On another long weekend we travel to Santa Marta, located on the Caribbean Sea in the cradle of the legendary Samarian Gold. There we meet the Dávilas, the kings of marijuana. Unlike the coke kings, who with few exceptions—like the Ochoas—are of poor or lower-middle-class extraction, the Dávilas belong to the old landowning aristocracy of the Atlantic coast. And in contrast to the coqueros, who for the most part aren’t very attractive—or, as Aníbal would say, “a bit thickset”—almost all of these men are tall and handsome, though ordinary. Some of the Dávila women have married such notable people as President López Pumarejo, or President Turbay’s son, or Julio Mario Santo Domingo, the richest man in Colombia.
Aníbal tells me that the Santa Marta airport closes at six in the evening, but the Dávilas are so powerful that it reopens at night just for them. That’s how they can quietly dispatch planes loaded with what is famed as the world’s best marijuana. I ask him how they do it, and he replies that they grease everyone’s palms: the control tower, the police, and here and there a navy officer. Since at this point I already know many of his most “newly rich” friends, I comment, “I thought all these narcos had their own runways at their haciendas. . . .”
“Noooo, my love. That’s only the big ones! Weed doesn’t pay enough, and there’s a lot of competition coming from Hawaii. Don’t get the idea that’s in everyone’s reach, because you need a million permits for a private landing strip. You know how much paperwork is involved in putting the plates on a car in this country, right? Multiply that by a hundred, and you can register a plane; now multiply that by another hundred, and you get the license for a private landing strip.”
I ask how Pablo manages, then, to have his own landing strip and a fleet of planes, ship tons of coke, bring giraffes and elephants from Africa, and smuggle in Rolligons and six-foot-tall boats.
“It’s because his business has no competition. And he’s the richest of all because Pablito, my love, is a jumbo: he has a key contact at the Civil Aviation Agency, a young guy who’s the son of one of the first narcos . . . an Uribe, cousin of the Ochoas . . . Álvaro Uribe, I think. Why do you suppose all these people end up financing the campaigns of the two presidential candidates? Don’t be naive!”
“That’s some position the kid’s got for himself! All these guys must be lining up.”
“That’s life, my love: the bad name goes away, but the money stays at home!”
. . .
THOSE ARE THE DAYS of wine and roses, honey and laughter, and enchanting friendships. But nothing lasts forever, and one fine day that captivating song stops playing just as suddenly as it had started.
Aníbal’s addiction is growing with every rock Pablo gives him, and as it grows, the most absurd and embarrassing scenes of jealousy come to replace declarations of love and expressions of tenderness. Whereas before those scenes had been reserved for strangers, now they are directed at our mutual friends and even my fans. After every argument comes a two-day separation, and Aníbal seeks consolation from an ex-girlfriend, a couple of mud wrestlers, or three flamenco dancers. On the third day, he’ll call and beg me to take him back. Hours of pleading, dozens of roses, and an artful tear overcome my resistance . . . and the cycle starts all over again.
One night, while we are chatting with the group in an elegant bar, my boyfriend takes out a gun and aims it at two fans who only wanted my autograph. When our friends manage to disarm him nearly an hour later, I beg them to take me home. And this time, when Aníbal calls to try to explain away what happened, I tell him, “If you quit coke today, I will take care of you and make you happy for the rest of your life. If not, I am leaving you this instant.”
“But, my love . . . you have to understand that I can’t live without ‘Snow White,’ and I’m never going to leave her!”
“Then I no longer love you. It’s over.”
And like that, in the blink of an eye, in the first week of January 1983, we say good-bye forever.
. . .
IN 1983, there are still no private television channels in Colombia. Each new government leases off airtime to private production companies called programadoras, and TV Impacto—the company I started with the well-known hard-line journalist Margot Ricci—has received several spaces in the AA and B time slots. But Colombia is going through a recession, and the large companies are only advertising in AAA or prime time, 7:00 to 9:30 p.m. We are only a year into the project, and our profits aren’t enough to cover the costs of the National Institute of Radio and Television; practically all the small producers like us are broke.
MARGOT ASKS ME for a meeting so we can decide what to do, but when I arrive at the office on Monday, the first thing she says is “Did Aníbal really shoot you on Friday?”
I reply that if he had, I’d be in the cemetery or the hospital, and not the office.
“But that’s what all of Bogotá is saying!” she exclaims, in a tone that says other people’s words take precedence over what’s right before her eyes.
I reply that I can’t change reality just to please all of Bogotá. But I also say that, while it is false that Aníbal fired the gun, I’d left him for good and I haven’t stopped crying in three days.
“You finally left him? What a relief; I’m so glad! Now, get ready to cry for real, because we’re $100,000 in debt. At the rate we’re going, in a few weeks I’ll have to sell my apartment, my car, and my son! Of course, before I sell my son, I’ll sell you to the bedouin with five camels, because I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this!”
Eight months earlier, Margot and I had traveled to Israel on an invitation from the government, and then we visited Egypt to see the pyramids. While we were in the Cairo bazaar haggling over a turquoise necklace, a scrawny, toothless bedouin some seventy years old, carrying a shepherd’s crook and smelling of goat, had leered at me lasciviously. He circled us nervously and tried to catch the attention of the stand’s owner. After exchanging some words with the old man, the merchant gave Margot a brilliant smile and addressed her in English: “The rich gentleman wishes to give the necklace to the young lady as a gift. And that’s not all: he wishes to marry her and negotiate the dowry now. He is willing to offer five camels for her!”
Offended by the figure, but quite entertained by the unbelievable proposal, I told Margot to ask for at least thirty camels for me, and while she was at it to tell that mummy from the Fourth Dynasty that the young lady was not a virgin: she’d been married, and not just once, but twice.
Exclaiming that only a sheikh had thirty camels, the old man, alarmed, asked Margot if I had buried my two husbands.
After smiling with compassion at the man seeking my hand in marriage, Margot warned me to get ready to run and turned to the merchant with a triumphant expression: “Tell the rich gentleman that she didn’t bury them: this young thirty-two-year-old lady already kicked two husbands to the curb, both twenty years younger than him, twenty times better-looking, and twenty times richer!”
And we ran off to disappear in the market while the old man chased us, howling in Arabic and waving his crook furiously in the air. We didn’t stop laughing until we reached the hotel and were happily looking out from our room at the legendary Nile River, jade-colored and shining under the stars.
Margot’s mention of the bedouin brings to mind a dromedary collector who is not yet septuagenarian, nor is he cantankerous, fetid, or toothless. And I say to Margot, “I know someone with more than five camels who once saved my life, and who could maybe save this company, too.”
“Sheikh or circus owner?” she asks ironically.
“Sheikh, with thirty camels. But first I have to consult with someone.”
I call the Singer and explain