Santiago Gamboa - Necropolis

The following week he called her and said, I want to see you, can you come? Of course, just like I said, tell me where. He sent her instructions and a ticket for Cartagena on Saturday, and that was where they met. They spent the day at the Hilton, hardly going out at all, because Ramón had not hired any security and he was afraid to walk with her on the street. As they lay in bed together, Soraya ventured to ask: why do you have so much money now? did you win the lottery or what? I owe it to my God, he said, who unexpectedly gives and unexpectedly takes away, and apart from that I work. And where do you live now, in Bogotá? Don’t ask me any questions, Soraya, after what they did to me I’ve become paranoid. O.K., Ramón, I’m sorry, I won’t ask you anything else.

They met almost every weekend for a month, each time in a different city. Sometimes he would ask her to come to Cali, and without leaving the airport they would get on a plane for Pasto, without any warning. Then he would leave without telling her where he was going, leaving her a ticket to get home.

Ramón continued to keep a close watch on the legal proceedings against Jacinto and Hernán and hired his own lawyer to process his accusation. One day he went to the Public Prosecutor’s Office to make a statement, and submitted to a long interrogation in which he answered questions about what had happened to him. They told him they would give him protection, but he said, I’ll accept it only from the airport to here, I can protect myself. One of the questions had been if he had any links with the FARC, which was what the prisoners, Dagoberto, Jacinto Gómez, and Hernán Mora, were saying, but he said, no, they’re just the same as the paras, why should I be with the FARC, Prosecutor, if I were, what happened wouldn’t have happened! They asked him why he had covered for Dagoberto when the police in Villavicencio had questioned him, and he said, because I was scared, because I was a coward, I had already seen the bodies thrown in ditches along the highway, that was the only reason, Prosecutor. When they asked him to tell them how he had escaped he saw that they did not believe him, it was not a very believable story, but that was how it had been and that was how he told it, and in fact the priest’s disappearance and kidnapping and the discovery of his body were all in the records, so they did not ask him again. What he did not mention to them, because he had realized it was not relevant to what they wanted to know, was Father Cubillos’s treasure in Barranquilla. Nor did he go into detail about his life in Panama, because he had read that the paras were everywhere and he was scared that someone in the Public Prosecutor’s Office would snitch on him.

Fortunately, the evidence on the computer was irrefutable and the police had gotten to Dagoberto’s house in Lejanías. Of course when they asked him how he had found the computer he told them the truth; he had to give them the name of the agency in Villavicencio. Later he found out that they had summoned the detective to make a statement and that their versions tallied, so nobody ever mentioned it again.

One Saturday he was with Soraya in Cartagena, eating in the restaurant of the Hilton, when he realized that a man he had seen that afternoon at the pool and later in the hotel shop was looking at them out of the corner of his eye. He immediately stood up, went out on the street, and hired a taxi to take them to another part of the city, the old part. From the taxi, he dialed a number they had given him at the Public Prosecutor’s Office, in case of emergency, and said that he was in Cartagena, and he thought he was being followed. They made him wait a while, and then the prosecutor said: don’t worry, Ramón, that person is there for your security, we’re keeping an eye on you. Oh yes? and how did you know I was at the Hilton? Oh, Ramón, said the prosecutor, you have no idea how much I know, just be grateful that we were the ones who tapped Soraya’s telephone.

He went back to the hotel, got his things, and went to the airport, leaving her in the room. You aren’t in any danger, stay the weekend if you like. And he left.

One morning he opened the newspaper and was stunned: it was announced that Dagoberto and Hernán Mora were being extradited to the United States, for drug trafficking, and that Jacinto had been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment. Immediately he called Soraya and asked her how she felt. Those bastards ruined my life, even Jacinto, I hope they rot, was what she said, and she added: I hope now you will calm down too, it was what you wanted, wasn’t it? It wasn’t what I wanted, it was what they deserved, Soraya. Don’t confuse the two things. He told her he wanted to see her, to celebrate this victory. She said all right, but that maybe it was the last time, because she had already paid enough.

They met in Bogotá, where he had been taking steps through his lawyers to recover the ownership of the auto repair shops — they had put Arnulfo in prison too, but only for three years — and put them on sale. His idea was to take her to the Charleston, and he had called ahead to book a room, but as they were driving along the beltway, coming back from the center, two Silverados blocked the road and opened fire. The escort from the Public Prosecutor’s Office took shelter behind the wall of a building and returned fire. The shootout lasted twenty minutes. Ramón threw himself down on the floor of the car and did not move, because he knew it was armored. When they lifted him out he had a wound in the shoulder, as he had lowered the window a little and had been shot through it. Soraya, on the other hand, was sitting there, bleeding profusely. They changed cars and raced to the Hospital San Ignacio, but she was dead by the time they arrived. She had two bullet wounds in the head and one in the neck. The first shot may well have killed her. That was what the doctors told him. They also told him she was pregnant.

He did not feel like crying, or rather, no tears came, even though he was sad. When you came down to it, they had all been victims.

After he recovered, he had no desire to stay in Bogotá, so he went straight from the hospital to the airport. As the plane taxied to the runway to take off he felt that he was moving away from hell and death, and he said to himself, could they have located me in Panama? It was possible, but it did not worry him. Revenge had been the most important thing in his life; that had been his only reason for living in the last few years, and now it was over, with Soraya dead — even though that had not been his intention — and the others punished. What did it matter if they shot him down now on some street corner? He had accomplished his mission and could leave without remorse, as if he was saying goodbye to a country that had kicked him out, forever, because he also knew that he would never return.

The life story I am about to relate is a harsh and sometimes even macabre one, so I hope there are no young people in the room. There are situations that the inexperienced or the innocent may find disturbing. I’m not sure of the conference’s policy on this, and I shall certainly go ahead and tell my story anyway, but it might be a good idea to check at the entrance that all members of the audience are of legal age, at least for today. That’s my feeling at least, but of course it’s also possible, indeed quite likely, that these young people may simply find my story highly amusing. The world has changed a great deal and even the most atrocious things don’t seem to bother anybody. They may bother me, but then I’m from another era. Before tackling my life, with a wealth of detail and quite a few surprises, I should like to put paid to an idea I know many of you may have in your minds, which is that, due to the nature of the films I make, I’m nothing but a whore. You must disabuse yourselves of that, my friends, and I’ll tell you why. Sex on the set is a very distinct thing, because for all those involved in it, it’s a paid job. Simple as that. In the best spirit of capitalism, it’s all done for a third party who isn’t there, like a person who cooks delicious dishes for others, or who writes passionate verses for anonymous readers — who will usually reject them — or even the person who invents mortars and grenades that will kill and maim people he can’t see, or even imagine, but which will be real enough when the moment comes. My poet friends may not like to hear this. They’ll say it’s a far-fetched comparison, but then everything that I, Sabina Vedovelli, do is and has always been far-fetched.