“Do you think that yours will be the only dynasty in this country that bears the weight of two deaths? The only difference is that, at thirty-four years old, you already have a billion or two dollars! And vote-buying in this country is the norm, so you’re not inventing anything new, just paying them with houses and sports fields instead of sandwiches! I will never understand why Belisario Betancur named as minister of justice the sworn enemy of the people who had financed most of the presidential campaigns! Alfonso López would never have done something so stupid. You don’t need Santofimio, and stop calling him ‘Doctor’! People like you and me say ‘Doctor’ to someone like Álvaro Gómez, not Alberto Santofimio!”
Pablo never loses his calm. Pablo never complains. And Pablo never interrupts me when I’m on fire. By now, he has learned that I only stop talking and calm down completely when he takes me in his arms, and that’s why he behaves with me like one of those animal trainers who whisper into horses’ ears until they relax. It’s been that way since the day I told him that if in hell they glued me to his body with Krazy Glue for all eternity, I would never get bored for a second, and I’d feel like I was in heaven. He told me that was the most perfect declaration of love of all time.
That night, he tells me that he and his candidate have agreed to separate officially, although they’ll go on cooperating below board. Santofimio’s gifts of persuasion with other congresspeople are more indispensable now than ever to Pablo’s trade in their efforts to bring down the extradition treaty. He explains that there is another big reason why he has decided, for the moment, to leave politics in the hands of professionals: the route through Norman’s Cay with Carlos Lehder is having serious problems, and sooner or later it’s going to fall. His partner is turning into a megalomaniacal drug addict and is causing all kinds of problems for Lynden Pindling’s government in the Bahamas.
“I’ve already made contact with the Sandinistas. They’re desperate for money, and they’re offering me whatever I want if I’ll use Nicaragua as a stopover point and distribution base for merchandise on the way to Miami. In a few weeks you and I will go to Managua together, and we’ll try out one of my passports. I want you to meet the junta and tell me what you think of them. Everything you’ve said is true, but you have to understand that my business comes before politics, and I have to milk it until it’s impossible to get anything else from it. Then, I can think about retiring, and when the storm is over, I will return to Congress. You’ll see, in six months things will start getting better. You know that I see problems coming months in advance, and when they arrive, I have the solution carefully planned and ready to go into action. Everything, except death, can be fixed with money. And I’ve got money pouring in, my love.”
I ask him how the founders of MAS manage to get along with a communist government so close to the rebel groups of Colombia. He replies that when we are there I will understand everything. In the end I keep quiet. Two weeks later Pablo announces he’s withdrawing from politics. I think that, as long as it’s provisional and not definitive, it’s the right decision, because it will take him out of the path of the publicity storm.
In the following weeks we are immensely happy. Our relationship is known about only by his partners, three friends of mine, and a handful of his staff: Fáber—his secretary and a very kind man, always in charge of picking me up and dropping me off at the airport—and three of his men whom he trusts completely, Otto, Juan, and Aguilar, who is known as “El Mugre” (the Dirt). Pablo and I roundly deny any romance out of consideration for his wife and also for my career, which is in ascendance: El Show de las Estrellas (Show of the Stars), my program on Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., is shown in several countries and has a fifty-three-point rating. In 1984, there are only three television channels in Colombia, and no one watches the official one. My other program, Magazín del Lunes (Monday Magazine), steals viewers away from the news show hosted by Andrés Pastrana on the other channel, supposedly because I cross my legs in a very sensual way. And, for that same reason, Di Lido Stockings, property of the Kaplan family from Caracas and Miami, has hired me to go to Venice to film a second commercial for them. The first one captured 71 percent of the national market; so, this time, I am requesting from the owners of Di Lido a fee equal to the country’s one hundred best-paid models combined, plus first-class plane tickets and a suite in the Cipriani Hotel or the Gritti Palace. I’ve happily told Pablo that, after Venice, the Kaplans will have to pay me like a movie star in a country without a movie industry! And he smiles because he knows that in 1981 I had received an offer from a Hollywood producer. I stayed in a bungalow at the Hotel Bel-Air, Princess Grace’s favorite hotel, and he invited me to join Michael Landon, Priscilla Presley, and Jürgen Prochnow in his upcoming film. I turned it all down after Margot’s withering questions: “Do you want to be a serious journalist or a movie star? Are you going to leave me with this company now that we’re finally getting out of poverty?”
One morning around eleven, Pablo arrives at my apartment unannounced. He says he’s come to say good-bye: he’s leaving for Panama and Nicaragua, and he can’t take me with him. The people who act as his liaisons with the Sandinista junta have forbidden him from bringing a TV journalist with him. He tells me he’ll be gone only a week, and he promises that when he’s back we’ll take a trip together, maybe to Cuba to meet Fidel Castro. I don’t believe a word of it, especially when he proposes that while he’s gone I take a shopping trip so I won’t be sad about the change in plans. I’m furious, but I don’t complain: New York is definitely more chic than Managua, and the Pierre is another earthly paradise. Not just because it’s a block and a half away from Bergdorf Goodman, but also because vengeance is sweet.
The scene in the enormous suite a week later is surreal: on one phone line, in his room, David is laughing on the phone with “Sonny,” the Duke of Marlborough. On the other, in my room, I am laughing on the phone with Pablito, the King of Coke, who is asking me to buy all the copies of Forbes magazine before they run out, because they’ve just listed him as the seventh-richest man in the world! And when both of us hang up, there, in the little living room between us, is Julio Mario, the King of Beer, laughing his head off because, he says, Metcalfe is going to get some cement shoes! (Among the capos of the illustrious Genovese, Bonanno, Gambino, Lucchese, and Maranzano families, there was a tradition of coating their enemies in liquid concrete and waiting patiently while it solidified, before throwing them to the bottom of the sea; it could be called the New York way of making people disappear, or the contemporary version of “a millstone around the neck.”)
Julio Mario asks me how rich, really, all those “peasant friends” of mine are. I reply that they are now among the richest in the world, and he says that I must have lost my mind from all that shopping. And since the bearers of all those titles are so happy today, I leave Metcalfe and Santo Domingo laughing at the demimonde and go down to buy cigarettes. I also buy all the copies of Forbes I can find. I head back to the suite, and without a word I hand them each a copy open to the page with the list of that year’s richest people. The Ochoas are in sixth place, and Pablo Escobar is seventh.
“So my competition has three billion,” says David. “Well, that kind of money should be enough not just to buy giraffes, pay El Mugre, and finance your shopping trips, but also to live with a little style, like Stavros Niarchos!”
“You should have his baby, doll face!” says Julio Mario in a companionable tone. “You’re not getting any younger, are you?”
David reacts in horror: “Virginia is not that kind of girl!”
I look at Julio Mario, and I tell him in Spanish so that David can’t understand: “If I didn’t have children with you, who are beautiful, why would I have them with that ‘peasant’? And don’t forget that I’ll always be twenty-six years younger than you.”
I say that both of them are just jealous because the new moguls work on a global scale and aren’t just domestic. And also because my friends are
the same age as me, not to mention they’re very intelligent peasants.
“My God, darling,” cries David with an elegant wave of his hand and sounding like Lord Curzon discovering that Pablo eats soup at brunch. “Intelligence is Henry Kissinger!”
“One thing’s for sure: now I really do think you’re the bravest man alive,” says Julio Mario, roaring with laughter. “Oh, what a fright, David. Your days are numbered before Junior Corleone puts you in a concrete suit!”
Now that my two favorite men are looking at me with new eyes, I feel that this is the happiest day of my life. I tell myself that God has a plan, and that’s why I am here today, laughing with them, my two dozen shopping bags in my room, instead of looking at the face of “La Piña” Noriega or Danielito Ortega.
A few days later I’m back in Pablo’s arms, and we’re both celebrating, though for different reasons. And even if the King of Coke is, along with the grandson of the Viceroy of India, the bravest of men, at the hour of truth he is as human as any King of Beer.
“Oh, what a fright, my love! There I was, alone with all those ugly guys in their military uniforms…thinking how they could just toss me into the sea because I had told them that no one in the world has fifty million dollars in cash. Can you believe it? That’s how much those sons of bitches wanted, ‘in advance’! Just that little chump change, how about that? Do communists think money grows on trees, or what? We were in a yard surrounded by a little white wall about three feet high, and I just kept looking at it, trying to figure out if I could jump it and make it to my plane before they could kidnap me or sell me off to the gringos. And the whole time I was thinking: Why didn’t I bring my beloved beauty with me? I miss her so much! Because oh, what ugly women they have there!…Well, the important thing is that we’re together now. Plus, they lowered the price to a fraction of what they were asking, and now I have that route in case the gringos start putting pressure on Noriega. He’s been ours since he helped us mediate when Martha Nieves Ochoa was abducted, but he could turn on us, because he always works for the highest bidder. And how did things go for you in New York?”
“And are the Sandinistas the ones who are going to introduce you to Fidel Castro?” I ask, before I answer his question.
“Yes, but down the road, supposedly once they make sure we understand each other.”
“And why do you want to meet Fidel Castro?”
“Because his island is closer to the Florida Keys than anything else. And now that we know we can pay the price set by communist dictators…”
“Yes, but he’s intelligent and rich, not ignorant and poor like those Sandinistas. Don’t count on him for anything, Pablo. Fidel doesn’t just have the gringos close: they’re right on top of him in the Keys, not to mention inside, in Guantánamo!”
I change the subject and tell him that while I was dining with a girlfriend at Le Cirque, I ran into Santo Domingo and an English lord who is an acquaintance of mine. They had heard something about us and were dying of curiosity about the Forbes list; they asked me about him, and I sensed they were just a bit jealous of his billions. And Julio Mario had the nerve to suggest I have an heir! Pablo asks me what I said, and I tell him, “That he knew perfectly well that in my family several generations of very pretty women had always taken the precaution of getting married before they had children. And that you were already very well married.”
Pablo sits thinking for a while, processing this information. I don’t realize the nerve I’ve touched until he starts talking:
“That was very, very good, my love. And now, I’m going to tell you a story I’ve never told a woman before. You see, before I met you, the woman I loved most in life was named Wendy….Yes, like in Peter Pan, don’t laugh. And Wendy Chavarriaga was not a lioness, no, no, no: she was a pack of hounds! Every time she thought I was with another woman, she crashed her car into mine, cut down the door with a chain saw; she came after me with a hammer, kicked me, threatened to kill me, flay and dismember me; she threw every four-letter word in Spanish, Colombian, and Chibcha at me…and I took it all, everything, because I adored her, I idolized her. Quite simply, I craved Wendy! And she used to go to New York with a dozen girlfriends, not alone like you, and I paid for everything they wanted. But in spite of my warnings, one day she got pregnant. And she went to find my wife at the beauty salon and yelled triumphantly: ‘Now, this is a child conceived out of love, not out of duty like yours!’
“The next day I sent four boys for her. They dragged her to a veterinarian and had an abortion performed on her without anesthesia. I never saw her again, and I haven’t missed her for a second. Thank God that you are a princess. And next to Wendy, even if you do throw your tantrums sometimes, you’re my oasis, Virginia.”
I’m stunned. I’m frozen. I’m terrified. A shiver runs down my spine as I tell him, “Yes, thank God my name isn’t Wendy or Chavarriaga.”
Something of my adoration for him starts to die that night after I hear that horrible story, a painful punch to the gut of any woman with a heart. And I think how God has a plan, and I’m glad I know how far I can go with that man who is so brave in general, and so monstrous in his exceptions. Silently, I wonder if someday that cruel streak will also turn against me; but I tell myself it won’t happen, because I’m the exact opposite of that poor girl, and there’s a reason why he calls me his “sweet panther.”
*
—
PABLO IS NOT ABOUT TO CHANGE after appearing in seventh place on the Forbes list. He gives a radio interview and says that neither he nor the Ochoas really have that much money, and that they don’t even know how much that would be in pesos! He says that those are the fortunes of Santo Domingo and Ardila, and that Forbes got them confused. And that if he did have three billion dollars, he would give $2.9 billion to the poor and keep only a hundred million so his family could live peacefully for a century!
Of course, Pablo isn’t really interested in pesos, because he knows more about dollars than any Swiss banker. And not only do we always talk in dollars: we do it in dozens of millions, in hundreds of millions, in billions. First, because that’s the currency he does business in, and because, in 1984, it is still one of the most stable currencies in the world. And second, because we’re both absolutely convinced that estimates in pesos are not reliable in either the medium or long term. The constant devaluations of the Colombian currency, which come to 35 percent annually, make any calculation with strings of zeros to the right grow distorted with the passage of time: a million pesos—a tidy sum in 1974—will be insignificant in 1994, while in those twenty years a million dollars depreciates around only 50 percent.
A week later, Pablo announces that he’s brought me a present: it’s hidden somewhere on his body, and I have to look for it very, very slowly. He opens his arms in a cross and his hands are empty, so I think it must be something very small and very valuable, like an “oil drop” emerald or a “pigeon blood” ruby. He stays very still and silent while I start at his scalp, and as my fingers move down over every centimeter of his body, I start to undress him. First I take off his shirt, then his belt, his pants…and nothing! When I reach his feet, and after stripping him of his shoes, I find hidden in his sock a nine-millimeter Beretta with a marble grip, engraved with his four initials and fully loaded.
“What have we here? Now it’s my turn, Mr. Alternate Congressman, and I’m going to get revenge for the night of the revolver. Hands up!”
In a fraction of a second he’s on top of me. He twists my arm, disarms me, and puts the barrel in my mouth. I think he must have found out about David, and he’s going to kill me.
“This time it’s not a game, Virginia. I brought you this because you’re going to need it. The license is in my name and it’s a loan, got it? If you have to use it, I want you to know I have the best carpet-cleaning service in the country: I don’t leave a drop of blood behind. And now you’re going to know the truth, my love: I’m not going to be a congressman anymore, or presiden
t, or any of that. Very soon you’re going to be a warrior’s woman, and I came to explain just what the security organizations will do to you the day they show up here asking for me. I’m going to teach you, too, how to shoot yourself so you die right away and you don’t end up disfigured or paraplegic. You may have very good aim at the shooting range, but if you don’t overcome the fear of killing, an expert can disarm you in seconds. And the first thing all those butchers will do is tear off your clothes…and you are the most beautiful thing in the world, right, my darling? So you’re going to take off that dress that cost $2,000 or $3,000 before I rip it, and then you’re going to come into the bathroom and stand in front of all those full-length mirrors. And I said now! What are you waiting for?”
I obey, because I’m not going to let him ruin a Saint Laurent. Also because I feel extremely relieved and enormously curious, and because the truth is, I have always adored those inflamed looks that precede his caresses. Pablo unloads the gun and stands behind me. He tells me that if you pull a gun with the intention to kill, you have to do it with a completely cool head, knowing you’re in control. Then he starts to instruct me on how to place my feet and legs, torso and arms, shoulders and head, when I’m facing several men but protected by a firearm. He shows me what the expression in my eyes should be, my mouth, my whole face, and what my body language should say. He explains what I should feel, how I should think, what they will try to do. With a strange glint in his eyes, he indicates which one I should kill first if there are two, if there are three, or if there are four and they’re unarmed or at a prudent distance. Because if there are five or more, and they are armed or coming closer, I should shoot myself before I fall into their hands. He shows me what to do in that case: where to place my fingers and where, exactly, to put the barrel. Again and again he pulls the trigger, again and again he twists my arm until I can’t stand the pain anymore and I learn not to let myself be disarmed. While I observe in those mirrors the images of our two naked bodies fighting for control of the gun, I can’t help thinking of two Athenian discus throwers or two Spartan wrestlers. Since he is a hundred times stronger than I am, he overpowers me again and again, exploiting that choreography mercilessly to send me on a roller coaster of emotions. He forces me to feel terror, then to lose my fear, to take control, to imagine the pain…to die of love. Suddenly, he tosses the Beretta to the floor and grabs me by the hair with his left hand, while the final part of that lesson starts to flow out of his lips and into my ears, from his other hand and into my skin: endless, detailed descriptions of the most aberrant forms of torture, the most terrifying, unimaginable, chilling styles that torment can fit itself out in. I try to silence him, to cover my ears with my hands so I can’t hear, but he restrains both my arms and covers my mouth while he goes on, not stopping for a second. Finally he finishes reciting all of that punishment dreamed up by a Benedictine inquisitor, all that suffering designed by the depraved mind of some South American military man during Operation Condor. Then, that devil who robs me of life and returns it to me, this man who spoils me and loves me like no one else can, whispers in my ear with a sibilant voice that it’s all only a fraction of what awaits me if I don’t learn to defend myself from his enemies. He tells me I must hate them with the same ferocity he does, be ready to kill them without hesitation when they’re in front of me, and not to doubt for a second that I’ll be able to pull the trigger the day they dare come to me to find out about him.
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 14
