Issue 20

 Jorge Enrique Botero
Translated by David Feller Pegg

Chapter 1: Inesita’s High Heels

We have been under attack for over an hour and I have yet to fire a single shot. It’s almost dawn and old Gala will soon notice the R-15 fluttering in my hands. I can’t do anything. My body’s shaking like a piece of paper.

Gala yells for us to keep our heads down and just rain lead wherever we can. There are three of us in this trench. Three men hugging the ground and clinging to the Virgin Mary. There were four of us, but Corporal Sandoval tried to make a run for the bunker and was hit by mortar fire. He was blown to pieces. One of his arms landed right next to me and I saw that his watch said it was 5:11 in the morning.

I’m going to try one more time. Left arm out front. The butt of the gun against my right shoulder. My right hand on the trigger. If I could only fire the first shot!

Villamizar has run out of ammunition and watches me as he changes his clip. He is the first to notice I am utterly terrified.

“Think about something else and you’ll see your fear goes away!”

I follow his advice and bring to mind any memory. I am in front of my mom’s wardrobe, I’m ten years old, and I try on a pair of Inesita’s high heels.

At last my finger is on the trigger. I squeeze and fire the first shot. Old Gala tells me I hit one of them.

I keep shooting, entertained by a rush of distant memories. And of course the trip to Buenaventura comes to mind. I think it’s the best memory I’ve ever had, and I think it’s Hamilton’s best memory too.

“These motherfuckers are coming at us with everything!” Gala yells.

The old guy knows more than the rest of us. He’s been in this jungle for years. I’ve heard he has a kid with an Indian and that he was sent here as punishment, but it doesn’t seem like he’s being punished. He seems happy, giving us nicknames and messing around with everybody. He’s why nobody calls me Johny anymore, rather Manzana, like the soft drink I’m always asking for.

Yesterday, the Colonel told us to watch out because we could come under attack. Gala’s right, though. We’re not just under attack. They’ve come at us with everything.

That’s why there’s this barrage of explosives making us deaf. And this trail of dead rising with the first light of day. And the long screams when the lead rips open and burns our skin.

At the southern end of the base, you can hear the desperate cries of someone calling for the medic, but the medic is motionless, his chest trapped under the weight of an enormous beam. His immense bulging eyes look like they’re about to explode.

Flames are coming out of the command post, I mean we can’t call for any help.

A downpour has come with this first light of dawn, followed by a shower of mortar fire. Everything is blowing up right in front of my eyes. I see the three soldiers who were defending the guard post flying through the air. Their blood splatters all over the walls and our clothes, spraying everywhere. Even the rain flowing along the floor is red. I lie on my back and let the rain drench my face and bombard me with thoughts. Then the rage that’s built up in me over the last three months explodes: my old man is going to pay for this. He must have come home by now. Of course! His greatest embarrassment is finally over.

I’ve finally spent a clip. Who would have thought it possible! Me, putting in another clip when I should be putting on some nail polish.

Villamizar notices I’m lying face up, mesmerized as I look at my hands. “What now?” he asks me with a powerful grin. “Did one of your nails break?”

We burst into laughter in the midst of the roar of gunfire and gas cylinder bombs. This Pamplona guy is pretty fine (Gala came up with this nickname too) and you can tell he’s not like the others. I don’t know, he looks a bit like Fernando, my sister’s old boyfriend.

Fernando was something else. I remember when he had to sleep under my bed. He came over one Saturday afternoon looking for Maribel, but she and my mom had gone to La Caña Park to see the Jorge Baron concert. My dad was at work and my brother was in the army. I was thirteen and happy, especially when nobody was home. I could put on makeup. I’d wear high heels and earrings. On that Saturday, I was wearing my sister’s yellow bikini. When the doorbell rang, I threw on a shirt and some shorts. Fernando was seventeen.

“Is Maribel there?”

“No, she’s out, but if you want you can come in.”

The kid had already spotted the way I looked at him, because he even tried to grab my hand. We were watching television in the living room and he just grabbed it. I got real nervous and didn’t know what to do. I was shaking. Like a little while ago, when this hell began, I was shaking, and he told me to come closer. Then he leaned over and gave me a kiss on my mouth. He gave me a kiss, which made me shake even more. Then he grabbed my arm and took me to my room. When he found out I was wearing a bikini, he went nuts. He pulled down his pants, whipped out his dick, and I started to suck him off. But I didn’t know how to do it, I mean I ended up hurting him. So Fernando said: “No, come here, I’ll shove it in you.” He wanted to penetrate me. And I wanted to experiment. I was really nervous, but I let him show me what to do. He put some saliva on his hand, rubbed it on my ass, and then he nailed me. It hurt so much, so much it went straight to my soul, and then everything went dark.

While we were going at it, my mom and Maribel came home, making all sorts of racket. My sister was all excited because Iván Villazón had given her an autograph and supposedly flashed her a wink. Mom came in screaming my name.

“Johny, my boy! What are you up to?” And us butt naked.

So Fernando went under the bed, just as he was, and I put myself under the covers, pretending to be asleep. When Maribel came in, she jumped on the bed and told me about the concert. It had been fucking amazing. The only bad part was not finding Fernando. Strange, since he loved Vallenato music.

If we make it out of this, I’m going to get to know Pamplona better. You can tell he’s different … But with the way things are, it’s going to be difficult.

Last night, there were fifty-one of us when the Colonel got us in formation to give out candy. Now there are about thirty of us, and that’s counting the wounded.

There are also at least two thousand guerrilla fighters in the town and every minute they’re getting closer. I don’t think we’ll still be alive by noon.

I start on the other clip halfheartedly and ask Gala if he’s ever experienced anything like this. He tells me the most important thing is to keep holding out until reinforcements arrive.

A gas cylinder bomb just landed on what had been the barracks. The roof and walls collapse. The beds look strange out there in the open air. Our morale has also collapsed. It’s almost two in the afternoon and there’s no sign of any reinforcements.

Don Tarcisio Martínez will be pleased. Tomorrow his youngest son will appear in the death count from the battle of Pueblo Nuevo and will even be given military honors. He’ll be able to say I fought like a man who died defending democracy.

I swear if I make it out alive by some miracle I’ll settle the score with that old fucking bastard, even though my mom tells me I should try to understand him.

“Son, look, he’s a cop. Put yourself in his place.”

That’s right. But nobody puts themselves in mine. I was already sixteen when somebody told my dad they’d seen me on the street with a homo. And ever since I was thirteen, since the time I was with Fernando, I hadn’t had relations with anybody else. For years, I repressed myself so he wouldn’t get upset. Until I couldn’t take it anymore and started to go out with a classmate’s transvestite brother. I went absolutely everywhere with him. One night we went out and I came home all drunk. My dad was waiting for me and I told him right up to his face.

“Yes, I’m a homosexual and I like men. And I’m always going to be attracted to them and never to women. And nobody can stop me!”

“Inés!” he screamed. “Come here and listen to what this little boy’s saying. He’s a homo. Your boy turned into a homo. He just admitted it.”

And when my mom appeared in the living room, totally scared, he topped it off with a soap opera cliché.

“Either he leaves this house or I do.”

My mom told him that she wasn’t going to put out her youngest child, so the next day my dad left our home. I imagine that’s when he began to plot his revenge …

For the first time since the attack began, we can finally see the Colonel’s face. Tall, thin, and balding, with a sweaty face and a dust-ridden uniform, he emerges from the rubble of the command post.

He yells for us to keep holding out and orders the sergeant wielding the M-60 to change his position, since the guerrilla forces know where he is. Just as Sergeant Rueda Rico leaves his trench, a mortar shell scrapes the air and lands right where he was. Stunned, he begins to spin around, all crazy with his machine gun over his shoulder. Then, he takes off on a suicidal sprint and lands between Villamizar and Gala. The Colonel comes up from behind and falls on top of me. Careful, Colonel, don’t play with fire. Watch out, you’re in hell.

“Soldier, what are you laughing about?”

I remain silent and old Gala comes to my aid.

“That’s just a nervous laughter. He’s been that way all day, but he’s fought courageously.”

We drink some water from the Colonel’s canteen. This dust creates an unquenchable thirst. We’ve even been drinking water out of puddles. Water and blood. I notice I’m not hungry, despite not having had a bite to eat since lunch yesterday. Well, except for the candy from last night.

We went out to give candy to the kids, but we couldn’t find a soul. Not even in their houses. Carrillo from Bogotá made a good point.

“This really is Halloween. It’s become a ghost town.”

We laughed, but we should have been worried. If people have hunkered down, something must be up. It didn’t worry us at all though. We ate the candy and went to sleep, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

Now we’re in the middle of this nightmare, clinging on to the fantasy of some reinforcements that will never arrive, because—just like Gala says—this place is a huge prison, faraway from the rest of the world, where nothing ever arrives. A plane only comes once a week, and that’s if the landing field hasn’t flooded. The other day we were on guard duty at the airport and this guy—who is an airplane mechanic—told us that the money had been sent eight times to make a decent landing strip and eight times the politicians ended up keeping it for themselves.

The Colonel is clutching a portable radio, whispering pleas for help that get lost in the air. If my sister were around, she’d say no one listens to the Colonel. She comes up with a saying for everything. When we used to talk, she’d tell me she dreamed of being a journalist. But Maribel doesn’t talk to me anymore. (And she never even learned about what happened with Fernando.)

It’s going to be four in the afternoon and another dense rain has broken through the blanket of clouds. We’ve been firing our guns for the last twelve hours and our ammunition, troops, and morale are running short.

Suddenly, there’s a huge opening in one of the walls and for the first time we see the faces of the guerrilla fighters who have been attacking us since dawn. They slip into the base behind sheets of bullets, jumping over the rubble and facing our gunfire as if they didn’t care about dying.

They shouldn’t be more than thirty meters away from us now so we decide to get on our feet and launch a fierce attack to either save ourselves or finally meet our end. Gala comes out of the trench with a burst of gunfire and I’m right behind him, shooting and thinking about the trip where I hooked up with Hamilton.

Pamplona’s suggestion works! There’s a squad of guerrilla fighters in front of me, but I see the ocean in Buenaventura. Hamilton makes love to me in the water and I’m relishing it, until a horrific scream sends me back into the trench.

Villamizar is trying to jostle his intestines back inside with his blood-soaked hands. He looks at us with pleading lifeless eyes, which begin to tighten and then extinguish.

Then I start shaking again. I throw the rifle down, sit next to Pamplona’s body, and start to cry. In the background, you can hear more screams than gunfire. The guerrilla fighters are only five meters away and they tell us to surrender, that they’ll respect our lives. While sobbing, I hear the Colonel and Gala talking about suicide. The Colonel has put the rifle’s barrel under his chin and is about to shoot himself when three guerrilla fighters suddenly jump in the trench with their weapons drawn.

“You aren’t going any farther you motherfuckering goons. Hands in the air and walk outside. The party’s over.”

We raise our arms and they search us. You can smell sweat and gunpowder on them and they have a strange flash in their eyes.

We slowly walk over the remains of the wall and the roof covering the ground.

The only thing left standing in the kitchen is a battered stove. The refrigerator ended up in the middle of the yard. The barracks no longer exist. Neither does the command post or the guard stations.

When we get to the entrance of the base, we see another group who also have guns drawn on them. The Colonel signals for them to keep their spirits up, but it doesn’t alter the panic-ridden paleness of their faces.

Gala is behind me. He’s talking to himself and mumbling curses about his fate as an old cop. I’m shaking as I walk, paying attention to the intense hustle of the guerrilla fighters, celebrating and distributing the spoils of their victory: ammunition, utility belts, radios, pistols, and our rifles …

Once outside, we find ourselves with the rest of the survivors. On the street, hands in the air, confused gazes, and remnants of gunpowder on our exhausted bodies.

They make us get into formation. A female guerrilla fighter with incredibly long hair walks in front of the row of us, looking in our eyes, one person at a time.

“There are twenty-three!” she yells when she finishes her review. We turn seven seriously wounded over to some priests.

Incredible! Twenty-three. The same number hollered by First Sergeant Quijano Hugo when he got us in formation for the first time in Villavo three long months ago.

That day, I was still fuming, cursing out my dad and that snitch Alfonso, who had told him where I went whoring around on Saturday nights.

Of course I was also asking for it. I had become too wild and had pissed off my brother.

Ever since my dad had left our home, I got all worked up about making myself look feminine. And seeing as my friends were transvestites, I also wanted to have tits and began to inject hormones. I’d put on real tight shirts and wax my eyebrows. I had become so blatant my siblings started to make life impossible for me. They even stopped talking to me.

“All you do is embarrass me in front of everyone, but this gay shit is going to come to an end,” Alfonso would say.

My mom took me to a psychologist at the general hospital in Cali. The psychologist couldn’t do anything, because I told him I wanted to be this way and “not you or anyone will stop me. I’m going to be who I want to be. Period.”

So I started to get all femme and hang out with queens. They would introduce me to men, and I began to have relations with them. Not just one, but several. Whoever came along. Just to party. To see what they had. To see if they had big dicks.

On that fateful Saturday, I went out with some queens to one of the gay bars in Cali. It was like one in the morning when five cops and a lieutenant came into the place. They had the lights turned on and put us up against the wall. I was in a miniskirt and the cop that frisked me seemed like he was high. He nipped my thighs and my chest. He breathed down my neck and said a bunch of filthy things. He stuck his hands up my skirt and grabbed my balls so hard he yanked a scream out of me. The other cops laughed until the lieutenant told them to shut up and made them ask us for our IDs.

The cops brought the IDs over to the lieutenant. He looked at each one and then threw them on the ground. Until he came to mine.

“Martínez Parra, Johny Gerardo,” the lieutenant yelled.

“That’s me,” I said, after thinking about it for a few seconds.

“Well, you’re coming with us,” the lieutenant ordered.

And just as I was, in my skirt and heels, they took me to the police station in Cali’s Silohé neighborhood. The next morning someone sent me some men’s clothes and shoes. And some makeup remover too.

A military truck pulled up at noon. An hour later I was with a bunch of other kids in a huge yard at the military base. At around four in the afternoon, they had us get into another truck that took us to the airport. One hour later we saw the famous apocalyptic sunset of the eastern plains in Villavicencio.

After counting off and yelling there were twenty-three of us, First Sergeant Quijano Hugo told us that all civilians were homos and welcomed us to compulsory military service.