Chepe was not spared either in the squall of death. They did not kill his pregnant wife, this is true, but they took her: she was in the hospital, for a routine checkup, when the attack started. They slipped Chepe a note under his door: You, sir, have a debt to clear with us, and that’s why we’re taking your pregnant wife. We have Carmenza and need fifty million for her and another fifty for the baby on its way. Don’t try to get around us again. The news of this double kidnapping was soon in the newspaper, under the headline: BABY ANGÉLICA KIDNAPPED BEFORE BIRTH. Chepe himself, in an interview, candid in his pain, had revealed to the journalist the name they planned to give their daughter. The journalist, a young redhead covering the recent attack on San José, does not only publish her articles in the newspaper, but also conducts live interviews for a television news program. Escorted by two officers, as well as her cameraman, she arrived in San José in one of those helicopters meant to evacuate seriously wounded soldiers — and dead ones — to their places of origin. She was granted this military dispensation because she is the niece of General Palacios. She has been strolling around for days under the sun, which at this time of year is intense, her ginger locks adorned with a white straw hat, her eyes hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses. This morning I saw her pass by my door: she stopped for a moment, seemed doubtful; she looked at her cameraman as if questioning him; the young man looked impatient. The journalist was probably wondering whether I, an old man sitting alone by his house, was a good subject for a photograph. She decided I was not and carried on walking. I recognized her: I had seen her on the television at Chepe’s. Being here, in this town, sunburnt, did not seem very agreeable to her. She continued her meandering through the blown-up streets, the wrecked houses. Slowly, her green T-shirt soaked in sweat — down the back, between her breasts — she seemed to be walking through hell, her mouth twisted in torment.
“Thank God we’re leaving tomorrow, Jairito,” I heard her say to her cameraman.
I had left my house, at dawn, to sit by the side of the door, as Otilia always did when she was waiting for me. I could still see the fog in the sunshine, persistent, this disaster that I do not know why those of us who remain seem determined to ignore. Thinking of Chepe and his pregnant wife, wondering how they managed to take her, how they transport people as fat as Saldarriaga, forcing them to walk up and down hills for kilometers, helps me to walk. I should go and keep Chepe company. Better to listen to someone than to sit here confirming Otilia’s absence.
It is eight o’clock in the morning and I arrive at his shop. Some people are sitting beside him, at one of the tables in the aisle, in complete silence; they are drinking coffee. Others, here and there, are drinking beer, or smoking. There is no music. Chepe nods hello. I sit down with him, across from him, in an uncomfortable chair, which wobbles.
“So, that means they’ll kill her,” Chepe says to me. He stares at me for too long — is he drunk? — and shows me a note, which I do not take, but the contents of which I give him to understand I already know. “Where am I going to get that kind of money?” he asks me. “Damn it, profesor, where?”
What can I say? We remain silent. The girl who wore a daisy in her hair brings me a cup of coffee. She no longer has the daisy and her face is somber. She resents, perhaps, my lingering look. She walks away unhappy. She does not hear us anymore, like before, does not want to hear us. I find aguardiente bottles under the table.
“Where?” Chepe asks us all.
We do not know whether he has started to laugh or to cry, but his mouth slackens, his head trembles.
“Tell them just that, Chepe,” they say to him.
“Negotiate with them, negotiate. That’s what everyone does.”
I see, behind Chepe, several neighbors’ heads; some smile in silence, on the verge of a joke, because in spite of the bullets and splashes of blood there is always someone who laughs and makes the rest laugh, at the expense of death and the disappearances. This time there was just a touch of somewhat kind irony: Chepe’s tears look like tears of laughter.
He recovers. It is as if he swallows his tears.
“And you, profesor? Any word about your wife?”
“Nothing.”
“It won’t be long, profesor, before they let you know,” someone says. “They must be weighing up your treasures.”
And someone else:
“Profesor, stop in at the post office. There were two letters for you.”
“Really? So there’s still post?”
“The world hasn’t come to an end, profesor,” says one of the ones who laugh.
“What do you know,” I say. “Your world may not have ended, but mine has.”
I finish my coffee, leave Chepe’s shop, and head straight for the post office. Must be letters from my daughter, I think. When the church was blown up she wrote to us asking if we wanted to go and live with them, assuring us we would be welcomed by her husband, begging us to think of our grandchildren. Neither Otilia nor I had any hesitation: we were never leaving here.
~ ~ ~
Both letters are from my daughter. I do not read them in the post office, but return home, as if Otilia were waiting for me there, to read them. When I arrive I find several children crouched down in a circle, at the edge of the pavement. I ask them to let me past, but they stay where they are, their heads almost touching. I lean over and see the children’s hands, thin and tanned, stretched out toward the hand grenade. “The grenade,” I shout to myself. “It’s still there.”
“Let me see,” I say.
The oldest of the children makes up his mind, grabs the grenade and jumps back. The rest of the children jump back with him. I have frightened them. It is not possible, I think, putting my daughter’s letters in my pocket. I’m going to blow up before reading your letters, María.
I reach out my hands, but the boy does not seem prepared to relinquish the grenade.
“It’s not yours,” he says.
The rest of them turn to look at me, waiting. They know very well that if they take off running I could never catch them.
“Nor yours,” I say. “It’s nobody’s. Give it to me before it explodes, do you want to blow up like that dog they buried with honors?”
I plead inwardly that the boy had been among those who attended the funeral of the dog with military honors, on one side of the cemetery, when they played the cornets. And yes, he must know perfectly well what I am talking about because he immediately hands it over. That public burial was useful for something.
The other children take a few steps back, moving away from me but still surrounding me.
“Go on,” I say to them. “Leave me alone with this.”
They do not leave, they follow me — at a prudent distance, but following me — and where am I to go? I walk through the streets with a grenade in my hands, accompanied by children.
“Go away,” I shout at them. “Don’t follow me. This will blow us all up.”
They carry on, unperturbed, and it even seems that more children come out of their houses, interrogate the first ones in whispers, and remain at my back, implacable. Where have so many children come from? Did they not leave?