We come upon a trio of giraffes, and I can’t resist asking their owner how one imports animals of such size, with those mile-high necks, from the Kenyan plains: Who handles the purchase, how much do they cost, how are they loaded on the ship, do they get seasick? How do they disembark, what kind of truck brings them to the hacienda without awaking curiosity, and how long do they take to adapt to the change of continent?
“And how would you get them here?” he asks me in a defiant tone.
“Well, with the size of their necks—and given that they’re endangered—bringing them through Europe would be . . . risky. They’d have to travel by land through sub-Saharan Africa to somewhere like Liberia. From the Ivory Coast to the coast of Brazil, or maybe Guyana, I think they could travel with no trouble to Colombia across the Amazon, as long as you’ve left . . . a few rolls of bills at each stop along the way, with hundreds of happy patrolmen along the route from Manaus to Puerto Triunfo. I guess it’s not that complicated!”
“I’m utterly scandalized at your propensity for multinational crime, Virginia! When can you give me some lessons? My giraffes are legally imported. What are you insinuating? They come from Kenya, via Cairo-Paris-Miami-Medellín, to the landing strip at Hacienda Nápoles, with their certificates of origin and all their vaccines in order! It would be impossible, inconceivable, to smuggle them in, because their necks aren’t exactly retractable, you know? Or do you think you can just make them lie down and go to sleep like five-year-old children?” And before I can say yes, he exclaims happily, “And now, we’ll go for a swim in the river, so all of you can see a corner of earthly paradise before lunch!”
If there is anything that makes a civilized person from Tierra Fría want to get moving, it’s the prospect of an outing with sancocho at a river in Tierra Caliente. (Sancocho is a substantial soup of chicken or fish with yucca, rice, and potatoes, and every region of Colombia has its own recipe.) I can’t remember ever submerging myself into waters that were anything but turquoise since my most tender childhood years, so I feel a great relief when I see that the green water of this Río Claro, fed by dozens of springs on the property, is crystalline. It flows gently among enormous round rocks, its depth seems ideal for swimming, and the clouds of those mosquitoes that tend to mistake my blood for honey are nowhere in sight.
Several relatives or friends of our host are waiting at the water’s edge, along with dozens of bodyguards and several speedboats. These steel watercraft are designed for the races that, I now know, are the passion of Escobar and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria, and they reach impressive speeds. They carry more than a dozen people, who must wear helmets, vests, and headphones, due to the thundering noise of the motor that is enclosed in a metallic cage in the back part of the boat.
We take off in a flash, with Escobar at the wheel of our boat. In a trance of pleasure, he glides over that river, dodging obstacles as if he knows every crevice and rock, every large or small whirlpool, every fallen tree or floating trunk, as if he wanted to impress us with his ability to save us from dangers we only glimpse as they shoot past like arrows and disappear in an instant, products of our imagination. The maelstrom lasts almost an hour, and when we reach our destination, we feel like we’ve just plummeted over Niagara Falls. Fascinated, I realize that for every second of the past hour, our lives hung on the precise calculation of that man who seems born to defy the limits of his mortality or to rescue others and, in the process, receive their admiration, gratitude, or applause. And since shared intensity is one of the most splendid gifts that one can offer to those who also have a sense of adventure, I wonder if our host has put all that theatrical capacity of his into creating an exciting and unrepeatable spectacle. I sense he is following his passion for conquering danger and his constant need to display the many forms of his generosity—or, perhaps, his excessive self-regard.
We arrive at the lunch spot, and I’m happy at the chance to rest in the water while the sancocho and barbecue are prepared. I float on my back, and lost in my thoughts and the beauty of the sky, I don’t notice the concentric circles of a whirlpool closing around me. When I feel strength like that of a metal whip paralyzing my legs and dragging me down, I wave my arms to call my fiancé and friends on the shore, some 250 feet away. But they think I’m inviting them to join me in the water and they all laugh; they only want to enjoy a good drink to celebrate the odyssey they’ve just been through, and to recover their body heat with a delicious hot bowl of soup. I’m about to die in the presence of four dozen friends and bodyguards who can’t look beyond their own comfort, machine guns, or cocktail glasses, when, nearly spent, I make eye contact with Pablo Escobar. He’s the busiest person, directing the show and giving orders—the orchestra conductor, el dueño del paseo (the “outing’s owner”), as a Colombian would say—but he’s the only one who realizes that I am in a blender I won’t come out of alive. Without a second thought, he leaps into the water and reaches me in seconds. First, he uses words to calm me; then, movements so precise they seem choreographed; and finally, a strength that seems equal to the whirlpool’s to pull me out. And that confident, brave man snatches me from the arms of death as if I were a feather, as if that act were just one more responsibility of a gallant host, and as if he were immune to a danger that he brushes aside. I hold tight first to his hand, then his forearm, and then his torso, while Aníbal watches us from afar, wondering why the hell I am not moving away from a man we’d met just a few hours ago, and who five minutes ago had been chatting breezily with him.
Approaching the water’s edge, Escobar and I touch bottom and stumble onto the shore. He holds me firmly by the arm and I ask him why, among so many people, he was the only one who realized I was about to die.
“I saw the desperation in your eyes. Your friends and my men only saw your hands waving.”
I look at him and tell him that it wasn’t just that—he was the only one to see my anguish and the only one who cared about my life. He seems surprised, and more so when I add, with the first smile I’m capable of after the fright, “So now you’ll be responsible for me as long as you’re alive, Pablo. . . .”
He puts an arm around my shoulders, which can’t stop shaking. Then, with a cheerful expression, he exclaims, “As long as I’m alive? What makes you think I’m going to die first?”
“Well, it’s just a saying . . . but let’s make it as long as I’m alive, so we can both take it easy, and you can pay for my funeral!”
He laughs and says he’s sure that will be a century from now, because judging from the events of today, I have more lives than a cat. When we reach the shore where the group is, I let myself be wrapped in the towel that Aníbal’s loving arms hold out to me; it’s warm, and because it’s large, it hides what he doesn’t want me to see in his eyes.
The grilled beef is as good as the best parrillada in an Argentine estancia, and the view from the cabin above the river is simply a dream. In complete silence, and a bit withdrawn from the rest of the group, I contemplate the opposite side of the river with the eyes of Eve granted a second chance in paradise. In the years to come, I would relive that afternoon in my mind time and time again, with me gazing toward the calmest part of that Río Claro, mirroring the magnificent wall of tropical foliage behind it and now covered with a million sparkling emeralds, the sunlight bathing every leaf of every tree, God shining in the wings of every butterfly. Several months later, I would beg Pablo to take me back to that place of reverie, but he would answer that such a thing was no longer possible because it had been taken over by guerrillas. Then, on a random day almost a quarter of a century later, I would finally come to understand that we must never return to the places of splendid beauty where we were once incredibly happy for a few hours, because all that is left of them is the nostalgia for the colors and, above all, the longing for the laughter.
EVERYTHING IN HACIENDA NÁPOLES seems colossal. We find ourselves now on the Rolligon, a gigantic tractor with the strength of three elephants, wheels almost