Juan Vásquez - The Informers

"That day at the Hotel Sabaneta was one of the strangest experiences of my life. It was a luxurious place. In normal times it must have been more expensive than ours, and that was saying something. Well, I don't know, I can't be sure, but it was a first-class place. Of course, it's hot over there, and that changes everything. Where we had a fireplace and heavy ponchos for the guests, they had enormous gardens with people sunning themselves in bathing suits. There was a huge swimming pool, something I'd hardly ever seen, and even fewer times had I seen so many blond heads atop seminaked bodies; it was a holiday resort like the French Riviera. Since the men spent most of their time alone, they saw no reason not to lie in the sun almost completely naked, and on visiting days the wives would find themselves with these people red as beets, some of them almost had sunstroke. That day the place was full. Imagine, a hundred and fifty families in a hotel where there was normally room for no more than fifty. It was like being in a bazaar, Gabriel. No one would have called those fellows prisoners of war. But that's what they were, no? Prisoners of war taking the sun. Prisoners of war sitting on a blanket eating roast chicken, an enviable picnic. Prisoners of war strolling with their daughters and wives along the most picturesque little gravel paths. Prisoners of war doing calisthenics in the gymnasium. Among them were some older men who walked around all day long properly dressed in white suits and ties, felt hats. Old Konrad was one of those, wearing a collar and tie in spite of the heat. The only ones more overdressed than him were the police on guard duty, with their police caps and sabers at their waists, the most pathetic little figures. Konrad was sitting on a balcony on the second floor. There was another person sitting about two meters away from him. Papa recognized him: 'Shit, I didn't know Thieck was here.' That's what he said, he said it in German, complete with vulgarity. He was very startled to see that Thieck. He was one of the important men of the Barranquilla colony. He worked at Bayer. He must've stayed at the hotel once or twice, I don't remember anymore, but the important thing is that he was sitting two meters away from Konrad and not a word passed between them, and a place like the Sabaneta really fostered sociability. Anyway, Konrad was there, with his back turned to the other man. We waved to him as soon as we got out of the car, as enthusiastically as possible, and he didn't even lift his hand, as though the newspaper were weighing him down.

"That visit was terrible. The old man was disturbing us all with his unbearable repetition of the same old story: 'I have not done anything, I swear, I am a friend to Colombia and to democracy, I am an enemy of all the dictatorships of the world, I am an enemy of the tyrant, I love this country that has been my host,' et cetera, et cetera. And he showed us a shadow he had under his eye. It seems he had come to blows with someone who dared to speak of Himmler with respect. There was no way to make him shut up for a second, or for him to see a stranger and not immediately leap on him to tell him his woes and convince him of his innocence. It was a lamentable spectacle. And all the time he was carrying that briefcase he carried till his death, he took it everywhere, all around the hotel, and if you weren't careful he'd sit down beside you and take out all the documents concerning his case and show them to you. He'd take out the letters he'd written explaining the misunderstandings, the letters his wife had written, the replies they'd received, the newspaper from the day his name appeared on the list. He carried all that everywhere he went, 'In case I run into a good lawyer by chance,' he said. That time it was our turn; for the old man we were the closest thing to confidants. We were sitting on that balcony, above a climbing bougainvillea, watching the people swimming in the pool and spreading towels on the grass to sun themselves. Our rented paradise, no? Then at some point my father got up to go over to talk to another of the internees, a Jewish man from Cali he knew by name. The old man was speaking in German, as he always did when he spoke of emotions, of feelings, since he felt less vulnerable in his native tongue. 'In these papers there's one thing missing, Sarita. Do you know what that is? I'll let you guess. Go on, guess. I've got everything here, see, things about myself that even I didn't know. Let's see if you knew, Sarita, did you know that I'm connected to platinum traffickers? I bet you didn't, did you? But that's how it is, Cristales Deresser is suspected of collaborating in the trafficking of platinum to Hamburg, ah yes, see what a well-organized business we've set up. The platinum comes from Cali, arrives in Bogota, and by way of Cristales Deresser gets sent to Barranquilla and then shipped to Europe. It seems I'm linked to my associates in Barranquilla by mutual friendship with Herr Bethke. What it is to have friends in common, eh? It's good to be with your own people abroad; the language is our homeland and all that. Let's see what else I have here. . I can always find more interesting documents, this briefcase is infinite. Look, I can tell you that my company is mentioned in letters from the Legation, yes, the Bogota Legation writes to the Lima Legation and mentions me, I must be important. Of course I also have documents that don't mention me but rather my good friends, you know who I'm referring to. El Siglo . November of the year of Our Lord 1943. Yes, we do get the newspapers here, don't think they keep us uninformed. Let's see, under B for Bethke, let's see what the list says, yes, B for Barranquilla. Did you know he was a member of the German Club? Did you know he lives in El Prado? Yes, here in my briefcase I've got all this, but something's missing, can't you guess what it is? I'm going to tell you and don't be startled. It's a letter of farewell.' Then he went from irony to tears. You should have seen him, he seemed like a lost child. 'I don't care if it's written in pencil on a paper napkin, there is no note here that says I'm going. You don't know what that means, arriving home one day and that happens. . Living with someone is many things, one day you'll find out, but one of them is waiting for homecoming time, because everyone has a time they get home, everyone who has a house has a time for coming home to it. It's not a routine, it's something that gradually takes over. I suppose it must be an animal instinct, no? A person wants to get to the place where he's safe, where it's least likely something bad will happen to him.' Enrique had written to him a few days earlier to tell him that Margarita had left. 'One day she didn't come home, Sarita, just like that. How could she do that to her family? I close my eyes and imagine Enrique awake and waiting for her, Sarita, hearing noises, and then the telephone rings and it's her, Sarita, there she is telling her son she's not coming home anymore, that she'll write to me later to say good-bye. Like that, nothing more, she left me a message, she left me a message and she went away, and of course she never did say good-bye, not even a letter of farewell. I don't know where she is, or who with, I don't know what her life's like anymore, I'm never going to know ever again. I pray to heaven nothing like this ever happens to you, Sarita. I wouldn't wish this on anybody.'

"He told me all that. But he didn't stop there. He told me about the first days. They'd been horrifying, he explained. Horrifying the first time the hotel administrator looked at him pityingly after having found out, and then, when everyone at the table must've known, horrifying the first time a letter arrived he didn't immediately recognize. He took it, sure it would be from Margarita, and it turned out to be from the Spanish Embassy, in charge of German assets during those years. They were notifying him of the state of his reserves. When he looked up he noticed that everyone else was watching him, not trying to hide it at all. They'd all stopped playing bridge or reading the paper and were watching him; they wanted to know if Margarita had come back, too. Or rather they knew the letter wasn't from Margarita and they wanted to see poor Konrad's face. 'They were making fun of me. They were laughing behind my back.' Most of the Germans that were held there were people with money, and many could allow themselves the luxury of buying a house in the village so their families could live nearby. For them things were easier. With a permit, which wasn't so difficult to obtain, they could go and sleep in their houses. They had family. They had wives, they had children. Konrad didn't have any of that anymore. 'They all looked at me with pity but inside they were laughing, they were killing themselves laughing, and I'm sure the laughter exploded as soon as I went to my room. The people in this place are the most despicable I've ever had the misfortune to know. Even the Italians, Sarita, even the Italians laugh at me. My disgrace is better than a book for them, I'm their melodrama, I keep them entertained. I'm alone here, Sarita, I don't have anybody.' Everything he would have liked to say to the Committee, to the U.S. ambassador, he said to me in the Sabaneta. And not many could endure that. There was Konrad spewing out his personal tragedy, and there's nothing less bearable than hearing disgraces one hasn't requested. Until I stood up and said, 'I'm sorry, Herr Konrad, I can't stay any longer. I'm going to find my father. We have to go back to Bogota and then on to Duitama. Think of the trip we have ahead of us. I've got work to do, you see, you know what a hotel's like,' and I left, I cut him off in midsentence and I left. It wasn't true that we were going to go back at that time, of course. We were planning to stay the night in a guesthouse in Fusagasuga that a local opportunist had opened for precisely that purpose, because there were lots of families who came from Bogota to see their fathers. We had reserved a room, we were going to return to the Sabaneta the next morning to say good-bye to the old man, but I begged that we should go straight back to Bogota. 'What an ill-mannered girl,' my father said, but I thought something worse: what a cynical girl. I had already started turning that way. Well, cynical and all, I insisted so much that in the end that's what we did. We didn't see Konrad again. After that day, I never visited him again. My father went a couple more times, but I refused. I'm quite sure I couldn't have stood it.