We knew that it was not easy to attract attention or ask for help in the midst of a country deafened by the noise of war. And if it was almost impossible to do it from any of the large cities, it was even more so from these craggy cliffs where neither the law of God nor that of man exists. Nor do the forces supposedly in charge of the public order ever reach us, but only those who, as civilians, come with the intent to annihilate us; and neither are the newspapers interested, nor do the edges of maps reach this far. That was why we were flabbergasted when we saw a delegation coming.
It was the most unusual, theatrical, and harmless of all delegations, composed of the rosy-cheeked parish priest of Vistahermosa, a freelance photographer, two radio reporters, and half a dozen girls about fifteen, wearing platform shoes and T-shirts that left their navels exposed and bearing names taken from Beverly Hills rather than the traditional Christian calendar, such as Natalie, Kathy, Johanna, Lady Di, Fufi, and Vivian Jane. They were all eighth-year students from Our Lady of Mercy School for Girls in Tora. Also making their presence felt, and in black from head to toe, their instruments stuffed into an old ocher Volkswagen they called the Mustard Menace, were the five members of Last Judgment, a heavy metal group from Antioquía, with tattoos and piercings even on their eyelids. “The latest thing; these boys are very modern,” was Perpetua’s remark when she saw them.
A motley bunch, ranging in age from fourteen to eighty and coming from every point on the compass, the members of this unusual delegation have nothing in common other than their intent to draw a human circle of unarmed protection around the shelter until the danger subsides, at least the immediate danger. Such is the trend starting to develop all over the country as the only means of resistance for people of peace against the violent people of every stripe.
“We will not abandon to the mercy of fate those who are threatened,” preached the parish priest during mass, which he set up at the foot of the niche built for the Dancing Madonna. He was pounding on every word with such fire that nobody would have believed that he was a potbellied, pink-cheeked little man, scarcely five feet tall.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit here in the shade, Padre, where it’s cooler?” I asked him, seeing that he was flushed and gasping for breath after the service, as if he had truly ingested the body of Christ and drunk His blood.
“In a minute,” he answered, “after I find the man who brought us here. I don’t see him around.”
“And who is the man that brought you?”
“I don’t know his name, but people call him Three Sevens. He was asking for solidarity with this shelter, and got people to listen at the Office of Foreign Affairs, at the editorial offices of El Tiempo, the Episcopal Chancery, the Red Cross, even at the Plaza de Bolívar in Santa Fe de Bogotá. ..”
“So it was Three Sevens!” screamed Mother Françoise, who was also listening. “Three Sevens made this miracle come true! What a nice young man, our own Three Sevens. .. Who would have thought!”
Then I saw him approaching, sticking his body half out the window of the dilapidated microbus, jam-packed with foodstuffs, and sporting his white linen shirt and an open smile that brightened his face. He was surrounded by a bunch of female members of the Animal Protection Society of Tenjo, who had offered to take care of feeding the caravan and the seventy-two displaced people currently in our shelter. As the commander in chief of this small army of girls and musicians, priests and older ladies, Three Sevens was never more handsome than when I saw him come through the door of the shelter, looking primitive and splendid, like a postatomic, epic hero, and then walk to the stone niche to kneel in front of his patron saint. It was the thrilling moment of return, the triumphal entrance of the prodigal son who had reappeared to be with his own and defend what he loved.
“You have come back,” I told him, and immediately regretted it, fearing that by uttering those words I could revive in him the compulsion to leave again.
“Have I?” he answered with a question, like being caught in the act, still unsure whether his own thinking agreed with his actions.
The ladies from the microbus improvised some fires in the middle of the yard, set cooking pots over the flames, and began their toil of peeling potatoes, preparing casava, slicing plantains, husking corn, and cracking some beef backbones to thicken the sancocho stew that they would distribute among all.
“At first, when we founded the Protection Society, it was just to shelter cats and dogs. Then we expanded our efforts to include orphans and soldiers’ widows, and now, look at us here,” one of the women, Luz Amalia de Montoya, tells me. This lady, with her carefully made-up eyes and rouged cheeks, fifties-style bob, and a double row of fake pearls and costume earrings, could be much more easily pictured watching a noontime soap opera and comfortably sipping chamomile tea than perched up here, challenging danger and distributing crackers and bowls of oatmeal among children and women whose names she doesn’t know, totally oblivious to the absurd fact that her old-fashioned soft roundness could be our best shield against the bullets.
Though I have never succeeded in developing a taste for sancocho, a grayish, heavily starched porridge that in all honesty I totally dislike, now that it is starting to boil and bubble, I have to admit it emanates a beneficial vapor that penetrates my lungs and, deep inside, turns into joy. How wonderful to perceive the smell of this soup, I think. Nothing bad can happen in a place where people gather around a big pot of soup. Life is stirring here, while death awaits outside, and the barrier between one and the other is just a bubbling pot of soup, a spider weaving its web, a fabric of minimal moves that builds up into a protecting wall.
Just like the huts of the invaders, everything up here is made out of nothing: of footprints, of memories, of three short nails and a couple of flattened-out metal cans, out of smells, intentions, affections, potted geraniums, and a photo of grandma. In the rest of the world everything is burdened with the unreality of matter; here, we levitate. Our days recover the freedom to invent themselves, and thanks to the strange arithmetic that results from adding nothing to nothing, our days can follow one another in a significant way — I mean, they are able to keep their meaning.
One of the ladies hands me a bowl of sancocho, and floating in its center is a challenging chicken foot, talons and all.
“Try this, it’s very tasty and loaded with vitamins. Eat some, to recover your strength,” she tells me in such a kind manner that I am ashamed to refuse, and accept the bowl.
How can I get rid of this sharp chicken claw, which has been presented to me as a delicacy but horrifies me with its human resemblance, so gnarled and funereal? I would rather die than eat it, and between these two extremes, my salvation could be to give it to one of the dogs, but that is impossible without everybody noticing. Three Sevens, watching from a distance, realizes my predicament and comes up to me, amused.
“Would my Deep Sea Eyes be grateful if I asked her for that chicken foot that has her in such a tizzy?”
Trying not to laugh, I transfer it to his plate, and as he gladly bites into it, I return to my own bowl and begin to take in the thick concoction spoonful by spoonful, though I still don’t like it, and it is boiling hot, and I am sweltering and not hungry; but in spite of everything, it goes down to my stomach, where it turns into joy, so much joy that in a playful mood I stretch my hand and tousle Three Sevens’s hair.
“Have the cooks perhaps not realized that what my lady requires here is a filet mignon, well done?” he pretends to shout, putting me on the spot. I give him a shove and say no, that I don’t want any filet mignon, that if I took the trouble of coming here from the other end of the world, it was precisely to measure up to this soup, even though it looks ugly to me.