“Sheikh or circus owner?” she asks ironically.
“Sheikh, with thirty camels. But first I have to consult with someone.”
I call the Singer and explain that Margot and I are about to lose our television production company, and I tell him I need Pablo’s phone number so I can ask him to advertise with us, or to buy our programadora outright.
“Well…the only business of Pablo’s that I know of is the ‘Coca-Cola’ one! But this is precisely the kind of problem he loves to solve with a flick of his wrist….Stay right where you are, and he’ll call you.”
Minutes later, my phone rings. After a short conversation, I go to my partner’s office, and with a radiant smile I tell her, “Margarita, the congressman Escobar Gaviria is on the line, and he wants to know if he can send his jet for us tomorrow at three in the afternoon.”
*
—
ON RETURNING FROM MEDELLÍN, I find an invitation to dine with Olguita and the Singer. She is sweet and refined, and he is the friendliest and most candid Andalusian in the world. When I get to their house—they hardly wait for me to sit down—Urraza asks me how it went. I reply that, thanks to the advertisement for Osito Bicycles that Pablo offered us, we’ll be able to pay all the company’s debts, and that the next week I’m going to film a program with Pablo at the municipal dump.
“Well…for that kind of money, I’d eat garbage! And you’re going to put him on TV? ¡Hostia!”
I tell him that every journalist interviews half a dozen unimportant congresspeople every week, and that Pablo is a member of the House; an alternate, yes, but a congressman nonetheless. And I add, “He’s in the process of giving away twenty-five hundred houses to the ‘residents’ of the dump, and others to people who live in slums. If that isn’t news in Colombia, I’ll eat my hat!”
He wants to know if Pablo made the interview a prerequisite, and I tell him no: I was the one who required it as a condition to accept the advertising; he asked only for a five-minute segment. I explain that I feel so grateful for his generosity, and have so much admiration for what Medellín sin Tugurios is doing, that I’m going to dedicate the whole hour of my Monday program to it, from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.; the show will air in three weeks.
“You’ve certainly got balls!…And I’m starting to think Pablo is interested in you.”
I reply that all I’m interested in is saving my company and advancing my career, which is the only thing I have.
“Well, if Pablo falls in love with you and you fall in love with him—as I think could happen—you won’t have to worry about your career again, or your future, or that damned production company! And you’re going to be thanking me for it for the rest of your life, believe me.”
Laughing, I tell him that’s not going to happen: my heart is still very bruised, and Pablo has always been fascinated by Ángela.
“But don’t you realize that was all just child’s play? And that she’s the kind of girl who will always be in love with some polo player? Pablo knows Angelita isn’t for him; he’s not an idiot. He has very big political aspirations and he needs a real, elegant woman at his side, one who knows how to speak in public, not a model or a girl from his own class, like the last girlfriend….Did you know he left her with two million dollars? What wouldn’t he, a man who wants to be president and who’s on his way to becoming one of the richest men in the world, give to a princess like you!”
I say that men who are so rich have always liked very young girls, and I’m already thirty-three years old.
“Oh, stop that bullshit, you look twenty-five, hostia! And multimillionaires have always liked sensational women—role models—not little girls who have nothing to talk about and don’t know how to make love. You’re a sex symbol, and you’ve got twenty years of beauty ahead of you. What more do you want? Do you know any man who cares how old Sophia Loren is, silly girl? You’re this country’s professional beauty with a pedigree, something Pablo has never had! Hostia, and here I thought you were an intelligent woman….”
To add a final flourish to his rant, he exclaims in horror, “And if you plan to show up at that dump wearing Gucci and Valentino, I’m warning you, you won’t be able to get rid of the stench for a week! You can’t even imagine what it’s like there….”
Ask Me for Anything!
IT IS LIKE THE STENCH of ten thousand bodies on a battlefield three days after a historic defeat. Miles before we get there, we can already smell it. The Medellín dump is not a mountain covered with garbage: it is a mountain made of millions and millions of metric tons of decomposing trash. It is the stench of organic matter accumulated over centuries, in every state of putrefaction. It is the smell of gas emanations erupting all around us. It is the reek of all that remains of the animal and vegetable world after it mixes with chemical waste. It is the smell of every form of absolute poverty, the stench of injustice, corruption, arrogance, and utter indifference. It impregnates every molecule of oxygen around us, entering our pores and shaking our bodies to their core. It is the sweetish aroma of death, a perfume made for Judgment Day.
We start up along the same ash-gray road used by the trucks to deposit their cargo at the peak. Pablo drives, as always. I can feel him observing me every minute, scrutinizing my reactions: those of my body, of my heart, of my mind. I know what he’s thinking, and he knows what I’m feeling: a fleeting glance catches us by surprise; a certain smile confirms it. I know that with him by my side I’ll be able to stand everything that awaits us; but, as we approach our destination, I begin to wonder if the cameraman and my assistant, Martita Bruges, will be able to work the full four or five hours in that nauseating environment, on that unventilated stage, in that stifling heat enclosed by the metal walls of a cloudy day that was more oppressive and suffocating than any I remember.
The smell was only the preface to a spectacle that would make the toughest of men recoil in disgust. The Dante’s inferno that spreads before us seems to measure several square miles, and the mountaintop is terror itself: above us, against a dirty gray sky that no one would think to associate with heaven, swarm thousands of buzzards and vultures with razor-like beaks under cruel little eyes and revolting feathers that haven’t been black for a long time. Haughtily—as if they were eagles—the members of this underworld’s reigning dynasty take a few seconds to evaluate the state of our health, then go back to feasting on horse carcasses with wet viscera glinting in the sun. Below, hundreds of newly arrived dogs greet us by baring teeth sharpened by chronic hunger; beside them, other, more veteran canines—less skinny and more indifferent—wag their tails or scratch their patchy, flea-infested fur. The whole mountain seems to tremble with undulating and frenetic movement: it is the thousands of rats, big as cats, and millions of mice of all sizes. A swarm of flies hovers above us, and storm clouds of gnats and mosquitoes celebrate the arrival of fresh blood. For the lower species of the animal world, this place seems to be a paradise of nutrients.
Some ashy figures, different from the rest, start to appear. First, out peek curious little ones with swollen bellies, full of worms; then, some males with sullen expressions; and, finally, some females so gaunt that only the pregnant ones seem alive. And almost all the younger women are expecting. The drab creatures seem to emerge from all around us, first by the dozen and then by the hundred; they circle us to block our way or prevent us from fleeing, and in a matter of minutes they have us surrounded. Suddenly, that close, oscillating tide explodes in a clamor of joy, and a thousand white sparks illuminate their faces.
“It’s him, it’s don Pablo! Don Pablo is here! And he’s brought the lady from TV! Are you going to put us on TV, don Pablo?”
Now they look radiant with happiness and excitement. Everyone comes to greet him, to hug him, to touch him, as though wanting to keep a piece of him for themselves. At first glance, only those miraculous smiles separate these dirty and emaciated people from the rest of the animal kingdom; but in the following hours those beings will teach me one
of the most splendid lessons that life has seen fit to give me.
*
—
“WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE my Christmas tree, miss?” asks a little girl, tugging at my silk blouse.
I imagine she’s going to show me a branch from some fallen tree, but it turns out to be a little frosted Christmas tree, nearly new and made in the USA.
Pablo explains that Christmas arrives here almost two weeks late, that all of these people’s possessions come from the garbage, and that rich people’s boxes and castoffs are treasures and construction materials for the poorest.
“I want to show you my Nativity scene, too!” says another little girl. “It’s finally finished!”
Baby Jesus is a one-eyed, one-legged giant, the Virgin Mary is medium-sized, and Saint Joseph is small. The plastic donkey and ox obviously belong to commercial models. I try to hold back my laughter on seeing this pleasant incarnation of a modern family, and I continue my tour.
“Can I invite you to see my house, Miss Virginia?” one affable woman asks with the same self-assuredness of any middle-class Colombian woman.
I imagine a shack of cardboard and tin like the Bogotá shanties, but I’m wrong: the little house is made of bricks held together with cement, and the roof is made of plastic tiles. Inside, it has a kitchen and two bedrooms, with furniture that’s worn but clean. Her twelve-year-old son is doing his homework at the table.
“I got lucky—someone threw out their whole living room set!” she tells me. “And look at my dishes: they have different patterns, but six of us can eat on them. The silverware and glasses don’t match like yours do, ma’am, but mine were free!”
I smile and ask if they also get their food from the garbage.
She replies, “Ugh, no, no. We would die! And in any case, the dogs get to the food first. We go down to the market and buy food with the money we earn recycling.”
A youth with the look of a gang leader, sporting American jeans and modern tennis shoes in perfect condition, proudly shows me his 18K-gold chain; I know that in any jewelry store it would cost $700, and I ask how he managed to find something so valuable, and so small, amid millions of metric tons of garbage.
“I found it with these clothes in a plastic bag. I didn’t steal it, miss, I swear to God! Some angry woman threw out her man along with all of his stuff, right down to the kitchen sink….These paisa women are fierce, my God!”
“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever found?” I ask the group of children following us.
They look at one another and then answer almost in unison:
“A dead baby! The rats were eating it when we got there. Then there was the body of a little girl who had been raped; but it was much farther away, up by the spring.” They point toward the place. “But those are things bad people from the outside do. The people here are good, right, don Pablo?”
“Right you are: the best in the world!” he says, with absolute conviction and without an ounce of paternalism.
*
—
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS LATER, I have forgotten almost everything that Pablo Escobar said to me in that interview, his first for national media, about the twenty-five hundred families who lived in that inferno. A videotape of his enthusiastic words and my face bathed in sweat must still exist somewhere. Only my heart and my senses still hold the memories of those hours that forever changed my scale of material values, my concept of what human beings need in order to experience a little happiness. Counteracting that omnipresent stench, there was Pablo’s guiding hand on my forearm, transmitting his strength to me. A few of those survivors were clean, most were fairly dirty, and they all seemed proud of their ingenuity and grateful for their luck. They told stories about where their humble possessions had come from or how they’d discovered some small treasure. The women’s faces lit up as they described the houses they could soon call home; the men were eager to recover the respect of a society that had treated them like scum, and young boys were hopeful at the prospect of leaving that place behind and growing up into honest men. They all shared collective dreams of faith in a leader who would inspire them and a politician who wouldn’t betray them.
*
—
HAPPINESS HAS SPREAD through the place, and something like a festive air floats around us now. My initial impression of horror has given way to other emotions and to a new understanding. The elementary sense of dignity of these human beings, their courage, their nobility, their capacity to dream, all intact in an environment that would plunge any one of us into the deepest chasms of desperation and defeat, have turned my compassion into admiration. At some point along that dusty path, one that perhaps I’ll find again in some other time or space, an infinite tenderness for all those people suddenly knocks on the doors of my consciousness and floods every fiber of my spirit. And I no longer care about the stench or the shock of that dump, or how Pablo gets his tons of money, but the thousand forms of magic that he makes with it. And like a spell, his presence beside me erases the memory of every man I had loved before then. He is my present and my past and my future, and my only everything. Now only he exists.
“What did you think?” he asks me as we walk toward the cars.
“I am deeply moved. It was an enriching experience, like nothing else. From afar they seem to live like animals; from up close, they seem like angels…and all by yourself you’re going to return them to their human condition, right? Thank you for inviting me to meet them. And thank you for what you’re doing for them.”
He is silent for a long time. Then he puts his arm around my shoulders and says, “No one says things like that to me….You’re so different! What do you say you have dinner with me tonight? And since I think I know what you’re going to say…I took the liberty of making sure the beauty salon is open until whatever time you want, so you can get that skunk smell out of your hair.”
I tell him that he stinks like a zorrillo, too, and laughing happily, he exclaims that he could never be anything that ended in the diminutive “illo.” Because he is nothing more and nothing less than…Zorro!
*
—
OUR ENTRANCE into the restaurant leaves a wake of stunned looks and a crescendo of whispers. We’re led to the table farthest from the door, where we’ll have a view of everyone who enters. I mention that I have never gone out with an interviewee, much less with a politician, and he says that there’s a first time for everything. Then, staring at me and smiling, he adds, “You know? Lately, anytime I’m sad or worried…I start to think about you. I think of you yelling at all those tough men in the middle of that cloud of tear gas: ‘Aren’t you ashamed? Have a little dignity; you’re like little girls!’ as if you were Napoleon at Waterloo. It’s the funniest thing I’ve seen in my entire life! I laugh to myself for a good while, and then…”
While he pauses to pique my curiosity, I mentally prepare my answer.
“I think about you soaked in freezing water and turned into a panther, with that tunic stuck to your body. I laugh for a while again…and I say to myself that you are, really, a very…very…brave woman.”
Before I can reply that no one has ever recognized that virtue in me, he goes on: “And you have a capacity for gratitude that’s very rare, because beautiful women aren’t in the habit of being grateful for anything.”
I tell him that I have an excessive capacity for gratitude because, since I’m not beautiful, no one has ever given me anything or recognized any talent in me. He asks me what I am, then, and I reply that I’m a collection of rare defects that for the moment aren’t noticeable, but will be with the passage of time. He asks me to tell him why I started the programming company with Margot.
I explain that, in 1981, it seemed to be my only option for professional independence. I had quit my job as the anchor of the 7:00 p.m. newscast 24 Horas, because when director Mauricio Gómez had tried to make me refer to the M-19 as a “criminal band,” I changed the terms to “guerrilleros,” “insu
rgents,” “rebels,” or “subversive group.” Mauricio reprimanded me almost daily, threatening to fire me and reminding me that I earned the equivalent of $5,000 a month. I replied that he might be the grandson of Colombia’s most archconservative president and the son of Álvaro Gómez, who was possibly the next, but right now, he was a journalist. One fine day, I blew up and left the best-paid job in TV, and although I know I made a tremendous mistake, I would die before admitting it to anyone.
Pablo says he’s grateful I could confide in him and asks whether the “insurgents,” “rebels,” or “subversives” know about what happened. I tell him they have no idea; I don’t even know them. And in any case, I didn’t quit out of political sympathies, but rather on principle of journalistic rigor and linguistic integrity.
“Well, they don’t have your principles: they kidnapped Jorge Ochoa’s sister, among others. I do know them, very well…and now they know me, too.”
I tell him I’d read something about the rescue and ask him to tell me how he managed it.
“I got eight hundred men and placed them at every one of the eight hundred public phones in Medellín. Then we followed everyone who made a call at six p.m., the appointed time for the kidnappers to call and discuss how the twelve-million-dollar ransom would be paid. Through tracking, we ruled out the innocent people one by one until we found the guerrilleros. We located the leader of the band and kidnapped his entire family. We rescued Martha Nieves, and the ‘rebels,’ ‘insurgents,’ or ‘subversives’ found out they can’t mess with us.”
Astonished, I ask how one manages to find eight hundred trustworthy people.
“It’s a simple matter of logistics. It wasn’t easy, but it was the only way. In the next few days, if you let me take you to see my other civic and social projects, you’ll see just where all those people came from. But tonight I just want to talk about you: What happened with Aníbal? You two seemed so happy together.”
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 5
