I should point out that Bárbaro had no problems getting by, not one. He lived in an artist’s studio but he didn’t work with leather or clay or anything at all. I think one of his cousins owned the studio; Bárbaro had saved his life in La Bocana, so he let him live there. They looked on him fondly, and on me with hungry little eyes, but I didn’t care. ‘She’s my pelada, and they respect her,’ Bárbaro said. They plied me with necklaces, with bags and blouses made by native women, and in this curious garb, I took on the scent and the flavour of the earth, I redoubled, retripled my ardour because my beloved and I were living south of Pance. Doing what? Mugging gringos. This was how Bárbaro made his living, and he liked action.
As soon as we stepped off a Blanco y Negra – the black-and-white bus that heads south – and felt the first lash of the blazing sun in the vast emptiness, he felt an overwhelming thirst for violence, a thirst he had to slake: blonde gringas – not blonde like me, because my hair is like ripe mango while theirs was the colour of sun-scorched wheat, of pale flax. I have to say I also felt a burning rage to see how many dumb gringos came to our country in search of the seven deadly sins, in an attempt to ‘find themselves’. The very sight of them had me itching to thump them, but anyone seeing us circle our prey saw only a cute couple, me all smiles and swaying hips, sometimes stumbling across the stony ground, and inevitably some gringo would fall over himself to help me up: ‘Señorita.’
And me: ‘Ay, qué pena.’
And Bárbaro: ‘What a polite young man! Where are you from?’
‘America,’ curtly.
‘America? But isn’t this America right here? Unless you’re talking about Club América FC? Are you taking the piss?’
I was the only one to laugh, a sound like a series of delightful sneezes. But the gringo would be stone-faced, bewildered, and he’d turn down the volume on his cassette player.
‘Don’t do that! Rock has be listened to at full blast,’ Bárbaro protested and, bang, his hand was already on the volume knob, his fingers silken, his smile tremendous beneath this accursed sun. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yeah,’ the gringo admitted and by now he was glancing around him, but there was no point because I was doing the same thing, making sure there was no one about: this boy was a long, long way from home, completely lost and almost certainly alone in the deathlike stillness of one o’clock in the afternoon.
But Bárbaro did not explode just yet. He’d get the boy to agree to everything he said, and the gringo would say, ‘Oh, yeah, I love Colombia, the countryside’s so beautiful, the people are so cool (pretty little peladas to be taught the mysteries of mainlining), and the dope and coke are so cheap.’
‘Ah, yes, las peladas,’ Bárbaro would say. ‘Especially the ones who get the hots for any gringo.’
‘Um … my name’s Dino.’
‘And what are you doing alone all the way out here, Dino? Don’t you know this place is dodgy, I mean really dodgy. It can be dangerous round here, you know. A lot of delinquents.’
‘No way. Everyone I’ve met here is so laid-back. And I often come out here. I always find ’shrooms, and no one ever gives me a dirty look, because I’m all about peace and love.’
‘Really? Well I know a lot of people who don’t like seeing all these gringos around, you know? Found a lot of mushrooms then?’
‘Yeah, loads of them, especially Golden Tops.’
‘All inside your skull?’
‘Boom! Yeah, all up in my brain.’
‘You must have a brain like a sieve. Don’t you feel ashamed that the cows are looking at you, with their rumens, reticulums, omasums and abomasums, thinking: “Shit-Eating Biped”?’
‘What?’
‘How would you react if my pretty pelada put a hand on your tape recorder?’
Half understanding, assuming we were asking him to lend us the machine, he was about to graciously give it to me when, with a savage jerk – crack – I snapped his will to be polite and – whack – turned down the volume and in the sudden silence and the lowing of the River, his eyes, racing against the clock to understand, could see no way out but abject terror.
He might have made a run for it if Bárbaro hadn’t slammed an elbow into his nose, a knee into his belly, a fist into his temple and laid him out flat. Then, the flash of a knife: ‘We’re going to kill you, gringo.’
‘Nooooo!’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What do you want? The tape recorder? Money? I’ve got loads of cash.’
He tried to get to his feet but another punch and he was on the ground again, blood pooling on the dry grass.
‘Don’t you dare get up while we’re here. Turn out your pockets, but do it down there, where you belong –’ Bárbaro was enjoying this – ‘paying due respect to us as the true masters of this land.’
And immediately the gringo stuffed his hands in his pockets and pulled out a wad of notes so thick he couldn’t close his fist around it, plus three metres of nose candy and acid, and Bárbaro said, ‘You dumb gringo, what the fuck are you doing going around loaded like that?’ Another whack for being so pig-ignorant.
And the gringo started sobbing: ‘What more do you want?’
I was already pocketing the stash, everything except the acid, which I tossed into the River, and as I did so, I pictured some unsuspecting swimmer opening his mouth wide to suck in air after a long dive and swallowing three of the fourteen tabs, and the heavens themselves would tremble …
‘Take off the natty shirt,’ Bárbaro ordered. ‘And the Levi’s.’
The gringo couldn’t get his head round the enormity of the offence; couldn’t manage to strip to order. ‘First, you have to take off your shoes, you dumb fucking gringo.’ Then, puzzled, holding them out between thumb and forefinger, Bárbaro muttered disgustedly, ‘Who the fuck would want shit like this? They must be at least size 48,’ and, zzzzzusss, into the River. ‘Now you can strip off those pathetic boxer shorts, kid, and stand there with your balls hanging out; maybe that’ll teach you something about how tough life is in this country.’
We didn’t leave him there bawling in the field. We dragged him to the River. A couple of days later we read an article about a gringo suffering from heatstroke – or off his face on drugs – wandering naked looking for the road to Cali, who’d run into a couple of football teams and the twenty-two players had humiliated, used and abused him. ‘Though still in a fragile mental state, he will fly back to Miami today where his parents are waiting with open arms.’
We walked away happy, skipping along, and got completely blitzed at the first beer and fried-food stall we could find. And as the sun sank behind the mountains, we were reborn with the new-minted night and tumbled into the Parque de las Piedras to recount our feats.
Ah, those days will never come again! But it doesn’t matter: they trail behind, they’re the sole pleasure of my melodies. Pity I have no one now to share my siestas with. Pity that I’m so alone. But the night swells, spirits rise, it is glorious, and I carry on with my story, and if I should die tomorrow I don’t want anyone to weep for me. I hope I finish before the dawn, because it would be too confusing to have to face the day without exposing myself to the darkness in which, as always, I sparkle and flash, just like in the old song Tico and Carlos Phileas and all the other guys took turns dancing to with me at parties long ago, Little star, why have you lost your curious spell? Here on earth from the distance we hear your sad wail; we were such kids – pay no mind to me, reader, don’t believe me if I speak of sorrows. As my pen scutters across the page, I imagine the distant, feeble river renewing itself, silvering over the stones. A river is ageless, and though it may dawdle here on its travels, it is not the end. Reader, follow me joyfully. I’ve shaken off such thoughts as ‘What will become of me?’ I have marshalled my strength, have found long-forgotte
n words, so many words, a jumble of words by a dancer who put me through blue-funk blues before I could get him to fall into step.
When not mugging gringos, our life was utterly peaceable. We listened to cassettes in the park and when we went for a drive, tuning to the signals of a hundred radio stations, we’d imagine ourselves tracing lines of sound through the warm air. Nobody complained that our speciality was robbing gringos, and none of the gringos could come looking for revenge. We never robbed a ‘neighbour’, as Bárbaro called our fellow countrymen.
Back now to Parque de las Piedras, but this to recount a farewell. It must have been 7 a.m. on the first Monday of last December that, shining and stylish, we were preparing to set off on our next trip. The barrio kids had got up early – unusual, what with them being noctambulation junkies – to wish us well, get stoned and say goodbye.
The sky was murky, milk-coloured, harbouring both moon and sun at opposite extremes. Three feet above the ground, rising or falling – I don’t know which – was a blanket of reddish mist and as I walked I felt my skin resist this strange, prickly, itchy air. But Bárbaro was clearly awestruck by the promise of the day, which he casually described as ‘incredible’. He was not wrong, as the reader will shortly judge.
I got to my feet, standing on the soft grass, prepared for anything, though feeling slightly nervous. Each of us is an abandoned nest where the marauding bird of sorrow seeks refuge. Sorrow and danger: this was what I foresaw, what I feared. As though two mountaineers (reduced to the scale of the black man’s knees that long ago I looked out at through the windows of my parents’ house) were colliding inside me with every step I took through this carpet of dusky, reddish air.
We walked in silence along Calle Quince, past the Departmental Hospital. I tied up my hair with a Spanish scarf and beneath the counterpoint of sun and moon and milk-white sky I looked stunning.
With great care we boarded the Transur bus and, seeing all the other passengers were black, I felt a strange unease, a sort of racist reverie, and even as I say this I apologize. I felt as though we were travelling in a black cloud. Could it be that the events that took place later that day were punishment for this thought? But the darkling morochos looked at us, smiling, completely relaxed by the undulating heat sucked in by the moving bus and creating little eddies between the heads and necks of the passengers. And I didn’t feel too good when, like an incantation, three different radios all started playing the same song:
Ala-lolé-lolé lalá-lo-loló lololala-lalalalalá oiga mi socio oiga mi cumbilá que voy en cama-caló alala-lele-lee lolo-lolá epílame pa los ancoros como le giro este butín guaguancó ala-lolé l-o-o-lá oiga mi socio oiga mi cumbilá le voy a encamacaló le-e-lo-lá ala-lo-lo loló epílame pa los ancoros como le giro este butín gua-guan-có cuando mi mene era un chiquitín y ya empezaba a rodar pachitum jamercoyando y no me pudo tirar pallá pallá oye-ló ala-le-loo lololololo-lololá y el niche que facha rumba aunque niña bien tullida cuando varan a la pira lo altare la araché el niche que facha rumba e-e-e-e-e cuandoro si que le encoje lo altare la araché ay qué niña bien tullida lo altare la araché y-y-y-y-y-y que ina que ina la noche lo altare la araché al niche que facha rumba lo altare la araché el niche que facha rumba e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e chinfanchum jamercoyando lo altare la araché mira cómo nos mira cómo nos mira cómo nos coge la noche lo altare la araché e-e-e-e caína caína nos coge la noche lo altare la araché e-e! el niche que facha rumba pero melé pero melé nos coge la noche lo altare la araché ey caína nos coge la noche lo altare la araché yevere caín yevere caín yevere caína la noche lo altare la araché aunque niña bien tullida lo altare la araché pero caína caína nos coge la noche lo altare la araché mira macochó mira macochó mira macochó ma-co-chó lo altare la araché el negro el negro que monta coche lo altare la araché. 57
And the judder of the bus and the hum of the air, boiling fit to burst, and the wheels as they sank (but they couldn’t be sinking, since we were moving) into tarmac like molasses and every metal surface sizzling like a frying pan. And the blacks sweating ebony and platinum, collars of pearls, white shirts that looked like they were stained with mud around the armpits and the back, their noses glistening; they were relaxed and happy, chugging forward since this way there was no drowsiness, this way they wouldn’t succumb to the embrace of the heat, and in this weather was the justification of their race, in this and in the fields, still lush green despite the harsh and treacherous sun. They were all smiling at the song as though it communicated some secret message of revolution and tragedy. As for me, the song’s insistence on la noche – the night – made me feel at odds with the world, especially as our day of youthful transgressions was just beginning. And just then images flooded back of mornings waking up through venetian blinds and I felt a sudden surge of joy; but one that wasn’t insolent, it didn’t make me move or pull faces, it was simply a feeling of anticipation. A joy at meeting the new day face on as we drove through the valley while, back in the city, my parents would only now be waking up, examining their new wrinkles, standing motionless under the spray of a scalding shower.
The bus zoomed through the valley at top speed, but Bárbaro’s excitement sped faster, overtaking the bus. ‘A good take-down,’ he said, ‘a fat gringo, with glasses, with good hair and better threads.’
In our wake, we left the modern suburbs, the schools for rich kids, the derelict mills – the relics of rice fever, fields of plum trees, of sugar cane and bitter guavas, but even in the midst of these calm, darksome people, Bárbaro’s fury swelled. He’d found no other way of dealing with the world. Ever since primary school, his first instinct was to follow the mob. He was adopted as a mascot by the toughest gangs, back in the days of Edgar Piedrahíta,58 of Frank and El Mompirita; he was there the night the El Águila gang killed that poor long-haired bastard at the ‘Centro’ of my ’60s: he’d known these people, hung out with them. And now that the gang culture had waned, his violence had resurfaced to be unleashed on gringos: I had no problem with this, it was expedient, a service to society; there on the bus I wrapped my arms around him. There wasn’t a breath of wind and the belching exhalations of the carburettor blasted us full in the face.
When the bus arrived in Xamundí, all the morochos got off and instinctively we followed them so we wouldn’t be abandoned by the music. No one tells me that I got here first, that I’ve got the cash, that I’m whiter than you. We walked slowly down the aisle of the bus, careful not to touch the white-hot metal, stepped down on to the red earth of Xamundí, into air that was fierier still, into the shriek of birds driven mad by the shimmering pool that the sky had become.
The morochos disappeared towards the Parque Central, famous for its cracked, dried-up fountain. And Bárbaro made a deal with a German to take us in his jeep to a place called ‘Yeah? That way’. Offered him twenty pesos. ‘Yeah? That way’ is a spa town and dance hall on the banks of the Río Xamundí from where it’s possible, preferably on foot, to get to the rivers El Jordan, El Turbio, El Estrellón, El Claro, El Bueno, El Zumbón, El Cojecoje, El Renegado,59 each feeding into a beautiful, treacherous pool that, from what I’ve heard, gives form and life to small valleys which people say are verdant and beautiful. For the moment I’ll reserve judgement.
We were walking north-east along a path dappled by acacias, looking for the Valle del Renegado – Renegade’s Valley. The long stroll through the shadows revived our spirits, but left us unprepared for the vision that awaited us: suddenly, as I crossed the bridge and found myself face to face with the valley, I wanted to turn away from the dazzling glare, from the scant, strangely orderly vegetation. But Bárbaro grabbed my shoulder and forced me to look.
The Valle del Renegado was circular, with a slight depression towards the south-east, which might have been a track, a path leading into the next valley. Beneath both moon and sun, the
grassland – perhaps because of the abundance of poppies – looked like a swarm of deranged dragonflies squandering their diurnal energy. Meanwhile the river that gave the valley its name was particularly turbulent and the roar as it crashed against the black rocks and the red mud banks made it seem as though the meadows were shifting without moving forward, like a sickening sluice of waves. I’ve got some weird ideas in this little head of mine. The true inhabitants of this place were thorny, sickly shrubs. In a moment of panic it occurred to me that if we couldn’t withstand the sun’s glare, the only possibility of sheltering in the shade would be a two-kilometre race against rapidly advancing heatstroke to the magnificent young ceiba tree thirsting (the very sight of it made me feel parched) on the nearest rocky outcrop, where everything was very different: there was cool vegetation, a paradise for birds, all the fruits of the vibrant tropics. Hills that were anchored to the valley by roots of deep red earth, like bleeding wounds, that gradually extended like a vast starched petticoat to form a rocky outcrop, a devourer of souls and aeroplanes, the first mountain rampart on the difficult road to the sea, crowned by a peak shaped like the head of a condor, beak and all. A peak like a beak? The intense, vivid blue made it seem sharper, gave it a sense of rage, of urgency. Was I hallucinating? No, the mountain in its grandeur was stirring from its slumber, but for now it dozed, its wings folded over its breast.
Having my gaze perched at such dizzy heights began to exhaust me. I can say that I reacted with a perfect straight line, a vertical glance down towards the shrub that grew in the very centre of the valley, reddish and larger than the others; as old as time itself, it presided over the orderly, concentric furrows in which the others were planted. Oh, the pointless neatness of this scorched vegetation! I had dared to lower my gaze from the beak of the condor to the centre of the earth upon which I trod. Something shuddered, or perhaps the earth quaked, because my heart or his was trembling. Changó ta vení. Changó is coming.60 God of cunning and vengeance, seditious god, deliver me not into danger, lend me your sword and with it I will vanquish.
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