Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

One of those nights, in Cartagena de Indias, as we were talking on the balcony of his suite in the Hotel Santa Clara, he grabbed me very hard by the arm and said, José, you’re a good person and that’s why you have to understand that, basically, I’m human, I have human pains and frustrations, nothing makes me different than the others, than any of those that come to hear me; I’m a son of the streets like you, it just so happens that people listen to me. Then he went to the bar and grabbed a quart bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, two glasses and a full ice tray, and said, I know you’ve distanced yourself from all this, but for tonight I want you to think of us as two friends who need to talk, two friends or partners or flesh and blood Latinos who have to level with each other, this won’t damage you, you’re strong, you have structure in your life; he poured the whiskey and I drank, and in my soul it was as if galleries were collapsing, and a kind of echo rose to the surface from deep inside; a taste of another life or an intense emotion, when you find something that can destroy you the more you long for it, whether love or just obsession. By the third glass, I was confessing my fears to him, saying: you’re bringing down what you yourself created with effort, and all for what? What you get from your shitty life in that tower isn’t much, compared with what you’re putting in danger, but he retorted, you’re wrong, José, if it wasn’t much I wouldn’t do it, I need it, period, I’m like you, I dream of pleasure and things hurt me, don’t be deceived about me; I said: be careful, you’re riding a tiger and if you dismount you’re going to break your legs, and he said, trust me, we’re having a downturn, but it’ll pass, it’ll pass, you have to believe me.

Then we talked about God and life and the distant stars that could be seen over the sea and what hard work it must have been for the Master to create this universal shithouse we live in is only seven days, thing by thing, trees and grains of sand and flies buzzing around shit and the blind fish at the bottom of the sea and the diseases of kangaroos and the flocks of birds, hats off, and we talked about that son of a bitch Satan, who was always interfering in our lives and twisting them around, and the worst thing was that he never tired, we talked about all that until I went to the bathroom and saw that Jessica had returned and was on her iMac chatting or watching videos on YouTube or something like that, because she was dancing with her headphones on: I noticed that beside her, next to a glass filled to the brim with gin, there was a mirror with a considerable quantity of coke, but I walked past and went back on the balcony, where Walter and I continued going over life and the future and the contradictions.

An hour later, with the second bottle of Johnnie Walker half-finished, Jessica came and brought us a tray of coke, and we took turns snorting it, and again something inside me opened my eyes; on top of that Jessica brought a pack of joints and so we smoked then too and inside me I could hear the grunting of an animal that was familiar to me, that had never abandoned me, and so it went on until the black of the night turned ocher and our brains or what remained of them were already bursting; Miss Jessica was jumping like a cricket, she was so high she was climbing the walls, and so, with the last neuron in my brain, I decided to go to my room, just as Jessica was bringing another tray of coke, but I said to myself, if we carry on like this we’re going to end up fucking, better if I go.

I went down to my room, put my head under the faucet and said to myself, what a piece of shit you are, José, how can you offend God like that; the grunting of the animal was becoming unbearable, so I said to myself, it’s over, there won’t be any more crap like that in your life; I grabbed a penknife and made a cut in my right wrist, and then the left, and I swear to you, my friends, it was like a liberation, I saw my blood coming out in the water like a pink ribbon and I felt clean, as if all the poison had gone out of me! I lay down and again saw the light-filled eyes I’d seen that first day, a drop of water glowing in the middle of the night, and I started praying, and I prayed until I was overcome with a great sense of calm and my eyes closed.

To those of you who think I’m going to tell you about my own death and are already making incredulous faces, let me tell you straight away that after what might have been a very long time I opened my eyes again. Mysteriously, instead of the hotel or the fire and brimstone of Hell and the servants of Satan, I saw a white, very white room; I was surrounded by nurses who were all hard at work over me, an injection here, a thermometer there. I was alive, ha ha, like in the movies, the hero is saved at the last moment because the water overflowed and went out under the door, so they called reception and bang! I hadn’t checked out after all, I was saved.

Soon afterwards Walter came and said: I understand why you did it, but you must resist. It doesn’t matter what you and I do, what matters is them, the thousands of people who believe in us, don’t you understand. .? Those eyes filled with questions, those people with broken lives who look trustingly to us. It’s them, damn it! They will save us and they will give us redemption, because they believe in us! You have to be strong and take care. Yes, I said, and closed my eyes. When I opened them again he was gone.

Two weeks later I left the hospital. Jessica drove me in silence to the airport and from there we flew with two nurses in another Falcon, hired specially for me. I was moved by that, my friends; we traveled in complete silence, with me looking at the clouds that seemed like whirlpools in the air and thinking about what had happened, and forgive me if I wax a little lyrical here, but it’s just that wanting your own death is something that calls everything into question, because if life is the most precious gift, how is it possible that a person can choose to throw it away? and so I asked myself the most difficult question of all, my friends, which is, what makes life worth living? Walter’s words lodged themselves in my tired brain and from there opened fire: it’s them, it’s their faith that’s going to save us.

When I arrived, Walter held a private service in my honor; he never used the word “suicide” but “accident,” and kept repeating the expression “the fragility of life” and also that “life sometimes gets away from us.”

Time passed, and I continued to distance myself from the house and stayed in my cabin, and the really paradoxical thing was that Walter started to visit me at night. I can’t get to sleep, José, he’d say, tell me what you’re reading, and he’d sit down on the floor, and I’d read him poems by St John of the Cross, the greatest of all, and by St Teresa and Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz and of course by Abbot Marchena and Góngora, and he’d listen in complete silence, not saying a word, not breathing, not moving any part of his face, nothing, it was as if he wasn’t really there, which at the beginning sent a shiver down my spine but which I eventually got used to. At other times he’d cry, also in silence. The way somebody who’s understood something very profound cries, or somebody who’s moved by a beautiful or noble gesture, I don’t know what exactly Walter understood as he listened to me reading poems, I never asked him, although he must have found something important in it; at the crack of dawn he’d go back to his tower, but his spirit was still tormented, I’d see him pacing back and forth up there, going around and around in circles, as if he was writing a message with his body, the answer to a question I didn’t know and neither did he, my dear friends, I know this is all a bit obscure but that’s the way it was and that’s the only way I can tell it.