everything, in partnership with Arnulfo, Ramón Melo García’s chief mechanic. That’s the official version, boss, but as I’m good at my job I dug a bit deeper to find what really happened, and it’s this: Jacinto was giving it to Soraya Mora every time Ramón Melo went off to Villavicencio to buy equipment for his shops, and through that relationship he became friends with Hernán Mora, who had just come back from Medellín and had contacts with the paras. As soon as he got back to La Cascada, Hernán Mora starting working for Dagoberto, and one fine day, after both of them had been drinking aguardiente, Jacinto told Hernán he loved his sister Soraya and the one thing stopping them becoming brothers-in-law was that Communist Ramón Melo García, who had been a Communist since he was small because his dad had fought with the guerrillas in the Plains, and so Hernán Mora said, don’t worry, I’ll talk to my sister and then we’ll ask Dagoberto to get that Communist bastard off our backs, Jacinto, I’ll take care of everything, the bastard deserves what’s coming to him.

Jacinto talked with Arnulfo, the man who managed Ramón Melo’s shops, and asked him to let him know about Ramón Melo’s calls and movements, and told him that if he didn’t they might kill him too, because his boss was a Communist and hated Colombia and our president and that was why they were keeping an eye on the people he worked with. Arnulfo Solano let himself be won over, partly out of fear, and partly because if he did what they asked him they told him they would make him a partner in the shops. He said yes without thinking twice.

With Soraya Mora, from what I’ve been able to establish, things were more difficult, because she was in love with Ramón Melo and they had to work on her a bit more. Obviously she was also in love with Jacinto and that was why she let him have sex with her, but although I’m not a student of character or anything, I do think women feel attracted to their boyfriends’ friends, and so the woman ended up sharing herself between the two of them at the same time, although she was officialy involved with Ramón Melo García. Hernán Mora won her over by telling her that Ramón was a member of the FARC, but they themselves were patriots so it was better if she forgot him. It took him a week to win her over.

Ramón was reading and weeping at the same time. They had all betrayed him. Not just one of them, all of them. His head was seething. He took a bottle of rum and went out onto the balcony of his apartment and looked at the lights of the bay and racked his brain for memories. He remembered one time when he had asked Soraya to come with him to Villavicencio, and she had said, no, Ramón, it’s better if I stay here and chat for a while with a friend on Facebook and then I’ll go to see my mother, it’s better if you go alone and come back quickly. He had given her a goodbye kiss — she was still wearing the uniform from La Maporita — and he had set off, listening to songs by Carlos Vives; he imagined her fucking Jacinto, an hour later, as he was driving along the highway. He heard the voice of the man known as Dagoberto saying to him, someone else is banging her, Ramoncho, they all like a bit of cock, what can we do?

His revenge should not be ordinary. No bullets in the back of the neck, no throwing bodies off a cliff. He would do things properly. He would not get his hands dirty: they were not worth it. He would lift the curtain and make the whole horrible affair visible to everyone. That was what he had to do. First he would deal with Dagoberto, then with Jacinto and Soraya, and finally with Arnulfo, his rat of an assistant, who was now part owner of his auto repair shop.

He wrote to the detective as follows:

Things are getting more and more complicated, but your fees will rise in proportion. This time you will need to hire people you trust. I want you to locate a farmhouse belonging to Dagoberto, an old house about four hours’ drive from La Cascada and another four hours from Puerto Lleras. They killed people in that house. I don’t know what it looks like from the outside, but it has a cellar with a number of rooms and stone walls, and a kind of kitchen with big concrete and tile counters where they tortured and killed people and cut up the bodies. If you find that farm for me, take some photographs of it, send them to me and I’ll recognize the place, your payment will go up to 10,000,000 pesos, how does that grab you? I also need you to find a connection between Jacinto and Dagoberto, a photocopy of a check, a signature, anything that shows that they were together, that they had a common interest, that they were protecting each other.

Three weeks passed before the detective sent his next message, which said:

Well, friend, let me tell you I have really good news. Brace yourself, because it really is good. It’s better than good, it’s brilliant. Get a grip on yourself before you download the photographs I’m sending you, because they show Dagoberto’s house, the one where people were killed. Don’t just take my word for it, have a look. It’s near Lejanías in a village called Palestina. It’s abandoned now, or rather, with a peasant looking after it with orders not to let anyone in, only this guy is hungrier than a piranha in a glass of water and doesn’t give a damn about orders. As soon as my colleague gave him a whiff of a fifty thousand peso bill, he opened his legs, or rather, he opened the doors wide and said, I’ll give you half an hour, I’m not responsible for what you find inside, I don’t know anything and I never saw anything. My colleague took some really artistic photographs. There’s a cellar just as you described it, with bloodstains. Take a good look at photograph number three. But the best of all is in another of the rooms: some metal trays and some drawers full of chemicals, enough to make a mountain of cocaine, how does that grab you? And there’s more, boss, pure gold: my colleague found a drawer with a padlock on it. He opened it and, to his surprise, there was a small laptop inside, clearly those guys hotfooted it out of there very quickly, or maybe just took the bigger things, in any case I have the machine here and on it there are names and photographs and everything, really sweet. My partner, who always has his eyes open for his big chance, says we could sell it for fifty million, but I told him that as you’re a friend we should let you have it for twenty million, because all the information you’re looking for is in it, and don’t faint dead away when you hear this: there are even photographs of Señor Jacinto and Señora Soraya actually in the act, a real delight, I can tell you. Those guys must be really depraved, to go around taking photographs like that and then keeping them, or maybe they were taken with a hidden camera. Well, friend, I await your reply, because what my partner wants to do is sell the computer to Dagoberto, but I keep telling him no, that’s not the way to proceed, which is why the best thing to do is for you to answer me quickly and leave the matter settled, and for my partner, who’s really short of money and whose daughter is getting married, to stop getting ideas like that.

Ramón read and reread the message. Then he decided to look at the photographs, and recognized the corridor and the narrow walls. It was the house, there was no doubt about it. The detective was really good, how had he managed it? had he bribed a former paramilitary? It was possible. Seeing those images, he remembered Father Cubillos and the confidence with which he had said to him, “we’re both going to get out of here, it’s God’s will,” and in fact they had both gotten out. There was no more room for doubt. He had to buy that computer because in it lay his revenge, which would now have to include them all. Maybe Father Cubillos was still helping him from on high. Only when it was over would he be able to feel clean and dignified again.

My friend, I congratulate you. You are one of the most professional people I have ever met, and I mean that. The photographs are good, that is the place. I really can’t imagine what you did to find it, but it’s better if you don’t tell me. There are things it’s better not to know. Now, let’s talk about money. I’ll give you the twenty million you’re asking, and five more if you let me have a signed paper assuring me that you did not make any copies of the material you’re handing over to me and that you will not be using any of it in the future. If you send me that, I’ll immediately send the twenty-five million, and I’ll send somebody to pick up the computer, placed carefully in a case and locked. But let’s take things one at a time.

Less than two hours later the detective’s answer arrived.

Ah, my friend, I already knew the name Poor Friend was a metaphor, and that you were a gentleman. Well, everything is confirmed, boss. You can send me the money and I will hand over the things. How could you even think I’d keep hold of any of it? And I’m sending you the paper you ask for, scanned, so that you can be reassured, my friend, and I’m already starting to feel sad that when our contract comes to an end so will our friendship, because I don’t mind telling you I’ve really gotten to like you.

That same night he called Daisy and said, well now, sweetheart, how would you like to go back to Colombia? Sure, darling, just tell me when. First thing tomorrow, to make sure everything’s fine, I’ll send for you now and we’ll leave together. Oh, that’s really wonderful, and are we going somewhere hot or somewhere cold? The same place as last time, you told me you liked it.

The next day, after transferring the detective’s money, they took the first plane and by noon they were once again at the Hotel del Llano in Villavicencio. Ramón told Daisy: now then, darling, I need you to do me a favor. I’m going to dial a number, I want you to say you’re calling on behalf of Poor Friend and you want them to hand over the package, which they should leave, addressed to Daisy, at the reception desk in the Hotel del Llano, O.K.? O.K., darling, as long as you swear to me it isn’t dangerous. I swear, and anyway we’re going to Bogotá today and after that if you like I’ll send you to Medellín, at my expense, for a few days, O.K.? Now then, dial the number, and say it’s from Poor Friend.

Ramón dialed the detective’s number and Daisy said exactly what he had told her to say. She asked the detective to bring the package in a case to the hotel before three that afternoon. The detective said O.K. and they hung up. Ramón started pacing the room nervously. Daisy called reception and said that someone was going to bring a case in her name, and would they please let her know, and they sat down and waited. Ramón hired a taxi and asked the driver to wait outside. At 2:40 the telephone rang. The package was downstairs. Ramón went down to the street, got in the taxi and made sure that there was nobody or nothing unusual. Daisy came down a few minutes later, picked up the package and walked out of the hotel. She joined Ramón in the taxi and they set off for the airport. That evening they were in Bogotá, at the Hotel Suites Jones in Chapinero Alto.

Daisy said: as you can see, darling, I make a good trafficker. That isn’t what this is, sweetheart, I already told you a dozen times. Oh really? why all the mystery, then? Because it’s something important. Remember what I said, no questions, now do you want to go to Medellín? Daisy said of course and the next day, very early, Ramón sent her by taxi to catch the shuttle with a ticket and two million pesos in cash.

As soon as Daisy had left, Ramón went downstairs, paid the bill, and changed hotels. This time he went to the Bogotá Plaza, on Calle Cien, near the freeway. As soon as he had settled in, he sat down and switched on the computer. It was only then that it occurred to him that he should have checked everything in Villavicencio. He had been concentrating so much on his security measures that he had forgotten the most important thing, but anyway, he would soon see. Once he had switched on, he had direct access to all the files, but there were others that were encrypted. He looked at the photographs and saw things that filled him with horror: Soraya naked, with Jacinto taking her from behind, Soraya giving Jacinto a blowjob, Jacinto sticking his finger into her anus, who had taken these photographs? He saw that they were all from the same angle and he assumed there must have been a camera hidden in the room, maybe the paras used the photographs for blackmail. In the other files, there were hundreds of photographs of other naked people, even others of Jacinto with a woman who was a friend of Soraya’s and worked in the same internet café, clearly he had been screwing both of them.

He kept looking at the photographs, his heart on the verge of breaking, and then opened another file that really knocked him sideways: Soraya and himself, naked in the motel, ten, twenty, thirty photographs, all from the same angle. He huddled on the floor, in a fetal position, and wept bitterly. He did not want to see any more and shut down the computer. He took a quarter bottle of aguardiente from the minibar and started drinking slowly. Outside, night was falling but he did not feel any desire to go out. He was alone and felt like shit, with a hatred in him that kept him awake, like a glass of cold water thrown in his face. He called room service, ordered a chicken sandwich and a Diet Coke, and waited, sitting on the floor. Then he got in the bathtub and filled it with hot water. The sandwich was good. They had all deceived him and now the Grim Reaper was coming for them. The next day he would think about what to do and see what else was on that damn laptop.

He spent two days looking at files and found many things that filled him with ideas. There were Excel pages containing details of drug consignments, drugs, prices, weights, and routes, the dates were recent, after Dagoberto had supposedly volunteered for the demobilization process. There were photographs of a grave with nine bodies, with faces taken from close up so that they could be recognized, and other photographs showing corpses being cut up to make them unrecognizable.

And there was the connection with his friend Jacinto. He had been buying, at a knockdown price, the cattle the paramilitaries had confiscated from other farms. Then, when Jacinto had become a major auto repair shop owner — with his shops — he had become the one who fixed the cars for them, cleaning off the blood and human remains. After every job Dagoberto handed the vehicles over to Jacinto and he handed them back as good as new, repainted, and with new plates. Jacinto never invoiced him, but in the accounts there were all the payments to his shop, each with a description: Toyota van, seven bullet holes and traces of bodies. Fixing, repainting, and cleaning of traces. 1,500,000 pesos to Jacinto, or Chevrolet Suburban after Operation Mayor of Fresno. Chassis cleaned and repainted. 1,200,000 pesos. Jacinto. And there was a file of more than a hundred and twenty pages, with invoices attached, which demonstrated that the cocaine was cut on Jacinto’s farm!

Another file detailed the cleansing operations by area, such as: 32 executed by Hernán Mora in Operation Lejanías. Buried in seven pits, cut up, does not count as massacre. List: followed by the names and the approximate ages. This Hernán was the brother of Soraya, so they were all there. The only one missing was Soraya, how could he take his revenge on her? It was Soraya he felt angriest at because nobody had forced her, she had done it even though she loved him. The photographs of her and Jacinto in the motel and the fact that she had married him, even though he would never have asked her mother for her hand: all that was more than sufficient proof that she was involved in the thing right from the start. All of them had been against him, and what had he done to them? Nothing, nothing. He had loved her, and he had loved Jacinto, who had been his friend since they were children. They had paid him back for that love and friendship with death and ruin. As he thought this, his breathing grew heavier and hatred filled his bloodstream, giving him even more strength. He would destroy them, that was clear.

And he was going to start with her.

He copied all the photographs in which she was with him, naked, and even with Jacinto, and erased the faces, leaving only her face. He chose five in which she was seen on all fours and with her face turned towards the camera, and two in which she was sucking Jacinto’s cock. Then he e-mailed them to the town hall of La Cascada, the Community Center, the kindergarten her daughter Gloria Soraya attended, the restaurant Luna Roja, the bar El Feliz, and Jacinto’s auto repair shops. Also to the Häagen-Dazs ice cream parlor and the Escrúpulos tearooms, where she spent her afternoons. Also to the people of the El Paraíso residential community, wherever he could find the addresses. Everybody and everything with a more or less public e-mail address in La Cascada received the photographs, and to make it even worse, he opened an account on Facebook in her name and added the rest of the photographs from the computer, including those of Jacinto with other women so that he could see it and know he had been found out. This Facebook idea was a brilliant one, he thought, which he could also use for Dagoberto. But he preferred to wait and see the reactions. His idea was to hand over the computer to the Public Prosecutor’s Office or the newspapers or the Human Rights Commission and that was why he decided to stay a little longer in Bogotá.

After five days he moved to the Hotel Charleston, on Calle 85 near Carrera 15. He was so nervous, he found it impossible to leave the hotel, even for a short walk; all the same, he did go a couple of times to have a drink in the Zona Rosa and walk around the Centro Andino. Finally, after three days, he received a message on Facebook that said:

Let’s see if you’re brave enough to come out and show your face, you son of a bitch, do you have something against my family or what? We’re already on your trail and we’ll soon find out where you got all those fucking photographs that you’ve been putting on the Internet. We’re going to cut your balls off and eat them fried, with chopped onions, you bastard.

The message was not signed but was obviously from Jacinto. It came from a Facebook account called The Executioner. So Ramón decided to have a bit of fun and replied: “Your wife is indeed a very elegant woman, what nobody can understand is what she’s doing with a para.” He waited nervously and that same night the answer came: “Son of a bitch, you’re still hiding, feeling pleased with yourself, but you’ll see, we’re on your trail, we may be coming for you right now, as you read this, so start shaking.”

The next day he made copies of the computer’s hard disk and went to the Human Rights Commission. There, he had to identify himself and they listened to his story. A lawyer from the Commission went with him to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to lodge a major complaint against Dagoberto, Hernán Mora, and Jacinto Gómez for kidnapping, torture, extortion, and theft. He handed over a copy of the hard disk and the prosecutors immediately started running and making calls. Ramón realized that his days as a fugitive were over, that he had to regain his true identity now, go back to being Ramón Melo García. It was the only way he could accomplish his revenge.

After a long statement in the Public Prosecutor’s Office about how he had gotten hold of the computer, Ramón was able to return to his hotel. It was late by now, but he had the feeling that he had achieved something. The next day he called the political desk at El Espectador and announced that he had information about paramilitarism in the eastern Plains. Somebody came to pick up a copy and that same night he was able to return to Panama City.

When he got home, he said to himself: the die is cast, now the one thing I have to do is make sure they don’t kill me, or don’t find me so easily. Dagoberto was confined to a high security prison at Cómbita, but many of his men were still on the outside, doing all they could to get him out as quickly and cheaply as possible. He did not know if Hernán Mora was also being detained.

A week later, El Espectador splashed all over its pages a lengthy article accusing Dagoberto, with photographs of the torture house in Lejanías, and information on the mass graves and the laboratories that were still functioning. There were also charges against a whole series of elected members of the senate who had been friendly with Dagoberto, and had received votes and money from him.

Ramón had not even known about that, as he had not checked the whole of the hard disk. The article quoted sources within the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Human Rights Commission, which were investigating and had asked the National Institute for Prisons to separate Dagoberto from the other demobilized paras, since in his case there were enough elements to bring more serious charges.

Less than a week later El Espectador reported the arrest of Hernán Mora and Jacinto Gómez, both accused of paramilitary activity in the region. The traitor Arnulfo Solano, his trusted former employee, was also detained, although on lesser charges. Everything came from the same computer, and Ramón felt a light inside him. He knew it was not good to take pleasure from hatred and revenge, but he had not been the one who had started all this. Then he wondered if now might be the time to take the step he so much desired, and decided it was. Now that his identity was obvious, he could make a frontal attack.

He took out his cell phone and looked at it for quite a while. Then he put it back in his pocket and took a good swig of aguardiente to give himself courage. Maybe the number had changed? Finally he dialed, with his heart standing still, and heard the rings. One, two, three. . At the fifth ring the automatic message came on and he hung up. He went out on the balcony and drank another aguardiente, and was standing there looking at the bay, lost in thought, when the cell phone started ringing. He looked at the screen and froze. It was Soraya. Hello? There was a silence, it was her, she had recognized him. He hung up. Again unsure what to do, he waited. He imagined Soraya with the telephone in her hand, cursing or crying, he could not know which. The voice was the same, with a slight quiver because of the years; he remembered her husky tone, which had always sounded both erotic and comforting. But now everything was different: she had given him up to the paras! Nothing could make up for that. There was no excuse, and apart from that there was the fact of his mother’s death.

He checked the Facebook address and found a message from Jacinto from four days earlier, before his arrest, which said: “We know who you are and we’re going to kill you, you son of a bitch, wait and see.” He reread the text with a smile and thought, this bastard doesn’t know a damn thing, he has no idea what’s in store for him. The fool.

An hour later his cell phone rang again and he made up his mind to answer. It was her. Was it you who took those pictures? was the first thing she asked, but instead of answering that, he said, were you in on their plan to kill me? There was a silence; then she said, they told me you were in the FARC and wanted to kill my brother. That’s nonsense, how could you believe such garbage? The thing is, Soraya, you were cheating on me with Jacinto and any excuse would have been all right. She was unable to respond immediately. She thought about it for a second and said: it’s your fault, Ramón, I told you to ask for my hand and you did nothing, just waited and waited, and when you wait too long the soup gets cold, doesn’t it? Oh, Soraya, you don’t kill a person for that, the fact of it is, you knew they were going to kill me and you didn’t care, and later my mother died because you didn’t even go to see her; she died of sadness, or rather, you all killed her; you killed her, Soraya; so don’t ask me to respect you or understand you, the only thing I want is to see you crawling on the floor, because you’re a bitch, a cheat, a traitor, and a murderer.

There were sobs, but his anger did not abate: You cry now that my mother’s dead and they took away my life’s work and almost killed me, and all because of you, so go on, cry until the blood comes out of your eyes. There was another silence, then she said: I’m already weeping blood, Ramón, you can say whatever you like to me, you can even tell me I’m a whore, you haven’t said it yet but you’re thinking it, so say it, filthy whore, lowdown whore, don’t hesitate to say it because it’s true, it’s what everyone is saying here in La Cascada since you came out with those photographs. . The whole town has seen me naked with a guy they don’t even know is my husband, and with you, but as nobody remembers you they think it’s somebody new, and so I’ve become the whore of the community, the whore of the club and the tearooms, the whore of La Cascada, and now they’ve put Jacinto in jail and things are really difficult. I already threw him out of the house because of the photographs on Facebook with other whores who aren’t his whore of a wife, oh God.

Ramón was getting impatient and said: tell me why you slept with Jacinto, what were you missing with me? I missed the risk, Ramón, I missed that great sensation of hanging from a thread. . I missed feeling more of a woman or more of a person or maybe even more of a whore, I don’t know, I liked him and I wanted him and you see, I even gave him a daughter who maybe he didn’t deserve, but what can we do, that’s how it was, we can’t change it.

No, but we can make sure the bad people appear bad and the murderers appear murderers, and that’s what I came to do, Soraya; the worst that could have happened to you, to all of you, was that I escaped from the paras and stayed alive, because now you’re fucked. Soraya had stopped crying, her voice was neutral and relatively steady. She said: and what more are you going to do, they’re already going to take everything away from us, they’re going to extradite Dagoberto, and they’re going to give my brother Hernán the maximum sentence because the bastard didn’t get involved with the demobilization, so you see, Ramón, you’ve ruined our lives, you’ve already avenged yourself, you’ve already avenged your mother, what more do you want? Ramón thought it over for a second and said, I want to see you, Soraya, that’s all, I want to see you for a second and maybe my anger will pass.

The proposal surprised her. And why do you want to see me, Ramón? A lot of time’s gone by and I’m fat, when I was pregnant I gained nearly sixty pounds and I still have twenty I can’t get rid of, I don’t look like the girl you used to go out with anymore, don’t think I do. But he said, that doesn’t matter, Soraya, I only want to see you for a second and look you in the face and ask you if you really wanted them to kill me. . You don’t need to look at me to ask that, I already told you, they told me you were in the FARC and were going to kill Hernán. You can believe me or not. To believe you I need to see you, Soraya, that’s why I’m saying this. She thought about it for a while: if we see each other, will you leave us alone? Well, Soraya, that’s not up to me anymore, it’s up to the law. Yes, but the law can be handled, what matters is that you stop stirring things.

Come to Bogotá on Saturday, Soraya. Bring your cell phone. At three in the afternoon I’ll call you and tell you where, O.K.? O.K., but call me straight away, don’t make me wait. Don’t worry, I’ll call you straight away, make sure you have a signal and swear to me you’ll come alone. She said: after all this trouble who do you think I’m going to come with? The Virgin Mary?

Ramón traveled to Bogotá on the Friday, to get ready. He had made enquiries about private security and hired four bodyguards for the weekend, and he met them at the Hotel Charleston. He went for a walk with them, got to know them, and invited them out for a nice meal to get them on his side. Then he visited a fashionable brothel called La Piscina, and went into a private room with two women. The bodyguards protected him well and he got back to the hotel at three in the morning safe and sound.

The next day, he called Soraya about eleven in the morning and said, are you already in Bogotá? Yes, she said, tell me where you want to see me. He told her to wait at the entrance to the Carulla on Calle 85 and Carrera 15, and he would send for her. Then he changed hotels, moving to the Radisson in Santa Bárbara, and waited until two of his bodyguards informed him that they were already with her. Señor? The lady’s with us. Good, put her on. Hello, Soraya, the security measures are for me, but nothing’s going to happen to you, O.K.? Do what the men tell you, you can trust them.

The bodyguards brought her to the Radisson and he waited for her in a suite with a very nice view of Bogotá. When they came in he made them take her into one of the rooms in the suite and, before seeing her, he told his men to check the whole floor and take up positions, two inside and two outside the door. He dressed slowly and well, and at last made up his mind to enter the room.

Oh, thank God, she said when she saw him, I was starting to think this was a wasted journey. Ramón was silent, his eyes started to water and he had to bite his tongue in order not to sob. It was true that she had changed, but she was still pretty. She had put on a few pounds and her hair was dyed, which made her look older, but he recognized her, she was just the same. He saw her smile and remembered that last night, on the eve of his departure from La Cascada. He hadn’t gone with her to the Rey de la Pachanga because he had wanted to get up early in order to go to Villavicencio to talk to the police. She had stayed in La Cascada, with Jacinto and her brother Hernán.

Ramón asked her about that night, saying, tell me what happened exactly, I want the details, did you go straight to Jacinto or what? No, she said, I wasn’t with Jacinto, but with my brother Hernán. We were in the disco and Jacinto arrived there with Dagoberto. They talked for a while, and then Hernán said to me, Sorayita, there’s something important we need to ask you, is it true Ramón is going to Villavicencio tomorrow to inform on Dagoberto to the police about the business with the car? I went red and didn’t say anything, I didn’t want anything to happen to you, but Dagoberto looked at me and said, I already know what he’s going to do in Villavicencio, I only want you to confirm it, that’s all, you’re the man’s girlfriend and I respect you, but it’s only right you should know that Ramón is working for the FARC in La Cascada and Villavicencio and that’s why he’s against us, and what he wants is for them to capture me and then fuck things up for Hernán, that’s why it’s important that you confirm it for us, Sorayita, because things could get nasty. I asked them what they were going to do to you, and they said, just question him, tell him to let us do our work and not interfere. That’s what they told me. So I said, yes, Ramón is going to talk to the police, he’s a good man because he covered for you when you were trying to extort money from him for the car, but they said, what do you mean, extort, the truth is the man is working for the FARC, we ought to go and kill him right now, tonight, said my brother Hernán, who was already drunk, and then Jacinto said, don’t worry, Sorayita, you know Ramón and I have been friends since we were children and I wouldn’t let any harm come to him, but we do have to stop him because otherwise this town is going to become a hell for us. I believed them.

She said these last words with tears in her eyes, and Ramón felt the impulse to console her, but he did not approach her. He said: and were you so stupid you believed they weren’t going to do anything to me, when they’d filled La Cascada with bodies in ditches? Oh, Ramón, what could I do if the three of them were in agreement and convinced me? Nothing. Ramón looked at her angrily and said: and then you went off to screw Jacinto! She continued crying and got down on her knees. Look, Ramón, I hurt you a lot, but now I’m paying. My daughter is with her grandmother, my husband is in prison, they’ve taken away the two farms, the restaurants, and the house, they’ve confiscated everything, and here I am, on my knees, begging your forgiveness, what more do you need to be able to forgive me?

Ramón looked at her and said: there’s nothing you can do to make me forgive you, my mother is dead, she died alone because of you. What I wanted was to hear the story of your betrayal and tell you that I was the one who hatched this revenge, the one who got hold of Dagoberto’s laptop with the photographs and distributed them everywhere, because you should know that friend of yours was spying on you and taking photographs, of you and me too, maybe from even earlier, don’t you see? You’ve all ruined my life and now I’ve ruined yours, that’s what you gained from being bastards. You can go now, Soraya, I never want to see you again.

Ramón walked to the door but she rushed to him and fell at his feet, embracing him. When he felt her his body quivered, and in a second she was kissing him and taking out his cock to suck it, saying, let me give you something, like any other whore; let me pay back the hurt I did you even if it’s with this, O.K.? She took off her clothes and lay down on the couch. He lay on top of her and finished in five minutes. He stood up and said, come, I’ll take you to the Carulla, or wherever you want to go, are you going back to the Plains today? No, said Soraya, I’m staying with a friend in La Soledad. Drop me at the Carulla and I’ll take a taxi from there.

They rode without talking, without touching each other. Halfway, she asked: did you like it, at least? Ramón looked at her and said: yes, just like before, you’re very nice. Soraya smiled. If you like, we can do it again another time, just call me at this number and I’ll come wherever you say. Good, said Ramón, and dropped her at the Carulla. When she got out of the car he felt relieved. Then he said to the bodyguards and the driver: to the airport. That night he was back at home. He rubbed his crotch and lifted his hand to his nose, searching for her smell, and said to himself: the bitch, now she’s cheating on Jacinto because he won’t be out for at least ten years. It’s all backfired on him.

The following week he called her and said, I want to see you, can you come? Of course, just like I said, tell me where. He sent her instructions and a ticket for Cartagena on Saturday, and that was where they met. They spent the day at the Hilton, hardly going out at all, because Ramón had not hired any security and he was afraid to walk with her on the street. As they lay in bed together, Soraya ventured to ask: why do you have so much money now? did you win the lottery or what? I owe it to my God, he said, who unexpectedly gives and unexpectedly takes away, and apart from that I work. And where do you live now, in Bogotá? Don’t ask me any questions, Soraya, after what they did to me I’ve become paranoid. O.K., Ramón, I’m sorry, I won’t ask you anything else.

They met almost every weekend for a month, each time in a different city. Sometimes he would ask her to come to Cali, and without leaving the airport they would get on a plane for Pasto, without any warning. Then he would leave without telling her where he was going, leaving her a ticket to get home.

Ramón continued to keep a close watch on the legal proceedings against Jacinto and Hernán and hired his own lawyer to process his accusation. One day he went to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to make a statement, and submitted to a long interrogation in which he answered questions about what had happened to him. They told him they would give him protection, but he said, I’ll accept it only from the airport to here, I can protect myself. One of the questions had been if he had any links with the FARC, which was what the prisoners, Dagoberto, Jacinto Gómez, and Hernán Mora, were saying, but he said, no, they’re just the same as the paras, why should I be with the FARC, Prosecutor, if I were, what happened wouldn’t have happened! They asked him why he had covered for Dagoberto when the police in Villavicencio had questioned him, and he said, because I was scared, because I was a coward, I had already seen the bodies thrown in ditches along the highway, that was the only reason, Prosecutor. When they asked him to tell them how he had escaped he saw that they did not believe him, it was not a very believable story, but that was how it had been and that was how he told it, and in fact the priest’s disappearance and kidnapping and the discovery of his body were all in the records, so they did not ask him again. What he did not mention to them, because he had realized it was not relevant to what they wanted to know, was Father Cubillos’s treasure in Barranquilla. Nor did he go into detail about his life in Panama, because he had read that the paras were everywhere and he was scared that someone in the Public Prosecutor’s Office would snitch on him.

Fortunately, the evidence on the computer was irrefutable and the police had gotten to Dagoberto’s house in Lejanías. Of course when they asked him how he had found the computer he told them the truth; he had to give them the name of the agency in Villavicencio. Later he found out that they had summoned the detective to make a statement and that their versions tallied, so nobody ever mentioned it again.

One Saturday he was with Soraya in Cartagena, eating in the restaurant of the Hilton, when he realized that a man he had seen that afternoon at the pool and later in the hotel shop was looking at them out of the corner of his eye. He immediately stood up, went out on the street, and hired a taxi to take them to another part of the city, the old part. From the taxi, he dialed a number they had given him at the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in case of emergency, and said that he was in Cartagena, and he thought he was being followed. They made him wait a while, and then the prosecutor said: don’t worry, Ramón, that person is there for your security, we’re keeping an eye on you. Oh yes? and how did you know I was at the Hilton? Oh, Ramón, said the prosecutor, you have no idea how much I know, just be grateful that we were the ones who tapped Soraya’s telephone.

He went back to the hotel, got his things, and went to the airport, leaving her in the room. You aren’t in any danger, stay the weekend if you like. And he left.

One morning he opened the newspaper and was stunned: it was announced that Dagoberto and Hernán Mora were being extradited to the United States, for drug trafficking, and that Jacinto had been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Immediately he called Soraya and asked her how she felt. Those bastards ruined my life, even Jacinto, I hope they rot, was what she said, and she added: I hope now you will calm down too, it was what you wanted, wasn’t it? It wasn’t what I wanted, it was what they deserved, Soraya. Don’t confuse the two things. He told her he wanted to see her, to celebrate this victory. She said all right, but that maybe it was the last time, because she had already paid enough.

They met in Bogotá, where he had been taking steps through his lawyers to recover the ownership of the auto repair shops — they had put Arnulfo in prison too, but only for three years — and put them on sale. His idea was to take her to the Charleston, and he had called ahead to book a room, but as they were driving along the beltway, coming back from the center, two Silverados blocked the road and opened fire. The escort from the Public Prosecutor’s Office took shelter behind the wall of a building and returned fire. The shootout lasted twenty minutes. Ramón threw himself down on the floor of the car and did not move, because he knew it was armored. When they lifted him out he had a wound in the shoulder, as he had lowered the window a little and had been shot through it. Soraya, on the other hand, was sitting there, bleeding profusely. They changed cars and raced to the Hospital San Ignacio, but she was dead by the time they arrived. She had two bullet wounds in the head and one in the neck. The first shot may well have killed her. That was what the doctors told him. They also told him she was pregnant.

He did not feel like crying, or rather, no tears came, even though he was sad. When you came down to it, they had all been victims.

After he recovered, he had no desire to stay in Bogotá, so he went straight from the hospital to the airport. As the plane taxied to the runway to take off he felt that he was moving away from hell and death, and he said to himself, could they have located me in Panama? It was possible, but it did not worry him. Revenge had been the most important thing in his life; that had been his only reason for living in the last few years, and now it was over, with Soraya dead — even though that had not been his intention — and the others punished. What did it matter if they shot him down now on some street corner? He had accomplished his mission and could leave without remorse, as if he was saying goodbye to a country that had kicked him out, forever, because he also knew that he would never return.

3. THE GARDEN OF RARE FLOWERS (AS TOLD BY SABINA VEDOVELLI)

The life story I am about to relate is a harsh and sometimes even macabre one, so I hope there are no young people in the room. There are situations that the inexperienced or the innocent may find disturbing. I’m not sure of the conference’s policy on this, and I shall certainly go ahead and tell my story anyway, but it might be a good idea to check at the entrance that all members of the audience are of legal age, at least for today. That’s my feeling at least, but of course it’s also possible, indeed quite likely, that these young people may simply find my story highly amusing. The world has changed a great deal and even the most atrocious things don’t seem to bother anybody. They may bother me, but then I’m from another era. Before tackling my life, with a wealth of detail and quite a few surprises, I should like to put paid to an idea I know many of you may have in your minds, which is that, due to the nature of the films I make, I’m nothing but a whore. You must disabuse yourselves of that, my friends, and I’ll tell you why. Sex on the set is a very distinct thing, because for all those involved in it, it’s a paid job. Simple as that. In the best spirit of capitalism, it’s all done for a third party who isn’t there, like a person who cooks delicious dishes for others, or who writes passionate verses for anonymous readers — who will usually reject them — or even the person who invents mortars and grenades that will kill and maim people he can’t see, or even imagine, but which will be real enough when the moment comes. My poet friends may not like to hear this. They’ll say it’s a far-fetched comparison, but then everything that I, Sabina Vedovelli, do is and has always been far-fetched.

I know there are many rumors about me, but what nobody knows is that I myself am the source of them, since they make me seem larger than life, and the idiots who repeat them, thinking they’re hurting me with their vulgar comments, are merely inflating the sails of my ego, pushing the boat that little bit farther out. “When they fly I am the wings,” as Brahma says in that poem by Emerson. The result is that they keep talking about me. They can’t stop talking about me. And that makes me very happy.

But let’s get to the story. I wasn’t always this woman who so many men today would like to have in their beds and who as she walks earns a string of lustful glances and throats being cleared and husbands scolded by their wives. I wasn’t always what I am. I was once a young girl and men scared me. That’s true. They scared me because they were as strange to me as bulls or scorpions, seeing as how I grew up among women, being an only child brought up by my mother and two aunts, all three of them abandoned by feckless men, who had moved from Naples to Rome and settled in a first-floor apartment on Via dei Monti di Creta, on the outskirts of the city, a long way from the center, next to a garden of pine trees called the Pineta Sachetti, where I used to play as a girl, until my mother met a short, stout man who spoke with a strange accent, and we went to Mexico City to live with him, and that’s why, when I speak Spanish, people think I’m Mexican.

We lived in an apartment on Calle Ámsterdam, near the Parque Independencia, and I attended the Sor Juana high school. By the time I finished school, I was a demure young lady, and that was how I stayed, oh yes, I didn’t change until later, in another country, France no less, the land where the storks come from, the land of love, but also the land of the most revolting vice and licentiousness. I should point out that my mother left me to my own devices during vacations, she would give me money and airline tickets to wherever I liked, so as to leave herself free to have a great time in Veracruz or Acapulco with her lover, who was half businessman and half drug trafficker, from what I discovered later, although more the second of those than the first, so I went traveling around the world, almost always with the daughter of one of my aunts from Rome, my cousin Giorgetta, who was crazier than I was and did everything before I did.

When I was eighteen and she was nineteen we went together to Paris, the city of vice and depravity. On the second day, through friends of Giorgetta, we ended up at a party thrown by a group of immigrants in Belleville, a party that lasted three days and where there was a lot of alcohol and drugs right from the start, although not for me, because I was very young and hadn’t yet picked up any bad habits. The group consisted of Jamaicans, Senegalese, and Spaniards who, if I remember correctly, were all studying with a Japanese friend of Giorgetta’s. It was just like a movie, I started seeing all kinds of strange things, a young guy with a hypodermic syringe hanging from his forearm, a woman lifting her miniskirt and injecting herself in the groin, another who was rubbing her nose against a mirror as she danced and crying in French, yes, yes, with the muscles of her face tense as wires, another man biting off half a pill and offering the other half to his girlfriend on his tongue and the girlfriend gobbling it up like a fruit, young girls wetting tampons in gin and sticking them in their bottoms, their faces all shiny with pleasure, people smoking some kind of brown tobacco from silver paper, tobacco that took the brain to another dimension, everything washed down with strong alcohol and, of course, hours later, when all modesty had been thrown out the window, I saw another kind of image, a young Jamaican penetrating a woman on a small table in the dining room, my cousin Giorgetta, behind the bathroom curtain, putting a penis in her mouth, a penis so black it looked like a clarinet, a man stroking another man’s ass as he danced, things like that, but I stayed as I was and only drank beer and a little Coke to keep going, and when I finally made up my mind to leave, and I’m telling you this so you can see the kind of bad influence I had to contend with, I went to look for my cousin and found her naked and bathed in sweat, having sex with her Japanese friend on the same flea-ridden mattress where a Senegalese guy was fucking a Spanish guy in the ass, which was quite a shocking scene for a young girl like me, if you see what I mean.

When the party was over, we went back to the Japanese guy’s apartment and Giorgetta slept for something like a hundred hours in a row, and when she woke up she spent another three hours in the shower and then she came out and said, Sabina, let’s do something really crazy, and I said, crazier than that party? She looked at me pityingly and said, don’t worry, I’m older than you but I began at the age of thirteen, you’re too quiet, you know, you need taking out of yourself, come on, let me take care of it. We went to the house of another friend of hers, a Norwegian who was about ten feet tall, and he and Giorgetta talked for a while and he asked her, are you sure? and Giorgetta said, very sure, it’s what I want now, so the guy tied a rubber band around her forearm, burned a liquid in a spoon, put it in a syringe and injected her.

Immediately, Giorgetta’s eyes rolled back and she started shaking, which got me quite nervous, but the Norwegian, whose name was Kay, said to me, don’t worry, she’s shaking with pleasure, it’s like having a hundred orgasms at the same time, do you want to try? I said no, I can’t feel a thousand orgasms because I still haven’t had my first, I’m a virgin. He opened his eyes wide and cried, really? and added, please don’t move, I want to take a photograph, you’re the first virgin I’ve met since I came to Paris, and then I asked, and what do you do? and he said, I’m a photographer, let’s see, stand over there. I heard the click of the camera and then a second click and a third, and then lots more, as many as the orgasms my cousin Giorgetta must have been having — by now she’d slipped off the couch and was lying on the carpet — thousands of clicks from a camera focused on my body, and I knew he desired me, and I started taking off my clothes, first my sweater, then my skirt, my blouse and my bra, and lastly my panties, my white virgin’s panties, and when I was naked Kay kept saying in French, parfait! parfait! and I could see the bulge in his pants getting bigger, so I said, take that off and let me see what you’re hiding there, and he showed it to me, and it was all pink and as big as an elephant’s trunk, with yellow hairs, and he said, you should suck it, it doesn’t taste bad, so I went to him and sucked it and it wasn’t too unpleasant, it tasted like rust or wet wood, so I carried on sucking and feeling his veins swelling until he said, open those thighs, I want to see what you’ve got, and he opened me with his tongue and I saw stars, he explored me with his finger and finally he put his penis in, which hurt me at first, but was quite nice after that and moved inside me very smoothly. Just as I was about to have my first orgasm he took it out and moved it up to my mouth and said, swallow it, you’ll like it, and so I did, and he spurted a bitter liquid that burned my throat.

When he withdrew, I grabbed his arm and said, where are you going? you haven’t finished with me, and I put his mouth back in my cunt and said, now suck and lick until I tell you, and he did as he was told, and one or two minutes later I felt a ray of light split my body in two and I screamed as much if not more than the girl in the movie Carrie when they tip the bucket of blood over her, and I lost consciousness, and when that huge volcano had stopped erupting and I returned to reality I saw Giorgetta looking at me through half-open eyes, and saying, did he fuck you or did he give you a fix? and I replied, the first, how are you? and she said, with her cheeks covered in drool, this is too much, it’s really intense, I can’t speak, I’m sorry, and she lay down on the carpet again and as she did so I noticed she was giving off a disgusting smell. I looked at Kay, who was just emerging from between my legs, and he said, don’t make that face, it’s normal to shit and pee when you shoot up for the first time, you’ll have to get used to it.

I stood up and went to the shower and stayed there for nearly an hour, letting the hot water run over my shoulders, directing the jet of water at my pubis and hearing distant drums, everything was very new and the desire I felt for that man was irrational and probably unhealthy, what others call love at first sight or — which comes to the same thing — the intuition that somebody can destroy us, and so I said to myself, Sabina, when you finish your shower you have to get dressed, walk past Kay and take Giorgetta outside, take her away from Paris and back to Rome, where your aunts are; I felt I was on the edge of something very dangerous and on the verge of falling.

But when I came out of the bathroom, what I saw made things even more complicated, because I saw Kay lying beside Giorgetta with the syringe in his forearm. They had both just injected themselves. From her position, it was obvious my cousin had taken another fix, so I went to the kitchen, made myself a chicken sandwich, had a Diet Coke and waited, how long would it last? After a while, I went to Kay’s room, which was filthy and was where he kept his rolls of film and developing equipment, and lay down facing an old TV set which was switched on but with the screen blank. I looked for the remote and when I pressed the button saw it wasn’t switched to a TV channel but to a movie.

I pressed play and, to my surprise, what did I see? it was a porn movie! A really old movie by Lasse Braun called Sin Dreamer, with pot-bellied men lying in a meadow, having sex with plump women with vaginas as hairy as spiders, a really old-fashioned kind of movie. I got very aroused, and when it finished I looked for another, because those two addicts were still lying on the carpet, and the one I found was Frequence Blue, by the same director, only this time I put my hand inside my panties and started touching my clitoris, I remember it very well, there was a scene in the country where a woman in an old Citröen sucked the cocks of three gendarmes from the highway police who were going to give her a fine, and at the end I heard noises and saw Kay come into the room, so I jumped on him and we had sex again, really wild sex. Then Giorgetta came in, with her eyelids inflamed and her skin all dirty, and asked Kay for more heroin, but he said, that’s enough for today, sweetheart, cool it, sleep a bit, you need to rest, and she said, O.K., and immediately slipped through the door and lay down on the floor again. Finally we fell asleep, with me embracing Kay, the man who had deflowered me, and Giorgetta on the carpet, her habitat for the last twelve hours.

And that’s pretty much how the weekend passed, with Giorgetta injecting increasingly large doses and me having sex with Kay, who with each fuck seemed to me more delicious and his penis sweeter. On the Monday, about ten in the morning, Kay had some black coffee, grabbed the bag with his cameras, and said, my dears, I’m going to work and I won’t be back before tonight, so make yourselves at home, I don’t know what’s in the fridge, so feel free to go to the supermarket and buy provisions, which wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway, ciao, à ce soir, and he left, slamming the door behind him.

No sooner had Kay gone than Giorgetta rushed to the drawers in his night table, the sideboard, the closet, and the kitchen, looking for drugs, and when she didn’t find any she said, the bastard’s left me high and dry, I’m going out on the street to get some more, wait for me here, and I said, Giorgetta, do you realize what you’re doing? Seeing the look of surprise on her face, I added, you’ve turned into a junkie in only three days, don’t you think that’s a bit. . excessive? but she replied, I told you I wanted to do something crazy on this trip, I didn’t say anything to you about the fact that you’re fucking Kay, did I? No, I replied, because it’s none of your business, and she wagged her finger and said, that’s exactly what I was thinking, so let’s make a deal, we each mind our own business, what do you think? I said yes, and she left. That night, when Kay got home, she still hadn’t returned. She came back three days later in a very bad state, with staring eyes and her skin all greasy, smelling of excrement and with blood in her anus. I bathed her without asking any questions, only ventured to say, have you had enough yet? can we go back to Rome? We did go back, in fact, but against all expectation I was the one who immediately got on a plane and returned to Paris, because I had fallen in love with Kay. He promised to make me a big star and I believed him, how could I not believe him when he allowed me to fuck him every night and suck his cock and lick his balls? Love at first sight and the bond with the first male who goes on the prowl between your legs did the rest.

Seven months later, Kay left me for a Norwegian model he was taking photographs of, and set off for Oslo. But I went after him. I wasn’t going to allow a junkie in a silk bra and G-string to take my man, however languid and rich she was. When I got to Oslo, I went to stay in his brother Stef’s apartment, because I’d known him in Paris and got along well with him, and devoted myself to waiting for Kay outside the front door of his girlfriend’s building.

The whore would do drugs with him and give him five-hundred-euro bills, and I realized that for somebody like Kay, a child of the Scandinavian middle class, a left-wing activist and enemy of globalization, an opponent of Norway’s joining the European Union, she represented something special, a way of touching something distant and desired with his fingers or his foreskin. I waited for them for about a week, but in vain. Stef didn’t know his brother’s whereabouts, at least that was what he told me.

I was already on the verge of going back to Paris when Stef invited me to a party, saying, a group of my friends is playing tonight at Yellowstone Creek, which was a trendy techno bar in the city, so I went with him. But on the way back home he raped me. I don’t want to go into details, I’ll only tell you that first he tried to drug me, then to seduce me the natural way, with laughter and alcohol, and when he didn’t get anywhere he resorted to violence, first beating me up and then, when I was on the floor, fucking me as much as he wanted and forcing me to suck his ass. When he’d finished, he called two friends and invited then to fuck me, which they were happy to do, the bastards. When they were all satisfied, they left me lying in one of the side entrances of the railroad station in Oslo, at four in the morning, where I almost got raped again.

As you might have guessed, Kay returned to Paris when the bitch got bored with him and threw him out on the street. I was in his apartment waiting for him, because in the meantime I had threatened my mother that I’d go back to Mexico and so her boyfriend from the Tijuana cartel decided to send me a few dollars a month, which allowed me to wait for my man calmly and, above all, with my resentment intact. I was also able to analyze my rape obsessively, and I say “my rape” because it was a painful baptism into life, as if somebody had said, hey, you, do you want to be really free? do you want to be able to stroll through the world as you please with drug addicts and punks and alcoholics in a highly altered state, not only that but walk around in miniskirts and your belly button in full view, open to the dirty air of the cities? Well, this is what happens, this is the price, they raped you and now you’ll be someone else, someone stronger, the tribe inevitably reprimands women who resist being confined to the female role that males have created for them, and that’s why whoever abandons that way of thinking is violently punished, in a way that is tantamount to amputating her arm or her clitoris, something like that.

Thinking that, I understood “my rape” a little better, although there’s no point in deceiving ourselves, understanding doesn’t mean overcoming — because the other thing I couldn’t get out of my head was that the rapist was none other than Stef, my God, a young man who had been in Paris, looking at museums and going to concerts, a young man I’d cooked pasta in tomato sauce for, all that kind of thing — I said to myself, men have sex when the prey reveals her fragility, and that was what I had done. I must never appear fragile again. I didn’t feel guilty, as sometimes happens to women who are raped, which makes them go to psychiatrists, or sometimes kill themselves, or turn into avengers, these last being the most interesting, because in general, before they end up in some provincial prison, they manage to mutilate a few male members, even pulling them out by their roots, savagely interrupting the trunk-foreskin continuum or the even more complex trunk-testicles continuum, which usually results in a geyser of blood.

I am aware of the injustice that some innocent foreskins may be presumed guilty and cut to shreds, but what we can do if the tribe is cruel, cruel in a different way for each tribesman. The rules of a mob devouring itself, penises still throbbing with life on the floor for having forced themselves into vaginas or anuses that didn’t want them, oh, what are we going to do, the world is crazy, we are all crazy: this was what I was thinking as I sat there smoking, wrapped in a blanket, by the window of Kay’s apartment, which I haven’t mentioned was on Rue Oberkampf, near République, in the eleventh arrondissement, and that was why when I dared to go a bit farther than the corner, where the Monoprix supermarket was, I walked as far as the Canal Saint-Martin and kept myself amused watching the brown waters flowing past, laden with garbage, shit, and plankton. The river that was flowing inside me was the same, a stream of black waters, filled with rats, excrement, and semen, because that night in Oslo they didn’t only rape me from the front but also from behind, which was something Kay and I had had a taste of without going all the way, preferring to wait for the right moment, and now that heavily guarded treasure had ended up in the ravine, lost and abused. Take note, girls.

After many days at the window, having already abandoned hope, I saw him coming. His tall, stooped figure, in a blue coat and scarf, stood out among the passers-by on Rue Oberkampf; on one side he was carrying his camera case and on the other a small bag, and I said to myself, there he is, the bitch got rid of him, she must have gotten tired of his snoring and his farting and his sour breath in the mornings. I felt a gigantic flower growing in my throat, because I loved him madly. Of course I made him pay. He had to do things, things that would never have occurred to him, before I would give him the first embrace or have sex with him, which was what he had been longing for from the first second. And so our relationship started up again, rebuilt like a house after a fire, never the same as before, with traces of soot on the ceilings, but still standing. There only remained the matter of my rape by his brother, but I preferred not to talk about it, we could see about that later.

I was young and I felt that my strength was infinite, that I was still able to bear a lot of things, so he went back to his work in Paris and of course continued with the drugs. His months with the Norwegian whore had strengthened his addiction and he increased his daily dose to keep a steady pulse, so he had to work very hard. Heroin is expensive and I was a spoiled little girl who liked exclusive things, fashionable clothes, scents.

And so things went on for nearly six months until one day Kay suggested taking a few nude photographs of me. He said that kind of thing paid very well and we’d be able to take a vacation in New York, so I agreed, I went to his studio, and we did them. The poses were fairly artistic, though with a touch of spice. In fact, some were a bit too suggestive for my taste, although there were no close-ups of genitals. Kay took them with him the next day and in the evening came back with a lot of money. We packed our bags and went off to New York to live it up for a while, with a room booked at the Mandarin Oriental on Columbus Circle and friends who took us to MoMA and to see the view from Brooklyn Bridge, but of course, there’s also plenty of heroin there, it’s cheaper and very different, so one night I had to take Kay to the hospital after an overdose, which was pretty unpleasant. When he came out, we had to go back to Paris, as all our money was gone.

Back on Rue Oberkampf, I started to ask myself questions like, what is life? is it worth living? what sacrifices are justified in life and why? questions connected with what I saw in front of my eyes every day, and one afternoon I don’t know why the idea came into my mind, but I decided to call my mother in Mexico City. When she heard my voice, instead of being genuinely pleased she sounded anxious, maybe she was worried I was going to announce my return, since by this time it was obvious that my presence bothered her. I quickly told her that everything was fine in Paris, that I was living with a Norwegian fashion photographer but that I wasn’t very sure what to do with my future. In other words: I was calling to ask her advice. She liked that and said, listen to me, Sab, I’ve always believed that what makes people noble and useful is studying, so you ought to study, darling, and in fact something just occurred to me: if you study, you won’t be able to work, so I’d like to help you, send you money to cover your expenses, how about it? I thanked her and thought it over for a few days, until I decided I’d study acting and phoned her to tell her.

On the phone, she sounded really moved, Oh, how proud you’ve made me, she said, a Gina Lollobrigida in the family, a Grace Kelly, a Julia Roberts, hey, Fito, come and hear this, and she immediately sent me a decent amount of money to start my course, and I enrolled in drama school at the Sorbonne, doing a little audition at which, in all modesty, I left the judges in raptures, and not only because I finished my monologue by taking my pants off and walking around the stage with a lilac-colored G-string stuck between my buttocks, but because my talent expressed itself openly, in a direct, transparent form.

A new period of my life began. I felt really active. An inner fire consumed me. Very soon I got together a group of friends from among my classmates from the school and we started going out, day and night, to see plays or hold rehearsals, and it was around that time that Petra first put in an appearance. Petra was a Romanian, and taught Expression through Movement. He was one of those Francophile Romanians like Ionesco, Mircea Eliade and E. M. Cioran, and well, it all happened very rapidly.

One afternoon, Petra asked us to interpret with our bodies something that made us feel afraid, and I evoked my childhood, which for me was the grimmest thing in the world. The one thing I could come up with was to sit down in a corner of the stage with my face covered, get down on my knees, pull my pants down and raise my backside; it was my way of expressing the fragility of childhood, transposing it to the sexual fragility of woman, my rape. Naturally, my male classmates, and some of the women, got a bit distracted, so Petra came up on stage and said, mademoiselle, can you explain your position?

I told him about my childhood and the horror of the rape and how all that formed a whole that generated all the greatest fears in my life. Petra asked the others to go and get changed. We were alone on the stage, and he said, can you get back in that position? I’d like to try and understand it in the light of what you’ve just said.

I got back on my knees, lowered my head, lifted my ass, and waited in silence, one minute, two, until I felt his hands squeezing my hips and his mouth sinking into my buttocks; I was surprised and uncomfortable, but just as I was about to protest I had the first of at least a dozen orgasms, and I said to myself, here I am again, I looked for it, I guess I really wanted it, so I turned and opened his zipper and took out his penis, the penis of a man of 55, which was another novelty for me, and put it in my mouth, tout doucement, as Édith Piaf says in her famous song, and started sucking it with such relish that Petra began breathing heavily and his heart started pounding, I could hear the heartbeats from down there.

Then we moved to an exercise mat and had a spectacular fuck, the kind that, when you finish, you’re like the first human must have been who trod the earth after the first time he got laid, a feeling that reality had exploded, as if everything had been sucked into a black hole and all that remained in the world was that stage, Petra’s penis, and my desires as a woman; that night, when I got off the metro at Oberkampf and walked to the front door of our building, it hit me, should I tell him or not? Kay was hardly entitled to blame me and I wanted him to know that, wanted him to know I was no longer the innocent young virgin he had seduced one night, and, having decided that, I went upstairs, but when I entered the apartment I found him lying on the couch with a syringe beside him, and I said to myself, O.K., another night alone, enjoy your drug, you don’t know what’s waiting for you when you wake up, and I went to the window again, with a pot of plain yogurt and a French loaf and looked out at the light of the city and listened over and over to the electronic music of Cyder Bang Bong, the musical essence of what it means to live in one of those soulless cities where all worlds collide.

I thought about the words I would have to use to tell Kay, and I looked at him, heard him making those gurgling sounds the drug forced from him every now and again; it was then that I saw a scribbled piece of paper under the syringe, a sheet torn from a notebook, which said, Dear Sabina, I know everything, I know what you did today with your drama teacher, I followed you, I’ve been following you for weeks. . at this point the letter broke off, he must have put it aside to prepare his fix. .

Although I’d been pumping myself up to remind him of the fact that he had run away with that Norwegian whore, I felt guilty and stroked his forehead, and as I did so I screamed. It was freezing cold! His sweat was so cold, his forehead felt like a salmon in a distant fjord, so I started slapping him and crying out, wake up, Kay, for God’s sake, wake up!

I called the emergency service and asked for an ambulance, while at the same time giving him a cardiac massage, which was something I had seen in a movie, but to no avail. The Sapeurs, Pompiers arrived and took him away, also taking the syringe to analyze the dose he had given himself, and I tagged along behind them, crying and on the verge of hysteria, an image nurses must know well, there can’t be an overdose that doesn’t have a heartrending scene to go with it, and this was no exception. When we were all in the ambulance, they looked at one another, extremely disturbed. Then they tried electric shock and cardiac massage, but nothing worked. I didn’t dare look, at any moment one of them would turn around and say, mademoiselle, this man is dead, is he a family member, your husband, your boyfriend, or just your roommate? And I would take all the blame on myself: I’d killed him, it was all my fault, and I knew in advance that the psychologists would say, listen, Sabina, a person only does something like this when he’s been carrying it inside him for a long time, there’s no such thing as a sudden suicide, you mustn’t blame yourself.

Everything was very strange. Nobody had announced his death to me and I was already hearing words of relief; there were many difficult moments before we reached the hospital and there they took him out without saying anything to me, only the laconic words, wait there, sit down, fill out these papers, and that was all; the worst of it is was that my crotch was still quivering with the memory of Petra’s mouth, his tongue separating my inflamed labia, and I thought, how the hell did he know, if Petra and I were alone on the stage? Of course, the curtain had folds that could easily have hidden the spy, the traitor, the informer who had told Kay, who had whispered the terrible words to him, nobody could have come in without my knowing it, it’s a small place and I know everyone, that must have been it, I wouldn’t rest until I’d learned the name of the traitor, my God, there were words that could kill, yes indeed.

As I was thinking this a doctor came out and walked toward me, Mademoiselle Vedovelli? I found it hard to look at him, my hands were shaking like wires, and he said, the vital signs are slow and there’s a loss of motor functions, but his brain is still working. In other words: your friend is in a coma. Now I need you to tell me exactly what happened, but I started crying again and said, he did it deliberately and it’s all my fault, I was unfaithful to him and he found out, that’s the truth, doctor, he’s been injecting heroin ever since I met him and he already had an overdose in New York a few months ago; he knew the right quantity to take to be safe, he wasn’t some street junkie, no, monsieur, he was a refined addict, believe me, but the doctor interrupted me and said, mademoiselle, don’t talk about him in the past tense, he’s still alive, and my hands started shaking again, the doctor had noticed that I was burying Kay, finishing him off, maybe because of his responsibility in my rape or because he had abandoned me, I don’t know, there are ways of hurting someone, resentment is the strongest thing that can unite two people, even two people who love each other and because they love each other they mistreat and destroy each other, which is something we have in our cells, like the need to reproduce or to feel pleasure, anyway, the doctor said that the best thing I could do was to go home, it was three in the morning, if there was any change they’d call me on my cell phone.

I left the hospital and walked as far as the Gare d’Austerlitz. Opposite, I found a brasserie open and ordered a glass of Sancerre. Then I walked down to the banks of the Seine. It was raining and the brown water was churning under the bridge and I thought about how good it would be to jump, once and for all, to leave behind the contradictions and the guilt, which was like ivy that had attached itself to my skin and was about to choke me. I stayed there for a while; then I carried on as far as Bastille, which at that hour was full of drunken young people coming out of the boîtes de nuit on Rue de la Roquette, and from there to Rue Oberkampf, where the memories, Kay’s smell, and the most terrifying solitude were waiting for me.

That night I couldn’t get to sleep. I drank part of a bottle of tequila and smoked a little grass, but they didn’t help. My hands were clammy with cold sweat and my heart was racing, so, in desperation, I had an idea to take myself away from the horror. . I knew where the heroin was, so I prepared a line and snorted it, calculating half of what he usually took. Immediately the apartment disappeared, and so did Paris, and so did I, and at last I felt calm.

I woke up the next day feeling strange. I was on the carpet, like my cousin Giorgetta, and I could see the view under the couch, which was something I’d never seen before. Dust, rusty springs, old cigarette butts and, right at the back, two tiny antennae, moving. It was a cockroach. I watched it tenderly and followed its rapid movements across the dust, and I said to it, little animal, help me settle a question, will you? The cockroach did an about-turn, retraced its steps, and stopped, moving its antennae, and I said, where do you think we go after we die? have you ever thought about that? The cockroach gave another complete turn and again stopped, this time closer to my face, and I said, do you think there’s life after death? do you believe in reincarnation and that kind of thing? and I said, I’d like to believe in something, I’d really like to believe that we get a second chance, and I mean that, my friend, sometimes our intentions are good but it’s the lack of experience that ruins us, or other people’s wickedness, oh, little animal, I don’t know if these things happen in your world, under the armchairs and in the drains, but I tell you this, that in my world wanting a little joy sometimes leads you to do harm, it’s hard to believe, I know, if you tighten a rope at one end it may break at the other, which is absurd but true, anyway, I’m boring you, I don’t know anything about you, I don’t even know if you have feelings, I’d like it if you did because I think you might understand me, right now I feel that I’m like you, that I’m walking in the dust and the rusty springs, moving my antennae alone, very alone in this world, just as you must be. . The cockroach, disturbed by the air shifted by my voice, stood up on its hind feet, did an about-turn and scuttled off to the wall, and before I could say anything disappeared through a crack and I was alone again, so I dragged myself to the table, where the bag of heroin was, and prepared two more lines, and in this way three days passed.

Every time I woke up, the anguish and the guilt overwhelmed me, they were waiting for me, like the couch and the dust on the floor. But what never came back was my friend with the antennae, which really upset me, and when the drugs were finished, there was a moment of anguish, but I overcame it and went to the shower, gave myself a good wash, dressed and went to my drama school, but unfortunately the door was shut, and I thought, what could have happened here? I started knocking, louder and louder, until somebody opened and said, it’s Sunday, mademoiselle, the school is closed. I stepped back, incredulous, as far as the curb. Something very bad might have happened if a passer-by hadn’t grabbed me by the arm and said, be careful, there are cars passing. I looked at him and realized that my brain was far away, I could see he was young, but I couldn’t focus on his face.

Instead, I thought I saw Fito, my mother’s Mexican lover, a little devil leaping around me in a purple cape. I pushed him away, crying, let go of me! and ran to the corner, but no sooner did I take two steps than I bumped into a bicycle and fell to the ground. Another man approached, only now it was Stef, Kay’s brother, with the other rapists; I cried out desperately and hugged the bicycle to stop them hurting me, until some strong hands lifted me and I closed my eyes and lost consciousness.

I woke up two days later in the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. A fairly young doctor asked me how I was feeling and I said, where am I? what happened? He leaned toward my ear and said, you can’t continue taking so many drugs, young lady, you had the DTs but it’s stopped now, your blood test shows you’re new to this, so I’d like you to stay with us for a few days, because we don’t want you to relapse when you leave here, and I said, that’s good, I only want you to help me to call somebody; I gave him the number of the doctor in the other hospital, where Kay was, and when I called that doctor he said, there’s no change, he’s still in a coma, try to think of something else and I’ll keep you informed, and I replied, that’s what I’m trying to do, think of something else, but it isn’t easy, I’ll call again.

I left the hospital two days later and returned home, but as I entered my throat filled up again with something sour and foul-smelling. I threw up in the bathroom, expelling a yellow liquid the smell of which made me retch even more, so I opened the faucet and put my head under it.

Then I went to the drama school, looked for Petra, and asked him for money. He gave it to me in return for a blow job in the bathroom. He said he would like to see me in the evening sometimes. He was married but we could go to a hotel, and I said, sure, whatever you like, as long as you pay me. I gave him my cell phone number, returned home and called Joel, Kay’s dealer. I asked how much a gram of heroin cost and he said, for you a hundred and twenty euros. Bring me a gram and a half, I said.

Four days later, I called Petra on his cell phone. I told him I urgently needed five hundred euros and he said, look, I’m just a university teacher. I told him he could save on a hotel if he came to my apartment. I opened the windows and took out the garbage, which was already reeking. In the refrigerator the tomatoes were growing fungus and there was some margarine that had turned green. I threw everything in a plastic bag and took it down to the trash. I looked for clean sheets and as there weren’t any I ironed one I’d been using for a while. I cleaned the bathroom.

An hour later Petra arrived, gave me the five hundred euros and said, I don’t have much time today, promise me that for the same money I’ll be able to come here twice more. I said yes and lay down on the bed. I took out his penis and sucked it. Then I said: I’m your slave, do with me as you please. He sucked my clitoris and my anus and my tits, sodomized me, and finally came in my mouth. He went away well satisfied. As soon as I heard him go out, I called Joel and said, bring me two grams, and on the way drop by a supermarket and buy ham, bread, and a Coke.

Kay was still in a coma.

I went to see him every two or three days, sat down beside him, and thought about the miserable life we had and how much I loved him. Being by his side, I remembered an old movie and decided to tell him the story of it, which I did to ease my guilt about the drugs and everything else.

Time passed, and one day Petra approached me with rather an unusual proposition. A job for which I’d be paid a thousand euros, but I wouldn’t be told what I would have to do until I got there, and I thought, a thousand euros? who would pay a thousand euros for a fuck? what will it be? a gang rape, a lesbian scene, sex with a donkey or a chimpanzee? Anything was possible, but by now nothing fazed me anymore, so we went to a building in the sixteenth arrondissement, climbed the stairs, and Petra greeted an elderly lady in Romanian, but didn’t introduce me to her.

We walked along a dark corridor and I started to notice strange things. Although the building was respectable enough, the apartment itself was old, with peeling walls; I wondered who the lady was and why we were there, but as I was about to ask, Petra looked at me and lifted a finger to his lips, quiet! he said, we mustn’t talk too much, you’ll see, it’ll be over very soon. We walked through a hall and reached a bedroom in which there was an adjustable bed, the kind you find in hospitals, and Petra said, if you don’t want to do it we’ll leave immediately, it’s something quite simple, a forty-year-old man suffering from Down’s syndrome, the lady is his mother, don’t make that face, there’s no danger, it’s only a mental condition. Like anyone who has a penis between his legs, he needs to find an outlet for his sexual impulses, and that’s why you’re here, if you accept the mission and the thousand euros.

So I said, O.K., you want me to have sex with a mentally retarded man, is that right? Yes, said Petra. Alright, I said, but for a thousand euros I could only give him a blow job, it’s all a bit awkward, I’m young and it might affect me psychologically, so it’s going to cost more, and Petra said, O.K., wait, and he went to talk to the old lady. After a while they both came and asked me how much I wanted and I said, two thousand euros, not a cent less. All right, I’ll go and fetch him, said the lady. The thirty seconds it took for them to bring him were the longest in my life; at last he arrived and I saw him: a mongol with gray hair and squinty eyes. They had undressed him, and a nurse was nudging him forward. He was making these desperate sounds, and it was quite a while before I realized they were words and not just noise. He was also waving his arms and trying to hide his face in his mother’s breast. You can get undressed now, mademoiselle, we’re ready, said the nurse; as I started to take my clothes off, with my back to the group, I thought of Kay and of the scribbled note and I told myself that this was a punishment, and that after it I would feel clean again.

A cry from the man brought me back to reality: I had taken off my panties and he had seen my ass. His mother and the nurse were struggling to subdue him. His penis was already erect, so I kneeled on the mattress, with my back to him, and said, I’m ready, but his mother whispered in my ear, wait a minute, young lady, I’m paying you two thousand euros, so you’ll have to do more than that, and she pointed at his penis. I understood what she wanted and moved my mouth closer to his body, which was hairless, like a giant baby’s, and started sucking, closing my eyes and repeating in my mind, I’m not here, I’m not here, but the man’s cries were fierce, as were his gestures. The mother and the nurse were finding it hard to restrain him. After a moment, the nurse touched my shoulder and said, mademoiselle, you can change position now, turn your back to him again. It would have been worse face to face, this way it was easier. They moved him closer, the nurse guided him, and they helped him put it in. Mother Nature did her job, since no sooner did he feel that he was inside than he began to rock backwards and forwards. It must be an instinctive reflex of the species, like sucking your mother’s breast, and so he went on for a while until his cries grew in intensity and he ejaculated outside of me with the help of the nurse, who had taken his member out first to avoid problems. Then he collapsed on the mattress, as if his muscles had deflated; within a few seconds he was fast asleep and snoring.

They took me to another room with a bath, and said, please have a wash. If you want to take a shower there’s no hurry, take your time, when you’re finished come into the living room. By the time I was dressed, Petra was waiting for me with the money. Before we left, the old lady said, thank you, mademoiselle, if you like I can ask for you again in a month, and I said, ask for me, and I’ll tell you if it’s possible at the time. The woman handed over ten two-hundred euro bills and squeezed my arm saying in a low voice, I know this can’t be easy for a young woman, but you have to understand, they’re human beings, too. . I understand, I said, I’ll wait for your call, and went back down to the street with Petra.

The next day was Saturday so I went to the hospital, I had a tremendous desire to be with Kay. I told him everything in his ear, whispered to him that I had had sex with a mentally retarded man for money, although I didn’t tell him it was for drugs; I said it was to arrange our apartment, to fill the vases with roses and the closet with wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy and fill the refrigerator with vegetable, and fruit, which was what the doctor had said he would have to eat when he woke up, and I said, I’m preparing for your return, my love, I feel you close to me, I know you’re there, you just have to break one thin membrane, I can feel it, you come and I’ll be ready, and so Saturday went by with me lying beside him, I had managed to sneak in some of the drug, so I snorted it in small doses, just to keep calm, and I felt happy, I swear, very happy in that room with a view of a parking lot and the overhead section of the metro line that goes from Charles de Gaulle to Nation. Through the window I could see the train passing in the distance, surrounded by smoke from the chimneys, and I imagined anxious women traveling in those carriages, longing to get home and have sex with the men they loved and cry out with joy between four dirty, peeling walls; and I also imagined disillusioned young girls looking for some kind of direction in their lives, girls who might have been raped, and might be thinking and thinking and feeling abused and guilty, the poor things, some of them might well be savoring the idea of sticking a needle in their veins to escape this den of iniquity; some might be looking up at the sky in the hope of seeing an igneous ball that would destroy everything once and for all, devour the city in a hurricane of fire, the colossal towers leaning and falling in clouds of dust and terrified people running through the rubble, choked by the smoke and the waves of heat, pushed toward nothingness by the winds of destruction, yes, a few lost young girls must be thinking all that, and things even worse that that, which the mind did not dare imagine, let alone say; I imagined them coming and going in the metro trains I could see from the window, with Kay breathing artificially beside me, and I felt protected, as if the world and its miseries could not enter this little room that smelled of disinfectant, this room where death prowled.

When dusk arrived I was filled with a sensation of emptiness and silence, so I went to the bathroom and set up my two gray lines on the wash basin, and when night fell I started seeing the lights and thinking again of my young girls, how many of them must be fucking their men, listening to music by the Fugees and drinking tequila or gin from a bottle, and how many were hugging a telephone that wouldn’t ring and they knew it, with the bottle of pills open and a bottle of Vittel ready to swallow the lethal, liberating charge of fifty sleeping pills; and there must also be happy women leading clean lives, writing doctoral theses with the remains of pizzas or Chinese food beside them on their desks, and women cooking and looking after babies and watching the clock, calculating how long the sliced chicken and the potatoes and the leeks have been in the oven, and as they look at the hands of the clock trying to imagine what metro station their husband has reached on his way home, and thinking all these things I fell asleep, hearing these voices emerging from the lights of the suburbs, and when I opened my eyes again everything had already gone black and all that remained was the weight of the night, the oppressive darkness, and the silence, and I could almost hear Kay’s blood flowing in his veins and I started again to put a little powder in my nasal septum and already the night was going and when I opened my eyes again it was Sunday morning and a nurse was coming in to take his blood pressure, to give him injections and change the serum; this activity disturbed me, so I left the room with the hope that this week would be the last and that very soon Kay and I would be reminiscing about it over laughter and a glass of wine.

I don’t know how much time passed, I really don’t remember, but one day the doorbell rang, and when I opened it, with my heart leaping at the idea that it was Kay, I gave a cry of surprise, because it was. . my cousin Giorgetta! and I cried out because she had changed a lot: her pink cheeks had turned glassy, with just a little flesh left around the bone. I was pleased to see her and we opened some of the bottles of wine I had been keeping for Kay, until she said, listen, you wouldn’t have a little…? I handed her a syringe and my case, and immediately we had a fix, although I only snorted, and we spent the night drinking and doing drugs, talking about the divine and the human, with long moments of silence, and the next day, already recovered, she said, Sabina, I’ve come to stay, there’s no work in Rome and my mother can’t stand me, she’s put me in clinics three times, I can’t go back, I’ve been so alone, you’re all I have.

I looked at her and said, then you don’t have much, almost nothing in fact, I don’t have a job, the money from my mother’s boyfriend isn’t enough to live on, I have to go out looking for work, and Giorgetta asked, intrigued, and what is it you do? I told her about the mentally retarded guy and she thought it was an excellent solution. Of course, she said, that kind of person has the same needs, dips his wick just like the others, only they pay more, help me to find something like that, but I said, you have to take care of yourself, Giorgetta, you mustn’t give the impression you’re a mess, this is done with the patient’s mother and a nurse, so image is important, know what I mean? It’s a medical matter, the crazy guy has sex with you, you empty his testicles, and then you go and change, just as if you were a physical therapist. The mother may even invite you to have a cup of tea.

Giorgetta looked at me enthusiastically and said, okay, I get the idea, call your friend and tell him you need to increase your clientele, an Italian cousin of yours has arrived who wants to conquer Paris, tell him if he wants to pay to fuck me, to try me out, I’d be delighted, tell him I scream a lot and I love S and M and do Greek and French, and even swallow, that’ll excite him, tell him. I called him with her standing there and of course Petra, who was sex crazy, asked if he could come that very night.

He arrived at ten and when he saw Giorgetta, who had had a good shower and put on some make up, he said he had a better idea, which was to do it with the two of us, a threesome. We looked at each other dubiously, but he immediately added: I’ll pay double, of course. We agreed. I had never felt either desire or repulsion for a woman, so it didn’t bother me having Giorgetta naked beside me, because I had known her since she was a girl. When he told her to suck me and she approached, I didn’t feel any disgust. Petra had a great time. He cried out, sang in Romanian, quoted Shakespeare and Sophocles as he penetrated me and Giorgetta sucked his balls, and afterwards, to round off the evening, he took us out to eat couscous at the Royal Maroc, a restaurant in République. We drank three bottles of rosé wine from Boulaouane and then, quite merry by now, ended the night drinking cognac in a bar in Bastille. At dawn, we went back to Kay’s apartment to sleep.

A week later, Petra called about the job with the mentally retarded guy. When I’d finished I said to his mother, madame, I assure you that I do it with a lot of respect and consideration for the patient, so please, if you have any acquaintances with similar cases you can call me, I have a cousin who needs work, a very healthy young woman, and the mother said, of course, Sabina, I’ll talk to the people at the special help center and if there’s anything I’ll call you, of course. Three days later, the telephone rang and the first job for Giorgetta arrived. A young man of twenty-five suffering from something very serious, dementia, mental handicap, Williams syndrome, I don’t quite remember. The young man was bedridden and obese. When Giorgetta saw him, her first impulse was to jump out the window, but then she thought of the money, so she undressed and did the job, telling herself, these are God’s mistakes, people who also feel, and even if it disgusts me I have to think that for them it’s much worse, I can take a shower and go out and back to normal life, the streets and the metro and the parks are waiting for me and I’m free, and that should give me strength, this is what she told me when she got home and prepared herself a good fix, pleased with the two-hundred-euro bills she’d come away with, and as we took a dose she told me that for her to give him a blowjob, two nurses had had to support his belly, he was that obese, and that his penis was small and flaccid, like a child’s.

We clung to each other all night and the next morning the telephone rang, and it was Petra, announcing a good job, something that could be really important for both of us. I asked him if he wanted to drop by and he said, no, this is something different, I prefer to talk to you face to face.

The appointment was in a café near the Belleville metro station, a neighborhood where everyone is black or Chinese or Arab, and Giorgetta was getting quite nervous by the time we met with Petra, who greeted us and said, come, it’s this way. He led us down a side street and we entered a building that wasn’t too dirty, in fact it was the least dirty in the block. We went up to the fourth floor. On the door was a sign saying Eve Studios. We were received by a man with a businesslike look who, when he saw us, cried, at last I’ve met you. Petra has told us all about you, and he was right, come this way, I want to see you properly, my name is Dimitros, I’m the head of the company. He explained that he published porn magazines that sold well in Europe, and that he now wanted to make the leap into movies, which was why he needed two actresses. He had studied the market and had worked out that he could make two films a month, which would mean approximately five thousand euros a month for each of us, and that would be just the start, because if the company grew the income would increase, what did we think?

Giorgetta was about to say something but I gestured to her to be quiet; she had never had much of a head for business, so I spoke up and said, first we’d like to see something of what you do and to know what kind of films you want, and he said, of course, the thing is, I only do normal stuff, fellatio, Greek, sodomy, DP, facial ejaculation, all the classic stuff, no

fornicating with donkeys or eating shit, and then Giorgetta, intrigued, asked, what’s DP, and Dimitros replied, double penetration, darling, two penises in your body simultaneously, if you’ve never done it before you may find it uncomfortable at first but you’ll get used to it, it’s a difficult position, you have to have good abdominal muscles, how’s your physical condition, girls? and we both said, very good, so Dimitros continued: as I said, I only film the traditional porn themes, because what I’m interested in is art, eroticism, I’m a disciple of Lasse Braun, you may not know who he is, but I said, yes I do, I’ve seen his movies, my favorite is Sin Dreamer. Dimitros looked at me wide-eyed, and said, that’s amazing, girl, that’s the best porn movie ever made! tell me, what’s your name?

We began two days later with a fairly simple scene. I played a nurse in the house of an elderly man. To give him something to eat, I phoned out for a pizza. The young man who delivered it, a fairly well-built Yugoslav named Yarco in real life, was helping me to divide the pizza into triangles in the kitchen and used the excuse of a few olives that had rolled onto the floor to start stroking my legs, my nurse’s skirt being short. That developed into a scene of oral sex and then penetration on the table, at which point the cleaner arrived. That was Giorgetta’s role. When she saw that Yarco had me on the table with my legs open and was thrusting into me, she started masturbating herself with the mouth of a wine bottle. This scene, of course, Dimitros rehearsed many times, because he wanted the reflection of my legs beating in the air to be seen in Giorgetta’s bottle. That was his art, he said, through the camera he was expressing his anger at the world and his nihilistic vision of life, which he had no faith in.

We patiently repeated the scene. The next thing to happen was the miracle, which was that the old man, played by Petra, alerted by the noise, managed to drag himself to the kitchen to see why he was being left alone and once there, seeing Giorgetta sticking a bottle of Burgundy inside her and his nurse lying on the table, being sodomized by the young man, a ray of light from the window fell on his forehead and filled him with newfound strength. He threw off his pajamas, took out a fairly respectable penis, and set to with Giorgetta. In the climactic scene, which was the most difficult, I took Yarco from the front and Petra from behind while Giorgetta sucked their testicles in turn, and at the end came the great ejaculation, which hit Giorgetta’s cheeks and mine and which we pretended to savor with relish.

All this took the whole of Saturday and Sunday, but at last Dimitros congratulated us and told us that even though we were beginners we had a lot of talent and a keen sense of art. He was sure he had pulled off at least three or four shots that showed his stamp, the mark of the artist. We left with three thousand euros in brand new bills each, so we decided to treat ourselves. We bought new clothes, went to the hairdresser, had dinner in a good restaurant, and of course, a good fix and a snort, a full dose, not the half we took to feel good during the filming. After three days of excess, I suddenly remembered Kay, and it was as if the sky had fallen on my head. I rushed to the hospital with my heart pounding, and the premonition that he had died, that they had been calling me but my phone had been off or mislaid, and when I got to his room and saw him there, lying on his back in bed, I felt the soul come back to my body, and I cried and cried, falling to my knees, and spent the night telling him about Eve Studios and the plot of the movie and how the fact that I’d seen his Lasse Braun movies had helped me, because the director was a very artistic and demanding person who didn’t just hire beginners. You might earn more having sex with mental defectives, but this is a real job and gives you the opportunity to learn a trade. I told him everything until day broke and the bustle of cleaners and nurses returned and I went home, with the impression that he approved this new development.

Two weeks later we saw the movie and laughed our heads off. Neither Giorgetta nor I had ever seen our vaginas on screen, let alone from such daring angles. The name of the movie was Home Delivery, and, from what Petra told us, Dimitros managed to sell it quite well, so the next week we got down to work again. Before introducing the new actor to us, Dimitros got us together and gave us a little speech, saying, the porn world is going through a great revolution and it’s necessary to meet its demands, which means there are some changes in this new production, beginning with the actor I’m about to introduce to you and who, I hope, will be to your liking, girls, and I said, what’s with all the mystery, Dimitros? and he said, it’s just that, you know, the buyers really liked the performances and the artistic shots, but they also said, it’s a very white movie, not very politically correct, Dimitros, how about something African, of exceptional size? and well, darlings, that’s what I did, and now I have the pleasure to introduce Clarence, a son of post-revolutionary Liberia, and with a theatrical gesture he opened the door and brought him in, a man of about thirty-five, quite strong and well preserved, with a broad smile and bulging eyes, who said, hello, shyly, without looking us in the eyes, which made me immediately want to be his friend, so I stood up and gave him a kiss on the cheek, hello, how are you, it’s going to be a pleasure to work with you, and he returned the compliment. Giorgetta greeted him less effusively, and then we started reading the scripts, it took us a while to learn our parts while Dimitros and his crew prepared the shots and arranged the lights. When we went to the bathroom to give ourselves our little shot to calm us down, Giorgetta said to me, are you going to have sex with the black guy? and I said, well, I don’t know if that’ll be me, in the script it only says I have sex with First Man, but if it’s me I’ll do it. Giorgetta didn’t think the idea was right, and said, don’t you think they ought to pay us more to have sex with a black man? and I said, don’t talk crap, all human beings are the same, but she said, if we’re talking about the soul or the spirit maybe yes, but not the dick, black men have huge dicks, you’ll see. I tried not to take any notice and said, don’t think about that, we’re built to take any man.

Giorgetta never forgot that day, she probably still remembers it, because what with talking to me and taking her shot she forgot to sit on the toilet and empty her rectum, so in the first anal scene with the African, when he withdrew an avalanche emerged from her orifice, drawn out by the suction, which was all the bigger because of the size of his cock, which really was king size. There was a loud laugh and Giorgetta gave a scream. Clarence was covered from head to foot and had to take a shower. The cameraman, who had been filming in close-up, spent an hour cleaning his glasses and his camera with sponges and cotton balls, while Giorgetta was in the bathroom, hysterical with shame.

What happened next was that Giorgetta, who, as you will have already noted, had a certain tendency to fall into the abyss, started to take more than she should in the syringe before filming and one day the scandal broke, when Vidiadar, the Pakistani actor, stopped the scene and said to Dimitros, look, how can I work with a woman like this? I’d feel more heat if I stuck my dick into a gimlet. Dimitros cursed, because delays cost him money, and went up to Giorgetta. He noticed that her eyes were open and her mouth was emitting moans, but her brain was as far away as the rings of Jupiter. So he lost his temper and said, you fucking junkie, how dare you come to the set like that? I have nothing against the fact that you fill your brains with shit, but if you want to continue with me you have to be clean, do you understand? the streets of this old continent are filled with cunts begging for an opportunity to get into movies, so think about it, that’s if you’re even listening, is there anybody in there? I had to take Giorgetta to the bedroom.

The next day, Dimitros brought in a Romanian named Saskia to replace her and as a punishment put Giorgetta with the fluffers, the girls who are on the set to suck the actors’ cocks before they go on and leave them erect or arouse them in case their tools undergo a sudden shrinkage. It was that night, after the fight, that I told myself for the first time: you have to give up drugs.

My cousin stayed on in Paris, but sank into one of her heavy depressions. She tried to contact the family of the mentally ill guy to offer her services, but when they saw her they almost slammed the door in her face, because she was in an awful state, so one day I said to her, listen to me, I’m giving you a week to get your things together and leave, I know you have nobody but it’s time you got a grip on yourself, I’ve done what I could. Giorgetta cried and told me I hated her and had always envied her and wanted to destroy her, but I said, Giorgetta, you’re the destructive one, you’re the one who wears out the people who protect you, do you know Murphy’s Law? well, you’re one of the people Murphy’s Law was invented for, any situation you find yourself in, if you can make it worse, you will, and you drag the people closest to you down with you, which in this case means me, I’m just as young and inexperienced as you and just as hooked and alone, but I have a tremendous desire to live and succeed, so you have to understand, I’m not asking you to disappear, but I am asking you to let me breathe a little, I need to think and I can only do that when I’m alone, Giorgetta, don’t hate me for this, goodbye.

Giorgetta left and I spent three days in the hospital, beside Kay, who was my source of consolation, and I told myself, I have to be good for when my love wakes up. I decided to go into detox. The heroin had protected me over the past year, but now things had turned around and I was its hostage. I got up courage and went to a rehab center. I assume everyone knows what detox is, so I shan’t expand. It’s a painful experience, which you remember only vaguely, because the brain blots most of it out as a defense mechanism. Nobody likes to hoard horrible images or such extreme feelings of pain, as if a thin knife slashed right through all the nerves in your body, which becomes your main enemy, that body you become tremendously aware of because every pore in it is screaming, and so the minutes and the hours pass, with all the slowness of pain, and you know that at the end of time, there in the distance, behind a chain of Himalayas and on an invisible horizon, is that morning when you slough off your old, sick skin and your body wakes up and your blood flows clean and you can go out because you’ve been reborn, that’s the challenge, there are those who can’t stand it and their brains melt, they blow a few fuses, and they are the former addicts who wander the world with a stupid smile and dribble hanging from their lips.

That didn’t happen to me, because I hadn’t been addicted for long. I suffered unspeakable pain but came out the other side, unharmed. When I felt well, I called Dimitros and he immediately hired me again, this time for a shoot in Brussels. I liked the idea of traveling so I agreed and it was a great experience. I got to know some Hungarian actors and two very pretty Russian girls, who looked so innocent you’d have thought they were virgins, an impression, obviously, that I forgot when I saw them sucking cocks as if they were eating candies and cream. It was a very professional session, from which I returned with four thousand euros in cash. Then, in the hospital, I told Kay all about the horrors of detox and I said in his ear, you don’t know how lucky you are to have been spared that, when you wake up you’ll be fine, your body will be as clean as a baby’s.

I also told him about the filming of Vixens in Heat, which was the name of the latest Eve Studios production. I said: you’ll get along very well with Dimitros and Petra, they’re fantastic and make a great team. We could work together, you’re a terrific photographer and, you know, during filming they take photographs, that way they generate more income. It would be a brilliant deal and we’d be together, what do you think, my love? But Kay was still silent, breathing softly. Suddenly the room filled with shadows and I went to the window to watch night fall. The city was drifting like a bank of seaweed toward the brightly lighted cafés. It was Saturday. I felt nostalgic for a normal life. I missed what I had, in fact, only experienced with the man lying by my side.

I carried on working and the year ended. I traveled to shoots in Budapest and Prague, and once in London, and the fees were always good, because Eve Studios was doing very well, Dimitros and Petra and other girls like Laura and Saskia and Valérie and Delphine, and guys like Bruno and Anatoli and Hervé and Alec, who worked on most of the movies, were becoming my family. One day the telephone rang and when I answered I almost fell to the floor with emotion. It was the magazine Hot Vision, asking if I would agree to an interview. They had seen Vixens in Heat and seven other Eve movies and thought I had a lot of talent. I put down the telephone, feeling really moved. I had an appointment with them at the Banana Café in Châtelet the next day. I couldn’t believe it. Hot Vision was the best known magazine of its kind in France and every two years awarded the Golden Hot, a prize for the best porn actress. Of course that was a dream, but an interview opened the doors to a possible nomination, oh, I felt so happy that I went with Alec and Delphine to the Casbah Bar and drank a bottle of champagne all by myself. They were all happy about the news and we celebrated in style, until seven in the morning, which confirmed, in passing, that my body was cured, because I didn’t feel at any moment the desire to snort.

The next day — in terms of perception, because it was actually the same day — I got up at three in the afternoon. I still had two hours before the appointment with Hot Vision so I emptied the closet trying to choose what to wear. Delphine had slept over at my place so she was there to help, thank God, and in the end we decided on a combination of garter belts, navy blue nylon stockings, and a shimmery silk dress of the same color, an extremely light outfit that, according to Delphine, brought out my strong personality and a melancholy eroticism. The makeup session lasted forty minutes and at four-thirty exactly we went out on the landing to call the elevator, both nervous and dying of laughter. As the elevator door opened, I heard the telephone ring in the apartment. Delphine said, leave it, you’ll be late, but I said, I’ll only be two seconds, what if they’re calling to cancel or change the appointment? I opened the door and said, hello? who is it? It was the hospital. Kay had woken up.

I collapsed. I was speechless.

A mixture of fear and happiness swept through my body, like some strange contrast liquid. Delphine had come in behind me and when she saw me on the floor she screamed. After a few minutes I got my breath back. I had to make a decision. Delphine went to the Banana Café in my place and I ran to the hospital. What I had waited for for so long had just happened and now I was scared, is he all right? will he remember me? I got to the room and saw him, he had his eyes open. He looked at me and an expression of doubt came over his face, but then he said, Sabina? and burst into tears. I kneeled beside him, kissed his hand, and thanked God. He had come back, and he remembered me. He was alive. The world had started turning again for the two of us.

The first thing he asked was, why are you dressed like that? I told him that I had made myself beautiful for him, but he didn’t seem to believe me. I explained that it was by chance and that I had to bring him up to date with everything. There have been many changes, darling, things are going very well for us now, you’ll see. He still had to spend another week in the hospital, for tests, and the best thing was that there were no serious lesions in the brain. The only thing he had lost was the sense of taste; things tasted neutral, like cardboard or a blank page, that was how he described it. He could bear the fact that he couldn’t enjoy food, but what he found very sad was that he could no longer savor the taste of my body. But he was alive and remembered everything.

Gradually I told him what had happened during the year he had been absent. About my addiction and subsequent detox, and the main reason I told him all this was to dissuade him from falling victim to heroin again. He didn’t feel the need, his body was cured, but in his mind he remembered the pleasure and the sense of calm. All the same, he didn’t relapse, and after his “rebirth” he stayed clean. With time, of course, we did do other drugs, but nothing really serious. Coke, to hold up under the relentless pace of the work, and sometimes hashish to fight stress. We did, though, drink rather a lot. It’s really hard to live in this rotten world without having at least one damn vice, given how hard and inhospitable reality can be, but anyway, let me carry on with my story. Kay quickly got used to my work. Once he had gotten over the blow of that thing with Petra, which he barely remembered anyway, he started to work in the photographic department of Eve Studios, which was no longer based in that dirty building in Belleville, but had taken over a large apartment near the Opéra, almost thirteen hundred feet of studios and offices.

We left the apartment on Rue Oberkampf and moved into a more spacious, light-filled one on Rue Pascal, in the vicinity of Boulevard Arago and Place des Gobelins, which meant that on Sundays we could go to the little market on Rue de la Contrescarpe and eat oysters and drink Chablis and read the newspapers, which was one of Kay’s great pleasures. Kay had opinions and ideas on everything that happened in the world. Thanks to him, I stopped being some kind of selfish animal who only cared about acting and making money. Thanks to him and all those newspapers I became aware that the world had a lot wrong with it and that the bad things that happened to other people could happen to me one day. That was what I thought as I listened to Kay commenting on the news, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorism, all the victims of violence, in other words, reality in all its glory. I really took notice of what he said, but at the same time I thought to myself, it’s curious, when I was on the floor, like a fallen gladiator about to receive the fatal spear, who cared about me? Nobody, I went through that ordeal alone, and I say alone because calling my cousin Giorgetta company would be like giving a human identity to bedbugs and lice: the lice I sometimes got, in those first movies, from my partenaires on the set. The world is cruel to small things, and I was one; a weak flame that needed to be kept alive by protecting hands and could only become a substantial fire with a great deal of effort and sacrifice.

Our beautiful apartment on Rue Pascal became our bolt-hole. Large and silent — an increasingly rare thing in the lawless cities where we live today — it gradually filled with shelves and books, histories of the cinema and biographies of directors, my own favorite director being, of course, John Cassavetes, while Kay’s was Blake Edwards, especially his amazing Days of Wine and Roses, with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, a movie that reminded him of what he had been through and what we had both suffered. For anyone who knows Cassavetes, I have to say that being with Kay I felt like Gena Rowlands in Faces, I’m sorry, I put that in for the fans. You’ll notice that my references are to normal cinema, auteur cinema, and you may think that’s a contradiction, since I’ve devoted my life to porn. Well, my answer to that is that the cinema is not divided into good cinema and porn, but good cinema and bad cinema, period. A porn movie by Lasse Braun or Othar Bill James can be as good of its kind as a film by Kubrick of its kind, that’s my opinion, anyway. Porn has its Olympus, fantastic actors like John Holmes, who died of AIDS, but who had one of the most extraordinary penises ever captured by a camera, or Ron Jeremy, a really funny man, a man without any great qualities and rather comical-looking, but great at fucking and an exceptional actor, who even did a few things outside the porn world, a short role in Jesus Christ Superstar and another in Reindeer Games, with Ben Affleck.

I come back to what I was saying before: our apartment on Rue Pascal was filling with beautiful things and artistic friends who came and went. As I said before, Kay started to make a career for himself as the photographer for Eve Studios, which then sold his work to magazines, Hot Video or Stardust or Plaisir xxl, for good prices, sometimes for more than they paid me, which was strange, but didn’t shock me, since Kay was talented and by this stage we were sharing all our income.

One night, after a bottle and a half of gin and lemon, six hashish cigarettes and an intense session involving three of my seven bodily orifices, I made up my mind to tell him the last secret I had kept from him, in other words, my rape. I don’t know how I found the strength. I told him the story in minute detail. Kay looked at me, stunned, and said, Stef? He went to the window in silence and after a while said, he was always an idiot, trying to imitate me in everything and never succeeding. What he did to you was unspeakable, and he’ll pay for it, he and his lousy friends, I already know who they are.

The next day, much to my surprise, Kay dragged me out of bed at nine in the morning, which was early for us, and rushed me to Charles de Gaulle airport. We got on a Norwegian Air plane and two hours later we were in Oslo. We took a taxi, didn’t even drop by his family home, but went straight to a lawyer’s office, where a formal complaint for rape was drawn up. Then we went to a police station and lodged the complaint with all the requisite details. From there we went to a hotel to rest and the next day we flew back to Paris and waited for proceedings to begin.

A week later, the telephone rang and it was Stef. He had been informed of the complaint and wanted to know if his brother had gone crazy, but Kay replied, you’re the crazy one and you’re going to pay, you and your lousy friends, where do you keep your brain? in your ass? you might think more clearly if you did, you idiot, what was going through your mind to make you do something like that? did you think I’d never find out? Well, you screwed up, not only did I find out but it so happens that I’m a civilized person, and I believe these things should be dealt with by the law. You’d have preferred to settle this with a couple of punches in the nose, like you do with your cronies, which just shows what an idiot you are, because this is different, this is the worst thing you can do to a person, somebody I trusted you with, and for that if nothing else they ought to put your balls between cubes of ice and puncture them with a drill. That woman thought she was safe with you and you took advantage of her weakness; now stop sniveling, don’t dare call this house again, as far as I’m concerned you’re no longer my brother. The lawyer has orders not to stop until you and the scumbags you call your friends are in prison with long sentences, far from the people you contaminate with your stupidity, if you did it once it’s because you’ve done it other times, God knows with what poor women, so I’m going to do the human race a favor, a favor that consists in giving you a kick up the ass and making sure you all go to prison for most of what remains of your useless lives, with plenty of time to just breathe, eat, and shit, which will be the noblest thing you can do. Goodbye.

That was how Kay spoke to his brother, and in fact, eleven months later, they were sentenced to nine years in prison and a fine of 170,000 euros, including 120,000 to me as damages. To collect the money they auctioned everything those bastards owned. My revenge was to waste it on pointless things. I bought ten Louis Vuitton purses and gave them away to the girls I worked with at Eve Studios. I bought Kay a navy blue secondhand Porsche. I bought myself a John Galliano dress. I invited Kay, Dimitros, Laura, and Petra to dinner at the Tour d’Argent. The best thing I did was give away two-hundred-euro bills to those young gypsy women you see begging on the streets with children they claim are their own. It took me four days to spend everything, until I only had a few coins left, which I threw in the Seine. And I felt liberated.

I forgot to mention that the magazine Hot Vision called me again soon afterwards about the interview, as some clips from my movies were already showing on Canal+, which gained me a few points. The interview was excellent, and we were able to include Kay’s photographs, which were of outstanding quality, and the following year, for my role in The Tsarina of Sodom, I was nominated for the Golden Hot as best actress. Kay did everything he could to find out what kind of chance I stood. Through Eve Studios he discovered that seven of the thirty-five judges would definitely vote for me, but there were at least ten who leaned toward the lead actress in a movie by Wolfgang Brothers Productions, so when we arrived at the Cannes Festival, where the prize was being awarded, we had no idea what was going to happen.

The prize show began with the best American actors and actresses in the various categories: oral orgasm, heterosexual scene, anal orgasm, etc. Some time later, with the atmosphere heating up and cameras trained on the stage, the legendary Rocco Siffredi read out the nominees for the most promising European actress. I closed my eyes and when my name was called as prizewinner a warm wind lifted me above the audience. I went up to the platform while flashbulb popped and the music from the movie Rocky played, I don’t know if you remember it, the music that plays as he runs up a flight of steps.

When I received the statuette I cried, and said, I want to thank the organizers and the judges, and I want to dedicate this award to my love, the photographer Kay Staarsed. Also to the production company who made the movie, Eve Studios, to Petra Nove and Dimitros Aulica and all the colleagues who have worked so hard to make this distinction possible. I don’t suppose that in this kind of prizegiving it’s common to have someone mention their mother, but I will, wherever you are, Mamma, and I think you’re a long way away, in Mexico, I hope you feel proud of your daughter, because today she achieved something important, both in her profession and as a woman, many thanks, I dedicate it the women of the world who have had to fight to survive.

There was an ovation, and people came and hugged me. There I was, rubbing shoulders with Jade and Jenna Jameson, with Fred Coppula and Briana Banks and Kris Kramski, my God, the jet set of porn, I could never have imagined anything like this. That night we drank so much champagne that we forgot the name of our hotel, which of course wasn’t the Hotel Martínez or anything like that, but a modest Sofitel on the outskirts of the city, but we finally remembered it the next day, when Kay, I don’t know how, managed to find the key card to our room on the floor of the Porsche.

The next important change came soon afterwards, when Eve Studios joined forces with Pussy Films, in Los Angeles, and the budgets started growing, as did the sales figures. At that point Kay and I became partners and co-owners of Eve, with a 35 percent share.

We started to make pictures in San Francisco and Los Angeles, where there are more means, and a common language, and a more open attitude to the genre. Some films we made in two versions, one commercial, the other a “cult” version, as was the case with Morgana, in which I played the lead, and which was a hit in both versions. In sales, the commercial version exceeded all expectations, and the cult version, filmed in Épinay-sur-Seine, earned me a second nomination for the Golden Hot, which I didn’t win, obviously, as it’s not the done thing for somebody who isn’t already a legend to win it too often.

Morgana is the story of a young woman with mental powers that allow her to put ideas into the minds of men. She seduces them and does as she pleases with them, but although this seems just an enjoyable game at first, it gradually turns into something more dangerous. Morgana has a sister, Jessica, who has always been her rival and competed with her in everything. When they were younger, Jessica had better marks, men always fell in love with Jessica, treated her better, and although outwardly Morgana hadn’t minded it had made her suffer. There is nothing worse than competition between women, especially if they are sisters. So when Morgana becomes aware of her powers she’s happy, because it means she can stand out, but once she has gotten past that and starts to remember how bitter she felt as a teenager because of Jessica, she decides to plant in a particular man the desire to kill her. And that’s what she does. The strongest scenes are when we see Jessica being penetrated from behind by her murderer while her partner penetrates her from in front and two illegal immigrants from Liberia and Burkina Faso give the murderer a double anal fisting. I don’t know if any of you have seen Morgana, but I can assure you that the tension achieved in those scenes is incredible, when Jessica is penetrated by her murderer and on the other side of a two-way mirror Morgana watches everything with her lover. She is so excited at seeing her sister sodomized by a man obsessed with the idea of killing her, that she straddles her lover’s penis and they perform a truly amazing scene on the table.

This film made me feel that we ought to do more daring things, to innovate, and it was it this point that we met Kim Ji Lu, a screenwriter who had been fired by an American studio for writing things that were too complicated. For us, that was an excellent calling card, and we immediately started reading his screenplays. They were fantastic. There were sci-fi stories, westerns, comedies. We invited him to Paris and when he arrived we were amazed to see that he was really obese, at least 330 pounds, bald, with an ugly ponytail, and wearing a Hawaiian shirt that showed the sun rising over the Pacific. The type of person who doesn’t exist in Europe. Kim was an eloquent speaker. He told us about his origins in Asian cinema and his love of Wong Kar Wai and Kim Ki-Duk, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, and Takeshi Kitano. His literary influences included Philip K. Dick, Thomas Pynchon, and the poetry of e. e. cummings and William Carlos Williams, and he also admired the techno-erotic paintings and images of H. R. Giger. Anyway, no sooner had he arrived than we spent a whole night listening to him, drinking martinis that he made himself, astonished by how highly cultured he was.

The first thing we did together was a really impressive piece called Vaginaland. It begins with a huge close-up of my cunt, filling the whole screen, which is then penetrated by a penis and as it does so turns into a curtain that opens and begins the story. The action takes place in a kingdom situated inside the vagina, where everyone worships the goddess V. and makes ritual sacrifices to her, which consist of outrageous orgies. Every inhabitant of Vaginaland has to offer at least one orgasm a day to the goddess V., and those who don’t are punished and sent to hell. And where is this hell? Again there is a full-screen shot of my vagina, but this time my body turns and what we see in close-up is my anus, which again is penetrated by a penis. This takes us into Anusland, the Country of the Damned.

Those who don’t do their duty in Vaginaland are sent to Anusland. It’s a change of atmosphere or, as Kim Ji Lu put it, a new solar system around a black star, where the objective is to conceal, to plunge everything into darkness. But the queens of both systems decide to fight each other. There is a final battle in which all the women soldiers are possessed in DP, and peace is declared in the absence of a winner.

We shot the movie and it was a critical hit in Europe, which brought Eve Studios some much-needed prestige. In the United States, we shot a lighter, comic version that lived up to our financial expectations. But the important thing was the prestige that Vaginaland brought both us and Kim Ji Lu. One funny thing about that was that many people, seeing the two names, assumed that Kay and Kim were brothers or at least from the same city, an assumption that could only provoke laughter if you saw them together, one huge, with his platinum-plated dark glasses and his palm-tree shirts, and the other thin and discreet, dressed in gray or black. Anyway, that was my little family, and the truth is that business was prospering. One afternoon Kay called me into his office and showed me a bank statement. I could hardly believe it, we had a million euros. It was the first time in my life I had seen that amount, and it was mine, or rather, ours.

During those years there was a kind of storm. I had such a strong will, it was like a small plane flying through rain and thunder, but always managing to reach a lighted airfield. Things happened every day, every week and year. We shot dozens of movies and each time Kim went a bit further. One day he came to us with a new project. A horror movie. Horror and sex, he said, it’s brilliant, read this. He took out a script and I saw the title, Deflowering. It told the story of a young woman deflowered by the devil, who, like the God Zeus, uses different disguises to seduce her. Along the way, she witnesses other deflowerings and a couple of exorcisms, which were supposed, at least in theory, to make the audience’s hair stand on end. We read it, and for the first time there was a disagreement between Kay and Kim. Dimitros claimed that there was no feeling more diametrically opposed to sex than fear, because fear inhibited erection and without an erection there is no porn. Kim disagreed, saying that art was the true genital organ to which we ought to aspire and that, once it was achieved, then penises would rise like stalagmites and vaginas melt in their own juice.

I didn’t want to give my opinion, but told Kay that, as Kim’s screenplays had given us prestige and success, we should show solidarity with his talent and support him, even if the movie turned out a failure. Not everything a genius does is perfect, or, as I read somewhere, “we cannot be sublime without interruption.” We did the movie, and again it came out well, perhaps because the scary parts weren’t all that scary, but simply gave the movie a sense of darkness and mystery that helped make the sex scenes stand out more.

In those years, at the beginning of the Nineties, a very large number of artists went to Sarajevo, in Bosnia, to express their solidarity with the civilian population trapped in the siege of the city, victims of that stupid war that had its origin in the desire for independence of those republics that had previously been part of Yugoslavia. Theatrical groups from Germany, Austria, France, and Poland all went. The writer Susan Sontag and her son staged a version of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot there, which stirred international opinion and gave the Sarajevans, at least for a time, the feeling that they weren’t alone, and I say “the feeling” because in reality they were indeed alone, more alone than a stone thrown in a river, which was proved by everything that happened later. Faced with that horror, Kay said, we have to do something, we can’t just fold our arms while people are dying. We decided to do a stage show that could be taken and presented there. We started working on that and once again it was Kim who came up with the best idea, which was to do an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade’s novel Justine or the Misfortunes of Virtue, the idea being to showcase a work that had survived intolerance. That was the message Kim wanted to give the Sarajevans. When it was ready, with six actors and a small technical team, we applied to the United Nations for entry papers and they gave us visas as artists within the humanitarian aid program. We traveled from Paris to Zagreb, spent the night there, and the following day flew to Split, on the Dalmatian coast, from where UN flights left for Sarajevo.

My God, what an experience that was.

We went in an old Hercules with wooden seats, which flew at a very high altitude and carried incendiary ammunition, in case anyone fired a missile at us. After an hour’s flight the plane went into a nosedive and our skin stuck to our bones. Then, just as it looked as if we were about to crash, the nose lifted, the plane returned to a horizontal position, and we landed. We could see the roofs of burned and demolished houses at the sides of the airfield.

After taxiing along the runway, the Hercules opened at the back and a UN soldier yelled at us, run to that hill and take cover, they’re shooting from over there, pointing to the other side of the runway. We grabbed our bags and the boxes with the props and ran behind the hill. The airport’s control tower was leaning to the side, not directly out of the ground like the Tower of Pisa but on top of a horizontal building. The walls were full of holes, and there wasn’t a single window in good condition. In their place were sheets of steel intended to stop bullets from snipers.

The French UN soldiers checked our baggage meticulously and after a while let us get into an armored car that was to take us to the city. The city. A euphemism for that vast mountain of rubble that Sarajevo had turned into. On the night of our arrival, we could feel it on our skin, because there was an air raid. Grenades and shells plowed across the sky, leaving green vapor trails. It was a macabre spectacle that, in spite of its dramatic quality, contained a certain beauty. I crouched on one of the upper floors of the hotel, looking out through a crack in the wall, because the hotel had been hit early in the fighting and now only the first six floors were in use. The atmosphere was bleak. The corridors were like caves, the rooms side grottoes covered in dust and rubble. In one of them I found a girl’s shoe. A little patent leather shoe with a low heel. I picked it up and dusted it off a bit. I lit my cigarette lighter and saw it had been pink. It was some consolation that at least there wasn’t a foot in it. Then I remembered the fantasies I had had in Paris, when I was taking drugs and Kay was in hospital. Images of women who saw destroyed cities, and a caravan of hooded men making their way through the rubble to a temple on top of a hill, before being massacred in a shower of black bullets, in the middle of an even blacker night. And I said to myself: it wasn’t a fantasy. It’s happening here.

The next day, the sun was radiant. We went with our props team to the Opera House and put up the lights and the set. One of our colleagues, Yarco, was Yugoslav, so there was no problem in making ourselves understood. The only sticky moment was when the director of the theater, a man of seventy who had agreed to our participation as a gesture of solidarity, was disturbed by some of the imagery and asked for a summary of the play. Yarco explained that it was a modern adaptation of the Marquis de Sade; the man was enthusiastic, but said, I don’t want any explicit sex scenes, my audience would find that quite sad, so we did as he said, limiting ourselves to simulating the couplings, and it all went very well. It was a wonderful day.

But days that are too wonderful scare me, because after them there comes a little voice announcing that a tragedy is on its way. I can hear that voice. It’s a metallic tone beneath the wind or behind the light, which suddenly manifests itself, and when it does you have to hide or flee. We didn’t flee in time, and two days later our Volkswagen was attacked by snipers. The driver was shot three times in the head and died instantaneously. A cameraman had a lung perforated by a bullet and had to stay in hospital for nearly six months. Kay’s right shoulder and shoulder blade and the bones of his arm were shattered in the gunfire. Fortunately for me, I had stayed behind in the hotel. The bullets went in one side and out the other of the car and its occupants. That night we flew back to Zagreb, where everyone was hospitalized.

After three weeks, and six operations, I brought Kay back to Paris, where they did more tests. There was nothing to be done: he had lost his arm, by which I mean, not that it was amputated, but that it had lost all mobility. A dead appendage. He had to reeducate himself and his whole body changed, like a boat with a broken mast. Now he walked bent over, which he tried to hide out of vanity. We spent hundreds of thousands of euros on miracle operations and mechanical arms, but it was impossible. The nerves and tendons had been destroyed. The arm was dead.

One day we were introduced to an expert in occult cures, related to old legends of the blacksmith’s trade in central Europe. It was the one card we hadn’t yet played, so Kay said to me, I’m going to try. The man, whose name was Ebenezer Selle Trimegisto, had an office in the elegant Parisian district of École Militaire. According to Doctor Ebenezer, Kay could recover his strength by invoking the old medieval blacksmiths, and putting his arm in a splint with various qualities of metal. As he explained it, the earth was the great midwife and every metal was in transition between carbon and gold. Then he said that the bones were the carbonic and solid structure of the body and that the proximity of certain metals could revive the shattered pieces of the inert appendage. We believed him because we wanted to believe him and a few days later Dr. Ebenezer Trimegisto presented Kay with a long leather glove that went from the fist to the armpit and had to be filled with iron and other metals. A Brazilian storekeeper adjusted it for us and that was why Kay started walking around with that strange prosthesis. He looked like a medieval falconer with his arm covered to receive a falcon or a goshawk. Of course, it wasn’t long before Kim — who hadn’t come with us to Sarajevo, which might have been why he was still alive, because given his size he wouldn’t have escaped the bullets — used the idea in one of his screenplays, which he entitled The Flight of the Vagina Falcon, and which reaches its climax when, in a tower at the top of a castle, as I’m on my knees giving a blowjob to one man while two others are penetrating my available orifices, a goshawk descends from the sky and comes to rest on his gloved hand at the very same moment when the man’s penis shoots its load over my cheeks. It was a very vivid scene that greatly impressed the critics, and again there were hundreds of thousands of euros and a brace of excellent articles.

One day I was walking through the Marais, looking in fashion shops and making unnecessary purchases, when I saw a hideous-looking woman, filthy and haggard. Her eyes looked familiar and her name emerged from my mouth in a cry: Giorgetta! Her skin was all cut and raw, as if she had been sleeping for many years under the sun of the Sahara. I looked at her and it took her a while to focus, but finally she opened her horrible, almost toothless mouth, said, Sabina, and fainted at my feet. A thousand images hit me like a storm of meteorites: playing in the swimming pool at the Circeo, near Rome, when we were very young, or going to parties thrown by our uncles, when she would swig all the dregs left in the glasses to get drunk. She was always precocious, the poor thing. I felt responsible, so I called my driver, a black Dominican named Jenofonte, who had been waiting for me in a nearby square, drinking beer and watching the girls swinging their hips as they passed. Seeing me with Giorgetta, he jumped out and said, Madame Sabina, is anything wrong? Help her into the car, I said, she’s my cousin.

When we got to our apartment, which by now was a penthouse on Rue Bonaparte, near Place Saint-Sulpice and the Jardin du Luxembourg, Giorgetta was incapable of stringing a sentence together. The only thing I understood was when she said: I went to a party with you years ago and I never saw you leave, when did you leave? I didn’t remember anything, but I didn’t think it was necessary to tell her that. The circuits in her brain had snapped and she couldn’t catch my words. I gave her something to eat, and during the night, when she asked me for money to buy heroin, I didn’t know what to do. Kay was in Los Angeles and wasn’t answering his cell phone, so I decided to give Jenofonte a two-hundred-euro bill to go out and buy some and come back as soon as possible. My cousin gave herself two fixes one after the other, sticking the syringe first in her foot and then in her neck, because she had no veins left. When she fell into the abyss, I told Jenofonte to pick her up and help me take her to a private hospital just outside Paris, and there I left her, with a check for twenty-five thousand euros to pay for the best possible treatment.

Two days later, I went to visit her and was told they had been doing tests. Not surprisingly, she had tested HIV positive, and also had the beginnings of hepatitis B and a heart murmur. I contacted my aunt Gerarda, her mother, in Rome and persuaded her to come to Paris. She was a nice, gentle old lady, who burst into tears when she saw me. On the way to the hospital she whispered in my ear, have you seen Beatrice? It hit me like a bombshell, because as I’m sure you remember, Beatrice was my mother. I told my aunt I’d lost touch with her years ago, because we led very different lives. But she said, call her, she’s been wanting to see you for years, and she slipped a folded piece of paper into my pocket. I felt a knot in my throat and didn’t reply, only looked through the window at the French countryside and gripped my cell phone, longing to call Kay. If Aunt Gerarda had said that, it was because she had talked to Mamma, and Mamma was somehow waiting for me.

We spent the afternoon with Giorgetta, who didn’t look as corpse-like as she had on the first day but still left her mother speechless and crying for a good couple of hours. She spent three months in the hospital, and I paid for it all, even for Aunt Gerarda to stay a few times. When the program was over she came out in a fairly decent state, so I went with them to Charles de Gaulle airport and we hugged and agreed to meet again soon. All three of us cried.

That night, while I was sleeping beside Kay, I heard him say: how odd, I feel a strange tingling in my arm. I woke up and said, wait, I’ll scratch you, but he said, no, not that one, the other one. We were both stunned. Can you feel your arm? I asked, rubbing my hand against him. Yes, he said, I feel your hand, the pressure of three of your fingers. He tried to move it and couldn’t, but it was an omen. Something was telling me that the loose or badly sewed threads of my life could be put back together again.

The next day I looked for the piece of paper my aunt had given me and dialed the number. It was a Miami number. When the phone started ringing at the other end I found I couldn’t breathe, so I hung up and waited a little. I poured myself two glasses of gin and the alcohol cleared my head. Then I gave the number to Jenofonte and told him to call from the next room, ask for Beatrice, then tell me. I had quickly downed another gin when Jenofonte said, Madame Beatrice on the telephone. I was unable to speak, but she heard my breathing and started speaking, daughter, I knew you were going to call so I’m ready, Gerarda told me you’re living in Paris and you’re rich, I know the kind of work you do and you mustn’t feel ashamed, what matters is that you had the courage to call, so speak now, tell me something. . I said hello in a thin voice and we both cried for a while then we started chatting and didn’t stop for three hours. At one point I said, Mamma, wait a second. I put my hand over the mouthpiece and told Jenofonte to call the travel agency and book a ticket on the next flight to Miami, and I said, Mamma, tell me your address, I’m coming straight away.

Our reunion was a happy one, if a little tense. She was sixty, but still elegant and beautiful. It was obvious she looked after herself, went to the gym every day, had had a few facelifts, and made a lot of effort to slay slim. She lived alone in an apartment near Coral Gables. She had separated from her Mexican lover more than seven years earlier, and although he was a fairly nasty and cynical individual, he had left her that apartment and enough money to give her an above-average monthly income. I waited nervously for the right moment to talk to her about my work, but it came very naturally. Do you know why I separated from him? she said, and I said, no, tell me, what happened? Mamma poured herself another dash of V8 with vodka, which was what we were drinking on her terrace, and she started her story, which wasn’t very long and basically fairly predictable.

I always knew he was cheating on me, she said, but I’d reached the age when a woman gives up and prefers to close her eyes. His meetings and business trips to Acapulco and Sinaloa and the Bahamas were getting longer and longer and seemed to be less and less justified, but I didn’t care because it all happened far away, in that great nothingness made up of all the places we haven’t lived and know only as dots on a map. Until one day he started to seem strange, nervous, exhausted. He would get home in the evening or at night and go straight in the shower claiming he was hot or tired. His mouth smelled of alcohol. One day he traveled to Chicago and I got into his office and gave it a complete once-over. That was a serious mistake, of course, because what you look for, you find. It’s something you should never do.

Well, I found it. A key ring with an address and two keys. 1587 Tijuana Drive, Apartment 6D. I went straight there, and it turned out to be a respectable-looking building, not luxurious but quite clean and well-maintained. When I got to the door of 6D I took out the key, but just as I was about to put it in the lock I heard a voice inside saying, can’t you get back before tomorrow? will you be here by noon? She was talking on a cell phone near the door. Then she said, bring me something nice, darling, different than what you always bring me. I felt jealous. I dialed Tony’s cell phone and of course it was engaged. I waited until the conversation was over and dialed again. This time he replied immediately and said, did you just call me? I was talking to the office, I’m going to have to stay until Saturday, it’s freezing cold here, but there’s no way I can get out of it, the Abbotts want to meet with me on Friday and it’s too much bother to go and come back.

The next day I found an observation post, a coffee shop on the corner of Tijuana Drive and Anchorage Street, just opposite the entrance to the building. Of course I saw him arrive at noon, right on time, with a bag of gifts. It made me angry, but then I cooled down and plotted my revenge. The first thing I did was make copies of the keys and leave them in their place so that he didn’t notice anything. Then I started keeping an eye on the bitch, who was a Colombian named Dorys. She was a stylist in a salon near Fito’s office, which was where he’d met her. One day I went in to get my hair done and studied her. She was an attractive woman just under forty, that idiot Fito had good taste. It was obvious she didn’t know who I was, because there was nothing nervous or uncomfortable about the way she behaved. On the contrary, she was very friendly and attentive. I started to make plans. My idea was to get her to dump him, or to make him believe that she had a lover. Something like that. One day, while Dorys was in the salon, I got into her apartment. It was quite nicely furnished, the home of someone who was neat and tidy but also romantic. A painting of a stormy dusk in the Caribbean, two heart-shaped red cushions, things like that. I looked through her underwear and was surprised not to find daring panties or garter belts, the kind of thing that appeals to older men going out with younger women. I wasn’t there for very long, I knew they’d be coming back together that night. Before I left, I put a pair of men’s socks beside the bed. That was part of my strategy. Leaving things that would incriminate her. Another day, I left a half-full bottle of eau de cologne, which I’d bought and half emptied, of course, like everything I left. And it worked, things started to go sour between them. One day I entered the apartment after they’d spent all weekend together, and saw that they had moved the TV into the bedroom. There was a bottle of rum, cigarette butts, and various DVDs strewn on the floor. I picked one up and saw you in the photograph on the cover. I recognized you in spite of the make-up and all the ways you’d changed, and in spite of the fact that you were naked. I sat down on the bed. My god, my husband has erotic parties with his lover and gets off on watching pornographic videos of my daughter. I felt really disgusted by the time I left, and when he got home I told him I knew everything and didn’t want to see him anymore. He gave me this apartment and a decent income. So I separated from him and found out what you did. Then I investigated a little and discovered that you were a great professional in that kind of thing and had even won prizes. I’m not going to tell you I was pleased, but I thought, if a person chooses to do something in life, however strange it may be, they should do it well, and that’s exactly what you’re doing, daughter.

I told her about my life, about Kay and Kim and Eve Studios, I talked about my experience with drugs, about Giorgetta and how hard things had been, but how that hardness had become my greatest treasure, an inexhaustible source of strength, and probably of talent. She felt guilty: if she had been closer I wouldn’t have suffered so much, but I insisted and said, Mamma, I repeat, those difficult years are my resource, I wouldn’t change them for anything.

I stayed for a week and found out about her life, which was quite simple. She had a group of women friends she played cards with every Friday in a restaurant called Sapori di Sicilia, and she was a member of an evangelical church led by a strange Latino, a handsome, muscular man with tattoos all over his body, who would certainly have had a great future in the porn industry. A few days later, Kay traveled to Los Angeles, and that was where we all met up. I think they got along well, because after four days Mamma invited him to Miami and later he bought her an airline ticket to Paris so that she could come and see us.

We are already coming to the end of this eventful life, full of highs and lows. Having now recounted how the only family I had was reunited, and how my professional success came about, it only remains for me to tell you about the last great idea of Kim, our brilliant screenwriter, something he wanted to call “left-wing porn.” His screenplays started to depict sexual situations in which selfishness was combated and the collective ownership of the means of production was advocated. The first one, Orgasmic Integration, was a founding document. It includes an amusing scene in which a Mediterranean fisherman, hard at work, catches his wife in the hold of his boat, being given a double penetration by two Senegalese immigrants with very large cocks, who had gotten on the boat the night before after drifting in on a clandestine raft. The fisherman takes off his rubber boots and his leather apron all smeared with scales, looks straight at the camera, and says, maybe having her with them will bring me new pleasures, through a combination of all the means of arousal I’ll be able to have better sex, because my pleasure is inseparable from everyone else’s. Having said this, he throws himself into the fray, displaying a fairly reasonable cock, although, as if to prove certain cultural myths, it’s smaller than those of the Africans, and everything ends in a double facial ejaculation accompanied by ejaculation over the buttocks, three cannons shooting their load at the same time, a sublime image intended, according to Kim, to recall the cannons in The Battleship Potemkin, which was the inspiration for the scene.

We made a new series of twelve movies to illustrate the theory of left-wing porn, and they were very successful, although, as often happens, we were soon attacked by those envious of us, who said that our esthetic approach was opportunistic, that we were jumping on the bandwagon of the new currents then transforming European socialism, and other nonsense like that. As often happens, instead of damaging us these diatribes gave our work a stronger impetus and helped to spread it. Some even started working in the opposite direction to ours, for example, a Danish production company introduced “center-right porn,” although the concept wasn’t very clear, because in the end it was all just routine humping and geysers of sperm, with no real significance.

In spite of its difficult beginnings, my story actually has a happy ending, which, of course, is something our screenwriter Kim hates, being an advocate of open and slightly incomprehensible endings, à la Bergman. Our company is one of the biggest in Europe and the movies we make are sold in America, Africa, Asia, and the former Soviet Union. The latest, The Clitoris and Its Forms, has sold 680,000 copies on DVD. A real hit.

I haven’t mentioned the books I’ve written, because that probably isn’t the part of my life you wanted to hear about, and it’s the least important anyway. Lives are like cities: if they’re too neat and tidy they don’t have a story. The best stories come out of misfortune and destruction.

I have told you mine.