The Armies

~ ~ ~

The empanada seller still persists from the same distant corner, we hear his shout to nobody in particular, his violent plea, I leeeey, the same as ever for years now, looking for customers where there are none — where there cannot be any, now. He is not the same chubby boy who arrived in San José with his little stove on wheels, the roving firebox he lights with petrol, spreading blue flames beneath the big fryer He must be close to thirty now: his head is shaved; he has a lazy eye; a deep scar marks his narrow forehead; his ears are tiny, unreal. Nobody knows his name, everyone calls him “Hey.” He arrived in San José knowing no one, turned to stone behind his stove, the enormous noisy crate where the oil bubbles, folded his arms, and there began to sell and continues to sell the same empanadas that he prepares himself, and repeats to anyone his story, which is the same, but so ferocious that it does not make one want to go back to eat more empanadas: he shows the metal draining rack, points to the fryer full of black oil, sinks the draining rack into it and then holds up the rack: he says at that temperature its edge could slice a throat as easily as cutting through butter, and he says that he himself had to use it on an empanada thief in Bogotá: “One who had the bright idea to steal from me, that was pure self-defence,” and while he says it he waves the draining rack a little, a sword in your head, and shouts to no one, at the top of his voice, deafening you: I leeeey!

I did not return for his empanadas, and I do not suppose the doctor did either. It seems we were both thinking the same thing.

“He’s a murderer in his dreams,” Orduz says, looking away from the empanada vendor with a slight revulsion.

We carry on down the empty, dusty street.

“Or he’s terrified,” I say. “Who knows?”

“He’s the strangest fellow I’ve ever met, I’m sure he sells his empanadas, he’s got money, but in all these years I’ve never seen him with a woman, never even with a dog. I always see him watching the news, at Chepe’s, stuck to the door, leaning against it, more absorbed than at the cinema; two years ago, when they filmed the streets of this town of peace, when the church had just been blown up, and it was our turn to see ourselves on the television news for the first time, surrounded by dead bodies, they showed him for a second, in the background, and he recognized himself on his corner, pointed at himself and shouted Heeeey so loud he almost broke the windows, our eardrums and hearts.

“And then he went pale when he heard Chepe shout: ‘Go and shout at your corner.’

“And he, with another louder shout: ‘Hasn’t a body got a right to shout?’ and left.

“They tell me he sleeps rough, behind the church.”

As if responding to his words, we hear the distant I leeeey, to which we are all accustomed in San José. The doctor turns to me, astonished, and seems to want my opinion. I did not say anything because we were almost at the Brazilian’s house, and I did not want to converse anymore.

We saw Captain Berrío’s jeep parked in front of the door.

“Berrío hasn’t gone out to look for the Brazilian yet,” Orduz says, with inordinate surprise.

And then we arrived at the large metal gate, which was open, as Mauricio Rey was coming out, all dressed up in white.

“It looks as though the last men left in this town are enjoying offering their condolences for the newly departed,” Orduz manages to say to me.

I know Mauricio Rey is not to his liking, and vice versa.

And still I hear the doctor continue indecently: “Anyone would think that Rey is no longer drunk. Look how straight he walks. He knows how.”

“Isn’t it true, profesor, that walking with doctors makes one ill? You’ll catch a cold at the very least,” Mauricio says to me and the doctor laughs politely: just as well we are talking in front of Geraldina’s house.

We look at each other as if in consultation.

“Berrío is still collecting information,” Rey says. “I think he’s scared to go after them.”

“As usual,” the doctor says.

“But go on in, gentlemen,” Rey encourages us, “and comfort Geraldina: they didn’t just take the Brazilian, but the children as well.”

“The children?” I say.

“The children,” Rey says, and makes way for us.

For the first time I do not think of Geraldina but of the children. I see them tumbling in the garden, I hear them. I cannot believe it. Dr. Orduz goes inside first. I start to catch up with him when Rey takes my arm and pulls me to one side. He is actually still drunk, I discover from his breath, from his reddened eyes that clash with his white suit. He has shaved, and the drunker he is the younger he looks, preserved in alcohol, they say, although he stopped playing chess because he started falling asleep between moves.

Now I see him stagger for an instant, but he recovers.

“A drink?” he laughs.

“This is not the time,” I say.

And he, breathing his stink in my face, completely distracted, his eyes floating along the empty street, amazed at himself.

“Be careful, profesor, the world is full of sober people.” He shakes my hand vigorously and moves away.

“Where are you going, Mauricio?” I ask. “You should lie down. This is no day to be out on the town.”

“Out on the town? I’m just going to the plaza for a minute, to find out what’s going on.”

We are interrupted by the Captain’s departure, in the company of two soldiers. The three of them clamber into the jeep. Berrío greets us with a nod of his fat, pink head; he goes right past us without a word.

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mauricio Rey shouts to me from the distance.

I had never been here, in the small living room of the Brazilian’s house. Cool and quiet, decorated with flowers, wicker chairs and lots of cushions around, inviting sleep, I say to myself, standing in the doorway, hearing what people are saying, but most of all absorbing the intimate air of Geraldina’s house, which is her smell, her own smell of home. I hear the doctor, then a sob, the voices of several women, a distant cough. I discover first of all that Otilia is not in the living room. I go in and say hello to the neighbors.

Professor Lesmes, the school’s headmaster for a few months now, approaches me, takes me to one side, as if I were his property, with faith in me as a fellow teacher, knowing that I had been in charge of the school.

“Lamentable,” he says, not realizing that he is preventing me from speaking to Geraldina. “I came to San José to do nothing,” he exclaims in a whisper. “Not a single child attends, and how could they? A barricade has been put up in front of the school; if there is a skirmish it won’t be long before we suffer the consequences, we’ll be the first.”

“Excuse me,” I say, and look at Geraldina.

“I’ve only just heard,” I say in greeting. “I'm so sorry, Geraldina. If there’s anything we can do, we’re here to help.”

“Thank you, sir,” she says.

Her eyes are swollen from crying, this is another Geraldina, and, just like Hortensia Galindo, she has dressed all in black, but still (I think, unable to stop myself), there still, rounder and more resplendent, are her knees. She holds her chin quite high, as if offering her neck to an invisible someone or something — to a deadly face, or a weapon — her brow furrowed, completely defeated; her pupils shine with fever, she entwines and untwines her fingers.

“Sir,” she says, “Otilia was asking for you. She seemed very worried.”

“I’m going to go and find her now.”

But I stay where I am, and she keeps looking at me.

“Did you hear, profesor?” she sobs. “My son, my children, they took them, it’s unforgivable.”

Dr. Orduz takes her pulse, says the usual things to her: calm down, a strong and serene Geraldina is more help to everyone.

“But do you know what this is like?” she asks him, with sudden force, as if rebelling.

“I know, we all know,” the doctor replies, looking around.

We all, in our turn, look at each other, and it is as if we did not really know, as if in a surreptitious way we understood, without shame, that we do not know what this is like, but this not knowing is not our fault, this we do seem to know.

She has turned back to me.

“He came in at midnight with other men and took the children, just like that, profesor. He took the children, saying nothing, without a word to me, like a dead man. The other men held guns on him; I’m sure they had forbidden him to speak, don’t you think? That’s why he could not say anything to me. I don’t want to think he couldn’t speak out of pure cowardice. He himself took the children by the hand.

“To suffer more, I have only to remember the children asking: ‘Where are you taking us? Why did you wake us up?’

“‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said. ‘It’s just a little walk,’ he told them, not a word to me, as if I was not the mother of my son.

“They went and they left me, they said I would have to take care of arranging the payment. That they would be in touch, they said, and they dared to laugh as they told me that. They took them, profesor, who knows for how long, oh God, just when we were about to leave, not only this town, but this damned country.”

The doctor offers her a sedative, someone brings a glass of water. She ignores the pill, the water. Her sleepless eyes look at me unseeing.

“Then I couldn’t move,” she says. “I stayed still until dawn. I heard you go out, I heard your door, but I could not manage to scream. By the time I was able to walk the sun was already up, it was the first day of my life without my son. Then I wished the earth would swallow me up, do you understand?”

Again the doctor offers her the pill, the water, and she obeys without taking her eyes from mine, and she has her unseeing eyes fixed on me still as I walk to the door.