But life goes on and gets to us, Consul, and unfortunately things start all over again, so that after that little joy there I was once more, sitting at the table in the dining room in front of an unappetizing dish. I had to make a great effort to eat anything, and to put up with Father’s comments, because by now he was already starting to proclaim, ever more insistently, the country’s need for a savior, someone who would come in with a firm hand and restore order, reestablish harmony, clear the air. Change the atmosphere in which we were living.
I don’t know what was going on in his work or in his inner life, if he had one, but it was clear that suddenly, without anything particular happening, Father had started to change. Having previously had few political opinions, and moderate ones at that, he now spoke passionately about what he read in the press or saw on the TV news. Whatever he was thinking just had to come out, and it came out in the strangest ways. It’s very likely that what he said to us at the dinner table was what he would have liked to say at work, but nobody there listened to him. His opinions didn’t interest anybody. At home, on the other hand, we were obliged to hear them and that’s what we did, stoically, hear that endless droning, that litany of rancor toward reality and the present day, that ultimate in resentment, depicting a country in a situation of chaos and moral collapse from which it could only emerge thanks to a true patriot, and who could else could that be but that soldier of Christ and champion of order, Álvaro Uribe, who at the time, very close to the elections, was already flying high in the opinion polls?
Father was mesmerized by Uribe.
It was that enthusiasm that turned him into a man with strong opinions, a secret amateur columnist, and Mother, hearing him talking about topics she considered of major importance, must have thought her husband had at last stopped being a resentful but docile bureaucrat and had turned into something new, a citizen whose ideas were appreciated and discussed by others, and which he shared generously with his family in order to show them the way, an ideological and moral beacon who filled her with pride.
I guess that’s why we had to put up with that pantomime and listen to him talk about politics, economics, recent history, as if instead of being in the dining room of his house he was on a TV show, debating with experts, and so he kept giving us arguments and counterarguments, without anybody contradicting him. He would present objections and answer them, interrupt himself and take over, a horrible spectacle that made me feel ashamed for him, a spectacle designed to exacerbate my sense of the ridiculous and my own self-esteem.
It was like being hit in the stomach, squeezed by pincers, it was my own Loch Ness Monster starting to emerge and I closed my eyes, trying to escape, to go far away, but when my hallucinations finished and I came back to the table he was still there, endlessly spouting his opinions, quickly gulping a mouthful of rice in order not to lose the thread, saying things that sounded false even though they might have been right, ideas that, uttered by him, were pure bullshit: that in Colombia the terrorists had become stars, that everyone wanted to have their photographs taken with them, that it was incredible that anyone could still be talking about negotiating, that Tirofijo’s empty seat next to Pastrana was a mockery, a symbol of a total lack of principles, and he’d repeat ardently, the blood rushing to his cheeks, what we need here is a firm hand, we have to make sacrifices, if you don’t believe me look at Chile, which is an example now to the whole of Latin America, here we have to take over the helm and change direction, and we have to do so with resolution, a sense of duty, and a love of our country, and Mother, feeling obliged to support what he said, as if we were on Big Brother or some daytime quiz show, would say to him, oh, Alberto, I hope God hears you, Álvaro Uribe is the only one who isn’t talking about making deals and handing the country over to the guerrillas, quite the opposite, he wants to fight them, that’s the only language the terrorists understand, fight them and keep fighting, he’s going to stand up to them, oh, yes, and let’s hope those other crooks, rich kids, and traitors just go away.
And Father would say, yes, Bertha, the other candidates are the spoiled children of this country, they’re all from foreign schools, always looking outside, people who feel ashamed of being Colombian, that’s how they are and that’s why they’re handing over the country, whereas Uribe comes from the middle classes and from the mountains of Antioquia, with all the moral values and traditional courage of the countryside, that’s what we need, a man who loves Colombia, who if you opened his veins would ooze Colombian blood, with pride, and that’s something we’ve never seen in a candidate, Uribe is the first one to talk about true patriotism, national dignity, to glorify the flag and stand up to terrorism, and that’s why I say, Bertha, that if Uribe doesn’t win, we’ll have to scoop this country up from the floor with a spoon, and we may even have to ask the gringos to send in the Marines to sort out our problem for us, the way it happened in Panama, and we’ll have to swallow the humiliation, how can there be people who don’t realize? You just have to see his slogan: “A firm hand and a big heart.”
They would talk and talk for more than an hour, and since Juana was always studying at the house of one of her friends, I had to face it all by myself, unable to get up from the table until they’d brought their pathetic show to an end.
I often dreamed of running away, Consuclass="underline" going out one morning and not getting on the school bus. Or rather: the two of us not getting on the school bus. I couldn’t run away unless it was with Juana. I couldn’t leave her behind, in our everyday life. Sometimes I’d say to her, Juana, when are we leaving? why do we have to wait so long? and she’d reply, you don’t have to do anything, just wait, I’m going to arrange everything and when it’s ready we’ll go away forever, far from this hell. We’ll go away without leaving anything that’ll help them trace us.
Hearing her, my heart would thump in my chest. All that sacrifice was going to have an end, and that end was near. The two of us were working for the same thing: she with her intelligence and her strength and I with my capacity to resist. We’d get away from this rabid world and build a better one.
Books helped me, but I still had to get them.
A neighbor on the block had an enormous library, but didn’t like to read. His parents were teachers and they bought him children’s books, but he was only interested in football, Internet sex, and American cable TV series. He was fourteen years old. His name was Víctor and one day I suggested a deaclass="underline" if he passed them on to me, I’d read them and then tell him the story, and that way we’d both be happy: he could devote himself to football, RedTube, and HBO, and I could do all the reading I wanted.
He agreed.
That was how I came to read Mark Twain’s stories of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, White Fang and Call of the Wild by Jack London, and things by Joseph Conrad like Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, and the sad, exotic adventures of David Balfour by Stevenson, and Ivanhoe by Walter Scott, and the works of Rudyard Kipling, especially Kim. Soon after, little by little, came Salgari’s series about Sandokan and the Tigers of Malaysia, The Count of Monte Cristo by Dumas, and King Solomon’s Mines by Rider Haggard.
Usually, we got together in his room.