I said, I thundered, ‘That’s enough, he’s shrivelled away, I won’t look any more,’ and I imagined what it would be like, taking the meek and gentle María Bayó by the hand, to run all the way to the ceiba tree behind us and from there into the mountain to hide her nakedness in the shadows and the stillness of the silver trumpet trees. I thought, ‘We’ll run until our spirit runs free and when it returns, wind-blown and revitalized, we’ll stop and eat some juicy lemons, faces puckered with calm concern. Then we’ll climb these hills like 8½69 pairs of breasts, constantly looking over our shoulders, crushing the rough colour of the air in the luminosity of the valley.’ And I concluded: ‘We will be safe there, and the house on the Ninth Hill will once again have hosts.’
I took time to think about this as I turned and held out my hand to María Bayó. But I’d misjudged the extent of her fear. Not only did she scratch my hand, she clambered up my arm till she was hanging from the tree of my body. I steeled my flesh, a glorious sensation, and with her astride me I took the first step, thinking, ‘You will not cross the mountains on a man’s back but riding pillion on a white dove.’ I was fleeing and she was fleeing my body. But I never took the second step towards the mountains.
My knee didn’t reduce the angle of advance of this desiccated air, which snarled in its dryness. The pores of María Iata opened to their fullest, then closed as though someone had stuck spikes into them. From her elevated position, she had a better view of the mountains. But how could I look at the peak, at the beak of the condor as it narrowed its eyes, then yawned and ruffled its feathers? The whole mountain flourished green again. María sank her nails, her teeth into my shoulders. The condor stretched its neck – ooooooooooh – a clamour in our heads, a beating of wings and it took flight, taking with it the whole mountain! Blossoming with the colours of mamey sapote and Madras thorn, jacaranda, cascarilla, fig and agave, the young ceiba tree where I’d hoped to feel the first hint of shade, wingleaf soapberry, pigeon wood and the loathsome timbo blanco, strangler figs and gliricidia, serried rows of wild cane and swaying walls of guadua bamboo, my havens of tranquillity, my unfinished trails, my rickety pathways, dazzling guava trees, the noble guava, the Cattley guava, the perfume guava, the para guava and the naranjilla, the devil’s fig, kindly birch trees, the seminarian’s chilca, cedar trees and whorish pines, carob trees, banks of Buritica, bandits’ hideouts, yellow ipê, black trumpet trees with their poisonous berries and Juan Ladrillo70 hiding behind a wild mulberry tree, turning over in his mind the compelling reasons upon which he was to found, between swampland and deadly brushwood and facing an accursed sea, the port of Buenaventura; Pascual de Andagoya, having captured him and sent him in chains to the powerful lord Don Felipe, Prince of the Spains and the Etceteras; Sebastián de Belalcázar compelling seven families to live in the aforementioned port, which seven died within seven months from despondency, mosquitoes and black slime, to be replaced by seven other families … And I thought I saw the ocean coming towards us, but I pulled myself together and controlled my fantasies: behind us the rest of the mountains held firm, so womanly and self-assured, as though happily watching the ascension of their sister into the heavens, and the condor flitted monstrously through kilometres of warm air; the castor oil plant wilted and the charcoal trees grew pale, the star apple retaliated with its sweetness and the breadfruit with its wholesome fibre; there was a vast, resplendent display of ripening strawberry trees, plums, gooseberries, custard apples, Jerusalem cherries, chilli peppers, Cambray pineapples, lemons in seventy different colours, soursops, bananas, plantains and Chinese plums, tamarinds, sapodillas, pomegranates, bitter oranges, dragon fruits, gru gru palms and peach palms.
The mountain also robbed us of the house on the Ninth Hill. It was not like people said, that the house was haunted: someone lived there. I don’t know whether the reader will remember Hectór Piedrahíta Lovecraft,71 a precociously intelligent young boy who, sometime around 1969, managed to devote himself equally (earning both fortune and posthumous fame, as attested by the various cults of different and conflicting Dadaist ramifications that have sprung up around the figure of Hectór P. Lovecraft, and in particular it must be said around Mare Tenebrum,72 his novel, an adaptation of H. James, so ‘white’ and so depraved) to the theatre, the plastic arts, fiction and his famously contemptuous articles about cinema, which were entirely in keeping with his personal behaviour as a direct (and astonishingly diligent) carrier of ‘cinesyphilis’, as he called ‘the Spanish disease’.73 Four years later (a rather disturbing period, since it’s not known what he did beyond bullfighting with automobiles) he disappeared. Muckrakers hinted at all manner of wretched and degrading deaths, but in fact he was here, clinging bow-legged to a sturdy pine overgrown with choking ivy and bastard fern, when the shockwave hit him and he was carried off in this flight across the heavens.
In the presence of all this, we were like sleepwalkers. But every mimmosa must find its patch of earth so, with great care, I set María down on the ground and her legs (so brave she was, so divine) supported her, firm and keen-eyed.
The condor wheeled in the sky, a little astonished by the immensity and the monotony of the landscape over which it flew, and it looked down at us on this spent earth, heads aflame and spliced together, buttocks hovering over the looming wonder, small personal hurricanes. With a joyous somersault, the condor planted its beak in the verticality of the slope. After that we didn’t see it again.
The sun and moon also cartwheeled and mother sun remained in the east sapodilling from her cradle. Was night about to engulf us?
From Don Julián’s cabin twelve sheets of official paper fluttered down. They had traced 130 long ‘S’s and nine ‘Z’s in the air when we collected them in the circle of devastation left by the departed mountain and we realized that they were handwritten documents. They contained declarations, short notes that each bore a date, written by well-known people. Here below I will divulge the contents of those I have closest to hand, since very soon I’ll be swallowed by the night born of my story, and I don’t want all this to be hushed by oblivion.
8 January 1966
Having withstood the hardships of the long trek – humidity, jungle and exhaustion and a small bear that crossed our path – we reached the summit of the mountain and Señor Julián Acosta’s house. Here we blissfully admired the beauties of the landscape and spent our nights playing dice.
Carlos Valencia Tejada / Roberto Calvache / Eduardo de Francisco
5 April 1966
The roughest gang and the toughest man in Kali were here.
Marquetalia Republic74
Nane / Hugo F. Porras / Armando Rodríguez / Almeiro Salazar / Alvaro Gomez, ‘The Phenomenal Fino’ / Chiminango
4 July 1963
‘THE TRIANGLE’
Diego Ortega / Jose Fernando Mejia / Henry Ossa (Barranquilla) / Rodrigo Ortega / Helmer Collazos (‘Judas’) / Leonel Moreno
7 January 1964
‘The Anchors’ [T-shirt with a drawing of an anchor and the name of the gang. Supported by the Vampires, the Nazis, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and the Triangle.]
Leader: Javier H. Jaramillo
Nadim Taborda / Jorge Lemos / Julian Llanos / Luis XX / Lalo / Piter / Zamorano / Corso / Piquina
There are a hundred of us. Bretaña district. Anyone who wants to join the gang should go to Number 9-02, Calle Veinticuatro. Ask for Javier (aka Terror). Thanks.
24 August 1966
ADEVAD gang: we drink, we hunt, we dance, we pray.
9 February 1964
The Death’s Head gang was here. Had a cool time. We came by helicopter. Landed on the lawn. People at Don Julián’s place were very polite. They served us rabbit meat tougher than a bandsman’s beat.
26 December 1963
Left at 6 a.m. Arrived at 1
2.30 p.m. (six hours).
27 December 1963
The light aircraft left at 10 a.m. Arrived at 1.40 p.m.
Ernesto Gutierrez (Thickhead), Francisco Mejia (Tough Guy), Daniel Perea (Gunslinger). Thanks to Señor Julián Acosta for sharing his lively company and his comfortable cabin which we used as a stopover while conquering the peak of this difficult and bewitching mountain, the tragic scene of the death of Major Fabricio Cabrera.
We invite all those who read this to discover and enjoy the delights offered by this magnificent landscape.
1968
We arrived on 10 April at 9 p.m. Having filled our bellies, we went to bed. Another rather sultry night. Before we arrived, we spent about six hours a mere two kilometres from here.
Today we plan to carry on climbing and exploring.
Fernando Barrios / Alfonso Llanos
The Cliffs of Kali, February 1964
The Gang of Fifty from the barrio Evaristo García stayed here, and a member of the Salomia gang. Viva Cuba! Long live the Russian Union ‘USSR’ – Yankees out of Panama and Colombia.
[There are drawings of skulls and crossbones, hammers and sickles, swastikas, snakes and knives.]
17 August 1965
Julián,
With your horse possessed of blood and speed, and adhering strictly to your advice about drugs, I cantered over the peaks of these mountains in a record time of four hours. A wild, whip-hungry steed!
Ulpiano Montes
March 26 – Holy Thursday
Señor Julián,
Those of us bound by a friendship which dates back many years have been disgusted to see the careless way some of your visitors have treated your furniture and chattels. We believe that living amid such magnificent scenery, your customary bad habits have led you to open your doors to philistinism. We hope that this place, which is visited by people from such diverse walks of life, both social and intellectual, may one day be restored to the atmosphere of former days, one that we are grieved to note has disappeared.
Armando Escobar / Reinaldo Paz Saa / Heliodoro Escobar
2 October 1964
Here I spent another day of my sojourn in this world.
Rodrigo Cabal H.
21 January 1968
Next time I’ll come with Daniel Perea, Nelson Parra, Camilo and Julio.
Pablito
Julián, we came to meet you but sadly did not have that pleasure. Greetings from the friends you have not met.
Omaira Calero / Rosario Bueno
Was night about to engulf us? To soothe our sorrows, I put María Iata’s clothes back on her. I brushed her hair gently and carefully. And walking in silence, we recommenced the circle of achievements. The Andean lapwings would attract other birds of prey to the corpses of Bárbaro and the gringo. Serenely, the two of us stood gazing at the river into which we could not bring ourselves to plunge our battered heads.
On the way back, I felt proud: behind me was one mountain fewer. Fresh, fertile pastures rolled away since the Valle del Renegado had grown by my presence. Cattle stared at us, surprised to see two beautiful bipeds make use of the flowers of their excrement.
Scrawny guava trees and scorched poppies. Beneath the one, upon the other we walked. The boundlessness of the land on the western horizon, the distinctive state of mind brought on by the scents of night drawing in.
What mushrooms do to you is dry up every last particle of food in order to create a huge bubble in your stomach, from which come spurts of psilocybin. But I remained peaceful, reconciled. María Iata had a terrible tic in her jaw and neck. As she was complaining of feeling ‘disorientated and dopey’, she stumbled over the rocks. How many burned-out neurones? And always spending your time staring at the ground looking for mushrooms, hunkering down to eat shit, produces a feeling of resignation towards everything, which in itself is bad for our people.
How must we look, from the second mountain? Backs straight, facing the long road home, happy to be alive but reluctant to go back?
As we crossed the bridge, we encountered three white campers, red as lobsters, who were singing:
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow
Rain and snow rain and snow rain and snow 75
It made me hungry for a hot place and some cool music, ‘Corazón de melón’,76 as we headed back on the bus towards the city in a dense somnambulistic silence. María’s spirits sank further in the embrace of the green and concrete fog: this to offer the reader a glimpse of the adventures of city children in papá’s jungle.
I helped her as much as I could. On the corner of Avenida Sexta and Calle Quince I found her a taxi and flashed her messages of strength with little smiles and one last (masterly) hand on her ass. I said goodbye to her, all friendly and bright. Far from my south now, watching her go I knew that from here on she would be plagued by sleepless nights or by dreams of a single plain yellow backcloth. On the first jet the next morning, she went back to her adoptive country. She was where she needed to be: why should we shoulder the problems of others? I’d already warned her the USA would kill her in the end. She couldn’t mould herself to studying or to life on the street. She shuts herself away, toying with the idea of seizing the day and spattering her brains against these walls she stares at. And feeling that the far side of her seclusion is lapped night and day by the treacly sea of Miami … shit the colour of shampoo.
Far from my south. How was I going to explain the death of their friend to the kids? All day they sense my presence but do not seek me out. If I allowed myself one last trip, one last great flight, I would land on them in one of those late afternoons the colour of mamey apples that make you want to bite into them. But I don’t go, flower of twilight. And I yearn, oh yearn, for someone to take care of me, to give me affection and a little attention before I sleep: little girls who’ve had a hard day are lulled to sleep, that’s the law of life – they sleep on cool, fresh sheets, snuggled in a blanket. A pat on the head, a gently plumped pillow, good night, my darling; and when they turn out the light, I wouldn’t be afraid because at an earlier stage in my life I used to fall asleep drawing up a favourable balance s
heet of the day’s events.
Ahhhh, my gentle reader already knows that I’d deserve a slap around the head if I let this sadness descend on me. This paradoxical sadness, this fickle sadness, ay ay ay, don’t let it touch me.
I refused to show up at my parents’ house. From that day I saw them only one last time. Cruel vanished childhoods: it’s like asking for green mango from the ripe. I could no longer go either north or south, so scaling mountains was impossible … And so all that was left was to turn firmly towards the dazzling and revolutionary east. Oh, the countless rumbas, the distant borders whence they blow! I heard a distant mayhem of potent melodies. Night closed in and lingering in my mind were the lyrics I’d heard on that terrible expedition I transcribed. Deliberately repeating ‘S’s and ‘Z’s, I set off in search of music. May the sun of peace and joy forever illuminate you. May the night, when you engulf it, smile on you: this is what I wish for you. As for me, I have the power to conquer. I walked and as you walk through this city you realize that the things that remain are close by, and it was close by that I found a happening street-corner rumba where they welcomed me and where I stayed looking for young guys, rich papitos who’d give me something pink, something soft, without having to touch first, for my silken hands, my sinuous curves, this crossroads where they split the rocks of women and grind the heads of men, I am a rock, sway, Miki, sway, Miki, it’s for the saints, Miki. From where I said goodbye to María Iata to where I live now is barely twelve blocks, meaning that I had only to cross the River to get to this crucifixion of corners.
Liveforever Page 18
