Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

Marta moved to the wall and said, obviously Amos is part of my decision, but he isn’t all of it, don’t you see? don’t you understand? Egiswanda’s story was a great revelation. It filled me with questions, things like: would I be capable of giving up everything for something I believed in or for something I wanted without thinking about the risks? have I ever believed in anything or anybody intensely enough to do that? You’ll say that’s simplistic, but these are the questions I’m asking myself right now and they seem important to me, and I think most people ask themselves these questions all the time, in every foot of this overpopulated planet there’s somebody asking themselves things like that, that’s the truth of life, and I tell you something: if in your books you dealt with this subject and imagined answers, you’d be more successful, you’d increase your loyal readership, you’d be translated into Icelandic and I’d be able to read you, anyway, to go back to what I was saying, I’m staying in the city, I decided last night, while I was trying to sleep. I realized that I’d never believed in anything seriously and that’s why I never made a radical commitment, not even to journalism, which to be honest I couldn’t care less about, like almost everything right now except the questions I’m asking myself, which I want to answer and which have to do with the fact of being more or less European and white and being born in that rich protectorate that’s the north of the world, where everything’s arranged so that nothing ever shocks you, and where life ought really to disgust us.

That’s what many of us feel: disgust or shame or uncontrollable anger. When I heard Egiswanda, I felt ridiculous, poor, disgustingly poor in spirit. I felt an infinite sadness, having it all and at the same time having nothing. It’s contradictory, isn’t it? The things that stifle me today are the result of wars and destruction and learned books and terrible peace treaties; many people have died so that we, the grandchildren of the century, can have what is crushing us today, as if we were on the verge of falling into a deep sleep, an opium sleep. Coming to a place like this is a way of waking up completely, opening your eyes and, once they are wide open, you can’t let them close; beyond the borders of our beautiful countries there is a terrifying outside world filled with life, a black sun that stretches over a number of continents, only revealing its beauty after the first impact. What you see on the surface is horrible and cruel, but slowly the beauty emerges; in our world, on the other hand, the surface is lovely and everything is bright and shiny, but with time what we see is the horror. I don’t want to go back to that opium dream that’s our paradise of the north, I’m staying here, with real people and real problems, where everyone has to go up on the trapeze without a net and the struggle for existence is real and not a metaphor; I’ve found life here, I’ve understood the value of that miraculous, fragile thing called life and that’s why I’ve developed an overwhelming desire to live it, to exhaust it to the last drop, what a miracle. This I discovered thanks to Amos, with his pink fingers and sweet penis; the best way to live life to the full is to take it to the limits, putting your face in its deepest depths, its edges, its caverns and ruined palaces, only that way will we keep our bodies hot and our heads boiling with dreams, I’m staying here and I’m in love with Amos, I love him with all my heart and with my vagina, both throb for him, my chest is bursting, I’m wetting my panties, everything is happening because of him.

That’s fine, Marta, I understand you, I said, you’ll be part of that smaller stream of contrary immigrants, those who go from the north and its wealth to lose themselves in the tropics or the deserts or the jungles of the south, you see, that demonstrates that paradise isn’t in any one place and everyone paints it with the color of his own needs, because you have to be aware of the fact that this boring, predictable, overprotected life you curse is the dream of millions of poor Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans; the dream of all those who see their children die of typhoid or malaria in the slums of Khartoum or Dar Es Salaam, the young people who fall asleep in their rickshaws in broad daylight because of malnutrition in New Delhi; the dream of those who grow up without schools or health and have to make do later on with picking up a rifle or a package of drugs in Burma or Liberia or Colombia; the dream of those who, because of poverty, lose their humanity and are capable of cutting throats, decapitating, lopping off arms and legs, castrating. You want their smiles and their dances and their freshness and their contagious optimism and they want your schools and libraries, your hospitals, your thirty-five-hour weeks and your paid vacations, your labor laws and your human rights, and of course they also want the abundance and the glitter. You want their soul and they want your money. The difference is that they can’t choose and you can. You can have both worlds just by wanting them. They can’t. Their world is a prison from which they can only escape by knocking down a wall or jumping into the sea or digging tunnels as if they were rodents; you just have to buy an airline ticket, you don’t even need a visa. To get what you despise, they risk their lives, you know what the fundamental difference is? that the rich can choose to be poor if they want, or pretend to be poor, but never the opposite. I was silent for a second and then said, what’s going to happen to your articles?

Marta gave a weary gesture and slapped the air. I’ll carry on writing, she said, but differently. Not to satisfy that daily appetite for the latest news, but writing non-topical articles, things the newspaper can give more of a spread when it’s less rushed, and I said, surprised, I didn’t know you were involved with news, I thought you were already doing non-topical articles, and she replied, I know, don’t remind me, I was going to do articles but they had to be connected with current events, do you understand? the proceedings of the conference, the debates, after all, that was what they sent me here for, but being here I realized there was something more important and that’s why I want to write real human-interest articles, something like Oriana Fallaci, do you know her? yes, I said, and she continued: a bit like that, but the truth of something that’s being lived through real people, which here means all those linked to the war and its victims, not the biographies or the literature of the conference, and I’m really sorry if saying that offends you, but I’m convinced that what’s important is happening outside, on the streets and on the walls protecting the city and not in these conference halls; it would be idle to devote my time to literary topics when half a mile away the destiny of one or several cities is being played out. The night I met Bryndis, my newspaper’s war correspondent, meant a lot to me. Hearing her tell her stories of brave men who leaped into the fray, the courage with which they went on the attack and fell under the crossfire of the tracer bullets, hearing those really profound adventures, I felt empty, without anything to give her in return, and I realized that what was happening in the conference was only words, nothing more.

Then I said: don’t you think the death of Maturana and the mystery of his life is something profound? Yes, perhaps it is, but not enough. It was because of that story that I met Amos, I can’t forget that, but believe me, there are times when literature has to take a back seat, and this is one of them; maybe you don’t like what I’m saying, but I respect you and I’m only trying to be honest.