LA BRUJA BRAVA – the Fierce Witch – stepped from a motorised canoe onto the bank of La Quebrada wheeling a leather suitcase and surveyed the assembled graduates.
She was short and squat, with thickly matted black hair threaded with condor feathers. Her wizened face might have belonged to an old-looking thirty-five-year-old, or a well-preserved seventy-year-old.
‘She doesn’t look so fierce to me,’ said Ñoño. ‘And I’m betting that suitcase is full of dried llama foetuses.’
‘I doubt it’s soap or a change of clothes,’ joked Palillo, referring to her pungent odour.
La Bruja Brava laid her suitcase at the water’s edge and flipped open the lid; it was empty. She lit a small pipe that she produced from the folds of her voluminous skirts. Then, fully-clothed, she waded into the river until the water was waist-deep. She lifted her face skyward, her eyes rolled back and she began to chant unintelligible words in a thick, masculine voice.
‘What’s she saying?’ I asked.
‘It’s an Indian dialect,’ answered MacGyver, who’d pushed his way to the front. ‘She’s invoking the Big Red Boy.’
‘The who?’
‘The devil. You make a pact with him and he saves your life.’
Alfa 1 stood on the riverbank and ordered us to strip to our underwear. He announced that making a pact with the Big Red Boy was compulsory. The devil’s spells protected you against enemy fire. Provided you obeyed the individual spell given to you, bullets could hit your body but never penetrate. A right spell meant that your right side was protected in battle. A left spell meant that your left side was protected. Those given an even spell should not advance with an odd number of troops in their squad and vice versa for odd spells. Other spells required you to repeat a special saying or throw a handful of rice over your shoulder after the first bullet was fired.
Beta went in first. Since spells expired after six months, he needed his renewed. He liked to display the keloid scarring on his abdomen that proved he’d already been saved once. His spell involved chewing on a piece of mutamba bark before battle then reciting a phrase that only he was allowed to know. The Fierce Witch guided his head underwater and inhaled smoke from her pipe, blowing it into his face as he resurfaced.
While Beta dressed, MacGyver strode in and I slunk to the back of the queue where I hoped to be less visible and perhaps even avoid receiving a spell. Papá had told me God could forgive everything except making a pact with the devil. It meant you’d lose your soul and couldn’t enter heaven. Palillo saw my discomfort and followed me.
‘Don’t worry. It’s perfectly fine to have two religions,’ he assured me.
To him, faith was like ice-cream: ordering a double scoop allowed you to mix contradictory flavours. However, like Papá, I was a one-flavour man.
Palillo told me I couldn’t refuse – white magic was common throughout Los Llanos, so we were surrounded by believers. Besides, the trainers were watching me closely. Ñoño also had his reservations, although for different reasons.
‘This is uneducated bullshit,’ he crowed. ‘Do they really think stupid chants will block bullets travelling at a hundred metres per second?’
‘Quiet!’ hissed Palillo. ‘Remember to stay on guard.’
The line advanced rapidly. Hemmed in on one side by the river and on the other by twelve trainers, I felt like a bull being corralled towards a matador.
As Ñoño entered the water, Alfa 1 eyed me attentively. Palillo went next. When my turn came, I followed Palillo’s advice and stepped forward without protest. Before holding my head underwater for five seconds, the Fierce Witch told me my spell. I should always move forward and face my enemy; the moment I turned my back or took my eyes off him, he would kill me.
As I came out of the water, Alfa 1 eyed me again. But I wasn’t his true target – he must have overheard Ñoño’s earlier snideness about the Fierce Witch.
‘You don’t feel protected by this uneducated bullshit?’ he asked with apparent concern.
Ñoño, who was buttoning his shirt, seemed startled. ‘I have my spell, comando.’
‘And yet you don’t sound convinced,’ replied Alfa 1. Then he yelled to the troop assembled on the bank, ‘Does anyone else here not believe in the Big Red Boy?’
Although most Colombians are raised Catholic, not a single hand went up.
‘And yet I’m sensing doubt,’ observed Alfa 1, no longer needing to shout. The troop was so silent that I could hear water trickling off nearby rocks. ‘I think we need an example for the doubters.’ He aimed his Galil at Ñoño’s chest. ‘Kneel.’
Ñoño remained standing. He was half Alfa 1’s size. He clasped his hands and looked up pleadingly as though praying to a giant god.
‘Please, no, comando! Please.’
Alfa turned the Galil away from Ñoño and fired his entire magazine into the creek. The rifle cracked repeatedly, a line of bullets splashed across the water and the air filled with smoke and the smell of burned sulphur. Ñoño was trembling. Alfa 1 gripped his shoulder and pushed him down.
‘I said kneel!’
The rifle was now empty. Alfa 1 removed a single round from his breast pocket and held it up before inserting it in the chamber and cocking the rifle, which he then trained back on Ñoño’s chest, waving it from left to right. ‘Left or right? Which side is your spell?’
Ñoño was too shocked to answer. The Fierce Witch came out of her trance and answered for him.
‘His left.’
‘Then hold still,’ said Alfa 1, digging the muzzle under Ñoño’s left collarbone, the side that was protected, ‘and you won’t feel a thing.’
Ñoño’s eyes now pleaded silently with mine. However, Alfa 1 caught the direction of his gaze. Smiling sarcastically, he raised his eyebrows at me in challenge.
‘Pedro, any objections?’
Of course, he was testing me. Would I make the same mistake I’d made that afternoon? Would I dive once more in front of his rifle to save Ñoño?
‘No, comando,’ I answered. ‘I learned my lesson.’
This time, I wouldn’t interfere. After the obstacle course, Alfa 1 had asked me, ‘Why turn back for Ñoño if he was already dead?’ I was an Autodefensa and Alfa 1 was my commander. And if my commander wanted Ñoño dead, then it was simple – Ñoño had to die.
‘Good!’ said Alfa 1. Keeping his left hand on the barrel and the muzzle tip buried under Ñoño’s collarbone, he lifted his right hand from the butt and signalled for me to stand in his place and hold the Galil. ‘Then perhaps you’d like to demonstrate for everyone exactly what that lesson is?’
Finally, I saw the trap he’d laid. Alfa 1 wasn’t making an example of Ñoño for doubting the Fierce Witch – that was simply a pretext. He was making an example of us both for the obstacle course: I was to shoot Ñoño.
It all made sense now – the perverse logic of Alfa 1’s lecture to me on teamwork and trust, as well as the lightness of his punishment. This was Alfa 1’s true punishment: having to do myself the very thing that I’d prevented him from doing at the obstacle course – eliminate the weak.
Ñoño began begging loudly. ‘Pedro, no. Please! No.’
Alfa 1 spoke louder. ‘That’s an order, Pedro.’
I looked at the rifle and then at Ñoño. I didn’t believe for a second that the Fierce Witch’s magic spell had made him bulletproof. But I knew that if I didn’t shoot him, Alfa 1 would anyway. Besides, wasn’t this what I’d wanted? An opportunity to undo my mistake and prove to myself my own toughness and commitment?
As I gripped my right hand underneath the rifle butt, Ñoño’s eyes grew wide with disbelief.
‘Sorry, Ñoño,’ I said, touching my finger slowly against the trigger. Breathing in deeply, I focused my eyes on the tip of the muzzle and emptied myself of all thought and feeling. And without further hesitation, I squeezed.