“They were sincere words, don’t think that we let out an ‘I love you’ if we didn’t intend for it to mean something. For every man there was a pretty phrase, ‘handsome daddy,’ ‘my little piece of caramel,’ ‘light of my eyes,’ and other flattering words like that. But ‘I love you’ was only used for the enamorado that each woman had, the one for whom her heart remained faithful.”
So as not to generate misunderstandings with the business of the international tariffs and so that the male clientele would know exactly what to go by, the custom of hanging a lightbulb of a different color in each house was established: green for the blond French women; red for the Italians, so temperamental; blue for all the women from neighboring countries; yellow for the colombianas; and common, ordinary white — vulgar Philips bulbs — for the pipatonas, who only aspired to a crust of bread to feed their brood of children. At least that’s how it was until the startling Sayonara made her appearance. Startling? Made of shadow and wonder, her name charged with good-byes.
Sayonara, the aloof goddess with oblique eyes, more revered than even the legendary Yvonne and Mistinguett, and the only one in the history of the barrio whose window glowed with a violet-colored bulb.
“The violet light, that was the key,” affirms Todos los Santos. “It was a new color, unnatural, never before imagined. Because green lights are seen in stoplights, in lightning bugs, and reds and blues are at the circus, in bars, in shooting stars, on Christmas trees. But violet? Violet is a mystical color. A violet light in the dark of night produces anxiety and motivates uncertainty. And to think that we owe it to Machuca, may God protect her despite the barbarities she says about Him; it was Machuca, the blasphemer, who obtained that violet lightbulb, so one of a kind. She stole it from a traveling carousel that had stopped in town at the time.”
Sacramento, the cart man, was the first to see Sayonara arrive in Tora.
“Sayonara, no; the girl that would become Sayonara and that later would stop being Sayonara to become another woman,” emphasizes Sacramento, and I begin to understand that I have entered into a world of performances where each person approaches or retreats from his own character.
The river floated along in a lethargy of idle crocodiles, and the champán, the raft, that brought travelers and hustlers, tagüeros and caucheros—gatherers of ivory palm wood and rubber — lively men and those dying of hunger from every port along the Magdalena, was taking longer than usual to arrive. Sacramento was waiting for a client who might solicit his service of human-powered transport for cargo or passengers, and as he waited he grew drowsy watching the spirals of brown water, frothy with oil, twisting and untwisting as they glided lazily by. He says he didn’t know when, light as a memory, she climbed into his cart with her two cardboard boxes and her battered suitcase, because he was startled from his nap by her voice ordering him:
“Take me to the best bar in town.”
He looked at her through still foggy eyes and he couldn’t see her face, which was covered by a tangle of wild, dirty hair. But he did see her beat-up luggage and the poplin dress that left uncovered some skinny and dark extremities. This girl isn’t even thirteen, nor does she have a peso to pay for the ride, he thought, as he yawned and took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe away the sleep that was still hanging from his eyelashes.
“Wake up, man, I’m in a hurry.”
“Haughty little girl.”
Sacramento stood up, walked to the river, making a show of not being in a hurry, drew a little muddy water in a can, dampened his head and T-shirt, took a mouthful, and spat it out.
“The world’s all fucked up,” he sputtered. “The water tastes like gasoline.”
“What is the best bar in this town?” she insisted.
“The most famous one is the Dancing Miramar. Who are you looking for there?”
“I’m going there to look for work.”
Intrigued and finally awake, Sacramento inspected the bony, tangled creature who had climbed into his cart without warning or permission.
“Do you know who works there?” he asked her. “Bad women. Very bad women.”
“I know that.”
“I mean very, very bad. The worst. Are you sure you want to go there?”
“I’m sure,” she said with a certainty that left no room for doubt. “I’m going to be a puta.”
Sacramento didn’t know what to say, so he simply diverted his gaze to a portion of the slow journey of a log with reptilian wrinkles that was being carried along by the river’s current.
“You’re too skinny,” he said finally. “You won’t have much luck in the business. Besides, you need manners, a little elegance, and you look like a hick from the mountains.”
“Take me there now, I can’t waste time arguing with you.”
Sacramento doesn’t know why he ended up obeying; he tells me that perhaps he was stirred by the freshness of the fruity lips and healthy teeth that he thought he saw beneath the tangles.
“To think that I was the one who took her to La Catunga,” he says to me. “You can’t count the number of sleepless nights that regret has robbed me of.”
“You took her because she asked you to,” I tell him.
“For years I thought I could have dissuaded her that first day when she was still such a young girl and so newly arrived. Now I’m sure I couldn’t have.”
“Everything was already written.” Todos los Santos exhales smoke from her Cigalia. “Eager creatures like her bargain with the future and shape it to their fancy.”
Weaving among the crowd, dodging tables and chairs, Sacramento the cart man pulled his old wooden wagon through the smell of oil reheated a hundred times emanating from stands crowded along the malecón that were selling greasy, delicious catfish stew and fried fish. The girl weighed so little that in an instant they were passing the main entrance to the Tropical Oil Company’s facilities, where several guards armed with rifles were busy feeding their pet iguana.
“What does it eat?” asked Sacramento as he walked by.
“Flies,” answered one of the men, without lifting his head to look.
Floating among cloying organic vapors, Sacramento took a shortcut through the municipal slaughter yard.
“Get me out of here quick; I don’t like this smell of guts,” protested the girl.
“Do you think I am your horse that you can just guide anywhere you want?”
“Get up, horse!” she said, laughing.
Then they crossed diagonally across the Plaza del Descabezado, so named because enthroned in its center was the decapitated statue of some important person whose identity was long forgotten by the townspeople, and that had turned green from stray dogs urinating on it each time they passed.
“Why doesn’t he have a head?” she wanted to know.
“It was knocked off years ago, during a labor strike.”
“The man’s, or the statue’s?”
“Who knows?”
They crossed themselves as they passed the church of Santo Ecce Homo and ended up on Calle de la Campana, better known as Calle Caliente, then Sacramento announced, with chauvinistic pride, their arrival in La Catunga.
“The most prestigious zona de tolerancia on the planet,” he said.
The girl climbed out of the cart, straightened her poplin dress, which was wrinkled like wrapping paper, and raised her nose into the air, trying to sniff the winds that the future had reserved for her.