The Secret History of Costaguana (6 page)
Read The Secret History of Costaguana Online
Authors: Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Aboard the
Isabel
, my father and Antonia de Narváez reproduce, in 1854, the tremors of 1805; aboard Antonia de Narváez, biology, treacherous biology, begins to do its stuff with heats and fluids; and in his room, abed and protected by a muslin mosquito net, Mr. Beckman, who has not yet read
Madame Bovary
, sighs with contentment, harboring not the slightest suspicion, closes his eyes to listen to the silence of the river, and almost by accident begins to sing softly to himself:
Isabel
, my father and Antonia de Narváez reproduce, in 1854, the tremors of 1805; aboard Antonia de Narváez, biology, treacherous biology, begins to do its stuff with heats and fluids; and in his room, abed and protected by a muslin mosquito net, Mr. Beckman, who has not yet read
Madame Bovary
, sighs with contentment, harboring not the slightest suspicion, closes his eyes to listen to the silence of the river, and almost by accident begins to sing softly to himself:
The forest on your banks by the flood and earthquake torn
Is madly on your bosom to the mighty Ocean borne.
May you still roll for ages and your grass be always green
And your waters aye be cool and sweet, oh Muddy Magdalene.
Is madly on your bosom to the mighty Ocean borne.
May you still roll for ages and your grass be always green
And your waters aye be cool and sweet, oh Muddy Magdalene.
Oh, the forests on the riverbank, the cool, sweet waters . . . Today, while I write not far from the Thames, I measure the distance between the two rivers, and marvel that this is the distance of my life. I have ended my days, dear Eloísa, in English lands. And now I feel I have a right to ask: Is it not very appropriate that an English steamer should have been the scene of my conception? The circle closes, the snake bites his own tail, all those clichés.
The preceding I write for the benefit of my more subtle readers, those who appreciate the art of allusion and suggestion. For the cruder among you, I write simply: yes, you have understood. Antonia de Narváez was my mother.
Yes, yes, yes: you have understood.
I, José Altamirano, am a bastard son.
A
fter their encounter on the camp bed of the
Isabel
, after the faked fever and authentic orgasms, my father and Antonia de Narváez began a very brief correspondence, the most important instances of which I must now present as part of my argument (i.e., reasoning used to convince another) and also my argument (i.e., subject matter of a book). But I must do so by first clarifying certain points. This labor of family archaeology I’ve carried out—I can already hear the objections I’ve heard all my life: mine was not really a family, I have no right to this respectable noun—is based, on occasion, on tangible documents; and that is why, Readers of the Jury, you have and will have in some passages of the narration the uncomfortable responsibilities of a judge.
fter their encounter on the camp bed of the
Isabel
, after the faked fever and authentic orgasms, my father and Antonia de Narváez began a very brief correspondence, the most important instances of which I must now present as part of my argument (i.e., reasoning used to convince another) and also my argument (i.e., subject matter of a book). But I must do so by first clarifying certain points. This labor of family archaeology I’ve carried out—I can already hear the objections I’ve heard all my life: mine was not really a family, I have no right to this respectable noun—is based, on occasion, on tangible documents; and that is why, Readers of the Jury, you have and will have in some passages of the narration the uncomfortable responsibilities of a judge.
Journalism is the court of our days. And therefore: I declare that the following documents are perfectly genuine. It’s true that I am Colombian, and that all Colombians are liars, but I must declare the following (and here I place my right hand on the Bible or the book that serves in its place): what I am about to write is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. No one will object if here and there I gloss certain passages, which, out of context, might be obscure. But I have not inserted a single word, nor altered any emphasis, nor changed any meaning. So help me God.
Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Barranquilla, undated
You will mock me, but I cannot stop thinking of you. And sympathizing with you, for you will have had to return to the one you do not love, while I move inexorably away from the one I adore.
1
Are my words excessive, my feelings illegitimate? . . . We disembarked yesterday; today we are crossing the sandy plain that separates us from Salgar, where the steamer that will take us to our destination awaits. The sight of the Great Atlantic Ocean, route of my future, supplies much welcome calm. . . . I am traveling with a likable foreigner, ignorant of our language but very willing to learn it.
1
Are my words excessive, my feelings illegitimate? . . . We disembarked yesterday; today we are crossing the sandy plain that separates us from Salgar, where the steamer that will take us to our destination awaits. The sight of the Great Atlantic Ocean, route of my future, supplies much welcome calm. . . . I am traveling with a likable foreigner, ignorant of our language but very willing to learn it.
He has opened his travel diary and shown me cuttings from the
Panama Star
that describe, I believe, the advances of the railroad. In reply, I have tried to make him understand that the very same iron track, able to conquer the dense jungle palm by palm, was also the object of my most profound admiration; I do not know, however, if I managed to convey that to him.
Panama Star
that describe, I believe, the advances of the railroad. In reply, I have tried to make him understand that the very same iron track, able to conquer the dense jungle palm by palm, was also the object of my most profound admiration; I do not know, however, if I managed to convey that to him.
Letter from Antonia de Narváez to Miguel Altamirano, place not specified, Christmas Day
Your words are excessive and your feelings illegitimate. Ours, sir, was an encounter the reasons for which I have not yet ascertained and furthermore refuse to explore; I regret nothing, but why pretend interest in what is nothing more than an accident? It does not seem that our destiny is to find each other; I assure you, in any case, that I shall do what is in my power to keep that from occurring. . . . My life is here, my good sir, and here I must stay, just as I must stay at my husband’s side. I cannot accept your claim, in an act of incredible arrogance, to know where my heart lies. I find myself obliged to remind you that, in spite of the ineffable event, you, Don Miguel, do not know me. Are my words cruel? Take them as you please.
Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Colón, January 29, 1855
At last it has happened: the Railroad has been inaugurated, and it was my privilege to witness such a great step forward toward Progress. The ceremony, in my modest opinion, was not as lavish as the event warranted; but the whole town came out to celebrate, the unofficial representatives of all Humanity, and in these streets one hears all the languages man’s genius has created.
2
. . . In the crowd, veritable Ark of human races, I was surprised to recognize a certain Melo-supporting lieutenant, whose name is not worth writing down. He was banished to Panama as punishment for participating in the coup, yes, the very one that my humble services contributed to toppling. When he told me, I confess, I was flabbergasted. Panama, punishment for rebels? The Isthmus, Residence of the Future, a place to banish enemies of democracy? Little could I find to contradict him. I had to bow to the evidence; what I consider a prize, one of the greatest my worthless life has granted me, is for my own government a disaster just short of the gallows. . . . Your words, dear lady, are daggers that pierce my heart. Spurn me, but do not repudiate me; insult me, but do not ignore me. I am, since that night, your deferential servant, and I do not close the door to our reencounter. . . . The Isthmus’s climate is marvelous. The skies are clear, the air sweet. Its reputation, I can now say, is a tremendous injustice.
2
. . . In the crowd, veritable Ark of human races, I was surprised to recognize a certain Melo-supporting lieutenant, whose name is not worth writing down. He was banished to Panama as punishment for participating in the coup, yes, the very one that my humble services contributed to toppling. When he told me, I confess, I was flabbergasted. Panama, punishment for rebels? The Isthmus, Residence of the Future, a place to banish enemies of democracy? Little could I find to contradict him. I had to bow to the evidence; what I consider a prize, one of the greatest my worthless life has granted me, is for my own government a disaster just short of the gallows. . . . Your words, dear lady, are daggers that pierce my heart. Spurn me, but do not repudiate me; insult me, but do not ignore me. I am, since that night, your deferential servant, and I do not close the door to our reencounter. . . . The Isthmus’s climate is marvelous. The skies are clear, the air sweet. Its reputation, I can now say, is a tremendous injustice.
Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Colón, April 1, 1855
The climate is lethal. It never stops raining, the houses flood; the rivers burst their banks and people sleep in the treetops; above puddles of still water swarm clouds of mosquitoes that look like locusts from ancient Babylon; the train carriages have to be cared for as if they were babes in arms for fear they’ll be devoured by the humidity. Plague reigns over the Isthmus, and sick men wander the city, some begging for a glass of water to bring down the fever, others dragging themselves to the hospital doors, under the illusion that a miracle will save their lives. . . . A few days ago we recovered the corpse of Lieutenant Campillo; now it is justifiable to commit his name to paper, though not for that any less painful.
3
. . . I must assume that your reply has gone astray; the reverse would be inadmissible. Dear lady, there is a conspiracy of fate that prevents my forgetting, for I am constantly crossing paths with messengers of memory. The lives of the locals begin each morning with the sacred ritual of coffee and quinine, which protects them from the phantoms of fever; and I myself have adopted the customs of those I visit, for I judge them healthy. So what can I do if every tiny grain brings me the flavor of our night? What can I do?
3
. . . I must assume that your reply has gone astray; the reverse would be inadmissible. Dear lady, there is a conspiracy of fate that prevents my forgetting, for I am constantly crossing paths with messengers of memory. The lives of the locals begin each morning with the sacred ritual of coffee and quinine, which protects them from the phantoms of fever; and I myself have adopted the customs of those I visit, for I judge them healthy. So what can I do if every tiny grain brings me the flavor of our night? What can I do?
Letter from Antonia de Narváez to Miguel Altamirano, Honda, May 10, 1855
Do not write to me, sir, and do not seek me. I consider this exchange closed and what was between us forgotten. My husband has died; know this, Don Miguel Altamirano, from this day on I am dead to you.
4
4
Letter from Miguel Altamirano to Antonia de Narváez, Colón, July 29, 1855
With my face disfigured by incredulity, I read over your terse message. Do you really expect me to obey your orders? By issuing them, do you seek to put my feelings to the test? You leave me, my dear lady, in an impossible situation, for complying with your directive would be to destroy my love, and not doing so would be to go against you. . . . You have no reason to doubt my words; the death of Mr. William Beckman, honorable man and favored guest of our nation, has deeply saddened me. You are excessively sparing with your words, my dear, and I do not know if it would be rash to inquire into the circumstances of the tragedy on the same page as I transmit my most sincere condolences to you . . . . I do so desire to see you again . . . but I cannot dare request your presence, and at times I think that perhaps it is this that has offended you. If this is the case, I beg you to understand me: here there are no women or children. So insalubrious is this land, that men prefer solitude during the course of their stay. They know, because experience has shown it to be so, that bringing their family with them is to condemn them to death as efficiently as running a machete through their chests.
5
These men, who have come to cross from one ocean to another toward gold mines in the land of California, are in search of instant riches, it’s true, and they are willing to stake their own lives on it; but not those of their loved ones, for to whom would they return with their pockets filled with gold dust? No, my dear lady; if we are to see one another again, it will be in a more pleasant spot. That is why I await your summons; a word, a single one, and I shall be at your side. Until that moment, until you concede me the grace of your company,
5
These men, who have come to cross from one ocean to another toward gold mines in the land of California, are in search of instant riches, it’s true, and they are willing to stake their own lives on it; but not those of their loved ones, for to whom would they return with their pockets filled with gold dust? No, my dear lady; if we are to see one another again, it will be in a more pleasant spot. That is why I await your summons; a word, a single one, and I shall be at your side. Until that moment, until you concede me the grace of your company,
I remain yours,
Miguel Altamirano
Miguel Altamirano
Eloísa dear: this letter received no reply.
Nor did the next.
Nor did the next.
And thus ended the correspondence, at least as far as this tale is concerned, between the two individuals who with time and certain circumstances I have grown accustomed to calling my parents. The reader of the preceding pages will look in vain for a reference to Antonia de Narváez’s pregnancy, not to mention to the birth of her son. The letters I have not copied also take meticulous care to hide the first nauseas, the protruding belly, and, of course, the details of the birth. So Miguel Altamirano would wait a long time before finding out that his sperm had got its way, that a son of his had been born in the country’s interior.
My date of birth was always a small domestic mystery. My mother celebrated my birthday indiscriminately on July 20, August 7, and September 12; I, as a simple matter of dignity, have never celebrated it. As for places, I can say the following: unlike the majority of human beings, I know that of my conception but not that of my birth. Antonia de Narváez once told me, and then regretted having done so, that I was born in Santa Fe de Bogotá, in a gigantic bed covered in uncured hides and beside a chair whose back was carved with a certain noble coat of arms. On sad days, my mother rescinded that version: I had been born in the middle of the Muddy Magdalene, on a barge that sailed from Honda to La Dorada, between bundles of tobacco and oarsmen frightened at the spectacle of that deranged white woman and her open legs. But, in light of all the evidence, that birth most likely took place on the solid riverbank ground of the predictable city of Honda and, to be precise, in that very room of the Beckman guest house where the owner, the good-natured man who would have been my stepfather, put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger upon learning that what was in that swollen belly was not his.
I have always thought admirable the coldness with which my mother says in her letter, “My husband has died,” when in reality she is referring to a horrid suicide that tormented her for decades and for which she would never stop feeling in part guilty. Long before his miserable cuckolded tropical fate, Beckman had asked—you know how these adventurers’ last requests are—to be buried in the Muddy Magdalene; and early one morning his body was taken out by a lighter to the middle of the river and thrown overboard so he could sink into the adjective-riddled waters of that unbearable song. As the years went by he became the protagonist of my childhood nightmares: a mummy wrapped in canvas who came up onto the beach, leaking water through the hole in the back of his head and half devoured by the
bocachico
fish, to punish me for lying to my elders or for killing birds with stones, for swearing or for that time I tore the wings off a fly and told it to fuck off on foot. The white figure of the suicide Beckman, my putative and dead father, was my worst nocturnal threat until I was able to read, for the first of many times, the story of a certain Captain Ahab.
bocachico
fish, to punish me for lying to my elders or for killing birds with stones, for swearing or for that time I tore the wings off a fly and told it to fuck off on foot. The white figure of the suicide Beckman, my putative and dead father, was my worst nocturnal threat until I was able to read, for the first of many times, the story of a certain Captain Ahab.
(The mind generates associations that the pen cannot accept. Now, while I write, I remember one of the last things my mother told me. Shortly before dying in Paita, Manuela Sáenz received a visit from a half-mad Gringo who was passing through Peru. The Gringo, without even removing his wide-brimmed hat, told her he was writing a novel about whales. Were there whales to be seen around there? Manuela Sáenz didn’t know what to say. She died on November 23, 1856, thinking not of Simón Bolívar but of the white whales of a failed novelist.)
S
o without precise coordinates, deprived of places and dates, I began to exist. The imprecision extended to my name; and to keep from boring the reader again with the narrative cliché of identity problems, the facile
what’s-in-a-name
, I’ll simply say that I was baptized—yes, with a splash of holy water and everything: my mother might be a convinced iconoclast, but she didn’t want her only son ending up in limbo on her account—as José Beckman, son of the crazy Gringo who killed himself out of homesickness before the arrival of his descendant, and a little while later, after a confession or two from my tormented mother, I became José de Narváez, son of an unknown father. All that, of course, before arriving at the surname that belonged to me by blood.
o without precise coordinates, deprived of places and dates, I began to exist. The imprecision extended to my name; and to keep from boring the reader again with the narrative cliché of identity problems, the facile
what’s-in-a-name
, I’ll simply say that I was baptized—yes, with a splash of holy water and everything: my mother might be a convinced iconoclast, but she didn’t want her only son ending up in limbo on her account—as José Beckman, son of the crazy Gringo who killed himself out of homesickness before the arrival of his descendant, and a little while later, after a confession or two from my tormented mother, I became José de Narváez, son of an unknown father. All that, of course, before arriving at the surname that belonged to me by blood.
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