Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  So I had a map of Latin America, with a little Colombia on it, the equator, and a few latitudes and longitudes with sketchy coordinates. Pinchao’s map was much smaller, but more clearly marked. In addition, along the edge there was a tiny printed ruler, and we copied it onto a pack of cigarettes to have the best estimate possible. All we had to do was divide the distance between two parallel lines to figure out where the second latitude was located. A little higher than the equator and we had a good idea of the coordinate 1°59’N. The lines of longitude ran from right to left, from 65 west, which went through Venezuela and Brazil, to 70, which was right on Colombia, to 75, west of Bogotá. So 70°12’ put us in a few millimeters to the left of the 70th meridian. Visibly we were in the Guaviare.

  I spent hours mesmerized by Pinchao’s map. If our calculations were correct, we must be in a little horn of the department of Guaviare that followed the course of the river Inírida at the frontier of the Guainia department. This river belonged to the Orinoco Basin. If we were on one of its tributaries, the current would take us to Venezuela. I dreamed of it. With my makeshift ruler, I measured the distance between the imaginary point that we called Maloka and Puerto Inírida, the capital of Guainía, where we were bound to end up. It was a bit more than 180 miles in a straight line, but the river took a very winding course, which could easily triple the actual distance to travel. If we thought about it, Puerto Inírida was not the goal of our journey. All we needed was to find a human being along the way who did not belong to the FARC and who would agree to help guide us out of the labyrinth.

  I felt like I was the master of the world. I knew where we were, and that changed everything. I was aware that we would have to prepare to last a very long time in this jungle. The distances were enormous. They had chosen their hiding place well. There was nothing definite for a hundred-mile radius, through the thickest of jungles. The closest town was Mitú, to the south, exactly sixty miles, but there was no navigable way to get there. The idea of marching through the forest, without a compass, seemed like a greater madness than what I sought to undertake. Was it possible to embark on such an expedition with a sick man? The answer was, I would never leave without him. We would have to learn to survive what we found and take the risk. It was better than waiting to be killed by our captors.

  One day Gira’s boyfriend came to dig some chontos. He was a huge Indian with a deep gaze. I hoped to chat with him for a few minutes. But I wished I hadn’t. He said, straight out, “The FARC doesn’t like you. You are everything we are fighting against. You’ll only get out of here twenty years from now. We have all the organization it takes to keep you as long as we like.”

  This reminded me of Orlando, talking about one of our fellow inmates: Look, he’s behaving like a cockroach. They sweep him out, and he scurries back in again. As I tried to befriend that Indian, I saw myself as a cockroach. There is no greater stimulant to finding the determination to escape, I thought.

  The fish did wonders for Lucho. Two weeks later his memory was back in place. While he’d been absent, I’d felt as if I were talking to a stranger. When he became normal again and I could confide in him at length, telling him how I’d suffered to see him like that, he played at frightening me, pretending to have new memory lapses that panicked me. He would burst out laughing and hug me, sheepish but delighted to see how much I cared for him.

  Everything was ready. We had even decided to leave and interrupt the Glucantime treatment. It was endless, and Lucho wasn’t getting any better. We could still improve our supplies, but we planned to find things to eat in nature, in order to travel as light as possible. We began to wait for the right moment: a terrible storm at six-thirty in the evening. We expected it every evening. In this tropical forest where it rained every day, the year 2005 was one of unprecedented drought. We waited a long time.

  SIXTY-ONE

  THE ESCAPE

  FEBRUARY 2005

  To keep busy we decided to start up our French classes again. Only Jhon Pinchao, a young policeman who had been taken hostage almost as soon as he enlisted, decided to join in. He was convinced he’d been born with bad luck and, according to him, the chain of events that had brought him to Maloka was proof that his entire life was doomed to fail. He nourished a deep sentiment of injustice, which left him bitter, and he would get angry at the entire world. I liked him. He was intelligent and generous, and I enjoyed talking with him, even though most of the time I would leave him annoyed, declaring, “You see! It’s impossible to talk with you.”

  He was born in Bogotá, in the poorest neighborhood in the city. His father was a bricklayer, and his mother worked wherever she could. He had spent his childhood in utter poverty, shut up with his sisters in a rented room in a slum. His mother locked them inside during the day, since she could not look after them. At the age of five, his oldest sister prepared their lunch on a portable stove that his mother left right on the floor. He remembered being often cold and hungry.

  He adored his father and revered his mother. Eventually his parents managed—the fruit of intense labor and unlimited courage, with their own hands and after work hours—to build a little house and give their children a decent education. Pinchao finished high school and then enlisted in the police, because he had no money to continue his studies.

  From the very beginning of our French lessons, I noticed that Pincho, the nickname we all used, was a very fast learner. He had a great thirst for knowledge and asked all kinds of questions that I tried to answer as best I could. He was delighted when, after he’d squeezed me like a lemon all day long, I would admit defeat and confess I didn’t know a particular answer.

  He became bolder and asked me to introduce him to what he called “my universe.” He wanted to know about the other countries I’d visited and lived in. I took him for a walk through my memories, through different seasons, something he knew nothing about. I explained that I liked autumn best for its baroque splendor, even though it was so short; that springtime in the Luxembourg Gardens was a fairy tale; and I described snow and the delights of winter sports, which he thought I’d made up just to please him.

  After our French lessons, we would immerse ourselves in another subject. Pincho wanted to learn all about the rules of etiquette. When he first asked me, I immediately thought I was the wrong person for the task.

  “To be honest, my poor Pincho, you’re out of luck! If my sister were here, she would give you the best possible training. I really don’t know much about etiquette. But I can show you at least what I learned from my mom.”

  He was very excited at the prospect. “I’ve always thought I would panic if I had to sit down one day with a pile of forks and lots of glasses lined up in front of me,” he said. “But I was always ashamed to ask.”

  We made use of a shipment of planks one day to build a table, on the pretext that we needed it for our French lessons.

  I asked Tito to use his machete to chop bits of wood to make pretend knives and forks, and we played tea party, together with Lucho, who took our classes in savoir faire very seriously and delighted in correcting my every other word.

  “Forks on the left, knife on the right,” I began.

  “Yes, but on the right you can also put a soup spoon or snail tongs,” said Lucho.

  “Wait a minute, what are snail tongs?” Pincho wanted to know.

  “Don’t listen to him, he’s trying to impress you.”

  “But how do I know which one to use?” insisted Pincho, dismayed.

  “No need to guess. They are placed in the order you use them.”

  “And if you hesitate, just look at your neighbor,” Lucho piped up again.

  “That’s good advice. Moreover, you must always wait for the host to set the example. You must never do anything before he does.”

  “If you do, you might have the same thing happen to you as happened to an African head of state—actually, I don’t know if he was African, but he was invited to dinner with the queen of England. They had put finger bowls o
n the table, and the man thought it was a cup to drink out of, so that’s just what he did. To spare the man any embarrassment, the queen drank from her finger bowl, too.”

  “What’s a finger bowl?”

  We spent entire afternoons talking about how to set the table, how to serve the wine, to help oneself, to eat, and we went off into a world of courtesy and refined pleasures.

  I swore that the day I finally got home, I would pay attention to detail, I would always have flowers in my room and wear perfume, and I would no longer forbid myself to eat ice cream or cakes. I understood that in my life I had abandoned too many little pleasures, taking them for granted. I wrote it down somewhere, so that I would never forget, because I sensed that the unbearable lightness of living could condemn me to forget what I’d experienced in captivity.

  But like everything I wrote in the jungle, I burned it to avoid it falling into the wrong hands. I was thinking about all this, sitting in my caleta, planning my French lessons for the next day, when I suddenly heard a long, creaking sound—it was painful, horrible the way it echoed, as if it were increasing in volume to surprise us and oblige us to look up. I saw a rustling of leaves over by the chontos, and then I saw Tiger dash hell bent for leather through the camp, abandoning his guard post.

  The tallest tree in the forest had chosen that particular moment to die, and it had come crashing down like a felled giant. Our surprise was equal to that of the young trees it brought down with it, which smashed with a thundering sound as they landed on the ground, raising a huge cloud of dust in the blast generated by the fall. Parrots flew away, terrified. My hair was swept backward by the shock wave; my face was coated with a cloud of particles that covered all the tents and the surrounding foliage. The sky had opened, revealing frayed yellow clouds. Everyone ran to take shelter. It didn’t even occur to me to do so.

  I could have died, I said to myself, stunned, realizing that a branch of the giant tree had landed six feet from my foot. But it was a beautiful sight.

  I was delighted that this providential opening would allow us to gaze at the sunset and the stars.

  “Forget it!” warned Lucho. “You’ll see, they’ll make us change camp.”

  And indeed, a few days later Mauricio gave the signal: We had to pack. The place where we set up camp was set back from the river. As at the Maloka camp, there was a caño to the left of our site. It was much wider, and it split into a fork before reaching the river. The larger branch served the guerrilla camp.

  Very quickly we all slipped back into our habits. We threw our aluminum-wire antennas into the trees to connect with the world. I didn’t miss a single one of Mom’s messages. After Trinidad was extradited, she undertook getting in touch with anybody who might have the ear of President Uribe. It was her intention to win over the president’s wife. Mom made a point of saying all this in public, on the air, as if it were just the two of us talking.

  “I don’t know what to try next,” she said. “I feel terribly alone. People are bored with your story. I feel as if all the doors are closing. My friends no longer want to see me. They say I depress them with my tears. And it’s true, my darling, that I speak only about you, because it’s the only thing that interests me, and all the rest seems superficial to me now. As if I could spend my time chitchatting when I know you are suffering!”

  I wept in silence, repeating in a hushed voice, “Stay strong, my little mom. I have a surprise for you. In a few days, I will arrive somewhere, in a village by the side of the river. I will go and hide in the church, because the guerrillas will be looking for me everywhere, and I will be frightened. But from a distance, I’ll see the church tower, and I’ll find the priest. He will have a telephone and I’ll dial your number. That is the only one I have not forgotten: ‘Dos doce, veintitrés, cero tres.’71 I will hear it ringing—once, twice, three times. You’re always busy doing something. Finally you’ll pick up. I will hear the sound of your voice, and I will let it echo for a few moments in the void, just long enough to offer up my thanks. I will say, ‘Mom?’ and you will reply ‘Astrica?’ because our voices are similar, and it can only be her. And then I’ll say, ‘No, Mamita, it’s me, Ingrid.’”

  My God! How many times have I imagined that scene?

  Mom was in the midst of preparing an appeal with the support of all the NGOs in the world, to ask President Uribe to appoint a negotiator for the humanitarian agreement. She was counting on the unconditional support of one of the country’s leading lights. Former president Alfonso López, looking on from his ninety years of age, continued to have an influence on Colombia’s destiny.

  All through my years in politics, I had maintained a certain distance from President López. In a way, he incarnated for me the old political class.

  A few days before my abduction, I received an invitation to go see him. I arrived early at his house, one Saturday morning, with the only one of my security escorts whom I trusted fully. I was startled as I rang at the door, because it opened instantly and it was President López himself who greeted me.

  López was a very tall man, handsome despite his advanced age, with eyes an aquatic blue that changed according to his mood. He was elegantly dressed, with a cashmere turtleneck, a dark blue blazer, and impeccably ironed gray flannel trousers. He asked me to follow him into his library, where he settled into a large armchair, his back to the window. I have no memory of opening my mouth for the two hours our meeting lasted. I was won over. By the time I left him, I realized that he had rid me of all my preconceived ideas about him.

  He had been to Neiva, a city as hot a devil’s cauldron, to take part in a demonstration organized on our behalf. Along with his wife, who had subjected herself to the same ordeal, he’d brandished photographs of the hostages during the march. Mom was there, with all the families of the other hostages. Intolerance had reached its apex. Some people in Colombia thought their demands for our liberation were an inadmissible compliance with the guerrillas’ blackmail and an act of treason toward the country. President López had lent his support to our plight at a time when so many were turning a blind eye. He died when I was still chained to a tree. I suffered. I had come to truly love him. But by the time he left us, he had won his last battle: Fighting for our freedom had become politically correct in Colombia.

  It was his voice I heard first when we disembarked on the radio and it made me like the new place. Our new camp had been designed in a strange way. We were isolated from the barracks that the guerrillas were building for themselves, and we had only two guards at either end of our camp. I had sketched out a plan that seemed perfect. Moreover, Lucho’s treatment was finished. He had received 163 injections of Glucantime over six months, five times more than the normal dose. The side effects had caused him to suffer, in particular, pain in his teeth and bones. But the sore on his temple had healed. All that was left was a slight indentation of the skin, which would be a lifelong testimony to the prolonged struggle he’d waged against leishmaniasis.

  We were still waiting for the providential storm at six-fifteen in the evening that would allow us to escape. Every evening we fell asleep disappointed that we’d not been able to leave but secretly relieved that we’d been able to sleep another night in a dry place.

  One morning Mono Liso and a group of five other guerrillas came very early, with enormous squared beams that they had cut at the base to make posts. They drove them into the ground every five yards around our camp. Simultaneously we were all moved inside what would in all likelihood become an enclosure. I thought I would die. They wouldn’t have time to finish it that day. The mesh and barbed wire would be put up the following day.

  “It’s our last chance, Lucho. If we want to leave, we have to do it tonight.”

  JULY 17, 2005

  My sister’s birthday was the following day. I got our minicruseros ready, and I put everything in a corner of my caleta, inside the mosquito net. Mono Liso went by at that very moment, and in spite of the black veil of the insect shield, our gazes me
t. He looked at me, feigned indifference, but in that very second I understood that he had read my thoughts. I went to stand in line for my last hot meal with my bowl in my hand, thinking that I was mad, that he couldn’t have seen my intentions, and that everything would be fine. I confirmed that Lucho was also ready, and I asked him to wait for me to come and get him. I had faith.

  Big black storm clouds were gathering in the sky above. There was already the smell of rain. And sure enough, big raindrops began to fall. I made the sign of the cross inside my caleta and asked the Virgin Mary to take care of me, because I was already trembling. I had the feeling she’d ignored me, for in the distance I saw Mono Liso headed my way. It wasn’t time for the changing of the guard. My heart sank. The boy was coming along a wooden walkway on piles that the guerrillas had just finished, to connect their camp to ours. The walkway went all around the camp, just three yards from my tent. It was already raining quite hard. It was exactly six o’clock. Mono Liso stopped just in front of me and sat on the walkway, his legs dangling, his back to me, indifferent to the storm.

  It was my fault. I’d been too nervous, and I’d set off the alarm. Tomorrow they would lock us up in a prison with barbed wire, and I would not get out of this jungle for twenty years. I was trembling, my hands were damp, I was overcome with nausea. I started to cry.

  The hours went by, and Mono Liso went on sitting there right before me, on guard, without moving. The other guards were changed twice, but he didn’t abandon his post. At around half past eleven, “El Abuelo,” another, older guerrilla, came to replace him. It went on raining. Mono Liso had gone away soaked through to the bone. The new guard went to sit beneath a temporary tent where they stored the cooking pots. He was diagonally across from me and could see all the angles around my caleta. He stared straight ahead, lost in his thoughts.