Popayán’s Hotel Camino Real didn’t have anything to do with the famous Mexican network of inns, but it was actually pretty nice, comfortable and affordably priced, and only twenty meters from Caldas Park, which was always swarming with tourists gawking at the colonial architecture. The Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Assumption sat at the edge of the square, with its gleaming white walls and aseptic air. It had been reconstructed just two decades earlier, after the earthquake.
The best thing about the hotel, in Julieta’s view, was one of the dishes its restaurant offered: Pacific shellfish soup with cream of peach palm fruit. The dish had won first place in a gastronomy contest at the 2010 Forum on UNESCO Heritages, held in Hondarribia, in Spain’s Basque Country, a place that knows something about good eating.
They settled into their room and then headed down for dinner. Julieta ordered the soup without a second thought. Johana went for a basket of roast chicken. And meat empanadas to start. A delicious meal that should help them put their notes in order. Julieta reviewed the low-quality video on her phone. Everything was far away: the moving vehicles, the sound of the wind. She tried to zoom in on the men in black and was only somewhat successful.
“Anyway, it would be a little weird,” Julieta said, “for somebody who was almost killed less than a week ago to be still driving around on the same roads.”
Johana took a sip of her Club Colombia beer. “Well, they’re clearly still jumpy,” she said. “Look at all those bodyguards. If our survivor is one of those men, it’s only because the attackers failed to take him out. They’re probably licking their wounds right now. When you go after someone that hard, boss, you don’t come back the next day.”
They finished the empanadas, which were nice and crisp. Julieta ordered another glass of wine and said, “Let’s see who took part in the Alliance gathering.” She pulled out her phone, put in the date and the details, and swiftly found what she was looking for. Focusing on the Christian Alliance, she noted that one of its tenets was that Jesus’s return is imminent. Our King who is coming. Acts 1:11. “The crown represents the blessed expectation of Christ’s imminent return.”
On their phones, they each reviewed the guests at the event. There were pastors from thirty-seven “Christ-centered” churches across Latin America, the full gamut of the evangelical community.
“Wow,” Julieta said, “this event was huge. A sort of missionary OAS. In Inzá? It’s weird they didn’t hold it in Popayán or Cali.”
“Well, it says here that the theme was solidarity with the rural community,” Johana said. “They see Cauca as sacred territory because of the way it’s been resurrected after the war.”
They kept scrolling through pages until they came across the guests’ bios. They started going through them.
Rubén Electorat Andrade, Chile. Christian and Missionary Alliance, Ñuñoa, Santiago. Seventy-six years old. Carlos Perdomo Montt, Chile. Pentecostal Church of Valparaíso. Fifty-four years old. Mario Andrade Paulista, Brazil. New Christ Church, São Paulo. Forty-seven years old . . .
“I don’t think our guy was a foreigner,” Johana said. “It would be odd for someone who isn’t from around here to have that kind of security force. On a rural road in Cauca!”
“I’ve got an idea,” Julieta said. “Let’s call my friend Doris Helena. Copy the pastors’ names and nationalities and I’ll send them to her to see what she says.”
Doris Helena worked in the immigration office at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá, but her database allowed her to see all arrivals and departures at every international airport in the country. Julieta knew she worked late because of night flights, so she called and explained that she was investigating an evangelical gathering in Cauca and needed to know the arrival airports and dates for a number of people. She emailed the list of the twenty-eight foreign pastors.
“Give me the names of the Colombians too, and I’ll tell you what airports they used and when,” Doris Helena said.
“Oh, absolutely,” Julieta exclaimed. “Thank you.”
While they waited, they started looking at the Colombians: two from Barranquilla, one from Cúcuta, two from Medellín, two from Bogotá, one from Cali, and one from Pasto. Which of them might it be?
After half an hour, Doris Helena called back and told them that all of the pastors, except the ones from Cali and Pasto, had entered the country or flown to Popayán on Thursday—in other words, Julieta thought, twenty-four hours after the attack. In addition, the foreigners had left on Monday, and the Colombians were returning home tonight and tomorrow.
“The last two names aren’t on any passenger lists,” Doris Helena said. “It makes sense, since they’re from Cali and Pasto. They probably drove.”
“Thank you so much, Doris,” Julieta said. “I owe you.”
“So the process of elimination leaves us with the guy from Cali and the one from Pasto,” Johana said. “Let’s see who they are. ‘Edwin Moncayo, Christ of the Border Church, Pasto. Seventy-nine years old. Fritz Almayer, New Jerusalem Church, Cali. Fifty-three years old.’”
Because of his age, both women thought the latter man seemed more likely. The kid hadn’t said he was elderly.
“Look, this could be the guy,” Johana said, pointing to a photo of Pastor Fritz Almayer.
The pastor was a slim, muscular man with gray hair. He was wearing sunglasses and a black hat. It was a group photo, but he was hanging back, as if he was trying to hide or avoid attention. They looked for him in other photos and finally came across another one with his name in the caption: “Pastor Fritz Almayer of the New Jerusalem congregation . . .”
“What an odd name,” Julieta said. “It must be an alias. Maybe he’s one of those Canadian evangelicals lost in the tropics.”
They looked up the church and discovered that it had a headquarters in Cali, plus other smaller branches in Florencia, Mocoa, Pasto, Barbacoas, and Tunja. The page didn’t seem very up to date. There was no mention of peace-related projects, which was what most of the country’s evangelical churches were involved in, lured by post-conflict resources. “Money provided by the very same peace process they so vilely opposed during the referendum,” Julieta thought angrily.
Their food arrived.
The aroma of the shellfish soup brought memories flooding back for Julieta. What was it? Something seemed to be moving toward her from very far away, at the end of her childhood. The steam from the broth rose to her nostrils. The faint smell of shellfish. For a moment she daydreamed, adrift.
She hated talking on the phone while eating, but she was impatient to make some more progress. She searched for Silanpa’s number among her contacts.
“Hi there, what a surprise,” he said. “Are you in Bogotá?”
“No, no, I’m in Popayán looking into a weird situation. You doing OK?”
Julieta’s tone was different from usual. When she talked to Silanpa her voice regained a certain youthfulness, a vibrancy it didn’t have when she was dealing with everyday affairs. “Look, Víctor,” she said, “I want to ask you a favor. Do you have something to write with? Jot down this name and see what you can tell me about the guy: Fritz Almayer. He’s an evangelical pastor. He’s got a church called New Jerusalem. Does that ring any bells?”
Silanpa was silent a few seconds. “Not off the top of my head. What’s up?”
“There was a shoot-out near Tierradentro and I think this pastor was involved. It seems like he was attacked with heavy weaponry but he fought back. I thought maybe you’d heard of him.”
“Who attacked him?” Silanpa asked.
“I don’t know yet, I’m starting my investigation with the target.”
“Let me see what I can find out and I’ll get back to you, OK?”
“All right, thanks. Kisses.”
She ate another spoonful of soup, still holding her cell phone. She dialed Jutsiñamuy’s number.
“You must have something good to be calling at this hour,” the prosecutor said. “What’s up?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it really late?” Julieta said.
“I only just ate, don’t worry. Tell me how things went down there. Are you back?”
Julieta described her discoveries in detail. From the shell casings on the road to the motorcycle that had been following them, the mayor’s obfuscation, and the Alliance event in Inzá. But especially the story of the men in black and the boy who saw them.
“Excellent,” Jutsiñamuy said, slamming his hand down on the table. “So there was fighting! And the boy confirmed he was the one who called it in?”
“When I asked him, he went quiet and hung his head,” Julieta said, “but he didn’t deny it.”
She gave him the name of the pastor they thought might be the survivor, Fritz Almayer, to see if he had a criminal record. Excited, Jutsiñamuy promised to get back to them soon.
“You two should work here in the prosecutor general’s office,” he said.
They said goodbye—it was late.
Julieta decided to stay in the bar, have a little more wine, and go over her notes. She sent a message to one of her editors in Mexico, updating him on the investigation and promising a good article. By her fifth glass of wine, she was in high spirits and considered calling Víctor again, but she refrained.
When she went up to the room, she saw that Johana had lain down in the bed nearest the door and was already asleep. Trying not to make noise, she got undressed and slipped under the covers. As she settled onto the pillows, she heard her assistant get up to go to the bathroom, and saw her walk by not in pajamas but in a cropped T-shirt and underwear. She had muscular legs and a nice butt. Julieta felt a strange curiosity and waited for her to come out, pretending to be asleep. When Johana returned, Julieta stared at her taut belly and saw in the backlight that the skin there was covered with a fuzz that made her tremble. What was going on? She’d never felt this before.
It must be the wine, she thought.
Eight in the morning, back on the road under a cloudy sky. A few scattered drops heralded rain. This time at the rental agency she chose another Hyundai, a 4x4 with tinted windows. Though in her eyes the vehicle was ugly and incredibly tacky, it also made her feel safer and more protected. They skirted Inzá, spotting the Alliance church in the distance. They arrived in Tierradentro at about noon. If Franklin recognized Pastor Almayer, they could focus the investigation on him and move forward.
They went straight to the church, but the boy wasn’t there. They stopped a woman walking by with a basket to ask about him. The kid Franklin? Have you seen him?
“No, miss, I haven’t seen him.”
“Do you know him?” Johana asked.
“I don’t know, miss.”
“He’s the kid who cleans the church pews,” Johana said.
“Oh, yes, the Vanegas boy.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“He’s not from the village,” the woman said, setting the basket on the ground. “That boy comes down from the hills, but I don’t know where. I haven’t seen where he comes from.”
“Who’s in charge of the church?”
“I don’t know, miss. Ask at the store—they’ll tell you.”
The woman lifted the basket again and continued on her way, slowly occupying her place in the harsh landscape. Looking at her, Julieta pondered that strange Nasa silence, that not being there, as if they were cloaked by the weather or the shadow of the mountains.
The store was on the north corner of the main square.
“Yes, his name is Franklin, right?” said the woman behind the counter. “He lives near El Tablazo. A little further on, I think. Ask around up there—do you know the way up?”
They were glad they’d chosen a 4x4, since the road was nothing but rocks, tree roots, and potholes. At a certain point, it was no longer drivable and became a stony trail. Johana parked the Hyundai off to the side as best she could, and they continued on foot. They ran into a man on his way down with two mules.
“The Vanegas family?” Julieta asked.
“Yes, miss, just over there,” the man said, pointing vaguely to a spot between the mountain peak and the heavens.
Johana climbed quickly and energetically. She was used to long walks in the mountains. Julieta was panting, and cursed whenever she saw that each dip was merely a prelude to the next steep incline. Where the hell was the kid’s house? At last they reached the summit and a track etched in the grass, which fortunately spread out level before them.
The view was incredible, but Julieta wasn’t in the mood for landscapes. Johana took a couple of photos. They spotted a clump of trees with a hut under it surrounded by an expanse of corn.
“Hello!” Johana called.
A scabby mutt started barking, and a hen hurried across the dirt path, followed by a dozen chicks. Eventually an old woman peeked out from behind a door.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
“Does the Vanegas family live here?”
The woman looked anxious, but came closer. “Who wants to know?”
Julieta held out her hand to shake, and the woman barely touched it before letting go.
“We’re journalists from Bogotá,” Julieta said. “We met Franklin at the church and wanted to talk to him.”
The woman looked behind her, hoping for someone to come out and back her up. An elderly Nasa man emerged from the field and came over, tucking his machete into its sheath.
“Mr. Vanegas?”
The man lowered his head and placed his hand on his chest. “Yes, ma’am, but the boy isn’t here. They came for him yesterday.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, miss. He’d just gotten back from town and said he needed to go back because of something to do with the church, so I didn’t ask any more. He didn’t come home last night.”
“Can we talk for a minute?”
The man hesitated, but finally made a gesture with his forearm that indicated to follow him. They sat down in front of the house, which looked out not on the mountain view but on the flat field and grove of trees. From the kitchen, the woman offered them a hot drink made from hardened sugar cane.
Julieta told them what the boy had seen on the road by the Ullucos River. “Did you know about that?”
“No, miss, the boy didn’t tell us anything,” the man said.
“And you didn’t notice anything unusual about him at the time?” Johana asked.
The man wasn’t expressing any concern, but Julieta had already learned not to prejudge the Nasa.
“No, miss.”
The woman came out with two steaming mugs and deposited them on the table.
“Are you the boy’s parents?” Julieta asked.
“Grandparents,” the man said.
“What about his parents? Do they live around here?”
“The father’s dead. He died young.”
Julieta sat waiting for another statement that didn’t come, so she ventured to ask: “And the mother?”
“The boy doesn’t have a mother.”
She took a sip from her mug and burned her tongue, but the sweet flavor lingered behind the pain.
“Everybody has a mother, don’t they?” Julieta said, placing a hand on the old woman’s arm.
The woman smiled briefly, but she didn’t say anything. She stared at the ground as rivulets of water began to run across it, pushing small twigs. It was raining again.
“His mother left when he was very little, that’s why we say he doesn’t have one. We didn’t know her.”
“Oh,” Julieta said. “That’s different.”
The drizzle intensified to a steady downpour. Deep in the mountains, thunder rumbled, and when they looked up at the sky they saw a dense raincloud, dark and menacing. The air was no longer transparent, the other mountains no longer visible. A thunderclap boomed. And then another that made the ground shake. The old couple invited them inside.
Julieta said, “And what happened to Franklin’s dad?”
The man shifted in his chair and said, “I’ll tell you, just until the rain stops.” And he began to talk:
The boy’s father was named Justino, and he was our only child. We didn’t have any others, who knows why. That’s how our family turned out, very small. You can’t do anything about it, it’s decided up there and down here we just have to accept it. Justino was born big and strong and with good arms for working. So I raised him. I taught him about us, our traditions, our old stories.
Everything.
When he was five years old, a teacher from San Andrés came and told us the boy had to go to school. I told him no, the boy didn’t need that school because we were teaching him what he needed to know right here, but they insisted he had to go, it was a child’s right, imagine that, miss, as if his parents didn’t know how to educate him; I didn’t want him to, but they kept coming and talking to his mother, you know? Of course, she always told them, it’s up to his father, he makes the decisions in this household, and so I asked Justino if he wanted to go, and he told me, whatever you say, Father. But do you want to go or not? He said, yes I do want to, if you give me permission, yes, but if not, no, the boy said, so well-mannered, and they pushed so hard about San Andrés that one day I said, well, just for a year to see how it goes. But your work here at home has to get finished the same as always, all right? So he did. The boy went up and down every day, he went to school when it was still dark out and came back in the early afternoon and worked hard in the field, and then the next year I let him keep going because he’d kept his word, and that’s how Justino got an education, he learned the textbooks, and when he finished high school they said he was a good student, that he had good grades and should go to university, but there I did put my foot down, no, I said, he’s our only son, he can’t leave us, I need him working here at home, and then he was the one who told me one day, look, Dad, if I go to college I’ll be able to get a better job, and then I can hire laborers for you so you can rest because I’ll be making good money, and I’m going to fix up your house, and maybe we’ll even buy a couple of cows and the large field out back, so we can plant more crops, beans and potatoes and cassava and even bananas and coffee, and so I said to him, well, where’s the university? and he said, I have to take an exam and then if I pass it’s in Inzá, at the University of Cauca, that’s what he told me, and I thought about it for a few days, and I asked the committee and they told me it was a good idea, said the community needed educated people who could help defend our rights, so I said, go ahead and study, and so he left, and we saw less and less of him, he would leave for the whole week and come back on Friday night, on Saturdays he’d work with me farming cassava and bananas, working twice as hard now because he had to make up for his time away, and so I said to him, take it easy, mijo, now that you’re gone there’s one less mouth to feed so we don’t need as much, don’t worry, go on and rest, you must be tired, and we saw him deep in those books, studying, what was it that he was studying? I don’t even remember the name, some university subject, and that’s how things were for two or three years, he would always come bringing gifts, sweets, candy, once he brought some fabrics for his mother, a new radio, until eventually he stopped coming, first one Friday and then another, and when he showed up the next he explained that he’d been too busy, he had a lot of studying, it was finals, and we told him, don’t worry; we stopped asking after that because we got used to it, whether he came or not, I would hear the dog barking like crazy and I’d know Justino was on his way up, and so another year passed, I think, or more, until one day he didn’t come back, two, three weeks, a month, and he didn’t return; at first I didn’t say anything, but after a while, when I went down with the harvest, I asked, and they told me, we’ll ask around in Inzá to see what happened, find out why Justino hasn’t been coming, he must be busy, and so another couple of weeks went by until they gave me a letter from him, I have it right over there, but I didn’t know how to read, miss, you know? But anyway I brought it here to the house, and his mother and I studied the piece of paper even though we didn’t understand a thing, but it made us happy because it was a message from Justino, he was the one who had written it; about three days later a neighbor’s son read us the letter and it said that after his studies Justino had decided to join the guerrillas to change the country and defend the people, that’s what it said, and his mother wept, of course, and I didn’t say anything, but I went out with the machete and chopped at a eucalyptus tree because I felt like it was my fault for allowing him to go to school. And so we ended up without our son, waiting to see what would happen, and well, one day they showed up with some money that was supposedly from him, a group of those guys who were in the area left it here, and they gave us some news of him, said he was fine, not to worry, he was still working for our sakes and would return soon, and so another year went by and we gradually got used to not hearing from him, to being alone, until one day someone brought us the boy Franklin, about a year old, saying he was Justino’s son, that Justino couldn’t take care of him and his mother couldn’t either, and we took him in gladly, of course, and we raised him, and I was reassured because I figured that since we had the boy here Justino would have to come back, nobody abandons their son, but as time passed and we didn’t hear anything, I started wondering, what about the mother? They’d said she was a fighter too, but that’s it. Every three or four months we’d receive a message or a little money, for the boy, that’s what the guy who brought it always said, and I’d send word to Justino asking for him to come visit, to bring the mother so we could meet her, but they said it was too dangerous, that Justino was in leadership and couldn’t, that the region was sealed off, and so time passed, and then right before those damn peace agreements were signed, just a little before, they informed us he’d been injured in combat, that he was alive but wounded, and I said, ah, that’s how evil arrives, the devil brings his winds and his brews, and I could already see that devil’s tail in the sky, and the next time they came it was to say he’d died, they brought a box with the ashes and a bag with his things, and they said I had given a son to the people’s struggle, which was a just cause, and they gave me some money and said they were going to help me, but I said thank you, there’s no need, and I asked after the boy’s mother, whether she was ever going to come, and they said she was in another region, fighting, that’s what they said. I didn’t even know her name, so I asked them so I could tell the boy when he grows up, but they wouldn’t tell me, they left and here we are, until today’s sunrise, ladies, or rather, until today’s rain, which is clearing, and now we’re waiting for the boy instead; this time the people who came looking for him said they were from the church, and he didn’t seem worried as he left, they often call him and he’s gone two, even three days, we don’t ask anymore, we’re old, and eventually you learn they always leave anyway.
It was hard going on the way down, since the path was now full of puddles and mud and wet, slippery rocks. Johana was quiet. Julieta figured she’d been deeply moved by the boy’s story. Did she know something? Had she met the boy’s father? Seeing her colleague so subdued, she decided not to ask, but they’d talk about it later. Johana must have seen a lot of female fighters give birth, and know a lot of stories. The soldier who hands her baby over and goes back to the fight. Had she known Franklin’s mother? Did she have a kid herself, or several, growing up in a shabby farmer’s hut somewhere? The image of Johana’s taut belly rose in her mind: abs like that haven’t ever been pregnant.
When they reached the car, she thought Johana’s eyes looked a bit red. Maybe some of what she’d imagined was true.
“You OK?” she asked.
“That kid’s story hit me hard,” Johana said. “We have to find him.”
“Do you know anything? Does the dad’s name sound familiar?” Julieta asked.
“I didn’t know many people’s real names, and I wasn’t in this area at the end of the conflict. Comrades were dying all the time.”
They went down to the church in San Andrés de Pisimbalá, which was still closed, with nobody working on the roof repairs, so they headed over to the archeological museum. Julieta asked to speak to the director.
They were shown into an office that looked out on the San Andrés gorge. A colonial-style house with wide corridors and windows with frames made of orange-hued wood. The director, Jacinto Duque, an anthropologist from Popayán, greeted them. They sat down and were offered coffee.
Julieta explained that they were looking into an armed confrontation that had taken place a few kilometers away. The director knew nothing about it.
“I was in Popayán for a lecture at the University of Cauca last week,” he said apologetically. “Nobody here told me anything. Combat? Where?”
They recounted the boy’s tale. The museum director, surprised, kept repeating that nobody had said anything to him about it.
Next they asked who was in charge of the church.
“It’s a long story,” Duque said. “Because of the delicate situation in keeping public order, they made this an apostolic vicariate. In 1989 Don Germán García Isaza was named prefect, but in 2002 the FARC threatened his life and he had to flee. So because of the problems with the guerrillas, it was given to the Apostolic Missionaries of Yarumal, and Bishop Edgar Tirado was named prefect, but he never comes here. A priest comes on the weekends, but everything else is managed from Inzá. And then there was the church fire—do you know about that?”
“More or less,” Julieta said.
“There was a conflict between the reservation indigenous community and farmers over some issue about education and land, which isn’t at all clear. Honestly, it’s best to leave it alone. The church is being repaired now, even if it’s slow going. It’s an eighteenth-century church! It was constructed by members of the indigenous population. Using their materials, but following the Spanish tradition. Cultural synthesis. Did the boy you’re looking for work there?”
“Yes,” said Julieta. “We talked to him yesterday. He was cleaning the pews with some sort of wax. Today we went up to El Tablazo to look for him at his house, but his grandparents said people came for him yesterday. From the church.”
“They must have been from the church in Inzá,” the anthropologist said. “Definitely, they’re the ones who manage the repairs. You should go and ask there. The parish priest is Father Tomás.”
“When will the restoration be finished?” Johana asked.
“It’s been years, but there’s no money. It’s getting done a little at a time. Like everything good in this country. Did you go to see the hypogea? Do you know about them?”
“Yes,” Julieta said. “I’d love to see them, but we’ve got this other issue to deal with. We need to talk to the boy again.”
“I suggest you go to Inzá, they’ll tell you what’s up. Maybe they took him somewhere else to do some kind of job.”
“It’s strange they didn’t tell his grandparents though,” Julieta said, “don’t you think?”
“People move at a different pace here. Remember, they’re Nasas. At twelve, a boy is already a man.”
“Well,” Julieta said, “I’m sure you’re right. We’ll head to Inzá.”
As they left the museum, Julieta looked around. The image of the motorcyclist was still at the front of her mind, but she didn’t see anything. Everything seemed calm, so they pulled onto the road. Johana kept her eye on the rearview mirror and they stopped a couple of times.
But there was nothing.
Inzá’s parochial church stood on the north end of town, on a leafy square shaded by oaks, palms, and shrubs. A neatly tended garden. The women were impressed by the majestic architecture. The central tower was topped by a cupola of arches. Inside, a nave ran down each side. At the far end they saw a large statue of Christ on the cross, known locally as Our Lord of Guanacas.
The priest, Father Tomás, greeted them with a big smile.
“It’s wonderful that journalists from Bogotá are taking an interest in us,” he said. “What brings you here?”
Julieta cleared her throat and looked at Johana. “We’re here about a boy from Tierradentro, Franklin Vanegas. Do you know him? He works in the church in San Andrés de Pisimbalá.”
“Of course! That’s a lovely church, isn’t it? And it’s looking fantastic too. We’re slowly getting there. Did something happen with Franklin? He works for Francisco, the missionary priest who’s there on weekends.”
“He hasn’t been heard from since yesterday, Father,” Julieta said. “That’s why we’re looking for him. His grandparents say people from the church came by to pick him up, but he didn’t come back today, and nobody knows where he is.”
“From the church? That’s not possible—Francisco was in Popayán yesterday. The grandparents must have misunderstood.”
Julieta and Johana glanced at each other anxiously. Had he been taken because he’d talked to them? They hadn’t been prepared for that, but it was possible. It was also clear that the priest didn’t know a thing.
Julieta started getting impatient. “Forgive me for changing the subject, Father. What do you think of the Christian and Missionary Alliance?” she asked.
The priest shifted around in his chair and for a moment she thought he was going to laugh, but his face took on a grimace.
“Well, that question is . . .” He moved his thick neck against the too-tight collar of his cassock. “You see. They’re our competition, and of course with the resources they have they’ve already got the mayor in their pocket. There’s no point in pussyfooting around it—it’s a fact. They monetize faith, and we frown on that. But I’m saying this in confidence, between us; I’d rather not have them as an enemy.”
“Do you think they could be dangerous?”
“I don’t know that they’d be dangerous the way things are usually dangerous in this country,” the priest said. “Or so I’d like to believe.”
“We need to speak with Father Francisco urgently. Do you have his phone number?”
“Of course, hang on.”
He pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through it. “Here it is, copy this down.”
It was getting dark as they left.
On the way back to Popayán, Julieta called Father Francisco. Once, twice, nothing. “Why does nobody answer the phone in this fucking country?” she fumed.
Johana looked over at her with a mixture of mirth and seriousness. “And it’s no good leaving messages either—nobody listens to them or responds.”
Just then her cell phone rang. “It’s a miracle!” Julieta exclaimed—the priest was calling her back.
“Somebody called from this number?” the voice said.
Julieta introduced herself, gave a brief recap of events, and asked about the boy, but the priest didn’t know anything.
“Nobody from the church sent for him at his home yesterday?”
“No, miss. That’s what I mean. I was in Popayán, so why would I send for him?”
“And you’re the only one who would?”
“Nobody can enter the construction site without my say-so. For starters. Franklin helps out with the cleaning during the week.”
“You know the kid,” Julieta said. “Where do you think he could be?”
The priest reflected a moment. “He loves the internet. Maybe he went to Inzá—there’s a good signal there. But it’s odd he didn’t go home last night. Maybe he stayed with a friend from school.”
“His grandparents said he left because he got a call from the church.”
“He could have made it up so they’d let him go,” the missionary said. “You know kids these days, especially with the internet. They’ll do anything!”
“I’m on my way to Popayán,” Julieta said. Her next question came out more like an order: “Could we meet up when I get there?”
“Of course, absolutely.”
They met in a café cattycorner to Caldas Park. Pochi’s. Fresh-squeezed fruit juices, chilled oat drink, organic orange juice, meat empanadas, gluten-free cassava cheese bread.
Julieta and Johana ordered coffees.
Francisco was an odd-looking man. A scraggly mustache strove, without much success, to disguise a cleft lip that had been sewn up, probably when he was a teenager, which created a strange tension in his mouth and twisted when he spoke. He was skinny and anxious. Instead of coffee, he ordered a glass of the cinnamon oat drink. Julieta guessed that his nerves had destroyed his digestion. Coffee is a powerful irritant. He might have hemorrhoids or reflux. She studied the way he was sitting and noted that in fact he was favoring one side. He couldn’t be older than forty. The clerical collar under a gray zip-up jacket, dark pants, and thick-soled black loafers completed the stereotypical image of a priest on his day off.
“Franklin spends a lot of time in Inzá so he can connect online,” he said. “He has friends from school there. He probably stayed with them. But I don’t know who they are, I’ve never met them.”
“And the people who came for him—could they have been from the Pastoral Alliance?” Julieta asked.
“Well, they do organize a lot of things for kids,” Francisco said, “a way of getting them young and drawing in the parents.”
The coffee cups were empty. Julieta signaled to the barista to bring her another.
“What about you, Father? How did you end up in San Andrés?” Julieta asked.
A very elderly shoeshine man, skinny and hunched from the weight of his box, crossed the street diagonally and came toward the priest, pointing at his shoes, but Francisco wagged his finger no. The last light of evening turned the sky purple behind the lush trees in the plaza: Castille guava, mora, mango, charichuela. The twilight scene, with the beds of hydrangeas and ornamental hedges, evoked the colors in an old engraving.
Let’s see, where do I start? I’m from Madrid, outside of Bogotá. At sixteen I was ordained as a Franciscan. No, actually that was my first vows and investiture. Ordainment came later, when I was eighteen. I joined the order to study—I was determined to get an education one way or another. It would have been dumb not to. If I didn’t join the church I was going to have to work in the fields, on someone else’s land, because my parents didn’t have much. And being poor is tough and miserable, especially in this country, which is so unjust and hard on the poor. You dream and dream, only to get nowhere, and poverty is a tombstone you carry on your back that just gets cold in the night. I don’t want to lie to you, miss.
And I did study, of course. I didn’t manage to travel the world, but I saw Colombia. Ultimately, that’s my world. They sent me to Virrey Solís, the Franciscan school in Bogotá. I was so thrilled to go! I taught Christology, my favorite subject, the life of our Lord. I taught the kids his ideas, but I mixed mine in too, and after a while I started getting warnings from the administration. I was in the doghouse! Don’t say this, and don’t say that, it’s forbidden . . . To avoid conflict I shifted to ministry with the Yarumal Society for the Foreign Missions. I’ve been strong in my life. You have to look out for yourself.
I was there for a while and later was sent to Caquetá, far from the trouble I’d had with the Franciscans. The people there are good, reliable people, strong. The children of poor country folk, indigenous communities, displaced or forgotten people—the dark and invisible people of Colombia. They started coming to listen to me, and I would tell them that I wept with those who wept and felt the pain of those who were in pain; I talked to them about the cross and painted it on their foreheads and in their minds: the cross, †, †, over and over, †, †, and I was a wounded man with the wounded children of war, and an orphan with the orphans, and I wept with the widowed and the mutilated, and if someone was missing a leg, I would draw a cross there, †, and if they were missing an arm, I would draw a cross there, †, and if someone lacked good eyes and a good heart and a good soul, I tried to draw a thousand crosses, †, †, †, †, †, and so I became a distributor of crosses, the cross thrower, because that’s what missionary priests are: they throw crosses. The cross is the pencil with which we sketch on the heavens or on the souls of the wretched.
Forgive me, ladies, I got carried away with my own musings. It happens sometimes. Where was I? Oh, right, in Florencia, Caquetá, in the lost villages, all those gray children and men and women, gray like trees or stones scattered in a field—they’re just there, in their silence, and one day they’re gone, but others arrive, that’s the law of life and of silence in those lonely places; places that may be insignificant to the nation but not to the Lord, and that’s why I was there, struggling in those difficult places, where—forgive me—buttoned-up city priests who freak out when their cassock gets muddy don’t go. The Church has its assholes too, ladies, if you’ll excuse my French. Whereas I am imbued with the sinew of Christ. I am passionate about the word, enamored of the word. I know you want to know about the boy and how I ended up in San Andrés. Well, one day I was in Caquetá when I got a call from the diocese: you’ve got to travel to Medellín immediately, pack up all your things, and I wondered, what have they been hearing about me now? I was resigned, but when I got to Medellín, to my surprise they wanted to transfer me to San Andrés de Pisimbalá, and why me? I asked, and they said the previous priest had been threatened by the guerrillas, and since I was coming from Caquetá, the FARC probably already knew me.
So that’s how I came there, and of course there were problems, but I’ve stuck it out. The Nasa boy started coming to help, Franklin, or Frankitón, as I call him. He was looking for work after school, said his parents were poor and couldn’t afford to give him an allowance—the kid’s obsessed with the internet—and, well, I’ve always thought that work is a way to learn too, so I started paying him a small wage to maintain the church, because since the construction’s going so slow, the floor gets filthy and the pews get infested with beetles; I give him a bit of money and he keeps it all spick-and-span, and when I go there, sometimes on Saturday or sometimes starting on Thursdays, he has everything ready for me.
So he’s disappeared? They came for him from the church? To be honest, he uses that excuse to get away from his grandparents. My bet is he’s at the cybercafé in Inzá or staying at a friend’s house. I’ve been in Popayán, so how would the church be sending for him? The people at the missionary inn can vouch for me. He’s a good kid, but I’m only just starting to teach him. He does like to fib sometimes. I work with him, talk to him about the Creator and the mountains and the sky and the graves of his ancestors, but he looks at me like he’s listening to the rain.