‘I’m not worried.’
‘I think you are. Because if nothing happened, and you did that drawing . . . Of course, of course I understand. But can I tell you something? We were all there. And can I tell you something else? The last thing you want to do is to start asking questions. You’re not guilty of anything, Javier – ’
‘But who’s talking about guilt?’ Mallarino cut him off. ‘I’m not talking about guilt, nobody’s talking about guilt. I’ll tell you one more time, Rodrigo: it’s not for me. It’s for her.’
Silence. A moment later, when Valencia spoke, it was as if his voice had fallen to the floor: a stepped-on, worn-out, used-up voice.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘And so the idea is to find the widow.’
‘Yes.’
‘And speak to her, ask her.’
‘Yes.’
‘But how stupid,’ Valencia said wearily. ‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.’
‘I don’t see why,’ said Mallarino. ‘We just – ’
‘What idiots,’ said Valencia.
‘Hey, just a minute.’
‘What an idiot you are. I won’t say anything about her, I don’t know what’s in her head. But you’re an idiot. And what are you going to do, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do. But that’s something – ’
‘You’re going to knock on her door and she’s going to invite you in, how are you, how’s it going, and is she going to offer you a coffee? Or is the girl going to introduce herself: pleased to meet you, señora, I’d like to know what it was your husband did to me. Is that it?’
‘Go to hell, Valencia.’
‘No, that’s not it, is it? That’s not it. She’s the least of it, Javier, what matters least to you is what happened to her. You want to confirm that you didn’t make a mistake, isn’t that it? You want to be convinced. It’s idiotic, Javier, think it through, you have to see. We were all there. All of us, we were all there: are you going to cast doubt on what happened, when all of us were there? But let’s suppose it didn’t, suppose that didn’t happen. Tell me, what do you want to change? It can’t be changed now, Javier, that’s all done and finished. Cuéllar jumped from the fifth storey of a building: nothing more irreversible than that. And can I tell you something? No one’s missing him. We haven’t missed him in all these years. We’re better off without him. More than that: we’ve all forgotten him. He’s forgotten. The country forgot him. Even his party forgot him. Back then they were ashamed of him, Javier, you think anyone’s interested in his name appearing in the newspapers again? He was a despicable guy, that Cuéllar. You on the other hand are important: you’re important to the newspaper and important to the country. This country is a jungle, Javier. We count on a few people to help us get to the other side, safe and sound, without being devoured by savage beasts. And the beasts are everywhere. You look up and you realize. Everywhere, Javier. And they’re disguised, they’re where you least expect them. Let’s say you were mistaken. Let’s say we were mistaken. In any case, the guy was despicable. He’d demonstrated it a thousand times, he would have demonstrated it a thousand more. Now you’re going to turn him into a martyr, even if only for his widow? You’re going to go and confess that you did that drawing without really having seen, without being really sure. Very well. And then what? Can you imagine what the beasts could do with that? Can you imagine what will happen when the beasts realize they can cut your head off? And for something that happened so long ago, besides. Do you think they’re going to spare you? Well, they’re not. They’re going to cut off your head, the beasts of this beastly country are going to cut your head off. Everyone who hates you, who hates us, all the fanatics are going to go for the jugular. When they realize that you have doubts, that you’re not sure any more, they’re going to be all over you. No one can afford doubt these days, Javier. This is not a world for doubters. You have to look tough, because if not, you’ll get killed. You want to stand in front of them, take off your bulletproof vest and tell them to fire. And they’re going to fire, believe me. They’re going to shoot you. What good is that, Javier? Tell me, explain it to me, explain the utility of this whole ridiculous thing, because I can’t see any, I swear by my fucking mother I can’t see it. I don’t know what good this is going to do and I need you to tell me. Clearly, without any stupid metaphors, without any nonsense. Tell me, tell me in two words what good it’s going to do?’
‘None for you,’ said Mallarino. ‘But it might do her some good.’
Silence.
‘To hell with you, Javier,’ said Valencia. ‘To hell with you both.’
And he hung up.
So what he could have found out in twenty minutes he ended up finding out in two hours: Mallarino had to get out his yellowing address book that was falling apart, poor mangy little thing, and call a court reporter and some journalists at other papers – the national, news and police desks – and even a Member of Congress who owed him several favours. In a few minutes they were calling him back, each and every one of them, bending over backwards to meet Javier Mallarino’s immediate needs. His name helped, he had to admit it, but he was not the least bit concerned about abusing his reputation to achieve these modest ends, for, after all, were not these journalists and politicians the ones who had given him this reputation and the power that went with it? One thing for sure, Mallarino would have got the information much more quickly if the people he asked had been in possession of that information. But they weren’t: some of them had a hard time remembering Cuéllar; others didn’t even know he’d ever existed. Valencia was right: the man had been swallowed up by oblivion. Not surprising in this amnesiac country obsessed with the present, this narcissistic country where not even the dead are capable of burying their dead. Forgetfulness was the only democratic thing in Colombia: it covered them all, the good and the bad, the murderers and the heroes, like the snow in the James Joyce story, falling upon all of them alike. Right now there were people all over Colombia working hard to have certain things forgotten – small or big crimes or embezzlements or tortuous lies – and Mallarino could bet that all of them, without exception, would be successful in their endeavour. Ricardo Rendón had also been forgotten. Not even he had managed to be saved. Maybe Rodrigo Valencia had also been right about that: it was no use. What good would it do? he’d asked, and he meant something else, of course, but he’d managed to get Mallarino to retain the question and ask himself now, with some melancholy: what good would it do?
And now his four-by-four was entering the city, and the mountain road turned gradually into a suburban road and then the avenue, and the rain clouds seemed to pass them going the other way, stubbornly returning to where they’d come from: the house in the mountains. Mallarino detested this stretch where one found oneself suddenly surrounded by horrendous brick buildings, the temperature went up two or three degrees and drivers, who didn’t expect the change, began, in risky manoeuvres, to take their jackets off while driving. He had never had to take his jacket off: unlike most of the rest of the people who lived in the mountains, who left their houses all wrapped up in overcoats and scarves (and it was not unusual to see someone driving in leather gloves), Mallarino tended to dress in light clothes, no more than a shirt and corduroy blazer which changed colour when he brushed it with his hand, and preferred to leave his raincoat on the back seat of the car, ready for any eventuality. Samanta Leal, sitting beside him, had complained of the cold and ducked her head between her shoulders, like a chick, and had only recently started to relax. The sheet with the information was a tube of coiled paper; the woman’s hands gripped the tube as if she were pushing a lawnmower. Mallarino looked at them out of the corner of his eye, looked at the white knuckles and the delicate ring that was their only adornment, and then looked at Samanta’s profile, the strong angle of her jaw, the shoulders of an attentive student pressed against the back of the seat, the seat belt that crossed between her breasts like a hunter
’s quiver. There, in the roll of paper, were the address and telephone number of Carmenza de Torres, who once was the wife of Adolfo Cuéllar and the mother of his sons and then his widow; Carmenza de Torres, who found herself obliged, after the death of her husband the congressman, to complete her studies in hostelry and tourism, which she’d given up at the time of her first pregnancy, and eventually ended up working at a travel agency, distinguishing herself in sales, becoming the owner’s personal assistant, marrying him and starting a new life with a new surname: a clean surname, a surname without memories. All this Mallarino found out with the help of his admirers. He also found out that the agency was called Unicorn Travel, and that the office was located across from the Parque Nacional and that Doña Carmenza went there every afternoon, from two till six, but never in the mornings (‘Every afternoon?’ Mallarino asked; ‘Yes, every afternoon,’ he was assured). Now, driving towards the ring road at forty kilometres an hour, Mallarino outlined the day’s itinerary for Samanta. He’d drop her off at her house so she could rest a little and change her clothes; he’d keep an appointment he had in the centre; they’d meet at the travel agency at three o’clock. Did that seem good to Samanta? She, staring straight ahead, nodded the way a condemned prisoner might nod.
An appointment in the centre. What would Magdalena be doing right now? He suddenly felt an urgent need to see her, to be with her and hear her voice, as if by doing so he could prove in some twisted way that not all of the past was changeable and unstable. Magdalena was also the past. But Magdalena was firm. Mallarino imagined her, by some sort of automatism, in front of a double microphone, two long silvery tubes. The desk in the image was made of wood and covered in a brown cloth; on top of the cloth was a stopwatch, so Magdalena could time her monologues without consulting the digital clock on the wall. But all this was mere speculation: he wasn’t even sure that Magdalena recorded her programmes in the morning. On the avenue, the traffic was moving slowly, more slowly than normal. The four-by-four passed between unfinished rust-coloured buildings and urban trees, those sad trees with their crowns that nobody ever sees and their asphyxiated leaves on the lower branches. Samanta had given directions and proposed the best routes, drawing a map with words that Mallarino could imagine in his head, and then she had gone quiet, as if hoping that the silence would be strong enough to make Mallarino forget her presence. ‘Where should I turn off?’ he asked. Her hand moved in front of the windscreen, like the incomplete shadow of a little dove, but not a word came from her mouth; and when he turned his head, trying all the time to keep an eye on the traffic, Mallarino realized that Samanta had started to cry. They were stealthy and weary tears, like those of someone who has already cried a lot: these were remainders, leftover tears. ‘Don’t cry, Samanta,’ he said; he felt immediately, irrevocably stupid; but searching through the archives of his head he could not find any other consoling words. He didn’t have very many, either, and he didn’t often use them. And he felt immediately, irrevocably stupid.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Samanta. She smiled, wiped both eyes with the same hand, smiled again. ‘It’s just that I was fine. I didn’t need this.’
‘I know,’ said Mallarino.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Ask away.’
‘What happens now?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, just that: what happens now? Or rather: what’s going to happen this afternoon? What’s going to happen after three? Am I obliged to carry on as before? I don’t know what I’m going to be told, but, do I have that obligation? And what if I decide I don’t want to, that I don’t want any of this? Right now, here, before we get to my house. What happens if I’d rather forget all this again? What if I’d rather go back to how things were before that fucking ceremony? Don’t I have that right?’
‘Is that what you want, Samanta?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I have a headache.’
‘We can stop and buy something.’
‘And I want to change my clothes,’ said Samanta. ‘I can’t stand wearing dirty clothes.’
‘Well, those dirty clothes look very good on you,’ said Mallarino. He hadn’t meant it to sound like a cheap flirtatious compliment but that’s how the words came out. Not that it wasn’t true: in the morning, when Samanta came out of Beatriz’s old room with her hair wet from the shower, but wearing the same blouse and the same skirt from the day before, Mallarino had found the sight strangely erotic. He didn’t say so to Samanta, of course: women have no reason to comprehend men’s idiotic impulses, or even put up with them or tolerate them, or endure every compliment thrown at them, no matter how well intentioned. That’s all his comment had been, and nevertheless he noticed or thought he noticed a sudden tension in Samanta’s muscles, her shoulders bracing against the back of her seat, her stretched-out legs folding up. Had it bothered her? ‘I have a headache,’ she said again, but talking to herself this time. A motorcycle with its lights on veered past; behind him was a pickup truck with darkened windows, and further back, a military van with rifle barrels sticking out: the President, or some minister? Now Samanta wiped her eyes again, rubbing them carelessly, the way you’re never supposed to do (a risk of seriously scratching the corneas). On her index finger, Mallarino noticed a wet trail like that of a snail.
‘Where should I turn?’ he said.
‘Pretty soon,’ said Samanta, ‘I’ll let you know.’ And after a silence: ‘This is fucking hell. Not knowing is not hell. The hellish thing is not knowing whether I want to know. Or if I’m better off the way I was before.’ Mallarino said yes, that he felt the uncertainty too, that he also – ‘No, you don’t know,’ Samanta cut him off. Mallarino sensed some hostility. ‘You can’t know. None of you can. People like you think you know, imagine you know, and it’s not true. If you only knew how insulting that is. Believing you know. Believing you can imagine. It’s not like that.’
‘You don’t understand, Samanta.’
‘It’s an insult. That you believe. That you imagine.’
‘That’s not what I meant to say,’ said Mallarino. ‘Don’t be like this, please.’
With a gesture that struck Mallarino as at once weak and authoritarian, Samanta pointed to a street with dark brick walls topped with broken glass: some transparent, some green, testimony to other, more innocent times when such strategies deterred thieves. ‘Turn down here. Then take the second right. But don’t miss it, or it’ll take forever to get back round.’ Samanta’s voice sounded fragile, as if it were catching somewhere. ‘That building, the only one there is,’ she said, or rather ordered, and raised her hand enough to point at a brick box with white aluminium-framed windows and net curtains behind the windows and silhouettes of women behind the net curtains: there, on a street of old Chapinero houses, Samanta’s building looked like something someone had forgotten. She pointed to a spot by the kerb where Mallarino could park: beside a tree with a thick trunk and roots growing over the pavement. A car must have just left, after the rain stopped, because a perfect dry rectangle of lighter grey was still visible on the dark grey surface.
Before they had stopped completely, with the wheezing murmur of the car’s engine still cutting off the softest syllables, Samanta said: ‘Fifteen, Señor Mallarino.’ A bicycle messenger went past, his right trouser leg tucked inside a fluorescent orange sock. ‘I was fifteen years old. My dad was away on a trip. He travelled a lot, an insurance salesman can travel a lot: Cali, Cartagena, Medellín, and, at some point, Caracas, Quito, Panama. I was at a party. My mum asked me specifically to come back early, because my dad was arriving home from a trip that night and we had to be there waiting for him. My mum’s life revolved around things like that. Having his dinner ready. His family waiting for him when he got home. I was a good girl, did what I was told. And that night, when I got home, I found my mum waiting in the kitchen. All the lights in the house were turned off, except for the one on the stove. You know the one? The little yellow light on the extrac
tor fan, which was on even though nothing was cooking. And my mum there, sitting by the counter, eating fried pork rinds out of the bag. That’s something I’ll never forget: the crackling, pork rinds straight from the bag. She told me he hadn’t come home. At six the next morning we drove across the city, went into the airport car park. He always left his car at the airport: his trips lasted two days, never any longer. We went into the car park and we were driving around for a long time, until we found it. There was my dad’s car. I looked through the window to see what was inside. I don’t know what I expected to find, but I looked in. The windows were dirty, because it had rained. And do you know what I saw, Señor Mallarino?’ He gripped an imaginary bar; he waited for a terrifying or macabre revelation. ‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Samanta. ‘There was nothing inside. Not a key ring, not a single toll receipt, no loose change. The windows dirty and the car, inside, clean. Clean as if he were going to sell it that afternoon. I think my mum knew deep down. She didn’t seem worried: I thought that deep down she knew my dad had left . . . and the weird thing is that none of this has ever been a problem for me, Señor Mallarino. What happened to my family has happened to hundreds of families, thousands. For me it’s never been a problem. But last night I began to ask myself stupid things. What did my dad’s leaving have to do with that night? Was there any link? No, what link could there be, I don’t see it. But is there one, even though I can’t see it?’ Mallarino saw her press her jaw to her chest, squeeze her eyes shut. ‘What I want to know is what happened here,’ Samanta said then. Her voice, damp and thick, had a sort of urgency in the rarefied air inside the car. ‘Here,’ said Samanta. She began to cry again, but her crying was more candid this time; it distorted her features, stole her beauty. Samanta was patting her belly and mouth, the expression on her mouth stretched. ‘What happened here,’ she was saying, ‘I want to know what happened here.’ Mallarino stared at her hands; he interrogated them, interrogated their tapping against her body; Mallarino didn’t understand. There, parked in front of her building, Samanta grimaced with impatience and her mouth suddenly released a pent-up breath.
Reputations Page 11
