A soldier asks for our identification cards, another verifies the numbers on the screen of a portable machine. Those who were sleeping in San José begin to come out of their houses. They know very well that we are the unfortunate ones who got up early. It is our turn. We the early risers are interrogated: why did you get up early today, what were you doing in the street? Only some can go, more or less half of us: a soldier reads a list of names.
“These can go,” he said, and I was astonished: I did not hear my name.
Anyway I leave with those who are leaving. A sort of anger, indifference, helps me walk through the rifles without drawing attention to myself. In fact, they do not even look at me.
Old Celmiro, older than me, a friend, follows my example: he was not named either, and this mortifies him.
“What’s wrong with these people?” he says to me. “What could they have to accuse us of? Fuck all.” He complains that none of his sons came to get him when they found out.
And we hear the protests of Rodrigo Pinto, young and worried; weakly he protests; he crumples his white hat in his hands; he is from the next district, lives in the mountains, relatively far from our town, but nevertheless he is arrested and will stay arrested for who knows how long; they will not allow him to go to his house, which is on the front line, halfway up the next mountain; he tells us his wife is pregnant, his four children alone and waiting for him; he came into town to buy oil and sugarloaf, but he dares not follow my example and that of Celmiro: he is not old enough to cross the line unnoticed.
It has been three or four long hours staring at each other, more resigned than outraged. It goes on all the time, when something happens and one gets up earlier than usual. They load the ones left up into an army truck; they are probably going to interrogate them more closely at the base.
“Someone was taken,” people are saying. “Who did they take this time?”
Nobody knows, and nobody is in a hurry to find out either; someone being taken is a commonplace occurrence, but it is a sensitive subject to enquire about too much, to be excessively concerned; some women, while we were being held, came to speak to their husbands. Otilia did not come; she will still be sleeping, she will dream that I am asleep at her side, and now it is noon, hard to believe; where had the time gone? But gone it had, as usual, as ever.
* * *
“So, profesor? You’re a light sleeper too.”
“I didn’t know you were with me,” I answer.
“I wasn’t. I was just watching. I didn’t want to disturb you, profesor, not to bother you. You looked as though you were dreaming of angels.”
And Dr. Gentil Orduz comes over to me, opening his arms, his square-rimmed glasses, his white shirt flashing in the sun.
“I was not detained,” he informs me. “But you’re so amusing, it was funny to watch you, profesor, why didn’t you resist? Tell them I am Profesor Pasos, and that’s that, they’d let you go immediately.”
“Those boys don’t know me.”
I confront the satisfied, pink, healthy face that is too close to me. He pats me on the shoulders.
“Have you heard?” he says. “They took the Brazilian.”
“The Brazilian,” I repeat.
No wonder he did not appear at Hortensia Galindo’s; Otilia did not mention him; was that not his horse I saw alone, saddled up, trotting casually in the night, on my way back from Maestro Claudino’s.
“You could see it coming, couldn’t you?” Dr. Orduz asks me. “Let’s have a beer, profesor. My treat: a man feels good in your company, why is that?”
We make ourselves comfortable in the aisle that looks onto the street. “Again at Chepe’s shop,” I say to myself “It’s fate.” Chepe greets us from the table opposite, with his wife, who is pregnant. They are both having chicken soup. What wouldn’t I give for some broth instead of a beer. Chepe exudes cheerfulness, energy. After all, his first child, his heir, is on its way. A few years ago they kidnapped Chepe, but he was able to escape quite soon: he threw himself over a cliff, hid in a hole in the mountain, for six days: he tells the story with pride, laughing, as if it is a joke. Life in San José is resuming its course, it appears. Today it is not Chepe, but a young girl, who waits on us; a white daisy shines in her black hair. Who told me all the girls had left town?
“It must be your age,” the doctor answers himself, “that makes one feel so at peace at your side.”
“My age?” I am amazed. “Old age does not bring peace.”
“But there is peace in wisdom, isn’t there, profesor? You are a venerable old man. The Brazilian was telling me about you.”
I wonder if he is saying this with a double meaning.
“As far as I know,” I say, “he is not Brazilian. He is from here, as Colombian as we are, from Quindío. Why is he called the Brazilian?”
“That, profesor, neither you nor I can know. Might as well ask why they took him.”
Dr. Orduz must be nearing forty, a good age. He has been the director of the hospital for six years or so. Single, with good reason, he has two nurses and a very young lady doctor doing her rural training year under his charge. He is the famous surgeon in these parts. He carried out a delicate heart operation on an Indian in the middle of the jungle, at night, successfully, and all on his own, with no anaesthetic, no instruments. He has been lucky, both times the guerrillas wanted to take him he was far away from San José, in El Palo. And the one time the paramilitaries came looking for him he managed to hide in a corner of the market, burrowing all the way into a sack of corn cobs. They do not want to take Dr. Orduz to ask for a ransom, they say, but to use him for what he is, a great surgeon.
He seems settled in San José.
“At first I was shocked to see so much blood spilled,” he tends to say, “but now I’m used to it.”
Dr. Orduz laughs all the time, even more than Chepe. Though not from around here, he has not wanted to leave, like other doctors have.
His voice subsides, becomes a whisper.
“I understand,” he says, “that the Brazilian paid his protection money, to the paras as well as the guerrillas, on the sly, in the hope that they’d leave him be, you know? So, why did they take him? Who knows. He was a cautious fellow, and he was about to pack up and leave. He didn’t manage to. They tell me they found all the cattle on his ranch with their throats slit. He must have annoyed someone, but who?”
He spread his arms in a wide shrug at the moment the girl brought our beers.
“Doctor,” Chepe shouts from his table. His wife looks up at the ceiling, blushing and anxious.
Orduz looks over at them with his grey eyes.
“We have finally decided,” Chepe goes on. “We want to know if it’ll be a boy or a girl.”
“Right away,” Orduz replies, but docs not stand up. He just pushes his chair back and takes off his glasses. “Let’s see, Carmenza, show me that belly. From there, like that, in profile.”
She sighs. And she also pushes back her chair and obediently lifts up her blouse, up to where her breasts begin. It is a seven-or eight-month belly, white, which shines more in the light. The doctor stares long and hard.