Laura Restrepo - No Place for Heroes

Do not run, Aurelia, the first thing to do is not to run. Pale, with their hearts in their mouths, they passed in front of the house without even turning around to look at it and kept on going, reaching the back entrance of the market.

They hid in the aisles, weaving through the vegetable and meat counters until they reached the front entrance facing Rivadavia. From there they walked to the Primera Junta Station. Mixed in with all the other people, they waited for what seemed a century for the subway to arrive, they took it, making several line changes and then resurfacing somewhere that was unfamiliar to Aurelia. They would never return to Coronda.

“DO YOU KNOW how long a person can go without sleep?” Lorenza asked Mateo. “Twenty days and nights. You’re going to say that this is not possible, but I know that it is. I know from experience. Twenty days and nights I had not slept, and weighed ten kilos less, when the call from your father finally came.”

“Just follow his lead,” she’d been told by Dr. Haddad, an expert on kidnapping who knew how to handle a call from an enemy who has your loved one in his hands. “If he says he loves you, you tell him that you love him. If he says that he misses you, tell him that you miss him. If he cries, you cry. But if he’s angry, do not get angry. Cry anyway, that always works. Tell him you’re sorry, that you need both him and the boy badly. Don’t forget that, both him and the child: don’t skip him. Don’t lay the blame on him, blame yourself. Lie consistently and without scruples and pretend that what matters here is that communication is not broken, which will be prolonged and narrowed, the thread that leads you to the child.”

To Lorenza’s ears, the voice of Ramón arrived both as a saving grace and improbably, like a miracle. The same drone voice, the same hurried pronunciation that, years later, Mateo was to hear recorded on the answering machine. Where was he talking from? Lorenza did not find out. Ramón did not say, and she did not ask him.

“I didn’t want to pressure him or make him uncomfortable,” she recounted to Mateo. Haddad had said it would be like dancing with a partner, she’d have to keep up with the beat and not fall too far behind or leap forward.

“And why didn’t you do it like in NYPD Blue , install a tracking system that in three and a half minutes finds out where the call is coming from?”

“I did. But it was like in the movies, after three minutes, he hung up.”

It seemed to her that Ramón was speaking from another world, that other world where her son was, a slippery world, almost unimaginable, almost nonexistent, which had been lost in space until the voice of Ramón told her, without telling her, that there was a specific point on the map where her son was. No longer in the nebula, or in a vacuum, or in death, but in a city or a village, in a hotel or a house where there was a physical point, a phone, and probably a table and a bed. A real place. It was terrible not to know where it was, but at least Lorenza knew that such a place existed. And if it existed, she could get there.

The call lasted three minutes and seven seconds, as Guadalupe timed it and recorded it. And then Lorenza hung up and she was able to master the shock. Together, they listened to the tape again and again, lest any data, hint, or nuance escape them. During the three minutes and seven seconds, Lorenza had not protested or insulted, had not said anything off script. During the first two minutes, she had simply asked how Mateo was.

“Very well,” said the voice, and she thought she felt the presence of the child, believed to guess his breath, trying to quiet the noise of her own heart, which thundered in her ears, lest it prevented her from hearing the boy’s heart, which would be beating on the other side.

“He’s happy, eating well, sleeping well, has learned two new words and repeats them every hour. I’ll put him on in a moment so that he can tell you what they are himself. But he’s driving me crazy repeating them.”

Ramón’s voice sounded natural, almost festive, as if nothing had happened, as if it were simply the voice of a father who has taken his child to spend the weekend on a finca, like he was supposed to do, and was making a routine call to the mother to catch her up on things.

“Put him on,” Lorenza implored, trying not to sound too much like she was begging, trying to attune her voice to Ramón’s, trying to sound like him.

She was gleeful, almost happy, playing the same game, following Ramón’s lead like Haddad had indicated, as if nothing had happened, as if she had not dropped ten kilos, as if she had not remained awake for twenty days and nights, as if she were not a death in life, which only the presence of the son could resurrect, as if she were any mom who has packed the suitcase for her son, including his warm pants, a couple of toys, and teddy bear pajamas, because the son has gone with his father but only for the weekend.

“What words,” she openly pleaded now, “tell me what words Mateo has learned.”

“He’s going to tell you himself,” said Ramón, but he never put the boy on. “Just calling to tell you that Mateo is well and to ask how you yourself are.”

“I’ve been through hell but I’m fine now that I have heard from you,” said Lorenza, and wished she could insist that he put Mateo on. But Guadalupe was standing beside her, stopwatch in hand, making peremptory signs not to go there and putting before her eyes a paper with writing in big letters, the passage that they had calculated might precipitate the trip: Today, a man came looking for me demanding that I pay the money from a check. Tell me what to do, Ramón, that man is going to kill me if I don’t pay the money back.

Lorenza read what was written on the paper, word for word, trying not to make it sound like a reproach, but a matter of great concern.

“It was the same for me with my notebook. You also wrote down what you had to tell Ramón over the phone,” Mateo said.

“You see, you’re not alone in trying to tame tigers with words on paper.”

“That’s good, to get in the tiger’s cage and hit him over the head with a notebook. But go on, Lolé, what did the tiger say?”

“He said, tell him you’ll pay him next week and don’t get all heated up about it, this has all been well thought out.”

“Well thought out?” repeated Mateo. “How about that, my dad, on top of everything, well thought out? That’s his thing, trying to head a heist and ending up with a hit on the head. Did he say ‘heated’? What is heated?”

“He said not to get heated up, not to worry about it. I looked at Guadalupe, indicating that, yes, we had touched some nerve.”

“I see,” said Mateo. “According to him, you would not have to worry about paying that money because you would no longer be in Colombia when the narco lost his shit. But I don’t know, Lorenza, I think that Ramón’s motives were a little more entangled. Was he going to bring you to Argentina so that the narco would not kill you, or was he taunting the narco so that he’d force you to flee to Argentina?”

“Whatever it was, I clasped on like a tick and told your father in my most forlorn voice: ‘But that man is demanding that he be paid right away, Ramón, don’t leave me alone in this—’”

“I’ll call back tomorrow,” he said, and hung up without waiting for an answer.

“Swear, swear that you’ll call me tomorrow,” she pleaded, if only to the telephone because communication had already been cut.

She asked Guadalupe to leave her alone and began to weep like Mary Magdalene. Now you finally cry, enough to fill seas, praying, calling, cursing, crying, crying, crying, and choking on tears, burning her eyes with tears of salt, outside of any script and beyond any calculation, still stuck to the telephone as if to let it go were to let go of the three minutes and seven seconds of the Mateo she had recovered. After much weeping, she was finally able to fall asleep. She could get some sleep, because the prophecy of Haddad had begun to come true.