Juan Vásquez - The Informers

"That day we ended up leaving the boardinghouse very late. We realized we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and of course Josefina had nothing to offer us. Although it was obvious, I said to Gabriel that it was too late to go to the cemetery, and asked him if he wanted to go the next day. But his mind was elsewhere. He didn't look at me, didn't hear me, and he was walking three steps ahead of me as if I were his body-guard. I thought he was going to suggest we go to the Parque de los Periodistas, or to look for the physical space where Deresser had died, but he didn't. And then I began to think what I later managed to put into words: Gabriel hadn't taken me to see Josefina to find out what she knew, or at least that wasn't his only reason. We'd gone to see her, and had listened to her talk and talk and talk for a whole afternoon, to confirm what she didn't know. Because it was perfectly obvious that this woman had lived all those months with Konrad Deresser without it mattering a damn to her where he came from or where he was going or why he was in the mess he was in or how he thought he'd get out of it. If she hadn't asked, we were both thinking, why was he going to explain. 'If he didn't explain it to her,' Gabriel said to me then, 'that means he hadn't explained it to anyone.' That's what he said. And I agreed, of course. It was the most logical explanation. And in spite of being so logical, and in spite of my agreeing, I didn't ask Gabriel why all that seemed so important to him. Most of all, why confirming that had seemed more urgent than going straight out to find his friend. Although the following day he did. He went to look for Enrique and didn't find him, he didn't find anybody. Much later we found out that Enrique had left home. Later, that he'd left Colombia. That was what your dad found out. But he didn't find out where he'd gone.

"I didn't want to go with him that time. I was too overwhelmed by all that had happened. I'd seen more than one case like that, of course. I'd seen my fair share of failures, of people who'd gone under, but this was different. I'd never seen anything like that up close and never anyone who'd killed himself. Yes, I'd heard of people who'd killed themselves; in those years it wasn't such an exotic thing. News from Germany, but also from immigrants. But what do you want me to say? When something like that happens to someone you know, who you've spoken to and seen and touched, it's like finding out for the first time. As if up to that moment you didn't know that was possible, to kill yourself because of problems. Konrad's case stood out, not because it was odd, but because it was close. Thousands of Germans went through the same thing with the blacklists, then their assets were frozen and put into trusts. Thousands were left absolutely ruined, watched for five years as their money went up in a puff of smoke. Thousands. After the blacklists, getting sent to the Fusagasuga internment camp was child's play; for old Konrad it was almost a rest, because by the time they sent him there his inclusion on the blacklist had left him almost bankrupt. Those interned in the camps were fed, and they didn't have to worry about utility bills and all those things. In theory, the government took their expenses out of their accounts, but if the internee had no money, what were they going to do, starve him to death? No, they went on giving him what they gave the others, and that's what must've happened with the old man. In any case, these ones were almost lucky; that's what you can see over time. One hundred and fifty, two hundred Germans, almost all upper class, were guests of the state under the pretext of having links with the Nazis or spreading propaganda or whatever, and of course, sometimes it was true. In that place there were people of the worst sort just as there were harmless little men who wouldn't hurt a fly. Some had already been on the lists, but not always. The old man had, and that's what matters. The punishment of the lists was suffered by thousands, like I said, but we only saw one fall from start to finish like that, like a plane, like a duck that had been shot, and that was Enrique's dad. Old Konrad, who wasn't old. We called him that because his hair was gray, but he was only about fifty-five when he killed himself. I've known people just starting out at that age.

"I remember the piece of paper, as if I had it right here; worse, it's strange that I don't have it. I suppose I got the collecting bug later, no? No one grasps the importance of what's happening when it's actually happening. If a genie appeared and offered me three wishes, that's what I'd ask for, to know how to recognize things that are going to be important later. I don't mean for other people, that's always easy to tell. For instance, we all knew that with Gaitan that was it. When they killed him, we all knew this country would never recover. No, with public things it's different; I'd like to recognize them when they happen to me, that phrase your best friend says, that thing you see by accident-one doesn't know that it's important. I'd like to know it. Well, later the lists appeared in books, facsimiles, as they called them, and we could see them, the ones who wanted to could see what those little pieces of paper that buggered us up so much, pardon my French, looked like. The circulars the gringos sent, and all, you know? The heading, the name of the country between two lines, the month in English and the translation. The thirty or forty pages of names. The names, Gabriel, the thousands and thousands of names all over Latin America. Hundreds of names in Colombia. That was the important part.

"Nice and organized, in alphabetical order, not in order of warrant or degree of danger. The owner of a bookshop in Barranquilla where Nazis held meetings and where they gave away free copies of Mein Kampf to everyone who came in-that man's name would be alongside a poor Japanese greengrocer who'd sold a few potatoes and carrots to the Spanish Embassy, and for that alone, just for exchanging a few of his vegetables for a bit of cash from the Franco regime, they put him on the blacklist. What power a list can have, no? That column down the left with all the letters exactly the same, all capitals, one after another, it's always fascinated me. I've always found lists enthralling, why should I deny it? There's nothing wrong in that either, I suppose, nothing reproachable. A telephone directory was the best thing I could have when I was little; I'd put my finger at the top and slide it down a page where they were all L's or M's, where they were all W's. The feeling of tranquillity that gives you. The feeling that there is an order to the world. Or at least that it can be put into order. Take the chaos of a hotel, for example, and you put it down on a list. I don't care if it's a list of things to do, of guests, the payroll. Everything that needs to be is there and what's not there isn't because it shouldn't be there . And you breathe easy, sure of having done things as they need to be done. Control. That's what you have when you make a list: absolute control. The list is in charge. A list is a universe. What isn't in a list doesn't exist for anyone. A list is proof of the nonexistence of God. I said that to Papa once and he slapped me across the face. I said it to sound interesting, a bit to see what would happen, and that's what happened, a slap. But deep down it's true. Well, anyway, in December 1943, on page 6, Enrique's father's name appeared on the list. Above him was 'DeLaura, Luciano, PO Box 199, Cali.' Below him was 'Droguerias Munich, Tenth Avenue no. 19–22, Bogota.' And in between those two, in that space so neat and orderly, was Enrique's father. 'Deresser, Konrad. Cristales Deresser, Thirteenth Street no. 7-17, Bogota.' That simple, all on one line, name, business, and address, and they didn't even have to use two lines, didn't even have to break into the margin the way they do when a single item occupies two lines in a list. That always bothers me, taking up two lines when one is sufficient, because it looks ugly. Old Konrad would have agreed with me. Old Konrad was always very orderly.