Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

Suddenly, in the middle of the city, the van turned in at an underground garage: this was my final destination. We took out the things and went up to an apartment on an upper floor, with a view of rooftops. Then I sat down to wait for things to pass, for the time to go by, that was all I wanted. I asked the woman who received me what was going to happen, but all she said was, rest, girl, you must be dead, do nothing but sleep for at least three days, the first week is for you to get used to it and the jetlag to pass and the bags under your eyes to go. So I was shut in for a week. I wanted to go out but they wouldn’t let me, and when at last I went out they gave me an escort. I don’t want to tell you names or many details of what I lived through in Tokyo, as I’m sure you’ll understand, it’s dangerous and there are people who could spend their whole lives tracking you down.

I worked with a group of Japanese who were the clients of the organization of my mamiya , a Colombian friend of the former Miss Colombia. It wasn’t a traumatic experience, but it was hard. After a while I found the lack of freedom stifling. I couldn’t go out on the street alone. I was earning good money but from it they kept deducting the costs of the journey, the costs of bringing me there, arranging my papers, and I don’t know what else. Every time I asked, my debt had increased. One day I asked a Japanese for accounts and the guy, a horrible dwarf, gave me a slap and threw me to the ground. I learned that I had to prepare myself for a new transformation: to be the submissive woman, ready to hit back when the enemy lowered his guard. I vowed that that Japanese dwarf would end up with his brain split open, and I began a tactic of seduction. Monsieur Echenoz was right again, and a month later I had him in front of me, naked. I knew what I wanted to do as soon as he forced me to kneel and suck his cock. The killer whale. I clasped him between my teeth but something strange happened: as I was about to cut into his skin the guy moaned with pleasure and ejaculated like crazy. Then he asked me to stand up straight on his back with my high heels on and walk all over him. Strange. Then he grabbed a lighter and held out his arm, which was covered in keloidal scars. I burned him and he ejaculated again, screaming with pain.

I soon realized that he was the local boss, so it struck me as a good idea to go along with him. His name was Junichiro, but I called him Juni. He knew English, although he didn’t speak much in general. He was thirty-four years old. One night he told me that, as a boy, starting at the military school in the province where he was born, his comrades forced him to lick the asses of the ten dormitory heads. For a year they gave him beatings in the toilets, urinated in his face, and of course fucked him thousands of times. From what I understood he felt guilty for having felt pleasure and that was why he liked to be punished. It purified him and excited him. I was with him for about a year. One night I heard noises in one of the rooms in the apartment and when I went to see I found him lying there almost unconscious. He was bleeding from the anus. I asked him what had happened but he said nothing, and a second later I saw Tarek, an Iranian bodyguard, come in with a towel and some drugs to cauterize him. I thought it was horrible and I walked out. I didn’t want to see him again and, fortunately, he respected me.

Then I got to know Jaburi, who was also a bodyguard. Whenever I went out I went with him, and one night, coming back to the apartment, I asked him to come with me into the shower. We fucked under the water, which was the start of my making him fall in love with me. The fucking was great. We maintained our relationship until one morning I felt something, a dizziness, my period was late, I was pregnant. It could only have been his, because we fucked without a condom. I think I must have wanted it subconsciously, so that he would get me out of there, to remind me that my life wasn’t just that, and it worked. Jaburi paid my debt and went to talk with the local bosses. We got married and they gave me an Iranian passport, because I’d left my Colombian one in the pocket of a pair of jeans and it had faded in the washing machine, maybe because it was false. Soon afterwards we got permission and were able to travel to Tehran, where Manuelito was born. But they don’t know that in Tokyo: the organization told the other girls I’d run away; I think they even said I’d been captured and tortured, I’m not sure.

In Tehran I kept putting off getting in touch with Manuel, every day I said to myself: tomorrow, next week… I had to gather my strength. I was dying to tell him that he had a nephew, actually a son. Manuelito was our son. I applied for the passports without Jaburi knowing. I hoped to run away somewhere before writing to Manuel, but without my realizing it time passed. I never imagined he’d come looking for me. It’s hard to explain what I did, but that’s what happened. In Japan I was high on pills most of the time; that’s what I chose to escape. I have lots of gaps. Sometimes I looked at a calendar and said, are we already in September? and then, ten minutes later, we were in another month, and suddenly someone said in my ear, happy New Year, and I’d smile and take another pill. Jaburi saved me but I gave him my body and made him happy for a time. I didn’t give him a son because Manuelito is mine alone. He hit me once, although you could say I asked for it. I prefer not to talk about that, but the truth is that I didn’t hate him, I felt sorry for him. He seemed to me a loser, an inferior animal. I’ll tell you what happened, Consul: one night I refused to have sex with him and he said, I’m your husband, you’re obliged. I told him that nobody obliged me to do what I didn’t want to do and I got up and locked myself in the bathroom. Then I started shouting through the window. The neighbors woke up, and his parents and brothers, who lived on the floors below, came up to our apartment. I started saying that Jaburi was a coward, that he beat me because he was incapable of having an erection and satisfying me, and I said that he wasn’t a man because he forced me to put my finger up his ass and rub him, and that, as a wife, I did it even though I was dying from disgust, and I cried that Jaburi was a lousy faggot who couldn’t get enjoyment with women and only had erections when he painted mustaches on me with a burned cork. The neighbors started laughing and saying, “Virtuous woman,” and at that moment Jaburi knocked down the door and grabbed me and hit me while I screamed and laughed. You shouldn’t hit a woman, but I enjoyed it. It was a way of telling him: you may have force and religion on your side, but I’m the one who has what you want between her legs, and I can destroy you. Again I raised my arms and prayed for Monsieur Echenoz.

The rest of the time, Jaburi was fine with me. The payment he’d obtained to save me was more than sufficient. He’ll find it hard for a while and then he’ll recover and later he’ll be happy. That’s how it always is in life. The more quickly you suffer, the better it is in the long run.

And that’s all, Consul. The rest you already know.

The urgent communication from Bangkok came as a shock. I was starting to get accustomed to the company of Juana and Manuelito Sayeq when one day, as often happens when you’re waiting for something, the telephone rang.

It was Angie, the secretary.

“There’s a call from Bangkok, Consul. It’s urgent.”

It was the lawyer, sounding very upset. He said that for some reason (something beyond his control), the legal authorities had suddenly brought the hearing forward to that very morning, abruptly, and that in court, when given the chance to speak, Manuel had refused to plead guilty, which made everything very difficult.