News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel García Márquez, Edith Grossman Page A

them. Theyplayed cards and dominoes and helped each other solve crosswords and puzzles in old magazines.
    Marina was submissive to her jailers’ rules, but she was not impartial. She was fond of some and despised others, gossiped to them about the others as if she were their mother, and sooner or later provoked internal discord that threatened peace in the room. But she obliged them to pray the rosary, andthey all did.
    Among the guards on duty during the first month, there was one who suffered from sudden and recurrent fits of rage. They called him Barrabás. He adored Marina and caressed and flirted with her. But from the first day he was Maruja’s bitter enemy. Withno warning he would go wild, kicking the television and banging his head against the wall.
    The strangest guard was somber, silent,very thin, and almost six and a half feet tall. He wore a second dark-blue sweatshirt hood on top of his mask, like a demented monk. And that’s what they called him: Monk. For long periods he would crouch down in a kind of trance. He must have been there a long time because Marina knew him very well and singled him out for special favors. He would bring her gifts when he came back from his timeoff, including a plastic crucifix that Marina hung around her neck on the ordinary string it had when she received it. She was the only hostage who had seen his face: Before Maruja and Beatriz arrived, none of the guards wore a mask or did anything to hide his identity. Marina had interpreted this as a sign she would not leave her prison alive. She said he was a good-looking teenager with the mostbeautiful eyes she had ever seen, and Beatriz believed it because his lashes were so long and curly they protruded from the holes in his mask. He was capable of the best and worst actions. It was he who discovered that Beatriz wore a chain with a medal of the Virgin of Miracles.
    “No chains are allowed here,” he said. “You have to give that to me.”
    Beatriz protested, distraught.
    “You can’t takeit away,” she said. “That would be a really bad omen, something awful will happen to me.”
    Her distress was contagious and affected him. He said medals were not allowed because they might have long-distance electronic trackers inside. But he found the solution:
    “Here’s what we can do,” he proposed. “You keep the chain but give me the medal. I’m sorry, but those are my orders.”
    Spots, on theother hand, suffered panic attacks and was obsessed by the idea that he would be killed. He heard imaginary noises, and he pretended to have a huge scar on his face, perhapsto confuse anyone trying to identify him. He cleaned everything he touched with alcohol so he would leave no fingerprints. Marina made fun of him, but he could not control his manias. He would wake with a start in the middleof the night. “Listen!” he whispered in terror. “It’s the cops!” One night he put out the candle and Maruja walked into the bathroom door, hitting her head so hard she almost passed out. To make matters worse, Spots shouted at her for not knowing how to walk in the dark.
    “Cut it out,” she stood up to him. “This isn’t a gangster movie.”
    The guards seemed like hostages too. They were not allowedin the rest of the house, and when they were not on duty they slept in another room that was padlocked so they could not escape. They were all from the Antioquian countryside, they did not know Bogotá, and one said that when they had time off, every three or four weeks, they were blindfolded or put in the trunk of the car so they would not know where they were. Another was afraid he would be killedwhen he was no longer needed, a guarantee he would take his secrets to the grave. Bosses in hoods and better clothes would put in irregular appearances to receive reports and give instructions. Their decisions were unpredictable, and both the hostages and the guards were at their mercy.
    The captives’ breakfast—coffee and a corncake with