Which was true. Obviously. In training for Special Forces, an instructor had explained the difference between direct-action missions and foreign internal defense missions as the difference between treating the symptoms of an insurgency and treating the disease. A guy like Arif was a symptom. A weak government and a military without the support of its own people was the disease. I understood that. That day was a day for treating the symptoms. Tomorrow, hand-holding an Iraqi unit, would be treating the disease. That all made sense to me. But after those three missions, I couldn’t just think about the symptoms and the disease. I was increasingly worried about the patient.
I didn’t say this to Natalia, though. I switched back to talking about the baby, and her high blood pressure, and all the reasons neither of us had to worry.
2
JUAN PABLO 2016
There’s a gringa hen and a Colombian pig, and one day the hen says to the pig, “We have known each other for so long, and we have always done well together. We should start a business.”
And the Colombian pig thinks, Yes, I have known this gringa a long time, though I’m not so sure I’ve always done well by her. Still, she’s always done well, so perhaps going into business together will work out for me, too. And the Colombian pig says, “What is the business?”
And the gringa hen says, “We’ll sell breakfast sandwiches. I’ll provide half the ingredients. You provide the other half.”
“That sounds fair,” says the Colombian pig. “What is your contribution?”
“The eggs, clearly,” says the gringa hen.
“Clearly, yes,” says the Colombian pig. “And what about me?”
The gringa hen smiles. She lays a wing on the pig’s shoulder. “You? My sweet little Colombian pig. You’ll provide the bacon.”
My daughter told me that story. My daughter, Valencia. She heard it from her professor of law, who is, like seemingly every professor of law at Nacional, very much a man of the left. She told it to me the way she tells me every little excess or flourish of her professors, with an eye roll. “Not quite a mamerto, but almost,” she said, echoing what I have told her often before. But, for perhaps the first time, I detected a question behind her eyes. Perhaps she herself did not know it was hiding there.
“There’s some truth to that,” I told her. But I didn’t say more. We don’t talk about my work. It is not appropriate for children to know more about it than the honor it is due, and I still think of her, twenty years old, beautiful, with her mother’s eyes and, unfortunately, my weak chin, as a child. But it is true. I, more than anyone, would know. After all, for the past twenty years, I have been the bacon.
We left it at that and, in the manner of our family, did not return to the issue. I told myself, as I have told myself many times before, that one day we would have a talk. Or maybe I would write it all down, the true story of my life, without evasions and without the boundaries that distinguish the relationship between father and daughter, in which I must be the authority and the source of wisdom and she the subordinate, incapable of judgment or even of talking back. Maybe I will one day write it down and tell it to her like I would tell a friend, or a priest, or God. If I believed in true friends, or priests, or Gods.
But I think of her professor’s little joke tonight, as Valencia does her schoolwork and as my wife, Sofia, chops onions and I tap my fingers on my cigar box, trying to decide whether to pull out the Cohibas or the more expensive La Flor lanceros, given to me by General Campos on the day of my promotion to lieutenant colonel. Tonight, we have Sergeant Major Mason Baumer to dinner. He’s what brings Valencia’s joke to mind. Because if I am the bacon, then Mason, the U.S. embassy’s Special Forces Liaison, is the gringa hen laying my eggs.
“You’re sure he likes Italian food?” Sofia says.
“Everyone likes Italian food,” I say.
“Didn’t you say his wife is a paisa?” Sofia says. “I could have asked my mother how she makes bandeja . . .”
“My arteries cannot handle bandeja,” I say. “And Vale doesn’t like bandeja. And you don’t like bandeja. Besides, she’s not coming, and it’s her family that’s from Medellín. She grew up in North Carolina.”
“North Carolina, ah,” Sofia says. I can tell she’s thinking back to the trip we took to Fayetteville. “Probably never had good Italian then.”
I give the cigars one more look. Unequal partnership or not, Colombia still needs those eggs, especially as the peace deal looms and the nature of the war shifts. Gringa hens need to be kept happy. I decide upon the lanceros, and let out a long breath, then walk to the dining room to examine the table settings. Everything is ordered. Centerpiece precisely centered, place settings distributed evenly, symmetrically, with one setting on the left for our guest, providing him the view out the window, and one on the right side for our daughter, with Sofia and me at the end, creating an effect that is almost perfectly harmonious. I check the tablecloth, the mats. One is not quite right, I tap it gently on the right side, moving it so its edge runs parallel to the edge of the table, precisely an inch away. I let out another long breath.
“I can hear you,” Sofia says from the kitchen. “Stop it. Tonight will be fun. American military are fun.”
“Not this one,” I say.
“You’re a snob,” she says.
Perhaps, I think, though it’s more than that. The nature of my current job, and my relationship with Mason, revolves around an unpleasant truth, which is the extent to which a third-tier official from the American State Department or
