"And even in sleep, the pain

that we cannot forget keeps drilling

drop by drop into the heart."

—Aeschylus

The learned bookseller Felipe Ossa, who recently passed away, wrote about Silvia Galvis, whose death was commemorated 15 years ago on September 20th:

“Kind, gentle, shy. She possessed the noble elegance of prudence, in social life and in friendship. Yet, in her denunciations and attacks on the corruption and wickedness of Colombian politicians, she was daring and civically brave. Silvia practiced, from the aristocracy of the spirit, the noble and forgotten art of thinking and dreaming, of imagining stories and recreating characters. Books and reading were nourishment for her soul. She reveled and delighted in her rich inner world, far from pomp and circumstance. She did not seek fleeting honors and glories. Cinema, music, theater—all the beautiful things that the genius of great creators has given us—were her joy and pleasure. A person of strong and courageous character. A powerful soul in a body of fragile health. She had a wonderful sense of humor, filled with irony and wit. A woman of free thought, foreign to fanaticism and fundamentalism; she was outraged by injustice, arbitrariness, and the exploitation of human misery. Her ideals were those of the great libertarians, those who, with their light, cleared the world of the darkness of ignorance and religious fetishism. Many times—though now they seem too few—I shared in the company of friends and dear ones, in pleasant and amusing gatherings where we spoke of everything divine and human. Silvia illuminated these evenings with her spark and wit. With that unpretentious, frank, and direct Santanderean way of speaking. Ah, the briefness of life and fleeting joy! How I remember those times now as something unique. A flicker of stars that shine for a moment, only to disappear into the black infinity of the unfathomable abyss. But only in memory does what we love endure.”

Silvia was a humorist, as Felipe recalled, because she expressed herself with humor and cultivated humor in her writings. She was also a loverist—a word missing from the dictionary—because she dispensed love abundantly. But she lived more than half her life amidst lovelessness. She was not surrounded by people of her same sensitivity and delicacy, nor by those capable of affection. After having two children and more than ten years of marriage, she confided to a friend that she longed for someone to love her. In 1986, already divorced, she noted in her diary:

“The relationship with Alberto is very deep. He has given me much affection and support. He restored my confidence in myself. He helped me regain my self-esteem, which had been near death. He is a very special person, sensitive, supportive, immensely affectionate. For me, these demonstrations of affection—so spontaneous, so unguarded—were a wonderful discovery in my life. I was getting used to the idea that rejection and isolation were my only inevitable reality. I learned that life could be different, that there could be abundance when I had only known scarcity.”

I met Silvia because, forty years ago, those of us doing investigative journalism in Colombia could be counted on one hand. Silvia always told me, from the moment we met and until the end, that she didn’t know what her life would have been if I hadn’t appeared in it. After Silvia’s death, her daughter wrote to me: “You helped her to bloom. My mother was a seed that couldn’t bloom before.” Her son wrote to me: “Alberto, thank you very much for your words. And I want to take this opportunity to say once again that to those thanks, we must add infinite more for having been the way you were with my mother. For having cared for her the way you did, for having understood her as you did, but above all, for having valued her as you did. That is the most important thing of all, and it is something we will know and keep in mind until the day we go to join her.”

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All of Silvia Galvis’s books can be read at ellibrototal.com, the largest Hispanic digital library in the world, thanks to the generous initiative of Álvaro Navas, Daniel Navas, and Sandra Cuesta: Soledad, The Woman Who Knew Too Much, The García Márquez, Sabor a Mí, A Bad Affair, Nazi Colombia, The Supreme Chief, and others. Also, a book of unpublished letters: Silvia Sublime, Silvia Infinite.