“And why Acosta?” asked Anzola. “Why would Pedro León Acosta pay him to tell what he knows?”
“I’m wondering the same thing,” said Tomás Silva. “But we’ve been begging the prosecutor to take García’s statement for a year. We’ve spent a year asking for the draft statement that García wrote in my presence to be incorporated into the case file. None of that has been done, and I don’t even know where that draft is.”
“Yes,” said Anzola. “But why Acosta?”
The name of General Pedro León Acosta began to appear too many times in the investigation. To Anzola it was more obvious every day that he was involved in some way. And there were good reasons to believe it: was Acosta not one of the surviving conspirators against Rafael Reyes? His past was that of a violent man, and one does not undo one’s past, thought Anzola; his past was always with him, and someone who has tried to kill once will try to kill again. It was true there was no proof, but there were strong indications. Acosta had been seen with the assassins at Tequendama Falls, even though the prosecutor had decided not to carry out the investigations necessary to confirm it. And now Alfredo García had reasons to think that man would be willing to pay for his testimony. Anzola thought about this and then he thought: No, he wouldn’t pay for his testimony; he thought: He’d pay him for his silence. And then, as if in a dream, he saw Pedro León Acosta standing outside a carpentry shop on the night of October 14, surrounded by others like him, accomplices and conspirators, and he saw him telling the assassins, All set, then, and he saw the assassins answering him that they were going to do this very well and then, You gentlemen are going to see this very well done.
“Acosta was there,” Anzola said to Tomás Silva. “Acosta was one of them.”
“I think so too,” said Tomás Silva.
“And Alfredo García must think so too.”
“He wants Acosta to pay him not to say anything.”
“No,” said Anzola. “He knows Acosta will pay him not to say anything. It occurs to me that wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Do you think he already offered him money?”
“I think we have to do this as soon as possible,” said Anzola. “We find García, take him to see Prosecutor Rodríguez, and we chain ourselves to the door until they take his statement.”
“And if they won’t take it?” said Tomás Silva.
“They have to take it,” said Anzola.
“And if they won’t?”
“First we have to get him there,” said Anzola. “Then we’ll see.”
The next day they went to the house on Sixteenth Street where Alfredo García rented a large room. They didn’t find him. They tried again two days later, and had no luck again. Almost a week later, the morning the cables announced that the United Kingdom had declared war on Bulgaria, was the third time. They knocked insistently on the door, shouted Alfredo García’s name, and a police officer who was doing his rounds approached to ask if there was some problem. While they explained to the officer that there was no problem, that they were looking for Alfredo García, a neighbor came out (stuck her head out the window and then the rest of her body, a voluminous body) and told them she knew Alfredo García and could assure them he was absent.
“What do you mean by absent?” said Anzola.
“That he’s not here, Doctor,” said the woman. “That we haven’t seen him in these parts for several days.”
Anzola kicked the door violently and the woman’s hands flew to her mouth.
* * *
—
A YEAR HAD PASSED since the crime. In the salons they were giving speeches in memory of General Rafael Uribe Uribe; in the streets there were processions of people who sometimes waved white handkerchiefs and prayed in low voices, and sometimes shouted slogans at the tops of their lungs and promised justice and vengeance. All over the city speeches were delivered that lamented General Uribe’s departure, missed his civic leadership and his moral strength, saw a profound truth contained in his controversial positions, and complained that other people, his enemies, had not been able to see it. On the green balconies there were new geraniums and on the doors, black ribbons tied to the knockers or the bolt.
Anzola participated in one of these demonstrations of collective pain. He did so out of a sense of duty, but not with pleasure: he walked from the basilica to the cemetery with hundreds of others dressed in dark colors, repeating the same route they’d covered a year earlier, the day of the funeral. A year, thought Anzola, and there had been no answer yet to the thousands of questions everyone asked, that he asked, that he had asked of others. Anzola had been entrusted with the responsibility of answering them and he was failing and his failure was still secret, and that was more humiliating or painful. Another witness had vanished. After the disappearance of Ana Rosa Díez, now it was Alfredo García who had been erased from the face of the earth. Witnesses disappeared from under his nose, or someone compelled them to disappear, and he could do nothing about it. Anzola felt incompetent, like an impostor; he felt that the job was too big for him, that he had gone to play a game with grown-ups without being ready for it. He felt confronted by forces beyond his control, that he didn’t even so much as suspect, and he also felt that he wasn’t fighting against them on a level playing field. He looked at his black gloves as he walked. That was how, empty-handed, he would arrive to visit the Uribe family later, with empty hands he would embrace the widow, greet the brother. Nothing yet? Julián Uribe would ask him, and Anzola would reply: Nothing yet.
He felt ashamed: walking along the wide avenue toward the west, moving with difficulty and in silence in the midst of the waves of people that were like a funeral cortège though the body was no longer there, brushing up against other living bodies or other mourners or sympathizers of the victim, Anzola felt that he was letting down General Uribe’s brother or that he was demonstrating that he was unworthy of his confidence. That pained him. He realized that what Julián Uribe thought of him mattered: it mattered to him the way the opinion of our elders matters to us when they have something to teach us or they are dignified or experienced. He wanted to get out of that mob and hide at home, without any noise, to feel more acutely in solitude his frustration and exhaustion. The mourners’ heels resounded on the ground, passing over cobbled streets and others that were still unpaved, sometimes stepping in puddles of dirty water, trying not to step in dog shit. Anzola, for his part, also concentrated on not stepping on anyone else’s foot. The people around him (sleeves touching sleeves) didn’t allow him to know exactly where he was putting his feet. He looked up, saw in the gray sky ahead of the cortège and behind, to the east, a large cloud shaped like a dead rat above the hills. He knew that later it would rain.
The procession ended in front of the mausoleum. There the general’s remains were interred (except for one part of his skull, of course, called the cranial vault, which Anzola had held in his hands and touched and caressed). The crowd had squeezed through the cemetery gate and now filled the available space in front of the monument, and its movements and murmurs filled the cold air. There were speeches that Anzola half listened to and quickly forgot. The orators took turns in front of the mausoleum, standing on tiptoe for more emphasis and shaking one open hand while holding wrinkled pages in the other, and the crowd received their words with respect and sometimes responded to them soberly and then began to withdraw in silence. Anzola watched them go. He looked at the white stone of the mausoleum, that unshadowed white that still conserved the sheen of new things, and thought that it would not be long before it was sullied as all monuments to all the dead of this country eventually were. Then a sustained murmur ran through the crowd, and Anzola looked up and saw a woman wearing a tunic who climbed up onto the pedestal of the mausoleum and began to wave a Colombian flag. Before the act could strike him as ridiculous or banal, Anzola realized that up ahead, in the front rows, were the Di Domenico brothers, who pointed their
black box at the woman in the tunic. One of them (it might have been Francisco but also Vincenzo: Anzola didn’t know them and couldn’t tell them apart) moved his face close to the black box while turning a handle with his right hand; the other directed those present, requesting space, pushing them aside with his hands as if they were an unruly mob, to keep them from interfering with their activities, as if the crowd were the intruders, those who had come to grieve for the general, not them, who had come to record their laments with their annoying, incomprehensible machine.
Yes, thought Anzola, that’s what the Di Domenico brothers had come to do. They were collecting images; undoubtedly they had collected some of the procession, and who could know what other things they had captured with their apparatus. Did this have something to do with the advertisement in the newspaper? Had the Di Domenico brothers found a writer prepared to recount General Uribe’s life? Anzola could not know and did not feel like approaching to ask: the presence of the Italians there, in the midst of the people’s sadness, struck him as impertinent and rude, mercenary and opportunistic. The woman in the tunic walked from one side of the mausoleum to the other, waving the flag, but there was no emotion on her face and no words came out of her mouth. What was her role? What was the aim of her presence there, on top of the mausoleum, dressed the way actresses dress in the theater? Anzola could not know it at that moment, but he would find out days later, at the end of November, when the Di Domenico brothers announced with much publicity the projection in the Salón Olympia of their most recent cinematographic work: The Drama of October 15.
* * *
—
ON THE WALLS of the city, large advertising posters promoted the premiere. The people of Bogotá were used to being viewed from those rectangles of paper by bullfighters or acrobats or circus clowns, but finding themselves confronted with the likeness of Rafael Uribe Uribe, who many knew only from solemn portraits published in the newspapers, seemed too close to sacrilege. The general’s widow refused to attend the projection; Julián Uribe, however, had no fear of using his surname to obtain the best seats at the premiere, and at his side sat Urueta and Anzola. Nothing like this had ever been done before. The posters announced a Great event, the First showing of moments never before seen on the screen, and the town criers promised an homage to the great leader murdered by criminal hands, and a reconstruction of the final minutes of a leader. Some in the audience remembered that the Di Domenico brothers had already shown a cinematographic film about the death of the patriot Antonio Ricaurte in San Mateo, but that had happened more than a century ago, whereas the assassination of General Uribe was still in the news and still causing tension and clashes and serious disputes among friends. The Salón Olympia was full before half the line had gone in. Police officers had to be called to control those who didn’t manage to get in. Those outside were frustrated and those inside couldn’t believe their good luck, but neither group really knew what to expect. Nor could the Di Domenico brothers, who observed with satisfaction the marvelous spectacle of the theater filling up, have anticipated what would happen.
The film opened with the image of Rafael Uribe Uribe (his broad forehead, his pointed mustache, his impeccable tie) surrounded by two branches that resembled laurels. The people applauded; from somewhere in the room came timid booing, for not even Uribe’s enemies had deprived themselves of attending the event. By then, without giving the audience time to grow accustomed to anything, the general’s body appeared on the screen, surrounded by doctors who were performing the last surgery. Anzola could not believe it. Something in the images seemed out of place, like a piece of furniture moved without permission, but he couldn’t manage to identify the discordance: there were the doctors, moving around the general and brandishing implements that on screen looked white, not shiny, and there was the dying body of General Uribe Uribe, ignorant that the efforts being made to save his life were futile. Then Anzola understood that the images did not correspond to reality, but had been falsified, staged in the way plays are staged in a theater.
It was all a slap in the face. How had the doctors lent themselves to such a farce? But were those the real doctors operating on the screen, or actors? The noise of the voices raised at the grotesque spectacle echoed off the wooden walls of the Olympia. People seemed indignant about the indiscretion of the images, but no one left: in a sort of collective hypnosis, the audience in the hall drank in every indiscreet image, passing from the failed surgery to the coffin coming out of the basilica, to the crowds that surrounded the dead man on the day of the funeral to the carriages with wreaths of gray flowers and skinny horses. On the screen mute speeches were delivered by Uribe’s sympathizers, and his brother Julián gave a start when he saw himself speaking on the screen the day of the funeral. The images registered the relatives approaching the coffin to say good-bye to the deceased, registered the men in black hats and sad mustaches, registered the open mouths that emitted no sound whatsoever, registered the salvos the army shot that did not resound inside the Salón Olympia: they were like fleeting clear stains on the gray screen. The people who had been made indignant by the exhibition of the general’s dying body seemed to calm down. Anzola, however, had become more anxious than before. In the rainy image of the projection there was a presence that made him uncomfortable: among the notables in the front rows, standing, making a gesture of respect like all the other mourners of the assassinated general, was Pedro León Acosta.
Yes, there was Acosta: his head uncovered, the black three-piece suit, eyes looking up at the sky. He was beside a priest whose antagonism toward General Uribe had never been secret; Anzola remembered that he was Spanish, but his memory could not summon up his exact name. The camera picked up Acosta’s unmoved face for two or three brief seconds, but that space of time was long enough for Anzola to recognize him. The general’s brother also recognized him, because he glanced at Anzola with complicity and melancholy, a disappointed look in which there was less camaraderie than obscure resentment. There, in the theater, surrounded by alert ears and attentive eyes spying on them, they couldn’t say what they would have liked to: that many things had happened since that October 15, and that General Acosta, who on the day of the funeral had accompanied the coffin like one more mourner, one year later had now become one of the main suspects in the case. Anzola saw Julián Uribe lean over to Urueta and say something in his ear. He knew without proof that they were talking of that same thing: of the presence of Acosta among those who had bid farewell to General Uribe, and how that simple image had transformed with the passing of this year. The image of the funeral turned into the scene of the crime: there was the eastern wall of the Capitol, the sidewalk where the general had fallen, the stone wall he’d leaned against. The camera registered the Plaza de Bolívar with its park and wrought-iron fence and its passersby who looked (who looked at us, thought Anzola) with curiosity. Then the assassins appeared.
“This cannot be,” exclaimed Julián Uribe. But it was: on the screen the Panóptico had materialized, the jail where Leovigildo Galarza and Jesús Carvajal were awaiting the result of the case that was proceeding against them, and the camera showed them talking to each other, laughing unheard but satisfied guffaws, arguing with other prisoners like cronies in a bar. Now the assassins appeared posing for the camera, first in their adjoining cells and then out of them, in the prison yard. The strangest thing was their outfits: both were impeccably dressed, as if they’d been expecting the cinematographers. Anzola knew that the prison had refused to allow journalists or photographers in to see them: How had the Di Domenicos managed to get them to strike these poses? Some of the images seemed to be taken without the assassins realizing, but in others Galarza and Carvajal looked at the camera (their sleepy eyes like an affront) and in others they raised their arms to hit an imaginary victim with an imaginary hatchet, as if the men behind the camera had asked them how the crime had happened. “This is an outrage,” said Julián Uribe between his teeth. “Shameless scoundrels
!” shouted Urueta, losing his composure for an instant, and Anzola didn’t know if he meant the assassins or the impresarios of the motion picture. One thing was certain: everything had gone the opposite of the way the Italians had hoped. They had wanted to ingratiate themselves with the Bogotá public through a re-creation of a traumatic event, but what might have been an homage had turned into a slap in the face, and what could have been a memorial to a great man had turned into an insult to his memory.
“Cynics!” shouted Urueta. “Shameful!” From the back they heard worse insults, in angrier tones. Anzola turned around to look for the faces of the Italians, but couldn’t see them above the furious heads, the irascible raised fists. On the screen, the assassins knelt looking at the camera and clasped their hands together, asking for forgiveness for the crime they’d committed, but they did not look repentant, only cheeky and unconcerned. Another wave of catcalling swept through the theater. Someone threw a shoe at the screen, and the shoe bounced off and fell onto the platform like a dead bird. Anzola feared things could get out of hand and began to look for the nearest exit, maybe on the left side, beside the lower boxes, maybe through a door that led out to the gardens. On the screen there was a sudden blackness, and it was followed by images that Anzola recognized immediately: they were of the procession the other day. Little more than a month had passed since the homages paid to the general on the first anniversary of his death, and already those homages were up there, moving magically and clumsily on the screen. Anzola wondered if he’d see himself. He didn’t, but he recognized the mausoleum he’d visited and was shocked at how much things changed when they were part of a film; on top of the mausoleum, the woman in the white tunic, the same one he’d seen with his own eyes, waved for long tedious seconds the colorless flag of Colombia. He understood that it was meant to be an allegory: liberty (or perhaps the nation) manifest on top of the tomb of its deceased defender. The idea seemed infantile to him and its execution mediocre, but he didn’t say anything to anybody. Then the screen went black again. In the middle of a luminous jumble of crazed bubbles and random scratches, the projection finished, and the Salón Olympia filled with the noise of people standing up from their seats.
The Shape of the Ruins Page 30
