So the father held back when faced with his son’s newfound fierceness, I say, Maybe, replies Aunt Sofi, or maybe Carlos Vicente Senior, like Carlos Vicente Junior, was just waiting for Eugenia’s reaction; the next move was hers and everyone was watching her, So what did she do then, She did the most disconcerting thing, says Aunt Sofi, turning to look back at Agustina, who is pretending not to listen. Having recovered her calm and concealing any sign of pain or surprise, Eugenia picked up the photographs one by one, like someone gathering a deck of cards, and put them in her knitting bag, then, turning to face her son Joaco, she said, and I’ll repeat what she said word for word because otherwise you won’t believe it, she said, You should be ashamed, Joaco, is this what you’ve been doing with the camera we gave you for your birthday, taking naked pictures of the maids? and then, laying the subject to rest, she addressed her husband, Take the boy’s camera away from him, dear, and don’t give it back until he learns how to use it properly, What do you mean, I ask, did Eugenia really believe that Joaco had taken the pictures? Don’t be naïve, Aguilar, it was clear by their format that they had been taken with the Leika camera that only Carlos Vicente used, and what doubt could there be that I was the one in the pictures; Eugenia, with stunning coolness and a perfectly steady voice, was putting on an act to defend her marriage.
For thirteen years, Aguilar, says Aunt Sofi, I’ve pondered the possible meanings of my sister’s reaction and I’ve always come to the same conclusion: she already knew, she always knew, and she wasn’t terribly bothered by it so long as the secret remained hidden, and the performance she improvised just then was a masterful attempt to guarantee that despite the evidence, the secret would remain a secret; what I’m trying to tell you is that she knew that her marriage would end not because Carlos Vicente was taking nude pictures of me but because it was known that Carlos Vicente was taking nude pictures of me, and not even then, but only if it were admitted that it was known. Are you sure of what you’re saying, Aunt Sofi? No, I’m not sure at all, sometimes I come to the opposite conclusion, that Eugenia was surprised by those photographs and that they were as much a blow to her as the kick was to Bichi, but that she had the courage to play down the facts and behave as she did. Even more surprising was the role that Joaco played; believe me, Aguilar, when I tell you that it was that afternoon that the pact between Joaco and his mother was sealed, What did he do? Joaco looked his mother in the eye and spoke the following sentence, just as I’m repeating it to you, Forgive me, Mother, I won’t do it again.
Can you imagine, Aguilar? that Eugenia, after a lifetime of practice, should know the code of appearances is understandable, but that Joaco, at the age of twenty, had already mastered it, that he could pick it up like that, is truly astonishing. Everything had been destroyed by a lie, my lie, the lie of my clandestine affair with my brother-in-law, and now my sister was trying to rebuild our world with another lie and preserve everything as it was before the shake-up, her marriage, the reputation of her household, even the possibility of me staying there despite everything, one lie canceling out another, tell me whether it isn’t enough to drive a person crazy. What was the price of all this, besides the bottomless confusion in Agustina’s head? I ask and I answer myself, The price was the son’s defeat before the father: the son had laid bare the truth and made a stand, and when the truth was denied, the son was crushed and the father saved. Almost, but not quite, Aunt Sofi contradicts me, because Bichi still had one last ace up his sleeve, that of his own freedom. When he saw that everything was lost in the house, that the morass of lies was swallowing them up whole, Bichi left by the front door, dressed just as he was, in a sweater, socks, and boots over his pajamas, and he went walking down the street and never came back, and I went out after him and I never came back, either.
By then Agustina, Aunt Sofi, and I were a good way down the road to Sasaima, and at that moment we were passing under a little cement bridge and Agustina announced from the backseat, This is the first bridge, take your jackets off now because in eight minutes, when we cross the second bridge, the heat and smell of the warm country will hit us all at once, and what she predicted came true exactly. In eight minutes by the clock we crossed the second bridge and at that same instant, like a wave coming in through the windows and hitting our noses, the heat reached us with its smell of green, damp, citrus, pasture, downpours, wild growth; we were in warm country now and it was only a little bit farther to Sasaima.
FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES all I did was shake, Agustina baby, I swear to you that after that phone call I was literally shaking, naked and helpless there like a newborn baby, until the telephone rang for a second time and I thought, Now it really is Rorro, but I was wrong again, this time it was a phone call from Mr. Sánchez, one of the security guards at the center, who spoke in gasps, unable to find the words to describe what was happening, They’re here, they’re here, Don Midas, and they’re searching, they’re tearing up the hardwood floor in the gym, they’ve already destroyed it and they’re still looking.
The first thing that popped into my head was that after the stir Agustina made that afternoon, the police must be raiding the center and taking it apart to find Dolores’s body, so I asked the guard, Who’s there, Mr. Sánchez, the police? No, Don Midas, it isn’t the police, it’s Mr. Spider’s bodyguards, Paco Malo, the Sucker, and six others, and Mr. Spider is outside with Mr. Silver, waiting in a car. I was still confused, but I managed to ask, Looking for what? because all this came as a complete surprise, Agustina darling, if it was Spider’s thugs then they couldn’t be looking for Dolores, since after all they knew the stretch of wasteland where they’d left her mortal remains, so I went back to interrogating Sánchez, What the fuck are Spider’s men looking for at my Aerobics Center at this hour of the night? Money, Don Midas, they say that this is where you must have hidden the stash that you…what do I mean? I’m sorry, I’m just repeating what they say, Don Midas, they’re looking for some money that according to them you stole from Don Spider and Don Silver, I’m calling to warn you, Don Midas, they say that if they don’t find anything here, they’re heading straight over there, to your apartment, these people are pissed off, Don Midas, there are lots of them and they’re extremely angry, they say that if the money isn’t here, it must be there, and pardon my language, boss, I’m just repeating what I’ve heard, they’re saying that if they have to string you up by the balls to find out where you hid it, then they’ll string you up.
You might ask, Agustina sweetheart, how I managed to think and respond in the middle of my intergalactic trip on Santa Marta Golden, a trip that was making my neurons, soft and spongy as marshmallows, bounce tamely around in the padded cell of my brain, and I tell you that either fear must work miracles or the double hit of adrenaline produced by those two calls gradually cleared away the fog, because at last I put two and two together and came to some conclusions, by which I mean that I assembled the previous month’s sequence of events as follows: one, Pablo’s cousins show up at my Aerobics Center asking to join and I rudely turn them down flat, without realizing the consequences of my actions; two, Pablo Escobar finds out and decides to teach me a lesson; three, Pablo sets a trap for me, ordering me through Mystery to ask for an excessive amount of money from Rony Silver and Spider Salazar; four, Pablo makes the money disappear and never returns it; five — and I had no way to confirm this fifth step but I deduced it logically — Pablo gets in touch with Rony and Spider and lies to them, making them think that he did return the money to me on the established date and with all the agreed-upon profits, and that he delivered it to me in full in order for me to pass their shares on; sixth and last, while I was mentally piecing together the map of the five previous points, Rony and Spider were on their way to my apartment with their gang of thugs to snip off my balls with fingernail clippers and yank off any detachable part of me, up to and including my eyelashes, to get me to tell them where I’d hidden the money that I’d supposedly swiped, so there you have it all laid out for you, baby, in six separate steps and a single move; why did the chicken cross the road? to get to the other side, riddle solved.