Reputations

Reputations (2013), a novel by Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez, follows revered political cartoonist Javier Mallarino as he realizes that one of his cartoons, long since forgotten, may have caused the suicide of an innocent man. One of Latin America’s most important novelists, Vásquez is best known for his 2011 novel, The Sound of Things Falling, which won the Alfaguara Novel Prize and the 2014 IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award, among others.

We meet 65-year-old Javier Mallarino as he gets his shoes shined on the sidewalk in Bogotá, Colombia. Having refused a government armored car, he is making his way on foot to the Teatro Colón, where a lavish celebration of his life and work is to take place.

Mallarino is a satirical cartoonist, who over four decades has lampooned politicians and drug barons and other public figures. He is credited with causing the overthrow of governments and the repeal of laws. He is “a moral authority for half the country, public enemy number one for the other half.”



The Teatro is packed with the great and the good of Bogotá, and Mallarino is amused to find himself feted by these people, having always regarded himself as an outsider. “Life turns us into caricatures of ourselves,” he reflects. An attractive 30-something journalist called Samanta Leal approaches him at the ceremony, and he agrees to give her an interview the next day, at his house in the mountains outside the city.

Mallarino’s ex-wife, Magdalena, is also present. They end up spending the night together, and we learn their history as a couple. She used to question whether it was worth hurting and antagonizing people to expose them in his cartoons, to which he told her that he would rather lose friends and family than his reputation for telling the truth. As he became increasingly famous, she found she no longer recognized the man she loved, and she left him.

The next morning, Mallarino returns to his house in the mountains, where Samanta joins him. The interview, it turns out, was a pretext: Samanta has an altogether different reason for speaking to Mallarino. She asks whether he recognizes her. He does not. Samanta explains that she was a childhood friend of his daughter’s; when she was seven, something terrible happened to her in this very house—at least, she thinks it did. She can’t actually remember it. That’s why she’s come to Mallarino, to find out the truth.



Mallarino tries to remember the night in question. He had hosted a party at his home and it had been gatecrashed by a conservative congressman, Cuéllar, someone Mallarino had lampooned in his cartoons. Cuéllar had come to beg Mallarino not to humiliate him further.

Meanwhile, Mallarino’s daughter Beatriz and her friend Samanta had been following the guests around the party, finishing the dregs of left-behind drinks, putting themselves into a stupor. A doctor was called, who prescribed some sugared water, and the girls were put to bed.

At some point during the party, Mallarino and his guests were disturbed by a commotion: Samanta’s father was chasing Cuéllar downstairs, from the direction of the bedroom where the girls were asleep. Mallarino, who had put the girls to bed, noted that Samanta had either moved or been moved to a different position. Her skirt was above her waist and one knee bent. However, there was no conclusive evidence that Cuéllar had touched her, or even been in the room.



The next day, Javier had drawn a cartoon suggesting that Cuéllar was a pedophile. Shortly afterward, his reputation ruined, Cuéllar had committed suicide.

Samanta has never been told about the events of that night, and now she is not sure whether she remembers them or not: “I don’t know if I’m remembering because I remember, or if I’m remembering because you told me.”

Mallarino wants to help Samanta achieve closure, so he arranges for her to speak to Cuéllar’s widow. Meanwhile, he goes to speak to his editor, Rodrigo Valencia. “The last thing you want to do is start asking questions,” Valencia tells him, pointing out that if Mallarino had been wrong about Cuéllar, his own reputation would be on the line. Nevertheless, Valencia reveals that he had encouraged Cuéllar to crash the party. Mallarino encounters Samanta on the sidewalk outside the office of Cuéllar’s widow, but we do not learn what passed between the women.



Mallarino’s conscience begins to trouble him. He has always thought of himself as a scourge of the powerful, of generals and drug lords, but now he recognizes that he has also attacked vulnerable people. He wrestles with his culpability. Can a single cartoon—even one of the cartoons Mallaraino proudly calls “a stinger, but dipped in honey”—ruin a reputation? A life? And if it can, then “what good is ruining a man’s life, even if the man deserves ruin?”

The novel ends as Mallarino comes to a decision: he will destroy his cartoons, his pencils, and drawing equipment, and never draw again.