Cartagena

by NAM LE

  It had been a whole day and still I could not think of a better excuse.

  I said, Maybe it is best to wait until Sunday. We both knew that Sunday is the best day to do the business as the target is usually at home.

  You were ordered to do it yesterday.

  I could not find the target, I lied again. Maybe he will be there on Sunday.

  We have never met, have we, Ron?

  No, sir.

  You have been a good soldado, he said. I think it is time we met. This week, I think.

  Yes, sir.

  I will call you with the details.

  Yes, sir.

  I am no child, wet behind the ears. I have now fourteen years and two months. I know how things work. That there is not supposed to be contact between a sicario and his agent. I know that I have been summoned.

  —

  WHEN I RETURN FROM THE BUSINESS with Luis and the others, my mother is sitting in her dark room watching an American soap show. I quickly scan the street as I close the front door.

  I switch a lamp on for her. In the yellow flood of light I see she is still wearing her makeup and her going-out clothes. For a moment I watch her as she watches the screen. She does not blink. The concentration of her face is calming.

  Your friend called, she says, not turning her head from the TV. It is a large, forty-inch Sony model and was in almost new condition when Carlos sold it to us.

  Claudia?

  I wrote it all down, she says and gestures vaguely. On the screen a white woman with large lips is hugging her elbows and crying. I catch my mother’s hand and make a show of kissing it gallantly, like I see in the old movies. It smells of fish and nail polish.

  Oh darling! I say in high-voiced English. Come back to me for I am…embarazada…with your secret love child! I say this last part in Spanish so she will understand.

  She shushes me and waves me away, then, as the commercials come on, she half turns and says, Do you think I should dye my hair more blonde?

  Why do you want to, dear Mother?

  I don’t know, she says. Maybe it will make me look younger.

  Younger? You already look young. In the streets, people do not think you are my mother. They think you are my sister. My mother has heard this before but still her face beams. I continue: They say, Is she your sister? And I say, Are you joking?

  Tonto! she cries out. I go into the kitchen to get some panela from the large urn. You should learn from your friend Xavier, she calls out.

  Xavier?

  I feel a tightening in my stomach, like the tightening when you walk into a room with your weapon ready and the target is not there. Then I think, I am stupid to feel surprised.

  He has nice manners on the phone. Who is this friend? He said you are lucky to have a mother such as me.

  He said that.

  I add milk to the panela and bring it out to her with some Saltina biscuits.

  We need more candles, she says absently. They say there will be another blackout tonight.

  What else did Xavier say? I ask, putting the tray down, but the commercials have ended and my mother is once again lost to her soap show.

  I pick up the notepaper next to the phone. She has written down an address in her large, girlish writing. It means nothing to me. For a moment I consider telling her to turn off the TV and start packing once more, but already, I know, it is too late. My only hope is to meet with him tonight. I put the paper in my jacket, my heart beating pá pá pá from what I have just heard, and bend over the chair to kiss my mother’s forehead.

  Outside, I catch a bus to Aures. Claudia’s house is the old cement one painted blue, halfway up the hill.

  She turns from the large window when I arrive and says, Buenas noches, guapo. I am calmer now. The night air has cooled me. Claudia comes and lifts her hand to almost touch my face, then lets it drop. She knows I do not like to be touched around the head.

  Let’s go to the park, she says, like a question.

  I nod. I am watching her. The window gap behind her is bigger than her whole body, and the dark openness is somehow beautiful; it is rare that any window in this city is not nailed up with grilles or latticework. Behind the window is a sheer drop of twenty meters into a marsh of mud and rocks and rubbish.

  We walk up the hill together. The night air is cold and clean. All this time I am thinking about Claudia’s window, and how it used to be filled with glass until one day her mother came home from the market, pulled the glass pane so far back the wrong way the hinges broke, climbed up onto the ledge and stood upright before throwing herself out. Even then, she only managed to ruin the right half of her body.

  We arrive at the spot. It is dark. Ever since I showed it to Claudia she thinks of it as our spot, but in fact I prefer to go there without her. It is high, above the barrio, past the reach of the electricity cables, at the top of the hill where there are fields of yellow ichu grass and you can feel the wind from all four directions. Recently I have come here every day to sit in the long grass and sometimes drink or do the basuco. From this place I see the deep, narrow, long valley where the city of Medellín lies, cradled by mountains. The tall buildings rising out of the middle. I see the nameless streets, carreras running one way and callés the other. And in the evening I see the streetlights come on, running in gridded patterns until they reach the mountainsides where they race up and spread out until all the barrios that surround the city shimmer like constellations.

  It is like that tonight, everything upside down. The stars are under us and above, a sky like dirt.

  So you are really going to Cartagena? Claudia says.

  Yes.

  Why?

  Why? To myself I think, To see the ocean. But I say, What did you want to talk to me about? I have important business tonight.

  What business?

  There is no reason not to tell her. I say, I am meeting with my agent.

  So it is real, she says. You have been summoned.

  I am silent. Everywhere around us is the whine of grasshoppers, and farther away the noise of people and machines sounds to me like the wash of the ocean. From far enough away everything sounds like the ocean.

  There is a night bus to Tolú from the Terminal del Norte, says Claudia.

  I shake my head.

  I know about Hernando, she says. Everybody does.

  What do you know?

  She opens her mouth as if to speak, then stops. Then she says, The contract placed on him. By your agent.

  You do not know everything, I say.

  I watch Claudia’s face carefully and it is hard, the face of a soldado with its thin cigarette mouth.

  I must ask my agent for leave, I explain. Or he will find my mother.

  Claudia pauses briefly. How is she?

  My mother, I think, who I had assumed was safely hidden. She is glad I have been home, I say. Four whole days. I continue to watch Claudia. Excepting the business today, in the tugurio.

  But she ignores me. Instead, she says, And you—how do you feel?

  It is a question only a girl would ask.

  Feel? I say.

  She is right, though. Tonight, of all nights, I should feel something. If I think about it, then I am scared, yes, and sad, but it is as though that person who feels is someone other than me. In truth I sit here and I do not know what to feel. In truth I come up here to feel nothing.

  The last time she asked me that was at Carlos’s funeral, six months ago, at the Cemeterio Universal. It was the first death in our gallada. Everyone agreed he had died well. Then, too, I did not know what I felt standing before his grave. The hole was so small—he was never big, even though of us all he had the most hair on his legs and chest. My head was full of voices. One voice said, You should be crying, the other said, I want to, I want to, and behind both I could see myself, the fresh dirt on the mound, the bouquet of fake flowers, the statuettes of Marias and angels bobbing above the streets of headstones; I could hear the singing of birds and smell the plumeria an
d then feel the tears come, fake tears, watching my body and my hands so clearly as they moved, as through polished glass.

  It is like that now; I am watching myself and it is like I am watching a different person.

  You want to do some basuco? Claudia asks, reaching into her bag.

  I have to go, I say to her.

  Then I will come with you, she says.

  —

  CHICAS, THEY ARE A DISTRACTION from the important things, and as Luis says, sometimes to go between the legs of a chica is more dangerous than walking under a bridge in a strange barrio. As for Claudia, we used to go together, as far as that goes. I am fond of her but in truth I would not call her a friend. There is only one I would call my friend, and that one is Hernando.

  Hernando used to be the head of our gallada, if such could be said, although nobody would have admitted it. (Especially not Luis, who had the same age.) There were more of us then, perhaps twelve, and Hernando organized the mocós and arranged with restaurants and market sellers for food in return for protection. The children he sent cleaning windshields, shining shoes, juggling machetes, minding cars, making sales. The older ones he organized to steal cigarettes, flowers, and gum for the children to sell. Only a few of us did the serious robbery. We worked only for ourselves. After my father’s death, my mother and I struggled for money and it was Hernando who helped us survive: he took me into the gallada and taught me all the techniques—how to run the tag team, when to wear the private-school uniform, how to spot marks, such as those gringos who go to ATMs with laundry bags and conceal their bills in dirty socks. I learned quickly, and soon Hernando chose me to work with him on all the big scores.

  When the others were not around, Hernado talked differently to me. Sometimes he liked to watch people going about their business, particularly in crowded places, at times when we were supposed to be doing recon. Once, in a plaza at noontime, he pointed to a farmer at a market stall, then a man at a construction site, and asked if I thought they were happy.

  I don’t know.

  What about them?

  I looked where he pointed.

  They are probably happier, I said, half jokingly.

  Pah! He spat on the parched grass. The suits, they are richer, yes. He turned back to the construction worker, lean and black-skinned and slow-moving in the heat. He thought for a moment, frowning all the while, then said, But to work with your hands, and to work with others—that is real work. He spat on the ground again. He had told me once that his father was a farmer in the west country—it was after I had told him about my own father, the details of his unforeseen death—but since then, the past had never been discussed between us.

  It may not make a man happy, he said, but at least there is honor in it.

  In that way, too, he was different. While most of the gallada was concerned with buying the new things, Hernando talked to me during those three years about happiness and honor—even about politics—about a future unconnected to money.

  Then the day came, seven months ago, when we became brothers. We were all playing football in a park on the edge of the city. Hernando was one of the better players and looked like a bronze statue in motion. Someone kicked the ball off the field. It went a long way, then stopped at the leg of a man sitting on a stationary motorcycle. The man got off his bike, removed his sunglasses, and kicked the ball—in the opposite direction—into the traffic away from the park.

  Hernando had been chasing the ball. I had followed him because I wanted to speak in secret about a new strategy for the game.

  What are you doing? Hernando called out to the man.

  Hey, puto! the man said. Why aren’t you working? Life isn’t a bowl of cherries.

  You should not have kicked our ball away, said Hernando.

  I am doing you a favor. The man paused briefly, then swiveled to look over his shoulder. At that moment I realized he was there with another man, a uniformed policeman, also sitting on a motorbike.

  Come here, the policeman said to Hernando. He was smiling. The first man began to smile too.

  Hernando walked over without hesitating. He was wearing only pants and his sweating body looked large and powerful next to the shape of the sitting policeman. I watched and said nothing.

  You would argue with a business leader in our community? the policeman said cheerfully. He unclipped his holster. Hernando did not move. Turn around, the policeman said. You will argue at the station.

  I watched as the policeman handcuffed Hernando. Then I felt my arms being jerked behind my back—the other man had approached silently—and I felt the cold click of metal around my wrists. This man led me to his motorbike and sat me down behind him, facing backward, away from him. He smelled of alcohol.

  As the motorbike started moving, I slouched into the man’s back to keep my balance. I saw the park diminishing—everyone had vanished from the football game—but I could not see where we were going.

  Hernando’s bike was in front of ours so I could not see him either. The handcuffs cut into my wrists. Soon I realized we were going away from downtown Medellín. We were not going to any police station. We began to climb a hill leading us west, higher and higher, into steep slumland. Fear surged through my body: I twisted around, trying to locate Hernando, but the man growled and elbowed me on the side of my head. A voice sang out. We skidded onto a dirt road. The back tire kicked dust into my face and I coughed, my eyes still smarting. When the dust cleared I made out scrapwood shacks, a series of clothes lines, two women glancing up then down from a cooking fire—the power cables didn’t run this high—then suddenly, as we swerved again, the city—far below—the vast concrete valley sealed in by a film of smog as flat and blue as a lake.

  We turned away onto a narrow track. My breath now coming hot, fast. I could feel the man’s sweat on the skin of my back, soaking through my shirt. Sunlight flared from corrugated tin roofs and plastic sheeting on the hillside below us. The ground grew thicker with olive-colored shrubs and banana trees.

  The man said something but I could not hear it in the wind. At that moment I realized there were no more houses anywhere in sight. The motorbike slowed.

  Jump! someone yelled. It was Hernando. Automatically I leaned to the side of the bike. I tried to jump but my pants got caught in the chain. Then the bike pitched onto its right side and I began to roll down the grassy hill, my hands cuffed behind me. I heard a couple of gunshots. I kept rolling until the ground leveled off. My head felt like it had been stabbed at the back. Moments later I felt someone’s boots roll me onto my stomach. I waited for the shot. All I could smell was earth, and grass, and it smelled richer than I had ever smelled anything before. I waited. But the gunshot did not come, and then I felt someone unlock and remove my handcuffs. Hernando helped me to my feet. Blood leaked from his right armpit. He led me up the hill to where my captor, the businessman, lay under the bike, one leg bent so far back the wrong way the foot almost touched the hip. Hernando handed me a gun.

  It is his, he said.

  And the policeman? I asked.

  Your corrupted friend is dead, Hernando said sternly to the man, as though it were he who had asked the question.

  The man groaned. The flesh around his mouth had gone loose. I did not know then—as I do now—that this was a sign of fear.

  You must do this, said Hernando. He looked at me like a brother. He said, Ron, you must do this so we are in it together.

  I took the gun, which felt unexpectedly warm and heavy in my hand, and which gave off a smell like a match being lit in a dark room. I pointed it at the man’s head. His sunglasses were broken and bent around his ear and the fragments shone in the afternoon light. I aimed at the blackness in the middle of his ear and shot.

  After a while, I turned my back to the man’s face and tried to lift the motorbike from his broken lower body. I felt filled with a tremendous lightness, as if every breath I took was expanding inside me. Then I remembered something.

  The policeman. How did you—<
br />
  Hernando let out a short, burp-sounding laugh. He bent his knees as though about to sit down on an invisible chair, then tipped onto his ass. He seemed suddenly drunk.

  The stupid puto stopped, he said, because the handcuffs were uncomfortable against his back. But he would not turn me around to face the same way as him—he said he did not want a faggot rubbing up behind him. Hernando burped again. So he handcuffed my hands in front. At the top of the hill, I stopped him like this.

  Hernando tilted his head backward and lifted his arms up, high up, arching them over his head. I saw the gashes in his right armpit that the policeman’s fingernails must have made when the cuffs looped over his face and under his throat.

  I watched him and he laughed again. Inside, the light air filled me like sacol. Help me lift this, I said. But he did not look at the bike. He remained sitting on the grass, half naked, embracing his legs tightly.

  For me too, he said. That was my first time too. He frowned, looking straight ahead. His face was as white as a plastic bag. Then a change came over it as though he was going to be sick. Then his face changed again and he smiled, but now the smile only affected his mouth.

  Finally, I lifted the bike and rested it on its side stand. We have to go, I said. You ride behind me.

  He nodded. I helped him to his feet and onto the motorbike. All the way down the hill he gripped me tightly, like a chica on her first ride.

  —

  AFTER THAT, OF COURSE, more things changed than just the fact that Hernando and I became friends. You do not kill a policeman and business leader and expect the streets to owe you protection.

  El Padre approached me—through a nero whom I knew but did not know to be employed by El Padre—and told me he would protect me. He would take me off the streets, like he took other kids off the onion farms, but he would raise me above these farm kids: I would be given an office job. There was strength in me, he said on the telephone. I could go back to my own barrio, where, with my new status, I would be safe. We are similar, he said. We are both soldados, we do what needs to be done, and we have both lost our fathers to the conflict of Colombia. He said, I will be your benefactor.