It moves me when a nation rises, believing in a leader strongly enough to follow him through a storm. He is a visionary who looks into the future, like the blind man in the story my father told my mother the day he met her, in that defunct Hotel Contemporáneo: someone who shows the way, sets the pace, even if that pace leads to death, it doesn’t matter, you have to follow even knowing that deep down it’s pointless because all that awaits us is death, but that’s the fate of everything that lives and it’s why we have to keep up the pace and believe, as if we weren’t going to die, and it’s there, are you following me? it’s there that politics becomes a great art.
There is a kind of violence that I call visionary and that can only be exercised when we have ideals. In our future Republic the man who deceives the weak and takes advantage of other people’s ignorance for his own ends, whether political or financial, will receive the death penalty!
The man who is caught using for his own good what the State placed in his custody will be sentenced to death!
The man who takes the power the State has conferred on him because of his abilities and uses it to obtain personal favors of any kind will be sentenced to death!
To serve the State will be the supreme dignity to which anyone can aspire, and that’s why whoever does so must be a worshipper of the good, an altruist of the present and the future. A mystic. Someone who can also honor the vision granted by symbols, the prophetic word, the future.
That will be the great requirement of our future functionaries, a mixture of illuminati and legionaries, ready to die for the supreme ideal that is the greatness of the Republic, however lowly their position.
Forgive me, I’ve started talking to you as if I were at a meeting, I’m sorry, but I’m going to tell you something that you may like, Consul, something I repeat in my speeches:
In our Republic the works of Shakespeare will be obligatory. In them, you find all that is noblest and most profound: honor, dignity, and the ancient values of the human condition struggling against ambition, betrayal, deception, and envy. And the most serious one: ignorance, which is the mother of all evils.
Years ago I established relations with communities in Latin America and the United States. I’ve traveled and there’s a solid network that’s growing, more in some countries than in others. That’s normal. In yours, everything’s fine and we’re strong. We’re expecting things to work out. There are young leaders who aren’t known yet, but believe me, they’ll emerge when the time comes. People with a mystique.
Anyway, enough of that, let me continue with my life story.
When my father was elected Pope I was in a psychiatric hospital. I’d had a terrible crisis. I was on my way home, walking along Calle Fuencarral, when suddenly I knew with complete certainty that on the next corner and on all the others I had to pass, there were enemies waiting for me with saws, and one with a scalpel. They were planning to cut off my arms and take out my liver and one of my kidneys, so I stopped dead and hid in the doorway of a store.
That’s how the illness is, you simply can’t do anything. If my neurons were better I might be able to avoid it, but that’s not the case. My masters decided to use madness to communicate, and what can I do against that? Nothing.
I was sent to the clinic just as they were about to make my father Pope. They strapped me down, they gave me hypnotic drugs, because the problem of those enemies was transferred to the corridors of the hospital: I saw them there, I heard them, I watched out for their shadows. They were behind the pillars, behind the curtains. They were waiting for me to sleep in order to perform amputations on me.
I was always a docile patient. My psychotic episodes didn’t involve what in clinical terms is called “cognitive loss.” In spite of the panic attacks and the hallucinations, I remained clear-headed, and of course, how could I not? My schizophrenia had a specific destination: a confessional on the other side of consciousness. And what was it my masters told me this time? If I were like the shepherd children of Fatima, I would go down in history recounting these conversations, but that’s not the way it is. In addition to words I see sparks, glimmers of meaning.
As if the future were opening up my eyes. Suddenly a window opened and I was able to contemplate what was to come. That’s when I found out that the cardinals of the Vatican were going to elect my father, and that I had to prepare myself to return to my region and fight for it.
The words of my masters were: “You have to protect your land, even with more violence.” And also this: “Follow your father, but not by the hand, since he cannot give it to you.”
And a last one: “You will know when to do so, when the time comes to return.”
Well, Consul, now I’ve told you almost everything. Do you still have any doubts?
21
Returning from the morning’s therapies, with Pedro Ndongo pushing my wheelchair, I found the priest Ferdinand Palacios in the room. He was lying on his bed, holding up his Bible. As soon as he saw me he frowned and said:
“Quite a beating you got, isn’t it? How’s the other fellow? Or were you run over by a truck?”
I told him what had happened.
“Oh, yes, it’s a sacred rule. You should never get involved in domestic quarrels, because in the end the two of them gang up on you. Well, may God help you with that. Thank heaven the other man didn’t die because then things might have gotten out of hand. I’m going to pray for it to be resolved, did you hear that, my son?”
Pedro helped me back into bed and secured the handcuffs. I felt tired after the therapy and closed my eyes. The priest drew the curtain and devoted himself to his Bible.
“Rest, man, you’re badly hurt,” he said.
“Don’t you also hurt, Father? With those bandages.”
“Don’t worry, other things hurt me. We’ll talk about that when you’re feeling better. Rest, there’ll be plenty of time.”
In the following three days he talked endlessly, as if he had been waiting years to do so. A dark (sometimes grim) torrent of words poured out of his mouth. That’s how I learned his incredible story. Perhaps he was looking to confess, or to leave his mark on someone. I followed the advice of Pedro Ndongo and tried to memorize what he said.
He also wanted to know who I was, so, in an incoherent way, I told him a few details of my life.
When talking about your own life, the greatest temptation is to cop out and invent a different one. Or to talk about that lost other that still survives in us.
I told him I had written several novels and a couple of travel books. I had lived in a number of countries and had a whole series of occupations, namely: mechanic in Paris, student on a scholarship from the Institute of Latin American Cooperation in Madrid, correspondent and radio journalist in France, consul and cultural attaché in India, first secretary in the Colombian delegation to UNESCO.
I’ve traveled through Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, but dream about the Pacific islands. More than anything else, I’d like to spend time in Tonga.
I’m still a writer, I told him, although the literary world, as I had known it when I started out, has hit the skids. Almost nobody buys books anymore and as a last straw, the crisis has imposed a cruel Darwinism. It’s not only the survival of the fittest, it’s the survival of the most versatile. Some of us have taken a crash course in versatility, but without great results. What to do when the atmosphere in which we grew, whose air governed our intellectual metabolism, has abruptly disappeared? It’s become necessary to gamble with life, believe in something, and try to survive. Like in those war movies, where in the ruins of a city after a violent bombardment something stirs amid the rubble and we see a line of tattered figures emerge. Dirty, badly wounded, but with their hearts clean and uncontaminated. Inside them there is something that protects them as they walk, perhaps to the top of a hill or even to death, with the free, confident pace of those who have lost everything. I’ve dreamed of being on
e of them. Not those who arrive unscathed from on high, but those who get up from the dust and walk, against all hope.
My antidote, I told him, was to evoke that young man of nineteen who dreamed of writing books and who is still alive inside me. But perhaps it’s already too late. When the last reader dies, I added, that young writer will most likely be scribbling away in some ramshackle hotel, not knowing that nothing has a meaning anymore. I might be my own last reader, I told him. There’s a kind of dignity in continuing to do things that nobody is interested in and nobody celebrates.
What else to tell?
I spent a happy childhood thanks to the books of the English writer Enid Blyton. I think I read the whole series of the Famous Five and the Secret Seven. Jules Verne and Salgari were favorites, too. At the age of eleven I read Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose and Kafka’s Letter to My Father, which I enjoyed even though my own father was good to me. I ventured into more complex territories until one day, just to emulate my older brother, I read One Hundred Years of Solitude. That was the start of my adult life.
At the age of twenty, I left home and went around the world reading Rimbaud. His books were always on the night tables of hotels, pensions, and hostels, before I continued my journey. I’m still reading him today, since the more I’ve tried to write about people who leave and return, about that flow of migrants I see circulating around the busy, noisy world, the more I feel the presence of the poet of escape, the man who turned leaving into one of the fine arts. The poet who abandoned everything and kept postponing his return, going farther every time, first to the East, like Lord Jim, and then to Africa.
Rimbaud and the art of fugue.
That, in broad terms, is what I told Ferdinand Palacios, with the slight suspicion that it was I myself who wanted to hear my own version of that life I had left outside, that life that now seemed remote. And it’s quite likely that when Palacios told me the story of his life in Aguacatal, a town in the Urabá Antioquia region, in great detail, he was doing the same thing, talking to himself in order to continue believing in something, clinging to his own words as if to a burning bush. When it comes down to it, we are all hungry for something to protect us, however remote and invisible. The only thing we can do is tell stories and believe that one day we will be saved by them.
Two or three days went by. The unsatisfactory hours of calm, that cruel, monstrous mass, which is what time is when you have absolutely nothing to do. All the same, I managed to establish a certain routine. Pedro Ndongo, my friendly nurse and guard, kept me informed about what was happening in the Irish embassy siege, which had already ended its first week amid tough negotiations, and that’s the reason weary voices were calling for an attack by special forces, whatever the price, to set an example. The family members of the hostages, who had gathered in Madrid, begged for calm. They feared for their loved ones.
One afternoon Pedro told me we had to go for a special checkup. I left my notebook on the table and, with effort, moved from the bed to the wheelchair.
Once out in the corridor, he said:
“There’s no checkup, friend, I just wanted to give you two pieces of news. Both good: the first is that Francis Reading has at last opened his eyes. He’s recovering very well.”
I tried to hug Pedro, but felt a stabbing pain in my ribs.
“And the second?” I said.
“The second is quite incredible: Reading’s wife has decided not to press charges against you and instead is asking her husband for a divorce! It’s because of the Colombian girl. He himself confessed to her.”
I felt free. It was as if the world had started turning again after a horrible stutter.
“Does that mean I can go?”
“No, not yet,” Pedro said, “the judge still has to rule on a sanction for ‘disturbing the peace.’”
“And in the meantime, do I still have to be handcuffed to the bed?”
“No, that’s finished with. Today they’ll be transferring you to another room in the hospital. And there’s another thing, I almost forgot.”
“Today must be my lucky day, what is it?”
“You have a visitor.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Juana Manrique?”
“No, it’s the Colombian girl who hit you. She’s waiting in the visiting room, do you want me to take you there?”
I recognized her from a distance. She was wearing faded jeans, sandals, and a white blouse. Seeing me, she lifted her hand to her face. My appearance was still upsetting. She came toward me, and almost got down on her knees.
“Oh, my God, look at you!”
When she recovered, she held out her hand and introduced herself.
“My name is Manuela Beltrán,” she said, “how sad having to meet you like this.”
She apologized for the blow. She said she’d gotten scared and hadn’t known what to do.
“Don’t worry, it was a bad night for everyone. I hear your friend is better?”
“Friend?” Manuela said. “No way.”
“I gather he’s your teacher.”
“Really? How did you hear that?”
“We’re sick and we can’t move, all we can do is talk.”
“Paco suffered a contusion from the blow you gave him. They operated on him to prevent a brain hemorrhage and possible lesions. From what I’ve been told, the coma was induced. After the operation they decided to wake him.”
She was silent for a moment, squeezed her chin with one hand, then said:
“I came to apologize to you.”
I was unable to suppress a smile.
“The blow you gave me wasn’t the worst. I’m already recovering. I’m glad your friend is all right, that way we’ll have fewer problems.”
“He started the fight, you were trying to defend me.”
“Yes, but I hit him so hard I almost killed him.”
“Accidentally.”
“So why did you hit me?”
Manuela did something childlike: she smiled even as her eyes expressed anguish.
“I didn’t think. I had no idea who you were. When I saw Paco on the ground, bleeding and with his head cracked, I went crazy.”
“Your friend’s wife has withdrawn the charges.”
“I really meant my apology,” Manuela said.
“The main thing is to have done with it.”
“I also want to thank you,” she added shyly, “after all, you did it for me. If you’d been at another table nothing would have happened.”
“I don’t think I’ll get to see your friend,” I said, “but tell him from me that I’m really sorry for what happened.”
Manuela’s eyes filled with tears.
“It was Paco’s fault and that’s why I don’t want to see him. He hit me in the face, in front of everyone. I was wrong about him.”
“Are you in love with him?”
Manuela dried her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. “I don’t know, I was never sure,” she said, “but something like that, I suppose.”
“You’ll get over it.”
“Now that his wife has left him, he’s asking that we try again. But someone who raised his hand like that dies forever.”
“Was it the first time he’d hit you?”
“No, but never as hard as that. He’s jealous, and he goes off the rails when he’s tense. Two months ago we went to a university conference in Seville. He was nervous because he was going to meet with a specialist in medieval literature. Nobody there was supposed to know that we were together. He’s my teacher and I couldn’t go with him to a lot of the meetings, so I started to go out and explore the city. One evening some students invited me for a few beers and I spent a while with them, while he finished up. When I got back to the hotel he was waiting for me. He was furious. He yelled at me that I was a whore, who had I been w
ith, I stank of men. He hit me, although without closing his hand. I ran out and went down to reception, and when he saw that I was going to make a scene, he calmed down. He started crying, he got down on his knees and begged me to forgive him. He’s a fragile person.”
“Are you studying literature?”
“Yes, at the Complutense. Actually, literature and linguistics; the name of the course is Hispanic Philology.”
I felt a small shock.
“Really? That’s exactly what I studied, also at the Complutense. Thirty years ago.”
“I’d heard of you before,” she said. “I’ve read your work. It’s a bit weird telling you this now, in this situation. When I think that I smashed a chair on your head, I feel like throwing myself out the window. How could I have known who you were?”
“Fortunately, not all my readers act that way.”
At last, she laughed.
Just then, Pedro Ndongo arrived, tapping his wrist with his finger. It was time to go back to my room. We had a couple of therapies. I said goodbye to Manuela and thanked her for her visit.
“I’d like to see you again, may I?”
I nodded, and she took out a card written in biro.
“These are my details, in case you leave here before I come back.”
“I’ll be here for a few more days. Then I’ll be going to the Hotel de las Letras, on the Gran Vía.”
“I hope you get better soon. And once again, my apologies.”
We went along the corridor to one of the elevators and Pedro said to me:
“She’s sincere, my friend. I don’t know what she said to you, but you must believe her. I can recognize sincerity in people. Was she the one who hit you with a stool?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then it’s a good thing she has such soft slim arms. Otherwise you’d be dead.”
“She’s Colombian,” I said.
“Really? I swear I have to check out your country. Do they treat black people well there?”
“If they have money and a European passport, very well. If not, very badly. And if they’re Colombian, worse still, unless they have money.”
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