“Why didn’t you stay there?”
“My mother wanted me with her. She lives in Calamar with her new husband. But I didn’t want to come back. And when I did, there were problems. We didn’t have any money, and I couldn’t leave again.”
“Did you like it in Calamar?”
“No, I wanted to go back to my aunt, in that nice house. They had a swimming pool. We ate hamburgers. Here they don’t know what that is.”
“Were you studying in Calamar?”
“I was in school at the beginning. I was good in school. I liked drawing a lot, and I had nice handwriting. Later on I needed money, so I had to work.”
“Work where?”
She hesitated for a moment, then said, “In a bar.”
I didn’t say anything. Most of the girls had worked in a bar, and I knew what that meant.
“That’s why I enlisted. Here at least, if you have a boyfriend, you don’t have to wash his laundry for him. We women and men are equal.”
I listened to her, thinking that it wasn’t quite true.
What was true, on the other hand, was that the girls had to work like men. I can still see Katerina in her tank top and camouflage pants, an ax in her hand, swinging her arms back with a spectacular twist of her waist to land a precise blow at the base of a fine tree she chopped down without any difficulty. It was a vision that had left my companions breathless, this black Venus displaying a physical prowess that emphasized every muscle on her body. How could a girl like her stay in a place like this?
“I would have liked to be a beauty queen,” she confessed. “Or a model,” she added dreamily.
Her words stabbed my heart. She was carrying her AK-47 the way others carry a book and a pencil.
The march went on, every day more trying. “We won’t be there in time for New Year’s,” said Gira’s boyfriend. I didn’t want to believe him. I thought he was just saying that to make us go faster. I had no intention of walking faster. This blind effort, with no idea where we were headed, was sapping my energy.
One particularly rough day, with cansaperros one after the other, like pearls strung together by an invisible hand, a storm broke. The only order we had was to keep going. Angel took pleasure in forbidding me from covering myself. I kept going, dripping with rainwater.
I caught up with Lucho, who was leaning against a tree in the middle of a climb, his gaze adrift. “I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take it anymore,” he said, looking up at the sky as it raged against us.
I went up to him to give him a hug, to take his hand.
“Keep moving!” shouted Angel. “Don’t try to trick us with your stories. We know the game you two play to slow up the march.”
I didn’t listen to him. I was fed up with his insults, his fits, his threats. I stopped, tossed my backpack on the ground, and took out the sugar I always carried on me.
“Here you are, my Lucho, take this. Let’s carry on together, gently.”
Angel cocked his M-16 rifle and poked the barrel into my ribs.
“Never mind,” said a voice that I recognized. “We’re already there. The troops are resting fifty yards from here.”
Efrén picked up Lucho’s pack and said, “Come on, sir, just a little more effort.”
He took out the black plastic sheet on the side of his equipment and handed it to him. Lucho wrapped himself in it and held my arm, and he was still saying, “I can’t take it anymore, Ingrid, I can’t take it anymore.” He couldn’t tell that I was crying along with him, because it was pouring so hard that my face was streaming with rain.
My God, this is enough! I screamed in the silence of my heart.
When I got to the top of one hill, I was ready to pass out. I had forgotten to fill the little plastic bottle I used for water. Angel was drinking from his, water dripping down his neck.
“I’m thirsty,” I said, my mouth all furry.
“There’s no water for you, you old hag,” he brayed.
He was looking at me with the cold eye of a reptile. He raised his canteen to his mouth and drank for a long time, never taking his eyes from me. Then he turned it over, and two drops fell out. He screwed the top back on. Enrique was doing his rounds. He walked the length of the column, frowning. He went right by me. I kept silent.
“Prepare the water!” he shouted when the last of us had arrived.
A sound of pots banging cheered the silence of the mountain. Two guys struggling to carry a cauldron filled with water stopped a few feet from us. They tossed in two packs of sugar and some sachets of the strawberry-flavored powder. They stirred it all up with a branch they broke off a tree.
“Who wants water? Come on up!” shouted one of them like a street vendor.
Everybody rushed up.
“Not you!” screamed Angel, in a foul mood.
I squatted down, my head between my knees. “I’m not as thirsty as before. Pretty soon I won’t be thirsty at all.”
The water left in the cauldron was poured out on the ground. We went on marching. Efrén came running up to me.
“Lucho sent this for you!” He tossed me a bottle filled with red water, which landed at my feet.
SIXTY-SEVEN
THE EGGS
On December 17, 2005, the march stopped at ten o’clock in the morning. We had just jumped two small streams, with a bed of little pink and white pebbles. The rumor immediately spread that we’d be camping at the top of a hill a few yards high.
“We made it before Christmas,” I said, relieved.
In a few hours, the camp was built. I was chained to my tree at the far end and Lucho to his at the other. I was allowed to build some parallel bars for exercise. They wanted me to be in better shape for marching, I thought. They opened the padlock that attached me to the tree, and I had to keep the whole chain wrapped around my neck when I climbed on the bars. I did my spins while the guards looked on, amused. I’ll fall, and the chain will stay caught on the bar, and I’ll die, strangled, I thought wryly.
I had one hour for my exercises and my bath. “You have to get some muscles in your arms,” said the young guy who had replaced Gira as nurse. I found it very difficult to do pull-ups, and I tried to raise the weight of my entire body, hanging from one of the bars, to no avail. I’ll do it every day, and I’ll make it, I promised myself.
My companions watched and felt sorry for me. Arteaga was the first one to break the silence imposed on me. He spoke without looking at me, continuing to work on sewing caps, advising me on which exercises to do and how many, right in front of the guards. There were no comments, no reprimands. One by one, my companions began speaking to me again, more and more openly, except for Lucho.
One afternoon on my way back from the bath, I could see that Lucho wasn’t feeling well. He needed sugar. I hurried to find it in my things, my hands trembling because I knew it was urgent. I gave Lucho the sugar and stayed with him for a while to be sure that he felt better. From behind, Angel pulled my chain violently.
“Who do you think you are?” he screamed. “Either you are stupid, a mental retard, or you’re taking us for fools! Don’t you get it? You’re not allowed to talk to anyone. Has your old donkey’s brain stopped working? I’ll get it to work, all right, with a bullet between your eyes, you’ll see!”
I listened to him without batting an eyelid. He dragged me like a dog to my tree and chained me up, relishing every second. I knew I’d done the right thing, maintaining my self-control. But the rage I felt against Angel distracted me from my good resolutions. I was almost angry with myself. During the night I replayed all the possible versions of the same scene, above all the imagined slap I delivered to his face, and I delighted in picturing Angel’s defeat when I put him in his place. Nonetheless, I knew the best thing had been to keep quiet, despite the white-hot burn of his insults.
Angel made a point of not allowing me to forgive him for degrading me. He persecuted me with his spite and shared it with the guerrillas like Pipiolo or Tiger, who got off on the self-
aggrandizing pleasure of attacking me. The slightest pretext for abuse was a delight. They knew that I waited impatiently for my morning drink. They insisted on serving me last, and when I held out my bowl, they hardly filled it at all or threw out the rest in front of me.
They knew I liked bath time. I was the last one to go to bathe, but they would hurry me from the water faster than anyone else. I was not allowed to sit in the stream to wash; I had to do it standing up, because they said I got the water dirty. My companions had set up a plastic curtain so that I could have some privacy when bathing. Everyone could use it except me.
One morning when I was washing, I noticed some movement over by the forest. Soaping myself, my eyes on the trees, I saw Mono Liso, his pants around his ankles, masturbating.
When the guard came to lock my chain around the tree, I demanded he call Enrique. Enrique didn’t come. But “the Dwarf,” his new second in command, answered my request.
The Dwarf was a strange man, first of all because he was well over six feet tall and then because he looked like an intellectual lost in the bush. I had never been able to decide whether I liked him or not. I believed he was weak and a hypocrite, but perhaps he was simply disciplined and cautious.
“I wanted to let you know that if the FARC is not capable of educating that brat, I’ll do it myself.”
“The next time it happens, let us know.”
“There won’t be a next time. If it happens again, I’m going to give him a thrashing he’ll blush about all his life.”
The next morning no one came to unchain me, so I couldn’t do my exercises at the bars outside my caleta. I was reduced to doing push-ups below my hammock.
Many months passed by when I saw the hen. She had just jumped onto Lucho’s caleta and had settled onto the mosquito net he left rolled up at the end of his bed during the day. It must have been a more pleasant nest. She stayed for hours, motionless, unbeknownst to anybody, with one eye closed, sitting straight up as if she were sleeping. She was speckled gray, with a lovely bloodred crest, well aware of the strong impression she made. What a looker, I thought as I observed her. She got up, clucking, then cackled energetically, ruffling her feathers, before going off without further ado.
Every day at the same time, Lucho’s hen came to visit. She regularly laid an egg for him on the sly. At twilight we observed the guards.
“She was in the camp this afternoon.”
“She must have laid an egg here somewhere, among the trees.”
The egg was already in our bellies. It had come to me in a roundabout way, so that I could cook it. I had perfected a technique for heating my bowl by burning the plastic handle of the disposable razors delivered to the camp. I kept all of them. With a single razor handle, I could cook an egg, which Lucho then shared out to our comrades in spoonfuls, taking turns.
When it rained, I could cook continuously—the rain hid the smoke, the smells, and the sound. And we would eat all the eggs we’d saved one by one.
We had just discovered a new one in the folds of Lucho’s mosquito net. The hen had made a great fuss, to Pinchao and me, to tell us about her egg. We were really happy, because it was Mother’s Day, and it would allow us to celebrate.
We could not have imagined that the date would be marked in a very different way. They hadn’t made a sound; by the time we heard them, they were already on top of us.
SIXTY-EIGHT
MONSTER
MAY 2006
The Dwarf arrived, out of breath.
“Take your equipos just as they are. Don’t take anything more. We’re leaving right away.”
The helicopters were whirring above our heads, their rotors slowly stirring the air with a deafening sound of cataclysm. William, the nurse, ran off right away. He was always ready. The rest of us always wanted to slip something precious in our packs at the last minute.
I didn’t try to go any faster. Papa always said, “Get dressed slowly if you are in a hurry.”And death? I didn’t give a damn. A bullet—quick, clean, why not? I didn’t believe it would happen to me. I knew that was not my destiny. A guard was barking ferociously behind me. I looked up. Everyone had left.
The guard pushed me, took my equipo, which was still open, and left at a run. Above my head a helicopter was hovering. A man was seated in the door, his feet dangling, looking at the ground. He was wearing big goggles, and his gun barrel was aimed at the same spot he was looking at. How could he not see me, right there below him? Maybe it was my camouflage pants. He might take me for a guerrilla and shoot me. I had to signal that I was a prisoner. I’d show him my chains. Maybe it would be too late, and they’d leave me lying there in a puddle of blood, and the military patrols would discover my body.
“¿Vieja hijue madre, quiere que la maten?”78
It was Angel. He was hysterical, bent over behind a tree with my equipo in his arms. The blast from the helicopter was making him squint, his head to one side as if he were in pain.
A hail of bullets raked the forest. I jumped. I ran straight ahead, grabbing Lucho’s mosquito net, with the egg still inside, and I landed next to a tree, to crouch beside Angel.
There was no letup in the firing, just next to us but not at us. The helicopter went on circling above us. Angel didn’t want to move. In a row of trees in front of ours, other guerrillas were waiting, like us.
“Let’s go!” I said. I wanted to move.
“No, they’re shooting at anything that moves. I’ll tell you when to run.”
I still had the egg in my hand. I wondered what I could do with it now. I slipped it into my jacket pocket and tried to roll up the mosquito net so it could fit into my equipo.
“Now’s not the right time,” said Angel, growling.
“You bite your fingernails, I put my things away—you have your way, I have mine!” I answered, annoyed.
He looked at me, surprised, and then he smiled. I hadn’t seen that side of him for a long time. He took my equipo and tossed it neatly over his head to wedge it on his own pack against his neck. Then he took me by the hand and looked me straight in the eye.
“On the count of three, we run, and you don’t stop until I do, got it?”
“Got it.”
Other helicopters were coming toward us. The one directly above climbed higher and went into a bank. I could see the soles of the soldier’s boots getting smaller. Angel ran, the devil on his heels, and I followed.
Three-quarters of an hour later, we were making our way through the bush once again. I showed the egg to Lucho. “You’re silly,” he said, delighted.
The egg was all that mattered. Having the army come to rescue us seemed like an impossible dream.
The forest was dressed up in pink and purple. This happened twice a year with the flowering of orchids. They grew around the tree trunks and they awoke all at the same time, in a flurry of color that lasted only a few days. I picked them as we walked, to put in my hair, tucked behind my ears, and wove them through my braids. My companions would hand me some, pleased to rekindle the gestures of gallantry they had forgotten.
We walked for days, and then we would find the bongo farther away. Enrique always crowded us together in the stern, next to the fuel cans, but we were too tired by the march to mind.
Behind a little cluster of trees, the gray-blue water of the river seemed immobile, like a mirror. Gradually the light changed. The trees stood out, as if drawn with Japanese strokes against the artificial paradise of the pinkish red background. The cry of a pterodactyl broke the air. I looked up. Two guacamayas soared across the heaven in a train of rainbow colors and gold dust. “I’ll draw them for my Mela and my Loli.”
The sky darkened. There was nothing left but stars when the bongo arrived.
We came to a disused FARC camp. We set up off to one side, on a slight slope overlooking a deep, narrow stream that capriciously formed a right angle just in front of us, creating a pool of blue water above a bed of fine sand.
Enrique magnanimously authorized each
of us to bathe when it suited us. My caleta was built first, in the row going up the slope. I had an incomparable view over the pool. I was as happy as I could be. The water flowed icy and crystal clear. Early in the morning, it was covered in vapor, like thermal waters. I decided to go for my swim just after the morning meal, because no one seemed to want to argue over that time slot, and I wanted to stay in for a long time. The current was strong, and a tree trunk lodged in the curve was an ideal support for swimming in place.
The next day Tiger was on duty, and his vicious gaze did not leave me during the entire time I did my exercises. He’s going to make my life hell, I thought. The day after that, Oswald replaced him at the same time.
“Get out,” he brayed.
“Enrique said we could stay in as long as we like.”
“Get out.”
When the Dwarf came on his rounds, I asked him for permission to swim in the pool.
“I will bring it up with the commander,” he replied, the model FARC guerrilla.
With the FARC, not a single leaf on a tree could be cut without permission from the leader. This centralized power meant that things moved very slowly. But it proved very useful for putting a wrench in other people’s works when it suited. If a guard wanted to turn down a prisoner’s request, he would reply that he’d ask his superior. The Dwarf’s answer was the equivalent of a refusal. So I was surprised when he came back the next day and declared, “You can stay in the water and swim, but watch out for the stingrays.”
Tiger and Oswald moved their rifles to the other shoulder. If they were on duty when it was my bath time, they would try to outdo each other repeating, “Watch out for the stingrays!” just to annoy me.
I hung some sheets that my companions had given me around my hammock so that I could change without having anyone look at me.
Even Silence Has an End: My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle Page 50
