Evelio Rosero - The Armies

I dream of the dead: Mauricio Rey, Dr. Orduz; the conversation with Hey probably made me remember them as I fell asleep, and speaking out loud without noticing, as if you were listening to me, “What do you think of this life?” I tell an invisible Otilia. “Mauricio Rey and the doctor dead, and Marcos Saldarriaga probably still alive.”

“Let those alive go on living,” Otilia would say, I am sure, “and allow those who die to die. You keep out of it.”

I can almost hear her voice.

On several occasions Marcos Saldarriaga referred to Dr. Orduz as a guerrilla collaborator: perhaps that is why the paramilitaries wanted to capture him, to call him to account, or avail themselves of his services: his patients used to joke that Orduz knew how to use his scalpel like the best murderer. In any case the damage was done and threats against the doctor, whether direct or veiled, became constant, encumbering his life. People said, absurdly, that he lent out the hospital’s cadavers for the purposes of transporting cocaine inside them, that he was a key figure in the contraband of weapons to the guerrillas, that the ambulances were at his personal disposal, and he filled them up with cartridges and rifles. Orduz defended himself with his imperturbable smile; he attended General Palacios, was a friend to soldiers and officers, no matter their rank; no one complained of his efficiency as a doctor And, nevertheless, the damage was done, because no matter what the truth was, he would die in the fire of war.

A similar damage was done to Mauricio Rey, also thanks to Marcos Saldarriaga. They had been political enemies for many years, ever since Adelaida López, Rey’s first wife, ran for Mayor. She was an enterprising woman and clear as day, as her slogans ran, and yes, as an exception to the rule, the slogans were true: clear as day, enterprising: perhaps for that very reason she was murdered with bullets and garrotte: four men, all carrying guns, one of them with a garrotte in his hands, knocked at Mauricio Rey’s door: they asked his wife to come outside. They both refused. Night was beginning, and so was one of the most painful crimes in the memory of this municipality — as the newspapers pointed out — the men grew tired of waiting, they entered the house and took Adelaida out by force, along with Mauricio. The one with the garrotte began to punch the woman in the face while Mauricio was held face down with a gun to his head. Their only child, a thirteen-year-old girl, ran out after her parents. They shot the mother and daughter. The girl died instantly, while Mauricio picked his wife up in his arms and carried her to the hospital where she died minutes later, after the futile attempts of Orduz — who tried until the last moment to save her Absurdly, since then, the friendship between the doctor and Mauricio has been irreparable, and all because Mauricio, in his bitter bouts of drunkenness, felt no compunction at lashing out and blaming the doctor, in an unjust but desperate way, calling him inept.

One of the murderers, arrested a few weeks later, admitted being a member of the regional Self-Defence Forces. He said that his bosses met on three occasions to plan the crime, because Rey’s wife was making headway in her electoral campaign, and because she had publicly refused to have any rapprochement with the paramilitary organizations of the region: the plan involved one former congressman, two former mayors and a police captain. Although the murderer never mentioned Marcos’s name, it was always thought that Marcos had something to do with the incident. That was why Rey never recovered from the crimes committed against his family and devoted himself to drinking nonstop, and at any moment of drunkenness he would remember that Marcos had defamed his wife on more than one occasion, and that he was guilty. Years later he married again, and even that did not save him from the memory; he could never understand why they did not kill him the day they killed his wife and daughter, although he realized that sooner or later they would try to get rid of him. Many people ridiculed him behind his back, saying that he pretended to be lost in drink to gain sympathy.

All these facts made Marcos Saldarriaga the invulnerable man of San Jose, because he seemed to have an understanding with the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, the army and the drug traffickers. That explained the origin of his money, which must have had multiple sources: he contributed large sums to Father Albornoz’s humanitarian activities, he gave thousands to the Mayor, for charitable works — which according to Gloria Dorado the Mayor returned in kind — thousands to General Palacios, for his animal-protection program, supplied uniforms and provisions for the soldiers of the garrison, organized colossal parties for them and started buying land from the peasant farmers, outrageously, by fair means or foul: he set the price, and any landowner who did not accept disappeared, until it was his turn to disappear, into who knows whose hands, those of which forces (the deceased Maestro Claudino, who was taken with him, never checked, never knew who they were, nor did he ask), the fact is that Saldarriaga disappeared leaving behind him a trail of hatred, for no one, in the end, held him in any esteem — apart from his lover and his wife, possibly — not even his escorts and foremen, who instead of Saldarriaga called him Saldiarrhoea, which did not prevent, for four years, the whole town of San José showing up at Hortensia Galindo’s house every 9 March, to regret his disappearance, to feast and to dance.

In my dream I seemed to be entering a house with no roof, where the doctor and Mauricio, on the patio, sitting across from each other, were talking; the wind in torrents blew down from above, like rivers, and prevented me from hearing what they were saying, and, nevertheless, I knew that it was something that concerned me alone, that at any moment my fate was to be decided, that in reality the two of them had me confused with someone else, with whom?

All of a sudden I understood: they both were convinced that I was Marcos Saldarriaga, and that was it: in a full-length mirror that suddenly sprang up beside me like a living being looking at me I saw myself with the face and body of Marcos Saldarriaga, the vast and detestable body.

“Who changed my body?” I said to them.

“Don’t come near us, Marcos,” they shouted, their voices almost physical, slapping against the wind.

“You’re confusing me with Marcos,” I told them, but they ordered me not to come near, they rejected me.

Other men came in, lots of them, strangers, armed shadows: they were coming for me, to eliminate me, and I could not hope for help from Rey, nor from the doctor, I sensed that to them I was the informer, the one who had marked them.

“I am not Marcos,” I yelled, and the dead men because in my dream as well the two of them were dead — insisted on confusing me with Marcos, or was I really Marcos Saldarriaga and waiting to be executed, without hope? It was my last doubt, the intolerable doubt of dreams, while Mauricio’s voice and the doctor’s voice rose, blaming me, and I still had not yet escaped their voices when Geraldina’s voice came to liberate me.

“Profesor , wake up. You’re shouting.”

Dawn was breaking.

“Profesor , do not suffer so.”

So this was true: there, before me, in the doorway, inside my garden, inside my house, inside my room, dressed in black, although at last with a sky-blue scarf on her head, Geraldina survived, and at her side her son, asleep on his feet.

“Profesor , I thought you were not at home. I was calling you from the garden, forgive me for bothering you.”

“It was a nightmare.”

“I realized, I heard you. You said you were not Marcos Saldarriaga.”