CHAPTER ONE

güicán

1987

Lucas’s family lived on a farm where the days were cold and the nights so frigid that the sky frosted over with stars. The icy water that gushed from the spigot in the makeshift bathroom outside the house descended from the snowcapped mountains and it was so stinging that the members of the family only washed once a week, two or three of them at a time.

Lucas was too small to wash by himself, so he showered with his father, Gumersindo. His mother, Clemencia, and his sisters, Adela and Lercy, showered together. No one looked forward to the occasion, except Lucas who was both frightened and excited by Gumersindo’s genitals. Lucas struggled to suppress the pleasure that his father’s nakedness awakened in him.

One day Lucas grabbed his father’s penis to soap it and Gumersindo slapped the boy’s face against the lichen-covered walls. “Men don’t do that!” he shouted. “Don’t you ever do that again.”

Lucas would never forget his father’s look of disgust and his harsh tone. For the rest of his childhood his biggest terror was that he would touch his father’s penis by accident.

* * *

Lucas grew up hearing about how his father was the only surviving member of a massacre that killed his entire family. Whenever he got drunk, Gumersindo would yell, “The military said that the farmers around here sympathized with the bandoleros and used that as an excuse to exterminate whole families! But the motherfuckers did it to steal our land! If they killed every single member of a family, there would be no one left to claim ownership of the farm.” Sometimes, depending on how inebriated he was, he would start weeping as he roared, “I’m still alive because on that day I was sent to town to buy food supplies! When I got back home, I found my parents and my brothers and sisters shot in the head and hacked with machetes.” He’d explode with fury, shouting, “Hacked to pieces!” Then he always added, “With their tongues sticking out from the base of their necks.”

Lucas felt sorry for his father being left an orphan at the age of fourteen. He wondered how he would have managed if he had had to grow up overnight in order to save the farm, which had been in his father’s family for generations. Lucas had heard many times—too many times, he thought—how Gumersindo, before he had grown a mustache, hired a married couple to help him run the farm in exchange for a place to live, food, and a share of the crops.

Lucas’s father’s family had planted anthuriums, sunflowers, carnations, daisies, and roses, which they sold in the local market. The soil at the top of the mountain was so fertile that in addition to the flowers, they had also cultivated the potatoes, fava beans, carrots, and roots that the indigenous people of the region ate, and sold them in Güicán’s Sunday market. Gumersindo would boast to the family around the dining table: “It’s a good thing I learned to read and write and have a good head for numbers. That’s why we have a roof over our heads and you don’t go hungry. So study; learn your arithmetic.”

One rainy afternoon when Lucas and his mother were in the kitchen, sitting by the stove shelling fava beans, Clemencia reminisced about the time she met his father: “He went to Güicán for the annual festival of Corpus Christi. Gumersindo had turned eighteen and decided he should look for a wife.” Then she fell quiet, as if she were unsure of stirring up a well of memories. Lucas hoped that if his mother didn’t want to say more about her courtship, she would instead talk about the festival of Corpus Christi—his favorite time of the year—when the townspeople decorated the churches and plazas with flower arrangements and fruit baskets, and built bamboo arches over the street corners in the shapes of dinosaurs, cows, and horses.

“I had just turned sixteen,” Clemencia continued. “Your grandparents had sent me to Güicán to study with the nuns—my parents wanted me to finish high school. We lived about twelve hours away by bus in the Llanos Orientales, where we had a plot of land and some cows. My ambition was to become a teacher in a rural school, near where we lived. The girls in the school in Güicán were allowed to go out in a large group one night during the festival, under the supervision of a nun. At the last minute Sister Rosana became indisposed. We were all disappointed—it was the only time during the school year that we could see people dancing in the streets—so the nuns took pity on us and told us we could go out unsupervised, but only if we stuck together and did not dance or talk to men.

“We didn’t have money for the rides. We just walked around gawking and laughing. A group dressed in regional costumes was dancing bambucos. I was standing there with some girls, tapping my foot, my hips swaying, when a handsome man approached and asked me to dance. I was flattered that he had noticed me, but I told him that I wasn’t allowed to dance. Then the other girls started saying, ‘Oh, go ahead, Clemencia. We won’t tell.’ That’s how I met your father. I loved dancing and he was a good dancer, and so we clicked.”

Clemencia stopped shelling the beans to smooth her hair, a blush rising on her cheeks. “We danced for a while . . . When I got tired I told him I had to join my friends. But they had left already, and there I was alone with a strange man. I was attracted to him, but a little scared too. Gumersindo asked me if I wanted something to drink and I said yes. I was so thirsty I drank a bottle of beer fast without thinking. I started feeling a little tipsy. Your father said, ‘Come, I’ll walk you back to your school.’ Somehow we ended up in a pasture outside town; I became his woman that night.” Sadness came over her face. “Okay, that’s enough for today. Don’t look so downcast, Lucas. I’ll tell you the rest some other time. We have to hurry and shell these beans or dinner is not going to be ready. You know how your father gets if his dinner isn’t on the table when he gets home from the fields.”

On another rainy afternoon that winter, when Lucas was helping her with the cooking, Clemencia resumed the story of his parents’ courtship.

“Gumersindo started showing up at Mass on Sundays, when the other boarding students attended church with the nuns. He always sat by the front door, so I saw him as I entered and left. Eight weeks after meeting at the festival, I realized I was pregnant. I was terrified of what would happen to me when I was discovered: as soon as it was noticeable I was with child, the nuns would expel me from school. I had seen this happen to other students.

“I decided I would not go back to my parents’ home in disgrace. One afternoon I snuck out of school, went into town, and began asking if anyone knew where Gumersindo lived. In a cantina a man pointed me in the direction of his farm. Gumersindo was overjoyed to see me. When I broke down in tears and revealed my condition, he told me that I didn’t have to go back to my parents’ home, and from that moment on we were man and wife.”

* * *

When he got drunk, Gumersindo would shout, “One day I’ll avenge my family! Even if it’s the last thing I do!” Then he would go on a rampage through the house, breaking and smashing things and kicking the domestic animals. Clemencia raised rabbits in the kitchen. She did not eat them and treated them as her pets; she also gave them away as presents to her neighbors for their birthdays or other special occasions. Often, after Gumersindo returned home drunk, many rabbits were found dead the next morning, splattered all over the front yard. The entire family tried to become invisible at such times and quietly huddled together out of his way.

On the weekends, Gumersindo squandered his money on aguardiente and beer, and visits to the whorehouse in Güicán. After he had spent his last cent, he would stagger home in the early hours and then beat Clemencia. Over the years, the beatings became so brutal, and her bruises so noticeable, that she was ashamed to leave the farm, even to go to Mass on Sundays. Gumersindo knocked out Clemencia’s front teeth, and she lost so much weight, and looked so weak, that Lucas was afraid she was going to die. On the rare occasions when a neighbor stopped by to visit, Lucas’s mother would send one of the children to say that she was busy.

There was nothing the children could do to stop their father’s brutal assaults. Lucas began to pray in earnest to Jesus and the Virgin to make his father stop.

One day, Gumersindo found Clemencia and Lucas in the kitchen, peeling potatoes and chatting. Gumersindo pulled Lucas from his chair and threw him against a wall. Then he started screaming at Clemencia, “That boy’s going to be a faggot! He’s practically a woman, all the time in the kitchen, and this will be your fault!” Then he turned to Lucas and bellowed, “I better not catch you here again! The kitchen is for women!”

The day after a beating, before the children had a chance to criticize their father at breakfast, Clemencia would say, “Before you judge Gumersindo, remember you didn’t have to see your entire family murdered when you were children.” And she’d add, “He’s a good provider—you’ve never lacked for anything.” Lucas suspected that she said those words as a kind of balm for her own bruises.

* * *

A few days after Lucas’s eighth birthday, Clemencia left the farm in the morning to do some errands in town. By the end of the day, she hadn’t returned. The children became worried: women traveling alone were frequently raped and murdered. That evening, as they gathered for the dinner which Lucas and his sisters had prepared, Gumersindo said, “Eat, children. I’m sure your mother’s fine. She probably got delayed in town and decided to stay overnight with one of her friends.” But Lucas didn’t know of any friends that his mother would stay overnight with. That night, the three children snuggled together in one bed and prayed for the safety of their mother. Then they cried themselves to sleep.

The next day Gumersindo went into town to try to find out what had happened to Clemencia. He returned hours later and told the children, “I reported her missing at the police station. They promised to contact me as soon as they hear anything.”

Nothing more was heard about Clemencia. It was as if she had tumbled down the mouth of an active volcano and was swallowed up in flames. A few weeks later, Gumersindo told the distressed children, “The police think your mother probably went to the Llanos to stay with her family, and that she’ll return when we least expect her.” He shook his head and grimaced. “Her parents will not be happy to see her when she returns home in disgrace. It won’t be long before Clemencia realizes how tough it is out there. Mark my words, she’ll come back home one of these days with her tail between her legs.”

* * *

Lucas felt as if the sun had gone from the sky. He hated the endless drizzle and fog that swept through the house during wintertime. When the fog was impenetrable, the family walked through the house with flashlights to avoid bumping into each other or the furniture. The mist left behind by the clouds seemed to penetrate to his bones and, instead of air, Lucas felt he breathed in a cool spray. At times he imagined this made him closely related to the trout the family raised in the pond behind the house.

During those chilly months, the kitchen, where Clemencia had always kept a fire going, had been the only pleasant room in the house. His mother seemed to acquire a permanent glow from the flames of the firewood, and she had always been warm to the touch, like a toasty wool blanket.

Lucas grew even more terrified of his father’s fits now that he didn’t have Clemencia to hit when he was angry. Without her protective nature, life on the farm seemed fraught with dangers lurking everywhere. Instead of calling him by his name when he wanted Lucas to do something, Gumersindo would say, “Come here, maricón,” and then bark his orders.

Every morning the children were awakened at five to feed hay to the two horses, the mule, and the donkey. Next they milked the two cows and fed them—and the sheep—hay; they fed vegetables to the rabbits, leftovers to the goats and pigs, and corn to the hens, ducks, and geese. Inside the house, they gave fresh water to the caged mirlas and other songbirds­—which Gumersindo trapped and then sold in town—and cleaned their cages. When they were done with these chores, the three children dressed for school and had breakfast before they left the house around seven.

They walked four kilometers to the schoolhouse, on a path that spiraled all the way down to the torrid zone. They were supposed to leave together because the narrow, slippery trails skirted yawning abysses, and they had to be watchful for serpents, whose bites killed domestic animals as well as unwary locals who stepped on them.

One day Lucas decided to leave before his sisters. Since they did not tell his father, he continued to leave earlier on most days to walk alone down the mountain so he could think about his mother and not have to hide his tears.

The schoolhouse consisted of two rooms—one for children in kindergarten through the second grade, the other for those in third through fifth grade. Because Lucas was such a diligent student, and read much better than other children his age, he had been placed in the third grade. Thus he spent the school day in the same room with his sisters, who were in the two grades ahead of him. They were the first ones to notice how Lucas had changed from a studious boy to one who spent hours looking out the window. He stopped doing his homework and began to receive poor grades. But his teacher, Señorita Domínguez, did not embarrass him in front of the other students by pointing out that he was failing his subjects because she knew it was due to his mother’s disappearance.

The school day was over at one in the afternoon. When they got home, Lucas’s sisters quickly put together a lunch of barley soup with vegetables or rice, boiled potatoes, and string beans. Before the children ate, one of the sisters would bring lunch to Gumersindo out in the fields, where he spent most of the day taking care of the animals and the potato fields.

After lunch the children were in charge of picking the tree tomatoes, oranges, mandarins, cilantro, and onions they sold in Güicán. They also helped Gumersindo till and fertilize the soil with manure. Work stopped as the sun began to hide behind the snowcapped volcanoes in the west, their summits glowing like burning coals.

The children learned not to mention their mother’s name in Gumersindo’s presence. Lucas was angry that his father made no effort to try to find out where she had gone. He heard his sisters whisper that they thought their mother was staying with a relative who lived in Bogotá. His sisters became very close, united in anger at their mother for abandoning them. Sometimes Lucas thought that she had left her children because she didn’t like them.

Lercy started tearing her hair out until her scalp bled. Their father bought her a wig, which he forced her to wear all the time. But the more their father lashed her with his belt for tearing her hair out, the more she did it. Sometimes she went through the house with blood on her face and streaming down her neck. After one severe beating, Lercy finally stopped pulling her hair. But one evening Lucas entered the girls’ bedroom while Lercy was changing her clothes and saw her chest and stomach covered with hundreds of brown scabs. He pretended not to have seen them, but his anxiety grew worse as he worried that Lercy might leave the farm too. Instead, Lercy quit going to school.

“Suit yourself,” Gumersindo said at dinnertime the night she announced her decision. “You’re the one who’s going to regret it later on in life.” He even sounded somewhat happy that he’d have her help on the farm around the clock.

When his father went into town Lucas would wander as far as the eucalyptus grove that bordered a neighbor’s property, climb a tree as high as he could go, sit on a limb, and cry until his chest began to hurt, hoping his mother would hear him and return home. After he exhausted himself from crying, Lucas would remain up in the tree, daydreaming about reuniting with his mother at the farm or far away from Güicán.

When he was alone in the house, his favorite activity was running around the dining table, picking up speed as he turned the corners. Lucas would stop when he was so dizzy he couldn’t stand up. On one occasion he slipped and smashed against the glass front of the cupboard. One long shard of glass lodged under his armpit; as he pulled it out, a rivulet of blood flowed down the side of his torso. Lucas fainted.

Later, Lucas was told that Adela had come into the house with the laundry and found him unconscious in a puddle of blood. Gumersindo was off in town, so Lucas’s sisters loaded him in a wheelbarrow, pushed it down to the main road, and managed to stop a bus going in the direction of Güicán, where the closest medical center was located.

The shard of glass had damaged several blood vessels and severed a tendon. Lucas had lost so much blood that, despite the transfusions, he was too weak to get out of bed for several days. The intern who worked at the medical center disinfected and dressed his wounds once a day and gave him medication for the pain.

“You need to go to Bogotá for surgery,” he told Lucas. “We cannot do much more for you here.”

Lucas was fed clear broth and a slice of bread twice a day, so he was happy when his sisters came to visit and brought boiled eggs, tangerines, and homemade blackberry jam. But what made him really happy was that his sisters had not forgotten him. Before they left, Adela said, “Father told us he’ll come to see you soon.” Lucas didn’t dare ask if they’d had any news of their mother.

His father didn’t scold him when he came to visit, but he looked at Lucas as if he were a weakling he wanted nothing to do with. Sister Yvonne, the older nun who ran the infirmary, told Gumersindo that Lucas needed surgery or he was going to lose the use of his arm.

“We’re too poor to send him to a hospital in Bogotá,” his father replied. “Maybe this will teach him a lesson.”

Though Lucas was horrified to think that he was going to go through the rest of his life with a crippled arm, he did not complain. He had heard of miracles and began to pray for one.

One afternoon when Lucas was staring out the window at the azure sky, Sister Yvonne came into the room. She pulled a chair close to his bed. Her presence helped to relieve his acute loneliness.

“You know, Lucas,” Sister Yvonne began, “despite all you’ve gone through, it’s admirable that you have such a sweet disposition. That’s a gift from God, my child. I hope you never change. When we have joy in our hearts, we can give joy to those who suffer more than we do.”

Lucas was grateful that there was someone in the world who paid attention to him. As his wound became infected and his arm turned red and dark blue, her kindness helped sustain him.

When his father came to visit again, he told Sister Yvonne in Lucas’s presence, “Do whatever you can for him, Sister. I’ll come to get him as soon as he’s ready to go back home. Even with a lame arm there are many things he can do on the farm.” Then he turned to Lucas and added, “That’s what happens to boys who live in the clouds.”

Lucas’s only consolation was the care of Sister Yvonne, who treated him with a gentleness he had only known from his mother. His arm became thinner, turned a purplish black, and Lucas could no longer lift it.

One morning while she was cleaning the wound, Sister Yvonne asked him, “Lucas, what’s your favorite thing in the world?”

He didn’t have to think about it. “I love animals and climbing trees, Sister.”

She smiled and took his hand. Her palms were leathery but warm. “If you love animals, Lucas, you must pray to San Martín de Porres for a miracle. Do you believe in him?”

“My mother had images of him in the shrine she kept in her bedroom. He always carries a broom.”

Sister Yvonne nodded. “He’s always shown surrounded by a mouse, a cat, and a dog—all drinking milk from the same saucer on the floor. This scene represents his ability to communicate with animals and to create harmony among all living things.”

Lucas had heard in religion class about the miracle of the mice.

“The rodents in the monastery of Santa Rosa de Lima, where San Martín lived, spoiled the grain in storage with their droppings,” Sister Yvonne explained. “Traps were set to control the infestation. San Martín found a mouse caught in a trap by the tail. Instead of killing it with a broom, as he was supposed to do, San Martín told him, ‘Little mouse, I’ll let you go on one condition: you must talk to the other mice and make them promise that they will not come inside the monastery again to eat our grain. If you keep your end of the bargain, I’ll bring food to the orchard every day so not one of you will go hungry.’ San Martín kept his promise, and the mice never entered the convent again.”

Lucas smiled for the first time since Clemancia had disappeared. “They say that San Martín de Porres was famous for making plants grow in times of drought,” he added. “That’s why farmers love him.”

“He was so holy, Lucas, that he walked through locked doors and the walls of the monastery,” Sister Yvonne said. “When he was asked how he did it, he replied it was God who did it, that he was just God’s vessel.”

Lucas asked eagerly, “What can I do, Sister, so San Martín will hear me?”

“I’ll teach you the Prayer to San Martín, which you must say first thing in the morning and again right before you go to sleep at night.”

Lucas began to pray with fervor to San Martín to intercede with God on his behalf. He repeated the prayer many times the first day until he fell into a hypnotic reverie. Lucas began to feel so peaceful, weightless, warmed all over, that he wondered whether he was dying.

On the third day, the sun came out earlier than usual and filled Lucas’s room with brilliant light. He closed his eyes and imagined he was in God’s presence. Lucas heard a door open and a lovely aroma filled the room. He pretended to be asleep. Then he thought he heard someone sobbing softly. He opened his eyes and let out a small scream of joy: his mother was there. Lucas wondered if that meant he was dead and in heaven with her. But when she rushed toward his bed and kissed his forehead and cheeks, Lucas knew she was real. It was like a miracle had happened to her: she looked strong, had put on weight, her arms were not covered with purple bruises, and her eyes were not swollen.

“I came as soon as I heard, my son. An acquaintance in Güicán wrote me at my cousin’s house in Bogotá,” she told him.

Lucas began to sob.

“Now, now, my angel,” Clemencia said. “We must get you dressed without delay. There’s a taxi waiting outside. We’ve got to leave Güicán before your father finds out I’m here.”

As soon as the taxi left Güicán behind, Clemencia explained to Lucas that she had found a job as a live-in maid for an American couple who were Methodist missionary doctors. “They came to Colombia to work for the poor. They’re good people. I told them about you before I asked their permission to come get you, and they said I could take you to the hospital where they work.”

* * *

At the hospital in Bogotá, Lucas had a tendon and a vein removed from his left leg to get blood flowing properly in his damaged arm.

He remained in the hospital for almost a month. After he was discharged, he went to live in a room his mother rented for him from Ema, her widowed cousin, who owned a house in Barrio Kennedy in Bogotá. Ema worked as a saleswoman in a retail store, so she was gone all day. A gang of drug dealers had killed Alberto, her only son. Clemencia came to visit on Saturday afternoons and returned to her job on Sunday evenings.

Lucas couldn’t return to school for many months. He worried he might have to repeat the third grade because of the time he had missed. The pain in his right arm was still sharp whenever he tried to lift it above his shoulder. He also limped. A government clinic in Barrio Kennedy offered physical therapy for a low fee to people with injured limbs. He walked to the clinic twice a week to do therapy for one hour. Lucas craved human contact—when the male therapist stretched his arm or leg, despite the pain, he didn’t want the man to stop. The rest of the time Lucas stayed alone in the house. Clemencia would call on the phone every morning, and before he went to bed they had brief chats. But as the weeks went by, his loneliness became more acute. He missed school and not learning new things all the time; and he missed his sisters. He prayed every night that they would be reunited soon.

Ema had warned him not to let anyone in the house when she was at work. His mother forbade him to go outside to play with the other boys in the neighborhood. Every Sunday afternoon before Clemencia left the house, she would take his hands in hers and repeat the same words: “In Bogotá, there are many boys your age who are up to no good. I want you to go to school and study. It’s the only way you’ll have a better life than mine. Lucas, promise me you won’t make friends with bad boys.”

Though he longed for the company of boys his age, he promised her he would not.

Ema didn’t own a TV, but she had many books about the lives of the saints. Lucas spent most of the day on a rocking chair by the front window reading those books and watching the busy street life. He kept the window closed, but he lifted a corner of the curtain so that he could peek out while remaining hidden.

Among Ema’s books he found a few pamphlets about San Martín de Porres and his miracles. The more Lucas read about the saint, the more his fascination grew. He was convinced San Martín had saved his arm from amputation and had sent his mother to rescue him. His favorite stories about San Martín were those that attributed to him the gift of bilocation. San Martín was seen consoling the dying in remote villages high up in the cordilleras while he was in his cell flagellating himself to atone for our sins. There were reports of his appearances in Mexico, Africa, China, and Japan—sometimes on the same day at the same time.

* * *

A year after his accident, Lucas was finally able to return to school. His mother had been saving for his education and she enrolled him in Colegio San Bartolomé de las Casas, a private Jesuit school. Lucas studied hard, did his homework, and enjoyed the company of his classmates. The school day began with Mass, and he found himself enamored by the rituals.

During his second year, Lucas told Clemencia he wanted to be an altar boy. This decision seemed to please her. Lucas began attending spiritual retreats sponsored by the church. At these events the nuns and brothers would share stories about the Christian martyrs with the boys, and they’d watch movies the church approved of. His favorite was Quo Vadis.

Some nights he would lie awake in bed reliving in his mind the gory scenes of the lions attacking and killing the Christians in the Roman Colosseum, and he wept for the martyrs.

Lucas loved the fantastic stories from the Old Testament that they studied in sacred history class. But when he read the New Testament he was moved by Jesus’ miracles and His vow to help the poor and weak. He decided he wanted to do his part to help relieve the pain of the unfortunate and sick. Becoming a priest seemed the best way to go about it, and thus the idea of helping others as a way of life became his dream. He was never as happy as when he was in church during Mass or when he went to the chapel to pray on his own.

Often, after classes were over, a small group of his schoolmates and a brother went to visit a nearby old people’s home that was run by nuns. When they read the Bible aloud to the old people, Lucas observed their wrinkled faces light up with smiles—even though many of them had no front teeth left—and witnessed the sparkle that came into their weary eyes. To see them momentarily forget the misery of their worn-out bodies and their loneliness as he read to them filled him with joy.

Lucas also loved drawing maps: he would fantasize about all those faraway places, and wondered if he’d ever get to see them. While he always got high marks in geography, history was his favorite subject with its stories of the past infinitely more appealing and romantic than the life he knew. In Latin, however, he was a poor student. No matter how much time he spent studying and practicing the declensions, he barely squeaked by. And although his mind was made up to serve God, Lucas was afraid he was not smart enough to be a good priest.

There was something else he worried about, something that could stand in the way of him becoming a priest. He was attracted to his neighbor Yadir, an older boy who played soccer every day after school. Lucas would wait all afternoon for the moment when Yadir went by his window—wearing shorts and a sweatshirt—on his way to the soccer field. Often, Yadir returned home bare-chested and sweaty. His legs and arms were muscular and he had a sculpted chest. Watching him walk by, Lucas relived the excitement of those showers he took with his father.

At the farm in Güicán, behind his father’s back, Adela and Lercy had sometimes dressed him in girls’ clothes so he could join their dress-up games. Now Lucas started wearing Ema’s blouses and skirts, and covering his head with a scarf. He would sit on a rocking chair and watch Yadir go by, making sure he remained hidden.

One afernoon Yadir stopped in front of the window and said, “I’ve seen you watching me, dressed up like a woman. Do you want me to stick it in you?”

Lucas said nothing; he wasn’t sure what Yadir meant by that.

“There’s a pine grove by a stream just up the hill, behind the soccer field. I’ll show you my cock. Meet me there tomorrow after school.”

The following day, when they were deep among the trees, Yadir unzipped his jeans, showed Lucas his erect penis, and stood still. Lucas felt giddy; he sidled up to Yadir and tried to kiss him on his mouth.

Yadir pushed him to the ground. “That’s for faggots,” he sneered. “Get on your knees and open your mouth.” Lucas obeyed him. Yadir shoved his cock between Lucas’s parted lips. “Now suck it, faggot,” he said.

From then on, on his way to the soccer field, Yadir often stopped by Lucas’s house. Lucas felt an equal measure of trepidation and desire as the hour approached when Yadir would walk through the front door. They’d lie naked on his bed; Lucas would masturbate him first and then Yadir masturbated Lucas. He was aware that Yadir stroked his penis without getting excited. As soon as Lucas came, Yadir would leap from the bed and go to the bathroom to wash himself. Sometimes he would complain, “You got me dirty.” Then he’d look at Lucas with disgust. Lucas knew what they were doing could get him in trouble if Ema or anyone else in the neighborhood found out. But he couldn’t put a stop to their meetings because the physical contact with Yadir made him feel fully alive.

“When I take girls to the movies,” Yadir told Lucas one time, “I stick my middle finger between their legs and up their asses. I want to do the same to you.”

The next time they were in bed, he penetrated Lucas first with his middle finger, then with two. Lucas felt pain while Yadir’s finger was inside him, but later that night he knew he wanted that pain to be inflicted again. And again. They carried on like this for many months, though Yadir never allowed Lucas to kiss him on his lips, which was what Lucas desired more than anything else.

“It’s one thing to fuck a faggot,” Yadir would say, “but if you kiss one, that means you’re one yourself. And I’m not a homo, you understand?”

Their encounters stopped when Ema came home early from work and found Yadir in Lucas’s bedroom. Yadir was dressed, and about to leave, but she must have noticed how tense Yadir and Lucas became when they saw her, and how quickly Yadir left, mumbling a rushed goodbye to her.

When Yadir had closed the front door behind him, Ema said, “I don’t want that boy to visit you again when you’re alone, or I’ll have to tell your mother.”

Lucas nodded, but avoided her eyes.

“Look,” she added, “I’ve heard that deviates die of horrible illnesses after they have sex. That’s their punishment.”

The next time Yadir came to the door, Lucas opened it a crack and said, “Cousin Ema told me that if you come inside the house again, she’ll go to the police and tell your family.”

* * *

Yadir and Lucas never again said another word to each other. Lucas began to have nightmares that he had a terrible disease because of the things they had done. Two years passed and Lucas became frightened that his hormones had gone haywire. To diffuse his sexual feelings—which were present even when he was asleep—Lucas joined a dance group in school. The director of the group, Brother Mauricio, made learning the steps of the folkloric dances a lot of fun. Lucas noticed that his teacher favored him over the other boys. Whenever Brother Mauricio corrected one of his steps, Lucas heard muffled snickers.

Lucas had been a member of the group for several months when Brother Mauricio told Lucas that he was director of a religious community that had been founded ten years earlier. “Would you like to hear more about it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lucas said eagerly.

The next day, after classes were over, Lucas joined Brother Mauricio in his office. To hide his nervousness, Lucas sat on his open hands. Brother Mauricio pulled a chair so close that their knees almost touched. Lucas felt light-headed by the priest’s proximity, but he tried hard to concentrate and listen carefully, knowing that whatever Brother Mauricio said might be of importance in his life.

On his way home, Lucas mulled over what Brother Mauricio had told him about the community: its mission was to listen and console people in pain, to give spiritual guidance and assuage people’s fears of death, to spread Christ’s message of humility, and to serve the poor and the old. All that sounded admirable to Lucas. He believed it was something he would want to do with his life.

On another afternoon, Brother Mauricio asked Lucas to stay behind when all the other boys went home. It was only the second time this had happened.

“Lucas, I’ve been watching you carefully for a while,” he began, “and I think you have the potential to be a good priest and could be a serious candidate to enter our community. If you’re ready to practice the vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, I will—with your permission, of course—talk to your mother and explain to her that you need to have an education that will lead to the priesthood.”

Lucas was so overcome he couldn’t speak. But he immediately worried about his continuing troubles with Latin. He knew that mastery of the language was no longer a requirement for being a priest, now that Mass was said in Spanish, but many of the required texts were in Latin, and his reading comprehension was inadequate. Though he was aware he had no particular talent that would make him an exceptional priest, Lucas believed that if he applied himself he would be adequately able to console those who suffered.

“Brother Mauricio,” he said with conviction, “it would make me happy if you would talk to my mother about my religious education.”

Lucas’s decision to become a priest was sealed when he read the story of Father Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, a nineteenth-century French priest. At that time, all priests were required to master Latin. Father Vianney could never learn the language well, yet he was ordained nevertheless. The bishop had said, “I will ordain him, though he lacks the brilliant quality of mind to be a learned Jesuit. We can send him to be the priest of Ars, a backwater in the Alps where the people are poor and illiterate. That will be his flock. He doesn’t need a brilliant mind to do that.”

Father Vianney made the long journey to Ars on a donkey. When he was in the vicinity of the village, a snowstorm hit and he wandered off the path and got lost. Half frozen, resigned to die, Father Vianney kneeled to say his last prayers. At that moment a shepherd boy appeared. The disoriented gaunt man wearing dark garments frightened the shepherd. “Don’t be scared, boy,” Father Vianney told him. “If you show me the way to Ars, I’ll show you the way to heaven.”

Soon after Father Vianney’s arrival in Ars, the shepherd boy fell gravely ill. Before he died, Father Vianney baptized him, the first person to be baptized in Ars in a very long time.

Lucas loved this story and he read more about Father Vianney. He learned that the people of Ars cherished Vianney’s simple but sincere sermons because his homilies related to the problems they faced in their daily lives. With the passage of years, the fame of his sermons spread throughout the region, and people began to flock to Ars on Sundays and on holy days to hear him. Toward the end of Vianney’s life, famous prelates from all over Europe would come to listen to him. Though Lucas often couldn’t follow the intricacies of the Jesuits’ discussions of their dogma, he felt he had been shown the path to becoming a priest through Father Vianney’s story.

At the end of the school year, Brother Mauricio told Lucas, “There’s a good Catholic school in Facatativá, where you could go for the first three years of your pre-novitiate. Your mother can visit you often. When you finish your studies there, if you still feel you have the calling, you can go on to the seminary and become ordained.”

As his dream to become a priest seemed more within reach, Lucas was both excited and afraid. He knew that if he continued on this path, soon there would be no turning back.

Perhaps sensing Lucas’s doubts, Brother Mauricio told him, “It’s clear to me you have a gift for consoling those in pain, and for spreading Jesus’ message of humility and service. Lucas, do you think you’re ready to devote your life to Jesus?”

“I’m ready, Father,” he said, without hesitation. At that moment, he prayed that if he became a priest his feelings for men would go away.

“Now all we need to do,” Brother Mauricio said, “is convince your mother to send you to Colegio San José in Facatativá.”

When Lucas told his mother the news, Clemencia, instead of being upset, said, “Nothing would make me happier than to have my son dedicated to the service of God.” She embraced him tightly and did not say another word about the subject.