Together with Elena — the rather hippie-like owner of Tiki Lounge — we spent a beautiful night together under the stars. Asíle, sadly, had not taken part in our conversation since she pretended to have been offended over the dinner table as I respectfully told her that she didn’t have to thank me a hundred times for my modest efforts to keep her happy (e.g. cooking), quite especially considering how regally she always took care of me. I guess she felt I was being harsh and tried to mute her sincere feelings, but it really wasn’t anything of the sort. After having in vain tried to get her to join us outside, I left her to weather out her frustration alone. I didn’t feel that her reaction was appropriate. Sure enough, in the morning she excused herself for having been so touchy, which I thought was fair, even though I still thought it was a pity she had missed the encounter with Alain and the beauty of the polymorphous fire stretching its eager fingers into unfathomable darkness. At the time Asíle served me breakfast Alain had already managed to launch his boat into the sea and steer off towards the western horizon.
Asíle and I stayed on for a couple of more days. We did indeed try to find interesting destinations for excursions but came in for a veritable anti-climax after having been led to believe that the region boasted its own nature reserve with a volcano and a water cascade. One afternoon we arrived in a taxi to a nearby indigenous village equipped with an eco-tourist office. The latter, however, couldn’t provide us with anything more useful than an approximate finger-pointed direction to the alleged attraction. We set off into the pasture land meeting two young girls riding a donkey who encouraged us to continue the trail to find ‘the volcano’.
If it indeed exists (and satellite images do show clouds rising from the Earth over this location) it’s got to be the smallest volcano in the world, since not even from the highest mound around was anything remotely resembling a volcano to be seen and we just returned to the village without having encountered much else than a herd of staring cows. Eager to quickly overcome our initial setback we accepted an offer to be guided to the waterfall — at least we knew that in the company of two local teenage girls we wouldn’t miss the target. We went steeply into the hills and had 45 minutes worth of stiff walking before we arrived at this marvel of nature, where we expected to take a well-deserved shower and swim.
There it was, a fall of ten metres alright, but nothing that would fall in it except a trickle of water comparable to that coming out of a half-open kitchen sink faucet. It sprinkled a pile of decomposing leaves below. That was it. No pond, no water gushing forth, no rainbow, no bananas, no mango: No Nothing. We began to laugh and asked the girls if this really was the famous cascada. They assured us it was. Overcome by a sensation of absurdity we thankfully drank our sodas (since bottled drinking water had been unobtainable in the village) and began to head back to base. But this time we took the high road and were rewarded with a spectacular vista over the Gulf of Urabá and the hills. Both Asíle and I were a bit puffed up and red-cheeked from the ascent while the giggling local girls — the names of whom I have unfortunately forgotten — seemed completely unaffected by the effort.
From the top of the hill the multi-dimensional mountain range of the Darién at the opposite end of the bay was discernible as a ragged, hazy-bluish ribbon set against the lighter, clearer blue of the sky, in turn reflected by the expanse of the sea, darker still than the distant land but covered in golden scales. Black vultures hovered over some carcass in the valley while pelicans in formation pierced stacks of cumulus clouds travelling the maritime sky. This sight finally made our trip seem worthwhile after all. The girls had not expected any remuneration for their tour but we gave them some anyway, drank more soft drinks, said hello to the playing kids and their toddler siblings, and then walked the dirt road back for at least an hour to the asphalted coastal road linking Turbo with Necoclí. Once we hit upon the main road we turned north and finally managed to get picked up by a taxi taking us back to town. As we arrived at our residence enveloped in dusk, the fata morgana of the distant Darién in dazzling sunlight soon was but a memory engulfed by the night.
A memory soon engulfed by the night — isn’t that what our entire lives are? You may choose to look backward or project forward, or you may try to remain in the present. Regardless, the invisible fluid of change runs through our bodies and forces them to in the end yield their individuality to indistinct matter. If you were someone considered of importance, someone profoundly loved or hated, someone in power, a grand creator, someone famous or someone who knew something others didn’t, an original innovator even, you may stay longer in human memory than others, but even so the living image of you is destined to fade and merge with the crumbling leaves of summers passed. Your own personal memory of the things that happened to you in the course of a lifespan — the thoughts, feelings, desires and fleeting dreams to which only you had access — dissolve too and become one with the impersonal system permeating atoms and galaxies.
Yet, for all the certainty of oblivion, you hang on to the idea of being someone during your lifetime, setting goals for yourself, chasing after experiences and movements as though these in themselves were of importance. The traveller, prone to the prejudice that he moves on the crest of time, leaves others behind to languish in their stationary prisons. He might think he accomplishes two journeys in one; the first being life itself, the second all the places he takes this life to. It has more than once happened to me, passing through a village or a small town in the dead of the night, that I remind myself of that there are people who are born and die in these locations without having seen much else of the world. It might be that some of them could never afford to travel, but I specifically think of those who are simply content to remain where they are, to whom it doesn’t even occur to want to go somewhere else. Seconds later the vehicle transporting me has taken me beyond their village border and soon beyond their ambit all together, whereby the inhabitants, brought to life by my imagination, recede into the woodwork, merging with the sombre row of sleeping houses along the town’s dusty main road. In the morning this place, like so many others, will come to life again and go about its business as usual, and no one will ever know that my eye was there.
The night — and on this point all cosmologies are unanimous — precedes the day and is always associated with the idea of primordial chaos existing prior to time, as the eye that sees through darkness is associated with that of God. The traveller is perhaps not only travelling twice, but by force of a written account thrice. In this way he hopes to seal into in crystallised form his memory of what happened to him, and to him alone. So that when he’s gone, there is a story. Perhaps one reminiscent of Sisyphus, who, according to legend, cheated Death himself by locking him up in a cupboard as he came to bring Sisyphus with him. Then he threw the key and ran away, hoping that he could stay away from the vengeance of the gods. Of course, we know that it eventually caught up with him and his subsequent punishment was to be emblematic of human creation as such. Apparently there was only eternal condemnation in store for him, but what if he too left a legacy of words scribbled on a papyrus, imbued with the hope of one day being brought back to life, or at least to a simile of such, a vicarious existence in an alien intellect at some junction in time trying to decipher the letter code left behind by a mysterious writer?
Since time is allied with the spectre of eternity we can never hope to wage and win any battle against it. It’s an inescapable human condition that it takes no skill whatsoever to either be born or to die — it just happens to us. And though the process of dying may be degrading and even horrible to watch — both for ourselves and for others — the actual passage from this world to the next is an immensely thin razor blade severing the last of the threads that tie us to our earthly existence. And when we go, no matter how selfish we have been in life, there is nothing that we can bring along. The ones who were in possession of earthly riches have always hoped for the opposite and made sure their graves were st
uffed with the same so that they may travel in style and comfort through the 12 regions of the underworld. But if there is not some mysterious alchemical operation by which these objects are transmuted into their spiritual counterpart, and so actually, somehow, come to exist also in the beyond, the fact remains that the burial chamber of Tutankhamun, undiscovered over centuries and therefore unmolested by grave robbers, was intact and that the many precious objects found in it had visibly been in the same place for over 3000 years.
Against the juggernaut of time man occasionally insists on holding up a cup full of bliss and happiness. But this elixir would never be so sweet and delectable if it didn’t simultaneously contain the sensation of fugacity as its secret hemlock. This is why happiness is so often associated with intoxication. Not necessarily of a grossly material kind, but in so far as the essence of joy contains within it the poisonous seed of death. We are all selected as winners by being born, and we all leave life as losers, forever unable to revoke the sun from its latest point of setting. That is, if you chose to regard life from the point of view of the individual sperm. Seen in the light or darkness of eternity, life might just as well be conceived of as a punishment. Some of the ancients were of this belief, and a stark Greek proverb teaches us that the best for man is never to have been born and the second best to die young.
The loss of a beloved friend or a relative is the intrusion of the forever unknowable into our earthly existence, accompanied by the feeling that something unique on Earth, a person, an individuality, has left us and will never return again. On the contrary, as we are standing by the coffin, we take leave of a memory that will slowly fade into the void, like a shiny coin sinking through the sea; like a black and white photography, singed and yellowed by time, disappearing into an album of remembrance.
The capacity to be happy in the face of death is intimately linked with our conscious realisation of the limit set to our time together and our attempt to convey to the persons we love what they really mean to us while they are still here — this may sound like a worn cliché, in the end, facing the ultimate loss, it’s nothing but and the thing you never made clear, and you really needed to make clear, will hauntingly remain suspended in mid-air for the rest of your life.
True, the child is often the purest image of instantaneous happiness, but the child can burst into tears of unmitigated despair in the very next moment and for no apparent reason. It is often at night that feelings of impending loss and grief beset us with demoniacal force. And if there was a way to learn how to face darkness — interior and exterior — in the same unflinching way as we face the challenges of a new day, I would very much like to be instructed, not the least so that I can give of myself while there is still time, and to receive from those who try to do the same for me. Meanwhile, I continue to travel.
*
As Asíle’s and my first journey together was drawing to its close, I felt happy that we had been able to stand one another for a whole month without conflict. The few moments of irritations that did occur were minor and I believe Asíle too must have regarded them as trifles — she told me that she herself didn’t understand why occasionally she had reacted in such or such way. To this day I don’t know if she said this only to avoid having to explain herself, or if it’s really true that she was simply overcome by some kind of speech impairing emotion. By all means, she’s indeed a sensible, sensitive and deeply feeling woman and I can respect that. I also tolerate all kinds of seemingly irrational moods as long as they don’t turn into a morose regard charged with chronic resentment. And this, luckily, has so far not been the case. In all fairness, I too had to honestly excuse myself for a couple of mishaps along the road. But what is that if not just normal in a relationship between two people? The reason for my even bringing it up is that I have indeed experienced women who dedicate their entire lives to playing the role of victims. Asíle is nothing of the sort.
I was also content to have been able to contain my natural need of solitude and independence. Though I was now certainly a bit eager to get back to my old ways — incidentally those of an inveterate bachelor — Asíle was visibly saddened having to part with me. It was her birthday and as we arrived in the busy town of Apartadó (whence we were scheduled to take a flight back to Medellín in the morning), I ventured out in the streets to find her a gift. It wasn’t all that easy to find her something that would make a suitable birthday present, but I finally opted for a handmade shoulder bag with a flowery pattern. I also found a restaurant close to our hotel proudly advertising its steaks. Since we hadn’t had any decent red meat for a month I felt opportunity knocking. Asíle agreed.
The interior of the restaurant was absolutely ghastly with aluminium furniture bathing in light green neon light bestowing upon every plate of food an eerie, otherworldly glow. But there were some tables outside too and that’s where we sat down. Perusing the menu, I was surprised to note that a glass of red wine only cost about one and a half dollars. Knowing even table wines to be quite expensive in this part of the world I had to check this offer out and ordered a glass. It arrived with an amount of liquid comparable to what you’d expect to find in a glass of brandy. This explained two things. One: why it was so cheap. Second: the unfamiliarity of many Colombians with this kind of beverage. To many of them wine is a kind of liquor and they don’t make any effort to keep it away from warm or even hot environments. Since an opened bottle of whisky is still good to drink after sitting on a shelf for two months, they believe the same applies to wine. Just put the cork back in. After having explained to him that this simply wasn’t an acceptable way of serving wine by the glass, I offered the manager to buy an entire bottle from the stock. He went away and returned with one not only opened but also one quarter short of its full content. I had to insist he’d knock off the price for an entire bottle as advertised on the menu. After he finally had consented to do this, I felt I had to also ask him for how long the bottle had been open prior to being brought to my table. With a broad smile, visibly betraying his satisfaction with this state of affairs, he proudly announced: ‘Three weeks’.
Like so many other Colombian nights, this was one in the seemingly endless series of public fiestas: incredibly loud music spurting out of myriads of bars and restaurants, yes, even from the tiniest fast food joints. And once again this had to be taken into the bargain, because without this annoying din there wouldn’t have been nearly as many beautiful girls parading the streets arm-in-arm or driving by in their scooters. There were of course a corresponding number of males out in the streets but for some reason I don’t remember them so well. Asíle and I nevertheless found a less noisy establishment where we topped off our last evening together with a couple of gin and tonics and then hit the hay. Morning come, the hotel staff proved to be exceptionally amiable and helped us carry our luggage to the taxi, in this way ensuring that we were safely brought to the airport. It was an half hour ride and it took us through vast banana and plantain plantations over which single engine planes manoeuvred death defyingly while spreading clouds of chemicals to protect the crops from insects and disease. Little by little the sun managed to pierce through the grey atmosphere but the day remained on the cloudy side, even as we got up in the air and the small jet plane was thrown around like a hapless rag doll by capricious turbulence. But the engines kept doing what they’re supposed to do and soon had us landed in the midst of Medellín’s urban sprawl at the Olaya Herrera airport. Once outside the airport building, our farewell was imminent and not overly drawn out. Still, leaving Asíle alone on that bench, knowing her big moist eyes would be following me until I had vanished in the crowd, was heart wrenching, notwithstanding a vague feeling of relief, which was not so much a sign of inner indifference as simply my way of anticipating the inevitable return of my own solitary self.
9This phrase is actually a loan from Baudelaire who entitled one of his sonnets in Les fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil) ‘Le goût du néant
’ — Taste for the void, alternatively nothingness, or in the figurative sense here hinted at: for nihilism.
10In Lyotard’s view, a just society should have several different accepted justice systems and their corresponding criteria — a revolutionary proposal which in these days of vociferous Muslim demands to have Sharia legislature and Islamic courts accepted by European governments as national institutions formally endowed with judicial as well as executive powers, take on a rather sinister aspect.
Bahía Soláno
However, it didn’t take too long before Asíle and I were again reunited and travelling together. This time to the Pacific.
Young Xavier had a very different idea from ours of what an hour’s hike on the jungle trail to Playa Mecana was all about. After having stayed put for two rainy days in our comfortably air-conditioned room at Paolo Escobar’s former Pacific hideout, today better known as the Bahía’s Hotel Balboa Plaza, we felt time had come for us to spring into action. Little did we suspect that we were soon to receive considerably more of that than we had bargained for. It had all seemed straightforward enough. Supposedly there was a path through the dense forest, and, again supposedly, we just had to keep following it until we reached the beach. So much for theory.
Incidents of Travel in Latin America Page 21