The Armies

~ ~ ~

“Good morning, profesor. I’ve come to say goodbye.”

At the door is Gloria Dorado, a cloth hat in her hands, her eyes red from crying. She carries a wooden cage, with a troupial inside.

“I want to give you this as a memento, profesor, so you can take care of him.”

I take the cage. It is the first time I have received a cage as a memento: as soon as we are alone I shall let you go, bird, how am I going to take care of you? I can barely take care of myself.

“Come in, Gloria. We’ll have a cup of coffee.”

“I don’t have time, profesor.”

“And your house? What is going to happen to your house?”

“I have entrusted it to Lucrecia, in case I come back. Although it could be that she will leave too, of course. But she can use the house, she has five children, and I have none, profesor. And I probably won’t have any.”

“You never know, Gloria. You are young and beautiful. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

She smiles sadly.

“You’ve still got your sense of humor, profesor. I’m very fond of you both, and I know that Otilia will be back, I swear.”

“Everybody tells me so.”

I cannot keep the grief out of my voice; I wished Gloria had not come to say it again. She does not realize.

“I dreamt I saw you walking together, in the market. I felt happy and went to say hello. I said to you: ‘Didn’t I tell you Otilia would return safe and sound?’"

She smiles, she smiles at me, and I must confess her dream hurts me, are we going to cry? That’s all I need.

“God willing,” I say, the cage hanging from my hand: the troupial hops from one side to the other, sits on the tiny bamboo swing, and begins to sing: perhaps he has guessed my intention to set him free. “And how are you going, Gloria?” I ask, and can no longer look her in the eye. “There is no circulation allowed on the highway. They threaten to blow up any vehicle, private or not, and sometimes with the occupants inside. There is no secure transport.”

“A lieutenant has offered to take us, my sister and me, as far as El Palo, in his truck, with the soldiers. I’ll find transport from there to go inland.”

“Traveling in a truck like that will be just as dangerous, if not more so. You’ll be exposed, Gloria. Do not even think of disguising yourself as a soldier, how can this lieutenant take you that way, putting you at risk?”

“He told me in secret that the truck will be protected by warplanes. They’ll clear the way for us, profesor.”

“I hope so.”

“And I will be in more danger here,” Gloria says; her eyes mist up and she whispers: “when they find out that Marcos turned up dead. Hortensia will not forgive me, she’ll say that I’m guilty, she’ll say I killed him.”

Now she begins to cry, hugs me, and I hug her, wrapping my arms around her with the cage in one hand.

“He showed up in a ditch, half a kilometer from here. It took a while to recognize him. According to what the Lieutenant told me, he’s been dead for two years, at least, left out there, in that ditch.”

“Gloria. Another death, by force. To the shame of the living.”

“You see, profesor? They didn’t want to help him. Nobody moved a finger to get him freed. That woman didn’t offer a single peso for her husband. I didn’t have money, just that little house he gave me. But what good is all that money to her? It won’t be long before they take her too.”

I do not want to tell her that Hortensia Galindo has already left San Jose, and in a helicopter.

“Oh, Gloria, this country, poor in its wealth. Good luck, start your life over again. What else can I say?”

“Like telling someone to be born again,” she smiles. “Is that what you’re advising?” And she pulls away.

I am pervaded by her fertile, torrid perfume, mixed with the smell of her tears.

“I’m off,” she says, “my sister is waiting.” And she leaves the house.

I close the door.

I go, cage in hand, to the garden. I am seized by a sort of annoyance: let beautiful women not come to this house, let my pain not be increased by seeing them, damn it. I put the cage down on the stone laundry sink, and open the tiny bamboo door.

“Fly away, troupial,” I shout at the bird. “Hurry up and fly, or the Survivors will come and take care of you.”

The bird stays still, before the open door.

“Aren’t you going to fly? You’ll see, there are cats here.”

The bird remains motionless. Have his wings been cut? I cover him with my hand and take him out of the cage. It is a lovely troupial, his feathers gleam, his wings are not cut.

“Are you frightened of the sky? fly, for God’s sake,” and I throw him up into the sky.

The troupial, taken by surprise, spreads his still numb wings, and, with great effort, manages to cushion the fall. Then he hops, a couple of times, and at last flies, as if jumping, up to the wall. There again he stays still: what is he waiting for? It is as if he was turning back to look at me, at the cage.

“What a lovely bird,” says a voice.

It is Geraldina, appearing through the breach in the wall. Geraldina dressed in black. I no longer remember her naked.

“A troupial,” I say.

And we both see him fly, disappear into the sky.

* * *

Once again sitting in the middle of the rubble, beside each other; her face at my side encloses me, without our taking our eyes off the sky. “Those were other times,” I tell her, and I can believe she knows what I’m referring to: her walking naked in her garden, me peering over the wall.

She gives a faint laugh and then the same pensive face reappears, her eyes on the sky as it fills with clouds, eyes on the skyless clouds; I see a hand on her knee, it is my hand on her knee, when did I put my hand on her knee? But she does not respond, it is the same as if a withered leaf had fallen from a tree and landed on her leg, a disgusting but innocuous insect, and she keeps talking (since when?) of her negotiations with those who are holding her husband prisoner, or an old man’s hand landing on her knee all of a sudden seems quite natural to her, old age has its liberties, or simply the only thing that interests her in this world is the payment of the ransom, the enterprise in which she is now involved, with the support of her brother from Buga; that is why, Ismael, no wonder she does not see my hand on her knee, she assures me she has given them all she has, she says she is at a crossroads, don’t you worry, profesor, it is my crossroads. Then she stares at me attentively, as if she guessed or thought she had guessed my thoughts; has she perhaps discovered my hand on her knee? Does she now know that I am only thinking of her knee? The contact, the flame?

“No, profesor,” she tells me. “They do not have Otilia. I asked them.”

“Otilia,” I say.

Now she tells me that she was not even able to raise half the money they were demanding.

“Don’t bother even giving us half,” they told her. “You won’t be doing your husband any favors,” they said, she tells me, her mouth contracted into a rictus I have never seen before; is it joy? They even said to her: “It’s obvious you don’t love him.”

She tells me: “I felt their looks all over my body, profesor, as if they wanted to eat me alive.”

They gave her two weeks to pay the rest, “that means today, profesor, time’s up today, I told them I agreed, and I told them to bring him with them, as they promised before, a promise they broke.”

“And what if we had brought him?” they answered. “We would have had to take him back again. If we didn’t feel like it, his death would be your fault, for failing to comply, understand?”

I told them again to bring him, to let me see him, speak to him, and I said: “I already gave you all I had, now I have to find someone to lend me more, and if no one will lend me money, I’ll still be here with my son.”

“What do you mean, they won’t lend it to you?” they said. “You’ll see.”

Geraldina looks at me again with a shocked, terrified expression; I do not know what to say to her; I have never seen the faces of the kidnappers; who knows what kind of people they are?

I only met Geraldina’s brother; I saw him arrive from Buga in his car, a rainy night; tall, bald, worried; he managed to cross the last stretch of highway with a safe-conduct pass from the guerrillas; I heard him sound his horn three times and looked out of the window: Geraldina came out, with a candle in her hand; they embraced. And they went into the house, both carrying, with effort, an enormous black plastic bag, with Geraldina’s money in cash, her money and her husband’s, she told me with sudden fury, the money earned by the couple through years of work, profesor, never any wrongdoing.

The same night of his arrival, Geraldina’s brother, a startled shadow, left San José the same way he came, in his car, in the rain, the safe-conduct taped to the inside of the windscreen as if it were a flag. He argued with Geraldina about the advisability of leaving Eusebito with her. Geraldina was willing to let him go, but the boy wanted to stay with his mother.

"I explained to him what the risks were, I explained it to him as to a little man.” Geraldina is proud, in her innocence. “And Eusebito had no hesitations: with his papa and his mama till death.” Geraldina’s mouth half opens, her eyes go further off into the sky: “I haven’t got a peso left, profesor, that’s what I’m going to tell them, they’ll have to take pity, and if they don’t take pity, let them do what they want, let them take me with him, that would be preferable, the three of us together, as it was meant to be, than to wait years not knowing how long, and Eusebito will go with me, that’s my last card, they’ll take pity, I’m sure, I’ve given them everything, I’m not hiding anything from them.”

Now Geraldina has begun to cry: for the second time today a woman is crying in this house.

And while she cries I see my hand on her knee, without really seeing it — I discover that, in one second — but all of a sudden I see it, my hand still on Geraldina’s knee. Geraldina, who cries and does not see or does not want to see my hand on her knee, or she is seeing it now, Ismael, you are so shabby that all that matters is her knee, never the tears for her missing husband, not even Geraldina’s senseless but irrefutable joy: to say that her son will accompany her like a little man, whatever may happen, and to say it without her voice breaking, what would her husband think? What a disappointment: “Pack up everything and get out of here,” something like that Eusebito said his father said, Geraldina’s delirious voice moves me, the two of us in the middle of the ruins, among the remains of flowers, both the same.

“Hortensia offered me a lift in the helicopter with her, profesor. Of course, I am not taking it, I could not. But today I won’t deny it: I am afraid.”

She is staring at my hand on her knee.

“You,” she says, or asks.

“Yes?”

And again the fleeting laugh.

“You’re not going to die, profesor?”

“No.”

“Look how you’re trembling.”

“It is the emotion, Geraldina. Or it is my lechery, as Otilia would say.”

“Don’t worry, profesor. Stick with love. Love conquers lechery.”

And, tenderly, I remove my hand from her knee. But she stays there, in silence, sitting beside me.

Her son called her, from the other side of the wall: it seemed he had just fallen in the empty pool, or was it a game? His voice sounded as if he had just fallen into the pool, and then a shout, nothing more. Geraldina returned immediately, ducking through the breach in the wall, her body as if carved in mourning. I did not follow her: another would have, not me, not anymore: what for? Besides, I was hungry, hungry for the first time; when was the last time I ate? I went to the kitchen and looked for the pot of rice: there was one plateful left, the grains looked hard, damp, burnt. I ate them with my hand, cold, leathery, and I sat there for a while, in front of the stove. For a long time now the Survivors had not appeared in the house, no doubt due to the lack of food, of attention. They would have to take care of themselves. But I missed their meowing and their eyes, which brought me close to Otilia, kept me company: thinking of them was like invoking their memory, palpable in the kitchen, where traces of feathers, like a trail in a fairy tale, led me into my bedroom: there, at the foot of the bed, lay two mangled birds, and on the pillow, the remains of black butterflies, an offering of food the cats had left for me. This is all I needed, I thought, for my cats to feed me: if I do not take care of their lunch, they take care of mine. If I had not eaten that rice, I would not have hesitated to finish plucking those birds and roast them. I picked up the birds, the butterflies, swept up the feathers, then I wanted to sleep, I stretched out face down, I think I was just about asleep when a woman’s scream from the street summoned me, everyone is screaming, I said to myself, and left the house as if stepping out into hell.