The Armies

~ ~ ~

Why stay in bed? Dawn breaks and I leave the house: I retrace my steps back toward the cliff. On the mountain across the way, at this time of the morning, the scattered houses look eternal, far from each other, but united anyway because they are and always will be on the same mountain, high and blue. Years ago, before Otilia, I imagined myself living in one of them for the rest of my life. No one lives in them today, or very few of them anyway; not more than two years ago there were close to ninety families, and what with the war — the drug traffickers and army, guerrillas and paramilitaries — there are only sixteen left. Many died, most of them must have had to leave: who knows how many families are going to stay on now? Will we stay? I look away from the landscape because for the first time I cannot stand it, everything has changed now — but not the way it should have, damn it.

A pig walks toward me along the edge of the cliff, sniffing the ground. It stops for a moment at my feet, lifts its snout, snorts, eyes up my shoes: whose pig is this? All through the town, every once in a while, a pig or a hen will wander, no sign of an owner. It is possible that it is I who has forgotten the names of the owners of the pigs; I used to recognize them. And what if I took this pig to Maestro Claudino, instead of a hen?

I hear a shout in the early morning, and then a shot. It is up ahead, at the corner. The detonation has formed a black cloud of smoke there. A white shadow runs across the street, from that corner to the next. Nothing more is heard, except footsteps hurrying away till they disappear. Today I got up early to go out, better to go out, one cannot go for a quiet stroll these days; I hear my footsteps now, echoing one behind the other, speeding up, in a definite direction; what am I doing here, at five in the morning? I discover that the route back to my house is the same one the running shadow took. I stop, it is not prudent to follow fleeing shadows, there are no more shots to be heard, a private matter? Could be; it does not seem like the war, it is another war: someone caught someone stealing, someone simply caught someone, who? I keep walking, stop, listen: nothing else, no one else. My knee: “You have to rest it for three days,” Maestro Claudino warned me, and here I am back and forth. Will you start hurting me again, knee? No, my painless steps round the corners, I am cured, what an embarrassment that pain was, Otilia, what a premonition, what a mistake, let nobody miss me when I’m gone, but let nobody have to help me to the toilet, Otilia, die after I do.

I walk without knowing where to, in the opposite direction from the shadow, away from the gunshot; better find a place where I can sit and watch the sun rise over San José, although I could use another shot of cane liquor for this other pain as if inside my breath, what is it? Can it be that I am going to die? More shots ring out, machinegun bursts this time — I freeze, they are distant — so it wasn’t another war, it is the real war, we are going mad, or we have gone mad, where have I finished up? It’s the school; habit brought me here.

“Profesor, you’re up early to teach?”

It’s Fanny, who was Fanny? The caretaker. Smaller than she used to be, the same apron as years ago. Did I not slip into her camp bed more than many years ago, did I not smell her? Yes. She smelled of sugar water. And her head has been painted white. She still lives here, but now none of her children are with her, what am I saying, her children must be old by now, they will have gone. I remember her husband: he died young, on his way back from some saint’s day fiesta; he fell into a ditch and his mule landed on top of him.

“Profesor, it seems they took someone today or yesterday.”

Her eyes are as bright as ever, like the time I smelled her, but her body is in ruins worse than mine.

And she says: “You had better go home.”

“That’s where I’m going.”

And she closes the door, just like that: she won’t remember what I remember. I set off again toward home, on the other side of the town. I am far away; when did I leave, at what time? I simply did not want to follow the direction of the running shadow. Now I can go back, the shadow will have gone now, I think, and I think I’m going back but in the plaza the soldiers stop me, they escort me, at gunpoint, to a group of men sitting on the steps of the church. We know each other; over there I see Celmiro, older than I am: a friend dozing. Some say good morning. Arrested. Today Otilia will not be bored by my news. I watch the brightening dawn, which descends from the mountaintop like fluttering sheets; the weather is still cool, but it makes way, minute by minute, for the stubborn heat, if I had an orange in my hand, if the shade of the orange tree, if Otilia was looking over her fish, if the cats.

A soldier asks for our identification cards, another verifies the numbers on the screen of a portable machine. Those who were sleeping in San José begin to come out of their houses. They know very well that we are the unfortunate ones who got up early. It is our turn. We the early risers are interrogated: why did you get up early today, what were you doing in the street? Only some can go, more or less half of us: a soldier reads a list of names.

“These can go,” he said, and I was astonished: I did not hear my name.

Anyway I leave with those who are leaving. A sort of anger, indifference, helps me walk through the rifles without drawing attention to myself. In fact, they do not even look at me.

Old Celmiro, older than me, a friend, follows my example: he was not named either, and this mortifies him.

“What’s wrong with these people?” he says to me. “What could they have to accuse us of? Fuck all.” He complains that none of his sons came to get him when they found out.

And we hear the protests of Rodrigo Pinto, young and worried; weakly he protests; he crumples his white hat in his hands; he is from the next district, lives in the mountains, relatively far from our town, but nevertheless he is arrested and will stay arrested for who knows how long; they will not allow him to go to his house, which is on the front line, halfway up the next mountain; he tells us his wife is pregnant, his four children alone and waiting for him; he came into town to buy oil and sugarloaf, but he dares not follow my example and that of Celmiro: he is not old enough to cross the line unnoticed.

It has been three or four long hours staring at each other, more resigned than outraged. It goes on all the time, when something happens and one gets up earlier than usual. They load the ones left up into an army truck; they are probably going to interrogate them more closely at the base.

“Someone was taken,” people are saying. “Who did they take this time?”

Nobody knows, and nobody is in a hurry to find out either; someone being taken is a commonplace occurrence, but it is a sensitive subject to enquire about too much, to be excessively concerned; some women, while we were being held, came to speak to their husbands. Otilia did not come; she will still be sleeping, she will dream that I am asleep at her side, and now it is noon, hard to believe; where had the time gone? But gone it had, as usual, as ever.

* * *

“So, profesor? You’re a light sleeper too.”

“I didn’t know you were with me,” I answer.

“I wasn’t. I was just watching. I didn’t want to disturb you, profesor, not to bother you. You looked as though you were dreaming of angels.”

And Dr. Gentil Orduz comes over to me, opening his arms, his square-rimmed glasses, his white shirt flashing in the sun.

“I was not detained,” he informs me. “But you’re so amusing, it was funny to watch you, profesor, why didn’t you resist? Tell them I am Profesor Pasos, and that’s that, they’d let you go immediately.”

“Those boys don’t know me.”

I confront the satisfied, pink, healthy face that is too close to me. He pats me on the shoulders.

“Have you heard?” he says. “They took the Brazilian.”

“The Brazilian,” I repeat.

No wonder he did not appear at Hortensia Galindo’s; Otilia did not mention him; was that not his horse I saw alone, saddled up, trotting casually in the night, on my way back from Maestro Claudino’s.

“You could see it coming, couldn’t you?” Dr. Orduz asks me. “Let’s have a beer, profesor. My treat: a man feels good in your company, why is that?”

We make ourselves comfortable in the aisle that looks onto the street. “Again at Chepe’s shop,” I say to myself “It’s fate.” Chepe greets us from the table opposite, with his wife, who is pregnant. They are both having chicken soup. What wouldn’t I give for some broth instead of a beer. Chepe exudes cheerfulness, energy. After all, his first child, his heir, is on its way. A few years ago they kidnapped Chepe, but he was able to escape quite soon: he threw himself over a cliff, hid in a hole in the mountain, for six days: he tells the story with pride, laughing, as if it is a joke. Life in San José is resuming its course, it appears. Today it is not Chepe, but a young girl, who waits on us; a white daisy shines in her black hair. Who told me all the girls had left town?

“It must be your age,” the doctor answers himself, “that makes one feel so at peace at your side.”

“My age?” I am amazed. “Old age does not bring peace.”

“But there is peace in wisdom, isn’t there, profesor? You are a venerable old man. The Brazilian was telling me about you.”

I wonder if he is saying this with a double meaning.

“As far as I know,” I say, “he is not Brazilian. He is from here, as Colombian as we are, from Quindío. Why is he called the Brazilian?”

“That, profesor, neither you nor I can know. Might as well ask why they took him.”

Dr. Orduz must be nearing forty, a good age. He has been the director of the hospital for six years or so. Single, with good reason, he has two nurses and a very young lady doctor doing her rural training year under his charge. He is the famous surgeon in these parts. He carried out a delicate heart operation on an Indian in the middle of the jungle, at night, successfully, and all on his own, with no anaesthetic, no instruments. He has been lucky, both times the guerrillas wanted to take him he was far away from San José, in El Palo. And the one time the paramilitaries came looking for him he managed to hide in a corner of the market, burrowing all the way into a sack of corn cobs. They do not want to take Dr. Orduz to ask for a ransom, they say, but to use him for what he is, a great surgeon.

He seems settled in San José.

“At first I was shocked to see so much blood spilled,” he tends to say, “but now I’m used to it.”

Dr. Orduz laughs all the time, even more than Chepe. Though not from around here, he has not wanted to leave, like other doctors have.

His voice subsides, becomes a whisper.

“I understand,” he says, “that the Brazilian paid his protection money, to the paras as well as the guerrillas, on the sly, in the hope that they’d leave him be, you know? So, why did they take him? Who knows. He was a cautious fellow, and he was about to pack up and leave. He didn’t manage to. They tell me they found all the cattle on his ranch with their throats slit. He must have annoyed someone, but who?”

He spread his arms in a wide shrug at the moment the girl brought our beers.

“Doctor,” Chepe shouts from his table. His wife looks up at the ceiling, blushing and anxious.

Orduz looks over at them with his grey eyes.

“We have finally decided,” Chepe goes on. “We want to know if it’ll be a boy or a girl.”

“Right away,” Orduz replies, but docs not stand up. He just pushes his chair back and takes off his glasses. “Let’s see, Carmenza, show me that belly. From there, like that, in profile.”

She sighs. And she also pushes back her chair and obediently lifts up her blouse, up to where her breasts begin. It is a seven-or eight-month belly, white, which shines more in the light. The doctor stares long and hard.

“More in profile,” he says, and squints.

“Like this?” She moves to one side. Her nipples are large and dark, and her breasts much bigger, full.

“A girl,” says the doctor, and puts his glasses back on.

The waitress who served our beers squeals, then giggles, and runs back inside the shop.

Chepe’s wife drops her blouse. She has suddenly turned serious.

“Then she’ll be called Angelica,” she says.

“O.K.” Chepe laughs, claps once and rubs his hands together, leaning over his bowl.

The troop of soldiers was marching down the street. One of those boys stopped in front of our table, on the other side of the wooden railing, and told us furiously that we could not drink, that prohibition was in effect.

“Oh, we can drink,” said the doctor, “but you won’t let us. Calm down, it’s just a beer, I already asked Captain Berrio. I am Dr. Orduz, don’t you recognize me?”

The soldier goes away reluctantly among the green blotch of the rest of the boys on their way out of town, in formation, slowly with the slowness of those who know they could well be going to their deaths. To run forward they would need a shout from Captain Berrio behind them. But Berrio is nowhere to be seen. They are very few, and very distinct, the combatants who run of their own volition toward death. I think they no longer exist; only in history.

“I bet today one of those devils is going to kill me,” a boy said to me one day.

He had stopped in my doorway, asked for water. They were leaving to confront an advance. Fear was twisting him, he was green with panic: with every reason, because he was young.

I am going to die, he said, and they did kill him; I saw his rigid face when they brought him back; and not just him, there were quite a few more.

Where are these boys going now? They will try to liberate a stranger. Soon the town will be left without soldiers, for a time. I watch the street, while the doctor across from me talks. The girls who have not gone away, because they cannot, because their families do not have the wherewithal or they do not know how or to whom to send them, are the prettiest, I think, because they are the ones who stay, the last ones. A group of them run away in the opposite direction from where the troop is heading. I see their skirts flying, I hear their frightened cries, but also, among them, other cries, the excitement of a farewell to the soldiers.

“A single battalion, in San José, against two armies,” the doctor says. And he observes me looking sad, perhaps wondering whether I am listening to him. I listen, now: “We are more helpless than this cockroach,” he says, and crushes an enormous cockroach under his heel. “The Mayor was right to ask for more troops.”

And I stare at the smudge of cockroach, a meager little relief map.

“Well,” I say, “cockroaches will survive the end of the world.”

“If they’re extraterrestrials,” he says, and guffaws, without conviction. And he stares at me the harder. He has, in any case, a wide, permanent smile on his face. Now he bangs the table: “Did you not hear the Mayor on the radio? It was broadcast on television as well, and he told the truth, he said that San Jose has only one battalion of infantry and a police post, and that it amounts to the same as nothing, being in the hands of the bandits; he said that if the Minister of Defence can come here, he should come, so that he can take stock of the situation himself. He needed balls to say that; he could be removed from his post, for shooting his mouth off.”

How will sweet Geraldina be doing? Otilia will surely be keeping her company. Warm water wets my leg. My problem, once in a while, is that I forget to go to the lavatory. I should have consulted Maestro Claudino about that. And that is how it is: I look at myself: my trousers are a little wet between the legs, it was not the fear, was it, Ismael, or was it? It was not the bursts of gunfire, the shadow that fled. No. Just old age.

“Are you listening to me, profesor?”

“My knee hurts,” I lied.

“Come to the hospital on Monday, and we’ll have a look. Now I have other things to see to. Which knee? The left one? Well, we can tell from which way you limp.”

I say goodbye. I want to hear, want to see Geraldina, find out what is happening with her.

The doctor stands up too.

“I’m going where you’re going,” he tells me mischievously, “to your neighbor’s. I gave her a tranquillizer a few hours ago. She was hysterical. We’ll see if she’s asleep yet,” and, again, he pats me on the shoulders, on the back.

They trouble me: his two hot hands feel dreadful in this heat, his two soft, delicate surgeon’s hands, the fingers burning, accustomed to so much death, pressing the sweat of my shirt against my skin.

“Don’t touch me,” I say. “Don’t touch me today, please.”

The doctor laughs again and walks along beside me:

“I understand, profesor. Being arrested just for getting up early would put anyone in a rotten mood, isn’t that so?”