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MARCHING POWDER

show, Laura. The program was the same every single day, but it always made me laugh and I never missed it. Laura is a nice little middle-aged woman who invites couples to appear on national TV in front of a live audience and then asks them if they love each other.

‘Yes, truly. Forever. Until I die,’ they always answer. ‘I couldn’t be with anyone else. Never. Not even if you paid me.’

Laura then points to a big television screen that shows video footage of the man being unfaithful, and all hell breaks loose. The girlfriend starts screaming and attacking her boyfriend, but they calm her down and the boyfriend apologises for what he has done.

‘That was a mistake,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. You’re the only one. It was only the once with that girl. It didn’t mean anything. I love you so much.’

Then Laura raises her eyebrows as if to say, ‘Really? Is that so?’ and again points to the big screen, which shows video footage of the man being unfaithful again, this time with another woman. The girlfriend starts going really crazy, breaking furniture in the process. Eventually, the security guards have to escort her off stage, while the audience cheers her and boos the boyfriend. Meanwhile, Laura gets the third tape cued up, just in case.

In the afternoons I read until my eyes hurt and then tried to watch the evening news, just as I used to do with Ricardo.

But things had changed. I hardly saw Ricardo these days, and I now found the news too depressing. There were never any happy stories. It was always about government corruption or murder, or something else bad that had happened in the world. The main news headlines at that time were about a gang of rapists that had finally been captured, and a government official, Gabriel Sanchez, who managed to run off with forty million dollars from a government workers’ pension fund. They arrested him but let him go on bail and he fled the country, causing a scandal. When I couldn’t handle watching television, I smoked dope and listened to Bob Marley on my tape player instead.

I had always liked Bob Marley’s music, even before I went to prison. I had memories of hearing some of the classic songs on the radio from when I was a young boy, even before I knew that Bob Marley was the singer. Now that I was in San Pedro, I began to listen to the lyrics properly and I liked him even more. His music is really simple but powerful, and it gave me a lot of hope in my difficult times. Whenever

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