TRAVEL DIARY TO FRENCH GUIANA

Wednesday

 

Boarding at El Dorado Airport and leaving for Panama on an uncomfortable Copa flight. Seat 26D. I had to fight for them to give me an aisle seat. I can’t stand sitting in the middle. The woman next to me has doused herself with half a bottle of an absolutely foul scent, probably a gift from her husband—one of those perfumes purchased in San Andresito where the bottle says Paco Rabanne but they’re actually made in Paraguay. Paraguayan Paco Rabanne.

What is Fabinho like? Is he really the attacker from the Ullucos River? And if so, what does he have against Fritz? I have my notes from the entire investigation. I’m going to type them into my laptop in case I lose them.

Panama. So hot. The air conditioning in the airport is on the fritz. They say the place is “being remodeled.” Obese police officers. With such unappealing physiques, how can they expect to inspire respect for order? They look like gringo cops. I stopped to look at the Crocs store, but the prices were sky-high. The dollar is up at the moment. Then I went to the VIP lounge and had three glasses of gin. I ate too many peanuts and a nasty sandwich. I got distracted and ended up having to race to catch my connection to Curaçao, which was leaving at 6:30 P.M. A Caribbean Airlines plane. I got a better seat. The flight was three hours.

We arrive in Curaçao. It’s nighttime; the air is warm and humid, but pleasant. The people on the plane are already in bathing suits. It seems like nobody comes to Willemstad to do anything besides swim, drink piña coladas, and surf. There are lots of Italians, the suntan kings. L’abbronzatura, they call it. I go to my hotel, next to the airport. It’s ten P.M. I drop off my suitcase and go out for a walk. It’s a small Dutch city in the tropics. Colorful houses, some made of wood. Others with metal roofs, Caribbean-style. I find a bar that looks nice. I go in with my notes and my laptop. I order a gin with lots of ice and two slices of lemon. The guy behind the bar looks like Morgan Freeman; I like him.

My theories on the Ullucos River case:

Fabinho attacks Fritz because they’re rivals in the sinister world of Pentecostal and evangelical churches. They are peers, and they hate each other; they’re fighting for the same thing, and they both want to come out on top, crushing the other. Human vanity—is there any limit to it? However much he talks about God, Fritz is a vain man who knows the effect he produces and enjoys it. Maybe this is over the top—do churches have armies? It would be a return to the Middle Ages, but everything about churches is a regression to the Middle Ages anyway. All due respect to the poor Middle Ages, which we always use as a metaphor for a savage world.

Another theory: Fabinho attacks Fritz and tries to kill him over an old vendetta. Money? Some buried crime? You’d have to list out a person’s motives for offing someone, especially given they’re both pastors and are therefore strictly prohibited from doing so. Whatever motivates them is so powerful, it overrides the religion they profess and represent. Did Fritz kill someone close to him? Did he do injury to a family member? Where? Given that one of them is Brazilian and the other Colombian, where could they have forged a bond so tense it impels them toward annihilation?

My third gin just arrived, and as I take the first sip, I see that Italian again who’s been smiling at me for a while now from the other end of the bar. The dumbass sure is good-looking. My guess is he’s Italian, but he could be Argentine. Same difference. He must be about ten years younger than me. I just remembered that I claimed to be interested in Amazonian gold mining in order to finagle this interview. Shit! I’d better do some internet reading so I know something about the topic.

Back at the hotel. All is well. The Italian idiot got bored and went off to pursue some other woman, who right now, as I go to sleep alone, will be doing acrobatics in a bed somewhere.

Both of them can go fuck themselves.

 

 

Thursday

 

Willemstad in daylight. Suffocating heat, lovely city. A town, really. Just tourists. Was anyone here actually born in Curaçao? I wonder that as I sit on the hotel terrace, looking out on a street next to the sea. All I see is foreigners in bathing suits, Bermuda shorts, sarongs. There’s a Chinese minimarket nearby. I’ll go buy some water. My plane to Paramaribo leaves at ten and arrives at noon. Everything’s close here; it’s a Dutch village lost in the Caribbean.

Another Caribbean Airlines flight. I have a window seat and stare out at the sea, the shadows of the boats on the coral reefs. It’s beautiful, of course—tourists know how to spend their money. The plane lifts up into the air. Hardly any clouds. Soon a huge island appears below, and the pilot announces that it’s Trinidad and Tobago. What a world this is, the Caribbean. I don’t know much about it. I was in Guadeloupe once. And of course in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. But these islands or forward islands (Antilles) pique my curiosity. What do the people born in these places think? It’s like being born inside a permanent vacation, a Cartagena resort. Living surrounded by people smeared with suntan creams and lotions, stuffing themselves with ceviche, fried snapper, rum, beer, and piña coladas.

We arrive in Paramaribo.

I look out the window. Sheet metal roofs, colorful houses. There’s a yellow cathedral. The airport is small and chaotic. What happened to Holland? They built and created this, but then left. Today Suriname is independent.

When I leave the terminal I see people offering transport to a place called Moengotapoe and Albina, on the Maroni River. It’s the border with French Guiana, so I’ll be going with one of them. A nine-seater Hyundai minibus. I’m lucky and get to sit up front, next to the driver. The air conditioning is on full blast, and I’m freezing. The driver’s name is Tito. I tell him in English that I’m going to Cayenne, and he says, “Once you cross the river, at the border, there’s transport. It’s easy.”

I figured it would be.

A flat four-lane highway. On either side, a landscape of seemingly impassible mangrove swamps that are definitely infested with animals. Especially snakes. I take photos with my cell phone, but the sun is perpetually in my face. I’m tempted to lower the window and stick my arm out, but when I try it Tito says no and turns the AC up another notch. One of the vents is right next to my foot. My toes are going to crack off with frostbite.

The Maroni River. It’s huge—you can’t even see the other side. Is this what the Amazon is like? I’ve never been. We get out at the ferry terminal and show our passports. I almost forget that Guiana is French territory. Among the people traveling with me are two gorgeous black women. Early twenties. Tall, with pretty faces and absolutely spectacular bodies. A gust of wind blows up the skirt of one of them and I spy a beautiful ass. Yellow panties on a black bottom—perfection. The people here look different from the Caribbeans. They’re tall, stronger. Incredibly elegant. The men, oddly, seem cultured and less sexist. The women are sophisticated.

I don’t know why I think that.

These ferry boats have always scared me a little. The river seems calm at the shore, but the boat shakes as it hits the current. At last we reach the other side. It’s called Saint Laurent de Maroni. We get our passports stamped in a wooden hut that says, “Port de’Ouest, gare fluviale.” What a desolate place. A concrete pad and a metal walkway that leads to the dock. Three drooping palms and a post with two reflectors. Maybe for them that’s what civilization means: an expanse of concrete with nothing left of the jungle.

There are several minibuses waiting. It’s three in the afternoon. We head off through an identical landscape: mangroves, palms, coconut trees, jungle. It’s hot as hell, and the bus is freezing. I should have brought a parka. We pass through a place called Iracoubo and then through Kourou, the French spaceport for the Ariane rockets.

It’s almost five when we reach an area that’s been cleared of trees. The road draws close to the sea and instead of mangrove swamps there are beaches and lovely houses. It looks just like France: the same signs, all in French. Of course, what else should I expect? I’m in France. I recall the young women in Guadeloupe once upon a time who told me they weren’t Latin American, they were Euro-Caribbean. Colonial legacies are weird.

At last I reach Cayenne.

It’s 6:30 P.M. local time.

The lodging Johana reserved for me is called Ker Alberte, a tidily kept and almost certainly refurbished mansion of yesteryear. It doesn’t have many rooms, a sort of boutique hotel. They give me a room on the second floor, at the far end of the garden. It’s small and cozy. The internet works perfectly. As soon as I log on I see a message from Thérèse Denticat, Sécretaire PDG, Ouro Amazónico, Inc., Trade. “Mr. Henriquez will be busy today and tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow he would like to invite you to lunch at Les Palmistes at 1:15 P.M.”

All right, that gives me time to get better prepared and explore a little of this strange, so far incomprehensible city. A sort of Amazonian village with signs in French, FNAC, Carrefour, and Darty. They use the euro, and I see that things are incredibly expensive. That was to be expected. Everything’s brought in by plane from France. It’s like Guadeloupe, but without sugarcane and, therefore, without rum. We’ll see. There’s got to be something.

Cayenne—what a mysterious, lonely city.

There aren’t many people around—is it the heat? It’s stifling out, and humid. I go for a walk and can’t figure out where I am. They say this is downtown, but it looks like a suburb. There are hardly any businesses. A French woman (the hotel owner?) pointed out the central square, and on my way there I walked down a street full of Chinese minimarkets, Rue de Rémire. Orient Shopping. I went in to buy the thing I always forget: toothpaste. And a bottle of Perrier, as expensive as in Colombia. How did the Chinese end up here? It’s weird. As I walk, question after question occurs to me. Finally I reach the square, which is very pretty. Lots of coconut palms. The Place des Palmistes. A huge lawn full of palms. On one side is a statue of someone whose name is illegible. The humidity has erased the plaque, but it’s probably a national hero, the first Frenchman to colonize Guiana.

What’s that in the distance?

Of course, it’s the ocean. I walk toward it. There’s a narrow, crumbling alleyway. I turn the first corner and suddenly the waves appear, lapping against a pile of trash. How odd. The place is next to the city’s main square, but it is charmless, even somewhat unpleasant. It stinks of rotting garbage. There are the ruins of an ancient wall. I walk to a wide beach, remaining alert. Sometimes, unwittingly, you wind up wandering into the lion’s den. I come across a young couple, probably high school age. He kisses her and she responds passionately, lying beside him. He strokes her knee and moves his hand up, but when he gets to the edge of her skirt she pushes his hand away. And he starts over: kiss, knee, thigh . . . Off! Kiss, knee, thigh . . . An old man appears beside the wall; though they see him, they remain unfazed. The defiance of youth. As the man walks past them, the young woman lets her beau go a little further up, but as soon as the man’s out of the picture, she pushes the hand away again.

Cayenne resembles the port cities in the Caribbean.

The houses have wooden shutters and whitewashed walls that let the breezes through. Metal roofs. I walk down a sandy path next to the water to a park with a viewpoint. The Atlantic Ocean. The beach is full of dry, stripped trunks carried in by the sea, the great devastator of trees. Where do they come from? There are piles of wood drying in the sun. The houses are made of wood. It’s the traditional architecture. The water is brown; the surf stirs up the clay on the bottom.

I buy a book about gold mining, which in French is called orpaillage, and go sit in the café next to the square. It’s called Les Palmistes, the same place where Fabinho arranged to meet the day after tomorrow. It offers a variety of services: hotel, bar, restaurant. Founded in 1908. I sit down on the terrace. What do they have? I order a Guianese punch. They bring a glass with slices of lemon, sugar syrup, ice, and a cup of rum of a sort they call “agricultural,” which is strong like cachaça. La Belle Cabresse. Rhum agricole de Guyane. I should drink slowly—I can’t get drunk here. I’m alone. I ask them to mix it for me and take a sip; it’s delicious.

I start reading about gold mining, the subject I’m supposed to be an expert on. The book offers a historical overview. It talks about how mining began in the Amazon after the arrival of the Brazilian garimpeiros, who came from Minas Gerais, where mining started in the sixteenth century.

Damn, this punch is delicious, but it packs a wallop. I’m going to order another—how many does that make? I think three. The sugar makes it go down easy, and what a flavor. This terrace is gorgeous. There are people at every table, mostly French. It seems to be the city’s major meeting spot. Some people are working on their laptops or staring at their phones. The music isn’t blasting. There’s a stage and a sign announcing live music later on. Jazz. I think this place is going to be my office in Cayenne.

Yes, that’s decided, Les Palmistes.

As night falls, the square empties out. What time is it? In the darkness, the streets, especially the poorly lit ones, look scary. I memorized the way back: I go out through here till it ends and then three blocks to the left. As far as I know, there’s no crime here. They didn’t say anything about being careful at the hotel, but maybe they don’t want to scare people. We’ll see.

Shit, I finished my damn punch again right as I figured out what I want to write in this notebook. Let’s see if the waiter spots me—will this be my fourth or my fifth one now? I don’t remember, but I’m feeling good on this delicious tidal wave: a soothing jacuzzi of rum and lemon. Hopefully it’s not too pricey. I didn’t even look at the price—a rich-kid habit I haven’t managed to break. Ideas are buzzing in my head. Is that the La Belle Cabresse?

Focus, damn it! Fabinho, gold miners, the Amazon, Pentecostal and evangelical churches. Fritz is fucking the Brazilian woman. That’s for sure. Those guys might be pastors, but they still get horny. Plus they can. Sultry bitch. Next thing you know she’ll be howling at the moon and running on all fours.

Fabinho, gold miners. Pentecostal churches. On one side of the room, the jazz band is tuning their instruments and the sound techs are hooking up the amps. In ten minutes it won’t be possible to think, at least not about anything except music. This is wonderful. I’ve ordered some empanadas and a fish steak, plus another punch. If I don’t eat something I’m going to end up drunk. At the next table is a young couple. She is staring raptly at her man—they’re French. And like all French people, they travel the world with those little green books, the Guide du Routard. Is it true the French invented oral sex? The young woman looks a little mousy, but she’s probably pure fire when her man turns her on. They look like they’re on their honeymoon. In Spain, they call a blowjob a “Frenchie.” The music is amazing. The jazz group is made up of two guys and two girls.

I think I’m tipsy now. I’m going back to the hotel before some guyanais makes a move and I end up practicing my French in the bathroom.

Good night, notebook. Bisous.

Hope I don’t get lost on the way back to that fucking hotel—what’s it called . . . ?

 . . . . . . 

 . . . . . . 

 

 

Friday

 

What time is it? 9:22 A.M. This headache is killing me. That punch is delicious but deadly. I’m going to venture out into the world slowly and a little at a time. The poolside breakfast is still being served. I’ll get in the water for a bit.

It’s nice to have the day free, so I can pull myself together and continue preparing for the interview. This coffee is fantastic, as is the bread. A baguette just like the ones in France. I’m in France!

About the interview: I’ll need to find a way to shift from the subject of gold to the churches. It will be interesting to see his reaction when I mention Fritz’s New Jerusalem Church.

 . . . . . . 

 . . . . . . 

Today’s a hangover day.

I knew it even as I ordered those damn drinks. I hate myself for that. I can go without drinking for weeks, but once I start it’s hard to stop. A certain melancholy tone in this notebook is the product of an excess of alcohols derived from cane sugar.

A walk after lunch, in the stifling heat. I went down to the ocean and pictured how, traveling in a straight line, you’d run into Saint Helena, the island where Napoleon was exiled. Does it look like this, with the beach full of tree trunks polished by the surf? I imagined the prisoners escaping, like Papillon, and disappearing into the jungle. The heat and the vast swarms of mosquitoes. I’m more scared of the mosquitoes than I am of snakes or jungle beasts. After my walk I went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool. I just ordered some grilled fish and zero alcohol. Early to bed.

Tomorrow’s the big day, the reason I’ve come all this way.

 

 

Saturday

 

The day could be summed up as “Meetings with Remarkable Men,” like that legendary book by Gurdjieff, guru of subjectivity and the power of the spirit. But in my case, it’s spiritual charlatans. Spiritual scum and tinkerers. Recyclers of spiritual rubbish. The first tinkerer, of course, was Fritz, and the second one is this guy. The famous Mr. F.

Let’s start at the beginning.

I met up with Fabinho Henriquez at a table at Les Palmistes. My first impression, walking toward him and observing him from a distance, was contradictory: I’d never seen anyone like him, but at the same time he was the most ordinary-looking person you could imagine.

This would be my description:

A sturdy man, not fat, Caucasian, balding, with deep black eyes. The kind of bald that’s finished off in the barbershop, a look I can’t stand. He was wearing a somewhat faded indigo T-shirt with the letters NYC across the chest. A leather vest on top of that. Very strong, tanned arms, tattoos of the face of Christ and the cross. On both wrists, woven and leather bracelets, cuffs made of copper and little shells. I thought, His arms are a showroom of local artisanry.

“My dear friend, welcome.”

He greeted me solemnly. He caught my hand between his, like a priest would to a member of his congregation, and looked me up and down. An indifferent look, without a speck of desire, though there was no hint of rejection or scorn either.

“Please have a seat. Would you like a soda, a punch, something warm to drink?”

I ordered sparkling water with lemon.

“You are from my beloved Colombia, the loveliest country in South America.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And the most problematic.”

“Oh, yes, problems, of course,” Fabinho said. “God bless that beautiful country. May Jesus place it on his highest seat, and may it prosper.”

As he spoke, he crossed himself quickly several times, kissing his fingers and looking heavenward.

“Problems are human; only God resolves them in the end. Ah, divine love.” He crossed himself again. “You’re an interesting person. I read some of your articles.”

“As I told your secretary, I’m interested in gold extraction in the jungle. As you’re no doubt aware, illegal mining is a serious problem in Colombia. That’s why I want to tell the story of somebody like you, who works on the side of the law and respects nature.”

“God put gold there for us to find and, seeing it gleam in our hands, be closer to his word and his works. Nature was conceived by him, and gold is part of that work, maybe his masterpiece. It’s good to take it out and look at it. It’s part of divine love.”

As he said this, he glanced at the next table, where two men sat. One of them furrowed his brow in a sign of agreement. They were with him. Someone on the sidewalk came to the edge of the terrace to beg for money, and the men at the table stood up, their hands at their waists. Bodyguards.

“Relax,” Fabinho said, waggling his hands, “it’s just a poor man. Viens içi, comment tu t’appelles?”

The man was Haitian. Lots of destitute immigrants were arriving from the Caribbean.

“Tiens,” Fabinho said, giving him some euro coins, “et remercie Dieu pour ça.”

The man went off toward the Chinese minimarket. I figured he was going to buy a carton of cheap wine.

“Christ was always on the side of the poor,” he said, sitting back down. “And though I know that man is going to spend the money I gave him on alcohol, it will bring him some relief. Who am I to judge . . .”

We engaged in small talk and asked polite questions for a while. He made a few jokes; I laughed obligingly. The awkwardness gradually eased. When I thought the time had come, I asked his permission to record.

“What do you say we get started? As I said, I’m interested in writing a professional profile, but above all a human one. In any business venture, it’s people who make the difference. So I’d like to start with this: How do you introduce yourself? Who are you?”

Fabinho cleared his throat, took a sip of water, and said these words, which I recorded.

(Transcript without corrections or omissions and some comments)

 

You ask me who I am?

That’s the hardest and most terrifying question, or the most human—or maybe the most unlikely in a world crammed with empty words.

Miss Julieta, who am I? Do you know who you really are? Before telling a story that might be mine, I’m going to tell you how I feel about life and God and the life questions that are our daily bread. This whole incredible world is made of words, and that’s the only way our minds can understand. It’s part of divine love. Oh, yes.

Oh, divine love.

You see me as a successful man who runs a large company in the Amazon, but who also has a clean conscience. And yes, that’s true. But it wasn’t always the case—I come from a place far away from here. I come from below. From the darkness. Maybe that’s why I like mines and gold hidden in the earth.

If I could, if I were strong and not worn out, I’d like to triumph in a world of creatures who dwell underground and light their ways with mineral sparks; creatures who walk hunched through long tunnels that connect to other tunnels, and still others, and the triumph would consist of sneaking up to the surface from time to time without anybody spotting me . . . 

Why? So I can’t be betrayed, my dear. So I don’t have to see mankind offending the Lord and failing to abide by his word. I’d rather be an underground animal or a solitary treetop bird whose only task is the silent work of living my life.

Because the most inhuman thing is a longing to resemble the men who go around the streets and squares with their minds locked on fornication or violence or wealth, in a way that can only be offensive to God. Most of what they think is just garbage, crudeness, pornography. Or even worse: selfishness, vanity, envy, resentment. And what is in the heads of young people, who are the future? Not much. They think about drinking, fornicating, and becoming numb. Loneliness makes us vain. The word of Christ is the only thing that tames the ego. It is in our minds, our hearts. The two go together. His word and each of us.

It is part of divine love.

Life—what value does it have? Long ago, in the mines or in the fields, you used to see the garimpeiros, weather-beaten people. The men had wrinkled faces and clothes torn from labor. They had scars from fighting, sometimes with jungle animals and sometimes with each other. Each scar told a story. Everything you saw in them recalled something, and that was their portrait. Things have changed now. Clothing is sold already torn, and since people don’t have scars they get tattoos, wanting stories they haven’t suffered inscribed on their skin. How can they suffer when they don’t savor life? That’s the big question I wonder about. The people who work in the mines are greedy. So am I, because it’s my business, and most of all because it’s what I’ve always known how to do, since I was a kid. Maybe you’ve heard of a dowser, which is someone who can detect water beneath the ground. I can do something similar. I sink my hands into the rocks, touch the soil. I smell the manganese. I soak it in and rub it into me. And suddenly I see it. Something tells me, It’s over there, and the machines go looking for it—can you imagine how much it would cost to do it blind? You have to wring out the earth and break it in half like a cookie, and the metals pour forth. You have to drag it out with dredges and buckets. It can take days. Gold is the last metal to become solid, and its veins meander without any logic. When you find it, you have to know where it’s coming from and where it’s going. I know how to see that. Thanks to my ability, I survived in Minas Gerais.

That’s who I am: the man who knows where the gold is going.

 

“And you don’t think,” I said, “that gold increases man’s greed? Aren’t you afraid of destroying everything because of that greed?”

Fabinho finished his mineral water with lemon and called the waiter over. He ordered a Coke with ice.

“It’s all part of the same thing, which is divine love,” he said, taking a long sip. “We shouldn’t worry about things that don’t worry nature. The earth contorts and cracks. When the continents formed and Africa separated from the Americas, the soil layer cracked and the two parts moved away from each other. That’s nature, and we are part of it. People say we’re destroying it, but you can’t really say that. The history of the planet is the history of its fractures and holes and its infinite chasms and the collisions of its tectonic plates. When this happened for the first time, where was man? Running away in fright. Man is part of nature and will die in it. You have to understand creation. To build a church, you have to topple trees, just as you do to erect cities, hospitals, schools. Should we stop doing that? Now man, who used to be naked, has machinery and dynamite and can bore deep into the surface. It’s not the end. A fly can’t topple a wall by flapping its wings faster.”

I broke in, trying again. “But the same scientists who made machines to perforate the earth and do fracking say it too: today the planet is small and fragile; we’re on the verge of damaging it irretrievably.”

“Those are just words,” he said, waving away the air in front of his nose as if an insect were buzzing there, “and that’s just because the apocalypse has such cachet. If we don’t talk about the end of the world, nobody listens to us. They also said the sun revolved around Earth and condemned Galileo, and today they say there’s no other life in the universe but us—can you imagine that? Or they claim God doesn’t exist because science made him obsolete. Do you believe them? Scientists are the quacks of the twenty-first century. That’s a fact, miss.”

“And yet you use machines invented by those scientists,” I persisted, needling him. “And you understand the order of the layers of Earth’s crust because of the knowledge they’ve granted.”

Fabinho stared off at the end of the street, which I found unsettling. Was there a new danger? Nothing was there.

“What I know doesn’t come from speculations I’ve read,” he said, “but from knowledge of these jungles and God’s work. I inherited it from having been born close to the soil, smelling firewood burning in the stove or the clay pot. The indigenous people didn’t study at Harvard, nor do they need to, to know what a plant has inside it.

“It’s knowledge accumulated over generations; indigenous children don’t start over from scratch. Just like our science, it gets stored. There’s a pedagogy.

“Intimate familiarity with the earth is more important, I’m telling you. Believe me. You’re good with words—it’s your job. For me, I know the things I know. In my bones. If I can’t explain them any better, it’s not because the ideas are weak, but because my powers of expression are limited.”

I nodded in agreement, but thought, This guy is totally nuts; he’s even more tangled-up and mystical than Fritz. They must know each other. They’re exactly the same.

“We’re living through the days before the Lord’s coming,” Fabinho continued. “And it’s not me saying that—it’s the Bible. That’s why we need to be in harmony with nature and the Creator’s work. People who keep throwing their lives away will not be able to receive grace. That’s why I created a church in the jungle, and that’s why I work here. Is there anything in the world closer to God’s work than the jungle?”

He was wearing a heavy gold chain with a medallion that he suddenly stroked. It was the hand of Jesus with the phrase “We are healed.”

“Are mining gold and building Pentecostal churches part of the same concept?” I asked.

He smiled, pleased by the question. “Of course, it’s all part of divine love. I told you that already. The end is coming, and it’s better to be close to the Lord’s work. That’s why I use the gold I mine to establish churches. It isn’t for my own personal enrichment.”

I was tempted to really get into that, but I held back. “Do you have any relationship with Colombian mining?”

He looked me in the eye, and I felt a sudden pang in my belly.

“I worked in your country for a while, near the border. But the people’s hearts were shattered, and I didn’t stay. I did what anyone would have done: work and keep my mouth shut. That jungle still dwells in my heart, one of the toughest places I’ve been. The trees block out the sky. The loneliness of the world is more intense, like the parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall, or a ghost town where all the people have fled or died of the plague; a universe without any life but one’s own is the most terrifying notion a person can conceive, and it is precisely there that the figure of Christ comes down and penetrates your heart and leads you by the hand to a boat or shepherds you into a drone for humans and lifts you above the world, close to the only source of heat that can console the spirit, which is God himself, he who is about to arrive. I am waiting for him—are you not?”

I was startled by the question. I told him I wasn’t a believer, that I didn’t have a religious background. My spirituality followed a different course.

“And what course is that?” he asked.

“Art, music, books,” I replied awkwardly.

“Oh, of course,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “but those, too, are manifestations of God, so in the end we agree. Receive my blessing. Everything is part of divine love.” He looked at me cheerfully and said, “Would you like to see the mine where I’m working now?”

I said I would.

He said he’d send someone to pick me up tomorrow at six A.M. Then he got up and, with a comical bow, we said goodbye. He turned to one of the waiters and made a circle in the air with his finger. I understood that he was saying, Put it all on my tab. He went down to the street, accompanied by two men, and as he turned right along the park the people at four other tables got up and hurried out. More security.

 

 

Sunday

 

At 6:11, as I was having breakfast, someone asked for me at reception. An Afro-Guianese woman, no older than thirty, with natural hair. She said her name was Thérèse Denticat and I remembered her emails. Fabinho’s secretary at Ouro Amazónico. I finished my (delicious) coffee, went upstairs to brush my teeth, and came back down.

“Mr. Henriquez is waiting for you at the mine,” she told me.

A fancy Peugeot 4x4 was waiting outside, its air conditioning hardly noticeable. Wonderful.

“How long is the drive?” I asked.

“Five hours,” Thérèse said. “The first three hours are on a good road; you’ll be able to rest and relax.”

Rest and relax? As soon as we left Cayenne, Thérèse turned onto a very rudimentary road (not even two lanes, let alone a proper highway) and immediately sped up to 160 kilometers an hour, which sent me into an unbearable panic. I was consumed by thoughts of imminent death. Why were we going so fast? I didn’t dare ask her to slow down, but if a dog ran into the road or we hit a pothole—and I saw several—we’d go flying. We’d crash into the trees in the jungle. Every so often the chassis of an abandoned car appeared.

Palms, towering trees, lush vegetation, and sometimes, when we got nearer the ocean, mangrove swamps. The same landscape I saw on my way from Suriname.

I almost wept when we turned off onto a smaller road that cut through the trees. We were slowing down! Containing my fear had given my abs a workout equivalent to an hour at the gym. As if that weren’t enough, every so often the idiot would ask me if I wanted to listen to anything in particular and would let go of the steering wheel to dig for a CD in the driver’s side door. I almost screamed.

Now that I’m writing it all down, my stomach’s hurting again. The road is striking. The treetops cover the sky. Sunlight doesn’t enter directly, and there’s a greenish light, like those low-wattage bulbs. The road becomes a track, and the dirt is the color of clay. There are prehistoric plants. I don’t know the names—they look like ferns or bromeliads. If a dinosaur lumbered out from behind them, I wouldn’t be surprised. Moisture drips off the leaves, as if they were sweating; a carpet of crushed branches covers the ground.

The Peugeot had amazing suspension, which my kidneys appreciated, since the ineffable Thérèse stepped on it again. Finally we reached a hill, and to the right a wooden tower appeared. Thérèse just honked, and the guards waved and signaled for her to drive through. At the third tower, tents appeared along with a wooden hut with a corrugated metal roof.

There, wearing rubber boots and with a pistol at his waist, Fabinho was waiting for me.

“Welcome to Ouro Amazónico,” he said. “First I should note that for security reasons, we don’t allow photos. If you need some for your article, there’s an archive of recent and stock images that guarantee us protection and maximum security.”

The men in the towers had machine guns and, it looked like, assault rifles.

“I see it’s a dangerous job,” I said.

“I’d love not to have these armed guards, which make the operation look . . . I can’t think of the word . . .”

“Illegal?”

He looked at me, amused. “Well, no . . . You have quite a sense of humor. The company is completely legal; it’s fully registered and . . . what is it they say? Compliant, that’s it. As you know. But since it’s in the jungle and has guards, it looks like a guerrilla camp. There’s nothing we can do about that. Come this way. Shall I show you around?”

We went to the gold deposits. The light was different there. The sun poured in through the hole left by felled trees. A machine similar to the ones used for oil drilling was punching into the earth to break the crust and access the deeper layers. Fabinho explained that those drills, with their steel heads, crushed fifteen tons of rock every twelve hours and extracted them with suction tubes into an enormous bucket, where the stone was washed and smashed. There were about fifteen grams of gold in each ton.

“Ever since I was very young, I’ve worked in underground mines, and it was there that I started to get to know the seam. We looked for what’s known as the vein, which technically is an inclined mass of exquisite auric chloride, mixed with quartz. It seems incomprehensible, right? Gold is in something known as ferruginous pyrites, impregnated with arsenic. There are other minerals too: white, needle-like crystals and impure aluminum sulfate, embedded in the walls.”

He waved his hand in the air, as if to erase what he’d said, and added, “These words seem like gibberish to you, but they are a miner’s psalms. Each occupation has its own language. I was born hearing them, and through them I came to know the world. God made language for that purpose. A dog or a chimpanzee can express rage or fear, but they can’t wonder about the meaning of life, right? And because they can’t, they don’t think about it. What came first? I’m a creationist, so I believe the Bible when it says that the first thing was the Word. Everything is explained by that. Look around—you won’t see anything but foliage and bushes. And do you know why? Because you don’t know the name of each plant. Whereas the indigenous people go into the jungle and read. To you it’s just landscape.”

Next to the water wheels and barracks was a lean-to sheltering something that looked like a catafalque. We walked over. I saw a painting with the image of Christ, a tree trunk made into a cross, and a carving of a hand with tendrils of vines and insects.

“This is our chapel,” he said. “We have services here with the workers twice a day.”

“Including the guards?”

“Sadly, no,” he said. “Since we’ve been here, bandits have attacked us four times. Satan is with them.”

“Thieves?”

“Yes, people looking to take advantage of other people’s labor.”

“What do the police say?”

“The officers come, make their report, take names, and leave. Nothing ever happens.”

“They don’t protect you?”

“Our contract says it’s our company’s responsibility. Anyway, we don’t want to make too much of a fuss because, you know, plenty of people don’t want us around. If we become a problem, they’ll end up shutting us down, and only the bandits will win, the people engaged in illegal mining.”

We went back to a wooden bungalow where an office was set up. He offered me coffee. We sat in director’s chairs.

“Tell me about your work as a pastor.”

“Miss, the most important thing to me is to communicate Jesus’s word to many people. To reach as many souls as possible. That’s my aim.”

I looked him in the eye. “Why?”

He was a little taken aback. “Why? Well, because . . . it’s the right thing to do. It’s what must be done to glorify God’s word and his work on Earth.”

He sat in silence and, for the first time, looked down.

“I understand that, but why do you do it?” I persisted.

“Because . . . Like I said, because it’s the right thing to do . . .”

From outside, jungle sounds drifted in: birds taking flight, animals running, branches rubbing in the wind, amphibians croaking somewhere. And above it all a deafening noise: the crash of the drills striking the subsoil and the steady rhythm of the water wheels, like the sound of the sea on rocks.

“Maybe I should tell you a little more about my life. Sometimes I get theoretical and forget that the substance that people are made of is memory. If you would, please join me in an exercise in memory.”

With that, he closed his eyes and lifted his arms for a few seconds, as if invoking some jungle spirit. It was moving and a little ridiculous. Then he looked at me and began to speak.

What I transcribe here, again without corrections or cuts, is his direct narrative:

 

First of all, you should know that I’m your typical socially embittered person. Why hide it? It’s part of me. I walk down the street and see other people, I watch the way most of them laugh and talk, busily coming and going. For them life is a piece of warm toast that they load up with delicious things: butter and then a bit of ham, cheese, gherkins, slices of tomato. Other people spread dulce de leche or jam for a sweet flavor, and from there they start taking bites of it, if you get what I’m saying. Nibble, nibble, nibble.

That gives their life meaning and makes it something to savor, because the task of living is to endure, even to thrive in this long span of time that was granted to us for our existence. It can be sad and bitter, or it can be sweet. That’s why those who triumph smile.

Seeing those people, I used to feel sadness. That’s what my life was like for many years.

I had pain in my stomach, a burning sensation akin to an ulcer that ruined my digestion. The symptomology of resentment. Other people’s smiles were a dagger in my belly. Why?

Throughout my life I’ve experienced lack of love, humiliation, fear, loneliness; I have been pushed out for no reason from places where I was comfortable and happy; I have endured the indifference of people I loved; I have felt jealousy and pain when I saw others receiving the love I craved, the attention I needed; I begged a thousand times, but always in vain.

Nobody listened to me.

I’ve been lucky to experience all those things, which now have converted into an enormous fortune. Time is a stream of water. It gradually heals everything, washes everything. The cruelest and most painful things fade away. Memory is there to prevent complete healing. That’s why some addicts flee from memory, a well-honed knife that reminds you: this is how it was, this is how you felt, it was there and now it’s gone, you lost it for ever, you loved something and it went away, you used to be so happy, they died because of you, they left without a word, you were a kid, they humiliated you, you want to go back and it’s not possible, the door is closed, you want a smile, just one, they’re gone, left for good, they’re buried, mother, friend, brother, father, I’m alone, I’m scared.

 

Fabinho wiped away a couple of tears and looked up at the heavens again, as if expecting to be refreshed by a nonexistent drizzle.

He pulled himself back together and kept talking.

 

I scream and scream, Where are you? And sometimes that scream is the scream of someone calling down the tunnel of a mine, toward the darkest, deepest center—can you imagine? C’est dure. The only reply is its own echo. When a person screams into the darkness, what reply is possible? None. When a person screams into soil that has been partially pried open, who replies? Nobody. When a person is at the seashore and is dragged off by a tsunami and gnawed by salt, who listens to him? The sea? The wind?

We are irremediably alone.

You’re the only one who’ll listen to you. An enormous silence that means being alone and never getting a response to what you say. Like the loneliness of Christ, who suffered and was abandoned by his father. That is where ignorant man’s understanding breaks down. It is the vastest silence.

Why do you do it? you ask me.

After much suffering, I found words inside me. Tattered though many of them were, they were still useful. Until I learned those words, I could not look at myself. I understood their meaning. Like a tremendous author who writes the book of the life of all humans and all animals and minerals and fire and water.

Can you imagine writing the story of water?

I do that.

Can you imagine writing the story of the wind and the trees that murmur when the wind moves them?

I write that story every day.

Can you imagine writing the story of fire and of the wood that transforms into fire?

Or writing the story of the birds, even those that are already dead?

I write it.

Every story that’s told is the story of a fall, because nobody tells happy lives. Just living them is enough.

And so my story is the story of my fall.

My parents sold me when I was a boy.

They sold me to a mine in Minas Gerais. I was seven years old. And so I grew up in a world of tough, unrefined men. My games were solitary races between the barracks. My toys were old, broken tools from the equipment storeroom. To a kid, a toy is not a passing fancy, it’s a need. I made believe as best I could, with empty hands. I always wondered how much my parents got for me. What my price had been. I once asked the old mine foreman, but he didn’t remember.

I concluded it couldn’t have been much. They purchased my sense for navigating seams of gold, which is like navigating air or water.

When I was twelve a priest taught me to read and told me I wasn’t an orphan. That we were all children of God. He is your father, he told me, forget everything else. Pray to him every day, you know the prayer. And every day I did; even today I still do. My other father was a poor man, ignorant and without malice. That’s the way life is when things are tough. You have to understand where a man’s coming from, and forgive. It took me a long time to be ready for forgiveness, but in the end it swelled inside me. It’s like love: nobody can force us to love or to forgive. Sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t. But it’s better to forgive because unforgiveness is resentment, it perforates the colon and inhibits protein absorption. I read that somewhere, I can’t remember where. I like mixing science with life, excuse me.

I’ll continue.

I see photos of the mines I worked in and I feel dizzy. I hear the name Congonhas, where I lived, and I am seized by a great bewilderment; being an adult means no longer being afraid. Or being afraid of other things. I wanted to go unnoticed, to stop being the kid everybody felt sorry for, and I decided to make up another life.

I made up that my parents had died in an epidemic of the Spanish flu, that they’d emigrated to Ouro Preto or Belo Horizonte, and that, when I was older, they’d come looking for me.

And so I became part of a different group of kids. Not the abandoned ones now, but the ones who had someone who’d “come looking for them.” In that group there was hope, and the kids were fragile. I was strong. We drank together, got high. We thought life was going to give us a second chance, you know? Like a gambler, you’re convinced you can recover what’s been lost.

I filled up with rage and often went out looking for fights as a way to let off steam. I always found them, and afterward, once I’d broken somebody’s nose and was being hauled off in handcuffs to the police station, people would glare at me and call me scum or thug. It was true, though it wasn’t my fault. Nobody said, He was sold as a child, he raised himself. There was no way for them to know. And I took some hard blows. Because of one fight, I lost my sense of taste. It’s a pity. I lost the flavors of food. And I love food.

 

I pause Fabinho’s account here only to note that with that last sentence, a deafening rainstorm opened up on the jungle. I don’t remember ever hearing rain fall so hard in my life. Maybe it’s always like that here. The branches bend, forming aqueducts that create even more torrential streams, and when they hit the ground they seem to break it open, pierce it like mining drills. The fiber cement and corrugated metal roofs writhe. It smells like wet earth. That incredible smell drives into your nostrils with the force of the water falling from the sky. The workers continue on, unflustered, accustomed to these incredible storms.

A vegetal vision of the apocalypse.

 

That’s how I grew up, until something happened. In every life there’s an incident that changes things, don’t you think? If I’d known, I would have just sat down calmly and waited, but, not knowing, every day was like being in a race I had to win. One afternoon, coming out of the barracks where the miners had their bunks, I saw a man in city clothes. He looked like he was from another world. He was sitting in the mine cafeteria and talking to the foremen. I was headed toward the library, where I used to study on my own, when one of them pointed at me. I noticed they were scrutinizing me carefully. A whistle and then my name.

“Hey, Fabio, come here.”

I was nineteen. I’d been living there more than twelve years.

Three days later I was leaving in a car for Belo Horizonte. The man was Colonel Wagner Cardoso, mining tycoon, who had an operation in the Amazon. He needed somebody like me and paid my way out. He bought me. I got the equivalent of a thousand dollars, and he told me he’d pay me every month.

It was my chance; I took it. Somebody up there had finally seen me.

In Belo Horizonte I got on a plane for the first time and flew to Brasília. I’d never seen the world from above. It seemed to me I was lucky to have been born in it, though I didn’t really know why. We arrived in Brasília, but I didn’t leave the airport. We waited a couple of hours, and I entertained myself by studying a map. I traced the route we’d flown with my finger. At bottom I was still a kid, a little boy. Later we left on a small prop plane, heading for Macapá. Through the window I saw the Amazon River. Dark, wide, ancient. Intimidating. We landed and went to sleep at a hotel. Mr. Cardoso was nice and paid for a room for me, plus dinner and breakfast. The next day we headed out really early, and I soon saw the jungle for the first time. The town where we would be staying was Água Branca do Amapari. A good place.

With what he’d be paying me, Mr. Cardoso said, I’d be able to rent a room. Or live in the mining barracks, if I’d prefer that.

I said that for now I’d stay at the mine, while I got to know the place and made a few friends. Cardoso thought it was a good idea.

And so my Amazonian life began.

 

Again I pause F’s story.

After lunch at the barracks that served as the dining hall and a walk down a trail to a river that frightened me with how beautiful and incredibly wild it was, we decided to go back to Cayenne. The rain stopped suddenly, but for more than half an hour water continued to drip from the trees, and the jungle gradually woke up from the deluge. Like a city putting itself back together after a violent bombing.

Fabinho grabbed the keys to a 4x4 and gestured for me to hop in. Thérèse Denticat came along with us. I was glad she wasn’t at the wheel. We left the camp at around four. We drove the unpaved track, and only when we reached the main road did Fabinho resume his tale. Before he continued, he asked if Ms. Denticat’s presence posed any problem. I said it didn’t.

 

In the Amazon I was reborn. The sun was different. Different food. When you eat new things, your body changes. It is renewed. Every seven years our cells die and are replaced by others that retain our DNA; that’s why we age. Our fears, our paranoias remain. And the malaises concealed in our memory. The things we have suffered are a source of wealth. Ah, oui. Human beings are well made; they’re perfect machines. Look at our hands, able to beat something to death or gently stroke the grass. God is a marvelous corporal engineer, miss. Sometimes I picture him assembling his finest creation: man.

What incredible work!

It was an open mine, not like the ones in Congonhas. We were on the surface. There’s nothing a miner longs for more than air. Though at times, I admit, there’s also a desire to be deep in the earth, which is like being close to a wild heart. The old clock of the world with its tick-tock, over and over. The desire to be buried, the return to the womb. Do I sound like a psychologist? Not even close. Pas du tout! I’m a person who observes life, in silence, and draws his conclusions.

Small, unimportant . . . No doubt. But mine. I am an incomplete human, but that did not cause me grief; rather, it gave me strength. It’s a contradiction, but so am I. You know what? If contradiction were a product, I’d be its most loyal customer. If it were a drug, I’d be the biggest addict. My drug of choice is contradiction. Sorry, I get carried away . . . Like I said earlier, I’m a chatterbox. Did I say that? I don’t remember.

We understand each other, you and I.

The years passed, and one day I realized I’d become a man. I was living in a small house. Mr. Cardoso’s wages went up over time—he was a fair, generous boss, and I was able to improve my station. The mine, the house. On my days off, I would go to Macapá to stare at the Amazon. A man staring at a river. Nobody can stare at a river without wondering about the meaning of things, and it was there that I started thinking about Christ.

A river doesn’t just lead to the sea; it also leads to the darkest places of the universe, to the idea of an origin. After spending one Saturday afternoon at the port watching people and boats go by, I decided to visit a chapel for the first time. I tiptoed in and was soon filled with a strange feeling. As if that place had been waiting for me, or something even more intimate: as if the dim light and the air that smelled of melted candle wax knew me. There was nobody there at that hour of day, just a young man sweeping in the back. I sat down on one of the pews and looked around at the figures on the walls. I felt intimidated, but as the light grew dimmer, I understood that it was my place.

My place in the world.

Soon I heard voices. A very loud one said, Fabio, once a boy and now a man, why did you take so long in coming? I went up to the front of the church, where the voice seemed to be coming from. And I heard, It doesn’t matter, don’t bother answering. You have come, and now you will never leave. I felt all sorts of things—ah, oui, things I wouldn’t be able to describe, miss, because I swiftly convinced myself of something: it was the voice of my father, the ignorant man who abandoned me and whom I had forgiven. It was my pain. Maybe those voices were at the end of the road, waiting for me.

I had to go to them.

I returned to Água Branca do Amapari and went to sleep in the mine barracks. Now I needed to be close to the jungle. At night in the midst of all those trees, there is great peace, great calm. The animals have hunted and mated; the quiet is vast. It’s what I needed: that silence that rises from the earth. The jungle keeps going when we’re not in it; everything we don’t see is breathing. Do you understand? There’s only one other thing like it: the bottom of the ocean. There is life there, and something moves in that instant—there’s a murmur of undersea currents and a blind fluttering and jaws that yawn open to devour something. That is happening now, miss—can you imagine it?

Where we are not present, something is happening that is mysterious and unsettling. The jungle taught me that.

There I found the figure of Jesus; I studied him, loved him, and most of all embodied him. You can’t love the son of God without transforming into him, and that’s what I did. The first church I built was there, at the mine. One Saturday morning I collected some materials and set up a little altar at the far end of the barracks. When Mr. Cardoso saw it, he told me, “That’s great, Fabio, that way we can gather ourselves for a moment and ask forgiveness for our sins.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, “but I don’t have any sins. My life here is exemplary for God. He knows I have nothing to hide from him.”

“It’s a manner of speaking, Fabio,” he said. “It’s a good idea. When you finish it, you can give a lecture about your experience with religion to the other men.”

And so the second Fabio was born. The Fabinho who would later build six churches for the Lord Redeemer. Talking to those rough men, who seemed to have the devil in their eyes, transformed me. People started knowing who I was in Água Branca do Amapari and the nearby villages—Serra do Navio, Cupixi, Pedro Branca—and at the other mines. People came to hear me, and gradually a tradition was born of giving a late-Saturday-morning lecture and another on Sunday. I started reading more; it was useful to be more educated. The thirst for knowledge comes from outside us—you know that—and it reels in the listener’s energy and intention.

Within a year Mr. Cardoso agreed to build a wooden chapel. He asked people to contribute, and everybody did, so we were able to complete it. We used it to hold weddings, children’s parties, baptisms. For the first time, I was happy; I would open my eyes in the morning and remember that I was someone whom others were eager to hear. I was twenty-three. After about two years, another important thing appeared: woman. A jungle woman, but not indigenous. Her parents were from the coast; they’d come from Rio. They tried their luck with the mines and built a site, but they never found gold (sometimes it hides; sometimes it refuses), so they were forced to find jobs instead. They were well educated and did administrative work. Her name was Clarice, and she was a beautiful young woman with a strong personality. She came to my talks on her own; she never missed a single one. As I was leaving the chapel one day, she asked if she could talk to me alone. She was very open, said I was the only person in the entire jungle who was able to find beauty in words, and she wanted to know if I’d be interested in having a relationship of affection or love—that’s how she put it, “of affection or love.” I looked at her, surprised, and said, “Of course, I love everybody the same,” but Clarice wagged her finger no and said, “I’m not talking about that kind of love. The other kind, the kind that men and women have, do you understand?” I told her I did, but for some strange reason I felt as if I should step back.

“I’m not ready, Clarice,” I told her. “Give me a little time.”

From that day on, when the weekend came, my heart would pound like one of those drills over there; I wanted to see her, I didn’t want to see her. She was always there. When I entered the chapel through the rear door, Bible in hand, I’d see her in the front pew. I thought about Christ. Did I love her? I didn’t know yet. Sometimes she’d stay to the end with one of the community groups, but she never spoke of her feelings again. She was very generous. She would bring food from home for everybody: a basket of tasty cowpea and shrimp fritters; or chicken croquettes, delicious. She’d come over and place one in my hand, and I’d tell her, “Clarice, you’re the best cook in the jungle,” and her cheeks would flush—she was very shy. Her eyes seemed to be telling me, I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for you. Almost two months passed. One Sunday afternoon I was fishing in the ravine alone when I heard a noise. I turned to look and saw Clarice walking toward me. I let her come, and as soon as she was close enough, I reached out and pulled her to me and licked her face the way an animal that’s been thirsty for days would lap at a puddle of water; my lips clung to her neck as if I was trying to extract something. And love began, miss. Please excuse this strange story; as I tell it now, I am reliving it. Christ, the power of words!

Clarice became part of my life. She started helping me during my lectures by reading texts—she had a pretty voice and read well. She would bring me lunch at work during the week and tidy my little house. She’d get me flowers. One day she announced she was coming to live with me. Just like that.

“From now on I want to live here with you,” she told me. “If you don’t want that, tell me and I’ll go.”

“I do want it,” I said.

I helped her organize her clothing on the board-and-brick shelves. I asked her what side she preferred to sleep on and made the bed larger with a few planks. I worked hard, wore myself out. Whenever I woke up and saw her beside me, I understood the meaning of companionship between people. When someone looks at you and recognizes themselves. You smell their scent, and that burrows deep inside you, into your soul. You say to yourself: I am fragile now, I depend on someone who is not me. Have I made a mistake?

No, because I’m happy.

Months passed, a year.

It was Clarice who said it one day: “We should open our own mine. That’s enough working to make other people rich.”

I told her that Mr. Cardoso was a good man, that I owed everything to him, but she insisted: “Of course he’s a good man, but he’s someone else. He’s not you or me. He has his own desires and pursues them and achieves them. Does he pursue yours? No, of course not. Yours are yours. His are his. But now yours are mine too. They’re ours. Right? Why can’t we pursue them now?”

I told her it was risky; we had nothing, and the jungle was foreign and sometimes unjust. What if we lost the job and the house?

“No,” she told me, “no.”

We had that discussion in complete darkness, very late at night, which is when words have value, as if they’ve been silently stamped by a notary, and she kept saying, “You’re not going to lose, you’re only going to gain, and you’ll gain a lot, and so will I along with you, we’ll both gain, that’s what I see when I close my eyes and think about time stalking us; here in the jungle we’re surrounded by eyes. Something is always watching you. Especially at night. All we see is little eyes shining, signs on a map. And the anxious gaze of hidden animals is them waiting. As if to say: When are you going to own a mining operation? When are you going to be the one who collects what the earth conceals?”

She said I knew the soil and how to find gold, and that was the most important thing. The rest could be achieved with effort. Knowing is the most valuable thing, and you have that, she said.

I listened to her as I lay in bed, under the mosquito net, naked on a clean sheet that Clarice changed every day. Even though we were alone, we were whispering. It was hot, and our words expanded in the air. From time to time the sound of a manatee drifted in through the window.

You know, and together we can.

With that sentence ringing in my head, I went to work the next day, and the rest of the week. “Did you talk to Mr. Cardoso?” she’d ask when I came home, and I’d say, “No, not yet. I’ll find the right moment.”

Until the day came. I went to Mr. Cardoso’s office and asked to talk to him. He invited me in. I explained that I wanted to start a family and open my own operation, further upriver, deeper into the jungle.

“Is there something you’d like to have that you don’t have here?” he asked, understanding, but I told him no. “It’s not my idea, it’s Clarice’s. She thinks we might get lucky. We have a little money saved, and with what I make selling some of my belongings I’ll be able to buy a boat to go upriver, to the Upper Pará. I’ve been thinking about exploring the Araquã region. I can hire Indians. I know I owe you my life, Mr. Cardoso, don’t think I’m not grateful.”

The man came over and said, “I understand. I didn’t inherit this either. In my youth I felt the same way, and if that’s the case, you should go. Upriver. You’ll find something. And if you don’t, you can come back. No hard feelings. Only friendship and help. I’ll come to your aid if you have any problems. You can take some old gear. Pickaxes and hammers and shovels. Borrow some baskets. Go with God, my friend.”

He shook my hand, and I left his office and went home. Clarice looked at me, worried that I was back so early. “I talked to him, we’re free,” I said. She flung herself at me.

 

At this point in the story we reached Cayenne. As we drove into the city, he suggested we go to Les Palmistes. It was after six in the evening. It was starting to get dark, and I wondered, Why am I doing all this? I assumed that his journey must, at some point, intersect with Fritz’s.

I no longer disliked him. That evaporated as I listened to his life story. Is this sensitive, Christian man really capable of an attack like the one the kid described?

We’ll see.

 

I went to Araquã on my own and started searching near the rivers and streams, near the waterways. Wide beaches where you could set up a small base from which to travel into the jungle. I touched the earth, sucked the stones I pulled out, smeared myself with mud. I found a place and marked it, then returned for Clarice and the Indians. We worked for five months, and when I next went to town again I was carrying two kilos of gold, well concealed in my backpack. Mr. Cardoso accompanied me to Macapá to open a bank account. We celebrated. And so my life as an orpailleur, a gold miner, began, following the currents of the rivers. It was a different kind of work from in a big mine. The veins I worked were small and close to the surface. They ran out faster.

Two years later I went to live in Manaus and opened an office to arrange expeditions in the area. It was hard work, but I was young and strong. There was a lot of mining there.

One day I met someone who, like me, led expeditions. He was a Colombian guy named Arturo.

We went out together twice and were successful. He was a good organizer—he knew how to handle the Indians and spoke good Portuguese. He’d escaped from the violence in your country—just think, when he arrived in Manaus, the guerrilla had issued two orders for him to be killed. He told me the story one night while we were drinking cachaça in the middle of the jungle. He’d learned river mining in the Putumayo, but after a few months the FARC demanded a cut of his earnings. He refused to give them money—big mistake. They came back and told him it was the last time they’d come in peace. Arturo was aggressive and told them, “Come after it if you want, my labor is my own labor.” They came back and burned the hut where he kept his gear. He wasn’t there—it was a miracle he escaped. He saw it burning from a distance.

He fled to another area, near the Ecuadorian border, and the same thing happened. After seven months the FARC showed up at his camp. This time he didn’t even wait to talk to them. He jumped in his boat and fled downriver. That’s how he arrived in Brazil. He’d been in a mine for three years, but he wanted to open his own operation. That night, with the heat of the cachaça in our spirits, we decided to become partners. We returned to Manaus the next day and started making plans. He had a good idea, though it wasn’t very legal, to mine in the Tarapacá region, in Colombia, a hundred and fifty kilometers from Leticia, on the Cotuhé and Putumayo Rivers. He knew the area well and had experience; we wouldn’t need much: a boat, a hydraulic dredge, good hoses, and diving suits.

What else do we need? I asked, and Arturo pondered a moment and said, “About four divers. You have to be underwater a lot, and one person can’t handle it longer than three hours. Plus some guys to run the machine and keep an eye on what’s coming out of the hose. And that’s it—easy, right?”

I asked how illegal it was. He told me that in Colombia, like in Brazil, you needed to apply for a license. “So why don’t we apply for one?” I asked, and he said, “That’s the problem, it’s an indigenous reservation, and it’s prohibited without the local government’s permission, and they’ll never agree to it. That’s the bad part, but there’s a good part too,” he said. “Because it’s a reservation, there’s not much security, and it’s easy to disguise yourself as a fishing boat; the indigenous communities don’t like people coming into their rivers, but they aren’t violent.”

And he told me, “I know how to deal with them.”

I told Clarice, and she said, “All right, if it’s good money, maybe it’s worth the risk once, to see how it goes.”

Clarice was intrepid. I wasn’t. I grew up terrified of losing the little I had. I was always insecure, but she would push me, “Go on, you have to take risks to get ahead, it’s worth it.” I told her I loved her, I felt her strength in me. That’s what she meant for me: the world, life. I agreed, and we started the strange business. The first time we traveled upriver with Arturo and the men we’d hired, I was uneasy. Nobody talked—it was late, and all you could hear was the murmur of the bow cleaving the water. We smoked, looked at the stars and the unsettling blackness of the jungle on either side of the river. The jungle makes whatever you have inside you more intense, whether that’s ambition, cowardice, or just fear. Did I say just? My God, if you’re fearful, in the jungle you tremble down to your marrow.

That’s what I felt that night.

But it went well. We stopped the boat, and a diver plunged into the black water, a hose tied to his waist. After a bit he gave it two hard yanks, and we connected it to the dredge. The motorized pump started up. It seemed like the noise must be audible for hundreds of kilometers, but nobody came. We dredged up rocks and silt, and then gold started to appear, little by little. Arturo was right. It was easy. We kept going back for more than a year until we were able to open a small office in Tabatinga, across the Brazilian border from Leticia. Have you been? Then, in time, we got better organized and started sending groups of Indians with dredges to other rivers. We got mercury so we could burn the ore and extract more gold. Once an army boat searched us, but when they saw we didn’t have any weapons they kept going.

They were looking for guerrilla fighters.

But a problem arose: Clarice didn’t like Arturo. She tried to get along with him, but when she met him she said he was dark, strange, bad; that we needed to be careful. She managed the accounting books, convinced that sooner or later the Colombian—and pardon me for saying so, miss—was going to swindle us and bring us trouble. I would say, “Don’t be like that, why do you think that? He’s quiet and reserved, but he’s a good guy.”

The business thrived, but after a while we started having problems. One night a diver died when he got tangled in some weeds in the river. He couldn’t get free; it was a tragedy. It took hours to pull him out. Another time the army came again in a boat and seized everything. The indigenous community started complaining because the mining process stirred up the water and scared off the fish. Diesel fuel and mercury polluted the river, and they cooked with its water, drank from it. God forgive me! Ah, oui. Life is hard, and a person has the right to survive, no matter what it takes, but it was too much.

The Indians were right, so we arranged with Arturo to give them a percentage of what we brought in. That really pissed off Clarice, who didn’t see why they should profit from our labor.

“It’s their land, calm down,” I’d say.

“They’re lazy savages,” she’d say, “they don’t live any better with our money or buy things for the community; they just drink and visit hookers.”

“They’re simple people,” I’d say, “don’t talk about them like that.”

Over the years, Clarice became a bitter person. I loved her, but day by day she was changing. She was obsessed with money and the accounts. Once she made a mistake in her calculations and came to me claiming that Arturo was stealing from us. I was on the terrace, smoking a cigarette. She was in a towering rage, with a revolver in her hand.

“Where did you get that?” I asked.

“When I find that thieving Colombian, I swear I’ll kill him,” she said furiously.

We looked again and saw that she’d been mistaken. She apologized, and I said there was no need for a gun, our life was going great, why invent problems? Seeking a bit of calm, I renewed my passion for Jesus and built a church, which I made part of the international congregation of the Assembly of God. It took several months, and she was excited about it. When I was finished, we invited the neighbors. I restarted my lectures on Saturdays and Sundays and found, to my delight, that that universe remained intact. My words still worked, they resonated with people. I became a Pentecostal pastor. I studied the New Testament.

Arturo used to come to hear me too, though he never participated. He’d sit in one of the rear pews and, as I spoke, peel an orange very slowly or whittle a piece of wood with his knife. Like any good loner, Arturo was methodical. He didn’t like having a house, so he lived in rented rooms. I visited him only once, and asked, “How can you live like this? You earn good money, you could buy a house, have a wife.”

“I have what I need,” he said. And then silence.

He used to come over to eat with us often. I hoped that if Clarice got to know him, she’d stop harassing me with her ideas about embezzlement and scams. For Christmas and New Year’s, we’d have a party at the office with the indigenous people and the boat people, and he was always very generous. He gave the employees incredible gifts. He once gave Clarice a beautiful watch, but she said, “He bought it with the money he’s stealing from us.”

One day I got home and found Clarice in bed, her eyes red from crying. “What’s going on?” I thought something was wrong, but she told me she was happy.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

A huge wave of heat, like a nuclear warhead going off, ran down my spine. I was going to have a baby? Reality shattered into a thousand pieces; I felt that this tiny being was coming to save me. The past might contain only sadness, but the future was hope. That’s how I saw it, and I started crying too. She was three months along, and she was supposed to rest at least until the fifth month to prevent complications.

Pregnancy changes women, miss, maybe you know that already. And she got worse, ah, oui! Anything that happened in our daily life could turn into a problem. Or even into rage. I was afraid for the baby in her belly—would her fury harm it? Sometimes at night she’d calm down, and I’d press my ear to her belly. I wanted to hear the heartbeat, and sometimes I thought I did. At other times, Clarice would cry, sleepless, in the middle of the night. “What’s wrong?” I’d ask, and she’d just stare into the darkness and say, “I don’t know, Fabio, I don’t know,” and keep sobbing. I went to talk to the doctor, and he told me not to worry, that it was normal for pregnant women, but I was convinced there was no way such a happy event to come could be the cause of so much anguish, of the immense desolation I saw in Clarice; if I said anything, she’d find a way to turn it around and vent at me, hurling awful insults. Then she’d start crying, throw her arms around me, and apologize.

I said to her that it was normal in her condition. “Your body is flooded with progesterone and estrogens,” I’d explain. “Hormones affect your neurotransmitters, the messengers between neurons, plus there are all the changes happening in your body: your belly swells, your breasts are getting ready for the infant,” and she kept asking, “Do you think I’m ugly?” And there was no way to placate her. Once she accused me of sleeping with a woman from work, but it was all in her head. She had my child inside her. After the ultrasound, the doctor said it was a boy.

At around that time, a letter arrived from Macapá with sad news. Mr. Cardoso was very sick; he’d had a heart attack, and because of the complications with transport had ended up in a coma. I started calling the hospital or his house every few days. His wife told me he could die at any moment. I thought I should visit him. The fourth time we spoke, I made up my mind. We owed him our life, and it was my duty to see him before he died.

So I arranged the trip. There’s a flight that goes from Tabatinga to Manaus, and from there another goes to Macapá, with a layover in Belém. It’s a long trip. I would be gone a week, so I asked the Marian Sisters to come keep Clarice company. Two came and stayed at the house, and I felt OK leaving. Clarice saw me off at the airfield. She was very calm—she’d relaxed, and her body was still growing. She asked me to bring her flour and other ingredients, since she wanted to cook her favorite dishes. She handed me a gift for her sister and another for her mother, and we agreed to invite them to our son’s birth. I flew over the Amazon, looked down from above at the ocean of green, and mused that my life would always take place there. It was my home. There was nothing for me in Minas Gerais, but there was in Macapá.

When I arrived, I went straight to the hospital. The family greeted me like one of their own and put me up at their house. I sat by Mr. Cardoso’s bedside for three days, telling him about my life and my dreams. He was connected to various tubes and was breathing. The nurse said he might be able to hear, that listening helped.

I talked and talked.

I told him about my business operation, about my partnership with Arturo, about Clarice and her anger, about the Putumayo and Cotuhé Rivers, about the barges with dredges, about the hideous noise of the motorized pumps and the darkness at the bottom of the rivers. The only light is from gold, I said, and told him that I’d gradually built a business. We had an office with several employees. We had a future.

On another day Clarice’s mother and sister came to the hospital. I met them in a small waiting room, and they asked me to give Mr. Cardoso’s family their best wishes. I gave them the gifts, showed them photos. “Is it a boy?” the mother asked. I said yes, we hadn’t chosen a name yet. They’d brought a basket of things for Clarice and the baby. We took a couple of photos, and they left in good spirits. I said that we’d send tickets so they could be with Clarice at the birth and for the first few weeks. They were delighted by that.

The last night I asked Mrs. Cardoso to let me sleep at the hospital, keeping her husband company. I slept by his side, except I didn’t really sleep. I told him about my childhood just the way I’m telling you about it now. That was the first time; I hadn’t even told Clarice. At dawn I embraced Mr. Cardoso, kissed his forehead, and left. I took a taxi to the airfield, now eager to return home. Return trips are always longer because you’re impatient to be back, don’t you think?

When I arrived, my life changed.

Clarice wasn’t at the airfield, so I went to the house and found the door open. Nobody was there, and the rooms were in shambles, with things strewn everywhere. What had happened? I called to her and went out to the courtyard, but nothing. I figured she’d gone out. I was worried to discover that her things were no longer in our bedroom. I opened the dresser drawers, and they were empty. I went to talk to the neighbors. They said they didn’t know anything, hadn’t seen her for a couple of days. Neither had the nuns. I went to the Marian community, and they told me Clarice had asked the women keeping her company to leave. Was something wrong? My heart pounded in my chest. She was the one who’d told them to leave? “Yes, Clarice drove us back here, saying she was fine, saying you’d be returning soon. She thanked us profusely and gave us some money for the congregation. She’s a kind person.”

I raced to the office, which was on the second floor of a small four-story building. But before I could go up, a candy seller on the street, Joãozinho, called me over and said, “Mr. Fabio, it’s great to see you! Please be careful, they’re looking for you. The police came and confiscated things. I saw them come down with boxes of books and folders.” Then the neighbors told me they’d sealed off the office and had men guarding it.

I couldn’t understand what was happening and didn’t know what to do. I called Arturo, but the woman who was renting him a room said he’d left. “When?” I asked. “A couple of days ago.”

Everything was upside down. What had happened in my absence? I went home, frightened. Where had Clarice gone? How could I reach her? Maybe she was in hiding. What crime had I committed? I thought about the rivers on indigenous lands. It was illegal, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. Arturo had arranged everything. Had he been arrested? I called Joaquim, one of the employees. By some miracle, I found him at home. When I heard his voice, I felt relieved and asked what was going on, but he said we shouldn’t discuss it over the phone. We arranged to meet at a café on the outskirts of Tabatinga, on the highway; he said it was dangerous. When? In an hour, the sooner the better.

I took precautions. I arrived early and sat at the darkest table, at the rear of a room that looked out on the tributary of the river. I waited about fifteen minutes until I saw him come in. I waved to him. He sat down at the table, looking scared. “What’s going on, Joaquim?”

“Somebody reported what we’re doing on the rivers, and the federal police showed up. They seized everything, asked me to open the files. And the thing is, sir. The business account—it was completely empty! Did you pull out the money? Since you were traveling, we thought you’d taken everything.”

“No,” I said. “I was visiting a dying friend in Macapá. My wife, Clarice, knew that. What about Arturo?”

“He wasn’t there when the police came, sir. It seems like he got away in time.”

“I have to find him. Have you heard from my wife?”

“No, sir,” Joaquim said, getting more and more nervous.

I saw that sweat was beading on his upper lip. His right eye was twitching.

Suddenly he got up and went to the bathroom, and a second later a dozen police officers came in, weapons drawn. One of them said my full name, told me I was under arrest, and read a very long list of charges. They took me out to the road, where two police vans were waiting. When I walked out I saw Joaquim talking to one of the police officers. “I’m sorry, sir. I had to do it,” he said. Poor man, I thought, he believed I’d betrayed them. My head started spinning. What had happened to my life? Suddenly everything was topsy-turvy. I assumed Clarice must have gone into hiding after pulling the money out of the company. But why hadn’t she warned me in Macapá? It was an urgent situation—she could have sent a telegram or called her mother to warn me. Where was Arturo? He must have gone back to Colombia.

They took me to jail. They interrogated me. I figured Clarice would show up with a lawyer at any moment. Presumably she knew I’d been arrested. But days went by, and I didn’t hear from her. I tried to call her mother in Macapá, with no luck. Was that where Clarice had gone? Why had she fled? She wasn’t responsible for what we’d been doing at the company, and she was pregnant.

After two weeks, a young legal intern took my case. He was my contact with the outside world, and he could do me a few favors. I still hadn’t heard anything—I was desperate. I asked him to go to my house and talk to the neighbors and tell them I’d been arrested, hoping she’d get in touch. Everybody had disappeared! You can’t imagine what every second of the day was like in that cell, in prison alongside drug traffickers from the Familia del Norte, which controls the drugs on the three countries’ borders. Rough, dangerous people with no humanity. A month passed, and I thought about death. I imagined stealing a knife and cutting my veins, or a faster method: a gun. I remembered Clarice’s pistol. I was alone and abandoned, obsessing about a woman I loved and who was carrying a child who was my son—can you imagine?

Finally a message arrived via the community of Marian nuns. One of the nuns brought it to me. A small envelope with a Colombian postmark. I opened it, shaking with emotion and fear. The letter was just a few lines, very short, that said basically this:

 

The child isn’t yours, Fabio. I ran off with the father and now we’re far away. I don’t expect you to forgive me, only that one day you will understand and try to forget. Please don’t look for me. Pretend it was all a long dream. Clarice

 

I went into my cell and cried for several days. But as I was deciding to end it all, the truth struck me like a bolt of lightning:

Arturo!

She’d run off with him. They’d been having an affair all along, and when Clarice got pregnant things snowballed. They took the money, and he reported me to the police. He’d provided detailed evidence: mining routes, sales networks, everything. Only he and Clarice knew the business inside and out. The ongoing theft that she’d complained about could have been setting the stage for them to run away. And you know what, miss? The hatred I felt in that moment was one of the purest and most uncontaminated feelings I’ve had in my life. I no longer wanted to commit suicide.

Soon I was sentenced to seven years in prison. The jungle gave me a life, then took it away. But from outside, on the nights I was most in torment, the jungle itself seemed to answer: Wait, be patient. I slept on a shabby, filthy cot. I lived with vicious men. I sank down into my sorrows, and the only thing that came to me was Christ’s name. This time I rebuked him. One night, clutching the bars and listening to three men beat an indigenous boy, a drug dealer, in the next cell, I said, “Christ, you abandoned me in the most difficult moment of my life. Why didn’t you warn me what was going to happen? Why did you put that man in my path?”

Silence, nothing but silence.

Gold, the intense green of the jungle, the heat.

Images of the placid rivers that I ravaged with my pumps and dredges seemed to be telling me: It’s your fault, you’re a convict, now you’re going to pay. I was burning up with fever. Sweating. I repented and acknowledged my guilt. I waited. Those seven years were the worst, but I endured them in silence, observing humanity and learning from every uncivilized gesture, every grunt. Animals and men, in captivity, are quite similar. I prefer animals. Animals don’t need a father, and we do. I didn’t have one. And so I was a fragile, incomplete man walking a cliff’s edge. Vertigo, and then the fall. Icarus disobeyed and fell, but disobedience requires that somebody restrict us and protect us in the first place. Somebody to fend off the serpent or the jaguar stalking us. But we orphans are alone in the jungle. Our only fathers are the gods. The distant gods . . . 

 

At that point I interrupted him and asked, “All these things you’re telling me happened a long time ago. Have you heard from them since? Have you looked for them?” I knew I was showing my hand, but it was impossible not to ask. Fabinho stared at the table for so long and so intently that someone might have thought he was trying to move the ashtray with his mind. Inside him, his thoughts must have been on fire. The memories were giving him goosebumps. He was clearly fumbling for words.

 

I never heard anything else. But I did think about them all the time. Especially around the supposed birthday of the little boy, for whom, luckily, we never chose a name. Afterward, when I got out, I returned to Macapá, but soon emigrated north and began a new life here in French Guiana. Things went well for me, and I started up again founding missionary churches in Brazil, since the only security in my life had been Christ.

I gave myself over to him and became one of his most faithful pastors. Every time I struck gold, I would build a new church in the jungle where I was living, which is why today lots of good people have a place to pray in Macapá, Araquã, Pedro Branca, Água Branca do Amapari, Cupixi, and Serra do Navio. Places equivalent to Bethlehem or Nazareth for me. The jungle gave me everything, so I give back to the jungle. I expanded the Assembly of God all over northeastern Brazil, and about once a month I go to give my word to the people. I also travel to other countries and meet with Assembly pastors. I’m taking notes for a book on initiation into faith through my own life. I read a lot, seeking knowledge, but over time I’ve realized that the only book that still gives me answers is the Good Book. Every day I read it and underline its lessons.

I don’t want to appear arrogant, but I think I’m the best Pentecostal preacher in this whole region, and do you know why? Because my word is born not out of study, but out of my untarnished contemplation of the world. That’s what divine love did inside me. It crushed me, transformed me. It gave to me and then took away, but it allowed me to survive. Today I’ve got fourteen churches in the region, built from what I pull from the earth. I don’t ask for money from the people who come to listen to me, no. Other preachers do, but not me. And people love me more every day. If I wanted to get involved in politics, people would vote for me. If I wanted to be mayor, governor, even legislator. But I’m not after power, just the power I feel when something speaks through me and the people hear it and fall to their knees. Transforming people’s lives—that is my power. If I wanted, I could go far, but I no longer want that. And you know what? As a result, I was able to forgive them.

You might think it unbelievable, or impossible, but I forgave them. And that freed me—I recovered my will to live. I exchanged hatred for something more tenuous: mercy. I felt mercy toward them; I imagined they must be haunted by a sense of guilt. You can flee justice, but not guilt. It always catches up to us. It’s an eye looking at us, watching us, tormenting us. I suffered from the enormous damage I did to nature. Today I am glad to have paid my dues to justice.

 

It was he who fell silent this time, as if to suggest that his story had ended, but I wasn’t done yet.

“Do you have a relationship with other Pentecostal churches?” I asked, to see his reaction. “Any in Colombia?”

He thought about it for a minute and took a sip of water. I sensed he was exhausted from his confession, but it was my last chance to fully understand this long tale.

“Yes, we have relationships with sibling and associated churches throughout the continent. Some in Colombia too, but very superficial and never there in the country—only at conferences and international events. You’ll understand why I never visit your country.”

Before we parted ways, I asked him to show me a photo of Clarice. He opened his billfold, rifled through some cards, and found it. I thought it was odd he still carried it with him. It was a very old and somewhat faded image of a couple beside a river, in the jungle.

I didn’t recognize her at first, but it was her. Egiswanda, Fritz’s girlfriend. There was a silence—I didn’t know what to say. She’s very beautiful, I said. I’m really sorry.

He tucked the picture back into his wallet. He drank down the rest of his sparkling water and said, “All right, miss, you know my life story now; all that’s left is to wish you a good life. Telling you all this brought back painful memories, but it’s a great relief to dig them out and see that they fit together by unexpected principles. C’est la vie! You know how to listen because you know how to write—I didn’t mention I’ve read some of your articles. Or did I? Congratulations. I enjoyed them. I’ll be off now. Thank you for your interest and attention. I don’t know what I’ll do in the future—I might stay here, or I might not. The only thing I possess is my love for Jesus. My hands are empty.” Gazing upward once more as if praying, he added, “I’m not young, I’m not old. I have lived. It’s time to think seriously about death.”

He got up and signaled to the waiter to put the check on his tab. He went down the steps to the street, surrounded by his bodyguards. Just as he was about to climb into the vehicle, I called from the terrace, “What was Arturo’s last name?”

He hesitated a moment. “Silva,” he said. “Arturo Silva Amador. But please don’t mention him.”

“Don’t worry,” I said.

“Goodbye again.”

His SUV pulled away, followed by two others. I raced to the hotel to transcribe everything in my notebook. So that was that, I thought.

I pictured him returning home, alone. A man broken inside, shattered into mismatching pieces of unequal value, like the subsoil from which gold is extracted.

There was no longer any doubt: Fabinho had organized the attack in Tierradentro, seeking revenge on Arturo (Fritz), who’d run off with his pregnant wife, stolen his company’s money, and framed him for the authorities. I felt an overwhelming desire to be in Cali and see Fritz. The end of this story pointed straight to the traitor. What would he say? What would his version of events be? Where was Clarice’s son? How had he known that Fabio had found him and was setting up the ambush?

The next day, before beginning the long trip back to Bogotá, I sent a message to Jutsiñamuy that said, “I have everything now—I’m heading back there. I’ll arrive tomorrow or the day after. We can confirm Mr. F’s identity. Please look into a Colombian by the name of Arturo Silva Amador.”

Hours later, when I arrived at the Suriname airport, I had a message from Jutsiñamuy: “That’s great. I’ll be expecting you. We’ve got some surprises here too.”