News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Read Free Book Online

mind he followed all the car’s turns until it screeched to a stop in a garage. By the route and the length of time they had been driving, he formed a tentative idea of the neighborhood they were in.
    One kidnapper led him by the arm—he was still wearing the painted glasses—tothe end of a hall. They climbed to the second floor, turned left, walked about five paces, and went into a place that was icy cold. This is where they removed the glasses. Then he saw that he was in a dismal bedroom with boarded-up windows and a single bulb in the ceiling. The only furnishings were a double bed, whose sheets had seen too much use, and a table with a portable radio and a televisionset.
    Pacho realized that his abductors had been in a hurry not only for reasons of security but in order to get back in time for the soccer game between Santafé and Caldas. To keep everybody happy, they gave him a bottle of
aguardiente
, left him alone with the radio, and went downstairs to watch the game. He drank half the bottle in ten minutes and felt no effects, though it did put him in themood to listen to the game on the radio. A devoted Santafé fan since his childhood, the tie—the score was 2-2—made him so angry he could not enjoy the liquor. When it was over, he saw himself on the nine-thirty news on file footage, wearing a dinner jacket and surrounded by beauty queens. That was when he learned his driver was dead.
    At the end of the newscast, a guard wearing a heavy flannelmask came in and had him remove his clothes and put on a gray sweatsuit, which seemed a requirement in the prisons of the Extraditables. He also tried to take the inhaler for asthma that was in his jacket pocket, but Pacho convinced him that keeping it was a matter of life and death. The guard explained the rules of his captivity: He could use the bathroom in the hall, listen to the radio, and watchtelevision with no restrictions, but at normal volume. When he was finished, he made Pacho lie down, then used a heavy rope to tie him to the bed by his ankle.
    The guard laid a mattress on the floor beside the bed, and a few moments later began to snore with an intermittent whistle. The night thickened. In the dark, Pacho became aware that this was the first night of an uncertain future in whichanything could happen. He thought about María Victoria—her friends called her Mariavé—his pretty, intelligent, and strong-willed wife, and about their two sons, twenty-month-old Benjamín and seven-month-old Gabriel. A rooster crowed nearby, and Pacho was surprised at its mistaken timing. “A rooster that crows at ten at night must be crazy,” he thought. He is an emotional, impulsive man, easilymoved to tears: the image of his father. Andrés Escabi, his sister Juanita’s husband, had died in a plane that had been blown up in midair by the Extraditables. In the midst of the family upheaval, Pacho said something that made all of them shudder: “One of us will not be alive in December.” He did not think, however, that the night of his abduction would be his last. For the first time his nerveswere calm, and he felt sure he would survive. Pacho knew the guard lying on the floor was awake by the rhythm of his breathing. He asked him:
    “Who’s holding me?”
    “Who do you want to be held by,” asked the guard, “the guerrillas or the drug dealers?”
    “I think I’m being held by Pablo Escobar,” Pacho replied.
    “That’s right,” said the guard, and made an immediate correction, “the Extraditables.”
    The news was in the air. The switchboard operators at
El Tiempo
had notified his closest relatives, who had notified others, who called others, until everybody knew. Through a series of peculiar circumstances, one of the last in the family to find out was Pacho’s wife. A few minutes after the abduction she had received a call from his friend Juan Gabriel Uribe, who still was not sure what hadhappened and could only ask if Pacho was home yet. She said no, and Juan