Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  I was taller than they were, I held my head straight and high, and my entire body was tense with anger. I knew there was nothing I could do against them, but they were not sure of that. They were the ones who were afraid, more afraid than I was—I could feel it—however, they had hatred on their side, and group pressure. All it would take was one gesture to destroy the equilibrium in which I still had the upper hand.

  I heard the man with the chain speak to me. He said my name, over and over, with a familiarity that was meant to be insulting. I had decided that they would not hurt me. Whatever happened, they would not touch the essence of who I was. I had to cling to this fundamental truth. If I could remain inaccessible, I might avoid the worst.

  My father’s voice spoke to me from very far away, and a single word came to mind, in capital letters. But I discovered with horror that the word had been completely stripped of its meaning. It referred to no concrete notion, only to the image of my father standing there, his lips set, his gaze uncompromising. I repeated it again and again, like a prayer, like a magical incantation that might, perhaps, break the evil spell. DIGNITY. It no longer meant a thing, but to say it repeatedly sufficed to make me adopt my father’s attitude, like a child who copies the expression on an adult’s face, smiling or weeping not because he feels joy or pain but because by miming the expressions he sees, he triggers in himself the emotions they are meant to represent.

  And through this game of mirrors, without my thoughts having anything to do with it, I understood that I had gone beyond fear, and I murmured, “There are things that are more important than life.”

  My rage had left me, giving way to an extreme coldness. The alchemy taking place inside me, imperceptible from the outside, substituted the rigidity of my muscles with a bodily strength that would prepare me to ward off the blows of adversity. This was not resignation, far from it, nor was it a headlong flight. I observed myself from within, measuring my strength and resistance not according to my ability to fight back but rather to submit to those blows, like a ship that is battered by the tides yet will not sink.

  He came very close to me and tried to loop the chain quickly around my neck. Instinctively I dodged him and took a step to the side, out of reach. The other two did not dare come forward, but they shouted abuse to encourage him to try again. His pride wounded, he held himself back, gauging the precise moment to attack again. We glanced at each other, and he must have read in my eyes my determination to avoid violence. He must have taken it for insolence. He leaped forward and struck me with the chain, landing a blow to my skull. I collapsed on my knees, the world spinning around me. After the initial blackness, I held my head between my hands and stars appeared in flashes before my eyes, until gradually my eyesight returned to normal. I felt intense pain, compounded by a great sadness that washed over me in successive waves as I registered what had just happened. How could he have done this? It wasn’t so much indignation that I felt, but something far worse: a loss of innocence. I opened my eyes again upon the world, and again my gaze met his. His eyes were bloodshot, his lips distorted by a snarl. He could not bear for me to look at him—he was stripped naked before me. I had caught him looking at me with the horror that his own gestures inspired in him.

  He regained his composure and, as if to eradicate all trace of guilt, redoubled his efforts to fasten the chain around my neck. I stubbornly fought off his gestures, each time avoiding physical contact as much as possible. He took hold of himself and, gathering momentum, came at me yet again with the chain, making hoarse grunts to multiply the strength of his blow. I fell down in the darkness, senseless, losing all notion of time. I knew that my body was the object of their violence. I could hear their voices around me echoing loudly.

  I could feel I was being assaulted, driven to convulsions, as if borne away by a high-speed train. I don’t think I lost consciousness, but although I suppose I had my eyes open wide, the blows I’d received no longer allowed me to see. My body and my heart were frozen during the short span of an eternity.

  When I finally managed to sit up, I had the chain around my neck and the man was pulling on it, jerkily, to oblige me to follow him. He was foaming at the mouth as he shouted at me. The way back to the camp seemed very long, under the weight of my humiliation and their sarcasm. One in front of me, two others behind, they were loudly exulting in their victory. I did not feel like crying. It wasn’t pride. It was just the scorn required to ensure that the cruelty of these men and the pleasure they derived from it had not reached my soul.

  During the suspended time of that endless march, I felt myself becoming stronger with each step, because I had become more aware of my extreme vulnerability. Subjected to every humiliation, obliged to walk on a leash like an animal, paraded through the entire camp to the victory cries of the rest of the troops, arousing the basest instincts of abuse and domination—I had just witnessed, and been victim of, the worst.

  But I was surviving, with a newly acquired lucidity. I knew that in a way I had gained more than I’d lost. They had not managed to transform me into a monster thirsting for revenge. I expected the physical pain to hit when I was at rest, and I prepared myself for the onset of my mental torment. But I already knew that I had the ability to free myself from hatred, and I viewed this as my most significant conquest.

  I arrived back at the cage and decided to isolate myself, to hide my emotions. Clara was sitting facing the wall with her back to me, by a wooden board that served as a table. She turned around. I found her expression disconcerting, I sensed a surge of satisfaction, which hurt me. I brushed by her, aware of the gulf that separated us. I sought out my little corner, to find refuge under my mosquito net, on my mat, trying not to think too much, because I was not in a state to make clearheaded judgments. For the time being, I was relieved that they had not found it necessary to attach the other end of my chain to the cage with a padlock. I knew that later they would. My companion did not ask me any questions, and I was grateful for that. After a long silence, she said, simply, “I won’t have a chain around my neck.”

  I lapsed into a deep sleep, curled up on myself like an animal. The nightmares had returned, but they were different. It was no longer Papa whom I encountered when I fell asleep, it was myself, drowning in deep and stagnant waters. I saw the trees looking at me, their branches yearning toward the shuddering surface. I felt the water trembling as if it were alive, and then I lost the trees and their branches from view. I was submerged in the briny liquid that was drawing me down, each time deeper and deeper, my body straining painfully toward that light, toward that inaccessible sky, despite my struggle to free my feet and rise up to the surface for air.

  I awoke exhausted and bathed in sweat. I opened my eyes on my companion, who was looking at me attentively. When she saw I was awake, she went back to her business.

  “Why didn’t you follow me?”

  “The girl put on a light just as I was about to go out. She must have heard a noise. . . . And I hadn’t prepared my decoy very well. She saw right away that I wasn’t in my bed.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Betty.”

  I didn’t want to probe further. In a way I was angry at her for not trying to find out what had happened to me. But on the other hand, I was relieved I didn’t have to talk about things that hurt too much. Sitting on the ground, with that chain around my neck, I went back over the entire course of the past twenty-four hours. Why had I failed? Why was I back in this cage again, whereas I had been free, totally free, all through that fantastic night?

  I forced myself to think of the ordeal I had just lived through in the swamp. I made an extreme effort to make myself recognize the bestiality of those men. I wanted to give myself the right to name it, to be able to cauterize my wounds and clean myself.

  My body rebelled: I was overcome by spasms. Quickly picking up the lengths of metal coiled at my feet, I jumped up, and in a panic I asked the guard for permission to go to the chontos. He didn’t bother to reply, since
he saw I was already on my way there, taking great strides to reduce the distance to the makeshift latrines. My body knew the distance by heart—and also knew that I would not make it. The inevitable occurred three feet too soon. I squatted at the foot of a young tree and vomited my guts out. I stayed there, my stomach empty, still racked by dry, painful contractions that brought nothing more to the surface. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and looked up at an absent sky. There was nothing but green. Foliage covered the space like a dome. Faced with the vastness of nature, I felt even smaller, and my eyes were moist with effort and sorrow.

  “I have to wash.”

  The wait for the appointed bathing time seemed to take forever, far too long for someone who had nothing better to do than ruminate on her own repugnant state. In addition, my clothes were soaked from the night before, and I stank. I wanted to talk with the commander, but I knew he would refuse to receive me. And yet the idea of disturbing the guard with my request gave me the energy to emerge from my apathy and formulate my request. At the very least, he would be so annoyed at having to respond to me that he was bound to do something.

  The guard looked at me warily and waited for me to speak. As a precaution he had straightened his Galil rifle, and now he held it vertically across his stomach, one hand on the barrel, the other on the butt, at attention.

  “I threw up.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I need a shovel, to cover it up.”

  He still said nothing.

  “Tell the commander I need to speak to him.”

  “Go back to your cage. You’re not allowed out.”

  I did as I was told. I saw him thinking, rapidly, warily, making sure I was far enough away from the guard station. Then, with an authoritarian air and a boorish gesture, he shouted to the nearest guerrilla, who sauntered over. I saw them whispering as they looked at me, and then the second guerrilla went off. I followed him with my eyes, unmoving. He came back with an object hidden in his hand.

  Once he was near the entrance to the cage, he hopped nimbly inside. He grabbed the free end of my chain, looped it around a beam, and locked it all with a huge padlock.

  It was clear that this chain was more than just a burden and a constant source of discomfort; it was also a confession of their weakness: They were afraid I might escape. To me they were pathetic, with their guns, their chains, so many men just to take care of some defenseless women. Their violence was cowardly, their cruelty was spineless. They knew it was something they could get away with, because they practiced it with impunity and without witnesses. The words of the young guerrillera came back to me. I had not forgotten. What she had wanted to warn me about was that it had really been an order. She had told me so.

  How could someone give such an order? What went on in a man’s head that he would require such a thing of his subordinates? I felt very dumb in this jungle. In this environment that was so hostile to me I had lost a large part of my faculties. Now it was vital for me to open a door that would help put me back in my place in the world or, better still, put the world back in its place in me.

  I was a grown woman. I had a solid head on my shoulders. Would it be a relief to understand? No, probably not. There are orders that must be contravened, no matter what. Of course, peer pressure was considerable. Not only that of the three men among themselves, who had all received the order to bring me back and punish me and who had tried to outdo each other in their brutality, but also the pressure of the rest of the troops, who would hail them for acting ruthlessly. It wasn’t the men but the image of themselves that had proved fatal for me.

  Someone called my name, and I was startled. The guard was standing before me. I hadn’t heard him coming. He unfastened the padlock, and I still did not understand what was happening. I saw him kneel down and run the chain in a figure eight around my feet, then lock me up again with the same huge padlock. Disappointed, I began to sit back down, which annoyed him. He condescended to inform me that the commander wanted to see me. I looked at him with my eyes open wide, asking him how he thought I could possibly walk with all this scrap iron between my legs. He grasped me by the arm to make me stand and shoved me out of the cage. The entire camp had taken a front-row seat to watch the spectacle.

  I looked at my feet, careful to coordinate my steps and avoid meeting anyone’s gaze. The guard waved to me to hurry up, showing off in front of his comrades. I didn’t respond, and when I didn’t even pretend to obey, he got truly upset, worried he might look like an idiot.

  I arrived at the opposite end of the camp, where the commander, Andres, had his tent, and I tried to anticipate what sort of tone he might adopt for this private audience.

  Andres was a man who was just reaching maturity, with the fine features of a Spaniard and copper-colored skin. I had never found him truly dislikable, even though from the day he took command of this mission he had made a point of being as inaccessible as he could. I sensed that he had a strong inferiority complex. He managed to emerge from his pathological mistrust when the conversation turned to everyday life. He was madly in love with a pretty young thing who hungered for power, and she had him wrapped around her little finger. She was obviously bored with him, but being the commander’s woman gave her access to some of the luxuries of the jungle. She reigned over the others, and as if somehow it went with being queen, she was putting on weight before our very eyes. Perhaps he thought I might be of use to him in decoding the secrets of this female heart he coveted more than anything. On several occasions he would stop by to talk with me, beating around the bush, lacking the courage to come straight out with his thoughts. I helped him to relax, to talk about his life, to share his personal thoughts. In a way it made me feel useful.

  Andres was above all a peasant. His greatest pride was that he had learned how to adapt to the demands of life as a guerrilla. Small but sturdy, he was better than anyone at doing what he required his men to do. He earned respect by fixing his subordinates’ slapdash work himself. His leadership resided in the admiration he galvanized in his troops. But he had two weak spots: alcohol and women.

  I found him sprawled on his camp bed, indulging in a tickling session with Jessica, his partner; her squeals of pleasure carried beyond the river. He knew I was there, but he hadn’t the slightest intention of allowing me to think they might interrupt their game for my sake. I waited. Eventually Andres turned, gave me a disdainful look, and asked what I wanted.

  “I’d like to talk to you, but I think it would be better if we were alone.” He sat down, ran his hands through his hair, and asked his girlfriend to leave, which she did, pouting and dragging her feet. After a few minutes, he asked the guard who had come with me to leave as well. Finally he looked at me.

  The hostility and harshness he displayed signaled that he was not the least bit sensitive to the sight of this ravaged creature in chains who stood before him. We were sizing each other up. It was odd for me to be this pivotal in a scene where all the workings of human machinery were becoming so patently obvious. I knew there were far too many things at stake, things that, like the jagged cogs of a clock, depended upon one another to set them in motion. First of all, I was a woman. Faced with a man, he might have been indulgent; it would have revealed his nobility of heart and thereby increased his prestige. But in this case he knew he was surrounded, that dozens of pairs of eyes were watching him all the more eagerly since they could not hear him, so his body language had to be flawless. He must treat me fiercely, to avoid any risk of appearing weak. Still, what they had done was hateful. The written codes by which they were supposed to abide left no room for doubt. So they had to seek refuge in gray zones, justifying themselves with what they called the casualties of war: I was the enemy, I had tried to escape.

  The punishment they had inflicted upon me could not be considered an error that they might have to explain, or even a blunder they could try to hide. They pretended that what had happened was the price I must pay for the affront I had made them suffer. There wo
uld therefore be no sanctions against his men, let alone any consideration for me.

  I was an educated woman and consequently terribly dangerous. I might be tempted to manipulate him, to bamboozle him and cause his undoing. As a result he was more than ever on his guard, stiff with all his prejudice and guilt.

  I stood before him, filled with the serenity of detachment. I had nothing to prove. I was defeated, mortified beyond bounds, there was no place left in me for pride. I could live with my conscience, but I wanted to understand how he could live with his.

  The silence that came between us was the fruit of my determination. He wanted to get it over with, while I wanted to observe him at leisure. He was looking me up and down, while I was examining him. The minutes went by one by one. “Well, what do you have to say to me?” He was defying me; he could not stand my presence, my obstinate silence. Then I heard myself continue out loud, very slowly, a conversation I had been carrying on in my head ever since I’d returned to my cage.

  He was transported imperceptibly into the secret place of my pain, and as I gradually revealed to him the depth of my wounds, as if he were a doctor to whom I could exhibit the full horror of my suppurating gash, I saw him turn pale, incapable of interrupting, both fascinated and disgusted. I no longer needed to talk to free myself from what I had experienced. That is why I was able to describe it to him with precision.

  He let me finish. But as soon as I raised my eyes, which betrayed my secret desire to hear what he had to say, he regained his composure and delivered the blow he had meticulously prepared before I’d even gotten there: “That’s what you say. But my men tell me otherwise. . . .” He was lying on his side, leaning on his elbow, casually fiddling with a twig he had in his mouth. He raised his eyes and looked straight out at the other tents in a semicircle around his own, where his troops had settled in to watch our conversation. He paused, then continued, “. . . And I believe what my men tell me.”