Our Lives Are the Rivers

by Jaime Manrique

  Jonotás dismounted first. Tonight, the expression on her face was severe, her features rigid, as if carved in stone. She was dressed in a dark-green hussar’s uniform, complete with saber.

  I wore my colonel’s uniform: a three-cornered hat, a royal-blue jacket—now without the medals I had been forced to sell, one by one—and red velvet pants. It had been years since I’d donned my military uniform, and I no longer felt comfortable in it, as if it were a skin I had shed long ago. The night before, after the trunks were packed, the only question remaining was what clothes to leave out for the journey.

  “There’s no question what I’ll wear,” Jonotás said, “I’m leaving dressed as a soldier.”

  Until that moment, I had not given any thought to my attire. “That settles it,” I said. “Let’s dust off my colonel’s costume.” We decided to depart Bogotá dressed this way in order to affront one last time a society and a people the two of us despised.

  After securing the horses for the night and posting two soldiers as sentries, our party descended the narrow path that led to the clearing that jutted out over the chasm at the top of the falls. At dawn, the convoy would take the road leading to Honda, fifteen miles away, on the shore of the Magdalena River. The government decree specified that from Honda I must travel downriver to the town of Arjona on the Atlantic Coast. From there I would be taken to Cartagena as a prisoner and held till a ship bound for Jamaica would remove me from Colombian soil.

  We divided into three groups for the night. The soldiers camped by the road. In the clearing, the Indian porters huddled around a fire, where they roasted yellow potatoes and ears of corn still wrapped in their green husks. Jonotás and I were ordered to set up camp closest to the falls. She chose a mossy spot at the edge of the wood, where a knot of oaks provided shelter from the mist that the falls created as it hurled its waters into the temperate zone.

  While Jonotás gathered twigs and dry logs for a fire, I wandered off to be by myself. Below me, thick fog hugged the rock at the top of the falls on which stood the Virgin’s shrine. At the wooden railing built at the edge of the precipice, I picked up a small stone, cast it into the open space and tried to follow its course, though the shifting body of the mist quickly swallowed it. My eyes traveled over the huge gap of the gorge. I wanted to memorize this moment, this place. I leaned on the railing and caught a glimpse of the river hundreds of feet below, propelling itself over rocks and boulders before it disappeared in the twilight. Tequendama’s icy drizzle sprayed my face, yet I felt as if I were burning.

  Tonight, the roar of the waterfall produced an urge to become part of its mystery. In pre-Columbian times, the Chibcha Indians of the savanna used Tequendama as a sacred entrance to the world of the ancestors. My Indian servants in Bogotá claimed that the ground around Tequendama was haunted by the souls of the hundreds who sighed in the pool at the foot of the waterfall. The Indians insisted that on tranquil nights they could hear the cries of the dead as far away as the city. On sunny, clear afternoons, when I hiked in the mountains with my girls to gather herbs and wildflowers, the hazy plume of the falls rising in the sky was visible in the background. And with it rainbows, often double rainbows, which made perfect arcs over Tequendama just before sunset. At those moments, I forgot I lived in Bogotá—I dwelt in a magical land.

  A part of me wanted to leap into the void before me. Four agonizing years had passed since Bolívar’s death. Only his memory anchored me to life, and I was, as always, steadfast in my determination to defend his name against those who vilified it. If for nothing else, I must live long enough to see the day when the general’s name would be restored to its full glory. If I did this, then my existence would be vindicated.

  Half a decade earlier, at one of my nightly tertulias in the house I had taken across from the Presidential Palace, in view of the fine summer weather we were having in the savanna I had proposed to my guests a picnic the following morning at the Falls of Tequendama. The exclusively male company—members of the British Legion, officers from Bolívar’s army, Irishmen and Frenchmen who had come to South America to fight for the cause of liberation—accepted my invitation with alacrity. As a young woman in Quito, I had dreamed of visiting the waterfall that Alexander von Humboldt had made famous in his book Personal Narrative. “Let’s go easy on the drinking tonight, gentlemen,” I said to my guests, “so we don’t oversleep and wake up hungover.” Despite my appeals, the tertulia, as usual, went on until well past midnight.

  The following morning we gathered in front of Captain Illingworth’s home. The sun bathed the mountains surrounding Bogotá in a bright white light. Although we had agreed the night before to dress as civilians to avoid curiosity upon leaving the city, at the last minute I changed my mind and dressed in my colonel’s uniform. To further amuse myself, I put on a mustache made of the hair of Spanish soldiers killed in the Battle of Pichincha.

  It was a pleasant outing. Upon arriving at the falls we spread the linen tablecloth Jonotás had packed, and I laid out cheese, ham, olives, bread, sweetmeats, silver goblets, and bottles of French champagne. The ride, in such sunny weather, had made me warm, and I imbibed goblet after goblet of champagne to cool off. Later that afternoon, inebriated, excited by the talk of the men about their travels in Europe and their adventures in South America, the battles they had fought and their romantic conquests (I noticed they talked about the ladies as if I were not present, and this flattered me), I wandered to the top of the falls. The chilly waters rushing right next to me were enticing and I dipped my toes into it, unaware of how close I was to slipping and falling in. Two men from the party saw me, came from behind, and pulled me away from what would have been a certain death.

  THE LIGHT was fading fast. I took off my hat, removed the pin holding my hair in a chignon, and shook my head to let my hair cascade to my shoulders. I tossed the hat toward where Jonotás was preparing our bed for the night.

  I turned to face the torrent and pulled from my pants pocket a copy of the letter the government had sent ahead to the authorities in Cartagena, stating the reasons for my expulsion from Nueva Granada, as Colombia was known once more. I propped my arms on the railing to examine the crumpled piece of paper I had read and reread since I received it.

  COLOMBIA. Member country of Nueva Granada.

  Secretary of the Interior and Foreign Relations.

  Bogotá, 7 January 1834.

  To His Excellency the Governor of Cartagena:

  The office of the Governor of Bogotá, in accordance with current laws, has ordered the departure from this capital of Señora Manuela Saénz, who has chosen the port of Cartagena to leave Colombian territory. The scandalous history of this woman is well known, as is her arrogant, restless, and bold character. The political chief of this capital has had to resort to force to remove her from here, because this señora, hiding behind her sex and her haughtiness, gave herself permission to mock the orders given by the authorities, as she has done from 1830 to the present.

  The Executive Power has ordered me to inform you of this occurrence so that you can be aware of any breech of conduct on the part of this woman, and be ready to force her, without excuses of any kind, to depart from the territory over which you govern, in accordance with the passport she bears, and prevent any turmoil she could create in political affairs. She boasts of being an enemy of the government and, in 1830, used her powers to contribute to the catastrophic revolution of that year.

  Also, His Excellency orders me to warn you that under no circumstances should you allow said señora to remain in Cartagena. If there should be no ship ready to sail with her as passenger, she must then be detained in Arjona, ensuring she is scrupulously watched, and ensuring that not even courtesy visits by any official of the army should be allowed.

  May God grant you good health.

  There followed the signature of Lino de Pombo, a government bureaucrat, an enemy of Bolívar, and a filthy swine. I crushed the letter in my fist and hurled it into the gorge.


  The chill of the Andean night crept across my skin. At the horizon the sky glowed scarlet from the smoking volcanoes to the south. Stars throbbed in the sky like fireflies. Directly above me the Southern Cross blazed. Shooting stars, fat with light, ripped the cobalt vastness, but I had no wishes to make, not one. From childhood, I had loved the Andean sky after nightfall, even preferred it to daylight. As a young woman, the solitude and quiet of nighttime conferred a sense of freedom. I had often stayed awake watching the firmament until dawn bled its darkness. Tonight all this beauty and promise was lost to my misery.

  A tap on my shoulder startled me. It was Jonotás, wanting to drape an alpaca shawl over my shoulders. “Come, niña Manuela,” she said, her voice full of concern. “You need to get some nourishment. Tomorrow we have a long way to go.” The last time Jonotás had called me niña was when I was a child in Catahuango.

  We had cheese, bread, chorizo, and wine, which I drank from my wineskin, and then I lay down on the pallet Jonotás had prepared for us on the cushioning moss. I buried myself under thick ruanas. Though I was not sleepy, I closed my eyes and drifted off. Some time later, I awoke. Jonotás, asleep next to me, was snoring in a purr, her soft skin brushing my face.

  “Tomorrow, tomorrow,” I said under my breath. Tomorrow I would awake and start the voyage down the river, toward the coast, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, where Bolívar had died and was buried. Lines by the Spanish poet Jorge Manrique came to mind: “Our lives are the rivers that flow into the sea of Death.” At sunrise tomorrow, night’s darkness would be dispelled for another day. But not for me. Not for me. Not for as long as I lived and remembered. Ahead of me, in a future full of tomorrows, I saw nothing but an unremitting darkness—no moon, no stars. Yet the oncoming darkness did not frighten me, because I knew it would never lift, would never change, would never trick me with a new beginning in which there might blossom again the promise of love, in which happiness would turn to grief. I would float down the river until the day I entered the sea, a dead woman on a raft, en route to eternity. As I closed my eyes, I knew that if I chose to live, I would have to go on and on until I met the pitch blackness beckoning at the end of the long road ahead. In the meantime, tonight, I was relieved and thankful that I could not foretell what was ripening for me in time’s dim, unknowable womb.

  book FOUR

  The Years by the Sea

  31

  PAITA

  1836

  I stood on the prow of the barkentine Santa Cecilia as the screeches of a swelling tide of seagulls, frigates, pelicans, and cormorants pierced my ears. Tijeretas hung suspended between the water and the sky, their long black-and-white tails drooping like supple scissors fanning the air. The mass of birds swelled above the sails, darkening the pallid sky, the color of the desert.

  As the ship entered the bay of Paita, the waters carpeted with whorls of dark-green algae, the town’s name stuck on my lips. Paita made me think of other words equally unpleasant in Spanish, all of them starting with “p”: puta, perra—the whore, the bitch I had been called over and over again, in many cities and countries. It also sounded like pedo, which is what I came to call Paita—the world’s fart. I arrived in Paita to die. I was barely forty years old, but my life was over. Six years had passed since the Liberator’s death, and now I was beginning my interment alive.

  Paita reeked of putrid fish. A slaughterhouse where sperm whales were dragged ashore, quartered, and boiled to illumine the world’s darkness.

  Petrified Paita. Its squatting port nestled in a bay walled in by barren, chalk-white mountains. Its ashen sky, unperturbed by clouds, the colorlessness of the landscape and the white sands of the streets made me feel I was entering my own mausoleum. I had arrived at a fishing port that was more like a desert island.

  I arrived in Paita after I had fought all my wars, except for two. I wanted to stay alive to reclaim my mother’s estate. More important, I wanted to live to see Bolívar’s enemies die, one by one, and to see his name restored to its former glory; restored after his name had been besmirched time and time again in the years following his death.

  IN JAMAICA, WHERE we had settled after our expulsion from Colombia, penury’s grubby hand had knocked louder and louder on our door. Jonotás and I survived by selling my few remaining jewels. Before we left Bogotá, my aunt had agreed to buy Catahuango with the understanding that she would send me the interest on the yearly profits for two years, at the end of which time she would buy me out for 10,000 pesos. Two years later Ignacia had not sent a peso due from the interest nor the 10,000 promised, and Catahuango was auctioned in Quito. It was bought by a man who signed promissory notes to me that would become due within the year.

  I became desperate to return to Ecuador and collect on the promissory notes the man had signed. Many obstacles arose preventing our departure. The memory of José María’s long and ferocious war against the current regime in Ecuador was fresh. Rocafuerte’s government feared that I wanted to return to rally José María’s followers, who were clamoring for revenge. After permission was given for me to return, and I had finally arrived in Ecuador, my enemies prevailed and I was forbidden from setting foot in Quito and told to immediately leave the country or else face execution. Peru was the logical retreat and Lima’s government allowed me to enter the country with the condition that I did not move from Paita, a port near the border with Ecuador, except to go abroad. We were able to sail to Paita thanks to a loan of 300 pesos, which my friend General Juan José Flores had given me.

  I rented a small two-story house with bamboo walls, with a balcony and a good view of the harbor, and settled down to write letters. Every week I sent Jonotás down to the beach to hand off my letters to the ship sailing for Guayaquil. Months passed with no word from General Flores, whom I’d put in charge of collecting the money that was owed to me. To someone who had waited all my life—for my aunt to die, for Bolívar to come home in three countries—waiting had become a way of life.

  After the 300 pesos General Flores had loaned me were gone, a bar of soap became a luxury for us. I forgot what red meat tasted like. There was nothing I could do but wait it out and hope for a return to Ecuador to collect the money from the sale of Catahuango.

  Drunken sailors, gamblers, schemers, political exiles, prostitutes with lips and cheeks painted crimson, Indian shamans from the mountains bringing potions that promised to cure bad health and bad luck, in business and in love—these were the citizens of Paita, my new neighbors.

  Each day in Paita began with a gray haze over the Pacific that hid the sun until mid-morning, when it blazed above our heads. I felt imprisoned, trapped between the vast ashen expanse of the ocean and the scorching sands of the desert that lay beyond the outskirts of town. I felt as if my soul were being squashed out of me.

  Two winds met in Paita, the hot one blew in strong from the desert toward the Pacific, carrying with it sand and spiders, snakes and scorpions that rained down over us like a punishment from the heavens. The pests slithered or oozed through the crevices of the house, lurking with their poison in dark corners. This wind blew as if desperate to immerse itself in the waters of the ocean to cool off. The other wind blew into Paita from the opposite direction, from the ocean toward the desert. Redolent with the aroma of ripe fruit and inebriating tropical flowers, it blew all the way from the Polynesian islands, bringing along an invitation that seemed to chant, “Come, come with us, don’t die there on that scorching coast. Come, let us wrap you in a lush green garment.” This wind filled my heart with melancholy, the melancholy of remembering how much beauty the world contained beyond the confines of this hell-hole I had come to live in.

  To distract ourselves, often late in the afternoon Jonotás and I would ride our burros up the hills overlooking the bay. Below us spread the desert that separated Paita from Piura, the nearest thing to a city in this desolate country. We would sit on a blanket spread on the ground and smoke a cigar, with our backs to the sea, as we watched the sun set behind the
Andes. On very clear days, it was possible to glimpse the charcoal plume of an Ecuadorian volcano. It was one of the few pleasures we had in Paita.

  Other days all we could see was the desert. During the hottest months of the year, its sands became so parched from lack of moisture that they baked until they turned hard as clay. The algarrobo trees, the only trees in that thirsty soil, would sweat their resin to the point that they combusted on their own, as if fire were a means to get release from the heat. The sparks of the flaming trees landed on the dried-out balls of matorral tossed about by the hot winds, setting them to spiral across the desert, burning every twig, dry leaf, and insect in their paths. The flames leaped so high that the birds, roosting in the tall cactuses, flew from their nests ablaze, like miniature comets. We sat on top of the hill at dusk on many days, in the roasting heat, mesmerized spectators at the gates of hell.

  Paita’s brief rainy season, when it poured all day long, brought a brief respite from the suffocating heat. When it rained harder than usual, the clay hills hugging the bay crumbled, unleashing a tide of wet earth to flow into the town, burying everything in its path. Paita cried in an avalanche of mud.

  That was Paita. So far away from anywhere, so remote that no matter what conflagrations were taking place in the world I could live in peace; where I could finally stop dressing as a soldier, carrying weapons, and fearing for my life; where I did not have to fight anymore to have the same powers as a man; where I could be just a woman, a woman without control over anyone’s life.

  Paita was the final destination of many exiled bolivarianos. The Peruvian port town had a large colony of those who refused to give up their belief in an ideal which history had defeated. The main occupation of these lost souls was to wait, and wait, for an auspicious moment to return to their homelands and continue the fight for a Gran Colombia. Now here I was, in that purgatory, to join them in their waiting.