Infinite Country(15)
“My name is Elena.”
He studied her as if she might pick his pocket in plain view. None of the typical blitzed tourist expressions of dazed joy and overstimulation. She could tell in the past ten seconds he’d already determined he was much smarter than she was.
“What can I do for you?”
She understood he was waiting for lies so she opted for a version of the truth. “I ran away from my boarding school. I need to get back to Bogotá. My father is waiting for me. I have no money. Can you help me?”
He may not have believed her but was intrigued enough not to shoo her off as tourists do to children begging outside restaurants for change. His Spanish was good, though he gargled his r’s rather than let them rest on his tongue and extended his vowels like some trench-coated villain. He said he was French. His name was Charles but he went by Carlos, since he’d been in Colombia for years already, obsessed with the country since he first heard about Ingrid Betancourt, held captive in the jungle, and kind of fell in love with her. He studied philosophy, worked a government job that was a slow eradication of his essence until he heeded his heart’s call to South America.
Talia acted fascinated though she was already sick of the other café people eyeing her as if she were some baby puta looking to pick up.
“Do you mind if we go somewhere else to talk?”
The guy looked uncertain but followed her out of the café to the cobblestone road. He wore jeans and a T-shirt under a denim jacket. On his wrist, a macramé bracelet in the national colors, the kind Colombian girls give their foreign boyfriends.
“Where is your girlfriend?”
A look now as if this Elena girl had come to entertain him. “I left her in Caldas.”
They settled onto a bench in front of a church on the plaza. He lit a cigarette and offered her one, which she took. Silence, until he slid his hand over hers. She was a virgin but had kissed four different boys since she turned thirteen. His hand was heavy and rough, but she didn’t push it away.
“Tell me, Elena. What do you want from me?”
“I need to get back to Bogotá. My father is waiting for me.”
“You just want bus fare?” He sounded disappointed.
She sensed he was a man yearning for purpose. If not for his whole life at least for that day. The sun was a buttery smear behind the mountainfold. In a few minutes, there would be no light.
“Do you have a car?”
“I do.”
“You could drive me yourself. It would be safer than taking the bus alone. You wouldn’t hurt me.”
He hesitated, maybe expecting her to beg or offer something in exchange. “I don’t like going on these roads at night. I rented an apartment here for the week. If your story is true I imagine you have nowhere else to stay. You can come with me, and I’ll take you home in the morning.”
She smiled thinly. “Can you also buy me some new clothes so I can change out of these dirty ones? I saw a store earlier. We can still make it before they close.”
* * *
His apartment was one room of stucco walls under wooden beams. They sat on the sofa, a picnic of empanadas and chorizo between them. She wore the new jeans, blouse, and sweater he bought her. They couldn’t find socks for sale, so he gave her a pair of his to wear with her prison sneakers, with their crusted canvas and gnashed soles. He’d wanted to take her to a restaurant for dinner. She explained that even though the news wouldn’t show her face, her picture had probably been circulated among the police stations of the region. She didn’t want to be spotted and turned over to the law when she was just trying to get home.
“Could I get in trouble for helping you hide?”
“They never do anything to foreigners. Besides, being charitable is not a crime.”
He liked this answer and poured her more wine, which she’d barely been sipping.
“I can’t believe you’re only fifteen. I thought you were much older. Your face. Something… I don’t know.”
He was thirty-eight. He came to Colombia to teach French. His students were mostly rich Medellín housewives, since people looking for practicality usually chose to learn English. “So many people want to leave this country,” he said. “I can’t understand it. Why would anyone want to leave the most beautiful place on earth?”
Talia’s father said people don’t leave Colombia looking for money so much as looking for peace of mind. She told the Frenchman people left this country for the same reason he left his. It wasn’t giving him what he needed. To that, he agreed, adding he always had the impression he’d been born in the wrong place. She wondered about that, if by birth one could already be out of step with destiny, but only replied that she was very tired and ready to sleep.
He told her to take the bed and he’d stay on the sofa. She approached the mattress, removing only her sneakers before slipping under the blanket, closing her eyes though the lights were still on. In the prison school, Talia lay on her bunk at night running films across her inner lids: images of her mother’s face, scenes from her life in the north, a life that would soon be hers too. She knew Elena from photos, though she probably wouldn’t have been able to pick her mother out of a crowd until recent years, when phone calls came with video—that is until the signal weakened and the picture froze or went black. On those video chats, Talia saw her mother’s bedroom behind her. Watched as she walked around with the phone to show Talia their house, her brother’s and sister’s rooms. Elena said Talia would share a room with Karina when she arrived. They’d already gotten a bed for her. She took Talia on a tour of the surrounding land. Silken grass, trees with leaves that brightened and shed with the mystery of seasons, unlike in Bogotá where the only weather shifts were from wet to wetter. In her mother’s winter, Talia saw tendrils of snow on their windows. In their summer, she saw her siblings sun-blushed, hair slick from swimming in the pool. Some days the Bogotá sun was naked enough for Talia to taste life beyond the elevated confines of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, smashing the climatic monotony, but then the sun would cover in clouds again and she’d remember those minutes of summer were a lie. The best her measure of the Andes could offer was a cycle of seasons in a single day.