Living to Tell the Tale

by Gabriel García Márquez

  It was a lovely house, enormous and dusty, with high ceilings and decaying walls, dim corridors and galleries crowded with ownerless papers. An average of one hundred unclaimed letters came in each day, and of these at least ten had the correct postage, but the envelopes were blank and did not even have the name of the sender. The employees in the office knew them as “letters for the invisible man,” and they spared no effort to deliver or return them. But the ceremony for opening them to search for clues had a bureaucratic rigor that was somewhat useless, but praiseworthy.

  The article, in just one installment, was published with the title “The Postman Rings a Thousand Times,” and a subtitle: “The Cemetery of Dead Letters.” When Salgar read it, he said: “You don’t have to wring this swan’s neck because it was born dead.” He published it, with the correct spread, no more and no less, but you could see in his expression that he was as grief-stricken as I by the bitterness of what might have been. Rogelio Echaverría, perhaps because he was a poet, celebrated it in a good-humored way but with a remark I never forgot: “It’s just that Gabo will clutch at any straw.”

  I felt so demoralized that on my own account—and without telling Salgar about it—I decided to find the addressee of a letter that had drawn my special attention. It was postmarked at the Agua de Dios Leprosarium and addressed to “The lady in mourning who goes to five o’clock Mass every day at the Church of Las Aguas.” After making all kinds of useless inquiries of the parish priest and his assistants, I continued interviewing the parishioners at five o’clock Mass for several weeks, with no result. It surprised me that the most faithful were three very old women, always dressed in strict mourning, but none of them had anything to do with the Agua de Dios Leprosarium. It was a failure that took me a long time to recover from, not only because of self-love or the desire to perform an act of charity, but because I was convinced that behind the actual story of the woman in mourning lay another impassioned story.

  As I was foundering in the swamps of writing feature articles, my relationship with the Barranquilla Group was becoming more intense. Their trips to Bogotá were not frequent, but I assaulted them by phone at any hour and in any difficulty, above all Germán Vargas, because he had a pedagogical concept of reporting. I consulted them about every problem, and there were many, or they called me when there were reasons to congratulate me. I always thought of Álvaro Cepeda as a classmate in the seat next to mine. After the cordial two-way mockery that was mandatory within the group, he got me out of the swamp with a simplicity that never failed to amaze me. On the other hand, my consultations with Alfonso Fuenmayor were more literary. He had the knowledgeable magic to save me from difficulties with examples from great authors, or to dictate to me the saving citation drawn from his bottomless arsenal. His greatest joke was when I asked him for a title for an editorial about street vendors of food who were being hounded by authorities from the Health Department. Alfonso gave me an immediate reply:

  “The man who sells food does not die of hunger.”

  I thanked him with all my heart, and it seemed so opportune I could not resist the temptation of asking him whose it was. Alfonso stopped me cold with the truth I had not remembered:

  “It’s yours, Maestro.”

  In fact, I had improvised it for some unsigned editorial but had forgotten it. The story circulated for years among my friends in Barranquilla, whom I never could convince that it had not been a joke.

  A chance trip by Álvaro Cepeda to Bogotá distracted me for a few days from the galley ship of the daily news. He came with the idea of making a film for which he had only the title: The Blue Lobster. It was a well-informed error, because Luis Vicens, Enrique Grau, and the photographer Nereo López thought he was serious. I heard no more about the project until Vicens sent me a rough draft of the script so that I could add something of mine to Álvaro’s original idea. I added something that I do not recall today, but I thought the story was amusing, and it had a large enough dose of lunacy to make it seem like ours.

  Everyone did a little of everything, but the papá by right was Luis Vicens, who imposed many of the things remaining from his first steps in Paris. My problem was that I found myself in the middle of one of those lengthy articles that left me no time to breathe, and when I managed to get free the picture was already being shot in Barranquilla.

  It is an elementary work whose greatest merit seems to be its command of intuition, which may have been Álvaro Cepeda’s tutelary angel. The Italian director Enrico Fulchignoni was present at one of its numerous private showings in Barranquilla, and he surprised us by the extent of his compassion: he thought the film was very good. Thanks to the tenacity and audacity of Tita Manotas, Álvaro’s wife, what still remains of The Blue Lobster has gone around the world at daring festivals.

  These things distracted us at times from the reality of the country, which was terrible. Colombia considered itself free of guerrillas after the Armed Forces took power under the banner of peace and harmony between the parties. Until the massacre of students on Carrera Séptima, no one doubted that something had changed. The military, eager for causes, wanted to prove to the journalists that there was another war going on different from the eternal one between Liberals and Conservatives. We were involved in this when José Salgar walked up to my desk with one of his terrifying ideas:

  “Get ready to find out about the war.”

  Those of us who had been invited to find out about it, with no further details, met at five sharp in the morning to go to the town of Villarrica, one hundred eighty-three kilometers from Bogotá. General Rojas Pinilla, on one of his frequent stopovers at the military base in Melgar, was expecting our visit at the halfway point and had promised a press conference that would end before five in the afternoon, with more than enough time for us to return with firsthand photographs and news.

  Those sent by El Tiempo were Ramiro Andrade and the photographer Germán Caycedo; there were four others whom I have not been able to recall; and Daniel Rodríguez and I from El Espectador. Some wore country outfits, for we had been warned that perhaps we would have to take a few steps into the jungle.

  We went as far as Melgar by car, and there we were divided among three helicopters that took us along a narrow, solitary canyon with high, craggy walls in the Cordillera Central. But what impressed me most was the tension of the young pilots, who avoided certain areas where the guerrillas had taken down one helicopter and damaged another the day before. After some fifteen intense minutes, we landed on the enormous, desolate square of Villarrica, whose covering of gravel did not seem strong enough to support the weight of the helicopter. Around the square were wooden buildings with shops in ruins and residences that belonged to no one, except one that had just been painted and had been the town hotel until the terror began.

  In front of the helicopter you could see the spurs of the cordillera and the tin roof of the only house just visible through the mists along the cornice. According to the officer who accompanied us, the guerrillas were there with weapons powerful enough to hit us, so that we had to run to the hotel in a zigzag and with our torsos bent over as a basic precaution against possible shots from the cordillera. Only when we reached it did we realize that the hotel had been converted into a barracks.

  A colonel with battle decorations, the good looks of a film star, and an intelligent affability explained without alarm that the advance guard of the guerrillas had been in the house in the cordillera for several weeks and from there had attempted several night raids against the town. The army was sure they would attempt something when they saw the helicopters in the square, and the troops were prepared. But after an hour of provocations, including challenges over loudspeakers, the guerrillas gave no signs of life. The disheartened colonel sent a reconnoitering patrol to make certain someone was still in the house.

  The tension eased. We journalists left the hotel and explored the nearby streets, including the less embellished ones around the square. The photographer and I, along with som
e others, began the ascent to the cordillera along a tortuous horseshoe cornice. On the first curve there were soldiers lying in the underbrush, prepared to shoot. An officer advised us to return to the square, since anything could happen, but we paid no attention. Our intention was to climb until we found some guerrilla advance guard that would save the day for us with a big news story.

  There was no time. Without warning we heard several simultaneous orders and then a sharp volley from the soldiers. We threw ourselves to the ground near the soldiers, who opened fire at the house on the cornice. In the instantaneous confusion I lost sight of Rodríguez, who ran to find a strategic position for his viewfinder. The shooting was brief but very intense, and it was replaced by a lethal silence.

  We had returned to the square when we caught sight of a military patrol coming out of the forest carrying a body in a wheelbarrow. The head of the patrol was very excited and did not permit us to take pictures. I looked around for Rodríguez and saw him appear, about five meters to my right, with his camera ready to shoot. The patrol had not seen him. Then I lived the most intense moment, torn between wondering if I should yell at him not to take the photograph for fear they would shoot him by accident, and the professional instinct to take it at any price. I did not have time, because at the same moment I heard the thunderous shout of the head of the patrol:

  “That photograph will not be taken!”

  Rodríguez lowered his camera in a slow gesture and came to stand beside me. The cortege passed so close to us we could smell the acid breath of the living bodies and hear the silence of the dead one. When they had gone by, Rodríguez whispered in my ear:

  “I took the picture.”

  He did, but it was never published. The invitation had ended in disaster. Two more soldiers had been wounded, and at least two guerrillas who had already been dragged to the refuge were dead. The colonel changed his mood with a somber expression. He gave us the simple information that the visit was canceled, we had half an hour for lunch, and right after that we would travel to Melgar by highway since the helicopters were reserved for the wounded and the dead. The numbers of each were never revealed.

  No one mentioned General Rojas Pinilla’s press conference again. In a jeep for six we drove past his house in Melgar and reached Bogotá after midnight. The entire newsroom was waiting for us, for the Office of Information and the Press of the presidency of the Republic had called to report without further details that we would arrive by land but did not indicate if we were alive or dead.

  Until then the only intervention by military censorship had been because of the death of the students in the center of Bogotá. There had not been a censor in the newsroom after the last one from the previous government resigned, almost in tears, when he could not endure the reporters’ false items and mocking evasions. We knew that the Office of Information and the Press had not lost sight of us, and with frequency they would give us paternal warnings and advice on the telephone. The military, who at the beginning of their government displayed an academic cordiality to the press, became invisible or hermetic. But a loose end kept growing, alone and in silence, and it inspired the certainty, never proved or disproved, that the head of that embryonic guerrilla movement in El Tolima was a twenty-two-year-old boy whose name has not been confirmed or denied: Manuel Marulanda Vélez or Pedro Antonio Marín, known as “Tirofijo,” or “Sureshot.” Some forty years later Marulanda—consulted about this in his war camp—answered that he did not remember if in reality it was he.

  It was not possible to obtain any more information. I had been longing to uncover something since my return from Villarrica but could not find a door. The Office of Information and the Press of the presidency was forbidden to us, and the unpleasant episode at Villarrica lay buried beneath military reserve. I had tossed all hope into the trash when José Salgar stopped in front of my desk, feigning a sangfroid he never had, and showed me a telegram he had just received.

  “Here’s what you didn’t see in Villarrica,” he said.

  It was the drama of a crowd of boys taken from their towns and villages by the Armed Forces, without prior planning and without resources, to facilitate the war of extermination against the guerrilla fighters of El Tolima. They had been separated from their parents without time to establish whose sons they were, and many of the boys themselves could not say. The drama had begun with an avalanche of twelve hundred adults who had been taken to different towns in El Tolima, after our visit to Melgar, and placed anywhere at all and then abandoned to the hand of God. The children, separated from their parents by simple logistical considerations and dispersed in orphanages throughout the country, amounted to some three thousand, of varying ages and conditions. Only thirty were orphans who had lost both father and mother, and among these was a pair of twins thirteen days old. The mobilization was carried out in absolute secrecy, favored by censorship of the press, until the correspondent for El Espectador telegraphed the first pieces of evidence to us from Ambalema, two hundred kilometers from Villarrica.

  In less than six hours we found three hundred children under the age of five in the Bogotá Children’s Asylum, many of them with no family records. Helí Rodríguez, who was two years old, could just say his name. He did not know anything about anything, where he was or why, or the names of his parents, and he could not give any clue to finding them. His only consolation was that he had the right to remain in the asylum until he was fourteen. The budget of the orphanage was nourished by the eighty centavos a month provided for each child by the departmental government. Ten of them escaped the first week, intending to stow away on El Tolima trains, and we could find no trace of them.

  At the asylum an administrative baptism was performed on many children, giving them last names from the region in order to tell them apart, but there were so many children, so alike and so active, that they could not be distinguished during recreational periods, above all in the coldest months, when they had to warm themselves by running along corridors and staircases. It was impossible for that painful visit not to oblige me to wonder if the guerrillas who had killed the soldier in combat could have wreaked such havoc on the children of Villarrica.

  The story of this logistical blunder was published in several successive accounts without consulting anyone. Censorship maintained silence, and the military replied with the explanation that was in fashion: the events in Villarrica were part of a broad Communist mobilization against the government of the Armed Forces, and they were obliged to proceed using the methods of war. A line from that communiqué was enough to put into my head the idea of obtaining direct information from Gilberto Vieira, secretary-general of the Communist Party, whom I had never seen.

  I do not remember if I took the next step with the authorization of the paper or if I did it on my own initiative, but I remember very well that I undertook several useless measures to make contact with some leader of the clandestine Communist Party who could inform me about the situation in Villarrica. The principal problem was that the military regime’s wall around the clandestine Communists had no precedents. Then I got in touch with a friend who was a Communist, and two days later another watch peddler appeared in front of my desk, looking for me in order to collect the installments I had not been able to pay in Barranquilla. I paid the ones I could and said with feigned carelessness that it was urgent I talk to one of his important leaders, but he responded with the well-known formula that he had no way to reach them and could not tell me who did. But that same afternoon, with no prior warning, I was surprised to hear a harmonious and casual voice on the phone:

  “Hello, Gabriel, I’m Gilberto Vieira.”

  Although he had been the most prominent of the founders of the Communist Party, until that time Vieira had not spent a minute in exile or in prison. However, in spite of the risk that both telephones might be tapped, he gave me the address of his clandestine house so that I could visit him that afternoon.

  It was a two-bedroom apartment with a small living room crowded with
political and literary books, and you climbed a steep and gloomy flight of stairs to the sixth floor and arrived breathless, not only because of the altitude but because you were aware of entering one of the best-kept mysteries in the country. Vieira lived with his wife, Cecilia, and their infant daughter. Since his wife was not at home, he kept the baby’s cradle close at hand, rocking it without haste when she would cry in the very long pauses in his conversation, which dealt with politics as well as literature, though without much sense of humor. It was impossible to conceive that this ruddy bald man in his forties, with his clear incisive eyes and precise speech, was the man most wanted by the country’s secret services.

  From the beginning I realized that he had kept informed about my life ever since I bought the watch at El Nacional in Barranquilla. He would read my articles in El Espectador and identify my anonymous editorials to try to interpret their hidden meanings. But he agreed that the best service I could perform for the country was to continue in the same way and not allow anyone to involve me in any kind of political militancy.

  He started talking about the topic as soon as I had the opportunity to disclose the reason for my visit. He was as informed about the situation in Villarrica as if he had been there, and we could not publish a word about it because of official censorship. But he gave me important facts so that I would understand that this was the prelude to a chronic war after half a century of casual skirmishes. His language on that day and in that place had more elements of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán than the Marx who was his bedside reading, as he spoke of a solution that did not seem to be the rule of the proletariat but a kind of alliance of the powerless against the dominant classes. The fortunate result of that visit was not only a clarification of what was going on in the country but also a method for better understanding it. That was how I explained it to Guillermo Cano and Zalamea, and I left the door ajar in case the end of the unfinished article ever appeared. It goes without saying that Vieira and I established a very good relationship as friends, which facilitated our contacts even during the most difficult times of his clandestinity.