Jefferson checked the pyre, blew sparks to light the far side, which had not caught yet, grabbed a stick, and pushed a burning nest of twigs further into the heart of the flame. He moved mechanically, without expression, and I wondered whether he was capable of love or horror. Inside my own hollow body, inside the space where my soul had been, echoes of pain and loss rang out, and I knew my nightmares would never cease, and that Jefferson had never slept poorly in his life. The flames slowly rose, and Jefferson took me to the edge of the mountain, the pyre burning behind us.
By this time it was sunset. I looked out on the setting sun and realized that Jefferson had planned all this, down to the timing of dusk. I looked at his craggy face. He seemed satisfied, like a man after a heavy meal. Around me the yellows and purples of the flowers darkened with the fading sun, and the greens darkened into shades of blue and black. They blended into one another and into shadows, and I realized that this high, in the mountains, I did not know the names of things. We were so far up, among trees and flowers different from the trees and flowers I knew from the river valley. A nature both older and wilder. And I had the idiotic thought that perhaps these things had no name, and like Adam, I could name them.
• • •
Jefferson told me a delicate time was coming.
“There are two elections. For Congress, and for president.”
He said our man was Álvaro Uribe, who I didn’t know much about but whose face I had seen in the papers. Towns that voted for Uribe and his allies were with us. Towns that voted against him were with the guerrilla. It was my job to make sure towns were for us.
Everybody else got to rest. In the months before the elections there were police and soldiers out on roads where there had never been anyone but us before. Our paracos kept the peace and stayed out of trouble. Jefferson even had a man from the International Committee of the Red Cross come to talk to about seventy paracos in a classroom at a school in La Vigia. They sat in children’s desks while he told us about “international law,” and how it didn’t allow torture or “extrajudicial killings” or driving people from their homes. He was describing a lot of their work, and they sat and nodded their heads.
Meanwhile, I scheduled events and meetings with neighborhood associations. I reminded people what they owed us, and who we wanted them to vote for. In most places this was easy. Most people appreciated us, and the delinquents who didn’t we had chased out. On the edges of our territory, though, I could sometimes sense awkwardness, expressions of loyalty that seemed forced.
In Rioclaro they didn’t even act like they loved us. I reached the village on the night that their neighborhood association was supposed to meet, and when I entered the church basement I saw Luisa. She was standing in the crowd, shouting at the man running the meeting. The man we had selected to run these meetings.
“We are hardworking people,” she was saying. “We are good Christian people. We are not the enemies of anyone.”
All eyes were on her. Her passion for what she was saying made her face shine. She was so different from the girl I’d seen dancing awkwardly next to her beautiful friend. I felt proud of her, and glad I’d kept my knowledge of her from Jefferson. But what she was saying was dangerous. If a town does not share your enemies, then they are your enemy.
I waited until the end of the meeting. Then I approached her and told her the truth, that what she was doing was both stupid and dangerous. There are times in life when you can make decisions, and there are times in life when you should respect the place you are in, and the powers above you. This was one of those times.
“I don’t want trouble, and I respect you . . .” she began, and I slapped her.
“No,” I said, “you don’t.”
She stared at me hatefully. She raised her hands, as if about to strike me, then lowered them.
“If Jefferson was here he would break every one of your fingers,” I told her. “And then how would you play the piano?”
• • •
Election Day we hired buses to bring people out to vote. I coordinated all the schedules, and then after the elections went to La Vigia to find out how the towns voted. To see which towns were for us, and which were our enemies.
The local archivist was a muscular, angry-looking man who walked me over to the town gymnasium, hardly saying a word the whole time. Inside the gymnasium a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses were holding a meeting. They stood in the stands in ill-fitting suits, choked by neckties. We walked underneath the stands, made our way to the stairs, then farther down below, to a room reeking of mildew and bulging with papers, papers in garbage bags and old boxes stamped “Chiquita Banana,” papers spilling out onto the floor and papers bound tightly with rubber bands. And in one corner, the newest addition to the chaos, sat a neat stack of binders holding the list of local electoral results.
As I filtered through the filings, it seemed our municipality was in good order. Plenty of votes for candidates who had received Álvaro Uribe’s blessing. Few votes for Carlos Gaviria types. As the archivist stared at me sullenly, clenching and unclenching his fists, I took careful notes, mapping out the degree
