The Armies

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We have been going from one side of the house to the other, depending on the blasts, fleeing from wherever we hear them, engulfed in their frenzy; we end up behind the living room window, where we catch astonished, fitful glimpses of the fighting troops, without distinguishing which army they belong to, the faces as cruel as any; we are aware of them going past, ducked down, slowly or at full speed, shouting or dumb with desperation, and always the sound of boots, panting, curses. A louder bang shakes us, from inside the garden; the octagonal living-room clock — its face of painted glass, an Alka-Seltzer promotion that Otilia bought in Popayán — has split into a thousand lines, the hour stopped forever at five o’clock on the dot. I run down the hallway to the back door, not caring about the danger; what difference can it make when it seems the war is going on in my own house. I find the fountain — of polished sandstone — blown apart; on the ground shiny with water the orange fish still quiver; what to do? Pick them up? What will Otilia think — I wonder foolishly — when she finds this mess? I gather up the fish one at a time and throw them into the sky, far away, so Otilia will not see her fish dead.

At the back, the wall that separates my property from the Brazilian’s smokes where it has been blasted in half: there is a breach the size of two men, there are pieces of the ladder scattered all over; flowers lie strewn about, their clay pots pulverized; half the trunk of one of the orange trees, split lengthwise, still trembles and vibrates like a harp, coming apart inch by inch; there are piles of smashed oranges, sprinkled like a strange multitude of yellow drops all over the garden. And that is when I discover, unable to believe my eyes, the dark silhouettes of four or six soldiers who jog along balancing on the top of the wall. Soldiers? I ask myself. Yes, the same. They jump into my garden, pointing their rifles at me; I smell the sweat, their breath, one of them asks me where the door to the house is; I point out the route and run behind them down the hall. We hear Cristina’s scream in the living room; she holds her hands over her face, thinks they are going to kill her.

One of the soldiers, the last one — the one closest to us — seems to recognize her. I see that he looks at her with excessive attention.

“Hide under a table,” he tells her, “get down on the floor,” and carries on advancing behind the others.

I know I have to tell them something, warn them of something, ask them about something, but I do not remember anything. So we go to the door, which they open stealthily. They lean out, peer this way and that and burst onto the street.

“Close that door,” they shout at me.

I close it, what was it I had to say to them? The grenade, I remember, but another tremendous blast — again from the direction of the garden — distracts me.

“Didn’t you hear?” I say to Cristina. “Hide.”

“Where?” she asks with a shriek.

“Wherever,” I shout back. “Under the ground.”

The smoke spreads from the garden, it is a long asphyxiating cloud that streams into the hallway. I return through its folds to the garden; I make out the edge of the wall, examine it: it is very possible that someone is following the soldiers, and in their place will find me; it does not matter, it is better to die at home than in the street. I remember Otilia and a sort of fear and rage inspire me to step right into the breach in the wall, as if that would protect me. The smoke is coming from another of the trees, burnt and split from the top; further down, on the very white pulp of the trunk stripped of its bark, I see a bloodstain, and, on top of the roots, pierced with splinters, the corpse of one of the cats. I clutch my head, everything spins around me, and in the middle of it all Geraldina’s house shines in front of me, with no wall: this hole is a huge irony, through which I can take in Geraldina’s garden in its entirety, the terrace, the round pool; and not just look, I could pass through to the other side; what am I thinking? Of Geraldina undressed, oh God. Is Otilia in there? I do not see anyone on the other side, I cannot distinguish anything. There are shots coming from the street, with increasing intervals between them. Far away, in a vortex of screams, the center of which is the white point of the church, curls of smoke can be seen, on all sides. I enter my neighbor’s garden, which has not suffered as much damage as mine — except for the absence of the macaws, their laughter, their strolls, although I soon find them, stiff, floating in the pool. I cross the terrace and proceed inside.

The glass door is wide open.

“Is there anyone here?” I ask. “Otilia, are you here?”

Something or someone moves behind me: I turn to look with my heart in my mouth. Our two hens are sheltering in the Brazilian’s garden, as indifferent as they are extraordinary, luckier than the macaws; they peck patiently around the ground. They remind me of Maestro Claudino, of my promise.

I find Geraldina in the living room where I’d spoken to her not long before. She is still sitting in the same armchair, still dressed in black, still sunk in her sorrow, in a shadow of love made more all-encompassing, urgent and devastating than ever by sadness. Her hands in her lap, her eyes gone, a tall icon of suffering. Probably because it is dusk, and because it is war, the same deep darkness of this day surrounds everything more forcefully. I find other sitting spectres around Geraldina; women chanting the rosary, their voices plead and answer in whispers. I interrupt the prayer. They ignore me. In vain I search for Otilia’s face among them. I feel sorry for myself: if Otilia was praying with them she would already have come to meet me.

“And Otilia?” I ask in spite of everything.

They continue their muttered praying.

“She was here, sir,” Geraldina’s emotionless voice says to me. “She was here, and she left again.”

I have returned to my house again, by the same route. I start to make coffee in the kitchen, and stay there, sitting, waiting for the water to boil in the pot. I listen to the water boiling, and remain still. The water evaporates completely, the pot burns; the thin strip of smoke rises up from the bottom of it and reminds me of the burnt tree, the dead body of the cat. Well, I was unable to make coffee; I turn off the stove, what time is it? How much time has passed? I do not hear anymore shooting. How will time pass, my time, from now on? The din of the war disappears: now and then a distant lament, which seems almost not to belong to us, a call, a shouted name, any name, running footsteps, indistinct noises that fade and are replaced by absolute silence. Night is falling, shadows begin to hang everywhere, I can see nothing but myself. I try again to make coffee: I hold the small pot under the tap. All of a sudden there is no water, or electricity; you have wasted your chance to make coffee, Ismael, and who knows when the water and power will come back on? What would Otilia do in my position? She would fill the pot with water from the fountain, light the coal stove, she would ennoble the world, offering us coffee in the midst of catastrophe; I sit still, night arrives in full and I hear that someone is speaking out in the street, through a megaphone.

We are asked to bring any wounded out immediately, otherwise to remain inside our houses until the situation is stabilized, that is what the impersonal voice says through the megaphone:

“… until this situation is stabilized. We have succeeded in driving back the bandits.”

I hear, as the only reply, a moan from inside the house. Cristina, I say to myself. Her name is the only thing that shakes me from this deathlike paralysis into which I have sunk. I look in the kitchen drawers for a candle to light. I do not find one. I have to feel my way through my own house; I go to my room — the room Otilia and I share with that old wooden Saint Anthony, a sort of altar where the candles and matches are kept. The moan sounds again in the darkness; it has to be the girl, but she is not in the room. My hands tremble, light the candle with difficulty. With this flame I go through the house searching, calling Cristina.

I discover that she has gone into the room that used to be our daughter’s, where I have not been for years — only Otilia goes in there, to pray for us.

“Here we will be closer to our daughter,” she said.

“Cristina,” I call out loudly. “Are you injured?”

“No,” she answers at last, coming out from under the bed. With all that has happened and the unfortunate circumstanccs I deplore my own self, detesting myself for noticing, voluntarily or involuntarily, the bunched up dress, the pale birdlike thighs, the wild darkness between her legs, in the faint candlelight, her face wet with tears.

“What about my mom?” she asks again in terror.

She hugs an old teddy bear that used to belong to my daughter. She is a little girl: she could be my granddaughter.

“If you want, go out and look for her,” I say. “And if you want to come back, come back, and if you don’t want to, don’t come back, but stop crying.”

“How?” she managed to reply. “The tears just come out.”

“This is no time to cry, Cristina. I’m not telling you to laugh, I’m just saying we have to gather our strength to find those we are looking for. If you cry, your tears weaken us.”

I tell myself the same thing.

And I hear her leave the house, slam the door shut, run out into the night, the night that must stand just like the street: empty. I have stayed sitting on my daughter’s bed, the candle in my hand, feeling the wax drip over my hands, the wick I extinguish with my fingers, smelling my own charred flesh, until dawn breaks. You have not returned, Otilia, not sooner and not later. I shall have to look for you again, but where, where did you go to look for me?

I hear birdsong — they sing in spite of everything. The garden appears to my eyes to be divided by gauzes of light, it is a haggard dawn, I hear the surviving cats meowing in the kitchen. I do what Otilia would do: I feed them bread and milk, and I eat the same thing, I am your other cat, I think, and in thinking it I remember the dead cat: I will have to bury that cat, so you shall never see your cat dead, Otilia. I go to the tree: the mangled cat is still there; I bury him under the same tree. Maestro Claudino’s hut is the last place left, the last place you could have gone looking for me, Otilia, I told you myself I planned to take the Maestro a chicken; there you are, I shall find you there, and so there I go, repeating it to myself with all the force and stubbornness of a light in the middle of the fog that men call hope.