Our Lives Are the Rivers

by Jaime Manrique

  Finally, she rallied and started taking her meals with us. One day we had finished eating when Manuela said she had something to tell us. “Mis niñas,” she began, “Santander’s not the forgiving type. I’ve been thinking that it’s time for me to leave Colombia. I’m a poor woman now and cannot afford to keep you. Tomorrow we will go into town and I’ll draft the documents to set you free. I will go on to Jamaica to stay with old friends of the general, and I will wait there until my aunt dies and I can sell Catahuango. That is, if I don’t die before she does.”

  Immediately I said, “I will stay with you, Manuela. I can help you in Jamaica.”

  “We may be even poorer there than we are here, Jonotás.”

  “I don’t care about that. I want to go wherever you go.”

  I knew, and I suspect Manuela knew, too, what Natán would say. She thanked Manuela profusely for making her a free woman. “I will go to Lima to be with Mariano,” she said. “He’s still waiting for me. In the meantime, I don’t want to be a burden to you, Manuela. I’ll wait here until Mariano sends me the money for the trip.”

  “No, I wouldn’t dream of letting you stay here by yourself,” Manuela said. She got up from the table and beckoned us to follow her into the bedroom. There, Manuela asked me to pull from under the bed the mahogany chest where she kept the few jewels she had not sold, the documents the Liberator had left her for safekeeping, and all the letters he had written to her. “Here it is,” she said, pulling out from under a packet of letters tied with a blue ribbon a medal—the Order of the Sun! “It’s solid gold,” she added, holding it up for inspection, as if to assure herself it was still gold. “This will pay for Natán’s trip. I knew one day it would come in handy.”

  Then the three of us embraced and cried as we hadn’t cried since we were children living with the Aispurus.

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Natán and I accompanied Manuela to the home of Pepe París, who had remained a loyal friend in her adversity. He purchased the medal, in addition to an emerald necklace the Liberator had given her as a birthday present. Later that day she signed the papers making us free women. Unlike Natán, who was beaming with happiness, I felt sad. Manuela and Natán were my family. And now my family was breaking up.

  We devoted ourselves to preparing Natán for her journey. Barely a week after she became a free woman, Natán left Bogotá with a convoy heading south to Lima.

  I thought I would never see Natán again. How poorly we can guess what the future holds for us. Many years later, in Paita, of all places, we were reunited.

  In the next few years, we wrote back and forth, from wherever we were. Natán had worried that she had waited too long to get married, that it be might too late for her to have a family. Fortunately, within two years she gave birth, first to a boy, Mariano Nemesio, named after her husband and her father; and the following year to twin girls, Julia Manuela and Julia Jonotás, named after her mother, and after Manuela and me. Though she knew of our dislike of the Catholic Church, we were asked to be the girls’ godmothers. We accepted, even though it was understood we couldn’t be at the christening. It was a source of puzzlement to Manuela and me that Natán had turned out to be a devout Catholic, and even more puzzling that she chose two atheists to be the girls’ godmothers.

  For years after we arrived in Paita, on the far northern coast of Peru, Natán spoke in her letters of her desire to come visit us. Manuela always wrote back, saying how much we’d love to see her again, that our home was her home. But the visit was always postponed—one year because money was a problem; another year because one of the children fell ill around the time of their departure; still another year because business was so good she couldn’t tear herself away from her bakery. I started to think I would never see Natán again, or ever lay eyes on my goddaughter.

  Finally, twelve years after Manuela and I settled in Paita, Natán and her children got off a boat in early January. They arrived with a big trunk full of presents for us. From her letters we knew that Natán and Mariano had done well for themselves. Natán, still modest, put on no airs despite her prosperity. She must have spent a small fortune on ladies’ accessories for Manuela, and pants and shirts for me.

  Natán also brought us two oil lamps, pots and pans, a set of beautiful china, English linen, and a lovely porcelain water jug and washbowl. Manuela was too proud to ever mention in her letters how poor we were, and Natán clearly seemed disconcerted at first observing our reduced circumstances. The children, who must have heard many stories of Manuela’s grand past, seemed perplexed. But Natán and Mariano had done a superb job educating them, and they had beautiful manners. The girls did not complain about the straw mattress on my bed. They were very much Natán’s children.

  We could barely accommodate so many guests in our little house, but Manuela would not hear of Natán’s suggestion that they stay at a boardinghouse in town, the only one that accepted Negroes. So the three of us slept in Manuela’s big bed, just as we used to do when we were girls, the two Julias sharing my bed, and we hung a hammock for Mariano in the parlor.

  The two weeks they spent with us were the happiest times I had in Paita, in all of my old age. Each night, with the balcony door open to a patch of starry sky, Manuela, Natán, and I would stay up until well past midnight, smoking, drinking pisco, and reminiscing. We’d laugh and laugh about our adventures until tears ran down our cheeks, then fell sound asleep, exhausted from so much talk and laughter.

  The children called us Aunt Manuela and Aunt Jonotás. Though I had not seen them grow up, I felt a love for them far beyond the affection I felt for the children to whom I sold candies in Paita. These two girls and Marianito were like my own blood family.

  Natán took over the kitchen, where she did not tolerate the presence of Manuela or me or the children. She woke up before anyone in the house and at breakfast fed us bread so warm that when you cut it to butter it, the butter would instantly melt into a puddle of gold on our plates. Among the delicious meals she cooked for us, our favorite was her thick parihuela soup, its fish and mollusks simmered to perfection. She also prepared coconut rice and sweets, such as coconut paste—Manuela’s favorite—and baked cookies and cakes. Natán tended the oven fire as if it were a sacred shrine and she was its priestess, in charge of keeping it going all the time.

  “Muchacha,” Manuela would say, “take a break from that kitchen before you end up cooking yourself.”

  At the end of the day, before supper was served by the Julias, Natán would go to the bathing room at the back of the patio and wash herself for a long time, singing songs from our palenque that brought back painful and happy memories. She came out of the bathhouse placid, smelling of lavender.

  While Natán spent her days in the kitchen, the rest of us hired horses and went on excursions to nearby towns to look at the ruins of churches and fortresses built by the conquistadors when they first arrived in Peru. One day we rode all day through the desert to reach the oasis near the Indian ruins of Narihualá. We went to the bay at least once a day. The children amused themselves playing games in the water. Manuela and I sought refuge from the heat in the scant shade of a coconut tree, from which we watched after them.

  In the evenings, before supper was served, Manuela sank into her rocking chair, and the children gathered around her to ask questions about the old times with their mother, or they told us what they learned in their schools. They had studied Simón Bolívar and his great triumphs. They were fascinated that their mother had actually known someone who was written about in books. The children wanted to know whether it was true that Natán had participated in military campaigns and fought in a battle.

  “As peaceful as she is, your mother is as brave as the bravest soldier in the Wars of Independence,” Manuela told them.

  Marianito had many questions about the Liberator in battle. “Did he ever talk about the Battle of Boyacá, the battle that freed Colombia?”

  “Are you interested in the military?” Manuela asked.


  “Yes, aunt,” Marianito said, bright-eyed. “I want to fight for our nation, to defend her against our enemies.”

  “Listen to me, Marianito,” Manuela said, frowning. “If your Aunt Manuela ever hears about you joining the army, she will sail straight to Lima and give you a good public spanking. If you don’t want to break my heart, or your parents’ hearts, you’ll stay away from the army.”

  “But Aunt Manuela,” Marianito replied, full of fervor, “if the Liberator were alive, what do you think he would have said?”

  “I’m not going to presume to know what he would have said. But let me tell you a big secret, Marianito. The Liberator hated war and the destruction of human life. He told me that one night shortly after we met, when my head—like yours—was full of dreams of military glory. If you want to do something for your country,” she added, her tone softening, as she ran her fingers through the boy’s curly hair, “you will be a man of peace. You will wage your battles with your words. The last thing our poor countries need is more wars.”

  Shortly before they went back to Lima, at the children’s insistence Manuela opened the mahogany chest that contained the love letters the Liberator had written to her. She chose a few passages to read for the awestruck children. Natán and I were no less awestruck. We had never heard what these letters, which she had carried and protected so ferociously, contained.

  WE DID NOT have time to mourn the loss of Natán. That same afternoon, Manuela received a note from Santander, ordering her to appear in his office in the Palace of San Carlos the following morning at ten o’clock.

  “This will be my final humiliation in this hateful country,” Manuela said. “After tomorrow, we will make preparations for our trip to Jamaica.”

  For the first time since Bolívar’s death, she smiled. It was as if her veil of sadness had been lifted. The prospect of leaving Colombia for good was liberating.

  After the Liberator died, Manuela didn’t care anymore about her physical appearance. She avoided looking at herself in mirrors, and there were none hanging on the walls of our house. No longer young, and a little plump, she was still beautiful, and she would be beautiful in old age, too, because of her charcoal eyes and her clear, porcelain skin.

  Yet Manuela gave a good deal of thought to what she should wear to her meeting with Santander. Not that she had much to chose from. She had sold all her elegant gowns. There was enough vanity left in her, however, that she did not want to appear disheveled in front of the man who had crushed Bolívar’s most cherished dream—Gran Colombia. More than Fausto D’Elhuyar, more than her father, and more than James Thorne, Santander had made her unhappy. Manuela chose a pale-yellow silk dress she had not worn in years.

  Though it was a sunny January morning when we rode to the palace, neither one of us could enjoy the horseback ride. Our mood was dark and apprehensive. Manuela must have been boiling inside as we entered the palace, the same palace that on so many occasions she had entered freely to see the Liberator. The palace where she had so often served as hostess was now Santander’s home.

  “What’s the worst he can do to me, Jonotás?” Manuela had said on the way to this appointment. “To be deported from Bogotá is no punishment, and I suspect that’s what this meeting will be about.”

  I hoped she was right. I could not forget that after the September conspiracy Santander had been locked up more than a year in a dungeon in Cartagena. I had no doubts but he had heard of Manuela’s public vows to shoot him. Surely he remembered these stories.

  We sat in the receiving room outside the presidential offices for hours, as people came and went. Fortunately, I had thought to bring the knitting bag with our yarn and needles. We passed the time making scarves we would try to sell before we left Bogotá.

  It was mid-afternoon before Manuela was summoned. During those long hours of waiting we barely spoke to each other, except to comment on how our knitting was coming along. She kept her thoughts to herself. One thing was clear to me: our destiny was in Santander’s hands.

  “Jonotás, come with me,” she said as she got up and started smoothing her hair and fussing with the pleats of her dress. “I cannot do this alone.”

  As we were admitted to his office, Santander rose from his desk. He glanced at me, and started to gesture as if to ask me to leave, but then changed his mind. Perhaps there was a flicker of compassion in that dog’s heart. He could afford to be kind in her hour of humiliation.

  Colombia’s president greeted Manuela and offered her a chair. I stood behind her. Manuela looked around the room as she seated herself, as if searching for signs of Bolívar. There were none.

  “I apologize that you had to wait so long, Señora de Thorne,” Santander began. “But matters of importance demanded my attention.” I saw Manuela’s shoulders tighten. Nobody addressed her by her married name anymore. Was this the rat’s way of denying the existence of Manuela Sáenz?

  A woman came in with a coffee tray. Manuela accepted a cup, but Santander did not. He was telling her their meeting would be brief.

  “Since I doubt we’ll get another chance to meet in the future, Señora de Thorne, I invited you here today to inform you that you must leave Colombia without delay,” he said. “I wished to say good-bye to you in person before you left.” He paused to clear his throat, then continued: “Although great animosity has existed between us for many years, I wish to remind you that there was a time when General Bolívar and I were close friends, as well as brothers-in-arms. I would have gladly given up my life to protect his. This is why my later disagreements with him were so painful. I always admired the general, in every way, in everything he did. I will forever be grateful to him for his great service to the nation. Without the general we would still be subjugated by Spain.”

  “The Liberator would have been happy to hear you say this,” Manuela said. Her tone was mocking, but Santander seemed unaware of it. The old Manuela would have said something like “Why didn’t you tell this to the general when he was alive? Before he died of a broken heart?”

  “Believe it or not, I am also full of admiration for you, señora,” Santander went on. “I admire you for your selfless devotion to the general, and for demonstrating your love for the people of Colombia when the Liberator was president. I take this occasion to say that I also deeply admire you as a woman—your example has shown the women of Colombia what it’s possible to achieve.”

  Could he mean a word of what he was saying? Did he think Manuela was a fool to believe him?

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “You’re most gracious.”

  “Graciousness has nothing to do with it, Señora de Thorne. I’m certain that in the future history will remember you as one of our heroines of independence. And although you have caused me great personal suffering, what happened between us is the past.”

  Perhaps that was so. I was convinced that until her dying day Manuela would despise him. As I would.

  “Despite my admiration for you, Señora de Thorne, you’re to be deported from Colombia and exiled for the rest of your life. You have continued to voice your opposition to the government. That I find unacceptable. And make no mistake about it, should you return, on any pretext, señora, you will be executed. Since the general’s death you have refused to accept that Gran Colombia is defunct, that the Liberator’s legacy died with him, that his ideas have been rejected by the people, that it is time for this new nation to move forward.”

  Manuela took a last sip of coffee, stared at the inside of the cup as if she were trying to read her future in the patterns created by the coffee grounds. Then she placed the cup squarely in the center of the small table next to her chair and stood to address Santander.

  “Mr. President,” she said, “the reason Your Grace hated the Liberator so much was because deep down, no matter how much the people preferred you to him, you knew that you would never be half the man he was. Even after all these years, it must torment you to know that history will remember you only as a footnote in the story
of Simón Bolívar.”

  As she turned to leave, and walked toward the door with me following her, I heard him say, “Bon voyage, Señora de Thorne. May God be with you.”

  LATER THAT NIGHT, when we were sitting in our parlor, smoking our nightly cigar, Manuela said, out of nowhere, “His looks are vastly enhanced by his elegant clothes.” It took me a moment to realize she was speaking about Santander. “Clearly, he learned to dress like a gentleman during his stay in Europe. But, you know, Jonotás, despite the cosmopolitan aura of power he projects now, he will never be a natural prince like Bolívar. I’m proud of myself, though. Last night I had decided that no matter what happened during our meeting, I would not apologize for the past.” She paused. “Jonotás, had I stayed there another minute, the scoundrel would’ve sworn he’d had no part in the September conspiracy. My only regret is that he was not shot with the other conspirators.” She let out a prolonged sigh, took a long puff of her cigar, exhaled, and added, in a tone so wounded it broke my heart, “They’ve erased the Liberator from history, Jonotás. It is as if he had never existed. And if Bolívar didn’t exist, I’m nothing but a ghost.”

  30

  It was the dry season in the cordillera. At this time of year the Falls of Tequendama broke into mere threads of water, but rain had fallen over the savanna late in the afternoon the day before, a sudden, violent pelting of heavy raindrops, and today the Bogotá River was swollen, furious. The clamor of the falls filled the spaces between the mountains, producing an endless echo that sounded like a crowd cheering a victorious general entering a liberated city.

  Our party—two Indian porters to lead the mules loaded with my trunks, eight soldiers assigned by the Colombian government to escort me out of Bogotá, and Jonotás and myself—had stopped for the night in a clearing near Tequendama.