The Flight of the Condor: Stories of Violence and War from Colombia

Fear

Fear Manuel Mejía Vallejo “They should be here soon,” the old man says, drying off his brown face with a dirty towel. “Hopefully they’ll be less brutal.” His voice becomes a plea, lost now in the damp folds of the towel. Outside his café, boots march to the beat of Sergeant Mataya’s piercing voice: “Haaaalt!” he shouts, and the pavement is burned by the fierce stomping of heels. The soldiers’ faces shine with sticky perspiration under the midday heat. Browned with dust and fatigue, they stiffen their muscles at the sergeant’s command. The old man is no longer shaving. The steel blade of the razor trembles in his hand. “My beard needs a rest anyway.” He removes the soapsuds from his face with the towel, with which he also rubs his eyes. The soldiers will again fill his establishment with voices. He also will be filled with voices. Everywhere terror mounts: in the blades of the bayonets, in the steady march of the troops, in the silence of every corner, in the impossible response. Before, the sounds were those typical of a village with doves in its streets. Now, he hears military vehicles, the sharp orders of the commander, gunshots. The doves display their love uneasily on the rooftops; they seldom fly to the deserted streets. He wraps the towel around his neck and with weariness in his voice he says to his wife, “What are we going to do? We have to make a decision. Our son already did.” 59 She sustains a desperate silence. They look nervously at the same spot. One day the bomb appeared . “Who could have brought it here?” the old man asked himself . They could kill a whole squadron of soldiers with it. “It was my son. He sent it because the revolution is expanding. He hoped that I, too, would make up my mind.” That was two months ago. The old man didn’t agree with his son. He didn’t turn him in, nor did he allow the bomb to be used; he kept it for no particular reason in a box of potatoes. Now it’s constantly bursting under its stringent obligation to explode in front of Sergeant Mataya and his soldiers. Thinking of the possible assault, his old leathery face goes pale, his movements get clumsy. What is he waiting for? The presence of the soldiers terrifies him. “At least before, we lived, we listened to the radio, read the newspaper, got together with old friends to talk about days gone by. Or we were silent, without much concern.” Again he hears the heels striking pavement, the shouted orders, and the rhythmic march in the middle of the street, until the squadron has become something amorphous in the ears of the old man. The towel has been lowered from his face to his neck inside his unbuttoned shirt. “Are they the new soldiers?” asks the woman. Her husband begins to clean the bar with an old rag. “The new ones arrive tomorrow. I don’t know how we’ve stood it.” “Maybe they won’t be worse, Jacinto.” The soldiers are not bad people. They have orders. But orders and soldiers have become one and the same thing for the townspeople. Soldiers are things that carry pistols and rifles and bayonets, that bloody their boots with the gaping flesh of guerrillas. The sound of boot heels shifts from the cobblestones of the street to the brick of the sidewalk to the wooden planks of the establishment . Heavy soldier boots. Acrid, oozing fumes, thick green drill jackets, sharp gray weapons, furrowed eyes, brusque gestures. Whirlwinds breathing like animals. The old man twists the towel in his hands. 60 Manuel Mejía Vallejo 61 Fear The interior darkens as the uniforms appear panting against the door. Shadows gyrate on the splintered floor. “We’re tired. The usual,” says Sergeant Mataya. He wants to order aguardiente and say that they couldn’t track down the guerillas. Sergeant Mataya, a name worthy of his stature. Wide mouth of powerful teeth. Hairless jaw aggressively set. Resolute eyes, devoid of brows. Prominent cheekbones to tighten his skin of old copper. “They will all fall!” he rasps. “That son of yours is a damn fool.” “He’s just a kid, . . .” Sergeant Mataya stares at him. The old man repeats “just a kid . . .” as if in solidarity. Terror begins to...