Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

These last words I threw out as a provocation, to see if they generated a debate, but instead of that there was laughter. I looked anxiously at the top left-hand corner of the hall and saw that the woman was no longer there. Could it have been Juana? I was starting to get impatient, I wanted the discussion to be over so that we could go up to the restaurant, where we were supposed to be having cocktails, since I assumed that the “shadow woman”—as I dubbed her — would be there to have a drink and a bite to eat before leaving. That, at any rate, was what I’d done in Paris in the years before I made it: I’d go to parties and receptions and eat and drink whatever I could, storing up the calories for harder times, which usually started when I left and walked out onto the street.

After an amusing story by Enrique about his years in the Colombian merchant navy, in which he called the ships “floating monasteries,” ideal for the study of philosophy and religion, the audience finally applauded and we started for the top floor, where wine, Serrano ham, and Spanish omelet awaited us.

In a state of great excitement, I managed to get away from those members of the audience who were trying to ask more questions, and went up to the restaurant. Oh, the relief! The mystery woman was there! But when I approached her, the mystery dissolved into thin air, because she was Spanish.

Hello, she said, how are you? What an interesting symposium, really, it’s been ages since we last had anything like this, do you live in India? Sadly, I couldn’t stay to the end, I had to come up here to make sure everything was ready.

She worked for the Cervantes Institute.

I quickly had a look around the other women present in the hope of spotting Juana, but none of them really looked like her, they were all exchange students, young girls who of course were a long way from the kind of life I was investigating. I did actually ask three of them if they knew a restaurant called La Caverna, in Shinjuku. They said no, but one of them took out her iPhone and within a second was writing down the address in a notebook.

I thanked her, then slowly, trying to emulate the invisible man, walked to the door. But just as I got there, I ran into the hosts and felt obliged to ask them if anything else had been arranged. They said yes, there was a dinner after this aperitif, so I had to wait.

At eleven at night, when it was all over — luckily things there finish early — they dropped us at the hotel and I immediately left again. I called a taxi, with my paper in my hand. Then I sank into the seat and watched the streets pass by, the flamboyant neon signs, that other nocturnal sky, an apocalypse of facades, skyscrapers that seem to burn, covered with lava or igneous winds, small planets in collision.

The taxi pulled up outside a low door with a descending staircase. Restaurante La Caverna. The street was narrow and there were lots of people on the sidewalks even though it was late. I got out of the taxi and was taken aback when I converted the price of the ride into euros (this investigation was going to ruin me!). I entered the restaurant, which now that it was after midnight was already turning into a bar, and ordered a pisco sour. There were couples sitting at tables and on high stools. Everything seemed totally normal. Latin women? Of course there were, lots of them. Almost all of those here. So I approached a waitress.

“Hello, are you Peruvian?”

“Yes,” she said.

She was about twenty-five.

”Have you been working here long?”

“Yes, to pay for my studies.”

The pisco sour was good, I finished it in one go and asked for another. When she brought it, we carried on talking.

“A friend from Colombia recommended this place to me,” I said. “Her name is Juana Manrique, do you know her?”

She thought about it for a moment, then looked up and said: the name sounds familiar, is she dark?

“Well,” I said, “that depends what you mean by dark. She has white skin, and dark hair and eyes. Here’s her photograph, do you recognize her?”

She looked at it, smiled, and said, yes, I’ve seen her, but she hasn’t been in for a while.

“She was always with two Colombian girls and a Japanese man,” she added. “A guy who never laughed, he looked like a bodyguard.”

I asked her for a third pisco sour.

“I’m sure he was a bodyguard,” I said. “Do you know what she was involved in?”

The waitress stopped and looked at me inquisitively, as if putting two and two together. When she spoke again, her tone of voice had changed.

“You know something, that sounded strange… I don’t think she recommended this place to you. I don’t think you know her, you’re looking for her, that’s it, who are you?”

“A friend of Manuel, her brother,” I said. “Juana has to go back to Bogotá, there are things she has to resolve urgently. I’m a diplomat. Do you remember the names of the Colombian girls who came with her? What did they look like? Do you remember anything about them?”

She looked at me with an earnest expression. “I’m not getting into trouble by talking to you, am I?”

“No,” I said, “I’ve already told you who I am. You’ll actually be doing Juana a favor if you help me find her.”

How difficult it is to persuade someone to do or say something they have no interest in doing or saying. You have to appeal to feelings like curiosity or a wish to save someone, if they have them. It’s exhausting. If this were a movie and the screenwriters had given me the role of an interrogator with a suspect to question, it might have been easier. There are codes and clear identities. You can hit the table or make the suspect laugh. But not here. I was nobody to her. Just a stranger coming late into her restaurant, ordering drinks, and asking unusual questions. Obviously, our paths might never have crossed in the first place, and now that they had her life would still be the same if she didn’t save anybody tonight. I realized she was reading my thoughts when she said:

“And what do I get out of this?”

It was an enormous relief to hear her say that. “It depends on what you want to get out of it,” I said.

She thought this over, then looked at me slyly. “This city is very expensive, I could give you those two names for a hundred dollars, and if you want me to go to your hotel that’ll be another two hundred, as long as you pay for the taxi rides.”

I loved her.

When we got to the Sheraton she went straight to the bathroom. I heard the water running in the shower. After a day’s work, I thought, a clean, warm place like this must have been paradise. It certainly was for me. I took advantage of her being in the bathroom to call room service and ask for one of their artistic ice buckets, and when it came I looked at it for a while. Each cube could have been a diamond.

Finally she came out with a towel covering her shoulders. She was wearing a thong. There was a slight flaccidness below the navel, and her lined belly hung over the elastic. She had been pregnant. I fantasized for a while about her pussy, but preferred to have a drink, so I said to her, put on one of my T-shirts, it’ll cover you better. Oh, and what’s your name?

“Aurora,” she said.

Then she gave me the names of the Colombian girls: Susana Montes and Natalia Collazos. She called on them for work at weekends and they helped her out, but she had never seen Juana again.

“Can we call them now?” I said.

”Of course, but wait, aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

I poured it for her, adding two slices of lemon, while she dialed the numbers. Then I heard her talking:

“Hello? Susy? Yes, it’s me, how’s it going? Listen, a friend wants to talk to you, it’s something important, could you see him tomorrow? Yes? He’s Colombian, I’d like to introduce you to him, can you come to La Caverna?”