“O.K.,” one of the men shouts, lengthening his voice strangely. “Leave it.”
And another: “Let’s go.”
The three or four left do not respond, they are each an island, a drooling profile: I wonder if it is not my own profile, worse than looking in the mirror.
“Goodbye, Geraldina,” I say out loud, and leave.
I hear shouting at my back.
I have left by the front door. I walk toward my house, calmly walk along the street, not fleeing, not turning back to look, as if none of this were happening — while it happens — and I reach the doorknob of my house, my hands do not shake, the men shout at me not to go in.
“Freeze,” they shout, surrounding me.
I feel for a second that they even fear me, and they fear me now, just when I am more alone than ever.
“Your name,” they shout, “or you’re finished.”
Let it be finished, I only wanted, what did I want? To go inside and sleep.
Your name, they repeat.
What am I going to tell them? My name? Another name? I shall tell them I am Jesus Christ, I shall tell them I am Simón Bolívar, I shall tell them I am called Nobody, I shall tell them I have no name and I shall laugh again; they will think I am mocking them and they will shoot: this is how it will be.
About the Author and the Translator
EVELIO ROSERO was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1958. He was awarded Colombia’s National Literature Prize by the Ministry of Culture in 2006 for his body of work, which includes several novels, short story collections, and books for young readers and children. The Armies, Rosero’s first novel to be translated into English, won the Tusquets International Prize and the 2009 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
ANNE McLEAN has translated books by Julio Cortázar, Carmen Martín Gaite, Tomás Eloy Martínez, Juan Gabriel Vásquez, and Ignacio Martínez de Pisón. Her translation of Javier Cercas’s Soldiers of Salamis won the 2004 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Premio Valle-Inclán.
Jacket art: Monotype, Red Cloud HI, by Wendy Mark
Design by Erik Rieselbach