Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

We went out on the terrace, and with the heat, I got straight into the pool. It was nice and cool. A waiter reached me my glass of aguardiente, but I noticed that the others weren’t drinking, so I said to myself, this party is a little strange. Better to act as if I’m stupid and not ask any questions; then I heard one of the men say that the gentleman wouldn’t be coming until the following day, we have to wait for him. After that Andrés Felipe relaxed and had a few whiskeys. The lady of the house started a conversation but I couldn’t say anything because they were talking about Colombian soccer. Our soccer that’s poor and ugly, like the country: poor and ugly, and that’s why I don’t like it. Like talking obsessively about a disease, the way most people only talk about accidents or madness. But nothing else seemed to matter to them, and they talked and talked, that if the Junior or the DIM, or something very strange called La Equidad, which sounded like a discount store for poor people, and the strange thing is that the one who most insisted on the subject was the lady of the house. I realized they were talking about all this because they didn’t have any other subject and because the reason for this meeting was a secret and could only be touched on with the husband, who would be arriving the next day. Her role was to distract us. When they served the food she showed us into a very swanky dining room, with silver cutlery and a beautiful blue and white dinner set with embossed hunting scenes, and of course wine, not Argentinian or Chilean wine but French wine, Pomerol, a delicious red wine, though it was a strange thing to drink in that tropical heat; I had about four glasses with the first course, which was an asparagus consommé; then they replaced it with a white, a Sancerre, also delicious and very cold, and the main dish arrived, which was fish, a roll of salmon with fines herbes with a salad of leeks and purée, a delicious thing, and since I love to ask awkward questions, pretending to be dumb, I wanted to know if the salmon was from some nearby river, and the lady of the house laughed and said, yes, from the river Orkla, not here in Antioquia but in Norway, and everybody laughed and I sat there like a silly young busybody but she looked at me affectionately, since I’d given her the opportunity to tell her joke and look good.

When night fell it got cooler, and they lit the fire and served us brandy and offered cigars, Montecristo and Davidoff; now the talk was about Shakira, whether or not she represented Colombia well abroad. The hostess complained that she sang in English, she didn’t think that was right because in Colombia people don’t speak English, but I said, yes, they do, it’s the mother tongue in San Andrés and Providencia, then she said, all right, and also the yuppies of Parque de la 93 in Bogotá, wasn’t it? Again everybody laughed. Andrés Felipe looked at me gratefully, I was giving a perfect performance in my role as the pretty but dumb girlfriend.

After the brandy they passed around trays with a delicious dark whiskey, served in cognac glasses, without ice, because they said it was too fine, and they talked vaguely about how well the country was doing; around midnight we retired to the bedroom and I commented to Andrés Felipe, pretending to be dumb, what elegant people, nobody snorted coke or smoked joints, and he said, no, gorgeous, it’s different here, that’s why I told you that the best thing is not to talk too much and go with the flow, although you’re doing it very well, precious, I’m really glad you came. I fell asleep after a good fuck, but before I did I thought: are they paramilitaries or just traffickers?

The following day, the host arrived at last, riding a sorrel with a high-quality saddle, surrounded by bodyguards. He greeted Andrés Felipe and said, how nice to see you, are they looking after you as you deserve? and Andrés Felipe answered, of course, Don Fermín, I wasn’t treated this well even in my grandmother’s house, and then the man said, come on, Andrés Felipe, don’t exaggerate, I knew your grandmother’s house, maybe you don’t know this, but my mother was one of her maids. Andrés Felipe didn’t know what to say and we all stood there nonplussed, there was a silence that seemed to go on forever, you could hear the air passing, so I stuck my oar in, out of pure intuition, and said, that’s the good thing about this country, the opportunity it gives us to advance, I congratulate you on your house, Señor Fermín, we’ve been feeling as if we’re in the Palace of Versailles, and then the man started to laugh and gestured to Andrés Felipe and said, and who is this very polite young lady? and he said, a friend, I invited her because I know you like to see friendly young people, and he said, good for you, come, my dear, and he took me by the arm and walked me as far as the terrace and said to me, before you leave here I’m going to give you a gift, and I looked at him and said, the only gift I need is this invitation, but I’ll take it because it came from you, and he said, yes, I like intelligent sensitive people, but go get in the swimming pool because I have to work with Andrés Felipe until lunchtime, all right?

They came out around two on the afternoon. There was a moment when Andrés Felipe tried to switch on his BlackBerry but one of Don Fermín’s security guys approached nervously and whipped the phone out of his hand. We had lunch and then another helicopter arrived. Before saying goodbye Don Fermín took me to his study, closed the door, and said: I’m going to give you your gift, just as I promised. He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a box wrapped in gold paper. Then he gave me a hug and said: take good care of that bastard and say hello to the chief for me. In the helicopter, on the way back, I opened the box and found a beautiful watch. It was perfect for me. When we landed in Bogotá, Andrés Felipe put me in a taxi and set off along the road. They were waiting for him at the Palace. I understood everything but said nothing.

I see I haven’t told you anything about my friends at the faculty, Consul. One of them was Jaime, an Aesculapian priest who had special permission from the Curia not to study at the Xavierian but at the National: a strange-looking guy, who looked more Norwegian or Hungarian, or even Russian. Yellow beard and hair, and very white, sensitive skin. He lived with his community in an area near Usme, with a Dutch priest. Actually it was a home for street kids and he was studying sociology because he wanted to understand what he should do to change the world. He was from Santander. A good person, very committed. He said that if Christ were alive today, that was where he would be. He hated the little chapels in the north of the city where rich people had their weddings. He said he could happily shoot those who celebrated Mass in those neighborhoods, without his hand even shaking, although obviously not all rich people were the same, there were shades of gray, and even some rich people who were good. The real sons of bitches, according to him, were the priests who ministered to the rich and were all opportunists and liars.

Other friends of mine were Tamara, José, and Carlos Mario. All three from Cali, very together, or rather, good students. They liked having fun and sometimes I went with them to prepare work or exams, because in the end, when it was over, we always went dancing at Café y Libro or Son Salomé. They liked salsa, as did I, and also rock in Spanish. With them I went to concerts by ChocQuibTown and Aterciopelados and Side-stepper. They were all on the left but they hated FARC and ELN. We wanted a change, simply to aspire to something different. The guerrillas were corrupted by the money from drug trafficking and kidnappings, and because of their passive attitude of hunkering down in the regions and becoming like local chieftains. The university was an open space. Sometimes FARC or ELN people came and held parades in the Plaza del Che, but it was nothing, nobody paid any attention. Anyway, that was my group, we’d come out of class and throw ourselves on the lawn to talk, to have a nap in the sun, to talk about movies or books or our lives, or politics, of course, it was all completely ordinary, commonplace, we were young students at a public university.