Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

When the Monkey, now about thirty, is making the third decisive move of his life, beautiful Natalia is just over twenty. When her mother sees her in bed, in her knit pajamas and surrounded by her stuffed animals, when she wakes her up to get her ready for school or to take her to a morning meeting and watches her, still sleepy, stumble sulkily to the bathroom, she tells herself that she still seems like a little girl. Because Natalia will always be her little girl, just like for every mother. But also because nature has been kind to Natalia, passing on her mother’s genes, giving her a body that resists time. A lighthearted girl, naïve and happy. And this is because Lucia Gaviria knows how to protect her daughter’s other nature — her inner nature — from the fangs of time. The money she has earned has made her even more lighthearted, which is as it should be, even though it doesn’t always work that way. To the sea of stuffed animals has been added a closet, overflowing with shoes, clothes, creams, perfumes, and some jewelry.

By now Natalia Paris has gotten used to being a star as soon as she steps out her front door. Used to seeing an army of girls who could be her clones on the streets of Colombia. Used to the paparazzi’s flashbulbs around the corner, used to rebuffing advances with a no that is as sweet as it is firm. Not one of the boys she goes out with has ever made her lose her focus, let alone her head.

Lucia Gaviria’s fears begin to wane. You can breathe more easily in Medellín now than you could a few years ago. It no longer happens that she has to go to a funeral because her best friend’s daughter has been ripped apart by a car bomb and for a while afterward she can’t find the courage to call her because her own daughter is still alive. It no longer happens that Natalia asks to go to a disco with her school friends and comes home talking about how shooting broke out when they were on the dance floor. Natalia is still frightened, sure, but not nearly as much now. When you grow up in certain places, you end up adapting to the reality around you. Doña Lucia realizes that bell jars are pathetically fragile.

It’s also true that those early days, when sudden success threatened to upset an adolescent’s precarious balance, are gone. In fact, Natalia’s celebrity was precisely what helped her. A star enjoys less freedom of movement than a normal person. In order to make her life bearable she frequents the same places where, mainly, people learn to pretend not to notice her, to treat her normally.

And so, a gray area worms its way into Lucia Gaviria’s vigilance. The gym. Keeping in shape is a professional necessity for Natalia, and besides, she really loves physical activity. For the most part she takes classes for women: aerobics and Latin American dance, activities that take the place of evenings at the disco, which, with all the attention she received, had become too exhausting. But now she wants to learn how to scuba dive. Her gym offers a one-week class in Santa Marta, the famous Caribbean tourist city. It’s not the tropical fish that frighten Doña Lucia, or the breathing apparatus and tanks. Sea sharks are far less dangerous than land sharks.

It must have been an almost mystical experience to watch Natalia remove her mask and fins and peel off her wet suit with a decisive tug. And yet she seemed oblivious to the way everyone looked at her. There was a man in the group who had had the same effect on her, though, ever since their first dive. He took off his equipment, stowed it, and then dove off the edge of the dinghy. She wanted to dive in after him, but didn’t dare. She waited for him to make a move, even the smallest sign, some joke, or a plea for help. He was already an expert diver, already had his instructor’s license, in fact. He’d gotten it in California, where he’d lived for work. The class her gym offered was merely a way for him to get back into his favorite sport.

This is what he tells her a few evenings later when he takes her to a romantic bistro. Medellín is not like Los Angeles, where, to recharge your batteries, you can ride the waves on your surfboard, go running on the beach, or swim out to the horizon and back. “I’m really tied to my family and my city,” he says, “but I miss the ocean and being outside.”

Natalia is already deeply in love. But now she’s convinced that Julio is the most extraordinary man she’ll ever meet. She’s comfortable pressing against him in the boat, kissing him, or clinging to him in the water. Love is a triumph that must be flaunted.

At first Lucia merely thinks that the vacation did her daughter good. But she soon senses that Natalia’s irrepressible happiness can’t be simply the positive effect of the Caribbean sun. There’s clearly a budding romance. It must be a special sort of crush, though, because, oddly, her daughter doesn’t talk to her about it. She feels a pang of anxiety, but represses it immediately. Natalia has always been impulsive, enthusiastic. She’s a Leo, a passionate sign, but sooner or later the fire goes out. It’s better to wait, to trust her. Lucia thinks she knows her daughter well enough to know that she’ll be the one to talk about it first.

And, in fact, Natalia doesn’t keep quiet for long. When she tells her mother about Julio, how handsome he is, how athletic, how attentive and elegant, her face lights up so much that her mother has to take a deep breath before she can begin asking questions. She is truly sorry to tumble her off the cloud she’s floating on.

“How old is he?”

“I don’t know. Thirty, thirty-five…”

“Are you sure he’s not married?”

“What are you saying, Mami? He was in Los Angeles, he came back to help his family, I think.”

“And what exactly was he doing in Los Angeles?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“So you have no idea what it is he does, this Julio of yours?”

“Oh, business of some sort. But he’s rich, family money. He has a fabulous house and some other properties too, a hotel maybe, or a country estate.”

“Maybe. But you don’t know how he got rich. Or how his family got rich.”

“No, Mami, and I don’t care! You can’t always think like this, calculating everything all the time, planning. Those things don’t matter at all when you’re in love!”

Natalia starts to cry and locks herself in her room. Lucia Gaviria stays sitting in the kitchen, devastated. She has an awful feeling; she can barely breathe. To calm down she pours herself a glass of water and finishes up some mindless house chores.

The only question she dares ask the next day is the last name of Natalia’s beau. She tries to sound casual, but she knows Natalia’s not fooled. With that piece of information she heads to court, as she does every morning. Off to face her tragedy.

Julio César Correa. A drug trafficker. He got his start as a hit man at Pablo Escobar’s side. His new last name, which replaces his original one, reflects his status as a killer: Fierro, Julio Fierro. All over Latin America fierro —as in Italy, ferro —literally meaning “iron,” means “gun.” In this new era Julio established his independence as a professional killer and got involved directly in the cocaine business, becoming a traqueto , a trafficker. Doña Lucia wonders if he went to the United States because of Don Pablo’s death, to make himself scarce. But now he’s back. Back in time to make Natalia lose her head. She simply won’t listen to reason. She confesses that Julio carries a pistol around town, but then screams: “What’s wrong with that, everybody else does!”

Whenever she addresses her mother now, Natalia always shouts.

Doña Lucia establishes peremptory rules and strict curfews, much stricter than when Natalia was under age. But when she’s alone, waiting for her daughter to return, Lucia Gaviria takes to brooding and blaming herself. Why did she let her take that damned diving course?