The Dispossessed. Aviva Chomsky

commander, and Mariá José, who has a temper, told him to eat shit, saying he was the one who was “keeping” another woman in Buenaventura. Aníbal’s lady friend had told her that and María José—I know her well—was spoiling for a fight.

      María José didn’t sleep well on January 7. She tossed and turned in the hammock and woke up several times during the night. The silence was absolute, and, except for the ocean, there was no sound at all. Early the next morning, Aníbal arrived and told her he’d found the dogs dead. They’d been poisoned, he said, and had their snouts covered with slobber. María José told me later it was at that moment she knew they all had to get away from Boca del Cajambre.

      The next morning, Diego came running up like a crazy man, crying for help and saying they’d killed Aníbal. When he calmed down, he told them a group of men with guns had arrived at about nine the night before. Taking them for guerrillas, Aníbal greeted them politely. He then realized his mistake.

      “You are a guerrilla son-of-a-bitch,” said the one in charge. “And we’ve come to pay you back for your partying with those bandits.” Without another word, he pulled out a pistol and shot Aníbal three times in the face.

      Aníbal spun sideways and fell onto the book María José had given him for Christmas, Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende. Diego was petrified. The killer looked at him and said:

      “As for you, you little bastard, I won’t kill you. But only so you can tell everyone what happened. I don’t want the flies eating both of you before they find out Lieutenant Aguirre from the Death Squad is here, cleaning up guerrillas from the region.”

      He hit Diego, threw him down on the ground, and kicked him a couple of times in the ribs. Paralyzed with fear, he lay there motionless waiting for the dawn.

      María José and her companion ran to Aníbal’s house. They found him lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the flies circling his body.

      María José ran out of the house and on to Puerto Caraña, the closest town, for help. She went straight to the police station. When she got there, the police chief told her calmly: “We already know about it. But we have orders not to leave here. Bring the old man’s body here and we’ll take care of it.”

      On she went, crying, to the priest’s house.

      “Look, I can’t bring that kind of body into the church. And, anyway, you must know the Three Wise Men arrive today,” he told her.

      Disconsolate, María José began to walk aimlessly through the town. Behind closed doors and windows, people asked each other: “Is it true? What did they do to him? How many times did they shoot him? Do you think he was the compañera’s boyfriend?”

      María José felt as if she were losing her mind. Finally, she ran into Celestino, the village idiot, a man who passed the time carving crosses for “repentant sinners” on mangrove trees and building altars on the town’s streets to “cleanse the air.”

      When he saw María José, he said, “I’ll sing Don Aníbal’s praises to the Lord.”

      Later that afternoon, Ramón and Diego arrived carrying the old man’s body. No one would let them into their house for the wake, and they couldn’t find a coffin anywhere in town. So they ended up laying the body on a pool table in a bar called The Ace of Hearts.

      Celestino sung his praises through the night while Diego and Ramón got drunk. When it got light enough, the two men dragged the body down to the water, lifted it onto a boat and, when they were far enough offshore, threw it into the water. Back on shore, María José left Celestino singing, and, without turning around to look at Ramón, walked out of the town.

      She arrived from Cali last night and hasn’t stopped crying since. She is beside me now as I write.

      ^a Colombian subsidiary of Irish pulp and paper multinational, Jefferson Smurfit.