Yerman -Part III

Germán always spoke up what came to his mind. He wanted to be rich and we all knew that becoming a drug lord was one of his strategies, after all, he “knew” some people who were close enough to Pablo Escobar, who by the way was an important influence on his life… When Pablo Escobar was killed by the Colombian armed forces, Germán told my mom that he knew very well that Escobar wasn’t dead; he was hiding in Canada in one of his big houses with billions of dollars to spend for the rest of his life…

I used to think that he was different from us, different from the rest of the group of friends; he probably had a pathology that his psychologists failed to identify. I do not find other reason that can explain how among our group of friends, he was the only one thinking the way he did and so obsess about money and everything that comes with it… Sometimes I felt that he was a little crazy, sometimes he looked more normal.

Sadly, as soon as we started to realize how different he was, we started to reject his presence, to either ignore him or simply to make such comments that would hurt him and make him go away. I do not want to go into many details about this, I couldn’t anyway since neither do I remember any particular comment from anyone, nor anyone of us suggesting not to be so cruel and hard to him. It wasn’t always like this, but it happened many times if I remember correctly. 

About moments with Germán I remember an evening when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. I was outside my house looking at the sky and asking the stars how come I was so ugly and my friends so pretty, how come they all had boyfriends and I hadn’t. I think I was particularly sad that evening and he was around so when he saw me he came to talk. We had a nice chat that evening and I even told him why I was feeling bad… That was my biggest secret and for some inexplicable reason I shared it with him. I do not remember his exact words, but he sure cheered me up! I am hoping I said something good back, I hope I at least said “thank you”.

I wish I could say the opposite, but I know very well the kind of “business” he was doing, not exactly how or with whom, I never had to meet his “friends”. What I do not know is why it was so important for him to be able to live a life in which he could be the “boss” and feel big, important and powerful. I just know that he always said it laud, without any problem, he talked about some people he knew, how much money they had and how they got it. I don’t know if someone ever told him to hush, but many people did tell me “he’ll be killed, he talks too much”.

He was buried some days after he was killed because his body had to go through many investigations and exams. He couldn´t be cremated, as he once suggested to his parents in case he would die before them, because it is forbidden to cremate the body of a person who has been assassinated. I went to two of his masses but not to his funeral, I had to go back to school and did not have the energy to see his mother devastated… Seven years later she is still devastated, as well as his father, as well as his ex-girlfriend. 

The maid of his house at that time said, that during the days prior to his death he had been sad and concerned. She believed that maybe he knew what he had done wrong and the consequences. And here I am wondering if he really knew he was going to die that way, if he felt what we all knew and anticipated, I wonder if he was given a chance to make up for whatever he did, how bad was it to have to pay with his life and with the life of those who loved him most, because even alive, they have been dying ever since he left, day by day and little by little. (The end)

foto tomada de http://didaskalosbarranquilla.wordpress.com/actualidad/

Yerman (part II )

...The first thing that comes to one’s mind when these kinds of things happen is –but who did it? How? Where?  You do not even wonder why anymore, or well, in some cases you may have the benefit of the doubt. With Germán it was clear, we all somehow knew that sooner or later he would end up lying on a puddle of his own blood with holes on his body. I do not intend to be sensationalist, most of them end up like that (when they are lucky enough), I wish they wouldn’t, I wish there was no drug trafficking, no guns, no shuts, no war, no good and no bad, but that’s the way it is and I am just telling the story.

When we were kids, Germán usually came to our house during school holidays, the last time I let him in, he broke the wheels of my new scatting doll. I was so upset and keen to get a new doll from his parents, that I went that night to show them my doll and to let them know what Germán had done. He denied his action and I only got to keep the broken 5 days old doll which was not longer able to skate. That night I asked our housekeeper not to allow him in our house anymore.

We did not play anymore inside my house, but the neighbourhood was small enough to keep all the children playing together, and big enough to make it perfect for different games. I remember that Germán always suggested games that required a lot of energy, he could not just sit down and play something for a little while, he always had to run and probably play the role of the one who needed to be chased or hunted as we used to say, for instance, when we were playing “policias y ladrones” = policemen and robbers, he never wanted to be a policeman, although, as children, we all kind of enjoyed  being hunted, but still had to play the good guy every once in a while…

Germán was the only one among us who had ever been to the States. He was the only one with a visa on his passport, actually, the only one with a passport. He told us so many stories about Disneyland (most of them ended up being extraordinary imaginary scenes but it did not make them less interesting) and I remember how I particularly enjoyed his explanations about Mickey Mouse, who was a real mouse two meters high and who in reality did not like children but got well paid to pretend he did… After his summer in the States he asked me once not to call him Germán anymore, he wanted to be Yerman,” Yerman sounds really American” he said.

When Germán was on his early 20’s without any prospects of finding a good job (since he did not really want to go to university and did not belong to a particularly rich family with companies or properties for him to administrate) he tried to get a visa to go to the US and pursue “the American dream”. However, life had something different prepared for him because this time his visa was denied and he had to stay in Colombia... (to be continued)

Picture taken from: http://patentados.com/invento/muneca-patinadora-perfeccionada.html