Juan Vasquez - The Secret History of Costaguana

Readers of the Jury, Eloísa dear: at some imprecise moment of that autumn night, the figure of Joseph Conrad — a man who asks me questions and will use my answers to write the history of Colombia, or the history of Costaguana, or the history of Colombia-Costaguana, or the history of Costaguana-Colombia — began to acquire for me an unexpected importance. I have often tried to locate that moment in the chronology of my own life, and recording it, I would very much like to use one of my solemn phrases of a Great Events Participant: “While in Russia the Party of the Workers divided into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, in London I opened my heart to a Polish writer.” Or: “Cuba leased the base at Guantánamo to the United States, and at the same time José Altamirano presented the history of Colombia to Joseph Conrad.” But I can’t do it. Writing these sentences is impossible, because I don’t know at what moment I opened my heart to him, nor when I handed over the history of my Republic. As the bogotáno biscuits Pérez Triana’s servant had baked were served? Maybe, but maybe not. As a faint-hearted sleet began to fall on the porch and the London sky prepared to drop the year’s first snowfall on the living and the dead? I don’t know, I couldn’t say. But that doesn’t matter; what matters is the intuition I had. And it was this: there, at 45 Avenue Road, under the auspices of Santiago Pérez Triana, I would answer Conrad’s questions, satisfy his curiosity; I’d tell him what I knew, all that I’d seen and all that I’d done, and in exchange he (faithfully, nobly) would tell my life story. And then. . then the things that happen when one’s life is written in golden letters on the notice board of destiny would happen.

History will absolve me, I thought, or I believe I thought (the phrase was not an original one). But I actually meant: “Joseph Conrad, absolve me.” Because it was in his hands. I was in his hands.

And now, finally, the moment has come. There is no sense in putting it off: I must speak of this guilt. “I could tell you episodes of the separatist revolution that would astound you,” says a character in the Damn Conradian Book. Well then, I can do that, too, I plan to do that, too. And so I return to the image of the Yucatán . I return to Manuel Amador.

I had met him, alongside my father, at the banquets Panama City offered years before for Ferdinand de Lesseps. How old was Don Manuel Amador? Seventy? Seventy-five? What had he been doing in New York, this man who was famous for his hatred of foreign travel? Why had no one come to meet him? Why was he in such a hurry and so reluctant to talk, why did he seem tense, why was he determined to be on the first train leaving for Panama City? Then I noticed that he wasn’t alone: one person had come to meet him, and had even boarded the Yucatán to accompany him (in view of his age, no doubt). It was Herbert Prescott, assistant superintendent of the Railroad Company. Prescott worked in the Railroad offices in Panama City, but it didn’t strike me as odd that he should have crossed the whole Isthmus to come and meet an old friend; Prescott, furthermore, knew me well (my father had been the Company’s prime publicist for several years) but nevertheless kept walking when I approached to say hello to Manuel Amador. I thought nothing of it; I concentrated on the Doctor. He looked so haggard I instinctively stretched out a hand to help him with the briefcase that looked too heavy for him, but Amador snatched the case out of my reach and I didn’t insist. It took me several years to understand what happened that day on the Company dock. I had to wait a long time to find out the historical contents of that briefcase, but it took only a couple of days to understand what was happening in my schizophrenic city.

There are good readers and bad readers of reality; there are men able to hear the secret murmur of events better than others. . From the moment I saw him flee from the Company dock, I didn’t stop thinking about Dr. Amador. His nerves had been clearly legible, as had his haste to get to Panama City; also the company of Herbert Prescott, who a few days later (on October 31 or November 1, I don’t know precisely) would return briefly, accompanied by four engine drivers, to take all the idle rolling stock from Colón station to Panama City. Everyone saw the empty trains leave, but no one thought for a second that it was anything other than some routine maintenance procedure. Anyway, the Gringos had always stood out for their rather strange ways of behaving, and I suppose even the witnesses had forgotten about it in a matter of hours. But the trains had gone. Colón was left without trains.

By November 2, however, it was no longer possible to avoid the force of events. While I was at the port waiting for my newspapers to arrive in some passenger steamer, what showed up on the horizon was something else entirely: a gunboat with a U.S. flag. It was the Nashville , which had arrived in record time from Kingston, and hadn’t yet been announced in the port of Colón (the Nashville became one more event, an event anchored innocently in the bay, ready to be interpreted). To me, an obsessive observer, the text of the story was completed the following morning: before the first glimmers of dawn, the lights of the Cartagena , battleship, and the Alexander Bixio , merchant steamer, were visible from the port; both, of course, were as Colombian as Panama. Before lunch — it was a sunny day, the still waters of Limón Bay sparkled pacifically, and I was planning to pick up Eloísa from school and share a grilled mojarra fish while we watched the ships — I guessed what the cargo was. It wasn’t very difficult to find out that those two ships, veterans of the War of a Thousand One Hundred and Twenty-eight Days, were bringing five hundred government soldiers under the command of Generals Juan B. Tovar and Ramón Amaya to Panamanian soil.

I didn’t say anything to Eloísa. Before falling asleep I had associated the hasty and almost clandestine presence of the five hundred soldiers with the trains that Prescott had taken to Panama City. And before dawn broke the certainty that a revolution would take place in Panama City that very day woke me. Before night falls, I thought, the Isthmus of Panama — that place where my father had lived his heyday and his decline, the place where I’d met my father, fallen in love, and had a daughter — before night falls, I said to myself, the Isthmus will have declared its independence from Colombia. The idea of a fractured map frightened me, of course, and imagining the blood and death every revolution brings with it frightened me. . It was no later than seven when I threw on a cotton shirt and a felt hat and began to walk toward the Railroad Company. I confess: I wasn’t very sure of my intentions, if I even had in mind anything as complex as an intention. But I knew at that moment there was no better place in the world than the Company offices, there was nowhere I would rather have found myself on that November morning.

When I arrived at the offices, in that stone building resembling a colonial prison, I found them deserted. This, moreover, was logical: if there were no trains in the terminus station, why should there be any engine drivers, mechanics or ticket collectors, or any passengers? But I didn’t leave, I didn’t go looking for anyone, because in some obscure way I had guessed something would happen in this place. I was still formulating these absurd deliberations when three figures came in through the stone arches: Generals Tovar and Amaya were walking together, their pace almost synchronized, and the uniforms they wore seemed about to succumb to the bristling weight of belts, epaulettes, medals, and swords. The third man was Colonel James Shaler, superintendent of the Railroad Company, one of the most popular and respected Gringos in the whole Isthmus and an old acquaintance of my father’s. It was obvious from his greeting, halfway between affectionate and concerned, that Colonel Shaler wasn’t expecting to see me there. But I wasn’t prepared to move: I ignored the hints and brush-offs, and went as far as to raise one hand to my forehead to salute the governmental generals. Just then, on the other side of the building, the tapping of the telegraph began. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but the Railroad Company had the only means of communication between Colón and Panama City. Colonel Shaler found himself obliged to answer the incoming message. Reluctantly, he left me alone with the generals. We were in the entrance hall of the building, barely protected from the killing heat that by then, just after eight in the morning, was beginning to come in through the wide door. None of us spoke: we all feared revealing too much. The generals arched their eyebrows the way children do when they suspect a salesman is trying to trick them. And at that moment I understood.