Pinchao was scrambling like an ant, furious to be so loaded, and I prayed that he wouldn’t drop the bars of chocolate on my head. He showed up with his feet bleeding and the straps of his equipo cutting into his shoulders.
“I’m fed up!” he shouted, throwing his backpack angrily to one side. Then the guard announced that a bongo would be coming for us at nightfall. Only then, Pinchao agreed to keep our precious supplies.
We landed in a sinister place. Swamps with slimy brown water extended from a murky river. Trees leaned into the water as if they were being stifled by fetid green moss. The sun hardly shone through the tropical canopy.
SEVENTY
PINCHAO’S ESCAPE
“I have a bad feeling about this place. It is cursed,” I murmured to Lucho.
We all fell sick. At twilight I was lying cramped in my hammock, and I felt as if I were being caught up by a centrifugal force that was sucking me out from within, making me tremble from my neck to my toes, like someone in a rocket ready to blast off. I had contracted malaria. We had all come down with it. I knew it was a filthy disease. I had already seen my companions shaking with convulsions, their skin shriveling on their bones.
But what the body was preparing once the convulsions ceased was even worse. Acute fever pulled on your ligaments like the strings on a bow and left you motionless, your entire body shrill, as if a dentist’s drill were boring into an exposed nerve. In a trance, after having to wait in excruciating pain for the guard to give the alert and for someone else to find the keys and another guard to come and open my padlock, I had to get up, in agony, and dart to the chontos, overwhelmed by a flood of diarrhea.
Afterward I was surprised to be still alive. The guerrilla in charge of medical supplies came in the morning, wanting to question whether it was indeed malaria. He agreed to put me on medication only after three crises identical to the first one, and when I thought I was already dead.
He arrived like a wizard with his boxes of various drugs. For two days I took two huge tablets that smelled like bleach, then little black pills—three on the third day, two on the fourth, three again, and finally just one to finish the treatment.
It seemed crazy, but I wasn’t about to disobey orders. The only thing that really mattered to me was the ibuprofen. He gave it sparingly, counting every pill, and it was the only antidote to the painful bar above my eyes that pressed against my sinuses, skewed my vision, and muddled my thinking.
Convalescence was slow. My first gesture when I came back to life was to wash my hammock, my clothes, and my blanket. I put up a laundry line in the one place where the sun seemed to be making its way through. I went there after my bath with my burden, too heavy for me, wanting to get the task behind me quickly. Angel was lurking at his guard post, spying on my every move. The moment I started hanging the laundry on the rope, he pounced on me.
“Get that out of here. You have no right to put up your laundry here.”
I was speechless.
“Take it down immediately, I said. You’re not allowed out of the perimeter of the camp.”
“What perimeter? I don’t see any perimeter. Everybody puts lines up next to their caletas—why can’t I?”
“Because I said so.”
I looked at the rope and wondered how I would manage with all that laundry in my arms. A sour voice called out, “Making trouble again? Chain her up!”
It was Monster, arriving on cue.
Massimo, on guard on the other side of the camp, saw everything. After his shift he came over. In his sleeve he had hidden a bar of chocolate he owed me—I had given him a pack of cigarettes in exchange for a bar of chocolate, and he hadn’t yet paid his debt.
“I don’t like to see them treating you like that. It really upsets me.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I feel like a prisoner here, too. There are days I feel like I’d like to leave.”
“Leave with me,” I said, thinking of Tito.
“No, it’s really tough. I’ll get killed.”
“You’ll get killed here, too. Think about it. There’s a big reward on our heads. More money than you’ve ever seen in your life. And I’ll help you to get out of the country. You’ll come and live with me in France. France is a beautiful country.”
“It’s dangerous, very dangerous.” He looked around nervously.
“Think about it, Massimo, and give me your answer quickly.”
In the evening when I was already chained up in my hammock, Massimo came over to me.
“It’s me, don’t say anything,” he whispered. “We’ll leave together. Shake my hand.”
“There are two others with me.”
“Three is too many!”
“Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll go with two, not three.”
“There are three of us.”
“Let me see, we need a boat and a GPS.”
“I’m counting on you, Massimo.”
“Trust me, trust me,” he whispered, shaking my hand.
With a guide we were sure to make it. I couldn’t wait for dawn to share the news.
“We have to be very careful. He could betray us. We have to ask for some guarantee,” warned Lucho.
Pinchao remained silent for a long while. “Already three would be difficult. But four, that’s impossible,” he said finally.
“We’ll see. For the time being, the main thing is for you to learn to swim.”
He devoted himself to the task. During the bathing time I supported him beneath his stomach to simulate the sensation of floating and showed him how to hold his breath underwater. Then Armando took him under his wing. One morning Pinchao called to me, overjoyed. “Look!”
That day Pinchao became a swimmer and Monster ordered my chains removed for the entire day. I regained courage: Once again escape became a possibility.
Luck continued to smile on us. Pinchao had offered to make a drawing in one of the guards’ notebooks. As he was leafing through it, he found precise instructions for making a compass copied out in childish handwriting. It was simple. You had to magnetize a needle and place it on a surface of water. The needle would swing to line up in a north-south axis. And the rest you could figure out from the position of the sun.
“We have to try.”
We settled inside my tent, on the pretext that we wanted to sew a jacket, a project that I’d had in mind for some time, to run away in something lighter and better adapted to the jungle. Everybody was always sewing something; no one would suspect anything.
We filled an empty deodorant bottle with water and magnetized our needle by rubbing it against the speakers of Pinchao’s panela. The needle floated on the level surface of the liquid, turned, and pointed northward. Pinchao hugged me.
“It’s our key out of here,” he said.
The next morning he came back and sat down, once again to play at being a tailor. My plan was to remove the seams from two identical pairs of pants, one belonging to Lucho and another that I’d been given. I wanted to recycle the fabric and the thread to make my jacket. Pinchao showed me a way to pull out lengths of thread long enough to be used again, a process that required infinite patience. While we were busy at our task, he said, “I’ve broken my chain. It’s perfect. You can’t tell. I’m ready to leave right away. We have everything we need.”
Lucho and I had to figure out a way to get free of our chains during the night. The trick would be to ensure that the links of the chains were not too tight around our neck—we needed to attach them with nylon thread to eliminate the gap between them. Once we broke the thread, the chain would grow longer and we would be able to put our heads through. With luck, the guard closing the lock at night wouldn’t notice.
“I’ll try it,” promised Lucho.
That night when I got up to pee, the guard who was on duty right next to my caleta insulted me. “I’ll make you stop wanting to get up during the night! I’ll put a bullet in your pussy!”
I’d often had to swal
low their vulgar taunts. It was stupid. I should really have felt contempt for them, but instead I felt outrage.
“Who was the guard next to me last night?” I asked the guerrilla who showed up in the morning to unfasten our padlocks.
“It was me.”
Jairo was a smiling young kid, always courteous.
“You were shouting those obscenities at me last night?”
He puffed up his lungs, swayed his hip to one side as if to defy me, and proudly said, “Yes, it was me.”
Without thinking I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him, spitting in his face. “You stupid jerk, you think you’re so strong with your big rifle? I’ll teach you how to behave like a man. I warn you, do it again and I’ll kill you.”
He was trembling. My anger vanished as quickly as it had come. Suddenly I found it hard not to laugh. I shoved him again. “Now get out of here.”
He was careful to leave the chain around my neck, out of revenge. Never mind. I was pleased. I had warned them any number of times. They never dared to address the men in such a coarse way, because they knew that the reaction could easily be a fist in a jaw. But with me they liked to play rough; a woman’s reaction could always be ridiculed. My outburst was reckless. I could have ended up with a black eye. I’d been lucky—Jairo was a short kid with a slow wit.
As soon as he was out of sight, I began thinking about the reprisals that might ensue. I waited, indifferent. Nothing they did could affect me. Their ruthlessness had made me grow insensitive.
I was having my breakfast, leaning against my tree, when Pinchao arrived. He reached his hand toward me, ceremoniously, and said, “Chinita, estoy muy orgulloso de tí.”81 He knew what had happened, and I was eager to hear what he’d have to say.
“Those chains you are wearing, wear them proudly, because they’re the most glorious of medals. Not one of us would have dared to do what you did. I feel vindicated!”
I took him by the hand, touched by his words. He added in a whisper, “There’s been a delivery of boots. Make a hole in yours so that they’ll give you some new ones. With the old ones, we can make little boots for our departure. We’ll say we need them for gym. I’ll tell Lucho.”
Before long, Monster came by to check the condition of our boots and ask us our sizes.
“You won’t be getting any,” he said when he saw me.
When Massimo came into our enclosure to take up his shift, I asked permission to go to the chontos. He came with keys to open the padlock. “Well, Massimo?”
“We’re leaving tonight.”
“Okay. Find me some boots.”
“I’ll bring them. If anyone asks you, you say they’re your old ones.”
They mustn’t see us having long conversations. Within the FARC, everybody told on everyone else. Their surveillance system was based on snitching.
Massimo was very frightened. Efrén had reported us, saying that he saw us speaking and found our behavior odd. Massimo was called before Enrique. He claimed we’d been discussing the Pacific coast, a region I knew well, and Enrique swallowed his story. But Massimo was being watched, and he was less and less eager to leave.
He came that night to my caleta, making a horrible crackling sound walking over the dry branches. He had boots for me. This is my guarantee, I thought as I listened to him.
“The situation is tough. All the boats are locked up for the night. The GPS that Enrique sometimes lends us isn’t working.”
“The guy’s not serious,” said Pinchao, the next morning. “We have to leave now, before he sounds the alert.”
“I can’t leave now,” said Lucho. “My heart feels weak. I don’t think I could make it, running through the forest with those guys on our heels. If Massimo comes with us, that’s different. He knows how to survive, we’ll be okay.”
When Pinchao came to see me on that April 28, 2007, with his spool of neatly rolled thread and the fabric of the pants ready to be cut, I was overcome by an inexplicable sadness.
“Thank you so much, my dear Pinchao. You’ve done a hell of a job.”
“No, I have to thank you. You gave me something to do. You helped me to cure my boredom.”
He looked me right in the eye, the way he did whenever he was going to confess something to me.
“If I leave tonight, then, I take the path toward the bañadero82 and then I take the boat they left moored in the little pond and head down the river, right?” he said.
“If you leave tonight, you’d better not take the boat in the little pond, because they’ve put a guard on duty, deliberately. You should leave from your caleta and cross the guards’ perimeter.”
“They’ll see me.”
“Not if you go across when they change shifts. The relevante will go past with the relief, one post after the other assigning each guard to his place; but the first one, the one he’ll take himself and which is just opposite your caleta, that post will be empty for two minutes while he finishes his round.”
“And then?”
“And then you’ll go straight ahead into the manigua. Not too far—otherwise you’ll end up in their camp. Say maybe a dozen yards or so, just far enough to hide your footsteps. If it’s raining, make a sharp turn to the left to get away from our enclosure and then left again to go around us and reach the river, farther than their boats and the little pond.”
He waited for me to go on.
“And then you put your empty bottles on and you let the current carry you as far as you can before you get cramps. Remember to swim, to move. It will help you.”
“And if I get cramps?”
“You’ve got your flotation device, you let them pass. And you get over to the shore and get out.”
“And I get out and walk straight ahead.”
“Yes, and be careful where you put your feet. Try to get out where there’s a bed of leaves, or in the mangrove. You have to make absolutely sure not to leave any traces.”
“Okay.”
“Wring out your clothes, set up your compass, and walk due north.”
He listened.
“Stop every forty-five minutes and take a good look around. And use the time to call upstairs, so that he’ll give you a hand.”
“I don’t believe in God.”
“It doesn’t matter, he won’t be offended. You can call him anyway. If he doesn’t reply, call Mary—she’s always available.”
He smiled.
“Pinchillo83 I don’t like this place, it gives me goose bumps. I feel almost as if it is cursed. . . .”
He didn’t answer. He was already taut like the string of a bow, ready to fly away.
In the three years or more that we’d been together, there had never been any demonstrations of affection between us. It wasn’t done. Probably because I was the only woman among so many men, I had built excessively thick walls between us.
And yet in that moment, in the presence of this young kid I’d come to know and grown fond of, when I understood we were saying farewell and I knew that he wouldn’t get a second chance—because he was a member of the armed forces and would be shot if he were retaken—I felt a crushing pain. I knew he was waiting for me to give him a final thumbs-up before he set off to accomplish his exploit. I reached out my arms to hug him, aware that our gesture would attract attention. I saw my companions watching us, and I pulled back, restraining myself to only wishing him well. “May God be with you every step of the way.” Pinchao hurried off, more moved, more tense, more tormented than I had ever seen him.
Suddenly there was a commotion. The guards were shouting, and the tension in our enclosure had once again reached new heights. He won’t leave, I said to myself just as Monster’s flashlight blinded me. I was already huddled in my nighttime cocoon.
The storm broke shortly before eight o’clock in the evening. If he’s going to leave, now would be the ideal time, I thought. But if he’s too afraid, he won’t leave. I lapsed into a deep sleep, relieved I would not have to face the wrath of the gods in such weath
er.
It was already late in the morning when they came to remove our chains. When I emerged from my tent with my toothbrush and my water bottle, my companions were all looking at the relevante, who went away cursing.
“What’s going on?” I asked Marc, whose tent had been set up opposite mine.
“Pinchao’s not there anymore,” he whispered, not looking at me.
“Oh! My God, that’s fantastic!”
“Yes, but now we’re the ones who are going to pay.”
“If it is so that one of us can get free, I don’t care.”
SEVENTY-ONE
THE DEATH OF PINCHAO
APRIL 29, 2007
Soon there was talk of nothing else. Everyone speculated on how Pinchao must have escaped, and no one was willing to bet that he would succeed. The weather is good. He’s making headway, I thought, reassured.
Rumors went around that the guerrillas had found him. One of the guards leaked the information to a prisoner he trusted. As long as I don’t see him, I won’t believe it, I said to myself. But the order was given to pack our things, because we were leaving. I was released from my tree, and I wrapped my yards of chain around my neck and put away all my gear without hurrying. Please let him escape from them.
They made us wait with our tents folded up by our beds all morning long. Then they gave the order to get ready to have our bath, and we had to unpack everything again. We stood in single file between the guards, who drove us like cattle, and as on every day we went along the little path down toward the swamps.
We passed five bare-chested men on their way through our enclosure with shovels over their shoulders. Massimo was one of them. He was walking energetically, careful not to lift his eyes from the ground so they would not meet mine.
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