Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

What to do, then?

I spent a week thinking and nothing occurred to me. Everything that came to mind was impossible or ridiculous. I actually imagined I was robbing a supermarket like the Pomona on Seventh, not far from my house, but I calculated that I would have to rob it at least three times to get the full amount together. It was impossible for someone like me to get hold of that much money.

After a while I hit on an idea that was also fairly desperate, but was the only one that didn’t seem impossible.

The former Miss Colombia.

Maybe she could think of a way for me to make that journey. Without asking for an appointment I went to the modeling agency. The secretary said, oh, you’re back! Obviously you like it, and winked. I wasn’t too sure what she was referring to, but she announced me and the former Miss Colombia received me in the same office, looking rather more of a mess than the first time, maybe due to the fact that there were a half-empty bottle of aguardiente and a plastic cup on the desk. When she saw me, she smiled and said:

How did it go with Juana? did you find her?

I said no, I’d barely started. I told her I’d called the Colombian embassy in Tokyo and that they had no record of her. Nor had she been arrested. I don’t know why I felt the need to tell her all that.

The former Miss Colombia looked at me with interest and offered me a drop of aguardiente. I accepted. Then she went to the bathroom and came back ten seconds later, rubbing her gums with one finger.

So what are you planning to do, darling? she said.

I’m convinced Juana is there and I want to go and find her, I said. I’ve already made up my mind, but I have a problem: the money. The journey costs fifteen thousand dollars and I don’t have it. That’s why I came here. Maybe you can think of a way to finance me, make me a loan, something like that.

The former Miss Colombia didn’t say no immediately, but moved her head up and down.

Okay, okay, she said. It’s difficult, and it is a lot of money, but let me see. Write your cell phone number on this piece of paper, and if I think of something I’ll make sure they call you, and you’ll come, all right?

I thanked her and went out on the street. That she hadn’t said no, or laughed in my face, seemed to me already a success. She was the only person who could help me. Now I just had to wait.

And that was what I did: I waited and waited, nervously watching the display screen of my cell phone. Five or six days went by, I can’t remember exactly, until at last it rang.

Manuel Manrique? a voice asked. You have an appointment at the modeling agency on Friday night at seven. I said I’d be there on time.

Three nervous, frantic days passed. When you’re waiting, time is heavy, impossible to get hold of. I don’t know anything about time.

By 6:40 on Friday evening I was at the door of the building, looking insistently at my watch. I smoked a cigarette, then another. 6:49. I went in slowly and walked up to the third floor. The secretary was more jovial than usual. How delightful of you to come back and see us, she said loudly; but as she said the last words drool ran from her mouth. Very strange.

This time the former Miss Colombia had a bottle of vodka and a cooler. With her was a man who also looked familiar, an old TV heartthrob whose name I couldn’t remember.

They poured me a drink. She was the one who spoke first.

I’ve been thinking over what you told me about Tokyo, but the truth is, what we might be interested in is Bangkok. I told her that my sister’s journey had taken her through Bangkok.

She and the man looked at each other for a moment and nodded. Then he spoke.

We’d be prepared to pay for your entire journey, to give you the fifteen thousand dollars, but you have to bring us back a small case some friends of ours in Bangkok are sending us.

And what’s in this case? I said, although, Consul, you’d have had to be an idiot not to realize that it was something to do with drugs. I knew where I was and who they were, but my need was great and required me to take risks. Beggars can’t be choosers.

Some pills, the kind that people take in discos, the man said. It’s no problem, my friends there will help you to pack them. We’ve already done it lots of times and nothing ever happens.

It was my only chance and I thought I’d be able to get away from them. Or that I’d come back with her. When I was with Juana, we’d find a way to get out of this. So I said yes.

I accept. What do I have to do?

A relatively simple process started. I had to go to 100th Street to get a passport. Then decide on a date. The Holy Week holidays would be ideal in order not to arouse suspicion. They agreed. That was less than a month away. They gave me half a million pesos for the preparations: a suitcase, vacation clothes, things for the journey, a diary, a camera, I had to make my journey credible. They asked for my address in Bogotá and my parents’ names. That bothered me, since I knew that if I didn’t do what they wanted they would go looking for them. But that would be after Juana, and with her the problems of the world would cease to exist. Together we could face anything, so I gave them the dates, the names, I told them where my father worked, the telephone number of his office.

They checked it in front of me, calling him, telling him it was a special offer of a trip to Cartagena de Indias, to which he, of course, answered no and told them to go to hell and hung up on them, insulting them for calling him and bothering him during working hours, which was very much like him, of course, a trip to Cartagena de Indias? what an idea.

I couldn’t keep the things at home, so I left them at the modeling agency.

One Thursday, I arrived after five in the evening to leave a digital camera that I had gotten hold of, secondhand, at the Lago shopping mall, and the secretary opened the door to me, smiling from ear to ear. She was more cheerful than usual and said, come in, darling, can I help you?

I explained it to her and she came with me to the office of the former Miss Colombia, who wasn’t there. I bent down to open the suitcase and put in the camera and a memory stick.

When I turned around, I saw that she was lifting her skirt and showing me her shaved pubis; the strange thing is that she was laughing and at the same time drooling, a strange expression, either of stupidity or anal dilation, so I said to her, are you all right? and she said, oh, darling, don’t you think I’m pretty or what? look how sexy I am, and she reached out her hand and said, here, take this and she came up to me and gave me a red pill, take it, handsome, and just see how good you feel.

I put it under my tongue without swallowing it and straightened up, but she threw herself on me and tried to kiss me, and in the struggle I ended up swallowing the damned pill; a minute later I felt a tickling in my blood, a great calm, and a desire for lots of things, as if my body and my skin couldn’t cope, and then the woman led me over to a couch, pulled down my trousers, and started to suck my cock. A mountain of sugar dissolved in my veins, and I lost all notion of time. Suddenly she turned, put herself on all fours, kneeling on the couch, and said, will you fuck me, darling? I stopped seeing her, there was nothing in front of me but a spiral of colors, like fireworks.

I regained consciousness on the street, walking to Seventh with the sun behind me, in the middle of a violent sunset that brought out the outlines of the hills and turned them into masses of color, like paintings by Rothko; I walked along, feeling strong, and told myself, all this is about to change, for the first time my life is going to be truly mine.

When I got to Eleventh I had a hallucination: Juana was sitting in the branches of a willow tree, next to a shop selling cell phones. With her hand, she said to me, come, Manuel, come, and she whispered, I’m waiting for you, you’ll find me if you follow the signs I left, a path of shiny leaves in the wood, a symbolic wood, like the one in Baudelaire, you’ll see, it’ll be easy, and when we’re together we’ll go to another planet, the one you’re going to create with your imagination for the two of us, so that both of us can be happy.