Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

We left the motel and he dropped me at Seventh and 140th. I was dying of panic, convinced that girl was me. I started to list what Víctor knew about me, and was relieved to realize he knew almost nothing, not even my name, just my cell phone number, which since it was for this work I’d bought using false papers. But they’d have a description or photographs: of the hotel, of the helicopter that took us to the ranch. I’d have to be very careful.

I felt scared for Manuel and my parents, what would happen if they went to the house? Víctor and his chief and Secret Service guys in general weren’t so fussy, I had to act fast. Then I remembered the offer from the former Miss Colombia. To go to Japan for a year, let things cool down, and then send for Manuel. It was the only solution, but I needed to talk with someone. I was alone, what to do? For some reason a light went on in my brain and I thought, Alfredo the lawyer! he could tell me how serious the problem was and if it was worth going. I didn’t have his number and I didn’t want to call the former Miss Colombia, so I went straight to his house. Seeing me, the doorman remembered, and immediately lifted the receiver of the entry phone.

He told me to follow him. Alfredo was waiting for me in the elevator, very surprised. To what do I owe this miracle? he said, and I said, I have to talk to you, you’re the only person I can trust, I have a problem, I’m sorry, if you’re busy I can wait, and he said, don’t worry, come, would you like a drink? and I said, yes, please, anything at all, a double, and I started telling him my life story, look, I’m this and this and that’s why I got involved with a guy from the Secret Service and then with people from Congress and the government, and that’s why I ended up in this and that; I told him about the visit to Don Fermín’s ranch and he opened his eyes wide, Fermín Jaramillo? and I said, I suppose so, I didn’t ask him his full name, and Alfredo said, damn it, wait, I’ll show you a photograph, he looked for a newspaper and showed it to me, is this him? I said yes, it is, I was on his ranch with the adviser I told you about, and Alfredo, looking increasingly grave, continued listening to the story, and I ended with Víctor, and I said, I think they’re looking for me, I don’t know what I did that was so bad, that’s what scares me the most, not knowing, and he said, well, it isn’t a crime to go as someone’s companion, you don’t work for the government, the problem isn’t the law but those who are covering their tracks and trying to protect this adviser. Andrés Felipe? I asked, and he said, yes, the press are investigating contacts between the government and the paramilitaries, the secret pacts, and that young man has become key to the whole business, the likeliest thing is that they’ll put pressure on him to plead guilty and say he acted alone, that’s what they always do, that’s why your problem isn’t with the law, let’s say, with the legal law, but with the law of those guys and the government, who do what they have to in order to protect themselves. It wouldn’t surprise me if they made up some sordid affair your friend was supposedly involved in that would make the visit to Don Fermín seem unimportant.

He stood up, answered a call on his cell phone, and after a while came back. Don’t worry, I’m going to protect you. If you don’t have a safe place stay here, does your family know I exist? do you want to call them? No, I said, that’s no problem, they’re used to my being away. I heard my cell phone vibrate and when I looked at the screen my chest contracted. It was Víctor. I said to Alfredo, should I answer? No, he said, better switch off the phone so they can’t trace you.

I spent the night in a guest room, looking at the lights of Bogotá and feeling scared. All I could do was wait. There was no mention of the case on the news, but I was sure the whole thing was about to blow up. Three days later, Alfredo arranged for me to travel overland to Quito. He had a friend, a magistrate of the Ecuadorian court, who could put me up until things calmed down. In the end I made up my mind to go home, invent an excuse, and pick up my passport, but when I got there nobody was in, only the maid. Mother had gone out and Manuel, who had no classes that day, had gone to the Luis Ángel Arango Library. It hurt me not to be able to say goodbye to him, but I told myself, it isn’t for very long. I left a note saying I was going to Los Llanos, and would call as soon as I could. I took out the money Andrés Felipe had given me. I should go to the apartment in Chapinero for my other savings, I thought. I caught a taxi and went, but as I got closer I saw two vans similar to Víctor’s on the corner of the street. I went back to the Nogal building, shaken, but from Seventh I saw more Secret Service vans in the parking lot of the building. What was going on? had they tracked me down? I stayed hidden for a while on the other side of the avenue, but nothing happened, so I decided to go.

I rushed back to the city center. Now I had nowhere to go, but luckily everything was ready for me to travel to Ecuador. From a phone booth I called my university friends. Tamara reassured me, saying nobody had come looking for me in the faculty. She didn’t ask me for any details, she was a good friend. Then I called Jaime, the Aesculapian priest, and said, look, I need you to help me, it’s a matter of life and death, I have to hide for a few hours, maybe until tomorrow, but it’s very dangerous, are you up for it? and he said, of course, we’ll protect you here in the community. I went there, and I think that saved my life, Consul. I was there the whole of the following day, worrying my head off, until in the end I decided that there was no other way out and from a pay phone called Alfredo’s friend, the one who was going to get me out of the country. He was anxious, and insisted we should go that same night. I was picked up two hours later and we began the journey. He told me they had arrested Alfredo and put together a charge thanks to some cleverly edited recordings. We crossed Rumichaca Bridge on a false passport.

The following day I bought the newspaper and saw the news: former magistrate Alfredo Conde, arrested in his house. Then I went on the Internet and saw all the news bulletins. A spokesman made a public statement, saying that they would do everything they could to clarify the relationship between the lawyer and terrorism. Behind him, next to the chief of police, I noticed Piedrahita’s thin, Indian-looking face, and I thought: they know I was there, they’ve charged him, and now they’re looking for me. I also saw that Andrés Felipe was being kept in detention in a house in La Picota belonging to the prosecutor’s department, that they had grabbed him trying to leave the country.

From Quito I called the former Miss Colombia and said, I agree about Japan, but I need you to get me a ticket leaving from Ecuador, and so it was, they sent me on a route that was like a country bus, with stops in São Paulo, Dubai, Bangkok, and finally Tokyo. Five days’ traveling.

In Tokyo everything seemed phantasmagorical. I had read Murakami and imagined the city as a combination of cold, sometimes icy sentences that spoke of lonely people, all-night cafeterias, and young people who couldn’t find a place in the world and isolated themselves in little towns in the mountains, that’s how I imagined it, a place in which everyone lived submerged in his obsessions, and when I arrived, going from the airport to the center in a van, I looked through the window and said to myself, I’m alone and I’m far away, I’ve left Manuel but I’ll go back for him, I couldn’t do anything but escape to save myself, to save the two of us, because if I’m in danger then he’s in danger too, and my joints and my love lobes hurt at the thought that I couldn’t write to him or call him, what could I say to him? what explanation could I give? The best thing was to live through this time as quickly as possible and then look him in the eyes and tell him the truth. It would be painful to be separated from him, but the day would come, I just had to be strong.