The Shape of the Ruins

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  And yes, he had shared the enthusiasm of all those present at first, but as the hours went by he began to fall into a disenchantment that nobody could really understand and he himself, much as he tried, could not explain. Something in the letter grated: it was too perfect, too pertinent, too useful, too opportune. “Precisely, here it all is,” he said. “All that we needed, all that we would have liked to prove. Here are Acosta and the assassins at the falls, here are Acosta and the assassins coming out of San Bartolomé, here’s the Jesuit’s card that no one could find a year and a half ago, here’s proof that Correal helped the assassins in hidden ways. Yes, here it all is.”

  “And what is the problem?” asked Silva.

  “I don’t know,” said Anzola. “But these things don’t happen just like that.”

  “Everything happens somehow,” said Silva.

  “Yes,” said Anzola. “But nothing happens like this.”

  “You’re beginning to worry me, esteemed Anzola,” said Silva. “You’re so used to looking for enemies everywhere that now you can’t realize it when a treasure falls out of the sky.”

  “This is no treasure.”

  “Be careful, that’s all I’m saying. Because this way you won’t even believe in Our Lord Jesus when he comes to save you on the Day of Judgment.”

  Anzola tried to put his skepticism into words. After the crime, Alfredo García had remained in Bogotá for more than a year, waiting in vain for the prosecutor to take his statement; in all that time, he had never mentioned what he saw on the night of October 13, in spite of the importance of the incident. He had never mentioned Salomón Correal, in spite of being aware of the suspicions that floated around the police commissioner since he refused to take his statement. Never had he mentioned the Jesuit’s card and never had he revealed that he could paraphrase its contents, in spite of having shared Anzola’s and Silva’s worries over Ana Rosa Díez’s disappearance. “Why not?” said Anzola. “Why didn’t he tell us any of this? Why was he with us for a year and a half talking about the crime, talking about all these things, without mentioning these precise things? Why just now, when we’ve collected testimonies telling of Galarza coming out of the Jesuits’ building with a mysterious man? Why now, when the complicity of the Jesuits and General Hatchet has begun to be obvious? Why does he now say yes, he knew, that he also saw and also knew? By what gift of fortune do we receive everything we would need so that the prosecutor will finally arrive at the truth about the assassination in a single document? Why does what García mentions in his letter correspond almost exactly to what we have been discovering from other sources these days? And why the change in initial? Now his second surname begins with B but on the draft it began with C and in the letter from Barranquilla it began with A. Why?”

  “Could it be a different person?” Urueta said timidly.

  “It’s not a different person.” Anzola was suddenly irritated, and he came very close to being insolent or rude to his elders. “It’s clear that it’s the same person. Unless by pure coincidence there are three homonyms in one. Unless the three of them know the same things about the crime against General Uribe. No, I think they are the same person, and I think that person is playing along with this game. I think someone got Alfredo García out of Bogotá by paying him a large sum. They bought him, as we feared, and now they’re making sure they get their money’s worth. They make him write letters that mislead us. They make him sign with different initials. And they make him confess in a letter all that can implicate the Conservatives and Jesuits in the crime.”

  “But it’s absurd, Anzola, listen to what you’re saying,” said Silva. “Why would they do that? Why would the conspirators want to point themselves out?”

  “Look who’s pointing at them,” said Anzola.

  “A witness,” said Silva.

  “A disappeared or escaped witness,” said Anzola. “A man who writes a letter to a newspaper and mistakes his own initial. That document has no credibility for a judge, because there’s no one to take responsibility for it. Where is the denouncer? No one knows. Is he in Barranquilla? Is he in Bogotá? Is he in Medellín? He has no face, and a witness who does not show his face might as well not exist. No, what this letter does is screw us.” Julián Uribe raised an eyebrow. “With a single stroke of a pen, the conspirators just discredited all of our accusations. The participation of the Jesuits, Salomón Correal, Pedro León Acosta, has all now turned into a cheap rumor. A confused letter sent by an escaped witness, whose whereabouts are unknown and who changes his second surname every time he signs a piece of paper: no, this does not produce the least conviction, and no judge in his right mind would give it the slightest credibility. This is what they want, to take credibility away from any accusation we make, turn it into the absurd rumor from a lost madman. And they are succeeding, it seems clear to me. They are beating us even before the battle starts. Do you want me to make a prediction? The prosecutor is going to move heaven and earth to look for the accuser, to turn this into a great spectacle of pursuing a hidden truth. Within a few weeks or months he’ll declare that he didn’t find him. That in spite of all his efforts, he did not find the accuser, and then the accusations are going to turn into the words of a madman. The Society of Jesus involved in the crime! Absurd. General Acosta and the police commissioner involved in the crime! Absurd. Of course, they’ll say, what can we expect from an anonymous accuser who signs with a borrowed name and doesn’t dare to emerge from his cowardly burrow. No, they’ll say, these accusations are no more than the odious product of a feverish mind. We cannot, they’ll say, take them seriously.” He paused and then said: “It’s a masterstroke. If it weren’t the work of our enemies, I’d find it easy to admire.”

  Later, as Anzola said good-bye to the gathering, he noticed they were looking at him differently. Was it pity he saw in their eyes, was it mistrust or worry? They looked at him the way people look at a delirious relative: with the same tense mouths, the same grieving eyes. When he left, Anzola thought he’d lost something that afternoon. He walked two or three blocks through the city watching the shadows made by the yellow light on the paving stones. Thinking of Alfredo García A., of Alfredo García B., and of Alfredo García C., remembering the man he’d met in Bogotá and whose conscience the conspirators had devoured, he told himself he was confronting a powerful machine, and a shiver ran down his spine. Was he capable of confronting those monsters? Then he wondered: Was this fear he was feeling? A small group of men looked at him as he turned into the Plaza de Bolívar, and Anzola was convinced they were talking about him. They began to move toward the corner, and then a burst of laughter erupted from the group that sounded at once hollow and deep in the empty plaza, like a stone falling into a pool. Anzola had an idea. In minutes he was back at Julián Uribe’s house, where the diners were sitting in the same places as when he left, and where the pitying eyes looked at him in the same way they had before.

  “Dr. Uribe, Dr. Urueta,” said Anzola, “I have a favor to ask you.” And before they could answer, he added: “I want you to put me in prison.”

  * * *

  —

  THAT’S HOW HE BEGAN to work in the Panóptico. His former occupation as a functionary in public works was helpful: using it as a pretext, Uribe and Urueta pulled some strings to get Anzola an administrative post in Bogotá’s main prison. No one ever knew what his tasks were, apart from wandering idly through the building work taking place in the jail; but no one asked and for several months Anzola was able to enter the building of cold stone where Galarza and Carvajal lived alongside criminals and delinquents from all over the country, and saw a tired hatred in the faces of the prisoners and also saw the defeat that wasted away the flesh of the cheeks and drew shadows under the eyes. Yes, the salary at the Panóptico was considerably lower than that of an inspector of public works, but Anzola didn’t mind tightening his belt for a time: what mattered to him was his investigation, which by then wa
s much more than a commission or even a job: it was a vocation, something that gave structure and reason to his days. He looked for Galarza and Carvajal. He observed them from afar, trying not to be seen by them, and when he got home in the evenings, he made notes of his finds. He realized that his conduct imitated or repeated that of the assassins before the crime, the vigilance of observing prey, the satisfaction of carrying it out without the prey noticing anything; he understood or seemed to understand the intoxicating power of someone observing someone else and thinking of causing him harm. From a certain moment on he began to discover a new attitude that might just be curiosity but could also be something more disturbing. What did the assassins think during the day? he wondered when he saw them. Did they remember their victim? Did they dream of him? What was it like to kill a man? One afternoon he asked a guard to point out to him a prisoner convicted of homicide and approached him later, cautiously, as someone might approach a circus beast.

  “Do you dream of your victims?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the murderer told him. “But only when I’m awake.”

  Anzola had never heard a more perfect definition of guilt, and didn’t ask him anything else on the subject. But as the days wore on that prisoner led him to another, and this one to yet another, until he ended up having sincere dialogues with a man called Zalamea who had seen him prowling around Galarza’s and Carvajal’s cells. “Your Honor is a detective?” the man had asked him. Anzola said no, that he was there to carry out some work on behalf of the Ministry of Public Works. But he couldn’t avoid a mistaken interest—a bit morbid, he had to admit—in General Uribe’s assassins.

  “More interesting is what’s happening to them,” the man said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They do whatever they like,” said Zalamea. “It’s as if they were free men.”

  This Zalamea was a man of some education, that was obvious, and for that reason he dared to complain to the guards about the injustice of treatment in the prison. He was in prison, he claimed, for reasons of debt, but he never gave any explanations or further details; he did explain, however, his surprise at seeing Galarza and Carvajal receiving special treatment that verged on illegal. It was Zalamea who told Anzola of some letters that the guard Pedraza took out clandestinely for the assassins; it was Zalamea who spoke of an incident in which a Jesuit priest came personally to collect some sealed envelopes the assassins were sending out into the world. “Are you sure he was a Jesuit?” asked Anzola.

  “Father Tenorio,” said Zalamea.

  “Rafael Tenorio?”

  “That’s the one,” said Zalamea. “Do you know him?”

  Anzola knew him, yes, but not by sight. Julián Uribe had discovered an uncomfortable fact about him: it seems that Father Tenorio had been a chaplain in the Conservative army in the last war, and in that capacity had once met a soldier by the name of Carvajal who offered to assassinate General Uribe and thus end the war the easiest way. After the crime, when the photo of Carvajal appeared in the newspapers, Father Tenorio told the anecdote to a certain Eduardo Esguerra, a Conservative and frequent visitor to the chaplain. “It’s the same man,” said Tenorio. But months later, when he was finally interrogated about the matter by the prosecutor, he retracted. “Comparing the portrait with my memories,” he said, “I can assure you they are not one and the same.” And this was the man who visited the assassins? This was the priest who served as their private mailman?

  “Galarza and Carvajal receive him in the chapel, they talk like friends,” said Zalamea. “I’ve seen them with my own eyes.” He paused and then added: “But it’s been like this the whole time. Father Tenorio visits them a lot. He brings them gifts. They are spoiled, I should say.”

  “What gifts?” asked Anzola.

  “I’ve seen packages,” said Zalamea. “Books, newspapers. But I don’t know any more than that.”

  Zalamea told him about a conversation he’d had with the assassins one day, during the hour they were allowed out in the yard. When he asked them why they’d gotten involved in such a mess, one of the two, Carvajal or Galarza, replied with ease: “If we hadn’t killed him, someone else would have killed him.” They were very sure they wouldn’t spend more than four years in prison, despite having committed a crime normally sentenced with twenty-five, and Zalamea believed this arrogance somehow came from their impunity. On a certain occasion, he told him, the guards had found the hammers, chisels, and files that another prisoner had been using to try to escape, hidden in their cells, and that offense, which would have resulted in grave punishments for any other prisoner, had no consequences for them whatsoever.

  “They didn’t do anything to them?”

  “They didn’t even tell them off,” said Zalamea. “That’s why I tell you, they’re sacred bodies, these two. They’re even making a living as cinema artists.”

  He was referring to the Di Domenico brothers’ film, for which the assassins had posed here, in these corridors, in front of these cells. From the beginning a rumor had spread that the appearance of the assassins in The Drama of October 15 had been remunerated; now Zalamea was confirming it out loud.

  “So they paid them?” asked Anzola.

  “Yes, they got paid,” said Zalamea. “Fifty pesos each. Look how well they dress. Look at the things they wangle. And not to mention what they have in their cells.”

  For several days, monotonous days of long hours, that his imposture made all seem the same, Anzola was waiting for a convenient opportunity to get into the assassins’ cells and see what he could find. It wasn’t easy, however, because Galarza and Carvajal had different routines from the rest of the inmates: they weren’t obliged to attend the instruction sessions, for example, or to get up at the cruel hour imposed on the rest of them. Sometimes they had lunch with what the inmates called the community, sharing everyone’s food at the same time everyone else ate, but sometimes they were allowed to receive elaborate dishes from outside that their women brought, and sometimes they bragged openly about eating as if they were in a restaurant, and people had seen how they had food brought to them in their cells. Those privileges, Anzola noted, had earned them the antipathy not to say frank resentment of the community. The other indicted men looked at them from afar, the way people look at intruders, and changed the subject and even their way of standing when one of the two approached. He even heard that Galarza and Carvajal lent money within the prison, and at high interest rates; that the neediest inmates sold them chains or rings or bottles of aguardiente, and they paid good prices; that sometimes they ordered raw food from outside and sold it inside the prison to inmates who didn’t have those permissions. He also noticed that the general’s assassins didn’t go to Mass at the same time as the rest: they had a sort of preferential place in the Panóptico’s chapel, so they could receive their services at different times, shutting themselves in there alone with the priest. Anzola had an idea. The following Sunday he went to the prison at an early hour. At midday a bald priest arrived, went to the assassins’ cells, and took them to the chapel. Anzola saw his opportunity.

  Galarza’s and Carvajal’s cells were not only more spacious than the rest: they were another type of room. They were separated by a mere partition wall, so thin that it would not have even kept them from talking to each other at night. Anzola chose the one on the left, without knowing which of the two it belonged to, and he was astonished. On the floor, a rug and a calfskin warmed up the place. A bare lightbulb floated above and threw domestic shadows across a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus; at the back, a tap dripped rhythmically. A cell with running water and electric light, thought Anzola, what kind of people were keeping watch over the assassins? The two beds placed symmetrically in the two cells were each made up with two woolen blankets, four pillows with pillowcases, and a cushion with an embroidered cover. There was no grime in the corners. On a wooden tabletop, in a disorderly pile, there seemed to be more than
the necessary books and papers, as if the carpenters who assassinated General Uribe didn’t live there, but rather some poor student. No, thought Anzola, not a student but a seminarian: beside the wall, under a picture of the Virgin of Carmen, leaned a padded stool like the ones for kneeling on to pray.

  Anzola saw missals and novenas to read at Christmas, he saw a leather-bound Bible, saw pamphlets and noticed one especially: The Yes and the No. It was the first time that he had seen it, but he had heard people talking about the book on several occasions, and always with the same indignation. In 1911, years after Father Ezequiel Moreno maintained that Liberalism was a sin, General Uribe had responded with a brilliant pamphlet, full of his best rhetorical weapons and precise ideas: How Colombian Political Liberalism Is Not a Sin. The opuscule was a scandal: in it Uribe asserted that the Liberal Party was as Catholic as the other party, as respectful of the family and social institutions that informed Colombian life as the other, and then went on to encourage Colombian Liberals to confront, denounce, and condemn the abuses of the clergy. That, however, was not the worst of it: after the Colombian Church forbade the reading of the book, Uribe had committed the gravest affront of all: appealing to the Holy See. For priests, this was the definitive slap in the face; and The Yes and the No, which occupied such a special place in the assassins’ belongings, was their reply. The author hid behind an impenetrable pseudonym: Ariston Men Hydor. Anzola took out Lubín Bonilla’s notebook and noted down, on the last page, the title, the author, and the name of the press: Cruzada Católica. It was the same press that published the newspaper La Sociedad, the pages of which had declared General Uribe an immoral force and established, beyond all doubt, that the war of 1899 had been God’s punishment against the acolytes of Satan. Anzola opened the pamphlet at random and read that Uribe Uribe was the enemy of religion, of conservative principles, and of the nation. But then a convict passed the open door howling and startled him, and Anzola left the cell without looking at anyone, in case he might encounter the eyes of the assassins in the long corridor.