📸 Photo

MARCHING POWDER

‘Why can’t you call him, then?’ I demanded.

Apparently, it was best not to pressure him. He had received the money, so all we could do now was wait. My lawyers started cutting up the fruitcake. However, I was so distressed that I couldn’t eat. They ate it in front of me.

Fruitcake was the only Christmas present I got that year. It was the world’s most expensive fruitcake. All up, it had cost me over twenty-five thousand dollars and I didn’t even eat a single slice myself. It cost even more if I included the three thousand dollars I had given to Constanza Sanchez. Maybe I was naïve to give them all that money, but they gave me a receipt for every payment and I had to trust them — they were my lawyers.

They kept promising to get me released, but they were the same promises they had made six months before, and nothing ever changed, not even the promises. They used exactly the same words as before. Meanwhile they needed some more money to pay for photocopying, a filing fee, a witness who was going to be my character reference, administration charges, someone they knew who might be able to take a message to the judge, or a specialist lawyer who was going to make a technical submission. Everything required money.

I had already established that that much was true after eight months in the Bolivian prison system. However, I felt the legal fees were excessive. But what could I do? I could fire them on the spot, but that would mean losing all the money I had already paid and starting afresh with new lawyers who might be worse. Without their help, I couldn’t see any way out. I felt I had nowhere else to turn. I began to regret not having escaped when I had the opportunity.

After my lawyers left, I got a bottle of rum and started drinking it on my own. I drank it too quickly and after half a bottle, I felt like vomiting, so I bought a small envelope of cocaine to sober me up before finishing the rest. In the section courtyard below, the celebrations were just getting under way, so I bought another bottle. Christmas wasn’t traditionally a big part of the Bolivian calendar, although it was catching on. For the children it was all about the presents and this new character they were beginning to believe in, called Santa Claus. For the inmates, it was another excuse to get drunk. After spending some time with their families in the morning, that was exactly what they did.