Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  “Stupid bitch, I’m going to stick a bullet in your head to teach you how to walk!”

  I turned around like a wild animal to face him. “If you say one more word, I won’t take another step.”

  He was surprised, and regretted having lost face. He went to shove me with the butt of his rifle, but I reacted more quickly than he did. “I forbid you to touch me.”

  He restrained himself, suddenly made of stone. I then realized that it was not I who had intimidated him in this way. Andres was taking great strides toward us along the footpath.

  “Quickly, quickly, hide in the manigua. Total silence, no lights, no movement.”

  I found myself sprawled in a ditch, crouched over my bag, certain I would see soldiers at any moment. My mouth was painfully dry, prey to a mortal thirst, and I wondered where Clara was. Andres had stayed there for a while, crouched next to me, and then he went away again. But before he left, he said to me, “If you don’t strictly obey orders, the guards have very precise instructions, and you run the risk of not being here tomorrow.”

  We stayed there until dawn, when Andres ordered us to walk toward the valley, cutting through the forest.

  “Those chulos are so stupid that they flew over our heads all night long and didn’t even locate the camp! They’re not going to bomb. I’ll send a team to pick up everything that stayed behind.”

  We did as he said. We were on a hill. Through the thick foliage, I could see spread below us an immense wooded savanna, crisscrossed with emerald green pastures, as if the English countryside had appeared by magic in the middle of the Colombian jungle. It must be wonderful to live down there! Such a world existed outside, and it was forbidden to me—it seemed unreal. And yet it was just beyond the trees, beyond their rifles.

  Right then we were shaken by an enormous explosion. We were already quite far away, but it must have come from our camp.

  As soon as we ran into other guerrilla troops, they talked of nothing else.

  “Did you hear?”

  “Yes, they bombed the camp.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve no idea. But Andres sent a team back to reconnoiter. It’s almost sure.”

  “They only bombed once.”

  “What do you mean? We heard several explosions. There was a series of attacks.”

  “At least all the planes are gone now. That’s something.”

  “We have to watch it. They made a landing. They’ve got troops on the ground. We’ll have helicopters over us all day long.”

  “Those sons of bitches, I can’t wait to see them face-to-face. They’re chickens, every one of them.”

  I watched in silence. The most cowardly ones were the most aggressive.

  We stopped in a tiny clearing where a small stream ran alongside. Clara was already there, sitting against a tree with dense foliage and generous shade. I needed no coaxing—I was exhausted. From where I sat, I could see the roof of the little house and a column of blue-gray smoke rising from the chimney. In the distance I could hear the voices of children playing, like an echo of happy days lost in my past. Who were those people? Could they know that just behind their garden there were guerrillas, hiding captive women?

  One of the girls, in her camouflage uniform, her boots shining as if for an important military parade, her hair perfectly styled in a large braid rolled into a chignon, came over to us, smiling from ear to ear, with two enormous plates in her hands. How did she manage to look so impeccable after running the whole night?

  We were given the order to start marching once more. We set off in single file along a footpath that began to climb, again following the crest of the hill. I was surprised, by the stamina of the girls who carried burdens as heavy as those the men carried and who walked as quickly as they did. Little Betty was astonishing. She looked like a tortoise with the enormous pack twice as big as she was, which she carried hunched over as if she had a piano on her back. Her little legs scurried along not to be left behind, and she still found a way to smile.

  The helicopters were after us. I could feel the throbbing of their engines on the nape of my neck. William, the guard who had been assigned to me for the march, ordered me to walk faster. Even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t.

  A sharp blow to my spine took my breath away. I turned around, outraged. William was poised to hit me again with a rifle butt in my stomach.

  “Shit, you want to get us killed? Can’t you see they’re almost on top of us?”

  Indeed, above our heads, sixty yards from the ground, the undersides of the helicopters in formation seemed to be brushing the tops of the trees. I could see the feet of the soldier manning the artillery, hanging in the void on either side of the gun. They were there. They must have seen us! If I had to die, I would rather die like this, in a confrontation where I might at least have the chance to get free. To die for nothing, swallowed up by that damned jungle, thrown in a hole and condemned to vanish without my family’s even being able to retrieve my remains—that was what filled me with horror. I wanted my children to know that at least I’d tried, fought, done everything I could to get back to them.

  The guard must have read my thoughts. He loaded his rifle. But in his eyes I saw a primal, visceral, most basic fear. I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him with scorn. He was not so proud now, this guy who liked to swagger around the camp all day.

  “Run like a rabbit if you want to. I’m not going any faster!”

  His girlfriend spit on the ground and said, “I’m not about to get myself killed for the sake of this old bitch!” She headed off at a trot and disappeared around the first bend.

  After a few minutes, the helicopters disappeared. I could still hear two of them, but even then they peeled away before reaching us and left for good. I was furious. How could they have failed to see us? With an entire column of guerrillas right under their nose!

  Unconsciously I had begun to walk more quickly, frustrated and disappointed, sensing that we’d come so close to a chance at being set free. When we arrived at the bottom of the hill, Andres had had a mixture of water and sugar made up, with a little bit of an orange-flavored, powder-based beverage mixed in.

  “Drink! It will help you avoid dehydration.”

  He didn’t need to tell me again—I was soaked in sweat.

  He then explained that we would cross the cornfield in front of us in groups of four. He pointed toward the sky. Far in the distance, I could see a tiny white airplane against the blue sky. “We have to wait until it’s gone. It’s the phantom airplane.”

  His orders were followed to perfection. I crossed the open field looking at the airplane directly overhead. I was sorry I didn’t have a mirror to try to make signals. Once again my captors had managed to slip through the net of the army. On the far side, in the undergrowth, a toothless, sun-baked peasant was waiting for us.

  “This is our guide,” whispered someone ahead of me.

  Without warning, a cold wind began to blow, filling the forest with a shiver. The sky turned gray in an instant, and the temperature immediately dropped by several degrees. As if they had received a peremptory order, the guerrillas all dropped their packs onto the ground, pulled out their huge black plastic sheets, and covered themselves.

  Someone gave me one, and I wrapped myself up in it the way I had seen them do. A moment later a torrential storm broke over us. Despite all my efforts, I was very quickly soaked through to the bone. It would go on raining like this all day long and all the night that followed. We walked one behind the other until the next day, passing through the forest for hours in silence, hunched over to avoid the water that the wind blew into our faces. Then at twilight we took a path that went along a hillside, and it became a veritable quagmire as the whole column marched over it. With each step I had to reach for my boot that had become mired in eighteen inches of thick, stinking mud, losing my balance. I was exhausted. I was shivering, worn out from the effort.

  Then we left the cover of the undergrowth, with i
ts steep ups and downs, and came out on flat, warm land, cultivated and inhabited. We went past farms with dogs that barked and chimneys that smoked. They seemed to be looking at us with scorn as we went by. How desperately I wanted to go home. Just before twilight we reached a magnificent finca. The landlord’s house was built in the finest drug-trafficker style. The stable alone would have fulfilled all my dreams of a place to sleep. It was late, I was thirsty and hungry, I was cold. My feet were ravaged by enormous blisters that had burst and stuck to my soaked socks. I’d been bitten from head to toe by tiny fleas I couldn’t see but I could feel, swarming all over my body. The mud had stuck to my fingers and beneath my nails, swelling them, infecting the skin, which cracked. I was bleeding, and yet I couldn’t identify my multiple sores. I collapsed on the ground, determined to move no more.

  Half an hour later, Andres gave the order to leave again. We were back on our feet, dragging our misery, marching like convicts in the darkest night. It wasn’t fear that made me walk, and it wasn’t their threats that made me put one foot in front of the other. None of that mattered to me. It was fatigue that made me carry on. My brain had disconnected; my body was moving without me.

  Before dawn we reached the top of a small hill that overlooked the valley. A fine drizzle continued to persecute us. There was a sort of shelter in beaten earth, with a thatched roof. Ferney hooked up a hammock between two beams, stretched a black plastic sheet on the ground, and handed me my bag.

  “Get changed. We’re going to sleep here.”

  I woke up at seven o’clock in the morning in the cocaine laboratory that had served as our shelter. Everyone was already up, including Clara, who was smiling: She was happy that I had dry clothes to give her. The new day promised to be equally long and difficult, and we decided to put back on our dirty, wet clothes from the day before and to keep the dry clothes for sleeping. I really wanted to take a bath, and I’d gotten up determined to find a place to have a wash. There was a spring ten yards away. They allowed me to go there. They had given me a piece of potassium soap, and I rubbed my body and scalp furiously with it to try to get rid of the lice and ticks I’d picked up during the march. The girl escorting me was urging me to finish, annoyed that I was washing my hair when the order had been to have a quick wash. However, there was nothing pressing: Once we got back up to the shelter, we found the guerrillas sitting idly, waiting for new instructions.

  The toothless, emaciated peasant from the day before reappeared. He had a mochila slung over his shoulder, one of those bags that Indians weave so nicely, and inside the mochila there were two hens tied up, their legs in the air, wriggling with convulsive spasms. He was relieved of his burden with cries of victory: Breakfast was turning into a feast. Once the euphoria had subsided, I went up to the peasant and asked him, with a boldness that was unusual for me, if he would let me have his mochila. It was grimy, stinking, and full of holes. But for me it was a treasure. I could fill it with the things I needed for the walk and keep my hands free, and once it was washed and stitched, it would be useful for hanging supplies to keep them out of reach of rodents. The man looked at me, astonished, failing to understand the value I placed upon his bag. He handed it to me without protesting, as if he had received not a request but an order. I thanked him with such an effusion of joy that he burst out laughing like a child. He tried to start up a conversation with me, and I was about to reply only too gladly when we heard Andres’s voice curtly calling us to order. I went back to sit down in my corner and glanced over at Andres, astonished by the violence in his gaze as he stared at the gift I had just received. It won’t be mine for long, I said to myself.

  The day seemed endless. Immediately after a solid breakfast, at which, to my great pleasure, I was given one of the hen’s feet to share, we went back down toward the valley to follow a road that wandered through the forest. Ferney and Jhon Janer, a young man who had recently joined the troops and whom I found more mischievous than disagreeable, had been assigned as our guards. Visibly, the rest of the troops had taken a different route. We came to a crossroads, by which time I was dragging myself, limping on the edges of my feet, and in the distance, like a mirage, I could make out my toothless peasant holding two old nags by the bridle. As soon as he saw us, he began to walk toward us, and I collapsed on the ground, incapable of taking another step. What a joy it was to see the old man again and to be able to exchange a few words with him. I know he would have liked to do more.

  We were each given one of the nags, and we set off again at a slow trot. The guards ran by our side, holding the horses firmly by the neck. We had to catch up with the troops, and they expected that it would take us most of the day. On horseback I thought, I don’t mind—they can take all day if they want, and all night and the next day, too. I silently thanked the heavens for this godsend, only too aware, now, of what I’d gained.

  The forest we were going through was different from the thick jungle where we’d been hiding all those months. The trees were immense and sad, and the rays of the sun reached us only after they had penetrated the thick layer of branches and leaves far above our heads. The undergrowth was bare, with neither ferns nor shrubs, just the trunks of those colossal trees like the pillars of an unfinished cathedral. The place was strange, as if a curse had been cast upon it. My mood seemed to correspond to the nature around me, and it opened up old wounds that had never completely healed. And now that my physical pain had been assuaged, with my bloody feet hanging loose and relieved from any excruciating contact, it was the pain in my heart that was aroused, for I was incapable of letting go of my past life, a life I so loved and that was no longer mine.

  The rain fell with a brute force, as if someone were gleefully tipping buckets of water on us from the treetops. Once again the road had become a quagmire. The water covered the guys’ boots almost completely, and the suctioning mud held them prisoner with each step. We had caught up with the troops, and now we began to pass them one by one, as they were bent beneath the weight of their burdens, their faces hardened. I felt pity for them: Someday I would get out of this hell, whereas they had knowingly condemned themselves to rot in this jungle. I did not want to meet their gazes as I rode by. I knew only too well that they were cursing us.

  The march continued all day long through the endless storm. We left behind the tree cover and crossed fincas rich with fruit trees. The rain and fatigue left us indifferent. The guys didn’t have the strength to stretch out their hands to pick up the mangoes and guavas rotting on the ground. I didn’t dare, from the height of my horse, pick the fruit on my way, for fear of irritating them.

  Turning a corner, we came upon some children playing, jumping in the puddles. They had bags full of mandarin oranges that they had left to one side. When they saw us arrive, because we were on horseback they took us for the guerrilla commanders, and they gave all of us some fruit from their reserve. I accepted with gratitude.

  It was still raining at dusk, and I was shivering feverishly, wrapped up in a plastic sheet that no longer protected me from the rain but did help me stay warm. We had to give up our horses and continue on foot. I was biting my lips to keep from complaining, as with each step I felt a million needles stabbing my feet and penetrating my limbs. We walked for a long time, until we reached an ostentatious finca. An opulent house majestically overlooked countryside that undulated like velvet in the evening twilight. We were guided toward a landing stage, where we were allowed to sit down and wait for the arrival of a motorboat, an enormous iron launch with enough room for all the guerrillas, all the backpacks, and a dozen sturdy plastic bags filled with provisions.

  Clara and I were made to sit in the center. Andres and Jessica sat just behind us, next to William and Andrea, his attractive but disagreable girlfriend, who’d been escorting us when we were chased by the helicopters. They were talking loudly, so that we would overhear.

  “I guess we got rid of the chulos again!”

  “If they think they’re going to get hold of our cargo t
hat easily, they’re in for a surprise.”

  They were laughing maliciously. I didn’t want to listen to them anymore.

  “They took everything that was left after the bombing and burned the rest. The old women’s mattress, their Bible, all the shit they had collected.”

  “So much the better—there’s less to carry now!”

  “And to think they wanted to swim away from us, stupid old bags. Now they’re with us for years!”

  “They’ll be grandmothers by the time they get out.”

  That made them laugh even harder. There was a silence, and then Andres turned to me and said disdainfully, “Ingrid, hand over the mochila. It’s mine now.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THE CAGE

  We traveled for days, heading down rivers that grew ever wider. Most often we moved at night, so no one would see us. Sometimes, but rarely, we risked traveling during the day, beneath a baking sun. And I always made sure to look into the distance, to search the horizon, to fill my soul with beauty, because I knew that once we went into the forest, I would no longer see the sky.

  Walls of trees rose a hundred feet above the riverbanks in a compact formation that blocked all light. We glided through the jungle, aware that no human beings had ever ventured here before, on a mirror of water the color of emeralds that parted like velvet as we passed. The sounds of the jungle seemed to grow louder inside this tunnel of water. I could hear the cry of monkeys, but I couldn’t see them. As a rule, Ferney would sit next to me and point out the salados. I stared at the riverbank, hoping to see some mythological beast emerge, to no avail. I confessed that I didn’t know what salados meant. He laughed at my expense, but he eventually explained that salados was where the tapirs, the lapas,24 and the deer went to drink. This was the place hunters always looked for.