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

of.” At first the guards lived a chaotic life, playing music at top volume, not eating at regular hours, wandering through the house in their underwear. But Diana assumed a certain authority and imposed order. She obligedthem to wear decent clothes, to lower the volume of the music that kept them awake, and even made one of them leave the roomwhen he tried to sleep on a mattress next to her bed.
    Azucena, at the age of twenty-eight, was a serene romantic who could not live without her husband after spending four years learning to live with him. She suffered attacks of imaginary jealousy and wrote him love letters knowing he would never receive them. During the first week of captivity she began to take daily notes that were very boldand quite useful in writing her book. She had worked on Diana’s newscast for some years, and their relationship had never been more than professional, but they identified with each other in their misfortune. They read the papers together, talked all night, and tried to sleep until it was time for lunch. Diana was a compulsive conversationalist, and from her Azucena learned lessons about life thatnever would have been taught in school.
    The members of her crew recall Diana as an intelligent, cheerful, animated companion, and an astute political analyst. When she felt discouraged, she confessed her sense of guilt for having involved them in this unforeseen adventure. “I don’t care what happens to me,” she said, “but if anything happens to you, I’ll never have a moment’s peace again.” Shewas uneasy about Juan Vitta’s health. An old friend, he had opposed the trip with great vehemence and even better arguments, and yet he had gone with her soon after his stay in the hospital because of a serious heart ailment. Diana could never forget it. On the first Sunday of their captivity, she came into his room in tears and asked if he didn’t hate her for not having listened to him. Juan Vittareplied with absolute honesty. Yes, he had hated her with all his soul when they were told they were in the hands of the Extraditables, but he had come to accept captivity as a fate that could not be avoided. His initial rancor had also turned into guilt over his inability to talk her out of it.
    For the moment, Hero Buss, Richard Becerra, and OrlandoAcevedo, who were in a nearby house, had fewerreasons for alarm. In the closets they had found an astonishing quantity of men’s clothing still in the original packaging, with leading European designers’ labels. The guards said that Pablo Escobar kept emergency wardrobes in various safe houses. “Go on, guys, ask for anything you want,” they joked. “Transportation takes a little while, but in twelve hours we can satisfy any request.” At firstthe amount of food and drink carried in by mule seemed the work of madmen. Hero Buss told them that no German could live without beer, and on the next trip they brought him three cases. “It was a carefree atmosphere,” Hero Buss has said in his perfect Spanish. It was during this time that he persuaded a guard to take a picture of the three hostages peeling potatoes for lunch. Later, when photographswere forbidden in another house, he managed to hide an automatic camera on top of a closet and took a nice series of color slides of himself and Juan Vitta.
    The guards played cards, dominoes, chess, but the hostages were no match for their irrational bets and sleight-of-hand cheating. They were all young. The youngest might have been fifteen and was proud of having won grand prize in a contestfor the most police killed—two million pesos apiece. They were so contemptuous of money that Richard Becerra sold them sunglasses and his cameraman’s jackets for a sum that would have purchased five new ones.
    Sometimes, on cold nights, the guards smoked marijuana and played with their weapons. Twice they fired off shots by accident. One bullet went through the bathroom door and wounded a guardin the knee. When they