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.”
Teresa also wept, but kept her distance, since she was holding Manuelito Sayeq. The guards said something to each other and continued with the gurney as far as the infirmary (I assumed). Juana hugged me again and for a second we were one and the same. I felt her grief, her guilt, perhaps her anger.
Soon afterwards the doctor came and shook his head, he was dead. I already knew that. We all knew. Then he handed over two folded sheets of paper.
“They were in his pocket,” he said.
One was for me, and said:
I told you, Consul, this wasn’t going to be a crime story, but a strange love story. Now I’m free, even happy, and with this freedom I abolish myself. At last.
The other was for Juana. She read it and read it, crying, and finally handed it to me.
“Please, Consul, read it.”
Dear sister. I wasn’t able to see you, I thought I could hold out, but I’ve been drowning more and more, and now there’s a way out and I don’t have any strength left. Forgive me for failing you. I asked the consul to look for you but I’m not sure he’ll succeed, time is up. Soon they’ll be coming for me. I seem to hear them, hear their steps, but they won’t find me. My life was always yours, but I have it on loan. I’ll give it back to you when you come to where I already am almost, where I will be forever. You don’t know the pleasure I feel seeing the liquid come out of my body, at last clean of that blood. This purity will suffice for both of us. With mine, I cleaned yours. I’m waiting for you where you know. If you read this it’s because they will have found you. A kiss.
Something bothered me, or rather made me indignant, didn’t they pass on the messages? didn’t he know that Juana was coming to see him? I went to one side (I didn’t want Juana, who was still crying in Teresa’s arms, to hear me) and asked the warden of Bangkwang: didn’t the lawyer send you my messages? weren’t you told the consul had found the prisoner’s sister? weren’t you told we were coming here? The warden looked surprised, which I didn’t understand, and when I repeated my question he said no, he didn’t know anything.
Then he called one of his men and asked him, but he just shook his head. Without asking permission I grabbed the phone and dialed the lawyer’s number. One ring, two, three. No reply. I couldn’t believe it, he hadn’t been given the message! They had killed him.
I insisted to the warden: it was important for us to clarify this, but he just looked up at the ceiling with a total lack of interest. I finally managed to speak with the lawyer:
“Of course I passed on the message, I dictated it by phone to the warden’s secretary and mentioned it was urgent!”