Juan Vasquez - The Secret History of Costaguana

Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Colón, January 29, 1855

At last it has happened: the Railroad has been inaugurated, and it was my privilege to witness such a great step forward toward Progress. The ceremony, in my modest opinion, was not as lavish as the event warranted; but the whole town came out to celebrate, the unofficial representatives of all Humanity, and in these streets one hears all the languages man’s genius has created. 2. . In the crowd, veritable Ark of human races, I was surprised to recognize a certain Melo-supporting lieutenant, whose name is not worth writing down. He was banished to Panama as punishment for participating in the coup, yes, the very one that my humble services contributed to toppling. When he told me, I confess, I was flabbergasted. Panama, punishment for rebels? The Isthmus, Residence of the Future, a place to banish enemies of democracy? Little could I find to contradict him. I had to bow to the evidence; what I consider a prize, one of the greatest my worthless life has granted me, is for my own government a disaster just short of the gallows. . Your words, dear lady, are daggers that pierce my heart. Spurn me, but do not repudiate me; insult me, but do not ignore me. I am, since that night, your deferential servant, and I do not close the door to our reencounter. . The Isthmus’s climate is marvelous. The skies are clear, the air sweet. Its reputation, I can now say, is a tremendous injustice.

Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Colón, April 1, 1855

The climate is lethal. It never stops raining, the houses flood; the rivers burst their banks and people sleep in the treetops; above puddles of still water swarm clouds of mosquitoes that look like locusts from ancient Babylon; the train carriages have to be cared for as if they were babes in arms for fear they’ll be devoured by the humidity. Plague reigns over the Isthmus, and sick men wander the city, some begging for a glass of water to bring down the fever, others dragging themselves to the hospital doors, under the illusion that a miracle will save their lives. . A few days ago we recovered the corpse of Lieutenant Campillo; now it is justifiable to commit his name to paper, though not for that any less painful. 3. . I must assume that your reply has gone astray; the reverse would be inadmissible. Dear lady, there is a conspiracy of fate that prevents my forgetting, for I am constantly crossing paths with messengers of memory. The lives of the locals begin each morning with the sacred ritual of coffee and quinine, which protects them from the phantoms of fever; and I myself have adopted the customs of those I visit, for I judge them healthy. So what can I do if every tiny grain brings me the flavor of our night? What can I do?

Letter from Antonia de Narváez to Miguel Altamirano, Honda, May 10, 1855

Do not write to me, sir, and do not seek me. I consider this exchange closed and what was between us forgotten. My husband has died; know this, Don Miguel Altamirano, from this day on I am dead to you. 4

Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Colón, July 29, 1855

With my face disfigured by incredulity, I read over your terse message. Do you really expect me to obey your orders? By issuing them, do you seek to put my feelings to the test? You leave me, my dear lady, in an impossible situation, for complying with your directive would be to destroy my love, and not doing so would be to go against you. . You have no reason to doubt my words; the death of Mr. William Beckman, honorable man and favored guest of our nation, has deeply saddened me. You are excessively sparing with your words, my dear, and I do not know if it would be rash to inquire into the circumstances of the tragedy on the same page as I transmit my most sincere condolences to you. . I do so desire to see you again. . but I cannot dare request your presence, and at times I think that perhaps it is this that has offended you. If this is the case, I beg you to understand me: here there are no women or children. So insalubrious is this land, that men prefer solitude during the course of their stay. They know, because experience has shown it to be so, that bringing their family with them is to condemn them to death as efficiently as running a machete through their chests. 5These men, who have come to cross from one ocean to another toward gold mines in the land of California, are in search of instant riches, it’s true, and they are willing to stake their own lives on it; but not those of their loved ones, for to whom would they return with their pockets filled with gold dust? No, my dear lady; if we are to see one another again, it will be in a more pleasant spot. That is why I await your summons; a word, a single one, and I shall be at your side. Until that moment, until you concede me the grace of your company,

I remain yours,

Miguel Altamirano

Eloísa dear: this letter received no reply.

Nor did the next.

Nor did the next.

And thus ended the correspondence, at least as far as this tale is concerned, between the two individuals who with time and certain circumstances I have grown accustomed to calling my parents. The reader of the preceding pages will look in vain for a reference to Antonia de Narváez’s pregnancy, not to mention to the birth of her son. The letters I have not copied also take meticulous care to hide the first nauseas, the protruding belly, and, of course, the details of the birth. So Miguel Altamirano would wait a long time before finding out that his sperm had got its way, that a son of his had been born in the country’s interior.

My date of birth was always a small domestic mystery. My mother celebrated my birthday indiscriminately on July 20, August 7, and September 12; I, as a simple matter of dignity, have never celebrated it. As for places, I can say the following: unlike the majority of human beings, I know that of my conception but not that of my birth. Antonia de Narváez once told me, and then regretted having done so, that I was born in Santa Fe de Bogotá, in a gigantic bed covered in uncured hides and beside a chair whose back was carved with a certain noble coat of arms. On sad days, my mother rescinded that version: I had been born in the middle of the Muddy Magdalene, on a barge that sailed from Honda to La Dorada, between bundles of tobacco and oarsmen frightened at the spectacle of that deranged white woman and her open legs. But, in light of all the evidence, that birth most likely took place on the solid riverbank ground of the predictable city of Honda and, to be precise, in that very room of the Beckman guest house where the owner, the good-natured man who would have been my stepfather, put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger upon learning that what was in that swollen belly was not his.

I have always thought admirable the coldness with which my mother says in her letter, “My husband has died,” when in reality she is referring to a horrid suicide that tormented her for decades and for which she would never stop feeling in part guilty. Long before his miserable cuckolded tropical fate, Beckman had asked — you know how these adventurers’ last requests are — to be buried in the Muddy Magdalene; and early one morning his body was taken out by a lighter to the middle of the river and thrown overboard so he could sink into the adjective-riddled waters of that unbearable song. As the years went by he became the protagonist of my childhood nightmares: a mummy wrapped in canvas who came up onto the beach, leaking water through the hole in the back of his head and half devoured by the bocachico fish, to punish me for lying to my elders or for killing birds with stones, for swearing or for that time I tore the wings off a fly and told it to fuck off on foot. The white figure of the suicide Beckman, my putative and dead father, was my worst nocturnal threat until I was able to read, for the first of many times, the story of a certain Captain Ahab.