Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

Two weeks later I attended a service in the chapel, organized by Jessica and Egiswanda, with help from Reverend Talisker. From what Jessica told me, they had tried to follow the model of the Ministry of Mercy, but it was difficult, because she now realized that all that had been entirely based on Walter’s personal charisma, and without him it did not work. But they prayed and listened to contemporary music and talked about people’s problems in a simple, direct way.

I had not exactly acquired a new faith, but I did believe in them and was starting to love them. I have to confess that I also desired them, and some nights my brain filled with voices, the ones I had heard that first night at the conference, which one of them had it been? Those voices made me imagine them and desire them even more.

I also decided it was time to recover my health completely, so I started doing exercises in the meadow and taking long walks over the mountains that climbed to the volcano. Later, I installed a gym in the garage and my muscles responded well to the exercise. My back got stronger and my arms swelled. On my walks I went farther each time and was able without too much effort to reach the terraces where the peasants planted potatoes. At other times I went down to the harbor and plunged into the swelling waves of the Atlantic. I never again got out of breath. I was being born again.

One evening I talked in the village with a man whose name was Jonathan, a Maori who had stayed on the island after being found guilty of organizing a mutiny on a factory ship flying the Australian flag. I made a few drawings on a piece of card and said, I want these tattoos on my back and chest, could you do them? He said he could, but needed ink. He would do them as soon as the next boat arrived.

I was growing accustomed to my new life, my two women.

One night, after drinking a lot of whiskeys in the pub, Egiswanda got down on her knees at a bend in the dark road that led to our house and gave me a blowjob. When we got home we went up to my room and made love until dawn. During the day we did not speak and at night we would spend a cozy evening with Jessica, reading poems or articles recently arrived from the continent, and then have sex. I understood that Egiswanda’s rhythm was one or two sessions of sex a week, behind Jessica’s back. And I agreed to that. I liked the fact that she was in control.

When Jonathan received the colors and did the tattoos on my arms, chest, and back, the two women were delighted. You look really good, you’re magnificent, they said. That night I decided to let my hair and beard grow. I felt an urgent need to transform myself.

One afternoon Jessica came to my study and said, I have to talk to you, do you remember Simonides, the writer? Yes, I said, the guest in Room 1209. She rubbed her hands nervously and said: I got in touch with him and asked him to come. I got a reply from him today, he says he’ll be here soon. I wanted you to know. The two of you will get along well.

I continued with my walks as far as the foothills of the volcano and along the headlands, breathing in the salty wind. At night I would sit down to write, although I spent most of my time looking at the storms whipping the ocean, our protecting ocean. Storms that recalled the violent siege of the city where the three of us had met. Or perhaps I should say: where Maturana had brought us together.

The fury of the thunder lit up the blackness of the night, which had abolished the boundary between sky and sea. The lightning flashes were like electric vipers sinking their teeth into the water. With each flash, the threatening clouds could be seen. The waves were mountain ranges of water hitting the cliffs of our fortress.

Those terrifying lights suggested a battle, but what battle? The final one, Armageddon, as Jessica sometimes thought, or a more conventional one, fought with missiles and nuclear warheads? None of us knew, but our little island, lonely and drifting, made me think that all of that had happened in another time, and that the horror was over now, and that the world as we had known it was already a distant, forgotten planet.

Santiago Gamboa was born in Bogotá, Colombia. His debut novel, Páginas de vuelta (1995), established him as one of the most innovative voices in Colombian literature. He has since published seven novels and two collections of short stories. His journalism appears regularly in El Tiempo (Colombia) and Cromos , and he is a regular contributor to Radio France International. Previously Colombia’s cultural attaché in New Delhi, he currently lives in Rome.