I was one of those readers, my dear listeners, and I want to tell you, by way of conclusion, that until a very short time ago you could still see that couple of old men moving the chess pieces on the sand, drinking vodka and waving their hands as a sign of disagreement over some game, which was the greatest thing in their lives.
And that is the end of my story.
2. THE SURVIVOR (AS TOLD BY MOISÉS KAPLAN)
The events I am about to relate all happened to a man named Ramón Melo García, who lived in the town of La Cascada, in the department of Meta, in the Plains region of Colombia. Ramón was a good man, hardworking and honest. By the time he was twenty-nine, he already owned three auto repair shops, two in the town and another on the road to Granada, where he also sold soda, coffee, meat pies, and donuts. He had a total of twelve employees, working for minimum salary but with a percentage on outside repairs, Christmas bonuses, paid vacations, and health insurance. They all liked Ramón, because he wasn’t a boss who gave orders from his office, but a worker like them, with his greasy uniform and his fingers covered in cuts and blisters. The little finger on his left hand was missing: at the age of fifteen he had caught it in a fan on a bus. As he would say, God cut off the finger I used for cleaning my ear, which must have been a message to stop listening to so much crap. And he would get back to work.
In the evenings, after work, he would go to see his girlfriend, Soraya Mora, who was twenty-six, had studied IT and secretarial skills, and worked in an internet café called La Maporita at the corner of Calle Tercera and the Parque Boyacá. He would sit down at one of the computers, look at his messages, check his Facebook account, and sit there for a while, chatting, drinking soda, and showing her photographs of his friends. At eight o’clock they would both go to Soraya’s house for dinner; her mother, Doña Matilde, would make fish soup and pork and sometimes corn pancakes, because she was a peasant woman from Santa Fe de Antioquia.
After dinner, they would sit in the doorway and watch the people passing by, and Soraya would say, when are you going to ask for my hand, Ramón? you’re putting me to sleep with all this waiting, and he would say, calm down, Sorayita, you know I will. Of course I know, but when, next year? my mother asked me the other day, and so did my brother. Is your brother back? Yes, he just got back from Medellín, he’s working in an office. And what kind of work does he do? What kind of work do you think? office work, I don’t know, but it’s well paid, about a million and a half pesos, maybe even more, yesterday he brought Mamá a gold necklace, and some earrings for me. Tell him I’d like to see him, tell him to drop by the shop whenever he likes, and we’ll go have a few beers. Then Ramón would go home to sleep. He lived with his mother and an aunt, who were both seventy years old. At weekends, he and Soraya would go out dancing and drinking, almost always with his best friend, Jacinto Gómez Estupiñán, and Jacinto’s wife Araceli Ramos. Most times, they went to a nightclub called the Rey de la Pachanga, on the road to Cubarral, next to the bridge over the River Ariari, and there they would drink and dance until it was time to spend a while at the Llano Grande motel. Jacinto and he had studied at the teacher training college in Cubarral and then taken their higher certificate in Villavicencio. As both were only sons and their mothers close friends, they had grown up together. Jacinto had a farm near Lejanías and raised cattle.
But the situation in the region was becoming complicated.
The 39th Front of the FARC operated around La Cascada, under the command of Mono Jojoy, and in 2004 the Héroes de los Llanos, an urban paramilitary militia, arrived, led by a man known as Dagoberto, a former lieutenant in the army who had worked as a foreman on a farm growing African palms before taking up arms again. La Cascada had become a strategic route in the drug trade and the paramilitaries began extorting money from local businesses and asking for information about FARC members. About a week after they arrived, the first bodies appeared in ditches. One of them was the body of Braulio Suárez Acevedo, a waiter from the Brisas restaurant, and the other, Alfredo Mora Cañizares, an assistant at the Don Saludero drugstore. They had been tortured with candles, their testicles had been cut off, and each had been shot three times. They had signs pinned to their backs that said: I am a traitor to my country. The people who saw them did not dare approach, and the bodies lay there almost the whole day. Just after nightfall, the police arrived in a van, identified them, and took them to the morgue at the local hospital.
Ramón did not see the bodies, but he had known Braulio Suárez Acevedo, who, as far as he was aware, had no connections with the FARC. One of his employees said to him, no, Don Ramón, of course he didn’t have anything to do with the FARC, what happened was that he didn’t want to pay the paras, that’s all, anyone who doesn’t pay them, they say he’s with the guerrillas and they take him away, yesterday apparently they took Jesús Torres, the guy who works at the La Ceiba pool hall, who didn’t have anything to pay them with and didn’t want to give them the deeds to some land he owned, so they took him away, he’ll show up in a ditch, that’s for sure, nobody escapes those guys.
They hadn’t yet come to Ramón’s auto repair shop to ask for money, but he knew it was only a matter of time. A few days later, they did come, not to ask for money but to leave him two vans to be repaired. One had a blocked carburetor and the relay was missing; with the other one, he repaired the starting mechanism and the spark plugs and changed the brake pads. When they came back for the vehicles, Ramón handed the bill to the man known as Dagoberto, who looked at it, put it in his pocket, and said, thanks, I hope you did a good job, I’ve been told you’re the only reliable mechanic around here. Ramón looked at him without saying a word, turned, and continued with his work, which involved stripping a camshaft on a Chevrolet dump truck.
More or less once a week, they left him vehicles to fix. One day they brought him a Cherokee with seven bullet holes in it, and said, Ramón, let’s see if you can do a job on this piece of shit, look what a mess they made of it. Come back in a week, I’ll get rid of those nasty holes, it’s a nice car. They did not come for it after a week, but one of the men said to him, Dagoberto told me to tell you that he’s selling it, so keep it and you can pay him later. But I don’t know if I can afford it, it must be worth about thirty million, right? better if you take it away, I don’t have the money. The chief said we should leave it, if you don’t want it, talk to him about it. They went away and Ramón left it parked in back of the shop.
As it was Saturday, he went to La Ceiba to meet Jacinto, because Soraya had to stay at home to look after her mother. They had a few glasses of aguardiente and he told his friend about the car. This Dagoberto guy told me I should keep it and pay him later, but I don’t have the money, a pity, it’s a great car. But Jacinto said: if I were you I’d hold on to it, these guys have a lot of money, they might get themselves killed, and you end up with a car, so don’t be stupid, tell them yes, they haven’t even told you when you have to pay, so do it, if the worst comes to the worst you can pay them off by doing more repairs for them. No, Jacinto, I don’t like these people, I prefer to have things I bought with my own money, not like that.
The next day he told Soraya about it, and said he was going to give back the car that evening, but she said, oh, Ramón, you really are an idiot, why give it back if they’re giving it to you? I love that car, it’s really classy, it looks great, keep it, you won’t be sorry, you’ll see, in fact, why don’t you take me out now for a drive? No, Sorayita, if I use that car and something happens I’ll be in trouble. What’s going to happen? If something does happen, you can fix it, you’re a mechanic, aren’t you? go on, give me a ride, Ramoncito. O.K., darling, but only a short ride, come on.