Even Silence Has an End

by Ingrid Betancourt

  “How are you?” he asked blandly.

  I was going to give a standard polite reply when a wave of tears overwhelmed me. Between two spasms I tried to assure him that everything was fine. This went on for over a quarter of an hour. When at last I managed to control myself, William asked outright whether I had heard Mom’s message. All I could do was shake my head, so he left, unable to help.

  The next morning at dawn, two guerrillas packed all my things to move elsewhere. Chiqui had ordered them to build an isolated caleta, far away from the other prisoners. As a form of special treatment, I would have only women watching over me. Consolacion, the Indian girl with the black braid, was on duty. “We’re going to take care of you,” she said, as if this were good news.

  They dropped off a box filled with intravenous-drip supplies. Fluff had just been appointed as a nurse, and she came up to me, trembling, with the order to get started by practicing on my arm. Once, twice, three times, inside my elbow, her needle went through my vein without finding the correct position. “Let’s try the other arm.” Once, twice, three times. On the fourth try, she decided to search for a vein in my wrist. Monster came by to take a look at my ordeal and went away delighted. “That’ll teach you,” he said mockingly, turning on his heel.

  “Call Willie,” I pleaded eventually. Asking me to be patient, Consolacion went off at a run. She must have been incredibly convincing, because half an hour later she came back with William and Monster following close behind.

  William looked at my arms, frowning in a way that made everyone ill at ease. “I refuse to try to prick her again. She’s getting phlebitis. We have to wait until tomorrow.” Then, turning to me, he said gently, “Chin up, I’ll look after you.”

  I lost consciousness. When I opened my eyes again, it was already dark. The Indian wasn’t there anymore. In her place was Katerina, her AK-47 over her shoulder, watching me with curiosity.

  “You’re in luck!” she said admiringly. “William said he wouldn’t take care of anyone else anymore unless you are treated properly.”

  Consolacion was back at dawn. She was working, cutting and stripping wood. I didn’t even think to ask what she was doing. “I’m going to build you a table and a bench. You’ll be able to sit here and write.” I hated her. They hadn’t returned my notebook, and here she was taunting me with a privilege I no longer desired. The Indian must have seen the dark shadow over my face, for she said, “Stop worrying, you’re going to get better. They’re going to make you a good fish soup.” Her gentleness was a burden. I just wanted to be left alone. The table was built by the time the pot arrived. A big piranha was floating in it. The girl put the pot down respectfully in front of me, as if enacting a sacred ritual. From the neighboring camp, I could hear the guard barking at the prisoners that it was time to eat. I sighed, absorbed in my contemplation of the beast in the pot. “I never managed to persuade Lucho to eat the eyes,” I mused.

  I had once been to a dinner among diplomats when Fabrice was posted in Quito. The wife of the officer hosting the dinner had prepared a superb fish, which lay splendidly in the middle of the table. The hostess had been born in Vientiane, Laos. I have never forgotten her, with her black hair pulled back into a shining chignon and her multicolored silk sarong. She explained gracefully that in Laos the most prized dish was fish eyes. As she spoke, with a refined gesture she removed the creature’s slimy eye and lifted it to her mouth. “I should try,” I urged myself one hungry day in captivity. “It’s like caviar!” I had to admit Lucho always looked at me and would laugh, absolutely disgusted. Tom was the only one who followed my cue, and he had become as crazy about fish eyes as I was.

  Willie’s voice roused me from my torpor; he was already holding my arm, looking for a vein.

  “Did you hear the message from your mother and daughter this morning?”

  “Yes, I think I heard them.”

  “What did they say?” he asked, as if asking me to recite my lesson.

  “I think they were talking about a trip?”

  “Not at all. They were telling you that your dog Pom died. Melanie was very sad.”

  Now it came back to me. La Carrillera had started with a beautiful song from Yuri Buenaventura composed for the hostages. I had the impression he was singing my story, and I was deeply shaken. I heard Mom next. She told me that Pom had been sniffing everywhere, trying to find my smell. She nuzzled my clothes and went from room to room inspecting every little corner. My little Pom, she’s gone ahead to prepare my arrival.

  I thought I was ready to go, too. There was a certain order to it all, and I liked that. Then I disconnected myself from the world, the needle in my arm filling my vein with a deadly chill.

  I came back suffering terrible convulsions. I wanted to disconnect the drip; I felt instinctively that it was killing me. The panicked guard forbade me and began shouting for help. Monster came running. He tried to make me stay down flat in my hammock, and when he felt that my body was rushing away at a gallop, he ran, disappearing in a panic the way he had come.

  William arrived and immediately disconnected the drip. The convulsions stopped. He wrapped me in a blanket, and I fell asleep again, dreaming that I was an old glove.

  The drip eventually stabilized my condition. William came to see me very often. He massaged my back and talked to me about my children. “They’re waiting for you, they need you.” He would feed me with fish broth, spoon by spoon: “One for your mother, one for your daughter, one for Lorenzo, one for Pom.” Then he stopped there, knowing I would refuse any more, and came back later to try again. When I thanked him, he got angry. “You have nothing to thank me for. Those monsters agreed to let me come because they need a proof of life.”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  THIRD PROOF OF LIFE

  OCTOBER 2007

  This news upset me greatly. In a spiral of depression, I clung to the words I had loved, to keep from falling. I reread Marc’s letters. And I recited poems I had always kept in my memory: “Je suis le ténébreux—le veuf,—l’inconsolé . . .”93 I savored the words as if they were the finest nourishment. “Porque después de todo he comprendido / que lo que el árbol tiene de florido / vive de lo que tiene sepultado.”94 I saw Papa, standing with his finger raised, aware of the mesmerizing effect he had on me; while reciting these verses, he was arming me for life. It was his words that I heard in my words. “‘There is no silence that does not end,95’” he said and I repeated after him, killing my fears with Pablo Neruda’s claim over death.

  This immersion in the past boosted my spirits. It wasn’t the IV that had allowed me to recover. It was the words! Back in my secret garden, the world I could observe through the peephole of my indifference seemed less insane.

  Enrique came by one morning at the end of October when I was already seated on my bench. At the sight of him, the nausea grabbed me by the throat, like a cat.

  “I have some good news!” he shouted from a distance.

  I played blind and deaf. He came toward me, acting mischievously, hiding behind trees playing peekaboo. Consolacion watched him, amused, giggling at her boss’s clowning. Dear Lord, forgive me, but I hate him, I professed silently, looking at the toes of my impeccably clean boots.

  He went on acting the buffoon, seeming more ridiculous by the second. He must have realized that he was getting nowhere with me. Finally he planted himself before me.

  “I have some good news,” he said again, not backing down. “You’re going to be able to send a message to your family,” he continued, scrutinizing my reaction.

  “I have no message to send,” I replied firmly.

  I’d had plenty of time to think about it. I only wanted to write a letter to my mother, a letter just for her, a sort of testament. I would not be part of the circus that the FARC wanted us to perform in.

  Naturally, I had gotten wind of President Hugo Chávez’s efforts to obtain our release. He was trying to sell the FARC on the idea that releasing the hostages could be a jackpot for th
em in political terms. He was the only one who could talk with the FARC, probably because Marulanda saw him as an ally, a fellow revolutionary. He had also won the trust of the Colombian president, Uribe.

  Uribe initially gave Chávez free rein to deal with the FARC; I thought Uribe was convinced, as I was, that the FARC would never yield. They wanted to make us their window display, never selling their goods. Uribe probably thought to unveil their true intentions, show the world that the FARC had no peace plans and therefore no interest in letting us go.

  But Chávez was moving fast. He had already met with the FARC delegates, received a letter from Marulanda, and even announced that the Secretariado was going to entrust him with our proofs of life. He would hand them personally to President Nicolas Sarkozy during his trip to France, scheduled for the end of November. I couldn’t believe there would be a positive outcome for us; it was just a game to show the FARC off.

  I would have no part of their manipulative pretense. My family was suffering enough as it was. My children had grown up in anxiety, and they had reached adulthood chained, as I was, to uncertainty. I had made my peace with God. I felt there was a sort of lull in my suffering, because I’d accepted what had happened to me. I hated Enrique. But in a way I knew that I could let go and not hate him anymore if I wanted. When he had looked at me and said, “You know I can get this proof of life no matter what,” he’d already lost. I almost felt sorry for him. Of course he would get it, but it didn’t interest me anymore. There lay my victory. He no longer had a hold on me. Because I had already accepted that I could die. My entire life I had believed I was eternal. My eternity had stopped here, in this rotten hole, and the presence of imminent death filled me with a peace of mind that I savored. I no longer needed anything; there was nothing I desired. My soul was stripped bare. I was no longer afraid of Enrique.

  Having lost all my freedom and, with it, everything that mattered to me—my children, my mom, my life and my dreams—with my neck chained to a tree—not able to move around, to talk, to eat and to drink, to carry out my most basic bodily needs—subjected to constant humiliation, I still had the most important freedom of all. No one could take it away from me. That was the freedom to choose what kind of person I wanted to be.

  With this realization came the understanding that I was no longer a victim. I was free to choose to hate or not to hate. I was a survivor.

  When Enrique went away, he was satisfied. So was I. I would write a letter to my mother and nothing more. I had emptied the space around me. I had only a day to do it. I put down the sheets of paper sweet Consolacion had hastened to bring to me, on her little table. I wanted my words to bring Mom to me, where I was. I wanted her to smell me and breathe me. I wanted to tell her that I had been listening to her, because she didn’t know. And I wanted my children to speak to me. To prepare them at last, as I had prepared myself, to face death without regrets. To restore their freedom and give them wings for life.

  I did not have much time to put myself back into a conversation that had been interrupted six years earlier. I had to go straight to the essential. But I knew they would find meaning in every word, in all our codes of love; they could smell my skin in the way I formed my letters and hear my voice in the rhythm of my sentences.

  It was a monologue that lasted eight hours, without interruption. The guards didn’t dare disturb me, and my bowl sat empty next to me the entire day. My hands carried me over thousands of words at a dazzling speed, following thoughts that had flown thousands of miles away.

  When Enrique reappeared to take my letter, I hadn’t finished. He left again, grumbling with irritation, but I’d obtained an extra hour to say good-bye. It was wrenching. I had just spent a day with my loved ones, and I didn’t want to let them go.

  Enrique came back just as I was signing, and he snatched up the letter with a covetous impatience. I felt naked in those sheets of paper he was slipping so inelegantly into his pocket. I should have made an envelope, I thought.

  “I see you’re in great shape,” he said.

  He was so stupid, I was no longer listening to him. I was tired. I wanted to go back under my mosquito net to my cocoon.

  “Wait, we haven’t finished. I have to film you.”

  “I don’t want you to film me,” I said, surprised and weary. “We agreed that I would write a letter and that was all.”

  “The commanders agreed to the letter, but they also want images.”

  He pulled out his digital camera and aimed it at me. The red button lit up and went out again.

  “Go on, say something. Say a little hello to your mom.”

  The red light came on for good. He had lied to me. The letter would never reach my mother. I sat stiffly on Consolacion’s bench. Lord, you know that this proof of life exists against my will. May your will be done, I prayed in silence, and I swallowed my tears and my pride. I did not want my children to see me like this.

  Before leaving, Enrique deposited my notebook on the table—the one they had taken away in the last frisk. I didn’t have the strength even to rejoice.

  I was surprised when, three weeks later, the radio announced that Chávez did not give the proof of life to Sarkozy. Was Mono Jojoy playing his own game, trying to abort a mediation process I now wanted to believe in, against my better judgment? Sarkozy had made the Colombian hostage situation an issue of global importance, working relentlessly since his election to advance the talks with the FARC.

  If Marulanda had announced proofs of life, and if they had been collected in time, why didn’t Chávez get them? Was there a latent struggle within the FARC between a militaristic wing and a more political faction?

  I discussed it with Willie endlessly. I knew this was Willie’s tactic to get me to take an interest in the world again. He had shown himself to be unfailingly constant, checking on my recovery hourly. He persuaded the guerrillas to provide me with some energizing supplement pills, and he sat down next to me to make sure I took them when our meals arrived.

  But with Willie I spoke primarily about my children and Mom. He came every day to ask me if I had listened to their messages, and I thanked him for repeating their words to me, because it gave me the opportunity to talk about them.

  “And you, why don’t you receive any messages?” I asked him once.

  “It’s hard for my mother. She works all the time.”

  He closed up like a clam, avoiding any topic that concerned him. One day, however, he sat next to me with the intention of talking to me about his lost world, too.

  I wanted to know more about his father. But Willie refused to say anything about him. As if to excuse himself, he eventually said, “I think I still hold it against him, but it’s less and less true. I would like so much to take him in my arms and tell him how much I love him.”

  The next morning on the radio program, his mother sent him a message. I was startled when they announced her presence, knowing how much joy it would give him to hear her, and I listened intently.

  Her voice was that of a very sad woman, carrying a burden that was far too heavy on her shoulders.

  “My son,” she said, “your father has died. Pray for him.”

  Willie came as on every day. We sat side by side in silence for a long time. There was nothing to say. I didn’t even dare to look at him so that he wouldn’t be ashamed of his tears. Finally I uttered, very quietly, “Talk to me about him.”

  We left the camp. I couldn’t carry my backpack, so they spread my things out among the guerrillas. Half of them I would never see again. It hardly mattered. I had my Bible and my letters on me.

  Suddenly the radio announced that the army had seized some videos from young militia hiding in a neighborhood south of Bogotá. They were the proofs of life that Chávez had never received. Chávez’s mediation had just been suspended, as the result of a virulent confrontation with Uribe. Mom was crying on the radio. She had learned I’d sent her a letter, because excerpts had been published in the press, but the authorities refused t
o give it to her. The images Enrique had recorded were also seized.

  Lucho and Marc had reacted just as I had, refusing to speak in front of Enrique’s camera, I discovered. Marc had also written a letter to Marulanda that had been found with the proof of life. He had asked to be reunited with me. Without knowing, we had fought the same way. This gave me great peace of mind. We were connected by our gesture of protest, united against all the forces that had tried to destroy our friendship.

  Something had happened with the discovery of these proofs of life that revealed our mental and physical conditions. For the first time in so many years, there was a change of heart. Testimonies of compassion and solidarity were being heard everywhere.

  President Sarkozy sent a harsh televised message to Manuel Marulanda. “A woman in danger of dying must be saved. . . . You bear a heavy responsibility, I urge you to rise to it,” he had declared. It’s the end of the nightmare, I thought. I fell asleep, as if lulled by an incantation. Words—the words of others—had healed me. The next morning, for the first time in six months, I wanted to eat.

  It was December 8, the feast of the Virgin, and an urgent need to listen to music from the outside world grabbed me . I had a thirst for life again. By chance I heard a countdown of Led Zeppelin’s best songs, and I wept in gratitude. “Stairway to Heaven” was my hymn to life. Hearing it reminded me that I was born for happiness. I had collected all their records, and they were my treasure back in the days when music came only on vinyl records.

  I knew that among die-hard fans it was frowned upon to like “Stairway to Heaven.” It had become too popular. Connoisseurs were not supposed to share the taste of the masses. But I never disowned my first loves. From the age of fourteen, I’d been convinced that the song was written for me.” On hearing the song again in that impenetrable jungle, I wept at the promise of freedom made to me long ago, that I had never understood before: “And a new day will dawn for those who stand long, And the forests will echo with laughter.”