Around seven the women would begin to arrive at the Dancing Miramar in groups of twos and threes, a few unaccompanied. All unrecognizable, vastly different from the way they appeared every day, their bodies transformed by a riot of color and anxious to escape their costumes of blue polyester, emerald green sateen, sunflower-hued rayon; neck and ears glittering with tricks of costume jewelry and fake diamonds; Elizabeth Arden lips bright red like the ace of hearts. Painted, dramatic, dolled up like transvestites — an eager, coquettish swarm of cats not yet fully tame. Or foxes, fully conscious of being putas, like a bullfighter is conscious of his being only when he steps into the ring, or a priest as he offers communion at the altar.
From that moment on life would be interwoven with the illusions of alcohol and darkness that magically lengthened eyelashes, sweetened the most unforgiving folds of skin, and poisoned the night with the smell of sewers and orange blossoms. The Victrolas would play tangos that made even the cat purr, and inside the Dancing Miramar, floating in smoke like a spaceship, love sprouted among the tiles and the ammonia in the back room.
Fragments of moonlight, like bits of broken glass, would collect in the corners among cigarette butts and empty bottles, and at the end of the spree, along with dawn, sadness would descend over the couples that lay naked on the beds and would clothe them with the caress of an angel.
At eight o’clock on another last Friday of the month, somewhere between stupefied and amazed, Payanés found himself seated at a table in the Dancing Miramar. This is what heaven must be like, he thought. It must be just exactly like this. Never in his life had he seen such an abundance of luxury and splendor. The red and black velvet, the semidarkness, the smoke that dazzled his eyes, the clinking of glasses, the delirium of women in brightly colored dresses, the smell of expensive perfume, the huge orchestra blasting the music of Pérez Prado. And above all, the satisfaction produced by the knowledge that in his pocket he had the money to pay for it all; he, Payanés, who had earned it fair and square. So this is the petrolero’s compensation, he thought finally. He sat Molly Flan on his lap and ordered a bottle of whiskey.
On a platform, higher than everything in the room, unaware of everyone else, and protected by the cage of light cast upon her by a spotlight, danced Sayonara, her furious mane cascading down her back. She was wearing the silk blouse fastened with a tight row of buttons that passed over her heart and ascended to her neck, and the narrow skirt the color of mourning with the slit up the side, through which her dark leg showed: the tip of her foot, the shin, the calf, the knee.
“Is that her?” Payanés asked Molly Flan.
“That’s her. What does she have, anyway, that the rest of us don’t?”
“She’s skinny, but pretty,” said Payanés, as if to himself.
“She’s pretty, but skinny,” corrected Molly Flan.
Lost in her own world, as if floating in her dreams, Sayonara undulated in the stream of light. In the middle of the noise and the pressing crowd, the space she occupied seemed set apart like a sanctuary, inaccessible and inviolable, steeped in the air of another world like a lunar landscape.
“No one can find a way to penetrate that woman’s solitude,” said Payanés, thinking out loud.
Should I approach the platform and shout congratulations to her, that it’s her lucky day because my friend Sacramento sends her the good news that he’s going to marry her? He downed a burning shot of whiskey and decided not to say a word to her. That way I’ll save Sacramento from looking like a fool, he thought — at the same time, and more importantly, I’ll save myself from the same fate. He would take the envelope with the money to the girl, but he would play dumb about the message to this woman.
“Would it be breaking a promise to only half fulfill it?” he asked Molly, speaking loudly to make himself heard over the deafening silence that was created around the girl on the platform.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
fourteen
I have often asked myself the same question that Molly Flan asked — what did Sayonara have that the others didn’t? What was it, really, that transformed her at a certain moment in the history of La Catunga into a sort of cipher of that tight universe of oil workers, prostitutes, and love for pay? According to what several people told me, the answer could be traced to her defiant nature. They say that she had a peculiar ferocity that went beyond beauty and that attracted and intimidated. Certainly one could also talk about a notable hybrid vigor, stemming from the mixture of blood, that illuminated her youthfulness with the spirit and sparkle of a filly.
I speak blindly about all this because I never met Sayonara personally. I learned the details of her life through the stories and memories of her people, particularly those of Todos los Santos, one of those monumental beings whom life grants us the privilege of getting to know. I forged a wonderful friendship with her through our many afternoons of conversation on Olguita’s patio, in the shade of the rubber trees, and because of that it would be absurd to call research, or reporting, or a novel, something that was a fascination on my part with a few people and their circumstances. Let’s just say that this book was born out of a chain of tiny revealed secrets that stripped the leaves, one by one, from Sayonara’s days, in an attempt to reach the pith.
Todos los Santos, Sacramento, Olguita, Machuca, and Fideo were extraordinary narrators, gifted with an astonishing ability to tell their tragedies without pathos and to speak of themselves without vanity, imprinting on the facts the intensity of those who are willing, for motives I still do not understand, to confess to a stranger for the sole reason that she writes, or because she’s precisely that, a stranger, or maybe because of the simple fact that she listens. As if the act itself of telling their own story to a third party would stamp it with a purpose, would make it somehow lasting, would clarify its meaning.
It was by accident that I entered the world of La Catunga. I was working against the clock on a report about a completely unrelated matter, the theft and clandestine distribution of gasoline by a criminal organization called the gasoline cartel, and because of that I landed in Tora on a Tuesday at eleven in the morning aboard a small plane belonging to the airline Aces. By two o’clock that afternoon Sayonara had already crossed my path, by pure chance but with a frightening obstinacy.
I needed a photograph of Sergeant Arias Cambises for my weekly magazine. He had been murdered six months earlier because he knew too much about the cartel’s operations, and I went to look for a photograph of him at the archives of the daily newspaper Vanguardia Petrolera. The young man in charge was just leaving for lunch, but he kindly allowed me to look around on my own.
“I’ll be back in half an hour,” he told me, and I went right to work.
I didn’t find what I was looking for in the alphabetical files, so I started rummaging around in the piles of unclassified material, a veritable Pandora’s box with a little of everything, except photos of Sergeant Arias Cambises: pictures of public disturbances, of bambuco composers hugging their guitars, teenage girls being presented to society, a demonstration in the twenties led by the famous labor leader María Cano, notable figures receiving awards, a native Charles Atlas called El Indio Amazónico, who swam underwater across the Río Magdalena. Even a litter of angora kittens playing with balls of yarn in a basket. Hundreds of photographs of all kinds and, suddenly, something that couldn’t be passed over.