Like This Afternoon Forever, page 1
Table of Contents
___________________
Chapter One: Güicán
Chapter Two: Facatativá
Chapter Three: The Putumayo
Chapter Four: Bogotá
Chapter Five: Soacha
Chapter Six: Barrio Kennedy
Chapter Seven: Parish House Of Soacha
Acknowledgments
Bonus Material: Excerpt from Cervantes Street
Copyright & Credits
About Akashic Books
for Isaías Fanlo
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
—from “Sonnet XXIX,” William Shakespeare
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 child
* * *
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.
