The Shape of the Ruins

by Juan Gabriel Vasquez

  The next morning, before arriving at his simulated or pretend job, Anzola passed by the offices of the Catholic Crusade printing press. He wanted to buy a copy of The Yes and the No; he also wanted to find out about its author. But he didn’t have any success at that: nobody, in the whole press, knew who the man was who hid behind that strange foreign name. A certain Marco A. Restrepo, a Jesuit priest, had brought the manuscript to the press, but the truth about its author could only be found in the accounts. Anzola asked if he could see them, but they explained that they were looked after by the Curia and they told him, in more elegant words, that the canons would sooner cut off one of their own arms than show them to a man of his reputation. Nevertheless, leaving with a copy of the pamphlet under his arm produced the absurd sensation of a small victory.

  He read it over the course of the day, during the meal breaks he took in solitude and in moments of rest, and forced himself to reach the end, despite every paragraph of the book being a grotesque lie, a distortion of evidence and calumny, a gob of spit from the pen of Ariston Men Hydor that sullied the memory of General Uribe as it had previously sullied his living image. One paragraph especially caught his attention. In it the author reminded his readers of General Rafael Uribe Uribe’s unpardonable sins as a senator of the Republic of Colombia. And what were those sins? Not having attended the session in which they discussed the consecration of Colombia to the Sacred Heart of Jesus; having abandoned the senate chamber when they debated whether the country should join the Catholic world celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Yes, thought Anzola, that’s why this country of fanatics hated him to death: for not modeling Colombian laws with the clay of their superstitions, for not entrusting the uncertain future of the country to the distant magic of a rotten theology. A Conservative congressman, seeing Uribe retire from the chamber when they were about to vote on the support of the festivities, reputedly cracked a joke that several others applauded.

  “The general is like the devil,” he said. “He runs away when he hears the name of the Virgin.”

  Enemy of the Catholic religion. Culprit of the civil wars. Murderer of Colombians. The accusations were familiar. Anzola had heard them a thousand times, a thousand times he had read them in the pages of newspapers, but now, reading the pamphlet, he noted something more. It was an echo, a vague flavor, and it took him a few minutes to arrive at this private revelation: the voice of Ariston Men Hydor was singularly similar to that of the author who, under the pseudonym El Campesino, had viciously attacked General Uribe from the pages of El Republicano. They were opinion pieces that Anzola had read and regretted for years; he’d followed the polemics they provoked; he’d discussed their implications with other Liberals. The Campesino also blamed Uribe for having sent thousands of young men to their deaths during the war of 1899; the Campesino also accused Uribe of desiring the disappearance of the Church, the destruction of the family, and the elimination of private property, of wanting to hand the country over to atheist socialism. The Campesino accused Uribe of seeking with his writings the deterioration of all morals and the discrediting of the faith that was the sustenance of the good life. Who was this man? If Anzola’s intuition was correct, the Campesino and Ariston Men Hydor were the same person: two different pseudonyms and one true libeler. But how to confirm it?

  He tried visiting El Republicano’s printing press. He spoke with staff writers and a machine operator. A young reporter with a patch over one eye came out to meet him. “Not here,” he said, and took his arm to lead him outside. While they walked around the block, the young man introduced himself as Luis Zamudio, told him he’d been a reporter for the newspaper at the time when the Campesino’s editorials appeared, he expressed his admiration and respect and desire that he would soon arrive at the truth about the Uribe crime. Then he said he didn’t know who the author of the articles against the general was.

  “They arrived already typed,” he said. “They were not written here in the office.”

  “The editor in chief didn’t write them?”

  “No, definitely not,” said Zamudio. “We used to say the Jesuits wrote them. Though you didn’t have to be a genius to figure that out.”

  “But who brought them?”

  “Sometimes Father Velasco, the Franciscan superior. He would close the door to talk to the editor. Sometimes Father Tenorio. The Jesuit, I don’t know if you know him.”

  “Yes, I know him,” said Anzola. “And you don’t think they could have been him?”

  “The Campesino?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, that I wouldn’t know. The articles arrived typed, as I said. Impossible to know whose hand had written them. What I do know is that they didn’t come from the newspaper.” And then: “I am ashamed, Señor Anzola.”

  “Of what?”

  “That this newspaper has turned that way. Of what they did to the general, of that rude campaign they waged against him,” said Zamudio. They were arriving back at the printer’s door. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why so much interest in the Campesino? The campaign against Uribe came from everywhere. Why especially the Campesino?”

  Anzola felt an explosion of fellow feeling: he remembered what it was like to confide in someone and, furthermore, to feel that someone confided in him; the feeling seduced him (perhaps a blend of vulnerability and nostalgia) and he was about to explain the whole situation to that unknown journalist with a damaged eye. He almost told him of Ariston Men Hydor and The Yes and the No; he almost told him the authors of the pamphlet and the columns were, in his opinion, the same person, and that he’d found that pamphlet among the assassins’ belongings, in one of their private cells; he almost explained that, in his opinion, the assassins had received that pamphlet from those who ordered the assassination, that they gave it to them to strengthen their resolve, nourish their hatred of Uribe, neutralize their guilt, and prevent their repentance. Anzola had gotten it into his head, therefore, that the discovery of this hidden identity would throw new light on those responsible, and there, on the narrow sidewalk, he was about to explain this to the reporter. But he reconsidered in time. This Zamudio, after all, was still working for El Republicano, was he not? Who could know what secret intentions drove his loquacity? What invisible strings had guided him around the block? How was it possible to confirm that he hadn’t been sent on a secret mission by Salomón Correal or Rodríguez Forero?

  Anzola glanced at all the corners, to make sure no one was watching them. He said good-bye to the reporter and went on his way.

  * * *

  —

  AT THE END OF MAY, what Anzola had predicted with respect to the mysterious letter published in Etcétera happened. Prosecutor Rodríguez Forero, with a great fuss, ordered heaven and earth to be searched for the witness Alfredo García, who had written those fearful accusations. He wrote to Barranquilla, where the first letter had come from, addressing himself to the mayor of the city in peremptory tones; but he did so without the minimal astuteness of describing García physically, which meant his request could not be fulfilled. The mayor of Barranquilla replied with a request for a description of the individual being sought, but in spite of the information being on record, he received no response. The prosecutor’s office then sent a mass telegram to all the mayors in the Republic: YOU ARE REQUESTED TO ESTABLISH AND INFORM BY TELEGRAM IMMEDIATELY IF ALFREDO GARCÍA A. RESIDES IN YOUR JURISDICTION. There was no favorable reply. When Anzola learned the contents of the telegram, he headed for Julián Uribe’s house without wasting any time. “Why García A.?” he said to the general’s brother. “Why not García B., why not García C., if the prosecutor knew of the confusion over the initials? Now we know why the criminals asked him to sign in three different ways: so later he could be searched for and not found, so they could seem to make an effort without running the risk of having their efforts
succeed. I was right. I was right and you didn’t believe me.” Julián Uribe had to admit it.

  On the morning of the twenty-eighth, Anzola was working at the Panóptico when one of the guards—the one called Pedraza, who seemed to be a Salomón Correal plant and helped the assassins have dealings with the outside world—came to tell him that someone was waiting for him out front. When he went out, the street still wet from the recent rain, and Anzola found Tomás Silva holding a copy of the edition of El Tiempo where the prosecutor had published an edict. He unfolded it, straightened it with a flick of his wrists, and read: “Alejandro Rodríguez Forero, prosecutor of the criminal proceedings against those responsible for the death of General Uribe Uribe, cites and summons the author of the letter . . .” He didn’t need to say more. Anzola understood immediately: the prosecutor was publicly requesting the witness to come forward and declare what he knew about the crime; he assured him his rights would be guaranteed; but if he did not come forward, he would be viewed as an accessory.

  Anzola walked a few steps and then sat down on one of the benches overlooking the avenue, under the trees with their dusty leaves. He saw two noisy automobiles go past, he saw ladies in hats in the back- seats of the automobiles, he saw a horse shitting as it walked north, toward Barro Colorado. “There it is, they did it,” he said. “They’re magicians, my dear Silva, we can’t beat them. García isn’t going to come forward: his absence is already paid for and assured. Tell me something, Tomás: How much does it cost to make a man disappear without taking his life? How much does it cost to transform him into a writer of absurd letters, and then into a ghost, and then a fiction, and then an instrument to discredit an entire investigation? That’s what Alfredo García is now: an invention of ours to tarnish the good name of the distinguished people of this country. All his accusations, everything he wrote in that letter, has now and forever been turned into the ravings of an accessory. With this maneuver, Pedro León Acosta’s presence at Tequendama Falls has just become worthless. The assassins having been seen coming out of the Jesuit convent’s door has just become worthless. I can’t do anything against this. Not me, not anybody. It makes me sick, but what can one do? What can be done against such a mighty force, capable of making Ana Rosa Díez disappear off the face of the earth, making Alfredo García write what he doesn’t know and then turn the truth into a lie, turn what happened into what has no longer happened? I thought only God could bring about such miracles, but it turns out that’s not the case, that others have this power too. Yes, I feel sick, that’s what one feels, that’s what I feel. And what can be done? Vomit, Silva. Vomit all that one has inside, and try not to let the vomit splash anybody.”

  No one spoke again of the witness Alfredo García: this marked his disappearance from the trial and also from the world. Sometimes it occurred to Anzola to think of him, wonder where he would be, whether in Barranquilla or in Costa Rica or in Mexico City, or perhaps buried a couple of meters underground with a machete wound in his neck, with two bullets at point-blank range in his back. At the end of September a rumor began to circulate that Alejandro Rodríguez Forero was coming to the end of gathering testimony and carrying out investigations, and some people, who had no reason to lie, said that he had begun to write the Vista Fiscal, his Prosecutor’s Indictment. Anzola heard the rumors and only thought: Alfredo García’s testimony will not be in that Vista. They have achieved that. They have kept it out.

  The second anniversary of the crime was approaching, and Anzola realized it had been a long time since he had visited the site. (He had grown used to calling it that, the site, in his monologues and dreams and ravings.) He went one morning. He was on his way somewhere else, but as he passed the Santa Clara Church he allowed himself this detour. Entering the Plaza de Bolívar from behind the Capitol, he had to pass the exact spot where an officer and a civilian had arrested Leovigildo Galarza, confiscating a blood-covered hatchet from him. “I never use that,” Galarza had said later, during his first interrogation, “because I haven’t been a murderer.” Anzola shivered, as if one of those gusts of icy wind that knock down foreigners had blown in, as if for an instant the entire city had turned into the site, every street and every wall had become a witness to Uribe’s murder or a crime scene.

  Anzola turned the corner. He was still twenty paces or so from the sidewalk when he noticed a new presence in the familiar landscape; as he approached, without taking his eyes off it, he saw that it was a marble plaque that someone had put up in the past few months so the people of Bogotá would never forget the tragedy. He read:

  HERE, AT THIS TRAGIC SITE, ON OCTOBER 15, 1914,

  THE DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN, DOCTOR AND GENERAL

  RAFAEL URIBE URIBE, BELOVED SON OF COLOMBIA

  AND HONORED THROUGHOUT LATIN AMERICA,

  WAS TREACHEROUSLY SACRIFICED

  BY THE AX BLOWS OF TWO SINISTER VILLAINS.

  Who would have put it there? For whom? It was obviously not for these lazy passersby who walked by without looking at it. Two sinister villains, read Anzola, and suddenly he felt deceived. No, it wasn’t two, it was many more: in this, the plaque was complicit with the conspiracy. Furthermore, the word tragic was a lie, the word sacrificed was affected, the word ax was an imprecision, and the word beloved was hypocrisy. Yes, thought Anzola, this whole plaque was a great marble impostor, probably placed here by orders of the general’s enemies, so dexterous in the art of distortion, of false leads and concealment in broad daylight. Written in stone, wasn’t that how people referred to an eternal truth, something that was true until the end of time? This plaque, with its appearance of an inoffensive memorial, was in reality the consecration of the conspirators, one more step in the imposition of that reality in which two half-drunk carpenters kill the general because the government hasn’t given them work. That plaque was part of the irrevocable absolution of the great wolves of the pack. Anzola then imagined an absurd scene in which he lifted the plaque and, there beneath it, on the wall, found the names Salomón Correal and Pedro León Acosta and Rufino Berestain. Then he had this revelation: that this marble plaque announced, in thirty-eight words, what the prosecutor would say in many more in his Vista Fiscal, as if they were tilling the soil in which to sow the seed of the lie. He read it again, took out Lubín Bonilla’s notebook, and copied the thirty-eight words, and with each stroke thought he wouldn’t even have to read the Vista Fiscal, for he already knew what it would say. It would say honor of Latin America, it would say distinguished gentleman, and it would say, especially, sacrificed by two sinister villains.

  Two lone wolves. Two assassins with no accomplices.

  * * *

  —

  THE VISTA FISCAL, the prosecutor’s pretrial statement, the document that would declare before the law who was accused in the Uribe case, was published in November by the National Printing Bureau. It was a leather-bound book of three hundred and thirty pages of small print and legal technicalities, but people devoured it as if it were a popular novel. “It’s out, it’s out,” you heard people saying on the street corners, and the newspaper vendors announced it even though they didn’t have it to sell. On the afternoon of the same day, Julián Uribe called an urgent meeting, not at his house, but at 111 Ninth Street: the general’s house, where his widow still lived, where his study and his library remained as he had left them and where his ghost was present in a thousand ways: on those steps his coffin had come down, in that spacious salon where they had kept watch over him, in those windows through which had entered, the night of his death, the disconsolate wailing of his followers. In the general’s study were Julián Uribe and Carlos Adolfo Urueta, both standing, both overcome with sadness and indignation.

  “Have you heard?” Urueta asked Anzola as soon as he saw him come in.

  Anzola had procured a copy from the offices of El Liberal and turned immediately to the last pages. He read with his heart clenched the vindication of his worst fears. After declaring th
e criminal case open against Jesús Carvajal and Leovigildo Galarza, the prosecutor concluded that there was no proof of responsibility against any other suspects. Anzola read the list of the innocent, all those people the law would take no action against. It began with the name Aurelio Cancino, that worker at the Franco-Belgian plant who predicted the crime against General Uribe weeks before it happened and whose prophetic talent, nonetheless, was never of interest to the investigators. He revised one by one the almost fifty names on the list, and eventually found the only one that truly interested him: Pedro León Acosta occupied the last place in that inventory of infamy. It was as if they had wanted to play a joke on him, thought Anzola, for the name of Acosta, placed at the end of the paragraph, served as an obscene bridge to the next paragraph, where the innocence was declared, beyond any doubt, of Salomón Correal. And now Anzola had arrived at the general’s house, and his brother was looking at him with eyes sunk in sadness while Carlos Adolfo Urueta asked him: “You saw it?”

  “I saw it,” said Anzola.

  “Acosta, innocent,” said Urueta, shaking the book like a preacher. “Correal, innocent.”

  “And not a word about the Jesuits,” said Julián Uribe.

  “Not a one,” said Urueta. “As if they didn’t exist. As if you hadn’t established all that you established. Unless, of course, it was all your imagination.”

  “I didn’t imagine it,” said Anzola. “I know the Jesuits visit the assassins and are mixed up in this. I know there is a pamphlet writer hidden behind the name Ariston Men Hydor, and that it is the same one who signed his editorials, horrible articles against General Uribe, as the Campesino.”