User:Maria Camacho
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NO HISTORY
I want to find
The path of your life
As memories get erased
With the passage of time
I must uncover
The trail of you
Across the years
Where you’ve dissolved
With no past
Disappearing into infinity
Leaving my time
And the world of life
Without any traces
Of that instant
As we’ve known it
When you made history
Come to this websites
[ http://erbmoh2.tripod.com/thebooksevenminutes]
This poem is in the memory of dad, who died ten years ago.
I REMEMBER
As I look at your pictures,
I remember those years
When we talked
About life.
They’re memories in space,
sounds that float in air
and fly around me
in the infinity of time.
Your memory is alive
in the world inside me
and in the universe
I see at night.
Your words I hear
like echoes from the past
flowing through my soul
and reaching for the stars.
Go to this website
This next poem is dedicated to my father's novel called seven minutes.
SEVEN MINUTES
Homer, money you chased
From babyhood to old age
Then Mario wrote those letters
Of sweet, funny scenes
Throughout a country gone mad
While bureaucrats swam in an orgy
Of blocked roads and crumbling buses
And ghosts danced frantically
At the sound of drums
Homer, you’ve changed my life
With your yacht
And women
All false
And full of appeal
Until the most famous people
Gathered in that ship
To see the end of the world
As the Beatles played
Their melodious songs
And the sun exploded
In a big bang
Homer the clever
Dreamed by a glorious mind
Interred in the depths of a book
Never sent to the world
Sulking in the midst of time
Buried in an orgy of dust
Under a bed
Homer, you're my heroe!
ISMAEL CAMACHO ARANGO
Doctor Ismael camacho Arango was born in Lebrija, Colombia in 1926. He got his degree of medicine in the universidad nacional de Bogota in 1952.
His literary career started when he won a short story competition in 1967. He wrote his book siete minutos in 1971.
The novel is a future vision of our industrialist society and of the citizens who only think of having money. The day will come when people will only worry about themselves.
Laugh and cry with the characters and adventures the author describes in this book full of morbid humour, where he was the master.
Dr. Ismael Camacho died in Palmira, Colombia in 1995. Web Site: [8]
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Siete minutos by Ismael Camacho Arango.[10]
The book has a humoristic look on life. We see the corruption and intrigue existing in Latin American governments then and now.
Homer is a foreigner in Colombia. He becomes very rich by taking advantage of poor people and society in general.
Mario is rich but wants to be poor. His butler puts him in a plane to Hawaii where he marries a girl. Then he discovers it was all part of a Holliwood film.
Our two heroes get together for the final chapter of man on this earth. The sun explodes in a nova and sends the planet out of its orbit.
The end of the world is told in an anonymous letter. Then Mario takes over the narrative and tells us what happens in Homer’s yacht. His story is spiced by the effects of the psychedelic drugs he has taken.
Mario, Eugene (a girl he befriends) the playboy(someone they find in a frozen tank) and Homer are the last people alive on earth. They meet aliens who look like lobsters.
JOSE ISMAEL CAMACHO A LIFE Jose Ismael Camacho was a Colombian writer. He was a clever man with a giant imagination. He was born in lebrija- Colombia on the 03- 16- 1926 and died in Palmira- Colombia on the 10-21-1995 I’m telling the story of my father in the next few pages. His life is very important to me. He was a writer like me but did not share my idea of Cryonics. I can’t accept his death, even though it happened ten years ago. I didn’t want him to die and disappear forever.
I’m sharing with you the life of a clever, funny and gifted Colombian writer, a man who could talk about any topic and knew everything. A father that I miss and wished he could have been preserved for eternity.
Santander del Norte was a quiet province in the north of Colombia at the beginning of the twentieth century. It had been rocked a few times by the wars between the liberals and the conservadores during the last century. In a quiet village called Lebrija an hour away from Bucaramanga, a young woman (Josefina Camacho) went in labour. She already had two other children and had lost a few others at birth.
Little Horacio Camacho was five years old and his sister Lijia, two years old as they waited with their father outside the room. As Josefina pushed for a last time, a rose faced child appeared in the world, locks of brown hair stuck to his wet head.
The two children outside the room heard the baby crying and pushed the door. The father, Ismael Camacho, rushed to his wife’s side and admired the new addition to the family, while the midwife cleaned the child and cut the umbilical cord.
The midwife didn’t let him near the baby. Josefina had lost another child during the previous year. The midwife wanted to make sure everything would be fine this time. Ismael led his two other children out of the room. He gave them some lunch while the midwife made sure mother and baby were all right.
That evening little Ismael slept in a small cot next to his mother’s side. The sound of cockerels singing woke them up the next morning. As the child cried, his mother put him to her breast. The nmemory of her other children dying when young was fresh in her mind.
Little Jose Ismael grew up into a chubby child. He had golden locks and looked like an angel from the Sixtine chappel. He possessed a creatrive mind, even at a tender age. He spent hours in the fields near his home, looking at the birds and the wonders of nature. Many things lived in his fertile imagination. Homer, the hero of his book might have been born as he admired nature.
My father's father died when he was five years old. Then young Josephina travelled from their small town in northern Colombia with her three children towards the mountains of central Colombia, where her uncles, the priests lived.
Another relative helped them to treck on horses, through old roads. Jose Ismael held his mother's waist as the animal galloped down the road. Ligia and her brother shared another horse.
It was an adventure. They led a primitive life,as they travelled towards the interior of the country in 1931. As little Jose Ismael looked at nature all around him, he dreamed with another world.
They arrived at Choconta, where the uncles lived, a few days later. it was a small town lost in the Andes, where the children went to school. They led another life amongst the village in the middle of the mountains.
My father's uncles were catholic priests and paid for my father's education. Jose Ismael was 14 years old when the second war world started. He used to read everything about the conflict. He liked going to the movies to see films and the trailers of the time.
He finished school and studied medicine at the Universidad Nacional of Bogota. He got his degree in medicine and married his second cousin, Cecilia Mogollon, on the 14 of February 1952. Maria Cecilia Camacho (The writer of this page) was born on the fifteenth of February1953. My brother Ismael Hernando Camacho was born onthe thirty first of May 1954.
This is part of my father's novel:
SIETE MINUTOS
Two and two are seven. By Homer’s imagination filed an army of green soldiers, who looked like green dollars. The sea seemed like an unending pile of green dollars. What about the clouds? He would have a rain of green dollars if he sold them.
A slight rain, lasting half an hour, should produce a three thousand dollars profit. A two hour thunderstorm would cost a small fortune. Whoever couldn’t afford it would die of thirst. Homer imagined his employees trying to solve the water problems of New York, the dry weather of Morocco or the need for beautiful sunsets in Bombay.
He looked at the sea and saw it covered in green dollars. Green dollar was his favourite colour.
What about the waves? They should be used to move turbines and lift tractors. It was a waste of energy to have them just rolling around. They must be classified by their size. The small ones would be worth one hundred dollars and the big ones fifteen hundred dollars. The froth should be included in the price with different colour to suit different tastes.
The world is crazy, Homer thought while sipping his favourite scotch. Chickens should lay their eggs in boxes and sardines ought to grow in tins. The air must be bottled and whoever can’t pay for it has to die. People without any money shouldn’t live. They’re bad for society.
They contaminate the air with their dead bodies and waste much needed food. We’ll get rid of the unemployed, when the air is controlled by a worldwide association of proletarians. They contaminate the planet with their bodies and their rubbish.
That control should have another positive effect. People who can’t buy the air, should die in special sanatoriums and their organs used for transplants. The poor things would get money for something they don’t need anymore.
Homer’s anguish trebled as he thought of the passivity of matter, people’s laziness and the indifference of galaxies.
Nasa spends billions of dollars sending humans to the space station and probes to the moon and Mars. Half of that money would buy Manhattan and part of the Hudson River to charge the toll, or a fleet of ships to look for oil in the seven seas. They could purchase The Vatican and convert it into the biggest museum in the world, or rebuild the Chinese wall with neutron bombs. Homer would like to build his home inside there and empty the yellow sea to fill it with dollars. Why did they have to go to the moon?
He felt that anguish again. It had to be a sign of superiority. Some men were under God’s tutelage while others had bad luck.
Homer had been born poor by accident but was guided by divine inspiration since his birth. He didn’t remember his father. He had been a man without limits, a man without space. His mother on the other hand had acquired a profile as vigorous as that of Washington in the dollars.
She had told him a funny anecdote. One day he had flown. He remembered that event with mixed feelings. He had just started to crawl and saw a dirty dollar that had fallen from somewhere. It whirled around the patio propelled by the wind.
The dollar went up and down and span around. Baby Homer looked as the piece of paper flew like a butterfly and was entangled in the branches of a tree. The child couldn’t take his eyes away from the money. He flew up there to rescue the dollar and put it in his wet nappies. Everybody thought he had God’s blessings. He must be an angel because the wings of angels had been invented to rescue money from trees.
“Dolls,” he muttered.
He wanted to tell his mother how he felt about dollars but she wouldn’t listen.
“He wants a doll,” she said.
His mother bought him a few dolls but he didn’t touch them. Homer didn’t know why his parents never exploited his qualities. They let him walk like anyone else and never put dollars by his eyes or his wings.
They didn’t see the money anymore after the incident. Confusion reigned in the region and it became part of another country.
Nobody knew where she or he had been born. More than three countries disputed the honour to have been Homer’s place of birth. He was a hero and in some ways greater than his Greek counterpart.
The chain of his existence might have been interwoven by a benevolent God who wanted him to gain glory. The fact that he had no country was an advantage in his life. If you don’t have a country, you can be a citizen of anywhere in the world and without any inhibitions.
Homer thought as he finished his glass of scotch. Schools should finish. Why did they teach children so much rubbish? I never learned anything and most of the wise men in the world are my slaves now. Many documents accredit my relationship with the best universities while hundreds of papers signed by the pope and his dignitaries show that I have bought a place up in heaven.
Homer had never been to school. His parents had gone to South America a long time ago. It looked from afar as a place full of gold and fools. The first was a lie but the second one turned out to be true.
He didn’t have time to learn his own language and never spoke Spanish properly. He said a mixture of things but everyone managed to understand him. He didn’t read and write properly and seemed as ignorant as his Greek counterpart.
He remembered the first few times he had appeared in public. He had gone to the ugliest part of the city with a suitcase in each hand. He sold his merchandise on easy terms to men who were hungry, had syphilis or tuberculosis. He reminded his customers of all the pain, suffering and sweating his goods had cost him. He had paid for them in cash but they could do it on credit and without any interest.
Homer thought he shouldn’t give anything free to poor people. That had been one of the strongest pillars of the economy. Rich people look after their money, while the poor like to pay their debts. That’s the reason they remain poor.
Homer’s business improved. He hired a boy to pull a cart with a few battered suitcases and he marched in front of it. Homer sold brassieres, trousers, table cloths, woven textiles from exotic places and colourful beads against bad luck. Sometimes he used a bicycle to collect the money his poor customers owed him. He cried if they didn’t pay, and his laments would soften the hardest person. Engineers should use them to build better roads.
As time went past, Homer looked half starved. He wore rags but the notes grew in his purse. He counted his money every night in the dilapidated room he shared with other people. It had a strict timetable. A man, his wife and four children lived in it up to eleven o’clock in the evening. They had to look after a factory afterwards. At three o’clock in the morning it was a cafeteria for the bus drivers and at three in the afternoon the workman and his family came back again. Homer slept for four hours in the room. He didn’t have any trouble falling asleep and counted his money in his dreams. He sold his food for the rest of the night and slept on his seat when he didn’t have many customers.
One day Homer had a shop. He called it: El Baratillo. It was between a café in the central market playing tangos and rancheras twenty four hours a day, and a drugstore where nonqualified doctors prescribed medications. A fish shop in front of it had a smell of putrefaction that stuck to the clothing. It gave Homer an additional advantage. He didn’t spend money in water and soap.
The country was declared in state of emergency and anyone caught in the streets after eight pm was arrested. They had to stay in jail until six o’clock in the morning. Then Homer became a cook. He made delicious hamburgers of dog meat and as good as the ones made of beef. The police detained him with a basket full of food.
He slept the night in prison on a few boxes and covered with rags. It seemed better than his usual room. He sold his food to the other inmates.
“El baratillo” became an institution. A neck tie that cost forty pesos was sold on credit at fourteen pesos and fifteen cents. A dress of four hundred pesos could be reduced to one hundred and twenty and the same with everything else.
Homer bought an old bicycle to visit the houses of his customers and collect the weekly quotas. He swept and tidied his small bedroom and paid himself a tiny wage. He drank a cup of tea with a bit of cheese on Sundays and sometimes switched his light on before he went to sleep.
One day something happened that changed Homer’s life. It started in a simple way like all the great things in the world.
An Indian with high cheek bones, long black skirt and his hair in a pony tail had come in the shop. He looked like one of the figurines of San Agustin, as he stood against the dirty white wall. He remained there until the last client had left the shop.
He invited the businessman to the darkest corner of the room after checking they were alone. Then he opened a greasy bag.
Homer saw an Indian’s head reduced to the simplest expression. It had its eyes shut while its mouth had been sewn. The head had been cleanly cut whilst the hair went down to what it had been its shoulders. Homer felt attracted and repulsed at the same time.
The head looked like its owner and anyone would think it was his son. It seemed like a transistorised man’s head. Homer thought he had discovered something never imagined. Balboa must have felt like that when he set eyes on the Pacific Ocean, or Columbus when he shouted “Land” for the first time. In a moment of generosity he invited the man to have a cup of tea.
The Indian accepted the invitation. Homer marvelled at the similarity between the Indian and the small head.
Children should play with reduced men instead of artificial toys, Homer thought as he sipped his insipid tea.
He tried to obtain more details from the Indian, but the man hardly spoke. Homer’s questions were answered by the Indian’s silence. They agreed by gestures, on a price for the head.
Homer gave him a few bits of cloth he had been unable to sell. He promised an Inca treasure if the man came back again.
He put the small head in a padded envelope, and mailed it to a friend in the USA the next morning.
They received it with deserved honours in the great country of the north. One of the most respectable houses of the Fifth Avenue asked for ten thousand more heads and they would pay a good price for them.
The Indian’s second visit to the shop happened a few weeks later. Homer led the man to his private room and gestured to his only chair.
As the Indian opened a parcel, another head appeared. It seemed almost identical to the first one. Homer gave a bag to the Indian. The man looked inside and his eyes widened.
He stood up and hopped around the room. He finished with his dance and put the bag in his satchel. Homer offered him an infinite quantity of coca in exchange for heads. He sounded logical. The Indians could be rich in coca if they wanted to.
He wanted to see the chief of the tribe in exchange for a few sacks of coca.
Homer’s name appeared in the newspapers for the first time: Foreign businessman wishes to visit savages. The article said Homer would take civilisation to the hidden corners of the tropical jungle.
The Indian came to the shop a few days later and waited for Homer to finish doing business.
Homer packed a few things in a suitcase. He shut the shop and followed the man. They boarded a bus that left them at the edge of the jungle. Homer looked with curiosity at the undulating plane full of trees.
“Will we go by car?” he asked
The Indian gestured to a few mules munching the grass and Homer gasped. He had never ridden on a horse or a mule before. The man put the cases on one of the beasts and helped Homer to get on his animal.
They went out of the town and through the plain. The Indian rode in front while Homer tried to make his mule move. His body hurt with every step the beast took.
They travelled through the jungle at a slow pace. Homer didn’t care about the mosquitoes or the snakes. He had his mind set on the Gringo’s dollars.
He lost count of the days they moved through the jungle and they slept in a tent during the nights. The Indian made tea on a fire in the mornings.
“We are near,” the man said one day.
It was the first time he had spoken a whole sentence. Perhaps the jungle made him talk.
Homer’s bottom was black and blue and he walked like a cowboy. He had to sleep on his back in the evenings. He felt like a conquistador trying to bring the light to the wild parts of South America.
A small man waited by a hut in a clearing. He vowed in front of Homer.
“The chief is pleased to meet you,” the Indian said.
Homer dismounted from his mule and staggered towards a seat, as the two men spoke in another language. They looked at him.
“He wants to talk about business now,” the Indian said.
As Homer nodded and wiped the sweat off his forehead, the chief offered him a cup filled with a clear liquid. Homer almost choked on it.
“It’s the chief’s liquor,” the Indian said.
The interview took place amongst the trees. It was between Homer, the Indian, the chief, three snakes and thousands of mosquitoes.
Homer opened his case and put the bags of coke on the floor. The chief mumbled something after smelling the powder.
“He thanks you for God’s mineral,” the Indian said.
“Where are the ten thousand heads?”
The Indian translated and the chief gestured to a bag on the floor. Homer opened it and saw three heads. The Indians could only count up to one and anything over such a figure didn’t exist.
Homer had to teach them how to count. He explained to the two men that other numbers existed apart from one.
He put a finger up and said, “One.”
They did the same thing and Homer tried with the number two. The chief put two of his fingers up and said, “Two.”
Homer smiled. “It’s good.”
“It’s good,” they said, with three of their fingers up.
“No,” Homer said.
The chief showed four fingers, “No.”
Homer had to start with number one again. Two hours later the men had learned to count up to ten. He told them that ten thousand would be many times ten.
He gestured to the coke. “I’ll give you ten thousand bags if you bring me the same amount of heads.”
“We don’t have so many Indians,” the Indian said.
Homer gestured to a depression on the jungle floor. “If you fill all of that with heads, I will bring as much coca.”
They seemed impressed with the amount of coca Homer had promised them.
The Indian boiled some water and Homer treated them to a cup of tea. The chief sipped his drink and looked at the coca in the bag.
“The chief is pleased,” the Indian said
Homer needed many heads. All the heads they could find had to be sent to him. They would get a similar quantity of coca. He slept that night in the chief’s hut and dreamed with the heads. They chased him all over the place, while muttering something through their sewn lips.
He woke up to the sounds of the jungle and under a cloud of mosquitoes. After a bit of breakfast the chief had prepared, Homer got ready to go back to civilisation.
“The chief’s town is a few minutes away,” the Indian said.
Homer frowned. A town meant many heads and they would bring dollars to his pockets.
“Can I see it?” he asked.
The man conferred with the chief and nodded his head. They led him through the vegetation until Homer could see more huts. A few children appeared while dogs barked.
As Homer looked at the naked people, his eyes widened. He could sell them his merchandise but the heads were more important for the moment.
They packed their things on the mules and left later. As the donkey trotted along the path, Homer looked at the three heads inside his bag. He hoped he would get many more heads. The gringos would like them.
He felt satisfied even though his body ached. He expected to earn good money from this transaction.
The papers spoke of the young foreigner. The citizens of the country didn’t care about the jungle, while Homer had gone to meet the indigenous population.
The heads started to arrive at the shop and the coca travelled through the rain forest to the chief. Homer had mailed two thousand heads to the US by the end of the year. They belonged to a neighbouring tribe where only two hundred people had escaped with their lives.
Homer was angry. The country needed money and with the Indian’s effort it had gained a few dollars. Now they said the heads had finished. A foreigner sacrificed his life to better the country while the citizens slept.
The Indian appeared in the shop again. Homer took him to his private room and gestured to his only chair.
“Did you bring any heads?” Homer asked.
“No one has died.”
“Couldn’t you kill a few enemies?”
“We don’t have any wars,” the Indian said.
Homer thought the Indians had to steal the neighbour’s cows or their women. That might start a war. The man left the shop in silence as his tribe would suffer if the coca stopped.
The heads kept on coming and Homer was happy. He earned money from the shop and the heads gave him dollars. He acquired fame as an exporter and earned his rights as an importer. Then he became interested in cigarettes full of marihuana and his horizons broadened even more.
He didn’t see the Indian again. A man with a basket covered in a cloth came to see him one day.
Homer finished serving his customers and shut the shop. As the man pushed the cloth away, he saw two small heads and a piece of dirty paper with something written on it: Mr. Homer. We send you the last two heads of our tribe. They are the chief’s and my own. Bye.
As Homer looked inside the basket, his heart beat faster. He recognised the Indian who had made him happy. He seemed to be asleep and his lips had been sewn together. It looked superfluous. He had not spoken much during his life.
Homer gave a few pesos to the man and shut the door. The business had come to an end. Nothing is eternal and the Indians only had one head.
Heroes never give up. Homer had seen the sea in his dreams whenever he went to sleep. It could be an ancestral calling as his forebears had sailed the seven seas. The Indian adventure had earned him respectability amongst the business community.
Homer borrowed a suit. Then he gave a talk in the local library about the importance of the sea.
“We used to have two large coasts filled with maritime treasures. I love the sea,” he said with tears in his eyes.
A few people in the audience also cried. They thought he remembered his country. Homer promised to have the best ships in the world. He finished and the audience applauded.
Many articles in the newspapers spoke of the foreign businessman travelling in the back of a truck to the nearest port.
Homer owned small vessels at first. They had exotic names: Atenas, Esparta and The Termopilas. The sailors put fish all over the ships. They would smell like proper fishing vessels, even though they never caught anything. Homer had the aroma of fish from the shop near El Baratillo.
Homer never set foot in one of his own vessels. They were not safe and defied death by immersion. That’s how doctors without a degree call death by drowning.
Homer’s boats didn’t go fishing. He had good international relations because of the business with the heads. The boats brought contraband along the river to be sold in his shop.
Homer lived the same way as before. He slept on a few boxes and drank his cup of tea with a bit of cheese on Sundays. He woke up during the nights and barked, while walking around his room. He acquired a lot of practice and sounded like a pedigree German shepherd.
Homer punished himself if he forgot to sweep the room. He reduced the amount of tea in his cup. It played havoc with his health and he nearly fainted sometimes.
Homer worked very hard. He was his own boss, secretary, and accountant. He had to do his own cleaning, cooking and guard the premises as a dog.
He didn’t feel well. He went to see a doctor who treated poor destitute orphans for free. Homer was also an orphan.
The doctor said Homer suffered from bad nutrition. He had to eat but food cost money and he couldn’t afford it.
Homer wrote a letter to himself and asked for a substantial increase in his own wages. He didn’t have an answer as he had to travel to the port that afternoon in one of his trucks full of merchandise. He always travelled on the boxes. He would admire the view and could have a free shower if it rained. He absorbed great quantities of free vitamin D, if it was sunny.
He had good luck this time. Somebody who travelled in the driver’s cabin had a dog. The man gave Homer some of his lunch to feed the animal. Our man ate everything. He had not had such a nutritious lunch for a long time.
He felt much better that afternoon and suffered an erection while trying to sleep in the back of the truck. Then he masturbated.
It’s cheaper than doing it with a prostitute, Homer thought as the sperm ran over the boxes. Why didn’t he marry himself? Then he might increase his own salary.
Homer’s Industries answered in an unexpected way. He wrote a long declaration of love and proposed marriage to himself. He thought about it for a whole week but the hunger made him answer yes.
The ceremony was solemn given the circumstances. One of his sailors brought two salted fish from the port and bread with cheese for his wedding party. The recently married man went to the doctor complaining of stomach pains.
“You were starving yourself,” the doctor said. “You have to eat slowly at first.”
The situation of our young executive improved after his marriage. He ate fish, meat or even eggs three times a week. He looked healthier and masturbated often.
Homer made a lot of money. Taxes had also gone up in spite of all the tricks he used. He could feed himself for ten years with the money he spent in tax.
His brain started to work. Up to now he had lived following the right path. He said he would go to the jungle and everyone supported him. He had sent the heads to the US. Then he noticed the sea and now his boats sold contraband.
The country went through a bad patch. Every day men, women and children appeared dead and nobody cared. Genocide became one of the national industries just as football and politics.
Widowers with a lot of children were numerous. Why didn’t anybody help them?
Homer’s eyes filled with tears. He had another ingenious idea. As he cruised the poor parts of the city in his old bicycle, he wanted to find land to build houses. They would be called: “Poor Widow’s Housing.”
He found a cheap place to buy. It lay in a low plain without any water, light or sewer. He paid for some houses to be built while the weather was good. Each unit had three rooms with a muddy floor and no toilet.
As Journalists heard of the new widow’s helper, Homer became more famous than Saint Francis of Assize. The papers spoke of the five chalets destined to redeem the widows of the violence.
The bishop was a practical man. He accepted Homer’s project after a few concessions. He wanted to elect a young widow for a pastoral mission. She had to be younger than twenty five years old.
The bishop wrote the following letter to be read in the church for a few consecutive Sundays:
Dear children.
Our flock has been invaded by the wolves the scriptures talk about. Atheists and sinners try to lead astray the herd God has given me.
You have witnessed my efforts to kill those wolves. It seems as if the earth throws them out in major numbers every day. These atheists are the antichrists the scriptures talk about but hell will teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.
Assassins without any faith kill men, women and children. Our churches have been filled by orphans and poor widows who ask the heavens for retaliation. God will punish the sinners just as he did to the Egyptian children.
That is why you must be afraid of his anger. You must repent of your sins. If the Devil appears from the abyss the angels can also come from heaven. God hasn’t abandoned us yet.
A foreigner called Homer has dedicated his life to help the widows and orphans of the violence. We mustn’t let our angel alone. We need the solidarity of God’s people to win over the darkness. We want your charity to erase the most despicable sins against these poor people.
I’m asking you to send money to our Episcopal palace. You must forget material interests that won’t serve in our present life. This is a temporal place before our real country up in heaven or down in hell for sinners. Perhaps they didn’t help their poor brothers or sisters.
We must support Apostle Homer in his angelic functions. You will have God’s blessing for every million pesos you give.
His Highness
Pomponio
Bishop
The letter his holiness wrote had a good effect. Homer received many times the money he had spent in the houses in a few days, even if the bishop kept more than half of it. The bishop had to reprimand a few priests who wanted a percentage of the earnings.
All the local newspapers published editorials exalting the qualities of Apostle. Homer. He gazed at the distance in the pictures as if looking at God’s face instead of a million pesos. The mystical breakdowns of Saint Theresa might give us an idea of Homer’s face before the cameras and the television.
The citizens filled millions of petitions asking for social solidarity. The governor with all of his cabinet marched to the Widow’s Houses. He gave materials for construction and money to Homer.
The Widow’s Soup was served in the most exclusive restaurant. The beauty queen of Colombia, the queen of the potato, the yucca, the corn, the banana, the pea, the pumpkin, the yucca bread, the tamales, the guarapo, and a hundred beauties of the city served the four thousand guests.
Each person had a bowl filled with boiling water and a cold bread for the sum of one hundred thousand pesos. Rich people from the city could be seen amongst journalists and television cameras. They hoped that God would absolve their past sins and those still to come.
Homer read a few lines of the Old Testament and spoke for five minutes. As he talked of the widow’s pain, his eyes filled with tears. He had learned how to do that without much effort.
The band played the national anthem amidst the public’s ovation.
The beauty queens filed in front of Homer and kissed his hand. They left it full of tears and saliva. People in the restaurant sobbed. Radio and television’s audiences cried. The readers of the newspapers cried the next day and the poor widows wept. Homer shed tears of happiness in his dilapidated room. He was a genius.
He had never seen such a show of solidarity. He made enough cash to build a city filled with poor widows but he needed the money.
Five more huts joined the others while some young and pretty widows who liked the bishop, went to live there. Homer had never earned so much and so quickly. He became more popular than Sister Theresa and Saint Francis of Assisi.
It rained hard. Some widows and orphans drowned but the newspapers didn’t say anything. Nobody paid for the burial and the wooden coffins were lowered into the ground without any ceremony.
As the waters left, a few young widows moved into the huts amidst praise for the apostle.
The widow’s business didn’t just give cash but it generated great publicity. It benefited the smuggled goods and taxes.
Homer asked the deprived mothers to sign documents. Most of them couldn’t read or didn’t want to know why they had to sign.
They wanted to thank the benefactor who gave them a roof over their heads and some food. It wouldn’t let a rat die of hunger.
The papers the women signed left Homer out of reach of the income tax. Homer’s expenditure became far greater than his earnings, according to the certificates. He had done all of this to sustain the poor women.
The widows’ food grew to be the largest business for our man. He brought lots of merchandise into the country every month. The boxes had a cross on them. It said in big red letters: Charity. This food is for the poor of Colombia. Look after it!
The boxes went past the customs without any problems. Sacks full of wheat went through customs sometimes, but they usually contained goods. Sport cars were smuggled with ‘frozen food,’ written on them. Any food sent in the packets would be sold at high prices to Homer’s customers.
His ships brought Swiss watches, Scotch whisky, French Wines, tinned food from all over the world, televisions, videos, pants and bras and other things.
Homer’s modest shop became a world bazaar. You could find a Mercedes Benz or fine French pants. Custom officials never wondered about so many expensive and rare things. They didn’t doubt Apostle Homer’s behaviour. The public would attack them, it they examined his business. They couldn’t bother someone as nice as Homer. He gave them whisky, cigarettes and lighters. Sometimes he sent them cheques of a few thousand pesos for Christmas. What a remarkable man!
The old boats: Athena, Sparta and The Termopilas had been replaced by three new and powerful ships: Odysseus, Ayax, Diogenes and Cyclops. They traded in goods.
Homer slept better during the nights. As he lay on his boxes with a few rags on, he counted and recounted the day’s earnings. His food improved. He drank a cup of tea with a portion of rotten cheese three times a week and had three suits bought in a second hand shop. He looked much better.
He stopped barking for a few nights. One of the widows gave him a dog but it didn’t have Homer’s deep barking voice.
The animal had a bad habit: it ate. Homer trained it to live without food but the dog died.
Our man walked around his property barking again. He did his job very well. A neighbour paid two thousand pesos for Homer to bark in his patio during the night. He accepted the job and used the money to buy some meat. His food improved even more.
He had a crisis at this time. He felt in love with a girl for some reason. How could it be?
As he saw her on his way to his room, he had a shock that ran down his spinal cord and ended in his genitals.
“What a woman,” he muttered.
He followed her along the streets and up to her home. He didn’t know what to do. He masturbated several times that evening. He had to buy two extra eggs the next day in order to feel strong.
He waited for her in a corner the next day. She looked like a good contraband when he saw her coming.
“You’re as beautiful as a million pesos,” he said.
He didn’t feel well, perhaps because he had masturbated the day before or the thought of a million pesos. The two things made him as pale as an anaemic flower.
Lola worked at a beauty shop and earned enough money to buy clothes and food for her and her mother. Lola had a perfect body and any clothes she put on seemed superfluous. She looked better than any duchess even if she dressed in rags.
She rounded her meagre wages, calming the amorous needs of a few sergeants. They became her favourite dish. She had seen Homer a few times in the television and her feminine intuition told her that he wasn’t a poor Franciscan.
Lola had loved a few members of that community and knew they had money. She liked to mix sergeants with clerics.
Homer was a young man who had a few ships. He didn’t look like superman but he wasn’t Frankenstein. Add a few million pesos to all of this and any woman would fall in love.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked.
She could see how pale he was. She pretended to be shy and shook her head. Homer couldn’t follow her anymore as his legs felt like jelly.
He didn’t sleep that night. How could a man of his quality fall for that silly girl? Every time he thought of the girl he barked in his neighbour’s patio. Then he went to sleep without much trouble.
He had to travel in one of his trucks the next day. He thought about it. What about if the driver stole something? He could do that kind of thing often and waste petrol. He could even bring his girlfriend. How could Homer see Lola and look after the trucks at the same time?
He surprised himself as he waited on a corner for Lola to appear. He should be behind the counter of El Baratillo or in the port as his ships loaded or unloaded their merchandise.
The girl was late. Homer’s hands sweated and he wanted to go to the toilet, when she appeared in the corner. She looked as beautiful as ever.
He checked his clothes and found them all right. A friend had lent him the suit. The trousers seemed a bit large but they looked fine so long as he kept his coat on.
“Miss,” he said. “Can I walk with you?”
He had thought of this phrase for a long time and said it with elegance.
Lola blushed like a shy school girl. “My mother doesn’t let me take anybody home.”
Homer walked by her side. She had a spiritual quality that he loved.
“I work hard to pay the debts,” she said. “I make dresses at home to earn extra money.”
He shrugged. “I’m also poor.”
He was madly in love with her. It had to be love at first sight like they said in the soap operas.
“My mother can’t see you,” she said.
As Homer left, a sergeant waited for her a few streets ahead. He took her to the cinema but Lola didn’t behave very well. She kept the militaries and the Franciscans away from her, as Homer’s money seemed more important. She wanted to own a few ships. She dreamed of rude sailors making love to her in fishing taverns, smelling of whisky and fish.
Homer thought he would go mad. That night he barked aloud and the neighbours complained. He kept them awake the whole night.
Lola learned of Homer’s apparent poverty and body lice later. Our businessman had as much life on his body as he had money. He only used water and soap for shaving himself and washing his hands. Couldn’t she change him with her charms?
She liked to spend money. Her husband could work all day while she enjoyed life. She let Homer take her home the next day and introduced him to her mother.
“I like your house,” Homer said.
“It’s small but we are poor.”
Homer held her hand. She smiled and kept her distance because of the body lice.
“I live in a hut with my dog,” Homer said.
Lola’s mother thought her daughter liked to have strange boyfriends.
Homer left an hour later. Fray Serapio had waited under the bed and developed rheumatism since that night.
Homer bought a new suit. Then he bought soap and had a bath. He had never done so many mad things on the same day.
Lola kept away her other lovers. She went to work, did her shopping and even slept alone. Chastity might be a good business sometimes.
You know where to start when you are in love but you don’t know where it will end. Homer’s madness became worse. He invited Lola to have an ice cream that afternoon. The girl chose an inexpensive shop and had the cheapest ice cream. He liked that. Lola could be his business partner as she didn’t waste her money in colourful ice. Homer had a glass of cold water.
He forgot to bark that night and lost a few thousand pesos. The two employees at El Baratillo and the crews of his ships couldn’t believe the change in him. They had never seen Homer clean and with no lice. He travelled to the port only once a week and sat next to the driver. He didn’t sleep on the boxes but at a hotel that charged a few hundred pesos per night, sharing the room with someone else. Everyone thought he had gone mad.
It didn’t end there. He bought a small coconut when he returned to the city. The taxi driver asked for a piece of the hard skin to keep as a treasure. It should bring him good luck. Homer had never done anything like that.
He gave Lola the coconut that evening. She thought this was just the beginning. She didn’t have the priests or the sergeant anymore and kept Homer at a distance.
As he tried to kiss her, she stopped him. The coconut had not been enough. Homer thought she was a virgin.
He slept better and did his job as a guard dog. The rest of the time he reproached himself. Why had he spent so much money with the girl? What use did it have?
These questions kept on repeating themselves in his head like characters in a nightmare. He couldn’t find an answer. Why did he give her the coconut? He could have fed himself with it for the whole week. The ice cream had been just water with a bit of taste and colour. He had wasted water having a bath as well as the new soap he had bought. He had to think in his water bill and in the money he had paid to the hotel in the port. He must be losing his mind.
He felt afraid of mad people since he had been a child. His mother had shown him people eating, drinking and spending money. They had to be crazy. He remembered fiends without a form and infamous animals moving through the streets. They were mad.
People who took care of their money looked fat and healthy. They were not crazy. Homer didn’t look very healthy.
He still wanted Lola in spite of all of this. He missed her firm breasts and her sex appeal. His body floated like a shipwreck survivor in a typhoon. He masturbated repeatedly and dreamed of an immense muddy lake full of bits of women and dollar bills. He had been destroyed by sex, mud, sex and mud.
Homer felt terrible the next morning. He couldn’t get up from his boxes to boil the water for his cup of tea. His employees found him later. He had hurt his face.
They wanted to take him to the doctor but he wouldn’t hear about it.
“No,” he said. “I don’t want doctors. “They charge a lot of money for nothing. I only want a cup of tea.”
His employees collected some money and bought milk and brandy. He felt much better. Then he found out what he had and felt ill again.
“You don’t have to pay for anything,” one of his employees said. “It’s a present.”
Homer smiled. The neighbours sent meat and eggs soup to their dear ‘dog’ the next day. As the widows learned of his illness, they sent him chicken soup. They wished for him to get better and prayed for his recovery.
The man had not eaten so well in his entire life. One of Lolas’ clerical friends found out about it and told Fray Serapio. The man had suffered lumbar pains because of Homer’s visit to Lola. He told her that poor people had helped her greedy boyfriend. What could she want with someone like that?
“I thought Homer was a good man,” Lola said.
She phoned the sergeant.
“Can you take me home today?” She asked him.
The man sighed. “You have your rich boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend anymore.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said.
The sergeant appeared as she left her job. They walked down the road as Homer stood in the corner.
“Hello,” Homer greeted.
The sergeant punched him and swept the street with Homer’s clothes. He made Homer’s life more tragic. His body felt sore and his clothes had been torn.
He tried to sleep on a sitting position on his boxes that evening. He couldn’t bark, thinking of the girl’s ungratefulness.
He had given her a bit of coconut and ice cream after all. She had let the sergeant beat him up. All women had to be like that.
The widows sent him a nutritious breakfast the next morning and things looked better. As his friend came to collect the suit, he heard of the harrowing moments when a bus had knocked Homer down. He didn’t accept any money for the ruined suit.
Homer calmed down and spent a few days on his boxes. He hated all women and their sergeants. An employee found a mattress next to Homer’s place of death. Sorry, next to his place of living. He repaired it a bit and took it to Homer’s room.
Homer liked it. It was better than the boxes. He dismissed his employee the next day in case he wanted a salary increase.
He had lost a lot of money. He had not been able to bark or to keep an eye on his workers. He had lost a fortune in a few days without counting the coconut or Lola’s ice cream.
Bad things never come alone. It rained that night. Seven widows and eight children drowned in the widow’s houses. One of the women had been the bishop’s favourite. The egg soups stopped coming.
The world had been at war for a few years. It was called a war world and Homer’s old country was invaded.
He had made money out of the Indian heads, the widow’s pain and the orphans. Could the invasion of his dismembered country be another business?
He travelled to New York in one of his own ships. They didn’t have a waiter and Homer took the job. He could earn pesos and have food for a few days.
One of his friends in New York found a job for him in a bad restaurant. He rented a room for a few dollars. He lived much better than above El Baratillo.
He made contact with a colony of people from his country. The invasion of their land made them angry, even though it had been invaded many times before.
Homer became the fire of the revolution. He would put his life in danger and lose a few ships, before the enemy set feet in his country.
Democracy filled him from head to toe and he didn’t speak of anything else.
“I have abandoned my second country for the price of love and freedom,” he said to his friends.
They were impressed. He didn’t have a coat for winter and slept without a heater. He would leave his bones here if it was good for his countrymen.
The gringos liked Homer. They thought they could use his ships to help the soldiers from his country. It was a dangerous thing. Instead of dying shouting in New York, he would do it at the bottom of the sea. The USA government would give him free arms.
All of Homer’s ships had been put at the service of the war. He cancelled his businesses in Colombia including El Baratillo. The Widow’s houses had disappeared under the water a few moths before and its inhabitants drowned. Homer was a warrior now.
Odysseus could be the first ship to leave port. It was surrounded by absolute secrecy. Homer would be the captain of the boat for the first time. He had an artificial moustache and looked like an old Turkish sailor.
He saw the workers putting things in his ship. Machine guns arrived in boxes, bombs that looked like corn on the hob and munitions disguised as chocolates. Canons pretending to be canoes and a few tanks camouflaged as ambulances.
Homer left New York in a misty morning. He saw a new adventure in the horizon. It might be more productive than his past enterprises.
He had started his life as a diplomat a few months before. He obeyed his instincts and his manner had been softened. He acquired a psychological saturation comparable to that of Fouche or Nicholas Machiavelli.
The Odysseus changed its course once it was in the high seas. The sailors thought Homer wanted to confuse the enemy submarines.
It didn’t have anything to do with submarines. Homer had already sold everything at a good price as South American governments needed the arms urgently.
The foreign gentleman reminded them of the legends of Viracocha as an airplane had thrown him out of the clouds. He offered the government a small arsenal. The mysterious visitor wanted to bring democracy to foreign lands to help with the war effort. He wished to take the bleeding flag at any time.
The governors, who had made the flag bleed for some time, accepted the offer to keep some of the earnings in their own bank accounts.
“We’ll be helping the country that way,” Homer said. “We fight for democracy and make a few cents at the same time.”
The Odysseus left its precious cargo in the Caribbean while the storm went on in rest of the world. They spoke of Homer’s heroic behaviour in New York. They had lost trace of him. Perhaps the sea had taken him away forever.
Homer came back sunburnt and with bananas and dried caimans. He brought a few messages from the anti Nazi warriors. They wanted to have some more arms.
They organised another expedition with four of Homer’s ships, who had shown a great ability to avoid enemy submarines.
He took more things than the first time: tanks, bazookas, anti-tanks canons, machine guns and a lot of ammunition. Two small aeroplanes completed the arsenal.
The fleet sailed around the sea taking care of enemy submarines. A bigger and more powerful South American country received the armament this time. It declared Homer as its national hero. The government kept the secret and its dignitaries became richer.
One of Homer’s boats sailed towards the Mediterranean Sea with a few old tanks. It sunk and the sailors died.
Homer’s friends in New York couldn’t believe it. They prayed for Homer’s soul in Colombia. He had become and hero and as the night neared its end his name was in everybody’s lips.
Homer heard the news in a tropical island. Wearing a wig and false nose, he went to the nearest port. He asked if anyone had survived the shipwreck.
“No,” they replied.
He paid to be left aboard a floating ring in the Mediterranean Sea. It was dangerous but worthy.
He spent six days and nights between the sky and the sea. He had Coca-colas, caviar, brandy, good wines and a lot of cakes. On the sixth day, he threw everything overboard as the pilot radioed for help.
They didn’t come for three days. Homer looked like a real shipwreck survivor when they found him. The news went around the world. The good news caused excitement amongst his friends
A famous journalist wrote a chronicle called: Alone between the sky and the sea. It won the first prize in international journalism and the peace prize.
ALONE BETWEEN THE SKY AND THE SEA.
Cucu Fifi’s chronicle. Winner of the journalism peace prize.
The air melted over the quiet mirror of the sea. The bearded and almost naked men, whose eyes shone with resolution, knew where they had to go.
Men’s lives are like ships. They have a goal in life or they go around forever in the Sargasso Sea.
Our bearded heroes didn’t know where to go. They found their north but it really was their east. They didn’t want to remain in the Sargasso Sea amidst bits of ships. They had a goal to justify their existence.
Sometimes we hear our inner voice, the call of the ancestors or the need to adopt a definitive goal with death as its limit.
We have heroes in this world. That singular example of human being will never cease to exist for the well being of humanity. The Odysseus has stopped any doubt about that.
It had the same name as the Greek hero, because of some premonitions. As if it knew of its honourable end. Real ships aspire to end at the bottom of the sea like in the poem of Neruda.
The sailors and the ship were an arrow sent by God against the enemies of humanities. They recognised the sound of the motors and the movement of the ship in the immensity of the sea. It had become a hero’s shout caressing the water.
They sailed through the turbulent Atlantic Ocean, full of submarines and arrived at the calmer Mediterranean Sea, who after giving birth to civilisation had been menaced by man’s insanity.
Civilisation is the fruit of many years of evolution. It can’t be lost because someone decides to make Berlin as the Russian capital when everyone knows the Russian capital is Leningrad.
In such a radiant day, the heroes carried arms for their companions fighting in inhospitable mountains, turbulent rivers and bloody awakenings. They wanted to fecundate the earth with the bones of their ancestors.
In Homer’s mind appeared the foggy form of his far away country where he would leave the glorious effort of his resolution. This thought made the men insensible to the water, hunger and hard work.
The colour of wine sea that Homer sang seemed to be destined to keep in its entrails that other contemporary Homer who never sang any epopees. He had written them in his contemporary life with as much heroism as the old Greeks who had defied the danger of the unknown in their concave ships.
The modern Argonauts travelled here wishing to leave their sober existence in the cliffs where gold and freedom flowered
The furious explosion of a torpedo covered all of their dreams with flaming waves. Before their eyes, the sea turned purple and the sky a big breath of fire that ate them with indifference.
Oh the hero’s life!
Oh the tears we all pour!
Oh the mothers and lonely sons!
The captain was there like a sign in the torment. Homer, the omnipotent hero, fought against fire and death like a hard rock.
They saw him all over the ship, fighting, calming and comforting his crew. His leaden soul didn’t suffer the attack of the waves and didn’t fracture with a powerful explosion. He tried to save his men, his boat and the arms of liberty.
He didn’t remember how long he was there. He came back to reality as the ship sank. Most of the crew had gone away in the boats before the sinking ship took them under the water.
Then he saw the apocalyptic monster still smoking between the waves. The submarine shot them with its guns.
They were not alone. The intrepid captain would not let them be killed like pigs. The small canon blasted the submarine. It sank quickly but alas too late as everyone in the boats had died.
Homer wanted to die with his ship. He tried to dress himself with his best clothes but the room had been flooded. His burned lips intoned a song he had learned in his childhood. Then his rough voice sang the national hymn of his country above the cadavers and bloody water.
The Odiseo didn’t want to die, perhaps in solidarity with our hero. As long as his heart could pump blood, the enemies of freedom would have a champion to fear and respect.
Our hero became a symbol for people suffering under the boot of the tyrant, and a hope for those fighting in the mountains, as well as for the poor women in concentration camps and the millions of slaves dying of hunger.
Homer spent a long time in between the smoky remains of his ship. He waited for the ship to sink to the bottom of the sea but the Odiseo didn’t want to die yet.
The flight of a solitary airplane brought him back to reality. Life is his passion and in this case freedom.
The sun dived behind the clouds when our hero thinking in his country and freedom went in the small boat. He swore vengeance for the blood of the soldiers floating in the dark sea.
Loneliness is the food of big souls. The quality of a hero is measured by the ability to be on his own for an indefinite time.
Homer, a tiny toy of God’s element had found himself alone between land and sea. He would be welcome in heavens for all the great work he has done. That place appeared hostile and burned him with its ardent rays. He knows very well what the almighty wants: Life eternal requires good souls purified by tears and hope.
None of us has experienced loneliness. He tried to give us a description of his suffering with his modesty.
SEA, SHARK, WHALE, SEA, SEA, SEA, SEA, SUBMARINE, SEA, SHARK, SEA, SUN, HAMMER HEAD, SEA, SHARK!!!!!!!! HOMER!!!!!!!SHARK, SEA, SEA SNAKE, SEA, SUN, SEA, SEA, SEA WOLF, SEA SICKNESS, SEA SICKNESS, SEA, THIRST, THIRST, SUN, SUN, SEA SICKNESS, WAVE, WAVE, WAVE, WAVE, BIGGEST WAVE, WAVE, WAVE, SMALL WAVE.
He drew the small picture we have seen here.
Sea, the eternal sea surrounds him, until it disappears in the horizon. A shark moves around the small boat. Homer tries to hit it with an oar but he only makes the monster angrier. He doesn’t remember for how long he fought the shark but a barracuda also came to the side.
Homer’s clothes have been torn, exposing his body to the hot sun. The shapes of his persecutors hide in the shadows of the night as he tries to sleep.
The sea turns into an enemy. He has to tie himself to the boat so that he won’t go overboard. He can’t sleep in peace for fear of capsizing.
He doesn’t remember when the sea quietened down. As he woke up later, he saw the sun high in the sky and felt very thirsty. He didn’t see any sharks because a giant whale had eaten them. The whale wanted to have the boat and its occupant for dessert.
As Homer punched the monster’s nose, the big fish fled towards the North Pole.
WATER!!!!!!!!! WATER!!!!!!!!!
He had his feet inside the water. It seemed to be a penance for big souls. Out of the water emerged a submarine and Homer shouted: WATER!!!!!!!!
It happened to be a U225, commanded by Lieutenant Fritz Wise. He found out the nationality of our hero and gave him a piece of salted fish. He left Homer in the same place, after doing the Nazi salute.
The salted fish dried his entrails and his stomach rumbled. Very soon he floated in a sea of chit.
The vomit changed the quality of the sea as time went by.
He stopped seeing the sea. He had been transported aboard a high mountain. The sun burned his skin while his entrails asked for water.
How long had he been there? No one knows. After hearing the noise of the waves, he appeared again in the sea. He realised what had happened. He had been on the head of a giant dragon that threw fire out of its mouth. The dragon had not noticed Homer’s presence and went to sleep at the bottom of the sea.
Homer prayed and remembered his mother while remaining on the boat’s floor.
He saw a light. It shone in front of his face filling it with sweetness. A voice said: Homer, my son. Our hero replied. Who is calling me?
“It’s your father who lives in heaven and will never abandon you!”
After a moment of silence even the sea went quiet.
“Heavens and earth will end but my words will go on,” the voice said.
As the light disappeared, an angel brought him something to drink in a big amphora. It tasted better the Coca-Cola.
He was fortified the next morning. He knew he had to win. His life had been planned by God for higher purposes. He knew about it.
When the British anti-torpedo ship, Robin Hood, found him, he looked thin but all right. He had been sixteen days without any food and drink.
They all marvelled about it except Homer, who remembered the amphora and the angel.
He recalls that life without freedom and dignity is not worthy.
HURRAY TO FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!
HURRAY TO HOMER!!!!!!!!!!
HEALTH TO THE HERO!!!!!!!!
The journalist article of the writer Cucu Fifi was translated in all the languages and dialects. Homer’s image became a symbol of heroism and decision around the world. He received a medal from the United States congress in a sober ceremony attended by the heads of many democratic countries, three hundred thousand soldiers, nine hundred thousand students and a lot of wounded and veterans of the world wars. Stalin declared him leader of the Soviet workers and General De Gaulle kissed him repeatedly in the cheeks.
Homer’s heroic temperament remained the same. His love for freedom and hate of tyrants grew more with each passing day.
Bigger ships sailed under his flag as arms were sold to poor countries in Latin America.
His creativity remained the same but his taste for clothes and manners had changed. He wore the best Piccadilly Street clothes and had finished a few correspondence courses.
He went around the tropics selling cheap autographs and smiles like a true hero. It served as an aperitif for future commercial transactions.
Love came to him in a torrent perhaps to compensate what he had not enjoyed before. For some reason all beautiful women wanted to love him. They then became celebrities.
Millionaire husbands found it pleasing to tell their friends their wives had been
Homer’s lovers. The best international high society presentation card was to love Homer. As the world war ended, Homer had found the best way to enjoy freedom.
Dear Suzy:
My butler went to the travel agency. He wants to buy a ticket for anywhere in the world. He is a good man. He has tried very hard not to learn how to read and write. It’s very good for a fifty year old. You can’t find people like that every day.
This countryside environment makes me sick. Country poets came to life after the invention of the cities. They liked the air smelling of cow dung, the green fields, the overflowing rivers and bird song.
Reality is better than imagination but not in this case. Cows are not very nice animals. They look like an Italian actress before saying yes. When it comes to lactic matters Italian actresses can’t be compared with cows. Bad tasting milk acquires cosmic dimensions in the lips of any Silvana.
The green fields are the natural living place of millions of ants. That’s good but I’ve finished with a rush fit for a visit to a dermatologist.
I must itch while saying bad things about ants. They are a sub product of nature, an offence to dignity and defy human intelligence. Apart from killing themselves with white phosphorus they like to work all day and night. What an indignity!
They tell us ants represent the best in the animal kingdom while making fun of intelligent crickets. They just sing and look for other crickets.
I have heard birds singing in Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony but the milking men’s radios produce incongruous noise all day and all night. How terrible!
Let’s go back to the butler. He’s just gone to buy tickets for somewhere.
Where?
I don’t care. We all think of travelling aboard a jet or a car but it doesn’t really matter. We all travel inside ourselves. It’s almost impossible to change the vehicle unless you have marihuana, LSD or aguardiente. We run away from someone most of the time. Perhaps we even hide from ourselves.
My case is a bit more complicated. I want to run away but I wish to find myself. I don’t care about the results. Acquiring or leaving something can make us sad. I find the middle one more interesting. The moment we think we’ll get it.
Human beings are really very similar to each other and trees are identical.
I don’t think you care where I go and you are right. Nothing is more beautiful than instability. Equilibrium is just a transitory position.
As I get on with the environment, I try to find a new stability. A symbiosis is formed between beings and things. We introduce the exterior world inside ourselves or we distribute ourselves amidst our surroundings. This phenomenon gets stronger with other beings up to the point where we believe we depend on each other. Lack of exercise might give us mental rheumatism.
We depend on everyone else. That’s one of the first things travellers discover. It shows us that life is not a question of geography. We take happiness or sadness with us wherever we go. You can be happy in Leticia or unhappy in Paris. A dip in the sea in Tumaco might be more interesting than in the blue coast.
Something as personal as a moan, music or perfume can make a difference with women. You don’t know me and never will. I don’t want to know you either. I want to let you know I’m the opposite of everything we imagine.
Perhaps you don’t want to know, that’s why I’m telling you, I have never worked in my life. Work is one of the most horrible thing humanity has. I have said that about the ants but it can be repeated.
I had the intelligence of being an only son of millionaires. No one else can do that. I have been offered several times the Boyaca cross and the industrial merit cross but I have rejected them. As my noble ancestors worked hard in the land, it grew up to the size it has now.
It was due to the surrounding wire. They moved it smoothly at the beginning. They couldn’t put it right again when someone noticed it. Now I get bored while others work.
Cancer or heart attack is not the twentieth century illness but boredom. I hate canes, cows and calves, round panelas, sugar, black beans, tractors and the agrarian people. I had some mantis once, but a helicopter killed them with DDT.
I grew schizophrenic papayas and they thought they were pineapples. The world health organisation stopped me. Then I grew Koch bacillus but winter damaged them.
Rivers without mother flood the countryside while damps turn into their jails.
The only thing I know how to do is not to do anything. When humanity learns this small lesson there will be nothing else to do.
The proximity of the trip or the hangover has made me philosophise like any cheap teacher. It has happened from time to time and it’s one of my bad things.
Everything is reduced to a simple good bye.
Bye, dear Sissy!
It’s difficult to do it in an automobile as you might understand. Try to forget me. We might love each other again but I hope you find someone who likes children, a mortgage, orange juice, tricycles, the rotaries and the lions.
I like pure and simple love without any maternity, priests, notaries, appendicitis, fine dogs and bad thoughts.
So long Sissy!!
Mario
Dear ZZa ZZa
I say goodbye a few times to the women I have loved. I can’t do it with every one, so I have chosen the most beautiful and less authentic of all of them. But is anyone? I’m not genuine either as authenticity is a big word with good luck.
As you don’t understand Spanish, you will keep this letter under your brassiere, like you did with the dollars I paid for your loving. A Philippine sailor might translate it in exchange of a bit of sex. Good!
That is your job according to our ever lasting exemplary western Christian society. My stupid butler put me in an aeroplane whose name I couldn’t see. I felt as drunk as one of those cakes full of liquor or like Sarah Churchill. One of those joys of the British Empire like Gibraltar and the Beatles.
I heard a rumble of four powerful motors under my bottom. As I looked out of the window, I saw clouds under us. Clouds usually float above and not under the ground. Then I thought I was drunk inside a jet.
As I tried to open the seat belt, I found a collar of flowers hanging from my neck. The gringa sleeping in the next seat also had a similar collar. I took it off. As I lifted her head to put it round her neck, she sighed.
“Oh darling.”
Then she went to sleep again.
She had a healthy dream full of rugby and chewing gum. I found myself in the fatty arms of a woman dressed in a sort of swimming costume as I looked for the toilet. She also had a collar around her neck. I thought the plane flew to Hawaii.
The air hostess tried to explain that but I can’t understand any English.
“Yes,” I said.
After a few times answering, yes, I ran to the loo. I nearly vomited on top of her.
Dear ZZa ZZa. Your country should have been very beautiful a few hundred years ago when it was inhabited by dinosaurs and idiot pines. It is as funny as any Broadway show now.
I noticed that everything must be made to order, after arriving at the airport. They must bring the sand from some factory over the Hudson. The trees, the sea and even the volcanoes belong in a musical comedy. Those good looking volcanoes throwing smoke every time a ship load of gringos arrive can’t be real.
Your smile, your dancing and your love have been sewn to your clothes just the same as the garlands of flowers. Your love is similar to the plastic flowers. You moan when the director rings the bell, faint on hearing two bells, and charge fifteen dollars by the third bell.
Your hotels are a marvel of Anglo-Saxon ingenuity, in spite of you mongoloid ancestry, or are your eyes a product of plastic surgery? The prawns are delicious. That’s why they bring them in tins from England. I also liked the Dutch prawns.
I left with my Kodak camera and a collar of flowers to be conspicuous. As I went past the hall, a few ladies talked aloud and looked at me. I then saw the cause of the problem. I had forgotten my swimming trunks. I bowed to the ladies and ran back to my room.
The Kodak camera never worked. I can get similar postcards all over the place. I had one of them in the Pan-American calendar, hanging in my student’s room. I yearned to go to your land, your beautiful Pacific paradise. Now I want for to see your landscapes in postcards.
I went to the beach yesterday and saw a fat ship. I don’t know whether it was, Japanese, Chinese or Filipino. I showed them green dollars and had what I wanted.
We are leaving at this moment. It has an immature siren that makes immature noises. After putting this letter inside a bottle, I’m throwing it into the sea. I’m sure that your sea. Your clean and educated sea will take it to you. If it isn’t so, the federal government will fine it until it is red and full of shame. The tourist guide they put in your suitcase says: Pretend you’re lost at sea. Write something and put it in a bottle. The waters of our seas are the best postmen of love.
You must notify the chief of peace, and I love you till you hear the three bamboo bells.
Mario.
Mr. Salvador de Rocafuerte
COLOMBIA- South America
Dear and respected uncle.
I wanted to write to you since leaving my country but I’ve been busy. I’m proud of the blood flowing through my veins. It’s the same blood as yours but a bit more watery.
You’ll say that marching through foreign lands is nothing new for me, and I’ll catch a wonderful gonorrhoea. I understand you. You’re such a gentleman. I won’t get any gonorrhoea now. I promise you. I’ve found a few Palaeozoic fossils that I want to sell to the academy. It’s a round business
I’m in an island without a name. I know it’s an island because it has water all around it. My boat has not capsized and the last Roccafuerte has turned into a Robinson Crusoe.
I sailed in a fat ship without a flag or I didn’t see it. I was in Hawaii when I was stung by the blood of my ancestors, the noble adventurers, with whom I slept many times as a child.
I see you making your best face of reproach. I want you to send me dollars, but this time things are different.
I boarded a fat boat. It moved a lot in spite of being small. The Captain drank Ron, similar to the combustible of an Atlas rocket. It has a speed of forty kilometres a minute at take off.
I stayed on the moon for a few days and visited a few of the nearby planets. I took a comet coming back to earth and fell on this island. After the crew left me on the beach, I woke up covered in sea weed and with a terrible hangover. The fat ship had disappeared, along with my dollars and the rest of my money. I was a survivor in the middle of nothingness.
I remembered the orthodox books of Salgar. I stood up with my torn clothes and swollen eyes and shouted ………….Water!!!
I heard as the waves went PLOP! Plop! Plop! Water!!!! Water!!!
A turtle looked at me philosophically but a crab didn’t like my shouting. He asked me to be quiet while digging out sand, as if he wanted to work as an excavator somewhere.
Someone had put an oven in my stomach. I thought I had swallowed a meteorite as my feet sank in the sand.
I remembered your preaching, dear uncle. Panic wouldn’t take me anywhere. Because I had to go somewhere, I decided to walk. After moving for a while, I arrived at the same spot. The turtle and the crab had not moved. It was an island. I felt satisfied at my knowledge of geography.
The oven in my body was getting worse and I thought I would die. As I kissed the turtle, she blushed.
I remembered my catholic faith and searched for a stamp of the saints within my clothes. I found a picture of Brigitte Bardot in my wet pockets. I kissed it and the turtle blushed again. I lost myself into infinity like a laser ray.
Someone fed me coconut water when I regained consciousness. It tasted as good as the aguardiente.
I don’t know whether I’m in the same island or somewhere else, but it is inhabited by very sane people. They spend most of their time sleeping under coconut palms.
I’m investigating their language and way of life as I want to write a fat book about them. Don’t you feel proud to be the uncle of a famous writer? I see you in the Colombia Avenue in Bogota, with your walking stick decorated in gold that used to belong to our grandfather the president. Everyone should whisper: that’s the uncle of the famous investigator of the South Seas. When you go to the hot springs in Coconucos, the hotel administrator will say: look after Don Salvador, he’s Mario’s uncle, that famous investigator everyone knows.
I found a pile of old bones, like I’ve said before. I’m sure they must belong to the Palaeozoic for reasons I’ll explain later.
The linguistic group seems to be the Indo-European Sanskrit, with a few words of Malay. I’ll tell you more in a few volumes, if you want to.
You’ll tell me the same usual things. I have to regulate my expenditure and keep money for my old age. I must marry Maria de la Piedad and settle down. Perhaps you’re right, but what about my investigations?
You must send me a few dollars, dear uncle. It can’t be less than two thousand. It isn’t a big sum, if you speak in terms of panelas, bulls and cows. I’ve discovered a new breed of cows, I: want to know if they’re able to live in our mountains.
You must write in the envelope the scribbles next to my signature, for the dollars to come to me. They’re my new address. You can use the same scribbles to write your letter, as I already know the answer. Take life easy. Look after your arteries and your rheumatism. I’m investigating a medicine this people use. It seems to be miraculous.
Your loving nephew
Mario
Dear cousin:
I don’t know how long I’ve been in this island. I had never seen a real island and arrived here by pure luck. I’ll tell you all about that if you ask my uncle to give me the dollars he promised. I want my overseer to sell my bulls and convert that money into dollars. He’ll get ten per cent of the profits as usual.
This is a real island. I was thrown down on the beach by a flying saucer, and I don’t know where I’m. I’ve been all around the island and haven’t seen any gringos or Antioquenos. Sometimes a boat appears and leaves meat and brandy in exchange for coconuts. Although I can’t understand this people, I communicate with them by sign language.
I live with a group of people. The girl of the family flirts with me. I like her slanted eyes and smile. She’s never used a deodorant and smells of prawns and coconuts.
The men don’t work by tradition, while women look after the palms and love their husbands.
That’s why I married her after a short romance. As I picked up some coconuts, she called me to one side by signs, while saying something in her sweet language. I understood that she wanted us to have a bath, so I too her hands and led her into the sea.
As we played there like good children, the inhabitants of the island congregated on the beach and the sound of drums echoed around us. I thought they must be preparing a cannibal banquet. I told the girl by sign language to get off the sea. She smiled and kept me by her side.
More people arrived at the beach while the drums went on. They brought a big saucepan. I trembled from head to toe or the opposite way as I wasn’t sure where the head was. No one saw how I urinated on myself because I was in the sea. It had to be a cannibal ceremony. The saucepan must have been made to my measures.
I never imagined a man like me would end inside the stomach of unknown salvages. It’s better to be eaten by stupid salvages, than by even more stupid worms. It’s all a question of dignity. We are food for someone else. We’re born, and look after ourselves, as worms and bacteria look at us with pleasure. We’re their favourite dish. They know we have to go into their stomachs one day.
If we take worming medicines, disinfect ourselves inside and out until we’re sterile and then we go to die in an Apollo rocket, I imagine the faces of worms and bacteria as our flesh goes around space. It would be a torture in the Tantalus, in a version specially prepared for the protozoan and bacteria. In spite of these deep meditations, or perhaps because of them, I wetted myself. As the drums went on, the people on the beach went inside the sea. The girl smiled while putting my hands against her chest.
The drums went: Bum…Bum…Bum…Bum… We all moved towards the big saucepan on the beach. It had acquired the serious characteristics of an exotic sarcophagus.
I happened to look at my legs and saw them much prettier than Sofia Loren’s. I cried a couple of tears for each leg. I divided them equally amongst the guests. The fattest of the dancers would have my right hip, while the left one might be shared by two old men, who could hardly dance. These people had healthy customs. They wouldn’t need Alka-Seltzer to handle indigestion.
I wanted Tawaty to have my testicles. I thought that was the girl’s name. I would give them to her myself.
Someone gave me a sip of the liquid with a coconut shell. It was a delicious wine. The girl drank some of it and I also did. Tawaty and I danced along the beach, under the light of the stars. Sometimes we went in the sea and the waves brought us down.
I awoke in her arms, in the same bed as her and in her house. We didn’t go outside to gather any coconuts for a few days. My parents in law fed us very well. We never lacked any wine, and the ceremony in the sea had been my marriage.
I’m a married man now. The girl is working while I write. I’ll go later to the beach to drink wine. It’s one of my favourite pastimes.
The language I thought to be Sanskrit, with bits of Malay and Indo-European, turned out to be simple English. Don’t forget I’m a married man now. Tell my uncle and my overseer to hurry with the money.
Your cousin
Mario
Dear Tawaty
This is the first time I write to an ex-wife and I hope it’s the last one. I loved you up to a few days ago, and my eyes filled with tears just like the immense sea. I feel angry today. I don’t know what’s happened to our marriage, even if we were not blessed by a priest, and our ceremony happened next to a saucepan filled with wine and rice.
In spite of you working during our marriage, while I spent my time playing cards and drinking wine, and you never wore pantaloon stockings or used deodorant. I still believe in free love.
I wanted to flee when I saw the island invaded by gringos. I looked for my fat ship to shipwreck me somewhere else. Coconut water is much better than Coca cola, and your wine can’t be compared with American whisky. You used to live in a paradise without cinema, transistors and television. You were on top of the world.
Humanity might need centuries of evolution to get to your state of development. That’s culture and life, everyone else has to die with chewing gum in their mouth.
That’s why I sailed on that Chinese boat. My father in law gave me a letter in English plus one thousand dollars. As my uncle had sent me some more dollars, I felt richer than the bank of England. I can’t recall our farewell. I think it’s much better.
The Chinese people treated me like a king, and this time we didn’t shipwreck. It’s a pity because I liked it.
I landed in the first inhabited beach I found, like any Jonas and headed for the opium den. It must have been the last in its category in the region, a real discovery.
I don’t know how long I was there but it was a paradise. Policemen found out about it and took me to prison. Dollars have a universal appeal otherwise your old husband would be building the road to Burma, or repairing the Chinese wall. This hotel is more comfortable than breaking stones in Tibet.
I saw you everyday in the opium dean, and you looked more beautiful than ever. I don’t know why people don’t smoke opium every day. I cried many times like I’ve already told you, but after paradise, I found the death of that man who had been there with you. He must be rotten somewhere in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Your death and the death of everyone I left there.
The two things happened almost at the same time. Someone in the hotel translated the letter your father had given me. What an infamy! The Twentieth Century Fox thanked me for acting as an extra in the film Tawaty. My wages had been one thousand dollars and all the expenses had been covered by the producers.
I had never married. Your smiles and the ceremony with the big saucepan had all been paid by the twentieth Century Fox. My dreams, your caresses and the fossils from the Palaeozoic had been arranged specially for the film.
I couldn’t believe it. Then I saw your name in a cinema in front of my hotel. It said Tawaty in big letters.
I couldn’t bear to watch our film. We were there in our island and in our hut. I never imagined I had made such a face when the problem with the saucepan. It had been ten minutes of filming and a whole life time of boredom.
I don’t know what your real name is. The sweet and musical name I used for you must have been arranged by the film technical director. The Palaeozoic fossils had been plastic. You must be a mannequin made in the USA.
You don’t know how much I hate you. I hope you fall in love with a calculator and have ten children made of nylon.
I hate you
Mario
Dear cousin:
You’ll see by this letter that I never forget my family. After a few sessions of alcohol, L.S.D and marihuana, I went to a spiritualist session. You have to look at the program to see that only the Gods can do this kind of thing.
I went with two Filipino Gods, who speak a few languages but everything must be simple for them.
I had forgotten to tell you that I divorced Tawaty, and left the island where I had found love between a saucepan and the Palaeozoic bones. If you go to see a picture with that name and see me standing by a saucepan, I beg you to keep silent. We, the gods can make a few mistakes. Ask Jupiter!
I can’t say how long ago it happened. That’s why my letters don’t have a date. Perhaps is a time in the past, and without any existence. Why do we have to worry? Time doesn’t exist for us Gods.
It’s impossible for me to tell you of my trips aboard L.S.D. I’d need to write a few volumes, and I think I don’t want to be a writer now. We the Gods, never wish to do anything. Our marihuana is as bad as that of any other country. The one we use here is grown with the milk of virgins and Mars’ semen. To be a marihuana grower in these lands is like being a Lord in England or the Colombian president. They’re functions inherited from parents to children, grandchildren and so on. They keep the intimate secrets as if it was the H bomb.
There are many types and subtypes in existence according with the client’s tastes. You can cry the whole day without stopping if you want to, or you can be with the most beautiful girl in the world. I sat inside a hole for eight days, marvelling at the beautiful things inside my belly bottom. The Prado Museum is nothing in comparison with it. You never thought of it, didn’t you?
You must think what you can do with other people’s belly bottoms as languages are inefficient.
I’ll tell you something of the spiritualist session, because you were in it. Do you think it is strange? I was in my five senses when this happened.
As the candles went off, the room was left in darkness. The prayers recited in many languages gave the room a funeral air. I felt very cold and imagined that I was the dead one.
A figure went on light as if it had swallowed a neon tube. My Filipino friend explained that the medium had started to light up. I thought he needed batteries as he threw a defuse light. He looked like a mandarin hanging from the door of a Shanghai restaurant.
Meanwhile the master of ceremonies sang or recited something. It’s difficult to know anything in this language. The medium didn’t move, in spite of a few flies playing football on his bald head.
They asked all the ritual questions. My friend explained how this ceremony will push away all the spirit jokers, before they rub shoe polish on the spectator’s faces.
I made the most sensational discovery in the history of spiritualism and alchemy. These spirits must belong to our street urchins. They behave in the same way even after they die. They steal aerials from cars, men’s wallets, women’s pants, and the false teeth of the members of parliament.
The neon light started to talk, interrupting the football game of the flies, as the counter showed two to one, in favour of the drosophila pendeginibus.
The cicerone wanted to catch the ectoplasm of U. Phong’s mother in law. He was a wealthy merchant, who didn’t let the death woman alone, not even in her present state.
Something like a fried egg appeared, illuminated by the feeble light. U Phong and the rest of the people said: OOHHHHHHHHHHH! I was foreign and said: UUHHHHHHHHHHH! It was the ectoplasm of the mother in law. I can’t understand these people. Why had U. Phong married a chicken?
The merchant seemed to be satisfied with the demonstration while the frying egg drifted to his left, and people swore in Chinese and Malay. Some chickens must be polyglots. I haven’t eaten any fried eggs ever since. They could have learnt to swear in Spanish and I don’t want that problem.
My cicerone nudged me in the ribs and I thought my compatriot urchins wanted to steal my wallet. It was the signal for me, as the foreigner to ask a question to the mandarin.
I asked for Tawita, as I’m really a romantic. I had a devastating answer. A brontosaur had eaten her. I always thought it was plastic!
I sighed deeply, interrupting the fly’s football game as they were 2-2. I asked for you, to show that I remember my family.
“He’s a very happy man,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Your uncle Salvador Roccafuerte is dead.”
I wasn’t just a widower, but half an orphan. I didn’t sigh hard or I might interrupt the fly’s football game. Well, you know where to write to me. I hope my uncle’s inheritance has dissipated some of your melancholy, as he liked to save money.
I hug you
Mario
PD: I promise to take crying marihuana for nine nights in honour of the old man.
Dear Sussy
I’m going to tell you how it feels to go back to your own country. I have been going around the world, I don’t know for how long.
Colombia, I adore you in my mute silence…
My silence was really mute because I had a bad liver. I can’t speak much English but I knew I’d be coming home soon. My heart jumped in my chest as though I was in an Espresso Palmira in the way to Buenaventura. It wasn’t the first time my liver had gone wrong, and it wouldn’t be the last one. I wanted to drink a double scotch with soda but the Alsatian air hostess kept on bringing a cup of hot camomile. I had turned into a camomile by the third time. As I thought of my country, my heart jumped.
Before I could kill the Alsatian with my boy scout’s belt, a small man with a big nose and even bigger glasses appeared. He said the woman was from Pennsylvania, and gave her mouth to mouth artificial respiration.
The little man spoke Spanish. He gave mouth to mouth respiration to the Pennsylvanian woman very well. He also hated camomile water. He was a tiger!!!
I tried to give her mouth to mouth resuscitation, after drinking a nice scotch. She punched me in my right eye, leaving me in darkness for a while.
I spoke to my saviour. He told me he was a Christian brother from Pennsylvania, Caldas. He came back from the far east, that’s the way Christian brothers call it, without realising the far west is even further away, where he made the mistake of baptising a few Thai orphans. That’s imperialism, I suppose.
I saw the film of Tazan in the screen. I had two choices, to watch Tarzan or the Pacific Ocean. I watched Tarzan. He’s a boy that goes in between the branches of trees, while Chita is a sophisticated girl. I remembered the monkey my uncle Salvador had in the back of his insignia. The insignia ended up with deep yellow penetrating tones. After Tarzan let go of tree 1847, I fell asleep.
“I Tarzan,” I hit myself in the fifth space in between the ribs with my fist. A shout came out of my mouth like the knife of a poor butcher. The Zabomba people had stolen the Mubamba queen and I said caramba!
I left for the town of Chumba, in the deepest jungle, next to where Lumumba was born by climbing the first tree.
“These Chumba girls are strong and useful,” I explained to Chita as the woman took me along the intricate paths of the jungle.
“You can go through the branches now, Mr. Tarzan,” the girl said. “The path stops here.”
I gave her an avocado pear as a tip and climbed the first tree I found. I remained in the same place four hours later, because the branches had been cut with a Collins knife. I couldn’t tie them back again. The birds started to sing. In the jungle it means siesta time. The hotel was uncomfortable. It didn’t have air conditioning and I had to sleep with Chita on my bed. The mosquitoes didn’t let her sleep, until I said: “Quiet, Chita.” She went to sleep under the net.
“Mr.Tarzan, Mr. Trazan, wake up,” someone said.
I remembered I was Tarzan, the king of the jungle, and had to get up everyday at four o’clock in the morning. I wrote a letter renouncing my job. I gave it to Chita and went back to bed. The sounds of the drums woke me up at four o’clock in the afternoon. Then I wrote a letter to Mubamba.
Queen Mubamba, Zabomba
I greet you
Dancing a cumbia
Kisses to Lumumba
I got onto the first tram I saw, wearing my bottom cloth of blond tiger and with a few dozen arrows. Chita went by bicycle. An exercise I recommend for her varicose veins.
The Zamomba people felt glad at the prospect of eating the queen. She did look provocative. Her body had been covered in oil and her curves shone under the light of the sun, making the guests feel hungry. As soon as they noticed my presence, they prepared their land, air missiles. I hit myself on the other side of the chest while shouting. Lumumba looked at me with her beautiful dark eyes.
“Are you coming to save me, handsome one?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I’m coming to have a chest X-ray. I must have broken one of my ribs.”
She smiled. “Your amygdales don’t seem to be well. That last shout didn’t sound very good.”
Cazumba, the Zabumba queen appeared. She gave me a plate with a fork and a coca cola.
“Tarzan,” Mabumba said. “Do you know they’re going to eat me?”
“No.”
“Are you going to let that happen?”
“Of course not,” I said.
Holding the fork in my hand, I walked towards Cazumba. (I realised I had left the arrows in the tram)
“How can you eat such a beauty just like that?” I asked.
Cazumba shrugged. “It isn’t just like that. We’re preparing her on the stones before the big party.”
“That’s a different,” I said.
The orchestra of flutes and drums started to play a cumbia. They poured aguardiente in our cups, while I danced with Mubamba. Chita danced with Cazumba.
“Don’t you feel hungry Mr. Tarzan?” Cazumba asked.
“Let me dance two more songs,” I replied.
The stones were bright red. First they made her lie on her back, and then on the front. She looked golden like a toasted pig.
A woman with a black skirt woke me up at that moment to tell me that we had arrived.
“Thank you, madam,” I said,
In realised it was the Christian Brother, wearing a gown.
I had arrived at my motherland and my heart bit like a shepherd dog. The Christian Brother arranged his bib and pulled up his skirt. He wore a short gown with long black socks, held with a girdle.
As we landed, my eyes filled with tears because of the ashes of my cigarette. I wanted to do like the pope and kiss the floor. I thought it might be better to kiss the air hostess but I remembered my painful eye. I kissed the Christian Brother instead.
One is aware of the arrival at Colombia because everyone looks at you with the air of correctional guard. You breathe prison air.
Seventeen people got out of the airplane. I stood in the queue as number fifteen. I couldn’t get in contact with the outside world even though I felt thirsty. Uniformed police looked at us with serious faces. I wanted to sit down but couldn’t see chairs anywhere.
A guard appeared an hour and a half later. He sat at the table and wrote things. Half an hour later, two more guards came in and chatted with the first one. A woman sat on the floor as policemen bit her up with the end of their rifles.
Two and a half hours later, we filed through the nothing to declare place. They looked at our papers, wrote down names and examined inside each suitcase. They checked male and female passengers in their most intimate places, while making threats of deportation. Fortunately no one understood much Spanish, apart from the Christian Brother and me, otherwise they would have swam back home.
An old man and four women had fainted. Their bodies had been pushed to the corner. As policemen checked them, they took off their clothes. They left them naked because their clothes had been illegally brought in the country.
I couldn’t stand up anymore. Holding onto the counter, I rested first my right leg and then the left one. A policeman thought I tried to hide merchandise. He made me kneel for half an hour, after taking my shoes away. We had been there for seven hours and only five people had left the room. The old man had died two hours ago. Nobody bothered to keep the rats away. His mouth looked dried and his eyes were clouded.
A guard felt sorry for us. He brought us coca colas at one dollar each one. We paid him the money. The guards smiled and gestured to the floor.
“Five dollars,” one of them said.
We paid him to lie down on the floor. I thought it was the softest mattress in the whole world. I gave him five dollars extra. There is nothing like my own country, I thought.
Twenty dollars more and I had an aguardiente with green mango. I felt much stronger and thanked my compatriots. They had to be human beings.
Eleven hours after landing I arrived at the counter. They took all of my clothes off as I had bought them abroad.
The personal inspection came later. They left me naked for the same reason. They examined my mouth and looked inside my rectum.
Half an hour later came the verdict. I had to go away naked, unless I paid some money.
“How much do you want?” I asked.
“One hundred and twenty dollars and eleven pence.”
They accepted traveller cheques, as my dollars had disappeared. They didn’t give me a receipt as it was forbidden by the law.
They gave me back my clothes and I finally entered my country
I forgot all of this because I was so happy to be back in my own land. I left the building and breathed deeply until my alveolus had been filled with air. The Marihuana I had brought for my cousin had not been touched. I had it in a big packet with the words: marihuana, written over it.
Nobody waited for me. How strange, because I had not told anyone I was coming. I took a taxi.
Five minutes later we had to stop. Guards checked us over. I paid them thirty dollars and they let us go. The marihuana was safe.
Twenty kilometres later, we found some other guards. They made me take my clothes off. I had to pay twenty dollars.
Ten kilometres later I managed to arrive. UUUUUUUUFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!
I had to hide in the car boot for the last kilometres of my journey.
That made everything easier. As policemen opened the door and looked at me, the driver smiled and said: “It’s a kidnapping.”
They laughed and motioned for us to go on our way. I didn’t need to take my clothes off.
I hope to see you soon, so that you can try the marihuana I brought for my cousin. I don’t think he will like it but you and I can take a few fantastic trips.
I love you.
Mario
P.D. Someone told me that you’ve gone to Barranquilla with a travel agent. It’s better as this letter was getting too long.
Mulan, Mochow and Siyun.
Can you remember the smoking den: The Rose Almizclena. Perhaps you don’t remember it because I don’t think we have been there. Was it, Snowy Rosa? We must have been there. I think we formed a beautiful trinity. We were four people, but none in reality.
Mula, Mochow and Suyu, had been three yellow lilies, losing the leaves in between the fog of the marihuana. We breathed hot Ron and ate uncooked fish. The scales shone on your forehead, Mulan. You had to be a priestess of the temple of the Emperor of Jade up there in the top of Taishman.
Mochow and Syun standing by the south door of the sky and shouting: Down with the rich people’s gold!
We played manjod, sometimes poker, but we always played making love. We loved each other and everybody else, even the one eyed cabin boy, who had a mark all along his left cheek. How long did we look at his tattoos for? How long did I look at your feet, Monchow? Your tiny feet were incapable of sustaining a thought.
We never thought of anything, we only felt. We felt lots of nostalgia coming through our skin, while I drank elephant milk from you erect teats, Suyun.
We moved through the path of bamboos as a fat Buda looked at us, after a while he stared at his own ugly bellybutton. Sometimes I smell your perfume and sail through your eyes with the same broken compass that never worked.
A hundred suns shone on my day and the river of my melancholy ran and ran. Let me drive your night in between your days, Mujan, my love. We’ll have a meeting with our dim constellations of sad stars, tired of being suns.
I’m sad, Mulan. I have the right to be sad. It’s not because my uncle has been killed. I’m tied to the land and have to breathe its putrid atmosphere.
My uncle Salvador died of a natural death. He was kidnapped. He had to look after his lands. The poor man wasn’t very clever, something indispensable to own sugar plantations. He made lots of money with the labour of others. They had given him the cross of Boyaca, the one of the industrial merit and he belonged to the order of Malta.
He used to get up everyday at five o’clock in the morning. None of my clocks mark such a terrible hour. Five o’clock in the morning is only good for making love and for a few stupid birds singing: PIIOO!
A few people wanted to kidnap him to ask millions of dollars for his rescue. He had detectives and policemen at his service. Salvador had to go to his far fields, because he looked after his money. He took care of his cents as the pesos looked after themselves. In this case the millions looked after themselves.
They kidnapped him in a remote part of his farm and killed him by mistake. That is how no one won four million pesos. I inherited most of them, while the rest of the money went to a few lazy people in the family.
I don’t like money since I was a little boy. That’s why it keeps on chasing me. Each time I live less and have more money. Do you know why that happens, Mulan?
You can’t understand the situation. You have never smelled the breath of a notary or your stomach would turn. If you looked inside their drawers, you’d see papers smelling of moss and urine.
Because of those spotted papers I receive many millions of pesos. I see men working from dawn to dusk with their backs hunched in front of the Holstein cows. They talk of human dignity, but pedigree cows are above that.
A poor man doesn’t earn enough money to own that kind of animal. He works and works but I see him more pale and yellow like the notary papers.
I earn fabulous sums, without moving from here and by the virtue of the yellow papers. I don’t understand much about cows. I just understand where the petrol goes, but I don’t know where the gear is. By virtue of some strange code, the cows produce rivers of money.
My uncle was the clever one in the family. He seemed to have been very lucid. He gave me an idea and I want to put it into practice.
Bye
Mario
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![[2]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Grand_father.jpg#file){kind=link}