Amanecerá y Veremos

by Adriana Uribe

“Amanecerá y veremos.”[1] Pedro learned and lived by this phrase from an early age and throughout his life. The motto assured him that the future could not be predicted. This made him live his life without expectations. All he knew was that the sun rises every day. Plans may become facts, but whatever hopes and expectations someone has may also result in disappointment.

For Pedro, things were never what they seemed. Mistrust was embedded in every action and decision, particularly when these involved other people and their promises. He probably inherited this stoic nature from his relatives, who lived by the same principle and therefore looked at the past like a succession of pointless memories, and did not hold any reason to look forward to the future. Nothing mattered, nothing was worth putting their heart on the line for. All you knew was that the sun rises every day and the rest would reveal itself in due time.

In contrast to her father, Dora had the enthusiastic nature of her late mother. She maintained high hopes for any new opportunity, even though she was continuously battling her desperation for survival, attempting singlehandedly to solve all the difficulties of her family. She bought a lottery ticket every Friday with whatever was left of her wages; she lit candles to a host of saints and virgins; she sprayed the house with holy water and would never kill spiders, in case they were the sign of a good surprise.

After Pedro’s accident, Dora became the breadwinner of the family while he was reduced to working with his shoeshine box in Parque de los Periodistas. He also looked after his grandchildren so that Dora could work more hours on weekends. Income was an uncertainty for Pedro and Dora, but she was in charge and took on the duty of looking after her two young boys and her father, as if accepting God’s punishment for her unwanted pregnancies, bringing children into the world out of wedlock and without the blessing of the Church.

Dora looks forward to wearing a uniform and working in a place where she does not have to clean up other people’s mess. Quitting her job as a maid with Doña Perla, la familia Ortiz and Doña Sofía was risky, but Dora wanted to stop comparing the wealth of the patrones[2] while she struggled to afford the basics. Dora’s new job in Almacenes Tia starts next month, six days a week from eight to seven, and it is a blessing. She would earn a minimum but steady wage every month, instead of the random cash in hand from the patrones, who regularly seem to forget to pay her what was agreed.

Pedro used to secure jobs for himself as a laborer and helped Dora find jobs like the one at Doña Perla’s house. To him, Dora’s patrones seemed generous: they gave her extra money for the bus, gifts for his grandchildren. Even some of the toys from Nena, Doña Perla’s granddaughter, ended up in their home. He couldn’t understand Dora’s expectations about working in a store. Since Pedro had arrived in Bogota, he had viewed employment as a linear sequence of events: he turned up, did what was asked of him, and waited to be paid at the end of the week. The simplicity of this agreement worked well; a job was a job, not an adventure, nothing extra to hope for, nor to bring him happiness or prompt grief. His occupation now, waiting for someone to come for a shoeshine, replayed the linear sequence of events. To him, Dora’s plans and hopes seemed naïve and pointless.

They both agreed to ignore the issue to avoid arguments, as long as she could provide for everyone in their household.

The day of the accident Pedro failed to notice the omens that presented themselves throughout the morning. The birds didn’t wake him up, the street dogs, who barked and howled out of boredom and hunger, were absent. The gray thick wall that blurred the horizon didn’t announce rain or move away. The air felt thick, humid and still. Above all, the blue flames of the kerosene stovetop turned emerald green, before fading away when the fuel had been entirely consumed. Dora only managed to half-cook the arepas and boil water for coffee before a foul, persistent smell invaded the whole space under the tin roof where they lived.

Pedro’s understanding of nature became irrelevant when he moved to the city. The city was a different untamed monster. He had become blind to the signs of nature anyone in his village would have interpreted immediately. Dora was simply too worried about the cost of kerosene to think of omens and, instead, she automatically grabbed her purse to figure out how much was left before the end of the week.

Pedro drank his coffee and chewed the soft arepa in silence, grabbed the canvas bag with his work clothes and an old pair of boots, and left. The bus took about two hours to get to the construction site where he was installing window frames. In spite of the long journey, he felt joyful when he worked on sites surrounded by nature. The eucalyptus trees on the path to this particular area reminded him of San Antonio[3] – soft grass, the distant sound of a river… He didn’t know what had happened to the river just beyond the city limits where he used to swim as a child, but this one near the construction site was more likely to be preserved for the benefit of the new, affluent neighborhood he was helping to build. There were plans for the first private club with a golf course on the outskirts of Bogota. Vast extensions of farmland and wild forests around the city were being converted into luxury homes as a way to avoid the risk of being invaded and turned into slums by people like him: displaced campesinos.

The constant banging, the rumble of engines and the noise of voices on the construction site never stopped nature, but Pedro failed to notice nature’s silence. He walked at a fast pace, worried about being late. It would mean a few pesos deducted from his wages at the end of the week.  

The workers were already gathering in front of an improvised office inside a metal container where Ingeniero Rodrigo spent most of his day looking at documents, making calls and generally pretending to be busy. In Pedro’s eyes, on account of his boss’s gold-rimmed glasses and expensive watch, the engineer was intelligent and rich. He spoke with a strong coastal accent that made other workers joke about the Caribbean laziness he was prone to. But knowing they could be laid off and quickly replaced, they never challenged his authority or joked with him.

Pedro put on his old shirt and ragged pair of trousers, ignoring the old boots as the weather over the last few days had been dry enough to solidify the mud. He followed Antonio and Joaquín to the building where they had been working for the last few days. The panoramic views of Bogota would be framed like oil paintings on pristine walls facing the open Sabana de Bogota to the north, huge blue mountains far in the distance when the sky was clear.

The morning went quickly with Antonio and Joaquín speaking about football. Something Pedro didn’t follow or care for, but it provided opportunities to joke and enjoy a sense of friendship with the two younger men at the site. The work was hard, and by noon, after seven window frames had been installed, they were anxiously waiting for the bell to announce their lunch break. Knowing Dora might need help to make it to the end of the week, Pedro had to make sure his cash would last until Saturday. The prospects for lunch were disappointing, as he calculated that he could only afford a soft drink and a pot of soup with bread.

Distracted, thinking about lunch while he waited for Joaquín to set up screws and hooks for the next window frame, Pedro suddenly felt dizzy. He was standing on the ladder to the second floor, holding the heavy frame with both hands and leaning into the ladder for balance. His fear of flimsy ladders had been tamed after hours spent on the roof of the same building installing red clay tiles, but he could now feel a subtle pendular movement around him. Not certain whether it was in his head, or if Antonio was goofing around at the bottom of the ladder, he gripped the window frame tightly.

“Is it an earthquake?” asked Antonio to no one in particular from the ground, holding the feet of the ladder. Someone shouted from inside the building.

“Está temblando.” Many workers repeated the earthquake warning in loud voices for the others to climb down and walk away from their stations. Earthquakes are common in Bogota, and in spite of a few Bogotanos panicking, the majority, especially construction workers, would simply wait for an earthquake to end and resume their tasks immediately. Some started to walk away lazily, hands in pockets, more concerned about the bell and the potential shortening of their lunch break. The earth wakes up often in the Andes and it’s not an event worthy of much attention for anyone born in or near these mountains.

“Baje, baje!” shouted both Joaquín and Antonio from both ends of the ladder where Pedro was holding the window frame.

Joaquín disappeared from the place where he was, close to the top of the ladder, to reappear next to Antonio on the ground, both repeating “baje, baje!” encouraging Pedro to descend immediately. They seemed to be the only ones still near the building, as most of the workers were already in the open space marked as a future parking lot.

Descending with the heavy frame seemed impossible for Pedro, as Joaquín had removed the safety harness from the frame he was awkwardly holding, full of metal hinges, nuts and bolts aimed to secure it to the wall. He couldn’t grab the ladder firmly enough to step down and, like anyone in Bogota used to frequent earthquakes, he stood still, waiting for the tremors to end.

But Joaquín and Antonio insisted that Pedro descend, feeling they couldn’t join the group and leave Pedro on his own. Pedro felt he had to attempt to step down the ladder, relying entirely on his balance to guide him while both of his hands held the heavy window frame. He thought of a circus he saw once in San Antonio where a man walked on a rope. He smiled for an instant, as he felt at the center of this improvised show of balance and courage.

Another step down. He felt dizzy again, the ladder wobbled. Pedro lifted the frame up in an attempt to adjust it, hold it with only one hand or support it on his shoulders, but his back instinctively arched beyond return. He saw the ladder peeling away from the supporting wall in slow motion.

The world entered pause while Pedro was in midair. When he landed on his back, window frame and ladder crashing on top of him, it was a dreadful mixture of cracked wood, broken bones, and squashed organs. He never imagined that falling on grass could be so painful, that it could account for such a loud noise. A burning sensation ran through his body. He tried to sit up, to stand, and let everyone know that he was fine, like the man in the circus finishing his act and bowing to the audience.

An instant later, Pedro realized that this attempted plan in his head was different from what was happening around him. Other workers surrounded him and were removing  the ladder and the window frame from his chest. Both objects felt like extensions of his body, and, as they were peeled away, an intense pain came from nowhere and everywhere, replacing their weight. His head pounded; his hair was wet with blood. The world began to spin around even though he wasn’t moving. He could hear voices, many voices. None of them distinctive enough, maybe not even intended for him to listen or reply to. Whether his eyes were open or not, he couldn’t say. It felt incredibly hard to focus on anything other than the sensations bursting in his body like thunderbolts in every limb, his pounding heart. The gray thick wall covering the sky that morning seemed to have descended to cover everything around him.

Pedro returned to his senses without knowing how long he’d been unconscious. He was aching and still lying on the ground, now with a pounding headache and sore limbs. There were a few people moving about; hammers and engines restarted, while portable radios were at full blast to hear the news about the earthquake. Ingeniero Rodrigo appeared, along with Antonio, Joaquín, and two other men.  They helped him to sit up. After putting his hands on his head to try to ease the pressure of a bandage wrapped around like a crown, Pedro realized his hair and face were sticky with blood.

Everything seemed to have returned to normal, except Pedro felt like he was floating around his own physical body. The burning and stabbing pain grew in intensity, tempting him to let out a loud scream to release the tension building up in his throat and between his ears. At the same time, all of those sensations seemed spaced out, happening to someone else. The eucalyptus trees, the construction site, the birds. Everything had a distant feel, as if he were watching a movie sitting far from the screen. Someone asked him to move his arms and legs, and he obeyed, first doubting he could, then slowly recovering his ability to control that distant body. He was a proud man and would not show weakness in front of the guys. He was fine, he could go back to work after lunch, he just needed a break.

He must have said those words to the men around him, but right then he saw Ingeniero Rodrigo tell everyone to stop for lunch. Some of the guys might have been shocked by Pedro’s accident; others were instinctively worried about the aftershocks, when there was a greater chance of buildings collapsing.

Most of the workers on the construction sites or in the factories and shops of Bogota were displaced farmers who represented a cheap and untrained labor force, accustomed to tolerating risks without objection and never challenging authority. In a country with seismic quantities of land, they believed mountains to be alive and nature to attack human invasion regularly and persistently. One earthquake was to be followed not only by rippling waves that caused cracks and marks in the city, but by other calamities in both urban and rural areas. Pedro’s grandfather always said that, after an earthquake, roads would break open and swallow entire buses; the milk would go sour; and women would get migraines that were impossible to cure for years, even decades. The dark mountains of the Andes and their unknown forces had a vengeful nature that could destroy entire towns with landslides, overflowing rivers or drought that ruined the crops, even those grown on steep hills where forests were burnt to make way for agriculture and livestock.

Awkwardly placing his hand on Pedro’s elbow, in a gesture meant to be kind, Ingeniero Rodrigo told him in a calm voice that he should take the rest of the day off and go to the hospital, “just in case.” They both understood without saying it: the boss did not want to deal with a sudden issue involving reports of an accident; the worker did not want to find out that an unreported injury would keep him from earning his wages.

The twenty-minute ride on the bus to the nearby hospital was more appealing than the long way home, but Pedro didn’t feel able to ask if the time off would be deducted from his wages. Instead, gathering all his willpower and ignoring the pain, he stood up and assured Ingeniero Rodrigo that he could continue working after the break. He wanted to show everyone that he was fine and that he wouldn’t be the cause of any disruption.

Pedro began to walk, feeling the looks from everyone around him, commanding every bone in his body to return to normal. The pain was excruciating. He collected his canvas bag and went to the kiosk where the workers were lining up to buy their drinks and lunches. Antonio and Joaquín took pity on him and bought him a beer for lunch. Beer was popular that day. Normally too expensive for the workers to include in their daily meal, they needed to relax and forget about the dangers they were going to be facing again in the afternoon. Pedro decided to indulge a little with an empanada and wait until later to see if he would have to ask any of his friends to lend him some money to make it to the end of the week. Ingeniero Rodrigo bought him a second empanada, possibly as compensation for not dying after the fall. The anxious mood of the day began to dissolve in the sun; there were jokes and laughter among them, making conversation lighter and friendlier. There was a collective unspoken agreement to dissolve any sign of panic with a few beers. It wasn’t manly to show fear of any kind in this environment. Pedro no longer felt embarrassed about the accident, because he wasn’t new to the job. The event showed that he was a seasoned worker who could cope with the dangers of the trade.

After lunch, the men spent time playing football or taking naps on the soft grass, sipping their now warm bottles of beer, but Pedro sat in the shade and felt close to fainting from the growing pain inside his body. He assumed the sudden opening of the skies with intense blue and bright sun were to blame for the sudden sweat and overwhelming heat.

When the pain turned unbearable, he quietly walked to Ingeniero Rodrigo’s tin office and told him he would go to the nearby hospital “just in case,” as he had suggested earlier. Ingeniero Rodrigo wished him good luck, asked him to keep him informed.

“Let me know tomorrow how it goes at the hospital,” he told him, knowing that any health issue in Colombia without private care took a long time to resolve, often involving a bureaucratic process of days or months. Pedro was unlikely to be back that afternoon. The engineer’s tone was also meant to remind him that he was expected to return the next day.

Pedro was still unable to ask if his pay for the day would be reduced on account of leaving early to go to the hospital. He preferred to rely on his “amanecerá y veremos.” He would find out soon enough and possibly resign himself to whatever the bosses decided was right under the circumstances. He needed his wages, but lower pay was better than no pay.

To reach the bus stop a few blocks downhill, Pedro took slow, tiptoeing steps, unintentionally attempting to keep the earth from waking up. Slipping, falling, or having another earthquake on the same day scared him more than ever. He did not want to fall ever again, to feel more pain than he was already struggling to cope with. His body was shaken, and the persistent intense headache made it difficult for him to move and to breathe. He chose to believe that the scent from the eucalyptus trees was healing him. He decided to ignore the painful irritation of his nostrils with every breath.

Once on the main road, a mixture of dust, noise and smoke from the cars and trucks hammered his skull. He curled his body into a cocoon and sat on the ground, indifferent to the looks of drivers and people waiting at the bus stop. The bright sky forced him to squint his eyes, and he pretended to focus on the vanishing point at the horizon where the bus should eventually appear.

Pedro suddenly came back to his body thanks to a loud siren coming from an ambulance next to the hospital’s entrance door. He seemed to have dozed off in the waiting room marked with a professionally painted EMERGENCIAS sign in big black letters on the wall in front of him. He didn’t remember how he arrived there. The bright lights forced him to close his eyes again; his mouth felt dry, and he was desperate to find a way to stop his headache and the unpredictable bursts of pain randomly attacking his body. A nurse touched his shoulder believing him to be asleep, but he jumped in surprise, feeling the sudden pain caused by the weight of her hand.  

She took him to a small room filled with light, like the rest of the building. He was told to lie on the bed and wait for the doctor to arrive. Contrary to what he expected, the nurse didn’t make eye contact or small talk. He desperately attempted to get her sympathy and perhaps a pill or two to stop the pain, but there was no hint of compassion or interest. He took his shoes off and lay on the bed, closing his eyes again. He had never noticed before that his eyelids were thin enough to allow light through and hurt his eyes.

“Buenas tardes,” said a male voice, to which Pedro replied by opening his eyes and instinctively sitting up.

“No, no, stay where you are,” commanded the doctor looking at the bandage and caked blood on Pedro’s head.

Pedro began to tell his story while the doctor continued checking Pedro’s vitals and making notes, but his explanations did not seem to be heard by the doctor. He continued quietly until he asked Pedro how much he had been drinking on account of the smell of alcohol in his breath.

“Solo una cerveza,” Pedro answered, unaware of the doctor’s own conclusions about the accident.

The doctor and the nurse cleaned the blood off his face, now almost non-existent since he himself had wiped it, trying to dry the sweat on his face with the sleeve of his old working shirt. Pedro’s bandage was changed after both of them looked at a now closed wound on the back of his head.

Since there was no more bleeding, and X-rays were expensive, he was told he should go home and rest. They knew Pedro didn’t have the money to pay for a private exam. The doctor warned him about the dangers of drinking alcohol and asked him about his diet, while the nurse judged him in silence, arms crossed, looking down at his ragged clothes. Pedro responded with the submissive attitude he had been taught to display – what was expected from him. He controlled his pain, rejecting the idea that at some point the doctor would instruct the nurse to provide him with pain killers, an injection, a magic potion. The doctor told Pedro to put his shoes on and go home. His case was not an emergency, and further care should be handled at San Juan de Dios Hospital, the charity hospital near his home. There was no obligation from this institution to look after anyone walking into the building unless it was a genuine emergency.

“Go to bed, sleep, and tomorrow morning you will be as good as new.”

End of consultation.

Pedro did not ask for a prescription; he did not ask to stay in the hospital. He was no one to  question authority. The doctor was another Ingeniero Rodrigo. Their word was final.

The next day and the days after the accident, Pedro continued to experience waves of pain that appeared and disappeared at random, causing him to constantly be on alert, stressed and exhausted. Although Antonio and Joaquín helped him with every task he was assigned, his mistakes grew in frequency and severity until Ingeniero Rodrigo threatened to sack the three of them for covering each other’s stupidity. Pedro walked away from that threat while another throbbing headache drilled his skull. He threw the tools on the floor, poured a bucket of cold water on his head and shouted to no one in particular:

“F–k this.”

After that day, he never visited another doctor or looked for another job.

Pedro’s headaches continue to come and go without apparent triggers. At times, a burning pain throughout his body demands absolute stillness before it disappears. He is certain that nothing, not even life and death, is predictable. All the more so as he sits and waits for someone to demand a shoeshine in Parque de los Periodistas day in day out.

Dora’s new job, like anything else, may or may not be what she expects. Just wait and see. Amanecerá y veremos.

Footnotes

[1] Literally, Spanish for: “It will dawn (the sun will rise), and we’ll see.” Transposed to English, something like: “Time will tell” or “We’ll see what happens.”

[2] Bosses.

[3] Columbia.