Juan Vasquez - The Secret History of Costaguana

“Sit down, man, don’t be foolish,” he said. “You have come here to listen to offers. And I have a very good one, Colonel.”

Colonel Torres tried to interrupt him — his hand went up, his throat emitted a snarl — but Shaler, consummate hypnotist, shut him up with his gaze. Before the day was out, he explained, the battleships Dixie and Maryland would appear in Limón Bay, full to the gunnels with U.S. Marines. The Cartagena had fled at the slightest sign of confrontation, and that should give him an idea of the central government’s position. On the other hand, nobody could shout about independence as long as the Tiradores remained physically present on the Isthmus, and the Cartagena was the battalion’s only means of transport. “But this morning things have changed, Colonel Torres,” said Shaler. “If you look out toward the port, you’ll see anchored in the distance a steamship with a Colombian flag. It’s the Orinoco , a passenger ship.” Colonel Shaler steadied his spider-like hands on the dark wood of the oak table, on each side of a coffee served in French porcelain, and said that the Orinoco would be sailing for Barranquilla at half past seven that evening. “Colonel Torres: I’ve been authorized to offer you the sum of eight thousand U.S. dollars if you and your men can be on board by then.”

“But this is a bribe,” said Torres.

“Certainly not,” said Shaler. “That money is for rations for your troops, who well deserve it.”

And at that moment, like a punctual extra in a theater play — and we already know, Readers of the Jury, who was angelically directing ours — the revolutionaries’ agent in Colón, Porfirio Meléndez, appeared on my front porch. He was accompanied by a cargador from the Freight House carrying a chest on his shoulders, like he would a small child (as if the cargador was a proud father and the leather chest his son who wanted to see the parade).

“Is this it?” asked Shaler.

“This is it,” said Meléndez.

“Lunch is almost ready,” said Eloísa.

“I’ll let you know,” I told her.

The cargador dropped the chest on the table and the cups jumped in their saucers, splashing the coffee left in them and coming perilously close to getting chipped. Colonel Shaler explained that inside were eight thousand dollars removed from the coffers of the Panama Railroad Company under the guarantee of the Brandon Bank of Panama City. Colonel Torres stood up, walked to the porch, and said something to his bugler, who immediately disappeared. Then he returned to the negotiating table (to my dining-room table, awaiting a fish stew and finding itself involuntarily transformed into a negotiating table). He did not say a single word, but Shaler the hypnotist didn’t need words at that moment. He understood. He understood perfectly.

Porfirio Meléndez opened the chest.

“Count it,” he said to Torres. But Torres had folded his arms and did not move.

“Altamirano,” said Shaler, “you’re the host of this meeting. You represent neutrality, you’re the judge. Count the money, please.”

Readers of the Jury: the Angel of History’s sense of humor, that sublime comedian, was confirmed for the umpteenth time on that fifth of November 1903, between one and four in the afternoon, in the Altamirano-Madinier house in the Christophe Colomb neighborhood of the future Republic of Panama. During those hours I, evangelist of the crucifixion of Colombia, handled a greater quantity of U.S. dollars than I had ever in my life seen in one place. The acrid, metallic smell of the dollars stuck to my hands, these clumsy hands that were not used to touching what they held that afternoon. My hands don’t know — have never known — how to shuffle cards for poker; imagine how they felt faced with what fate brought before them that day. . Eloísa, who had stopped in the frame of the kitchen door with a wooden spoon in her hand, ready to give me a taste of the stew, witnessed my quasi-notarial labor. And something happened at that moment, because I was unable to look her in the eye. I am flesh of Colón flesh . Eloísa did not remind me out loud, but she didn’t have to: she didn’t have to pronounce those words for me to hear them. I am blood of Panamanian blood . We did not share that, Eloísa dear, that’s what separated us. In the middle of the revolution that would carry off Panama, I realized that you, too, could be dragged far away from me; the Isthmus was detaching itself from the continent and beginning to distance itself from Colombia, floating in the Caribbean Sea like an abandoned lighter, and carrying off my daughter, my daughter who had fallen asleep inside, under the palm leaves, on top of the cases of coffee covered in ox hides like my stepfather used to use in happier times, when he traded up and down the Magdalena River. . My hands moved, passing worn bills and piling up silver coins, but I could have paused to tell her to go ahead and eat her lunch, or given her a complicit or perhaps cheerful glance so we understood each other, but none of that happened. I kept counting with my head bowed, like a medieval thief about to be decapitated, and after a certain point the movements became so automatic that my mind could occupy itself with the other thoughts pushing and shoving their way in. I wondered if my mother had died in pain, what my father would have thought if he’d seen me at this juncture. . I thought of the dead engineer, of his dead son, of the profound irony that yellow fever should have given me the only love I’d ever known. . All the images were ways of avoiding the limitless humiliation that was overwhelming me. And then, at some moment, my humiliated voice began to give out figures almost of its own accord. Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-seven. Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight. Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine. The end.

Colonel Shaler left as soon as Torres declared himself satisfied with the receipt of his money for rationing his troops; before leaving, he said to Torres: “Send one of your men to the Company offices before six to collect the tickets. Tell him to ask for me, I’ll be expecting him.” Then he said good-bye to me with a rather casual salute. “Altamirano, you’ve been of great service to us,” he said. “The Republic of Panama is grateful.” He turned toward Eloísa and clicked his heels. “Señorita, a pleasure,” he said, and she nodded, still with the wooden spoon in hand, and soon went back into the kitchen to serve lunch, because life had to go on.

Now you can understand, Eloísa: it was the most bitter fish stew I’ve ever eaten. The yucca and the arracacha tasted like much-handled coins. The flesh of the fish did not smell of onion or coriander but of dirty dollar bills. Eloísa and I lunched as the street filled with soldiers’ movements, the laborious drive of the battalion taking down their tents and packing up their equipment and beginning to depart Christophe Colomb for the Railroad Company wharf, to leave the way open for the revolution. Later the sky cleared and a merciless sunlight fell over Colón like a herald of the dry season. Eloísa, I remember perfectly the expression of serenity, of complete confidence, with which you went to your room, picking up the copy of María you were reading, and lay down in your hammock. “Wake me up when it gets dark,” you said. And in a matter of minutes you’d fallen asleep, with your index finger stuck between the pages of the novel, looking like the Virgin receiving the Annunciation.

Eloísa dear: God knows, if he exists, that I did all I could to let you catch me in the act. My body, my hands, took on a deliberate slowness in the process of taking out of the utility room (which in the houses on stilts of Christophe Colomb was barely a corner in the kitchen) the smallest trunk, one I could carry without help. I dragged it instead of picking it up, perhaps intending that the noise might wake you, and when I dropped it onto the bed, I didn’t worry about the creaking of the wood. Eloísa, I even allowed myself time to choose certain outfits, discard some, carefully fold the others. . all to try to give you time to wake up. I looked on the desk that had belonged to Miguel Altamirano for a leather bookmark; you didn’t notice when I took the book out of your hands taking care not to lose your place. And there, standing next to your sleeping body that did not sway in your hammock, beside your breathing so quiet that the movements of your chest and shoulders were not visible at first glance, I looked through the novel for the letter in which María confesses to Efraín that she is ill, that she is slowly dying. He, from London, comes to believe that only his return can save her and sets off immediately; a short time later he passes through Panama, crosses the Isthmus, and boards the schooner Emilia López that takes him to Buenaventura. At that moment, on the brink of doing what I was planning to do, I felt for Efraín the most intense sympathy I’ve ever felt for anyone in my life, because I seemed to see in his fictional destiny an inverted and distorted version of my real destiny. By way of Panama, he returns from London to find his beloved; from Panama, I was beginning to flee, leaving behind that budding woman who was my entire life, and London was one of my probable destinations.