The Sound of Things Falling

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  ‘From Medellín,’ said Elaine, but not as a question. ‘And you’re here to see Ricardo.’

  Mike Barbieri was going to say something (she was perfectly well aware that he was going to say something) but he didn’t. His gaze left her face and glided past her like a paper plane; Elaine, turning around to see what he was looking at, found Maya, a little ghost in a lace nightie. In one hand she had a stuffed animal – a rabbit with very long ears and a ballerina’s tutu that had once been white – and with the other she was pushing her chestnut hair off her face. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ said Mike, and Elaine was surprised by the sweetness in his tone. ‘Hello, sweetie,’ she said to her. ‘What happened? Did we wake you up? Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ said Maya. ‘Why is Uncle Mike here?’

  ‘Mike came to see Daddy. Go to your room, I’ll bring you a glass of water.’

  ‘Is Daddy back?’

  ‘No, he’s not back yet. But Mike came to see all of us.’

  ‘Me too?’

  ‘Yes, you too. But now it’s time to sleep, say goodnight, you’ll see him another day.’

  ‘Goodbye, Uncle Mike.’

  ‘Goodnight, lovely,’ said Mike.

  ‘Sleep tight,’ said Elaine.

  ‘She’s so big,’ said Mike. ‘How old is she now?’

  ‘Five. She’s about to turn five.’

  ‘Holy smoke. How time flies.’

  The cliché annoyed Elaine. Annoyed her more than it should have, it almost made her angry, it was like an affront, and suddenly her annoyance turned into surprise: at her disproportionate reaction, at the strangeness of the scene with Mike Barbieri, at the fact that her daughter had called him Uncle. She asked Mike to wait for her there, because the floor was too slippery and if he came in soaking wet he risked hurting himself; she brought him a towel from the servants’ bathroom and went to get a glass of water from the kitchen. Uncle Mike, she was thinking, what’s he doing here? And she thought it in Spanish too, what the hell is he doing here? And suddenly there was that song again, What’s there to live for? Who needs the Peace Corps? When she walked into Maya’s room, when she breathed in her scent that was different from all others, she felt an inexplicable desire to spend the night with her, and thought that later, when Mike had left, she’d carry Maya to her bed so she could keep her company until Ricardo got back. Maya had fallen asleep again. Elaine bent down over the head of her bed, looked at her, brought her face up close, breathed in her breath. ‘Here’s your water,’ she said, ‘do you want a sip?’ But the little girl didn’t say anything. Elaine left the glass on her bedside table, beside the string merry-go-round where a horse with a broken head was trying, slowly but tirelessly, to catch up with a clown. And then she went back to the front of the house.

  Mike was using the towel vigorously, rubbing his ankles and shins. ‘I’m getting it all muddy,’ he said when he saw Elaine come back. ‘The towel, I mean.’

  ‘That’s what it’s for,’ said Elaine. And then, ‘So you came to see Ricardo.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. He looked at her with the same empty expression. ‘Yeah,’ he repeated. He looked at her again: Elaine saw the drops running down his neck, his beard dripping like a leaky tap, the mud. ‘I came to see Ricardo. And it seems like he’s not here, right?’

  ‘He should have been back today. Sometimes these things happen.’

  ‘Sometimes he gets delayed.’

  ‘Yeah, sometimes. He doesn’t fly by a precise itinerary. Did he know you were coming?’

  Mike didn’t answer straight away. He was concentrating on his own body, on the muddy towel. Outside, in the dark night, in that night that blended with the rocky hills and became infinite, another downpour was unleashed. ‘Well, I think so,’ said Mike. ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s confused.’ But he didn’t look at her as he spoke: he dried off with the towel and had that absent expression, like a cat cleaning itself with strokes of its tongue. And then Elaine thought that Mike might keep drying himself till the end of time if she didn’t do something. ‘Well, come in and sit down and have a drink,’ she said then. ‘Rum?’

  ‘OK, but no ice,’ said Mike. ‘See if it’ll warm me up. I can’t believe how cold it is.’

  ‘Do you want one of Ricardo’s shirts?’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea, Elena Fritts. That’s what he calls you, isn’t it? Elena Fritts. A shirt, yeah, not a bad idea.’

  And so, wearing a shirt that wasn’t his (short-sleeved with blue checks on a white background, a breast pocket with a missing button), Mike Barbieri drank not one, but four glasses of rum. Elaine watched him. She felt comfortable with him: yes, that’s what it was, comfort. It was the language, perhaps, coming back to her language, or perhaps the codes they shared and the disappearance, while they were together, of the necessity of explaining themselves that was always there with Colombians. Being with him had something of indisputable familiarity, like coming home. Elaine had a drink too and felt accompanied and she felt that Mike Barbieri was also accompanying her daughter. They talked about their country and politics back home just as they’d done years before, before Maya existed and before Villa Elena existed, and they told stories of their families, their personal histories and also recent news, and doing so was comfortable and agreeable, like putting on a nice wool coat on a winter’s evening. Although it wasn’t easy to know where the pleasure came from in talking about the 2-dollar bill that had just been reissued back home, or about the bicentennial celebrations of independence, or about Sara Jane Moore, the muddle-headed woman who had tried to assassinate the president. It had stopped raining and a cool breeze came in from the night heavy with the scent of hibiscus. Elaine felt light-hearted, even cosy, so she didn’t hesitate for a second when Mike asked if there was a guitar around and in a matter of seconds he was tuning it up and started singing Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel songs.

  It must have been two or three in the morning when something happened that didn’t shock Elaine (she’d think later) as much as it should have shocked her. Mike was singing the part of ‘America’ where the couple gets on a Greyhound bus when they heard a sound outside, in the distance, in the quiet night, and the dogs began to bark. Elaine opened her eyes and Mike stopped playing; both of them sat still, listening to the silence. ‘Don’t worry, nothing ever happens around here,’ said Elaine, but Mike was already on his feet and had gone to find the olive green knapsack he’d brought with him and taken out a big, silver-plated pistol, or a silver pistol that looked big to Elaine, and had gone outside, raised his arm and fired two shots at the sky, one, two, two explosions. Elaine’s first reaction was to protect Maya or to neutralize her unease or her fear, but when she reached her daughter’s room in four strides she found her asleep, deep in an imperturbable sleep and far from all sounds and noises and worries, incredible. When she got back to the living room, however, something had broken in the atmosphere. Mike was justifying himself with a twisted sentence: ‘If it was nothing before, now it’s even less.’ But Elaine had lost the urge to hear the song about the Greyhound bus and the New Jersey Turnpike: she felt tired; it had been a long day. She said goodnight and told Mike to sleep in the guest room, the bed was made, tomorrow they could have breakfast together. ‘Who knows, maybe even with Ricardo.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mike Barbieri. ‘With any luck.’

  But when she woke up, Mike Barbieri had gone. A note, that was all he’d left, a note on a paper napkin, and in the note three words on three lines: ‘Thanks, Love, Mike.’ Later, remembering that strange and hazy night, Elaine would feel two things: first, a profound hatred towards Mike Barbieri, the most profound hatred she’d ever felt; and second, a sort of involuntary admiration for the ease with which that man had gone through the night, for the massive deception he’d carried out for so many and such intimate hours without giving himself away for a moment, for the incombustible serenity with which he’d pronounced those final words. With any luck, Elaine would think, or rather the words would rep
eat themselves in her head tirelessly, with any luck, that’s what Mike Barbieri had said to her without a muscle in his face twitching, a feat worthy of a champion poker player or a Russian roulette enthusiast, because Mike Barbieri knew perfectly well that Ricardo wasn’t going to return to Villa Elena that night and he’d known it from the start, from the time he arrived by motorcycle at Elaine’s house. In fact, that’s precisely why he’d come: to tell Elaine. He’d come to tell her that Ricardo wasn’t going to come back.

  He knew very well.

  He knew very well, he who’d been to see Ricardo days earlier to tell him about the new business opportunity they could not afford to miss, to convince him that the shipments of marijuana were bringing in pocket money compared to what they could be earning now, to explain what this coca paste that was coming in from Bolivia and Peru was and how in some magic places it was transformed into the luminous white powder for which all of Hollywood, no, all of California, no, all of the United States, from Los Angeles to New York, from Chicago to Miami, were willing to pay whatever they had to. He knew very well, having direct contact with those places, where a few Peace Corps veterans, who had just spent three years in the Cauca Valley and in Putumayo, had turned into overnight experts in ether and acetone and hydrochloric acid, and where they assembled bricks of the product that could illuminate a dark room with their phosphorescence. He knew very well, he who’d done some numbers on a piece of paper with Ricardo and calculated that any Cessna, with the passenger seats removed, could carry some twelve canvas rucksacks full of bricks, 300 kilos in total, and that, at 100 dollars a gram, a single trip could produce 90 million dollars of which the pilot, who ran so many risks and was so indispensable to the operation, could keep two. He knew very well, having listened to Ricardo’s enthusiasm, his plans to make this trip and just this trip and then retire, retire forever, retire from piloting cargo planes and also passenger planes and all piloting except flying for pleasure, retire from everything except his family, a millionaire forever before the age of thirty.

  He knew very well.

  He knew very well, he who accompanied Ricardo in the Nissan to a ranch in Doradal with its property lines too far away to see, this side of Medellín, and there introduced him to the Colombian side of the business, two men with wavy black hair and moustaches who spoke softly and gave the impression of feeling very much at ease with their consciences and after greeting Ricardo they attended to and entertained him as he’d never been entertained or attended to in his life. He knew very well, he who’d been at Ricardo’s side while the bosses showed him around the property, the paso fino horses and the luxurious stables, the bullring and barns, the swimming pool like a cut emerald, the fields that stretched further than the eye could see. He knew very well, having helped load the Cessna 310-R with his own hands, having taken the rucksacks out of a black Land Rover with his own hands and put them into the plane, he who couldn’t contain himself and had given Ricardo a big hug, a hug of true comrades, feeling as he did so that he’d never loved any Colombian this much. He knew very well, having watched the Cessna take off and followed it with his gaze, its white shape against the grey background of the clouds that were now threatening rain, and having watched it get smaller and smaller until it disappeared in the distance, and then got back into the Land Rover and let them drive him out to the main road where he caught the first bus heading in the direction of La Dorada.

  He knew very well.

  He knew very well, having received the phone call twelve hours before arriving at Villa Elena that gave him the news, and in an urgent and then threatening tone demanded explanations. And he couldn’t give any, of course, because nobody could explain how DEA agents were waiting for Ricardo in the very spot he landed, or how the two dealers – one from Miami Beach, the other from the university zone of Massachusetts – waiting for Ricardo’s shipment in a covered Ford pick-up truck hadn’t noticed their presence. It was said that Ricardo was the first to notice that something was wrong. It was said that he tried to get back to the cockpit, but he must have realized his effort would be futile, for he’d never be able to get the Cessna in motion in time to escape. So he ran down the runway towards the woods that surrounded it, chased by two agents and three German shepherds who caught up with him 30 metres from the edge of the woods. He had already lost at the moment of running off, it was obvious that he’d lost, and that’s why no one could explain what happened next. It’s possible to think it was out of fear, a reaction to the moment’s vulnerability, to the agents’ shouts and to their own weapons pointing at him, or perhaps it was out of despair or rage or powerlessness. Of course, Ricardo couldn’t have thought that firing a random shot could help him in any way, but that’s what he did, using a .22-calibre Taurus he’d started carrying in January: it was a random shot and only one shot, over his shoulder without bothering to aim and with no desire to hurt anyone, with such bad luck that the bullet pierced the right hand of one of the agents, and that same hand in a plaster cast would be enough later, during the trial for drug trafficking, to increase the sentence, even though it was a first offence. Ricardo dropped the Taurus on the way into the woods and shouted something, they say he shouted something, but those who heard him didn’t understand what he said. When the dogs and the second agent found him, Ricardo was lying in a puddle with a broken ankle, his hands black with dirt, his clothes torn and covered in pine gum and his face disfigured by sadness.

  6

  Up, Up, Up

  Adulthood brings with it the pernicious illusion of control, and perhaps even depends on it. I mean that mirage of dominion over our own life that allows us to feel like adults, for we associate maturity with autonomy, the sovereign right to determine what is going to happen to us next. Disillusion comes sooner or later, but it always comes, it doesn’t miss an appointment, it never has. When it arrives we receive it without too much surprise, for no one who lives long enough can be surprised to find their life has been moulded by distant events, by other people’s wills, with little or no participation from their own decisions. Those long processes that end up running into our life – sometimes to give it the shove it needed, sometimes to blow to smithereens our most splendid plans – tend to be hidden like subterranean currents, like tiny shifts of tectonic plates, and when the earthquake finally comes we invoke the words we’ve learned to calm ourselves, accident, fluke, and sometimes fate. Right now there is a chain of circumstances, of guilty mistakes or lucky decisions, whose consequences await me around the corner; and even though I know it, although I have the uncomfortable certainty that those things are happening and will affect me, there is no way I can anticipate them. Struggling against their effects is all I can do: repair the damage, take best advantage of the benefits. We know it, we know it very well; nevertheless it’s always somewhat dreadful when someone reveals to us the chain that has turned us into what we are, it’s always disconcerting to discover, when it’s another person who brings us the revelation, the slight or complete lack of control we have over our own experience.

  That’s what happened to me over the course of that second afternoon at Las Acacias, the property formerly known as Villa Elena, whose name no longer suited it one fine day and had to be urgently replaced. That was what happened to me during that Saturday night when Maya and I were talking about the documents in the wicker chest, about every letter and every photo, about every telegram and every bill. The conversation taught me all that the documents hadn’t confessed, or rather organized the contents of the documents, gave an order and a meaning and filled in a few of its gaps, although not all of them, with the stories that Maya had inherited from her mother in the years they lived together. And also, of course, with the stories her mother had made up.

  ‘Made up?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Maya. ‘Starting with Dad. She invented him entirely, or rather, he was an invention of hers. A novel, understand? A flesh-and-blood novel, her novel. She did it because of me, of course, or for me.’


  ‘You mean you didn’t know the truth?’ I said. ‘Elaine didn’t tell you?’

  ‘She must have thought it would be better that way. And maybe she was right, Antonio. I don’t have children. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have children. I don’t know what a person might be capable of doing for them. My imagination doesn’t stretch that far. Have you got kids, Antonio?’

  Maya asked me that. It was Sunday morning, that day Christians call Easter and on which they celebrate or commemorate the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified two days before (more or less at the same time as I began my first conversation with Ricardo Laverde’s daughter) and who from this moment on began to appear to the living: to his mother, to the Apostles and to certain women well chosen for their merit. ‘Have you got kids, Antonio?’ We’d had an early breakfast: lots of coffee, lots of freshly squeezed orange juice, lots of chunks of papaya and pineapple and sapodilla plums, and a cooked breakfast with a very hot arepa, which I put in my mouth too hot and left a blister on my tongue that came back to life every time my tongue touched my teeth. It wasn’t hot yet, but the world was a place that smelled of vegetation, humid and colourful, and there, at the table on the terrace, surrounded by hanging vines, talking a few metres from a trunk with some bromeliads growing out of it, I felt good, I thought I was feeling good on this Easter Sunday. ‘Have you got kids, Antonio?’ I thought of Aura and Leticia, or rather I thought of Aura taking Leticia to the closest church and showing her the candle that represented the light of Christ. She’ll take advantage of my absence to do it: in spite of several attempts, I was never able to recover the faith I had as a little boy, much less the dedication with which my family followed the rituals of these days, from the ashes on the forehead on the first day of Lent to the Ascension (which I pictured in my head according to an encyclopedia illustration, a painting full of angels that I’ve never found since). And I had therefore never wanted my daughter to grow up in this tradition, which now seemed so alien to me. Where are you, Aura? I thought. Where is my family? I looked up, let myself be dazzled by the clarity of the sky, felt a stabbing in my eyes. Maya was looking at me, waiting, hadn’t forgotten her question.