The Armies

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It seemed like any old Sunday in San José, well into the morning: Everyone is going where they're coming, I said to myself idiotically, because none of the faces I passed along the way was Otilia’s.

Gloria Dorado again, at the edge of town, said wordlessly: “Have faith.”

Not far from the road, fifty meters away, in the town’s water tank, some soldiers were bathing; they were washing their clothes, joking with each other.

Near the plaza, men’s voices come from the rectangular building that used to be the market, arguing, proposing, rejecting. Someone speaks through a megaphone. I go in but the quantity of bodies crowded into the corridor keeps me from getting very far There I feel the midday heat for the first time. I listen to the discussion, I even distinguish, at the back of the room, in the center of all the heads, the heads of Father Albornoz and the Mayor.

Professor Lesmes is speaking: he proposes vacating the municipality “so the military and the guerrillas find the scene of battle empty.”

Voices reply in shouts, murmurs. Some think they should barricade the highway as a protest until the government moves the police out of San José.

“Yes,” says Lesmes, “they should at least take their fortifications out of the urban center to stop the assaults on the town.”

They announce that the attack has left five soldiers, three policemen, ten insurgents, four civilians and one child dead, and at least fifty wounded. There is no consensus in the meeting, and what does it matter to me? I don’t see Otilia either; I want to leave, but the compact group of recent arrivals behind me blocks me; in vain I try to make my way through; we are all sweating, we regard each other dumbfounded.

The Mayor dismisses the proposals: he will ask the national government to initiate a dialogue immediately with those who have taken up arms.

“We have to get to the roots of this problem,” he says. “Yesterday it was in Apartadó, in Toribío, now in San José, and tomorrow in some other town.”

“They want the town vacated,” Father Albornoz interrupts. “They have let me know.”

“We cannot leave,” several men reply heatedly. “People here have what little they have by the sweat of their brows and we are not going to throw it away.”

“Evacuation is not the answer,” the Mayor determines, and, nevertheless, it is not possible to ignore the deep alarm about another imminent assault on the town center: who would have thought that it would happen to us as well, they say here, they say there, they repeat.

Years ago, before the attack on the church, displaced people from other towns used to pass through our town; we used to see them crossing the highway, interminable lines of men and children and women, silent crowds with neither bread nor destinations. Years ago, three thousand indigenous people stayed for a long while in San José, but eventually had to leave due to extreme food shortages in the improvised shelters.

Now it is our turn.

“My house has been turned upside down,” someone shouts. “Who’s going to pay for that?”

Disconsolate laughter is heard.

Father Albornoz begins a prayer.

“In the Lord’s goodness,” he says. “Our Father, who art in heaven …”

The laughter stops. I think of Otilia, my house, the dead cat, the fish, and, a moment later, while the prayer goes on, I manage at last to get out as if held up by all the bodies, which push me to the door; does nobody want to pray?

Outside we hear the cry of Hey, the empanada vendor: the echo bounces along the boiling street. Mechanically, I walk in the direction of the plaza. A group of men, several acquaintances among them, fall silent when I approach. They greet me anxiously. They are talking about Captain Berrío, temporarily relieved of his command while an investigation gets under way.

“They’ll court martial him, and he’ll end up a colonel in another town, as a reward for shooting civilians,” predicts old Celmiro, older than me, and such a good friend that he avoids looking me in the eye.

Why are you frightened to see me, Celmiro? You feel sorry for me, for yourself, but in any case you decide to go home, surrounded by your children.

Voices warn me that landmines have been laid around the town: it will be impossible to leave town without the risk of being blown to bits, where were you, profesor? All the outskirts of San Jose have been mined during the night, they’ve deactivated seventy or more devices, but how many remain? Damn, say the voices, there are tin cans, milk churns full of shrapnel and excrement, to infect the victims’ blood, what bastards, what assholes; the voices speak of Yina Quintero, a fifteen-year-old girl who stepped on a mine and lost her left ear and eye. Those who came into San José cannot now leave, they say, and nor do they want to go.

“I am going to the hospital,” I tell them.

We hear a helicopter. We all look up, in suspense: now there are two helicopters, and we stand listening to them for a while, seeing them disappear in the direction of the garrison.

I walk away.

“Profesor,” someone warns me, a voice I do not recognize: “They killed everyone in the hospital including the wounded. You keep looking for your wife: we know you’re looking for her. She is not among the dead, which means she’s still alive.”

I have stopped, without turning my head.

“Missing,” I say.

“Missing,” the voice confirms.

“And Mauricio Rey?”

“Dead, like all the wounded. They even killed Dr. Orduz, didn’t you hear? This time he tried to hide in the refrigerator where they keep the medicine, and they found him: they riddled the fridge with bullets, with him inside.

I keep walking, not knowing where to.

“It was brutal, profesor.”

“You keep calm and wait,” says another voice.

“They’ll let you know.”

“You need to keep calm.”

I return again to my house, again I sit on the bed.

I hear the surviving cats meowing, circling around me.

Otilia is missing, I tell them.

The Survivors sink the abysses of their eyes into my eyes, as if they were suffering with me. How long has it been since I cried?