For the next eight hours, that stupendous madrileña version of Sean Connery at forty will give me an intensive course on the March and Fierro economic groups, which he works with and are the largest in Spain, and I become a burgeoning authority in capital flows, stocks, and junk bonds, not to mention real estate in Madrid, Marbella, and Puerto Banús, Construcciones y Contratas, the Koplowitz sisters, the king, Cayetana of Alba, Heini and Tita Thyssen, Felipe González, Isabel Preysler, Enrique Sarasola, bullfighters, the Alhambra, the cante jondo, the ETA, and the most recent prices of Picassos.
I reach my apartment and listen to the messages on my answering machines. A hundred death threats on one, and on the other, a number only three people know, someone who hangs up dozens of times. To avoid having to think of the horrible way my trip had ended I decide to go to sleep, but I leave both phones connected in case there is news about Gilberto.
“Where have you been?” comes the voice that I haven’t heard in almost eleven weeks and whose owner speaks as if he owned me.
“Let me think…,” I reply, half-asleep. “On Friday, I was in Rome at the Hassler, having dinner with a Sicilian prince, not a colleague of yours. On Saturday, I was at the Baur au Lac in Zurich consulting with an English lord—not a drug lord—about my possible relocation to Europe. On Monday, I was at the Villa Magna in Madrid, analyzing and considering that possibility. On Tuesday, I was crying at the doors of Carabanchel, because I would no longer be able to settle in Paris as God intended. Since they didn’t let me in, on Wednesday I was on an Iberia plane, rehydrating with Perrier-Jouët after crying gallons of tears. And, yesterday, to keep from killing myself after so much tragedy, I was dancing the night away with a man who looked just like James Bond. I am exhausted, and I’m going back to sleep. Good-bye.”
He has six or seven telephones, and he never talks more than three minutes on one. When he says “change” and hangs up, I know he’s going to call back in a few minutes.
“But what a fairy-tale life you have, princess! Are you trying to tell me that now you can have the noblest or best-looking man because you’ve just lost the two richest?”
“Only one, because you and I lost each other a while ago—ever since you went to live in Sandinista-land with some little beauty queen. And what I’m trying to tell you is that I have a very busy social life, that I’m terribly sad, and I just want to sleep.”
He calls again around three in the afternoon.
“I’ve made the arrangements to send for you. If you don’t come nicely, they’ll drag you out in your negligee. Remember, I have your keys.”
“And remember that I have your ‘ivory.’ I’ll give them chumbi and say it was in self-defense. Good-bye.”
Fifteen minutes later, now employing his usual persuasive tone, he tells me that some very important friends of his want to meet me. In our secret code—made of the names of animals in his zoo and of numbers—he insinuates that he’s going to introduce me to Tirofijo, leader of the FARC, and other rebel commanders. I reply that everyone, poor and rich, left and right, high and low, dreams of meeting the stars of the screen, and I hang up. But on the fifth call, he leads me to believe that he and his partners are working full steam with the Spanish government so that his best friend and “that lover of mine” are not sent “up” (to the United States), but “down” (to Colombia), and that he wants to tell me the details in person because he can’t talk about it over the phone. And I decide that vengeance is sweet:
“He’s not my lover…but he was going to be. And I’ll come.”
I hear silence on the other end of the line and I know I’ve hit the bull’s-eye. He warns me: “It’s pouring down rain. Bring your rubber boots and a ruana, okay? This isn’t Paris, my love, it’s the jungle.”
I propose that we leave the meeting until the next day, because I still have jet lag and I don’t want to get wet.
“No, no, no. I’ve already seen you bathed in a river, jugs of water, in the ocean, in the swamp…in the bathtub, in the shower, in tears…a little clean water now isn’t going to hurt you, princess. See you tonight.”
I decide that to meet Tirofijo one doesn’t wear a ruana, but a Hermès parka. And a foulard on one’s head and a Louis Vuitton bag, just to see how he reacts. And Wellingtons, not guerrilla boots, so he can see that I’m no communist.
I’ve never been in a guerrilla encampment, but this one seems to be deserted. The only sound is a radio playing, but very far away.
I guess these guerrilleros go to bed early so they can get up at dawn to steal livestock, nab the kidnappable people while they’re still half-asleep, and get Pablo’s coke out of their territory before the sun comes up and the police arrive, I conclude. Old folks get up early, of course, and Tirofijo must be around sixty-five by now….
The two strangers leave me at the entrance to a little house that is under construction and then vanish. The first thing I do is circle the building with my hand in the pocket of my parka, to be sure that, in fact, no one is there. The little white door is very rudimentary, the kind that locks with a padlock. I go inside and see that the room is about 150 square feet and is made of bricks, cement, and plastic tiles. It’s night and the place is cold and dark, but I can see a mattress on the floor in one corner, with a pillow that looks new and a brown wool blanket. I study the place, and I think I can see his radio, his flashlight, a shirt, his small machine gun hanging across from me, and an unlit kerosene lamp. When I lean over the little table to try to light it with my gold lighter, a man leaps from the shadows behind me and grips my neck with his right arm. I think he’s going to break it, while he clasps my waist with his left arm and presses me against him.
“Look how I sleep, practically out in the open! See how people who are fighting for a cause live, while princesses travel around Europe with the enemy! Look close, Virginia,” he says, letting go of me and lighting the lamp. “Because this, not the Ritz Hotel in Paris, is the last thing you’re going to see in your life!”
“You chose to live like this, Pablo, like Che Guevara in the Bolivian jungle, only he didn’t have three billion dollars. No one is forcing you, and you and I have been over for a while! Now tell me what you want from me and why you’re not wearing a shirt in this cold, because I didn’t come to spend the night with you or to sleep on that flea-infested mattress.”
“Right, you didn’t come to sleep with me. You’ll soon find out why you’re here, my dear, because the woman of the Capo di Tutti Capi doesn’t cheat on him with his enemy in front of his friends.”
“And no one cheats on the Diva di Tutti Divi with models in front of her audience. And stop calling me yours, because I am not ‘The Nanny’!”
“Well, my diva, if you don’t take off every one of those thousands of dollars you’re wearing, I’ll call my men in to cut them off with razors.”
“Do it, Pablo, it’s the only thing you haven’t done yet! And if you kill me, you’re doing me a big favor, because the truth is I’ve never much liked life, and I won’t miss it. And if you mutilate me, no other woman will ever come near you. Go on, call all two hundred of them in here! What are you waiting for?”
He yanks off my parka, rips my blouse, throws me onto that enormous white mattress with blue stripes, tossing me around like a rag doll. He tries to cut off my breathing and starts to rape me while he moans and howls like a beast:
“You told me one day you’d trade me for another pig as rich as me…but did you have to choose that one? Precisely that one? Do you want to know what he said about you to my friends? Tomorrow that pathetic jailbird is going to know you’ve come back to me, one day after you were supposedly crying for him! And in jail, that’s going to hit hard! The Mexican told me everything a few days ago…because I went through the F2 tapes and I asked him why you called him. He didn’t want to tell me anything, but he had to. I couldn’t believe that swine of a maricón had sent you to my partner…you…my girlfriend. To get my princess dirty with that kind of business…m
y enchanted princess…and that witch he has for a wife was the mafiosa who called the stations…right, my love? How did I not realize? Who else but her? While I was ready to suffer and die for all of them, that coward climber was trying to steal my girlfriend, my best friend, my partner, my territory, and even my president! Take you to Paris…how about that. If Jorge wasn’t with him in jail, I’d pay those Spaniards to turn him over to the gringos! You have no idea how I hate you, Virginia, how I’ve dreamed of killing you all these days. I adored you, and you ruined everything! Why didn’t I just let you drown? Look, this is what it feels like when you’re drowning: feel it now! I hope you like it, my love, because now you’re going to die in my arms. Look at me, I want to see that goddess face breathing its last sigh while I hold you. Die, today you are going to hell with me on top of you and inside you!”
Again and again he presses the pillow over my face. Again and again he holds my nose shut and covers my mouth with his hands. Again and again he squeezes my neck. That night, I experience suffocation in all its forms. I make a superhuman effort not to die, and another one a million times greater not to let out a single sound. For an instant I see the light at the end of the tunnel, but at the last moment he returns me to life and lets me gulp in air while I hear his voice, ever more distant, demanding that I scream, plead for my life, beg. When I don’t answer his questions, or say a single word, or look at him, he goes crazy. Suddenly, I’m not struggling or suffering anymore because I don’t know if I am alive or dead, and I also stop wondering what that thick layer of viscous, slippery liquid that joins us and separates us is made of—if it’s sweat, or damp, or tears—and when I’m about to lose consciousness and he has finished punishing me, insulting me, torturing me, humiliating me, hating me, loving me, and taking revenge for another man or whatever all that horror was for, I hear his voice coming from somewhere neither near nor far, telling me:
“You look horrible! Thank God I’ll never see you again. From now on, it’s only little girls and whores for me. I’m going to get things ready for your trip home. I’ll be back in an hour, and you better be ready! If not, I’ll have them drop you in the jungle just as you are.”
When life begins to return to my body, I look at myself in the mirror, to be sure I still exist, and to see if my face has changed like it did the afternoon I lost my virginity. Yes, I look terrible, but I know it’s not the fault of my skin or my face, but because I’ve been sobbing and his beard was rubbing against me. By the time he comes back I’m almost completely recovered, and I even think I see a spark of recognition in a fleeting glance from him. In the intervening time I’ve decided that, since today I am leaving his life for good, the last word will be mine. And I’ve mentally prepared a good-bye that no man could forget, especially one whose goal is to be the most macho man in the world, twenty-four hours, every single day.
He walks slowly into the room and sits down on the mattress. He puts his elbows on his knees and takes his head in his hands, a gesture that tells me everything. I understand him, too. But I remember almost everything I hear and all that I feel, so I would never be able to forget even if I wanted to, and I know I will never forgive him. I am sitting in a director’s chair and I look at him from above, with my left boot crossed over my right thigh. Now he leans against the wall and stares into space. And I do, too, thinking how odd it is that the gazes of a man and a woman who once loved each other madly and respected each other deeply always form a perfect forty-five-degree angle when they are about to say good-bye; they are never face-to-face. Since vengeance is a dish best served cold, I decide to use my sweetest voice to ask about a newborn baby.
“How is your Manuelita, Pablo?”
“She’s the most beautiful thing in the world. But you have no right to talk to me about her.”
“And why did you give your daughter the name that in other times you wanted to give me?”
“Because she’s named Manuela, not Manuelita.”
With something of my self-esteem recovered, and now without fear of losing him—because today he is the one who is losing me—I remind him of the reason for my visit.
“Is it true you’re working with Enrique Sarasola to have them sent to Colombia?”
“Yes, but that’s not a subject for the press. These are private matters for the families in my trade.”
After the two polite questions, I initiate the attack I had planned.
“You know what, Pablo? I was taught that an honest woman only has one fur coat…and the only one I’ve had in my life I bought with my own money, five years ago now.”
“My wife has an entire cold-storage room with dozens of fur coats, and she’s much more honest than you. If you’re trying to get me to give you a new one now, you must be out of your mind!” he exclaims, raising his head in surprise and looking at me with absolute contempt.
Since that was exactly the reply I had anticipated, I continue.
“A girl should be taught that an honest man doesn’t have more than one plane. That’s why I will never again fall in love with a man who owns a fleet, Pablo. They are terribly cruel.”
“Well, there aren’t many of us, my dear. Or maybe…how many?”
“Three. Or did you think you were the first? And experience has taught me that the only, absolutely the only thing that terrifies a mogul is the possibility of being traded for his rival. Because he tortures himself over and over…imagining the woman he loved and who loved him in bed with the other…mocking his deficiency, laughing at his…shortcomings…”
“But do you still not know that that’s precisely why I like innocent girls so much, Virginia?” he says with a triumphant look. “Didn’t I ever tell you that I like them because they can’t make comparisons, not with tycoons or anyone else?”
With a deep sigh of resignation, I pick up my travel bag and stand up. Then—like Manolete about to kill a Miura bull with the most calculated precision, and a tone of voice I have been practicing mentally over and over—I tell Pablo Escobar what I know no other woman has told him or will tell him as long as he lives.
“Well, you see…there aren’t many women, either, who can make the comparisons I can, my dear. And what I have always wanted to tell you—what I’m absolutely sure of—is that the real reason why you like very young girls isn’t because they can’t compare you to other magnates, but because they can’t compare you to…sex symbols. Good-bye, Pablito.”
I don’t even bother to wait for his reaction, and I leave that horrible place feeling jubilation and the most inexplicable sense of freedom, which briefly replaces all the rage inside me. After walking nearly two hundred yards in the rain that’s begun to fall, I finally see Aguilar and Pinina, who are waiting for me with the same smiling faces as always. Behind me I hear the characteristic whistle from El Patrón, and I can picture his gesture as he orders them to communicate his instructions to the six men tasked with the complicated process of returning me home. This time he doesn’t put his arm around my shoulder and walk with me, or send me off with a kiss on the forehead. I don’t take my hand from the Beretta in my pocket until I reach my house; only as I am putting it away do I realize that it was the only thing he didn’t strip me of.
Some days later, Los Trabajos del Hombre (The Jobs of Man), one of the most-watched prime-time programs of Colombian television, dedicates a complete hour to me to talk about my life as a TV journalist. I ask the jewelry seller to lend me the most eye-catching piece she has, and at some point in the interview, I come out against extradition. Just as soon as the broadcast ends, my phone rings. It’s Gonzalo, the Mexican, calling to express his deepest gratitude in the name of Los Extraditables. He tells me I am the bravest woman he’s ever met, and the next day Gustavo Gaviria calls to praise my character in similar terms. I tell them it’s the least I could do in basic solidarity with Jorge and Gilberto. The director tells me it was the most-watched program all year; but there’s not one single word from Pablo, or from the Ochoa or Rodríguez Orejuela famili
es.
*
—
JORGE BARÓN informs me he has decided not to renew my contract for El Show de las Estrellas for a third year, as we had agreed. He doesn’t give me any explanation except that the public watches his show to see the singers, not me. The program has fifty-four rating points on average, the highest in the history of the medium—there is still no cable TV in Colombia. It is shown in several countries, and though they only pay me $1,000 a month, I spend thousands of dollars on my wardrobe; as a result I make much more in product launches for advertising agencies. I warn Barón that he can forget about the international market. A few weeks later, all the foreign channels cancel their contracts, but he makes up for the losses by associating with soccer impresarios from his native Tolima in businesses that move millions of dollars. Later, those same businesses will be investigated by Colombia’s attorney general’s office, and when they call me to testify in the case against Jorge Barón for illicit gain, I will only state under solemn oath that the one conversation of a personal nature I ever had with him lasted exactly ten minutes. He wanted to find out about my romantic relationship with Pablo Escobar and—once I responded that our friendship was strictly political—Barón informed me that my contract was canceled, because his production company was not in a condition to continue paying me $1,000 a month. I know perfectly well that that director, so ugly and vulgar, had not sacrificed the North American audiences just to save a miserable amount of money: his new partners quite simply had demanded my head.
All the events of that terrible year of 1984 ended up making me a catalyst for a long and complex series of historical processes that would end up with the protagonists of this story in a tomb, in ruin, or in a jail; and all because of that karmic law of cause and effect for which I have always had so much respect and such reverential fear. Maybe it was with that same admiration, or the same dread, that a beloved Sufi poet of the thirteenth century summed up his cosmic vision of crime and punishment in two exquisite actions and only twelve words, to electrify us with a perfect synthesis of the most absolute compassion or, perhaps, to inspire its most sublime form:
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 20
