Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  As for Pata-Grande, he wanted to play the mediator. He believed that by maintaining control over the prisoners he could convince Cesar that Enrique’s presence was pointless. So he insisted on having us invited to what he called “cultural hours.” The young people loved it, and our presence stimulated them. They sat us down on freshly cut tree trunks. There were riddles, recitals, songs, and spoofs, and we were all invited to take turns and join in. My heart wasn’t in it.

  I saw myself with my cousins, in the old house where my grandmother lived, making up a show to honor our parents. We ran up the old wooden stairs that led to the attic in a stampede, and I could hear my grandmother downstairs shouting that we were going to bring the house down. In the attic there was a chest where Mom kept her ball gowns and the crowns she’d been given when she was a beauty queen, and we all took turns dressing up in them. We would recite and sing and dance, just like in this jungle, because children’s games are the same everywhere. Invariably one of my cousins would shout “A mouse, a mouse!” and there would be a frantic retreat in the other direction to throw ourselves down the stairway into my grandmother’s arms before she could scold us. This little Proust’s madeleine came to remind me of what I had lost. I didn’t feel like playing. The time these people were stealing from me, keeping me away from my children, could not be dressed up in some cultural hour. My comrades said that my attitude was contemptuous and that I was preventing the others from having some fun. The only one who understood how wrenching this was for me was Lucho.

  “We don’t have to go,” he said, patting my hand. And then, with a touch of humor, he added, “Yes, we can stay here and be bored. We could even have a contest to see who’s the most bored between the two of us.”

  I didn’t insist, but my reservations were reported to the guerrillas. Pata-Grande came to warn us, “Everyone takes part or no one does.”

  One day there was an exceptional arrival of fruit salad from a neighboring village. There must have been a road leading to the camp, and I was relieved to know that civilization was not completely inaccessible. The fruit salad was distributed only to the guerrillas, but because I was convalescent, Gafas allowed me to have a cupful. I’ve never eaten anything so good in my life. The fruit was fresh and just ripe. There was mango, apricot, plum, watermelon, banana, and medlar. The flesh was firm, juicy, and tender, melting in my mouth, seasoned with an unctuous sugary cream that stuck to my palate. I was unable to speak after the first mouthful, and by the second I focused on running my tongue all around my mouth to capture every flavor. I was about to take my third bite when I stopped short, my mouth still open. “No, the rest is for Lucho.”

  One of my comrades saw me as I was handing Lucho my cup. He leaped from his hammock as if he were on a spring and called out to Mauricio. He wanted to complain about the preferential treatment I was getting. We were all prisoners, so why should I get more to eat than they did? Mauricio brought the incident up with the troops. He had just been given a weapon against Gafas. The very next day, they gave another turn of the screw. We’d been in the habit, ever since Jeiner’s time, of going to the chontos without having to ask permission from the guard. I was on my way there when the guard called out curtly, “Where you going?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “You have to ask me for permission, get it?”

  I didn’t answer, thinking that things would only get worse. And they did, but for other reasons. A squadron of helicopters passed right over the camp, turned around several miles away, and then flew directly overhead again, covering us with their shadow for a few seconds.

  Mauricio gave the order to strike camp that very minute and to hide with our equipos in the manigua. We waited, crouching in the vegetation. From dusk until midnight, I was devoured by microscopic ticks that took possession of every pore in my skin. I couldn’t even think straight, struggling against a torture of itching.

  Angel, a young guerrilla, was determined to chat with me. He was a nice-looking boy, not mean, I thought, though somewhat slow. He was listening to the radio, sitting on his heels, and seemed impatient. “Have you heard the news?” he said, opening his eyes wide to get my attention.

  I went on desperately scratching, unable to grasp what could be attacking me like this.

  “Those are cuitibas. Stop scratching, you’re just feeding them all the quicker. You have to pull them out with a needle.”

  “Cuitibas? Microscopic ticks! How awful! They’re everywhere. . . .”

  “They’re tiny.”

  He switched on his flashlight and aimed the beam onto his arm.

  “There, see that dot moving? That’s a cuitiba.”

  He dug his fingernail into his skin until he bled and then declared, “It got away!”

  Someone ahead of us shouted, “Switch off your lights! Shit! You want them to bomb us? Pass it on!” The voices echoed around us, every guerrilla repeating exactly the same thing, one after the other, all along the column, until it came to Angel, who recited it reproachfully to his neighbor, as if it had nothing to do with him. He eventually switched off the flashlight and was laughing like a child caught doing something naughty.

  He continued in a whisper, “So! Have you heard the news?”

  “What news?”

  “They’re going to extradite Simón Trinidad.”

  Simón Trinidad had been present at the meeting at Pozos Colorados58 between all the presidential candidates and the FARC leaders. I remembered him well; he hadn’t opened his mouth, just sat taking notes and passing bits of paper to Raúl Reyes, who was officiating as group leader. During the peace negotiations he had declared that international human rights were a bourgeois concept. His speech was all the more astonishing in that he himself came from a bourgeois family from the Caribbean coast, had studied at the Swiss school in Bogotá, and taken courses in economics at Harvard. I had stood up before the end of the conference to go and get some air. The session had been endless, and it was very hot. Simón Trinidad got up behind me and followed me out. He had been gallant, opening the door for me and holding it while I went through. I’d thanked him, and we exchanged a few words. I found there was something hard and brittle about the man. Then I forgot about him.

  Until the day he was captured in a shopping center in Quito, Ecuador, without his ID. The FARC’s immediate reaction was to make threats. Trinidad’s capture, according to them, meant the failure of the talks with Europe for my release. They claimed he had been in Quito to meet with representatives of the French government.

  However, every time the arrival of European envoys was announced on the radio, the Colombian government dragged the bait of the negotiation of the humanitarian agreement back out of the closet, and the FARC lost interest in any contact with outsiders. My enthusiasm always ended in disappointment, because of their inability to initiate any talks.

  According to Lucho, Trinidad’s arrest was a central obstacle to our release. I felt, on the other hand, that it was a new variable that could lead to negotiations. The FARC had very quickly announced that Simón Trinidad must be added to the list of prisoners they wanted to exchange for us. But the revelation of Trinidad’s possible extradition confirmed our greatest fear. “If they send Trinidad to the United States, the Americans will never get out of here. And neither will you!” Lucho had said, already months earlier back in Sombra’s prison, when we were analyzing the various possibilities.

  We were all sitting in a row in the dark. Two other guerrillas had slipped in between Lucho and me. Gafas had given the order that prisoners must be physically separated by guards. When Angel told me the news of Trinidad’s extradition, I turned instinctively to speak to Lucho. “Did you hear?”

  “No, what are you talking about?”

  “They’re going to extradite Simón Trinidad.”

  “Oh, no, what a shit!” he exclaimed spontaneously, visibly distraught.

  The guerrilla who was between us interrupted. “Comrade Trinidad is one of our best commanders. Keep your
insults to yourself. We don’t like the use of vulgar words here.”

  “No, you’re mistaken. Nobody is insulting Simón Trinidad,” I said.

  “He said he was a shit!” Angel retorted.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  DESCENT INTO HELL

  The enormous bongo arrived at midnight. We were ordered to board in complete silence. The guerrillas tied their hammocks to the metal bars that supported the canvas roof of the bongo and went to sleep. Shortly after four o’clock in the morning, the bongo shook and the rattling and banging as we came in to dock woke everyone up. Enrique announced that we would be disembarking. A huge house overlooking the river seemed to be waiting for us. I prayed to the God who was listening to let us spend the rest of the night there. I wanted to hear Mom’s voice. She was the only one who could calm me down. My little radio wasn’t working very well. It needed an antenna, and this was something I could set up only at a fixed campsite. The other radios had been stored away and were inaccessible.

  With our equipos on our backs, we were made to walk single file down a path alongside the house, then we left it behind to cross immense pastures, perfectly enclosed with impeccable white picket fences. It was already a quarter to five. Where were we? Where were we going?

  The sky was ocher, precursor of dawn. The thought that Mom would be speaking to me in a few minutes was paralyzing me. It was as if I no longer knew how to walk, I stumbled over flat, even ground that presented no obstacles other than the mud which clung to my boots and the long oblique shadows that changed the aspect of the terrain. Angel was walking alongside me and he made fun of me, saying, “Parece un pato.”59

  That was enough to make me slip and end up lying in the mud. He helped me back to my feet with a forced, exaggerated laugh, looking all around him as if he were afraid someone might have seen us.

  I went to smooth off my clothes, now coated with mud, and then I wiped my hands on my pants and pulled out my radio. It was three minutes to five.

  Angel looked at me, enraged. “No way! Keep moving, we’re behind.”

  “Mom is going to speak to me in three minutes.”

  I fiddled impatiently with my radio, shaking it in every direction. He took his M-16, pointed it at me, and shouted, “Start walking, or I’ll shoot!”

  We walked all day long under a baking sun. I stayed walled up in relentless silence as we passed through elegantly maintained estates, one after the other, with cattle as far as the eye could see, all surrounded by virgin forest.

  “Todo esto es de las FARC,”60 Angel boasted, before we entered the undergrowth.

  Angel stopped under a gigantic tree to pick up some strange looking, gray velvet fruit that were strewn over the ground. He handed one to me.

  “This is the juanchaco, the chewing gum of the jungle!” he announced, as he peeled the fruit with his teeth and began sucking its flesh. It tasted sweet and sour, like a large litchee, and as he had warned, the flesh was very chewy. It gave us both a timely boost to our energy.

  We penetrated a wall of vegetation, made of creepers as thick as a man’s body that intertwined to build an impenetrable weave. The scouts had been through hours ahead of us, hacking away with their machetes on either side to open the path. It took us hours to keep on their tracks and find our way out of the labyrinth, and that was only thanks to Angel’s concentration, for he could tell where we’d already been, although the dense tangle of plants offered no landmarks.

  Stunned, we stumbled out onto a veritable freeway, wide enough for three huge trucks to roll side by side, and we followed it without stopping until twilight, crossing grandiose bridges made from the millennial trees they had gutted with a chain saw.

  “Esto lo hicieron las FARC,”61 he pointed out with pride.

  Hours later I saw the others, sitting down far ahead of us. They were drinking Coke and eating bread. Lucho removed his boots and his socks, which were drying over his backpack, covered with greenbottle flies. His toes were purple, and the skin of his feet was peeling off in shreds. I made no comment. I trembled at the thought of amputation.

  A white jeep showed up. We were driven along miles of mud and dust for hours. We went through a ghost village, with pretty, empty houses set in a circle around a little arena, with its wooden bleachers and sandy ring—for the corridas. The car’s headlights had swept over a sign that read, BIENVENIDOS A LA LIBERTAD. 62 How ironic; we have arrived at Freedom, I thought. I knew La Libertad was in the region of Guaviare.

  The militia drove through La Libertad with the same contentment as El Mocho Cesar when he went into La Unión-Penilla. Lucho was sitting next to me. He gave me a sad smile as he whispered, “La Libertad . . . Fate is snubbing us.”

  And I answered, “No it’s not, it’s good omen!”

  The car stopped at a pier beside an immense river. The guerrillas had already set up tents all around. It was cold, and there was the smell of a storm in the air. Gafas did not allow us to take out our hammocks. We waited until dawn under the fine drizzle, so tired we did not have the strength to move, even to swat flies, watching as the guerrillas found shelter and slept.

  With the first light of day, a bongo came in to dock. We had to squeeze up in the bow, in a space too small for all of us, packed in together to make room, asphyxiated by the stink of diesel coming straight at us from the engine. The guerrillas spread out over the entire deck. At least here we could sleep.

  The journey lasted nearly two weeks, reaching farther and farther into the insides of the jungle. We sailed at night. At dawn the motorista,63 who was not the captain, would find a place to moor, according to Gafas’s precise indications. Then we had the right to set up our hammocks, take a bath, and wash our clothes. I had been listening to Mom religiously. She did not mention Simón Trinidad; she was getting ready to spend Christmas with my children.

  One dark night the bongo stopped. We were made to get off. On the far shore, the lights of a large village were like a magical apparition. The river was scattered with stars. It was all inaccessible to us.

  We went along the opposite riverbank, jumping over rocks; we discovered there were rapids, and that is why we’d had to leave the boat behind. Another bongo was already waiting a distance downriver. It immediately bore us away from the village, far from the lights and the people.

  The next morning, farther down, still more cachiveras64 blocked the river. They were impressive. They stretched over hundreds of yards, in a tumultuous expanse of raging water. We repeated the maneuver.

  Children were playing on the opposite shore, by a little peasant house across from the rapids, and there was a rowboat upstream from them. A dog was running around the children, barking. They hadn’t seen us. We were hidden behind the trees.

  I could hear the sound of a motor: a speedboat.

  They appeared on our right, heading rapidly upstream. It was an outboard, driven by a young guy in a uniform, with two others leaning against the prow, one in civilian clothes, the other in a khaki outfit. They sped straight ahead, as if the idea of going over the cachiveras was perfectly natural. The boat leaped up over the first line of rocks, bounced over the second, and on hitting the third, it exploded. The passengers flew into the air, propelled like missiles, and disappeared into the turbulent, foaming currents.

  Gafas was sitting opposite me. He did not bat an eyelid. I rushed forward at the same time as Lucho to the edge of the river. The children had already jumped into their rowboats and were rowing as fast as they could to reach the pieces of the wreck surfacing on the river. The dog was standing at the prow and barking, the children’s shouts exciting it even more.

  A head had surfaced. The dog jumped into the water and struggled desperately against the current. The head disappeared again in the swirling water. The children shouted ever louder and called to their dog. The animal, disoriented, turned on himself and was borne away by the current, until he managed, courageously, to swim back to the rowboat. Gafas did not move. Mauricio was already running to and fro along the bank
, carrying a pole he had just cut, using his machete with amazing dexterity, not to be expected from a one-armed man, and he kept staring stubbornly at the river. The troops looked on in silence. Finally Gafas opened his mouth. “That will teach them to act like idiots.” Then he added, “Rescue the engine.”

  I was grieving. Lucho was holding his head between his hands; my comrades gazed at the river, aghast. Around us life went on without any transition. A makeshift rancha was set up, and we all went to get our own bowl and spoon.

  At night we climbed into a rowboat similar to the children’s, with the rescued outboard on it. We drifted on the current for hours, until dawn. We saw no more houses, or lights, or dogs.

  Next morning, when the sun was already high in the sky and we were still traveling, Gafas gave the order to stop, and then he suddenly hurried forward like a madman.

  “My rifle!” he shouted to Lili.

  It was a tapir.

  “Aim for the ears,” somebody said.

  It was a magnificent animal, bigger than a bull, and it swam powerfully as it crossed the river. Its chocolate-colored skin gleamed in the sunlight as it lifted its snout out of the water, revealing a bright pink mouth, which gave it a certain feminine allure. The animal swam toward the boat, unaware of the danger, and looked at us mildly through its curling eyelashes, almost smiling with ingenuous curiosity.

  “Please don’t kill it,” I begged. “These are endangered animals. We’re very lucky to see one.”

  “They’re all over the place!” shouted Lili.

  “It’s your steak,” Enrique said, shrugging his shoulders. Then, turning to my companions, “If you’re not hungry ...”

  We were all hungry. However, no one said anything, and Enrique interpreted this as an answer.

  “Fine,” he said, putting away his gun. “We know how to protect nature.”

  He gave us a huge grin, but his gaze was murderous.

  FIFTY-NINE