Santiago Gamboa - Night Prayers

Everything is merely proof that I can still dream.

Dawn was breaking.

It was almost six in the morning, and Teresa and Juana were still asleep. I sat down in the living room to wait for them, thinking that a confession by Manuel would set things in the right direction. The waiting would be difficult, as would the procedure for the pardon (if the pardon came), but others had done it. They were both young, they would bear it.

I opened my e-mail and found a message from Gustavo:

What happened to Manuel Manrique? Did you find his sister? You never told me.

I answered, saying that I had found her.

She’s an incredible woman, I’ll tell you all about it. She’s here with me. She’s asleep now in the next room. We’re in Bangkok and in a few hours she and Manuel are going to meet. The trial has already started. I hope he’ll be able to serve his sentence in Colombia. It’ll have to be negotiated with the ministry. Thanks for everything, a hug.

E.

Around eight I managed to speak with the lawyer. He was surprised I was already in Bangkok, and said he would make arrangements for Manuel’s sister and me to visit Bangkwang.

“I won’t be able to go with you,” he said, “I have a meeting with the prosecutor that’s key to the trial. It’s a big problem.”

I told him I would try to persuade Manuel to plead guilty, and asked him if he thought it would still have an effect.

“Well,” the lawyer said, “if he makes a confession the trial will end with a sentence that may be a long one, but at least it’ll get Article 27 off our backs. The important thing is that he do it in a solemn way, even a bit theatrically. It’d be very important to plan it for Monday’s hearing. I can ask to be heard first and announce it. That would go down well. It may even make them reduce the sentence by a few years. Do you think you can persuade him?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m sure. His sister will talk to him.”

“That’s excellent news,” he said. “In that case, go to Bangkwang around ten this morning, I myself will call the warden and tell him to expect you at that hour. And then come to my office in the afternoon. We have things to discuss.”

“All right,” I said.

When I hung up, Teresa came out of the bathroom, already dressed. She called her office and said that she would be busy until the afternoon, that they should transfer only urgent calls to her. She called the driver to come and pick her up. Juana was in the kitchen: anxious, hopeful. With a touch of fear for what she had to face.

We had a breakfast of bacon and eggs, orange juice, and coffee. The heat kept rising. Soon afterwards Manuelito Sayeq started crying. By 8:45 we were ready. The car from the Mexican embassy was waiting for us outside the door.

Again the bustle of the streets, the smog, the screeching sound of the tuk-tuks , the accelerating and braking. And on leaving the city, the other world: paddies, fields with palms and fruit trees, stooping women wearing triangular hats, with their children tied to their backs.

Juana was looking at everything in surprise.

“I suppose I’ll have to get used to this,” she said. “This is going to be the landscape of my life for a while.”

“The next fight will be to try and get his sentence transferred to Colombia,” I said.

She looked at me anxiously. “To Colombia? We’ll see about that later, Consul, what makes you think it’s going to be better there? Anything would be better than that hell!”

Her answer did not surprise me.

“Well, that depends on the two of you and nobody else,” I said.

“I could rent one of those huts,” Juana said, “grow rice, and visit him at weekends until he comes out. We have time, we’re young. Manuelito Sayeq will grow close to his uncle. Or rather, his father. Manuel will be his father.”

The walls of Bangkwang didn’t impress her. The warden had a visitor from the Australian embassy, so we had to wait, and at last, about eleven o’clock, he received us in his office. Teresa accredited herself as a diplomat, given the task by her Foreign Ministry of following the case of the neighboring country. I introduced Juana as the prisoner’s sister.

The man greeted her without looking her in the eyes, and said, yes, his lawyer called a while ago, you have an hour for the visit. He lifted the receiver and a moment later an orderly came to take us to the first cellblock.

I asked Juana to wait, and Teresa went with her to the visitors’ parlor. I kept going with the orderly and one of the guards. As this was a special situation they authorized me to go as far as his cell and talk with him for a few minutes, preparing him for the visit. We went through three doors of rusted bars, in the midst of the heat and the flies. The corridor was a damp little passageway.

“It’s that one,” the guard said, pointing.

There were plenty of stains on the ground, seeping through the cracks in the doors, but as I approached Manuel’s cell, I noticed something shiny. I felt a rush of fear and walked more quickly.

My God, it was blood! A bloodstain was spreading along the corridor, from under his door. We ran. The guard took an eternity to get the key in.

At last he opened it.

Manuel was lying in a fetal position. He had cut his wrists with a sharpened spoon.

The guard went back out into the corridor and pressed the alarm button, but I saw immediately that he was dead. His eyes were half open as if he were laughing. I embraced him, clasped him to my chest, cursing. He was still warm. The warmth of his skin told me: not long ago, not very long ago.

On the wall, just above the body, there was a drawing made with his own blood and traced with his finger. A heart-shaped island and a volcano. Two figures sitting on the hillside, a man and a woman, holding hands, looking at the approaching storm, unable to see the monstrous animals that lay in wait below the water. To one side, he had written: Us .

By some desperate association of ideas, a poem by Vallejo came into my mind, and I cried out, as I hugged him: “Do not die, I love you so much! But the corpse, alas, continued to die…” I cried out until I had no voice left, and my face turned red and filled with tears. At that moment, feeling that part of reality was opening up, leaving a hole for the elements, the irrational, I realized to what an extent this story had become my story.

A few seconds later (or maybe minutes, I couldn’t be precise), a gurney arrived and they took him out wrapped in a grey blanket. The guards were shouting nervously, giving each other orders. The other prisoners were also shouting; although they were unable to see what was happening, the momentary chaos seemed to excite them. What darkness, what sadness, I thought. “But the corpse, alas, continued to die.” Manuel’s face, his dignity, seemed to give an unreal light to those dirty, peeling walls.

Going through the second set of bars, the guard went out into the yard and pushed the gurney along a path, right past the visitors’ parlor where they were waiting. The noise made both of them run to the window.

Juana saw him and then looked at me.

I saw something collapse in her eyes. More than pain, I seemed to recognize an expression of profound weariness. She came out into the yard without screaming, raising her hands to her face. The gurney reached her and she was able to touch him. The men stopped and Juana swooned over him, kissing him: his blood and his eyes, his pallor. Kissing his skin and his wounded arms. Kissing everything that was kissable on that dislocated, absent face, in which Manuel was no longer there. She wept and I also wept. “Weeping together made us feel a strange happiness.”