Living to Tell the Tale (34 page)

“Your papá and I would like to know what’s happening to you.”

The sentence could not have been better aimed. I had known for some time that my parents shared their uneasiness regarding the changes in my behavior, and that she would improvise trivial explanations to reassure him. Nothing happened in the house that my mother did not know about, and her rages were legendary. But the cup overflowed when for a week I did not get home until broad daylight. My
reasonable position would have been to avoid her questions or put them off for a more opportune moment, but she knew that so serious a matter allowed only immediate replies.

All her arguments were legitimate: I would disappear at dusk dressed for a wedding and not come home to sleep, but the next day I dozed in the hammock until after lunch. I had stopped reading, and for the first time since
my birth I dared come home not knowing with certainty where I was. “You
don’t even look at your brothers and sisters, you mix up their names and ages, and the other day you kissed a grandson of Clemencia Morales thinking he was one of them,” said my mother. But then she became aware of her exaggerations and compensated for them with a simple truth:

“In short, you’ve become a stranger in this
house.”

“All of that is true,” I said, “but the reason is very easy: I’m fed up with the whole business.”

“With us?”

My answer could have been affirmative, but it would not have been fair:

“With everything,” I said.

And then I told her about my situation at the
liceo.
They judged me by my grades, year after year my parents were proud of the results, they believed I was not only an irreproachable
student but also an exemplary friend, the most intelligent and brightest boy, and the one most famous for his congeniality. Or, as my grandmother would say: “The perfect kid.”

But to make a long story short, the truth was just the opposite. I seemed to be that way because I did not have the courage and sense of independence of my brother Luis Enrique, who did only what he wanted to do. And who
without a doubt would achieve a happiness that is not what one desires for one’s children but is what allows them to survive the immoderate affections, the irrational fears, and the joyful expectations of their parents.

My mother was crushed by this portrait so contrary to the one they had forged in their solitary dreams.

“Well, I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said after a lethal silence,
“because if we tell all this to your father he’ll die a sudden death. Don’t you realize you’re the pride of the family?”

For them it was simple: since there was no possibility I would be the eminent physician my father could not be because he did not have the money, they dreamed I would at least be a professional in something else.

“Well, I won’t be anything at all,” I concluded. “I refuse to
let you force me into being what I don’t want to be or what you
would like me to be, much less what the government wants me to be.”

The dispute, at cross-purposes and somewhat rambling, went on for the rest of the week. I believe my mother wanted to take the time to talk it over with Papá, and that idea filled me with new courage. One day, as if by chance, she made a surprising proposal:

“They
say that if you put your mind to it you could be a good writer.”

I had never heard anything like it in the family. Since I was a child my inclinations had allowed me to suppose that I would draw, be a musician, sing in church, or even be a Sunday poet. I had discovered in myself a tendency, known to everyone, toward writing that was rather convoluted and ethereal, but this time my reaction was
one of surprise.

“If you’re going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones, and they don’t make them anymore,” I told my mother. “After all, there are better ways to starve to death.”

On one of those afternoons, instead of talking to me she wept without tears. Today I would have become alarmed, because I esteem repressed crying as an infallible device used by great women to impose
their purposes. But at the age of eighteen I did not know what to say to my mother, and my silence frustrated her tears.

“All right,” she said, “promise me at least that you’ll finish the baccalaureate the best you can, and I’ll be responsible for arranging the rest with your papá.”

At the same time we both felt the relief of winning. I agreed, as much for her sake as for my father’s, because
I feared they would die if we did not come to an understanding soon. This was how we found the easy solution of my studying law and political science, which was not only a good cultural foundation for any kind of occupation, but also a course of study humanized by classes in the morning and free time for working in the afternoon. Concerned as well by the emotional burden my mother had endured during
this time, I asked her to prepare the ground for me so I could speak face-to-face with Papá. She objected, certain we would end up in a quarrel.

“There are no two men in this world more similar than you and him,” she told me. “And that’s the worst thing for having a conversation.”

I always believed the opposite. Only now, when I have already gone past all the ages my father was in his long life,
have I begun to see myself in the mirror looking much more like him than me.

My mother must have considered that night her crowning achievement, because Papá gathered the whole family around the table and announced with a casual air: “We’ll have a lawyer in the house.” Perhaps fearing that my father would attempt to reopen the debate for the entire family, my mother intervened with her best innocence.

“In our situation, and with this army of children,” she explained to me, “we thought the best solution is the only career you can pay for yourself.”

It was not anywhere near as simple as she said, but for us it might be the lesser evil and its devastation the least bloody. To go on with the game, I asked my father’s opinion, and his answer was immediate and of heartbreaking sincerity:

“What
do you want me to say? You’ve broken my heart in two, but at least I still can be proud of helping you be whatever you want to be.”

The height of luxury in that January of 1946 was my first trip in a plane, thanks to José Palencia, who reappeared with a major problem. He had waltzed through five years of the baccalaureate in Cartagena but had just failed the sixth. I committed myself to getting
him a place at the
liceo
so that he would receive his diploma at last, and he invited me to go there with him.

The flight to Bogotá took off twice a week in a DC-3 belonging to LANSA, and the greatest danger was not the plane but the cows that wandered onto the clay runway improvised in a pasture. Sometimes the plane had to fly around in circles until they had finally been shooed away. It was
the initial experience in my legendary fear of airplanes, at a time when the Church prohibited them from carrying consecrated Hosts to keep them safe from catastrophes. The flight lasted almost
four hours, with no stops, at a speed of three hundred twenty kilometers an hour. Those of us who had made the prodigious river voyage were guided in the sky by the living map of the Great Magdalena River.
We recognized the miniature towns, the windup boats, the happy little dolls waving at us from the courtyards of the schools. The flesh-and-blood flight attendants spent their time reassuring the passengers who prayed as they traveled, helping those who were airsick, and convincing a good number that there was no danger of running into the flocks of turkey buzzards that kept an eye on the death
down below in the river. Experienced travelers, for their part, recounted historic flights over and over again as feats of courage. The ascent to the altiplano of Bogotá, without a pressurized cabin or oxygen masks, felt like a bass drum in your heart, and the jolts and the hammering of the wings increased the joy of landing. But the greatest surprise was having arrived before our telegrams of the
night before.

Passing through Bogotá, José Palencia bought instruments for an entire orchestra, and I do not know if he did it by premeditation or premonition, but from the moment Rector Espitia saw him stride in with guitars, drums, maracas, and harmonicas, I knew he was admitted. For my part, I too felt the weight of my new circumstances as I crossed the threshold: I was a sixth-year student.
Until then I had not been aware of bearing on my forehead the star that everyone dreamed of, which could be seen without fail in the way they approached us, in the tone of voice they used to speak to us, even in a certain reverential awe. It was also a year of fiesta. Although the dormitory was only for scholarship students, José Palencia installed himself in the best hotel on the square, one of
the women who owned it played the piano, and life was transformed into an entire year of Sundays.

It was another of the leaps in my life. While I was an adolescent my mother would buy me used clothing, which she altered for my younger brothers when I could no longer wear it. The most problematic years were the first two, because wool clothing for the cold climate was expensive and difficult to
find. Even though my body did not grow with much enthusiasm,
it did not allow time for altering a suit to fit two successive heights in the same year. To make matters worse, the original custom of the boarders, which was to trade clothing, could not be imposed because the items were so well known that the mockery at the expense of the new owners became unbearable. This was resolved in part when
Espitia imposed a uniform of a blue jacket and gray trousers, which unified our appearance and hid the secondhand items.

In the third and fourth years I could wear the only suit that the tailor in Sucre altered for me, but in the fifth I had to buy one in very good condition, and by the sixth I could no longer wear it. My father, however, was so enthusiastic about my intention to change that
he gave me money to buy a new suit made to measure, and José Palencia gave me one of his from the previous year, a three-piece camel’s hair that was almost brand new. I soon realized how true it was that the habit does not make the monk. In my new suit, interchangeable with the new uniform, I attended the dances where the boys from the coast reigned, and I only managed to get a girlfriend who lasted
less time than a flower.

Espitia welcomed me with unusual enthusiasm. He seemed to teach the two chemistry classes a week only for me, with rapid-fire questions and answers. My obligatory attention was a good starting point for keeping the promise to my parents that I would have an honorable ending. The rest was accomplished by Martina Fonseca’s unique and simple method: pay attention in class
in order to avoid staying up all night in fear of the terrifying final exam. It was a wise lesson. When I decided to use it in my last year at the
liceo,
my anguish subsided. I could answer the teachers’ questions with ease, and they began to be more familiar, and I realized how easy it was to keep the promise I had made to my parents.

My only disturbing problem continued to be the howls of my
nightmares. The prefect of discipline, who had very good relations with his students, was Professor Gonzalo Ocampo, and one night during the second semester he tiptoed into the dormitory in the dark to ask me for some keys of his that I had forgotten to return. As soon as he placed his hand on my shoulder,
I gave a savage howl that woke up everyone. The next day they moved me to a dormitory for
six that had been improvised on the second floor.

It was a solution for my nocturnal fears, but one that was too tempting because it was over the dispensary, and four students from the improvised dormitory slipped down to the kitchens and ransacked them for a midnight supper. Sergio Castro, who was above suspicion, and I, the least daring, stayed in our beds to serve as negotiators in case of
emergency. After an hour they returned with half the dispensary ready for us to eat. It was the great feast of our long years as boarders, but it was followed by the indigestion of their finding us out within twenty-four hours. I thought it would all end there, and only the negotiating talent of Espitia saved us from expulsion.

It was a good period for the
liceo,
and the least promising one for
the country. Lleras’s impartiality, without intending to, increased the tension that was beginning to be felt for the first time at the school. Today, however, I realize that it was already inside me, but only then did I begin to be aware of the country in which I lived. Some teachers who had tried to remain impartial for the past year could not manage it in their classes, and they would let loose
with indigestible outbursts about their political preferences. In particular when the hard campaign for the presidential succession began.

Each day it was more evident that with Gaitán and Turbay running at the same time, the Liberal Party would lose the presidency of the Republic after twenty-five years of absolute governments. They were two candidates as inimical as if they were from two different
parties, not only for their own sins but because of the bloody determination of the Conservatives, who had seen the situation with clarity since the first day: instead of Laureano Gómez, they imposed the candidacy of Ospina Pérez, a millionaire engineer with a well-deserved reputation as a patriarch. With Liberalism divided and Conservatism united and armed, there was no alternative: Ospina
Pérez was elected.

Then Laureano Gómez began to prepare to succeed him by using official forces with all-out violence. It was a return to the
historic reality of the nineteenth century, when we had no peace but only ephemeral truces between eight general civil wars and fourteen local ones, three military coups, and then the War of a Thousand Days, which left some eighty thousand dead on both
sides in a population of four million people. It was so simple: it was all a common plan for regressing a hundred years.

Professor Giraldo, at the end of the year, made a flagrant exception for me that I am still ashamed of. He prepared a simple set of questions for me so I could make up the algebra I had failed since my fourth year, and he left me alone in the faculty office with all the opportunities
for cheating within reach. He returned an hour later filled with hope, saw the catastrophic result, and canceled out each page with a cross from top to bottom and a ferocious growl: “That brain is rotted.” However, for the final grades, I passed algebra but had the decency not to thank the teacher for having gone against his principles and obligations for my sake.