Night Prayers

by Santiago Gamboa

  “I’m a consul,” I said, “and I’d like to help her. She doesn’t know it, but she’s involved in a problem I’d like to help solve.”

  My explanation convinced her and she started to lower her guard. Juana did sound vaguely familiar, but she really wasn’t sure, all the same she’d think about it. I asked her if she was happy with her life and she said she was lucky; it had been hard at first, but now it was better and she could send money to her mother, who was bringing up her son in Cartago. She began by working on the street, like the others, never knowing who the guy was who was taking her to the hotel on the corner, or sometimes into his car; she’d feel scared, or disgusted, or even amused at the things Japanese men asked her to do: spit in their mouths, urinate on their faces, hit them with the heel of her shoe.

  “These people are so regimented that the only time they let themselves go and enjoy life is when they have sex,” she said, “but they aren’t violent, I’ll say that for them. The thing is, the language sounds very abrupt and you always think they’re telling you off, but deep down they’re affectionate, they help you, they have feelings, they even give tips.”

  In the two years she was on the street, her knees frozen with cold from lowering and raising her stockings so much (that’s how she put it), nothing untoward ever happened to her.

  I asked her if there was a group of Colombian friends and she said, yes, but not an official one, just a bunch of Latin American girls who got together in a Latino restaurant called La Caverna, in the Shinjuku district.

  Then I gave her my telephone number and e-mail address. She promised to call me if she found out anything. As I poured her a third drink, she got a call on her cell phone and she stiffened again.

  “It’s my mamiya,” she said.

  She spoke with her hand over the phone. When she hung up she said, I have to go, but if you want me again I can arrange it. I walked her to the door and said: I can’t now, but I’ll be here until Sunday and I’d love to see you again. She smiled and walked down the corridor to the elevators.

  I opened my notebook and wrote: La Caverna, Shinjuku district.

  That night we had a presentation at the Cervantes Institute. We talked about literature, our careers, and our relationship with the work of Gabriel García Márquez, which is an obligatory question. As I listened to either Juan Gabriel or Enrique talking, I can’t remember which, I looked out at the audience and, suddenly, I was almost certain that Juana was in the hall. A sociology student from the National University wouldn’t miss an event like this. My heart started pounding and I began looking along each row. The lights in the hall had been dimmed, and there were two spotlights shining directly at the platform, blinding me. But I did the best I could, starting from the front rows and moving back.

  It’s a well-known fact that audiences for this kind of event, and for literature in general, are made up mostly of women—there are authors with a great practical sense who aim their writings at them—which is why that night, at the Cervantes Institute in Tokyo, there were at least three possible Juanas in every row.

  But as I was scrutinizing the upper part of the hall, where it was darkest, I spotted a woman sitting alone in the left-hand corner. She had taken a seat some distance from the others, as if afraid to be recognized. Her age was right for Juana, so I looked straight at her, seeking out her eyes, trying to establish a modicum of contact, but at that very moment I heard the voice of the presenter saying my name and I realized it was my turn, so I started talking. I spoke a little about everything, about my life and the things I’d read and what it might mean to be a writer in this strange era, to be a Latin American writer and as if that weren’t enough a Colombian, if that still made any sense at all, if it meant something in aesthetic terms or was only an avatar that bound us to a series of landscapes, problems and complexes, to a common frame of mind and a fairly grim history, a fast-paced reality and a way of speaking, and all this transplanted to literature, where, for many, to be a Colombian seemed to oblige us to deal with certain themes and above all to deal with those themes in a particular way, which was why my generation and the ones after us were trying to escape all that, trying to be just writers, and I added that in our part of the world, being a writer was a highly uncertain and probably unhappy existence because of the helpless state, the neglect and poverty in which most of our writers grew old and died, or because of the fact that, once you reached a certain level of recognition, that became an excuse to ridicule you on the part of those who hadn’t made it or had made it some time ago and had seen their own success devalued by newcomers, not to mention the critics, most of whom were writers or frustrated writers, although as my friend Jorge Volpi says, “a literary critic isn’t a frustrated writer. A literary critic is a frustrated literary critic.”

  These last words I threw out as a provocation, to see if they generated a debate, but instead of that there was laughter. I looked anxiously at the top left-hand corner of the hall and saw that the woman was no longer there. Could it have been Juana? I was starting to get impatient, I wanted the discussion to be over so that we could go up to the restaurant, where we were supposed to be having cocktails, since I assumed that the “shadow woman”—as I dubbed her—would be there to have a drink and a bite to eat before leaving. That, at any rate, was what I’d done in Paris in the years before I made it: I’d go to parties and receptions and eat and drink whatever I could, storing up the calories for harder times, which usually started when I left and walked out onto the street.

  After an amusing story by Enrique about his years in the Colombian merchant navy, in which he called the ships “floating monasteries,” ideal for the study of philosophy and religion, the audience finally applauded and we started for the top floor, where wine, Serrano ham, and Spanish omelet awaited us.

  In a state of great excitement, I managed to get away from those members of the audience who were trying to ask more questions, and went up to the restaurant. Oh, the relief! The mystery woman was there! But when I approached her, the mystery dissolved into thin air, because she was Spanish.

  Hello, she said, how are you? What an interesting symposium, really, it’s been ages since we last had anything like this, do you live in India? Sadly, I couldn’t stay to the end, I had to come up here to make sure everything was ready.

  She worked for the Cervantes Institute.

  I quickly had a look around the other women present in the hope of spotting Juana, but none of them really looked like her, they were all exchange students, young girls who of course were a long way from the kind of life I was investigating. I did actually ask three of them if they knew a restaurant called La Caverna, in Shinjuku. They said no, but one of them took out her iPhone and within a second was writing down the address in a notebook.

  I thanked her, then slowly, trying to emulate the invisible man, walked to the door. But just as I got there, I ran into the hosts and felt obliged to ask them if anything else had been arranged. They said yes, there was a dinner after this aperitif, so I had to wait.

  At eleven at night, when it was all over—luckily things there finish early—they dropped us at the hotel and I immediately left again. I called a taxi, with my paper in my hand. Then I sank into the seat and watched the streets pass by, the flamboyant neon signs, that other nocturnal sky, an apocalypse of facades, skyscrapers that seem to burn, covered with lava or igneous winds, small planets in collision.

  The taxi pulled up outside a low door with a descending staircase. Restaurante La Caverna. The street was narrow and there were lots of people on the sidewalks even though it was late. I got out of the taxi and was taken aback when I converted the price of the ride into euros (this investigation was going to ruin me!). I entered the restaurant, which now that it was after midnight was already turning into a bar, and ordered a pisco sour. There were couples sitting at tables and on high stools. Everything seemed totally normal. Latin women? Of course there were, lots of them. Almost all of those here. So I approached a waitress.
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  “Hello, are you Peruvian?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  She was about twenty-five.

  ”Have you been working here long?”

  “Yes, to pay for my studies.”

  The pisco sour was good, I finished it in one go and asked for another. When she brought it, we carried on talking.

  “A friend from Colombia recommended this place to me,” I said. “Her name is Juana Manrique, do you know her?”

  She thought about it for a moment, then looked up and said: the name sounds familiar, is she dark?

  “Well,” I said, “that depends what you mean by dark. She has white skin, and dark hair and eyes. Here’s her photograph, do you recognize her?”

  She looked at it, smiled, and said, yes, I’ve seen her, but she hasn’t been in for a while.

  “She was always with two Colombian girls and a Japanese man,” she added. “A guy who never laughed, he looked like a bodyguard.”

  I asked her for a third pisco sour.

  “I’m sure he was a bodyguard,” I said. “Do you know what she was involved in?”

  The waitress stopped and looked at me inquisitively, as if putting two and two together. When she spoke again, her tone of voice had changed.

  “You know something, that sounded strange … I don’t think she recommended this place to you. I don’t think you know her, you’re looking for her, that’s it, who are you?”

  “A friend of Manuel, her brother,” I said. “Juana has to go back to Bogotá, there are things she has to resolve urgently. I’m a diplomat. Do you remember the names of the Colombian girls who came with her? What did they look like? Do you remember anything about them?”

  She looked at me with an earnest expression. “I’m not getting into trouble by talking to you, am I?”

  “No,” I said, “I’ve already told you who I am. You’ll actually be doing Juana a favor if you help me find her.”

  How difficult it is to persuade someone to do or say something they have no interest in doing or saying. You have to appeal to feelings like curiosity or a wish to save someone, if they have them. It’s exhausting. If this were a movie and the screenwriters had given me the role of an interrogator with a suspect to question, it might have been easier. There are codes and clear identities. You can hit the table or make the suspect laugh. But not here. I was nobody to her. Just a stranger coming late into her restaurant, ordering drinks, and asking unusual questions. Obviously, our paths might never have crossed in the first place, and now that they had her life would still be the same if she didn’t save anybody tonight. I realized she was reading my thoughts when she said:

  “And what do I get out of this?”

  It was an enormous relief to hear her say that. “It depends on what you want to get out of it,” I said.

  She thought this over, then looked at me slyly. “This city is very expensive, I could give you those two names for a hundred dollars, and if you want me to go to your hotel that’ll be another two hundred, as long as you pay for the taxi rides.”

  I loved her.

  When we got to the Sheraton she went straight to the bathroom. I heard the water running in the shower. After a day’s work, I thought, a clean, warm place like this must have been paradise. It certainly was for me. I took advantage of her being in the bathroom to call room service and ask for one of their artistic ice buckets, and when it came I looked at it for a while. Each cube could have been a diamond.

  Finally she came out with a towel covering her shoulders. She was wearing a thong. There was a slight flaccidness below the navel, and her lined belly hung over the elastic. She had been pregnant. I fantasized for a while about her pussy, but preferred to have a drink, so I said to her, put on one of my T-shirts, it’ll cover you better. Oh, and what’s your name?

  “Aurora,” she said.

  Then she gave me the names of the Colombian girls: Susana Montes and Natalia Collazos. She called on them for work at weekends and they helped her out, but she had never seen Juana again.

  “Can we call them now?” I said.

  ”Of course, but wait, aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

  I poured it for her, adding two slices of lemon, while she dialed the numbers. Then I heard her talking:

  “Hello? Susy? Yes, it’s me, how’s it going? Listen, a friend wants to talk to you, it’s something important, could you see him tomorrow? Yes? He’s Colombian, I’d like to introduce you to him, can you come to La Caverna?”

  She held the telephone away from her and said: what time? I looked at my diary, it would have to be about midnight, is that possible? Aurora told her and nodded. Perfect, midnight tomorrow.

  I hadn’t thought it would be so easy, let alone so quick, to arrange it, and neither had Aurora.

  “And now what? Do you really not want me to do anything for you?”

  I poured myself another gin. “Nobody said that, but for now let’s drink.”

  She left just before dawn, when the subway opened. I lay in bed thinking about everything that had happened since my arrival in Bangkok.

  Through the window I saw the night at its darkest point and imagined Manuel in his cell, hoping that my strength or my intuition or even my lack of scruples would help me find Juana and take her away with me.

  The following day, there was an arranged visit to the National Museum. An imposing place, surrounded by red and sepia-colored trees. All totally symmetrical and perfect. They explained to us the rules of battle and code of honor of the samurai. Also that it took them three days to dress for those battles. I remembered Kurosawa’s film Kagemusha, in which a simple archer fires off a blind shot in the middle of the night.

  After this we had the afternoon free, then in the evening a debate with pupils and teachers of the Faculty of Hispanic Studies at the University of Tokyo. Much to my surprise, the Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya was in the audience, there on a grant from the Japan Foundation. One of the teachers, a friend of his, had told him we were coming and he wanted to say hello. I had met him years earlier, in Madrid, along with Rodrigo Rey Rosa.

  When the talk was over, the professors invited us to an informal dinner at a beer hall in Shibuya, which pleased me, because it was near La Caverna (or so I assumed). We drank beer from pitchers, ate dozens of little dishes of exquisite fish, talked about the divine and the human, and, of course, about Japanese literature: about the writer who was the most widely read and most fashionable outside Japan, Murakami; and about Oe, who for me was the best; as well as Tanizaki, a classic, as was Kawabata—his story “First Snow on Fuji” is a masterpiece—the indescribable Mishima, much admired by Marguerite Yourcenar; or the strange Osamu Dazai, who led a dissolute life in Tokyo. Of course nobody knew the Burns Bannion novels, all set in Japan and with openings like this: “I’ve never seen a bottle of beer broken into so many pieces of chiisai. A bottle of Sapporo beer, large size.”

  When dinner was over, I asked Horacio if he’d like to go somewhere with me, without being any more specific than that. He was surprised that I knew a place in Tokyo, but he said nothing, so we went, and as we walked down the steps at the entrance Aurora approached and greeted me.

  “Give us two pisco sours but make four,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said.

  Then she leaned toward me and whispered in my ear: she’s already in the room, she’s waiting for you, you can talk to her now. I saw her from a distance: a pretty woman, but one who looked as if she’d lived through wars and shipwrecks. Aurora introduced us, brought the drinks, and started talking to Horacio.

  Susana’s northwestern accent was even more marked than Cindy’s. I bought her a drink and got straight down to business.

  “I’m told you’re a friend of Juana Manrique, that you know her. I’m a friend of her brother Manuel. I’m here on his behalf.”

  She gave me a guileless look and said, Manuel? Juana never stopped talking about him, day or night, he was the love of her life.

  “T
hat’s why I’d like to know about her, is she still in Japan?”

  Susana frowned. “Why are you asking me that? Don’t know where she is, or what?”

  A light came on, a warning light. I’d have to take it nice and slowly. The natural defenses of a woman injured by life had been activated. I ordered another pisco sour.

  “Manuel’s in prison in Thailand and I’m trying to get him out. Or rather: the Colombian Foreign Ministry is trying to. I’m a diplomat. I’ve come to Japan on personal business and I’m using the opportunity to look for Juana, it’s urgent she should know what’s going on. Manuel’s desperate to see her. He was on his way to Tokyo when he was arrested. He’d been searching for her, did you know she hadn’t been in touch with Manuel for more than three years? did you know that?”

  For a while she sat pensively sipping her pisco sour. Then she opened her handbag and took out a pack of menthol cigarettes. She lit one (I was surprised to discover that smoking was permitted in bars in Tokyo).

  “Look,” she said, “I knew Juana was running away from something. She loved her brother but didn’t want him to know she was here, especially that she was in this line of work. They kept a close eye on her. When she was working on the street, she always had someone close by, never letting her out of his sight. I don’t know why they treated her like that. We lived together for about eight months. Or rather: they kept us in the same room, locked up. That’s not living. They always had their eye on her. Juana had style, she was well educated and spoke English; she earned a lot of money for them and they didn’t want to lose her.”

  I was starting to get impatient. At the other table Horacio was chatting with Aurora.

  “I need to talk to her, where is she? It’d take me a long time to explain, but right now it might be a matter of life and death.”

  Susana gave me a strange, almost angry look. “She’s not here anymore, she ran away eleven months ago.”

  “She ran away?” I cried.

  Fortunately the bar was noisy.

  But Susana was afraid to say too much, to go into details. She may have been questioned many times, maybe threatened. I felt as if I was stepping on shifting sands. I ordered another two piscos and took out my diplomatic passport.