But maybe the strangest thing that afternoon was that everything we saw we saw in silence. We looked at each other frequently, but we never spoke anything more than an interjection or an expletive, perhaps because all that we were seeing was evoking different memories and different fears for each of us, and it seemed imprudent or perhaps rash to go rummaging around in each other’s pasts. Because it was that, our common past, that was there without being there, like the unseen rust that was right in front of us eating away at the car doors and rims and fenders and dashboards and steering wheels. As for the property’s past, we weren’t overly interested: the things that had happened there, the deals that were made and the lives that were extinguished and the parties that were held and the violence that was planned, all that was a backdrop, scenery. Without a word we agreed we’d seen enough and began to walk towards the Nissan. And this I remember: Maya took my arm, or slipped her arm in mine like women used to do in times gone by, and in the anachronism of her gesture there was an intimacy I could not have predicted, that nothing had foretold.
Then it began to rain.
It was just drizzle at first, although with fat drops, but in a matter of seconds the sky turned as black as a donkey’s belly and a downpour drenched our shirts before we had time to seek shelter anywhere. ‘Shit, that’s the end of our stroll,’ said Maya. By the time we got to the Nissan, we were soaked to the skin; since we’d run (shoulders raised, one arm up to shield our eyes), the fronts of our trousers were wet through, while the back, almost dry, seemed made of a different fabric. The windows of the jeep fogged up immediately with the heat of our breathing, and Maya had to get a box of tissues out of the glove compartment to clean the windscreen so we wouldn’t crash. She opened the vents, a black grille in the middle of the dashboard, and we began to move cautiously forward. But we had only gone about 100 metres when Maya stopped suddenly, rolled down the window as fast as she could so I, from the passenger seat, could see what she was looking at: thirty steps away from us, halfway between the Nissan and the pond, a hippopotamus was studying us gravely.
‘What a beauty,’ said Maya.
‘Beauty?’ I said. ‘That’s the ugliest animal in the world.’
But Maya paid me no attention. ‘I don’t think it’s an adult,’ she went on. ‘She’s too little, just a baby. I wonder if she’s lost.’
‘And how do you know it’s female?’
But Maya was already out of the jeep, in spite of the downpour that was still falling and in spite of a wooden fence between us and the piece of land where the creature was. Its hide was dark iridescent grey, or that’s how it looked to me in the diminished afternoon light. The raindrops hit and bounced off as if they were falling against a pane of glass. The hippopotamus, male or female, juvenile or full-grown, didn’t bat an eyelid: it looked at us, or looked at Maya who was leaning over the wooden fence and looking at it in turn. I don’t know how much time went by: one minute, two, which in such circumstances is a long time. Water dripped off Maya’s hair and all her clothes were a different colour now. Then the hippopotamus began a heavy movement, a ship trying to turn around in the sea, and I was surprised to see such a long animal in profile. And then I didn’t any more, or rather I saw its powerful arse and thought I saw streams of water sliding over its smooth, shiny skin. It wandered away through the tall grass, with its legs hidden by the weeds in such a way that it seemed not to make any progress, but just to get smaller. When it reached the pond and got into the water, Maya returned to the jeep.
‘How long are those creatures going to last, that’s what I wonder,’ she said. ‘There’s no one to feed them, no one to take care of them. They must be so expensive.’
She wasn’t talking to me, that was clear: she was thinking out loud. And I couldn’t help but remember another comment identical in spirit and even in form that I had heard a long time ago, when the world, or at least my world, was a very different one, when I still felt in charge of my life.
‘Ricardo said the same thing,’ I told Maya. ‘That’s how I met him, when he commented how sorry he felt for the animals from the zoo.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Maya. ‘He worried about animals.’
‘He said they weren’t to blame for anything.’
‘And it’s true,’ said Maya. ‘It’s one of the few, very few, real memories I have. My dad looking after the horses. My dad stroking my mom’s dog. My dad telling me off for not feeding my armadillo. The only real memories. The rest are invented, Antonio, false memories, made-up memories. The saddest thing that can happen to a person is to find out their memories are lies.’
Her voice was twanging, but that could have been due to the change in temperature. There were tears in her eyes, or maybe it was rainwater running down her cheeks, around her lips. ‘Maya,’ I asked then, ‘why was he killed? I know this piece of the puzzle is missing, but what do you think?’ The Nissan was on the move again and we were travelling the kilometres that separated us from the entrance gate, Maya’s hand closed over the black knob of the gear lever, water ran down her face and neck. I insisted: ‘Why, Maya?’ Without looking at me, without taking her eyes off the drenched panorama, Maya said those five words I’d heard from so many mouths, ‘He must have done something.’ But this time they seemed unworthy of what Maya knew. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but what? Maybe you don’t want to know.’ Maya looked at me with pity. I tried to add something but she cut me off. ‘Look, I don’t want to talk any more.’ The black blades moved across the windscreen and swept the water and leaves away. ‘I want us to stay quiet for a while, I’m tired of talking. Do you understand, Antonio? We’ve talked too much. I’m sick of talking. I want to be silent for a while.’
So in silence we arrived at the gate and passed beneath the white and blue Piper, and in silence we turned left and headed for La Dorada. In silence we drove along the part where the trees met over the top of the road, keeping the light from passing through and on rainy days lessening the difficulties drivers faced. In silence we came back out into the bad weather, in silence we saw the yellow railings of the bridge over the Magdalena, in silence we crossed it. The surface of the river bristled under the downpour, it wasn’t smooth like the hippopotamus’s hide but rough like that of a gigantic sleeping alligator, and on one of the little islands a white boat was getting wet with its motor pulled up. Maya was sad: her sadness filled the Nissan like the smell of our wet clothes, and I could have said something to her, but I didn’t. I kept silent: she wanted to be in silence. And so, in the middle of that obliging silence, accompanied only by the thundering of the rain on the jeep’s metal roof, we went through the toll booth and headed south through the cattle ranches. Two long hours in which the sky gradually darkened, not due to the dense rain clouds but because night fell halfway there. By the time the Nissan lit up the white façade of the house, it was completely dark. The last thing we saw were the eyes of the German shepherd gleaming in the beam of the headlights.
‘Nobody’s home,’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ said Maya. ‘It’s Sunday.’