Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

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Necropolis: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Upon recovering from a prolonged illness, an author is invited to a literary gathering in Jerusalem that turns out to be a most unusual affair. In the conference rooms of a luxury hotel, as bombs fall outside, at times too close for comfort, he listens to a series of extraordinary life stories: the saga of a chess-playing duo, the tale of an Italian porn star with a socialist agenda, the drama of a Colombian industrialist who has been waging a longstanding battle with local paramilitaries, and many more. But it is José Maturana — evangelical pastor, recovering drug addict, ex-con — with his story of redemption at the hands of a charismatic tattooed messiah from Miami, Florida, who fascinates the author more than any other. Maturana’s language is potent and vital, and his story captivating.
Hours after his stirring presentation to a rapt audience, however, Maturana is found dead in his hotel room. At first it seems likely that Maturana has taken his own life and everybody seems willing to accept this version of the story. But there are a few loose ends that don’t support the suicide hypothesis, and the author-invitee, moved by Maturana’s life story to discover the truth about his death, will lead an investigation that turns the entire plot of this chimerical novel on its end.
In Necropolis, Santiago Gamboa displays the talent and inventiveness that have earned him a reputation as one of the leading figures in his generation of Latin American authors.

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The message was not signed but was obviously from Jacinto. It came from a Facebook account called The Executioner. So Ramón decided to have a bit of fun and replied: “Your wife is indeed a very elegant woman, what nobody can understand is what she’s doing with a para.” He waited nervously and that same night the answer came: “Son of a bitch, you’re still hiding, feeling pleased with yourself, but you’ll see, we’re on your trail, we may be coming for you right now, as you read this, so start shaking.”

The next day he made copies of the computer’s hard disk and went to the Human Rights Commission. There, he had to identify himself and they listened to his story. A lawyer from the Commission went with him to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to lodge a major complaint against Dagoberto, Hernán Mora, and Jacinto Gómez for kidnapping, torture, extortion, and theft. He handed over a copy of the hard disk and the prosecutors immediately started running and making calls. Ramón realized that his days as a fugitive were over, that he had to regain his true identity now, go back to being Ramón Melo García. It was the only way he could accomplish his revenge.

After a long statement in the Public Prosecutor’s Office about how he had gotten hold of the computer, Ramón was able to return to his hotel. It was late by now, but he had the feeling that he had achieved something. The next day he called the political desk at El Espectador and announced that he had information about paramilitarism in the eastern Plains. Somebody came to pick up a copy and that same night he was able to return to Panama City.

When he got home, he said to himself: the die is cast, now the one thing I have to do is make sure they don’t kill me, or don’t find me so easily. Dagoberto was confined to a high security prison at Cómbita, but many of his men were still on the outside, doing all they could to get him out as quickly and cheaply as possible. He did not know if Hernán Mora was also being detained.

A week later, El Espectador splashed all over its pages a lengthy article accusing Dagoberto, with photographs of the torture house in Lejanías, and information on the mass graves and the laboratories that were still functioning. There were also charges against a whole series of elected members of the senate who had been friendly with Dagoberto, and had received votes and money from him.

Ramón had not even known about that, as he had not checked the whole of the hard disk. The article quoted sources within the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Human Rights Commission, which were investigating and had asked the National Institute for Prisons to separate Dagoberto from the other demobilized paras, since in his case there were enough elements to bring more serious charges.

Less than a week later El Espectador reported the arrest of Hernán Mora and Jacinto Gómez, both accused of paramilitary activity in the region. The traitor Arnulfo Solano, his trusted former employee, was also detained, although on lesser charges. Everything came from the same computer, and Ramón felt a light inside him. He knew it was not good to take pleasure from hatred and revenge, but he had not been the one who had started all this. Then he wondered if now might be the time to take the step he so much desired, and decided it was. Now that his identity was obvious, he could make a frontal attack.

He took out his cell phone and looked at it for quite a while. Then he put it back in his pocket and took a good swig of aguardiente to give himself courage. Maybe the number had changed? Finally he dialed, with his heart standing still, and heard the rings. One, two, three. . At the fifth ring the automatic message came on and he hung up. He went out on the balcony and drank another aguardiente, and was standing there looking at the bay, lost in thought, when the cell phone started ringing. He looked at the screen and froze. It was Soraya. Hello? There was a silence, it was her, she had recognized him. He hung up. Again unsure what to do, he waited. He imagined Soraya with the telephone in her hand, cursing or crying, he could not know which. The voice was the same, with a slight quiver because of the years; he remembered her husky tone, which had always sounded both erotic and comforting. But now everything was different: she had given him up to the paras! Nothing could make up for that. There was no excuse, and apart from that there was the fact of his mother’s death.

He checked the Facebook address and found a message from Jacinto from four days earlier, before his arrest, which said: “We know who you are and we’re going to kill you, you son of a bitch, wait and see.” He reread the text with a smile and thought, this bastard doesn’t know a damn thing, he has no idea what’s in store for him. The fool.

An hour later his cell phone rang again and he made up his mind to answer. It was her. Was it you who took those pictures? was the first thing she asked, but instead of answering that, he said, were you in on their plan to kill me? There was a silence; then she said, they told me you were in the FARC and wanted to kill my brother. That’s nonsense, how could you believe such garbage? The thing is, Soraya, you were cheating on me with Jacinto and any excuse would have been all right. She was unable to respond immediately. She thought about it for a second and said: it’s your fault, Ramón, I told you to ask for my hand and you did nothing, just waited and waited, and when you wait too long the soup gets cold, doesn’t it? Oh, Soraya, you don’t kill a person for that, the fact of it is, you knew they were going to kill me and you didn’t care, and later my mother died because you didn’t even go to see her; she died of sadness, or rather, you all killed her; you killed her, Soraya; so don’t ask me to respect you or understand you, the only thing I want is to see you crawling on the floor, because you’re a bitch, a cheat, a traitor, and a murderer.

There were sobs, but his anger did not abate: You cry now that my mother’s dead and they took away my life’s work and almost killed me, and all because of you, so go on, cry until the blood comes out of your eyes. There was another silence, then she said: I’m already weeping blood, Ramón, you can say whatever you like to me, you can even tell me I’m a whore, you haven’t said it yet but you’re thinking it, so say it, filthy whore, lowdown whore, don’t hesitate to say it because it’s true, it’s what everyone is saying here in La Cascada since you came out with those photographs. . The whole town has seen me naked with a guy they don’t even know is my husband, and with you, but as nobody remembers you they think it’s somebody new, and so I’ve become the whore of the community, the whore of the club and the tearooms, the whore of La Cascada, and now they’ve put Jacinto in jail and things are really difficult. I already threw him out of the house because of the photographs on Facebook with other whores who aren’t his whore of a wife, oh God.

Ramón was getting impatient and said: tell me why you slept with Jacinto, what were you missing with me? I missed the risk, Ramón, I missed that great sensation of hanging from a thread. . I missed feeling more of a woman or more of a person or maybe even more of a whore, I don’t know, I liked him and I wanted him and you see, I even gave him a daughter who maybe he didn’t deserve, but what can we do, that’s how it was, we can’t change it.

No, but we can make sure the bad people appear bad and the murderers appear murderers, and that’s what I came to do, Soraya; the worst that could have happened to you, to all of you, was that I escaped from the paras and stayed alive, because now you’re fucked. Soraya had stopped crying, her voice was neutral and relatively steady. She said: and what more are you going to do, they’re already going to take everything away from us, they’re going to extradite Dagoberto, and they’re going to give my brother Hernán the maximum sentence because the bastard didn’t get involved with the demobilization, so you see, Ramón, you’ve ruined our lives, you’ve already avenged yourself, you’ve already avenged your mother, what more do you want? Ramón thought it over for a second and said, I want to see you, Soraya, that’s all, I want to see you for a second and maybe my anger will pass.

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