Juan Vásquez - The Informers

"I don't speak German."

"Well, it's your loss. Don't stand out. Don't call attention to yourself. Go along with people. That's all contained in that phrase. It was a sort of command for them. Papa repeated it all the time. I came out different: I was mouthy and sometimes insolent, I liked conflict. It was much more than saying what I thought. I did, but pounding the table or right in the face of my opponent, if necessary. Sara, in that, was a worthy representative of the immigrant community. And then later she was a worthy representative of Bogota society. It could be a slogan for Bogota, Bloss nicht auffallen , although only to your face. Behind your back people in Bogota will tear you to shreds. Anyway, I'd like to see a photo of her, a recent one. Have you seen photos of her when she was young?"

"One or two."

"And? Did she look like herself? Had she changed much?"

"The person in the photos was her. That's not always easy to see."

"Exactly. Maybe I was right."

"How did you hear she'd died?"

"The Ungars told me. Since they opened the Central I've ordered four or five books a year, books in German, always on horses, to keep in touch with the language. That's all I read. They told me. They called me as soon as they heard, that same night. I actually considered making the trip, going to the funeral, then I realized how absurd that would have been."

"And my dad's funeral? Didn't you think of attending that one?"

"I found out too late. Just think, he was killed two or three hours after talking to me: it was the most absurd thing in the world. Even when I found out, two days after the funeral, not even then did I entirely believe it. It had to be someone else, someone with the same name. Because that Gabriel Santoro had been killed on the twenty-third, the same day your dad and I had seen each other. No, it seemed impossible. First I thought it was you who'd died. What a terrible thing to say, I'm sorry, it's probably bad luck as well, but that's how it was. Then I thought there must be more than two people with that name in Colombia. A person invents things when they don't want to believe something, it's normal. I didn't want him to be dead, at least not after we talked, what we said, especially after what I said to him, or what I didn't say, yes, that more than anything, what I refused to say to him. And three hours later, he goes and gets himself killed. Sergio said, 'That's life, Dad. You just have to accept it.' I smacked him. I'd never hit him before in my life and I hit him when he said that to me."

"I even thought maybe he'd never come here."

"Of course he came," said Enrique. "And we were sitting right here. Here where you and I are. The only difference was that it was a Sunday and daytime. It was stifling. It had rained the night before, I remember that, and there were puddles here, we were surrounded by puddles, and even this bench was still a bit damp. But I didn't want to have him in my house, I can tell you now. I didn't want him stepping on my floor and sitting on my chairs, much less eating my food. Quite primitive, no? An educated person like you must think that sounds pretty basic. Well, maybe it is. What I felt, in any case, was that letting him in, showing him the photos on the shelves, letting him pick up my books and leaf through them, showing him the rooms, the bed where I slept and made love to my wife. . All that would contaminate me in some way, contaminate us. I had conserved the purity of my life, of my family for half a century, and I wasn't going to screw it all up now as an old man, just because Gabriel Santoro decided to show up and sort out his conscience before he died. That's what I thought. Yes, the first thing that came into my head was: He's dying. He must have cancer, or even AIDS; he's dying and he wants to leave everything in order. I was disparaging toward him, Gabriel, and I regret that. I disparaged the effort he'd made. What he did, coming here to talk to me, not many people could do that. But our position at that moment was very different: he had thought a lot about me, or at least that's what he said. I, on the other hand, had erased him from my memory. I suppose that's how things go, don't you think? The one who causes the offense remembers more than the offended one. And that's why it was almost inevitable that I would be disparaging, and almost impossible for me to appreciate the enormity of what he was doing. Besides, it was enjoyable to be disparaging, why should I deny it? A person feels good, I felt good. It was a sudden satisfaction, a sort of surprise gift.

"As if that weren't enough, I didn't know about his operation. He didn't tell me, I don't know why, so I held on to the idea of his being ill. I spent our whole conversation looking at him, trying to find inflamed glands on his neck, or the shape of a colostomy bag under his shirt, those things you get used to seeing after a certain age, when every time you run into a friend it might be the last time you see him. I looked at his eyes to see if they were yellow. He thought I was giving him my whole attention. Because I looked at him, I looked at him closely, and what I looked at most, obviously, was his right hand. Gabriel had said hello when he arrived, but he hadn't offered me his hand. Of course, I knew very well why not, and at that moment I had enough tact not to look at it, but deep down, very deep down, I was shocked that he hadn't shaken my hand, I felt that he hadn't greeted me properly. If he'd offered me his left hand. . or slapped me on the back. . no, that's unthinkable. But none of that happened. There was no contact when we saw each other, and I felt it was missing. It was like the encounter started off on the wrong foot, you know? It's strange how shaking hands is so conciliatory, regardless of how we might actually feel. It's like defusing a bomb, I've always seen it like that: a handshake is a very strange ceremony, one of those things that should have died out by now, like bows and curtsies. But no, it hasn't gone out of style. We still go around all over the place squeezing other people's fingers, because it's like saying, I mean you no harm. You mean me no harm. Of course, then everyone harms everyone else, everyone betrays each other all the time, but that's beside the point. It helps. Anyway, it didn't happen like that with Gabriel. There was no conciliation to start with, the bomb remained active.

"And sitting here we began to tell each other about our lives. I told him what I've just told you. He told me about your mum, he chose to start there, I don't know why. 'I confessed everything to her,' he told me. 'When I asked her to marry me, I also asked her to forgive me. It was a two-for-one offer, as they say.' He never talked about me to anybody, he never wrote my name down anywhere, but he told her everything as soon as he could. 'Confession is a great invention,' your dad said. Half seriously, half in jest. 'Priests are pretty cunning, Enrique. Those fellows know how things work.' A person would think that the death of someone who knows an evil secret would be a liberation, just as the death of a witness frees the murderer. But your mother's death was just the opposite for Gabriel. 'It was like my reprieve had been revoked.' That's how he explained it to me. Gabriel hadn't changed at all in that respect: he said everything with a certain coolness, a certain cynicism, just like when we were young. As if it had nothing to do with him, as if he were talking about someone else. With him every word had its contents, but it was also a tool for looking down from on high, for keeping his distance. You'll know better than me what I'm talking about. When I told him I'd read your book about Sara, he said, 'Oh yes, very good, very original. But what's original isn't good, and vice versa.' The same sentence you put in The Informers , isn't it? Well, with you one already knows: everything I say can be used against me. If I wasn't so old I'd think I had to be careful. But no. What do I need to be careful of now? What can I say at this age that could matter? What can they do to me if I tell? A person gets old and impunity lands on you, Gabriel, even if you don't want it. That was one of the things I said to your dad: 'Why now? Who's going to benefit from your coming here on your knees at this stage of life?' And it was true. Was it going to do my father any good after forty years in the ground? Was it any use to my mama, who had to reinvent her life at fortysomething, have children at an age when it can kill a woman? Reinventing yourself is painful, like surgery. After a certain point the challenge is overcome, the anesthesia of the emotion, of the pride at overcoming it, wears off, and you start to feel the most savage pain, you realize you've lost a leg, or your appendix, or at least they'd opened up your skin and flesh, and that hurts even if they didn't find a tumor. I knew it because I'd been through that, too. Through a reconstruction. Through the anguish of choices. It's a whole process: you can choose how you want to be, what you want to be, and even what you want to have been. That's the most tempting thing: to be another person. I had chosen to be the same but somewhere else. Change jobs but keep my name. 'It's of use to you,' Gabriel said to me. 'It has to be of use to you to know that I've carried this all these years, that I could have forgotten and I haven't. I've remembered, Enrique, I've stayed in the hell of remembering.' I told him not to be a martyr. A whole family had been ruined for one little word of his, so not to come here boasting of his memory. 'There's something I'd like to know,' he said then. 'Was I lucky or unlucky? Did you pay them to kill me, or just to scare the shit out of me?'