the person staying with Pablo, was superstitious. He believed in witches and fairies, the luck of the four-leaf clover, even the power of spells. Pablo didn’t take any of it seriously, but he enjoyed Limón’s predictions. On the last day of November he was reading the newspaper when a big, ugly fly started bothering him. He rolled up the paper and tried to kill it, but failed. When he sat down again to read the fly landed on his right ear. Limón said nervously, “Patrón, this is not good. This means bad luck. Something is going to happen.” Pablo tried to kill it again, but again the fly escaped.
Pablo told Limón to kill it, which he tried to do, but again it landed on Pablo’s leg, and Limón just let it out the window. I’m sure Pablo laughed.
At night Pablo sent our cousin Luzmila to the store to buy a present for me, a copy of the new Guinness Book of Sports Records. Pablo was an expert on our sports, particularly soccer; he knew the details of every World Cup final ever played and would always quiz me to make sure my knowledge kept even with him—and I would not lose any sports bet. When Luzmila returned he wrote a note to me in this book and asked our cousin to send it to me in prison.
The next day, December 1, was his forty-fourth birthday. Writing this, it is difficult not to think of the great celebrations we had enjoyed in years earlier, from when he was a boy to the parties at Napoles with hundreds of people. Now he was almost alone. Luzmila made his favorite breakfast and he read the notes that had arrived the night before from his family. Manuela had written, perhaps with some collaboration with María Victoria, “Even though you are not here, we have you hidden in a corner of our heart. Happy Birthday, I love you Dad.”
María signed her letter of good wishes and long life with the mark of her lips.
My card to him expressed my love for him and my hopes for his long life. After reading them all he put them in a paper bag and for security asked Luzmila to burn them. She does not remember if she burned them or not.
For dinner that evening the three of them enjoyed seafood from one of the best sea food restaurants in Medellín, Frutos del Mar, with a bottle of Viuda de Clicoff champagne. Limón failed to open the champagne so Pablo tapped it gently against the wall. The cork shot out, hitting Limón on the chest. They laughed and Limón said, “Thank God it wasn’t a bullet, patrón.”
The three people raised their glasses in a toast, but Pablo insisted a fourth glass be present, “Which symbolizes the presence of my family that cannot be with me today.” His toast was, “For my family, for the good health of all.”
“God bless you forever,” toasted Luzmila.
Limón offered thanks to God for the chance to work with Pablo, saying, “God crossed our paths.”
They raised the glasses to toast once again, but as Luzmila remembered later the glass slipped from Limón’s hand and fell to the ground—and landed standing up without breaking. To Limón everything that happened in life was a sign from the other life. This one, he said, was “a sign of bad luck. Something bad is going to happen.”
I know that Pablo respected the fears of Limón, but never took superstitions very seriously. He probably wanted to comfort him when he said softly, “You don’t die the night before.” After dark he put on his disguise and went outside. Early in the morning he managed to get inside to see our mother. She was still living in the secure apartment he had established for her. Getting there was difficult and dangerous, but this time Pablo risked it because he needed to tell her goodbye.
Pablo had finally accepted that the government would not make an arrangement with him for his surrender. There was nothing he could do in Medellín for his family. He needed to get back his power if he was going to make them release María Victoria and his children. So he was going to leave the city and go into the jungle to form up with his new group. “This is the last time we’re going to be seeing each other in Medellín,” he explained to our mother. He was going into his new life to set up Antioquia