*
—
A STRONG MAN is never more of a man than when he lets a tear fall. A furtive one for the irreparable loss of a child, a father, a dear friend. Or for an impossible woman. Between these other four walls, a man very much like Escobar, but diametrically opposed to all those subordinates outside, cannot hide his pain. He’s just learned that the only being in the world for whom he would give his life, for whom he would leave everything behind, is a woman who someone like him can never have. Gustavo Gaviria begs me to tell him the whole truth, difficult as it may be for him to hear, and I am grateful for the trust placed in me by this man I had once thought was made of steel, ice, and lead. I confess that at the mere mention of his name and relationship to Pablo Escobar, Ana Bolena Meza went running. But first she’d told me, scandalized, “Virginia: you were this country’s diva, and that drug trafficker ruined your career and your good name. I am just an actress who earns an honest living. Tell this Gaviria that not even for all the gold in the world would I subject myself to what those brutes let people do to you, or what the press is doing to you now. Tell him women like me only feel contempt for them. I’d rather die than let one of those narcos come near me!”
Gustavo asks me to repeat every word uttered by the impossible woman he was head over heels in love with. When he refuses to understand why that beautiful girl with enormous light eyes has such scorn for him, I remind him of what was written and said about me in the newspapers and on the radio: the stories of drug traffickers who beat me up horribly to take away my yachts and mansions, of women who had me cut with knives to take away my cars and jewelry, of authorities who raided my house to seize drugs and weapons, of doctors who treated me for syphilis and AIDS. I tell him that the media has disparaged me to keep me away from the screen and the microphone, in an attempt to deny me my right to work, my integrity, my honor, all the while demanding that any remnant of dignity, talent, or beauty be violently sliced, beaten, and kicked out of me.
Unable to contain or stop myself, and knowing that sooner or later he would share it with his best friend, I start to tell Gustavo all the things that I could never say to Pablo. Not just about the price I paid for having supported his ungrateful business associates and their nationalist position against extradition, but many other things. How can any poor devil sleep with a woman who really loves him when he knows, in the depths of his heart, that he is unworthy of love? Millionaires as they may be, for their whole lives, they will be doomed to pay the pretty ones for the mere illusion of love. I add that the Bible says, “Do not cast pearls to swine,” and that men like Pablo don’t deserve any love besides that of those pricey prostitutes he likes so much. And I end by saying that my mistake was to not have set my price from the beginning, when his partner had begged me to ask for whatever I wanted and I told him I wanted nothing, because iconic women educated like princesses don’t love a special man because he’s rich or poor—or so that he’ll give them gifts—but rather because they want to make him happy and protect him from the outside world.
Gustavo has listened to me in silence, looking out the window. With a sad voice, he recognizes that I was clearly educated to be the wife of a prominent man and not a criminal’s lover. But, he adds, that all of them are married to women who love and care for them, for richer and for poorer. I reply that those women only bear all the public humiliation because their men cover them in diamonds and furs, and if it weren’t for those, almost all of them would leave. I describe the emerald jewelry worth a quarter of a million dollars—which couldn’t have been ordered for that girl with the medal on her chest—and I ask him to help me convince his cousin to give me just $100,000 while I sell my apartment, so I can leave behind this country so hostile and lost to memory. I tell him I want to go to Europe and do the work I’ve always wanted: use my verbal and written mastery of half a dozen languages and basic knowledge of the Germanic and Nordic tongues.
Gaviria explains that they are going to need a lot of liquidity for the war that’s coming, and he warns me I should be ready for his partner to say “No!” to an amount that, a few years back and it being for me, he surely would have given without thinking twice. He adds that neither is Pablo going to willingly accept my leaving for good, because he needs to know that his dear friend will always be there for all those things that he couldn’t discuss with any other woman, or with his family.
Gustavo is a small and thin man who is always pushing a lock of limp hair from his forehead and who, like his cousin, doesn’t look people in the eyes. After a brief silence and a deep sigh, he walks over to the safe, takes out his trays of diamonds, and places them on the coffee table in front of the sofa where we have been talking. He opens the cases full of hundreds of diamond rings whose sizes vary between one and two carats. He tells me he wants to give me one as a souvenir, because he is grateful for everything I’ve done for them.
Very moved, I tell him no and no, and thank him. But then, at the shining sight of all that thousandth millionth of his wealth, I change my mind: I take a Kleenex to dry my tears and I exclaim that I want the biggest of them all. Not only because I deserve it, but also because it’s about time some blessed magnate gave me a jewel! He laughs delightedly, tells me he’s honored to be the first, and urges me to take the purest, a diamond of less than one carat. I reply that I’ll leave all that purity to Saint Maria Goretti, that no one can see the carbon except him with his magnifying glass, and that I want the fattest one with the fewest defects. I try on an oval one—uncommon, since the majority of diamonds are round (brilliant cut) or square (emerald cut)—and I have the ring on one hand and a Kleenex in the other when the door opens.
“But…what are you doing here? I thought you’d left a while ago! And what’s this scene? Is the star getting engaged? Are you marrying…Don Gilberto?”
Gustavo looks at me with his mouth and eyes wide-open, and I can’t do anything but burst out laughing and tell him his partner should be put in a straitjacket. Enraged, Pablo exclaims, “She doesn’t get diamonds! She’s different! She’s not interested in diamonds!”
“What do you mean, different? Does she have a mustache, like you?” replies Gustavo. “I still haven’t met a woman who hates diamonds! Do you really despise them that much, Virginia?”
“I adore them, and for five years I deceived your cousin here into believing I didn’t so he wouldn’t think I loved him for his dirty money! But he seems to think I’ve been deceiving him for years with a man behind bars, and I’ve had to come, like some Helen of Troy, to stop this war before they castrate each other and all feminine humanity is left in mourning!”
“You see she’s with Cali, brother?” shouts Pablo furiously to Gustavo. Meanwhile, enraptured, I contemplate my first solitaire and prepare to defend it with my life. “Diamonds are for beauty queens who are on our side!”
“Don’t talk nonsense, man; if Virginia were with Cali, she wouldn’t be here!” Gustavo tells him in a reproachful tone. “Everyone wants to starve her to death, and I am going to give her something she can keep, something she can sell tomorrow if she needs to. I don’t have to ask permission from you or anyone else, and plus, a diamond protects a person. And the only real queen you’ve had in your life is this woman here: before she met you, she had millions of men already pining for her!”
“Let her spend her time writing instead of posing for so many magazines and photographs!” replies Pablo, looking at my ring like he wants to cut off my finger and throw it into the toilet. “Yes, books, instead of so much talking! Stories to tell, that’s what she has!”
“Oh, God forbid! Promise me, Virginia, that if you’re going to write, you’ll never, ever, say anything about us…or the business, for the love of God!” begs Gustavo, alarmed.
I swear, and he explains to his partner the reason for the gift.
“We’re never going to see her again, Pablo. Virginia came to say good-bye to us for good.”
“For good?” asks his cousin, dis
concerted. Then, with the expression and tone of voice he surely uses to interrogate any poor guy accused of stealing one hundred kilos of coke from him: “What do you mean, for good?…Is this true, Virginia? Are you getting married, or what? Why didn’t you tell me anything about this?”
I keep ignoring him, and I promise Gustavo that whenever I’m in danger of dying, like now, I’ll rub the diamond as if it were Aladdin’s lamp. I tell him I will never sell it, and I’ll wear it to the grave.
Pablo says that he thought I was different from other women, and I raise my arms and exclaim that he was wrong—turns out I’m just like the rest, and I’ve discovered that I love diamonds, too! Gustavo laughs, and his cousin closes the door behind himself after saying, in a mixture of disgust and resignation:
“I’m disappointed in you, Cleansoul! Well…you and I will meet tomorrow.”
The place of our final encounter is a little country house with white walls and geraniums in flowerpots, some thirty minutes from the Medellín Intercontinental, where two of his men had picked me up. He drives up in a little car minutes after we do, followed by another car with two bodyguards who immediately withdraw. A woman is sweeping the floor of the living-dining room, and she looks at me curiously. From personal experience, I know that when certain people are forced to get up at the crack of dawn, they are always in a bad mood. Pablo doesn’t bother to ask the cleaning woman to leave, and right away he lets me know he’s on the warpath.
“I can’t give you more than twenty minutes, Virginia. I know you’re here to intercede for your lover, and I’ve also already heard that you’re going to ask me for money. Don’t expect a single cent from me, or that I’ll back off, because I’m going to destroy him!”
The woman cocks an ear while I tell her boss that the only life I’ve come to intercede for is his. And that someone who has spent three years in prisons in Cádiz and Cali couldn’t be the lover of a person who lives in the Rosario Islands or in Bogotá. I add that, in effect, I didn’t come to ask someone like him for guitar lessons; I came to ask him to get me out of the country before his enemies tear me to shreds. Looking at my nails while I contemplate my diamond, I add with utter calm: “I think that the Rodríguez family and Ernesto Samper are going to finish you. If you want to know how, I’ll tell you all the details right here in front of this lady.”
Pablo asks the cleaning woman to leave and come back later. The woman flashes me a furious look and vanishes. He sits across from me on a small two-seater bamboo sofa lined with brown flowered chintz, and I start to tell him everything about Gilberto’s visit with Santofimio:
“They stayed less than an hour because they were going to Alfonso López’s to celebrate Gilberto’s freedom with the former president and Ernesto Samper. They were dressed very elegantly, and I couldn’t believe my ears or my eyes! If you’re going to go to war with Cali, Pablo, you can’t keep trusting Santofimio: remember that his cousin is married to Gilberto’s daughter, and that his partner in Chrysler, Germán Montoya, is now the man behind the throne in Virgilio Barco’s government.”
I ask him not to forget Machiavelli’s advice, “divide and conquer,” and I beg him not to get into a war that seems designed by the DEA to kill the two biggest bosses. It will leave hundreds dead, bring extradition back, and seriously sap both their fortunes.
“His, at least. It will be much harder for mine to run out!”
In my most persuasive tone of voice I remind him that if he were so rich, or so “liquid,” he wouldn’t have suggested I help him kidnap magnates; I add that, thank God, that secret stayed between us. He looks at me furiously, and impassive, I go on.
“The Rodríguezes don’t have to support an army of one thousand men, Pablo, or all their families. I’m guessing that total is about six thousand people….”
“My, how you’ve learned, Virginia! I’m impressed. And what about his army? Hundreds of congresspeople and journalists who are more expensive than all my boys put together! I think that in terms of costs, we’re equal. And I invest in the people’s affection, which is the best-spent money in the world! Or do you think any one of those senators would give his life for that guy?”
Again and again I repeat that the Rodríguez family has protection in their territory from the governor, the police, the army, and thousands of taxi driver informants. And that the M-19 doesn’t mess with them, either, because Gilberto, aside from having been Iván Marino Ospina’s friend, has been very close throughout his life to the family of commander Antonio Navarro who, according to him, “likes money a lot.” I warn him that his enemy is a personal friend of several presidents and that given a choice between Rodríguez’s silver and Escobar’s lead, people’s affections aren’t going to waver. I try to make him see that he’s dividing a guild that started out united around him and is now splitting into dozens of little, bloodthirsty cartels led by people without an ounce of greatness who will do anything to emulate him.
“A lot of clever people are fishing in those troubled waters, waiting to kill each other and leave the territory open. But if you and Gilberto join forces, your costs will be cut in half, your strength will double, and you both will win the final battle against extradition. Because if Galán is elected the next president, he’ll enforce extradition the day after he takes possession. Gilberto has relationships with almost all the powerful people in this country, and you inspire a different kind of respect, the kind no one in his right mind would dare to question. Stop using those millions to kill each other, and let the rest of the Colombians live in peace—this country will forgive anything. You’ve always known what people are good for, Pablo: use me to stop this war. Go on, extend your hand and show him what greatness looks like. And the next day I’ll leave Colombia so neither of you ever sees me again.”
“He has to take the first step. He knows why, and there’s no reason for you to know. They are men’s concerns that have nothing to do with you.”
I try to make him see that what matters isn’t why the conflict started, but what an alliance with Cali could do for him.
“Well, if that guy seems so rich to you, and so important and powerful, why don’t you ask him for money to leave?”
Never in all my life have I felt more insulted. I react like a panther and tell him that not only would I be incapable of asking anyone but him for money, but that I also never even spent one night with Gilberto Rodríguez. I add that my career ended because Pablo Escobar was my lover for a full five years, and not because of a five-minute affair that only three people know about, preceded and followed, it’s true, by dozens of conversations that helped me learn how cheap presidents, governors, and half of Congress can be. Since I see we’re not going to get anywhere, I remind him that he’s a very busy man and we’ve been arguing for almost one hour.
He asks what time my plane leaves. I tell him it’s at five, and that I should leave the hotel at three. He gets up from the sofa, and with his hands resting on the railing of the little balcony to my right, he looks off into the distance.
“And why do you want to leave…forever?”
I explain that I want to study simultaneous translation in Geneva. An excellent interpreter earns $1,000 a day, and I only need a loan of $100,000 because I would sell my apartment or rent it furnished to some diplomat. I add that, moreover, a translator with five or six languages will always be of great use to him, because he’ll always be able to trust me with those kinds of recordings or legal documents he wouldn’t want to leave in the hands of strangers.
“Well, you’re not going with my money! There are millions of translators, and you are not going to end up married to some fat banker, giving dinner in Switzerland while I go through hell here. I don’t care anymore if you love me or hate me, Virginia, but you’re staying here and living through the things that are coming, so that later on you can write about them. Period.”
I try to make him see that the day I do, corrupt people and all his enemies are going to cut me to bits, and that hi
s selfishness is condemning me to starve to death in a country that can no longer offer me anything but daily terror. I ask him where he has buried his greatness. He looks at me, offended, and replies that it’s the same place where my career is buried. Then, as if wanting to justify himself, he sighs deeply and says, “Do you really think you or I can choose our fate? No, my love! One only chooses half. The other half we’re born with.”
I get up from the chair and look out from the balcony at a bucolic landscape whose beauty, in other circumstances, I surely would have enjoyed. I tell him that someone who is going to turn thirty-eight years old with several billion dollars has no right to describe himself as a victim of fate, and that I should have known that someday his cruel streak could also turn against me.
“I’ve made this decision for reasons that I can’t explain to you, but someday you’ll understand. It’s just that you…know me and understand me like no one else, and I also know you better than anyone. I know that even if you’ve stopped loving me, stopped respecting me, you will always judge me with noble parameters and you’ll never betray my memory. Journalists won’t be able to write my true story, nor will the politicians or my family, or my boys, because none of them has spent—or will spend—hundreds of nights with me talking about the kinds of things you and I shared. I chose you for your integrity and your generosity, and I think only you are prepared to communicate exactly what I think and what I feel…why I became what I am and what someday I will be. That’s why I need to know—even if you’re not with me but someone else, and even if you don’t want to see me anymore, or hear from me, or talk to me—that you’re out there somewhere, watching the madness that’s coming with your unique clarity.”
After a confession like that, I don’t know what to say. I can only reply that we are both experts in feeding each other’s ego when we’re torn down. That everything he’s said is nothing but an excuse not to give me a cent. That he has a wife and all the women he wants, and he doesn’t need me for anything. That I still don’t understand why, if I was really so important to him, he can’t end my suffering with one stroke, the way he did with my company’s debts five years before. When he replies that a war is going to start very soon, I laugh incredulously and admit that my good friend showed me a set of jewelry worth a quarter of a million dollars for a woman he’s almost surely already forgotten. He comes toward me, takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger, and with all the irony he’s capable of, in a tone of voice either reproachful or threatening, he says, “And the next day you went to see him in jail. Right, my dear?”
Loving Pablo, Hating Escobar Page 32
