Belano said it's four in the morning. At that moment I accepted that I wasn't going to be able to sleep. Then López Lobo started to talk and his speech went on until dawn, only very occasionally interrupted by questions from Belano that I couldn't hear.

He said that he'd had two children and a wife, like Belano, like everyone, and a house and books. Then he said something I didn't catch. Maybe he talked about happiness. He mentioned streets, metro stops, telephone numbers. As if he were looking for someone. Then silence. Someone coughed. López Lobo repeated that he'd had a wife and two children. A generally satisfactory life. Something like that. Anti-Franco activism and a youth, in the seventies, in which there was no lack of sex or friendship. He became a photographer by chance. He didn't take his fame or prestige or anything else very seriously. He was in love when he got married. His life was what is usually described as a happy life. One day, he and his wife happened to discover that their oldest son was sick. He was a very clever boy, said López Lobo. What he had was serious, a tropical disease, and of course López Lobo thought the boy must have caught it from him. Still, after performing the appropriate tests, the doctors couldn't find even a trace of the disease in López Lobo's blood. For a while, López Lobo pursued the possible carriers of the disease within the child's limited circle and found nothing. Finally, he lost his mind.

He and his wife sold their house in Madrid and went to live in the United States, leaving with the sick child and the healthy child. The hospital where the boy was admitted was expensive and the treatment was long and López Lobo had to go back to work, so his wife stayed with the boys and he took on freelance assignments. He was in many places, he said, but he always returned to New York. Sometimes the boy would be better, as if he were beating the disease, and other times his health would plateau or decline. Sometimes López Lobo would sit in a chair in the sick boy's room and dream about his two sons, seeing their faces close together, smiling and defenseless, and then, without knowing why, he knew that he, López Lobo, must cease to exist. His wife had rented an apartment on West Eighty-first Street, and the healthy child attended a nearby school. One day, while he was waiting in Paris for a visa to an Arab country, he got a call telling him that the sick boy had taken a turn for the worse. He dropped what he was doing and caught the first flight to New York. When he got to the hospital everything seemed submerged in a kind of hideous normality and that's when he knew the end had come. Three days later the boy died. He dealt with the arrangements for the cremation himself, because his wife was devastated. Up until this point, López Lobo's account was more or less intelligible. The rest is just one sentence, one scene after another. I'll try to string them together.

The very day the boy died, or a day later, López Lobo's wife's parents arrived in New York. One afternoon they had an argument. They were in the bar of a hotel on Broadway, near Eighty-first Street, everyone together, López Lobo's in-laws, his younger son, and his wife, and López Lobo started to cry and said that he loved his two sons and that it was his fault his older son had died. Although maybe he didn't say anything and there was no argument and all of this only took place in López Lobo's mind. Then López Lobo got drunk and left the boy's ashes in a New York City subway car and then he went back to Paris without saying anything to anyone. A month later he learned that his wife had returned to Madrid and wanted a divorce. López Lobo signed the papers and thought it had all been a dream.

Much later I heard Belano's voice asking when "the tragedy" had occurred. It sounded to me like the voice of a Chilean peasant. Two months ago, answered López Lobo. And then Belano asked him what had happened to the other boy, the healthy one. He lives with his mother, answered López Lobo.

By then I could make out their silhouettes where they sat leaning against the wall. Both of them were smoking and both looked tired, but I might have gotten that impression because I was tired myself. López Lobo wasn't talking anymore. Only Belano was talking, as he had been at the beginning, and surprisingly, he was telling his own story, a story that made no sense, telling it over and over, with the difference that each time he told it he condensed it a little more, until at last all he was saying was: I wanted to die, but I realized it was better not to. Only then did I fully understand that López Lobo was going to go with the soldiers the next day, not the civilians, and that Belano wasn't going to let him die alone.

I think I fell asleep.

At least, I think I slept for a few minutes. When I woke up, the light of the new day had begun to filter into the house. I heard snores, sighs, people talking in their sleep. Then I saw the soldiers getting ready to leave. López Lobo and Belano were with them. I got up and told Belano not to go. Belano shrugged his shoulders. López Lobo's face was impassive. He knows he's going to die and now he's calm, I thought. Belano's face, meanwhile, looked like the face of a madman: in a matter of seconds, terrible fear and fierce happiness coursed across it. I grabbed his arm and without thinking went walking outside with him.

It was a gorgeous morning, of an airy blueness that gave you goose bumps. López Lobo and the soldiers watched us go and didn't say anything. Belano was smiling. I remember that we walked toward our useless Chevy and that I told him several times that what he planned to do was insane. I heard your conversation last night, I confessed, and everything makes me think your friend is crazy. Belano didn't interrupt: he looked toward the forest and the hills that surrounded Brownsville and every so often he nodded. When we got to the Chevy I remembered the snipers and I felt a stirring of panic. It seemed absurd. I opened one of the doors and we got in the car. Belano noticed Luigi's blood soaked into the fabric but he didn't say anything, and I didn't think it was the right moment to explain. For a while we sat there in silence. I had my face hidden in my hands. Then Belano asked me whether I'd realized how young the soldiers were. They're all fucking kids, I answered, and they kill each other like they're playing. Still, there's something nice about it, said Belano, looking out the window at the forest trapped between the fog and the light. I asked him why he was going with López Lobo. So he won't be alone, he answered. That much I already knew, I was hoping for a different answer, something conclusive, but I didn't say anything. I felt very sad. I wanted to say something else and couldn't find the words. Then we got out of the car and went back to the long house. Belano took his things and left with the soldiers and the Spanish photographer. I went with him to the door. Jean-Pierre was beside me and he looked at Belano in confusion. The soldiers were already beginning to head off and we said goodbye to him right there. Jean-Pierre shook his hand and I hugged him. López Lobo had gone on ahead and Jean-Pierre and I realized that he didn't want to say goodbye to us. Then Belano started to run, as if at the last moment he thought the column would leave without him. He caught up with López Lobo, and it looked to me as if they started to talk, as if they were laughing, as if they were off on an excursion, and then they crossed the clearing and were lost in the underbrush.

Our own trip back to Monrovia was almost without incident. It was long and grueling, but we didn't run into soldiers from either camp. We got to Brewerville at dusk. There we said goodbye to most of the people who'd come with us and the next morning a van from a humanitarian organization took us back to Monrovia. Jean-Pierre was out of Liberia in less than a day. I spent two more weeks there. The cook, his wife, and their son, with whom I became friendly, moved into the Center. The woman worked making beds and sweeping the floor and sometimes I would look out the window of my room and see the boy playing with other children or with the soldiers who were guarding the hotel. I never saw the driver again, but he made it to Monrovia alive, which is some consolation. It goes without saying that for the rest of my time there I tried to track down Belano, find out what had happened in the Brownsville-Black Creek-Thomas Creek area, but I couldn't get any straight answers. According to some, the territory was now under the control of Kensey's armed bands, and according to others, troops under a nineteen-year-old general, General Lebon I think was his name, had managed to reestablish Taylor's control over all the territory between Kakata and Monrovia, which included Brownsville and Black Creek. But I never found out whether this was true or false. One day I went to hear a speech at a place near the American embassy. The speech was given by a General Wellman, and in his own way, he tried to explain the situation in the country. At the end, anyone could ask whatever they wanted. When everyone had left or gotten tired of asking questions that we somehow knew were pointless, I asked him about General Kensey, about General Lebon, about the situation in the towns of Brownsville and Black Creek, about the fates of photographer Emilio López Lobo, from Spain, and journalist Arturo Belano, from Chile. General Wellman gave me a long look before he answered (but he gave everyone the same look, maybe he was nearsighted and didn't know where to get himself a pair of glasses). In as few words as possible, he said that according to his reports General Kensey had been dead for a week. Lebon's troops had killed him. General Lebon, in turn, was also dead, in his case at the hands of a gang of highwaymen, in one of the eastern neighborhoods of Monrovia. So far as Black Creek was concerned, he said: "Peace reigns in Black Creek." Literally. And he had never heard of the settlement of Brownsville, though he pretended otherwise.