Short Story

Seven Hundred Colombians Up A Lift
An ironic statement about Latin American immigration to Spain

Literary_Texts | Protestations

Please feel free to alter this text provided to improve it only with proper words, as this was written by a Spanish speaking person.

Not a single day had the owner wanted to have the flat vacant. So he had the new contract made immediately with another 3 Colombians, or so some neighbors said.

The problem with the Colombians was that they were too many. Some say fifteen, some eighteen, many stick to the repetitive figure of 11, which by the way was the very number of the floor they were living in. Anyway, there were too many of them, not only in the building but on the entire neighborhood; they seemed to have sprung suddenly from under the stones, and now they were everywhere around, chatting on the pavement, meeting near the telephone centers where long distance calls were cheaper, using the only lift…

First it had been the lift.

Then the staircase, where someone had apparently feared a dark stranger’s attack… Just remember also that a couple of years ago, before those video cameras had been installed at the entrance, three or 4 flats had been broken into and thoroughly stolen.

Then another’s door had been so torn down by thieves’ lever that it had needed immediate replacement and new locks of course.

Even though insurance companies used to pay for those things, they didn’t pay for rapes, to the best of our knowledge, and even rape had been attempted, or so she said, on the blonde girl living down with her parents on the 6th left, but it had been so many months before the Colombians moving in, even before the original owner moving out, that it should not have been relevant. Yet with memories of rapes and thefts, the atmosphere was not of a very trustful one indeed. It was a block building, an 11-storeyed building in fact, which does not explain much, by itself. Take into consideration as well that there were 22 flats along those 11 floors, about 60 square meters each.

Perhaps the owner’s lack of response to the general complaints helped to foster the collective fancy. Parties, they said, were made by the Colombians at the strangest times, on Saturday mornings to last through the day and the night, to continue on Sunday…

Perhaps it was also the continuous going up and down a lift where there was always at least one Colombian present, which made them think that the party was semipermanent.

They did not know them by their names; they could scarcely distinguish three or four at the best by their faces… their bronze-dusty faces and suspiciously dark eyes, as lustrous as polished beans.

So it is sensible to imagine some neighbors dreaming of Caribbean paradises where they had never traveled before, sold to them by travel agencies on TV, on Internet… but never willing to be invited into a Colombian party held before their very noses…

Whilst others, perhaps most, more obviously regarded them as an inconvenience and a permanent source of discomfort.

- They have caused me no trouble indeed- 86-year old Mrs. Gutierrez would argue- why should I complain? Yet she, being deaf, was the only one to put forward a kind word for their benefit.

- Those females are very dirty - replied Mrs. Concha Pérez from the 10th right- Haven’t you seen them leaving their rubbish bags on the pavement? Ms. Concha Pérez had the cleanest flat of them all, second only to Mrs. Herrera from the 12th left, whose only son, 30 by now, unmarried, could not fall into a well deserved nap in the afternoons because of the Colombian’s drums.

- You would have died from a heart attack, Mrs. Gutierrez, had you but seen the stairs I have found this morning… full of shit! - cried the cleaner, who came three days a week and was a serious rival to use of the only lift.

- It is like coming into a brothel! - suggested Mr. Valverde, appointed Chairman of the Community, whose only known vice was visiting the red light bars of the prostitution areas, where now and then he could be seen having a drink.

- I am afraid! - whispered Ms. Quiroga, a spinster from the 8th left, I am really afraid of meeting any of them in the dark!

- I am sure they are into drugs - murmured somebody else.

- What do you expect? Illegal immigrants, no documentation…

- They’ve got a lease contract...at least someone must have papers among them!

The brief meeting, spontaneously held at the entrance hall, fell silent as the door opened once again for another couple of Colombians, both in their jeans, who came in from the streets. The tallest and darkest one produced a comb from his jeans’ pocket and carefully combed his hair as if in front of an invisible mirror. The smallest one bowed his head respectfully to the meeting and led his companion to the bottom of the stairs, as if in a queue. Everybody was still waiting for the lift. Ms. Quiroga then banged the metal frame, crying vigorously: - Close the door!

Yet the lift wouldn’t come down.

Turning to face the two Colombians who were sitting on the bottom stairs, Mr. Valverde initiated the climbing on foot, to the floor where the lift had been left open, not without some witty remark about careless people who entered brothels as if they were family houses (or viceversa, since he was usually made incoherent by his semialcoholic condition).

Everybody was silent in the meantime. Enraged looks crossed from one another and targeted on the Colombians, now with heads bowed down, as if attentively watching the reflections on the polished marble-like floor.

Didn’t they look like submissive, good-hearted people!

Just to think they could be into drug business was enough to make everyone’s hair stand on end!

Down came the lift with Mr. Valverde inside.

- Open on the 11th! As usual! - Whilst Ms. Quiroga, Ms. Perez and Ms. Herrera’s eyes turned into flames of retribution, the tallest Colombian stood up as if willing to march into the lift.

That was enough for their patience. The cleaner hit him on the head with her broom’s handle, and soon everybody was at him. The other Colombian fled inadvertedly.

So it was only that one to deal with. Bleeding from the mouth, he was left lying on the marble-like entrance, unconscious because of the hard blow.

Ms. Quiroga’s chihuahua pissed by his stretched legs.

O they were so dirty, quarrelsome and careless!

- They have caused me no trouble indeed… What has happened?

- O Ms. Gutierrez, that Colombian took a pocketknife and threatened Mr. Valverde?

- O Virgin of the SevenHundred Sorrows!

- Now we should call the police…

So did the police come, soon afterwards, to arrest the wounded Colombian at the entrance.

Thus they got rid of two, that very evening.

Better news came in the following days, since word obviously had spread amongst the little Colombian community, who diminished to a much reasonable figure. You could tell by the silence, the quiet, and the cleaner reflections everywhere…

For how long? Who could trust the landpersons who were the owners? Who could rely on anybody, if there was drug business involved?

Such were the growing doubts in Ms. Herrera’s lonely nights. By now Ms. Herrera had grown quite an addict to cleaning stuff, which she used to inhale by gallons. You could tell by the way her hair’s color changed from green to bluish green to emerald green which kind of bleach she was hooked to every week.

Yet the knowledge that drugs were being pushed around under her very noses did not make her any more pacific. Hadn’t her own son been not so long ago into a dexintoxication unit? Hadn’t that cost both herself and her husband half their life savings? Because of this wound in her heart, Ms. Herrera could not stayed quiet, she grew more and more nervous and therefore more hooked, until that evening when she decided that enough was enough, and arranged a little party all by herself. And she then went downstairs, knocked at the Colombians’ door and invited the one female who answered her call to join the celebrations. A couple of hours afterwards a hospital ambulance arrived, they say, to carry an illegal immigrant who had been working at Ms. Herrera’s as a cleaner and had somehow inhaled a lot of toxic cleaning stuff…

If there was any Colombian still left, they must have fled immediately after that, because nobody saw any of them going up or down the lift, nor walking upstairs. They did not even ask for their deposit money back!

And so, when another flat in the same block was left vacant, soon to be crowded by another batch of Colombians, the neighbors already felt much more self-confident.

-- Amparo Perez Gutierrez April 2000