My dear Germán:
With Betzabé gone, our life changed completely. Our make-believe in the theater, my concerts on the player piano, Helena’s school—all of it was abandoned. Mrs. María decided that the two of us had to take over for Betzabé, because she had to take care of the shop.
They taught me to sweep, and I assure you the broom was larger than I was (I’d just turned five and Helena six and a half); they taught me to peel potatoes, carry water, take out the trash and the ashes from the stove, wash pots and plates, help unpack boxes of chocolate, clean floors. Helena made the beds and helped in the shop on market days. Mrs. María washed the clothes at night and prepared the food for the next day so that all we’d have to do was light the stove and heat it up. I remember that Helena did all that while standing on a crate because the top of the stove was taller than she was.
One night they sent me down to the backyard alone, to get the water bucket, and I wept with fright. I went on tiptoe, my back against the wall, barely breathing, aware of the slightest sound. I’d crossed the theater and was passing by the first of the wooden dressing rooms where all the costumes were kept when I felt two giant hands press against my waist and lift me up in the air. Just like when we’d abandoned the Boy, I was struck dumb, unable to make a sound. I felt something like a rock in my throat, drowning me. At first I couldn’t see anything either, but then I felt the hands set me down on the ground again, and it was at that moment that I was face-to-face with the lunatic: his bulging eyes, his thick black beard, his open, toothless mouth. He was completely naked. As he placed me very carefully on the ground, he knelt beside me and started to kiss my face. I felt the hair of his beard on my mouth, my nose, my eyes, my ears. I tried to hit him and kick him, but his large hands were stronger than my feet or my arms. Then I saw a light appear at the door to the yard; it was the two elderly sisters, looking for him with a lamp. As soon as he saw them, he sprang to his feet. I was still on the ground. They came closer very slowly, calling him in a sweet voice, while he stood over me, watching me intently. When he saw that they were close, he grabbed his dick with both hands and peed on me, spraying me from head to toe, as if I were a plant. When he was finished, he turned to them without saying a word, wearing a great big smile.
One of the old ladies picked me up, took me to Mrs. María, and told her she shouldn’t let us go out alone in such a big house, and certainly not at such a late hour. If they hadn’t come out, who knows what might have happened. Helena undressed me, and they washed me thoroughly, even my head, with the old lady helping even as she chastised Mrs. María.
Mrs. María got very bored in Fusagasugá. Just as in the other places, she had not a single girlfriend, no one she saw regularly; nor did she have, as she’d had in Guateque, that cluster of men who came to chat with her at the shop. The only man who visited us from time to time was the Dominican priest with whom we’d taken the outing. Without Betzabé, life had become very difficult for all of us. One day Helena was lighting the coal iron—or, rather, the iron was lit and she had placed it, uncovered, on the floor. She climbed onto a box to take down the bellows. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the fact is she fell off the box and landed atop the iron. Poor thing, I felt so bad for her! A complete impression of the iron was imprinted in the middle of her ass. You could see it on her red skin; I remember that she ran shrieking all over the theater. She was so sick and threw up so much that Mrs. María never let her do anything more in the house or at the shop. That’s when I discovered that Mrs. María had a real preference for Helena. She repeated the same phrases all the time: the prettiest, the one I love the most, I would’ve preferred this to happen to Emma, my poor little darling. I’d never seen her so affectionate; she seemed genuinely anguished by Helena, lying facedown day and night with that terrible bruise because she couldn’t lie on her back or sit up. Of course I couldn’t do the work of the two of us. One night Helena had a high fever, and Mrs. María started to cry and told us she couldn’t take it anymore, that it was impossible to go on, that she was going to write to Bogotá and quit the chocolate shop, that she was a miserable soul without a man at her side to help her make it through life. She told us again that we were the cause of all her grief, because without us she’d be living like a queen.
A few days later a man arrived from Bogotá, sent by the chocolate company, to go over the paperwork and look for someone to take over Mrs. María’s franchise. He became very good friends with her. He was a young man, very tall, suntanned, with pretty green eyes. He was very kind to us and always brought us candy. He gave us the first dolls we’d ever owned in our lives, rag dolls with kinky black hair. Helena’s was dressed in red, mine in pink, and we adored them. Mr. Suescún—that was his name—helped Mrs. María take out the trunks and deal with the aggravation of packing. We knew from experience that Mrs. María would get into a very bad mood when it was time to pack up, but Mr. Suescún helped us a lot. He took charge of finding the Indians with the horses for the trip back to Bogotá, and he said he’d come with us. Mrs. María was beaming.
You must think it strange that I can tell you in such detail and with such precision what happened so long ago. I agree with you, that a child of five who leads a normal life wouldn’t be able to recount his childhood with this level of accuracy. But we, Helena and I, remember it as if it were today, and I can’t explain why. Nothing got by us, not the gestures, not the words, not the noises, not the colors. Everything was clear for us.
They woke us at dawn on the day of the trip. For some reason we never knew, they decided we wouldn’t ride on horseback but instead be carried by men. They bought two chairs of woven vine, made an awning for them, and tied each to the back of an Indian. Then they picked us up and sat us there.
Mrs. María and Mr. Suescún went ahead; behind them went two Indians with the pack mules, and last, the two Indians that carried us. They were given a basket with food for the two of us. The two Indians were drunk. Each had a large calabash of chicha. The one carrying Helena, whose face was covered in pimples, had diarrhea and would take off his pants, squat, and shit while making horrible noises. Mine would stand beside him, dying of laughter, telling him: “Drink more chicha, buddy. Only chicha is good for the runs.”
Mrs. María and Mr. Suescún continued on ahead of us, and when we got to the plateau we didn’t see them anymore. The Indians were relaxed, telling stories we couldn’t understand. The one with diarrhea was getting worse, until suddenly he sat on a rock and said he couldn’t go any farther. The other one, mine, told him that if we didn’t hurry we’d miss the train, that Mrs. María had said she’d wait for us at the station. They gave each of us bread and a banana and kept drinking chicha. They stopped at a farmhouse to fill up their empty calabashes and dawdled there, chatting with other Indians. When they came out, they couldn’t walk anymore; they were so drunk they zigzagged. Then they started to fight. One took out a knife, but the one with diarrhea said, “I can’t kill you because I have to go take a shit.”
He dropped his pants and knelt down; the other one put his knife away and started to sing. It was getting dark; Helena began to cry and shout for Mrs. María. I started shouting with her, until we got tired and fell asleep. We woke up as the Indians were leaving us at the train station. It’s curious that neither of us recalls the name of the town. We remember the station, the hotel, and the church, but not a single street. By that point, the train had left a long time ago, and Mrs. María and Mr. Suescún had also left, without waiting for us. The Indians asked the man at the station and others if they’d seen a young woman in a dress and a gray hat, accompanied by a man from Bogotá. Everyone had seen them board the train. Little by little the people surrounded us. Helena and I looked at each other, and we had the same thought. Then at the same moment we began to cry, a single sentence emerging from both of our mouths:
“She’s left us.”
Our hands and our heads came together, and our weeping subsided. The number of people around us kept growing; they all asked us the same thing:
“What’s your name?”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Where were you headed?”
Nothing interested us. We answered no one. We saw them without seeing them, heard them without hearing them. In that moment, only Helena and I knew the true shape of our lives. Someone went to get the priest from the church, and he came, fat, big bellied, with a nose like a red ball, and squatted beside us, patting our cheeks and asking us:
“What’s your name?”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Where were you headed?”
We couldn’t say a word. By then the Indians who’d brought us had disappeared. No one saw them again, and little by little the people dispersed until we were alone with the priest and a soldier or policeman. They took us by the hand and led us to the hotel. The owner was a very serious woman wearing the dress of the Carmelite order, her white hair pulled back in a bun. The soldier stayed with us in the courtyard, and the priest took the owner aside. Helena understood that the priest was saying: “Keep them here. Surely the mother will come to pick them up on tomorrow’s train. I’ll come tomorrow after mass.”
The hotel’s dining room had glass doors that faced the street. They sat us at the table, and we watched once more as the people gathered, crowding against the doors, some pressing their faces to the glass so they could see us more closely. Everyone argued and pointed.
The woman made us serve the food and then she sat between us, cutting our meat and our potatoes into tiny pieces, but neither of us wanted to eat. Some people in the dining room approached our table, begging us to eat and asking us:
“What’s your name?”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Where were you headed?”
They took us to a room with two beds and laid us down, one on each. When the woman left and locked the door, Helena got out of her bed and lay down in mine. We embraced each other fiercely and fell asleep.
When the priest and the soldier came back the next morning, the woman from the hotel was brushing our hair. We still wouldn’t speak. They took us to the station. We heard the train whistle and saw it enter the station. When people started to disembark, the soldier picked up Helena, and the priest lifted me, and they held us very high, pointing at all the people passing by. Once all the passengers had gotten off the train, the crowds began to thin. They put us back on the ground, disconsolate, and returned us to the hotel, where we spent the next day in bed. I think we slept, but I can’t remember, because neither of us spoke. Another train came that afternoon, and the priest and the soldier repeated the same scene at the station. We knew she wasn’t coming back for us. Three days passed this way. Each of these three days, morning and afternoon, the same scene at the train station was repeated. The priest seemed worried and commiserated with the soldier and the woman from the hotel. On the fourth day they didn’t take us to the station. The priest came with two nuns wearing black and white. One was old with glasses and the other was very young and happy; she picked us up, kissed us, rubbed our heads tenderly:
“What’s your name?”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Where were you headed?”
They took us to a convent out in the countryside. We entered a large courtyard with many flowers and a statue of a priest. As soon as we arrived a throng of nuns appeared from all over, and they surrounded us:
“What’s your name?”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“What’s your father’s name?”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Where were you headed?”
These questions were repeated in every tone of voice, loud, some less loud, sharp, shrill, authoritarian, affectionate. Then, abruptly, there was complete silence; all we saw around us was a wall of black nun’s habits, pushed together one against the other. I heard Helena’s voice, which felt very strong to me, and it said: “My name is Helena Reyes, and my little sister is called Emma Reyes.”
Helena took my hand and, pushing with her head through the nuns’ dresses, brought me to the edge of the garden, where there was a cage filled with birds. The nuns were still, frozen, and they followed us only with their eyes. As we approached the cage, far from the nuns, Helena said in a low voice: “If you talk about Mrs. María, I’ll hit you.”
And that silence lasted twenty years; neither in public nor in private did I ever say her name again, or speak of the years we’d spent with her, or of Guateque or Eduardo, the Boy or Betzabé. Our life began at the convent, and neither of us ever betrayed that secret.
A thousand memories and kisses. Write.
Emma.
Paris, November 1969.