Return to the Dark Valley

by Santiago Gamboa

  “In that case, I’m going to celebrate!”

  Then, in a state of euphoria, he called various people:

  “I won the Ciudad de Melilla Prize! A million pesetas!”

  Later, friends started to arrive and again he knocked at my door:

  “Come celebrate with us,” he said, “I’ve just been given a prize.”

  I didn’t dare ask him what the prize was for, but I could imagine.

  From that day on, Miguel was my constant companion. He got me to read Spanish poetry. I met his entourage, above all Agustín García Calvo and the poet Isabel Escudero (I still remember a line of hers: “Death, come take away the thought of death”). I read Rilke, whom he worshipped, and Borges, whom he could recite like nobody else. With him, I confirmed my taste for Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Heine, the sonnets of Shakespeare.

  Although Miguel didn’t read novels, I lent him One Hundred Years of Solitude and he read it in a single night. The following day he said:

  “It’s one long poem.”

  Sometimes he would wake me early in the morning to read me something he had just written, or we would read aloud Edgar Allan Poe stories by candlelight, drinking vodka with coconut liqueur that his grandmother’s boyfriend gave him. When I read Sophie’s Choice by William Styron, it seemed familiar to me: the relationship between the young southerner recently arrived in Brooklyn and the lovable madman named Nathan.

  Like me, Miguel was living far from his family, so we spent Christmas and New Year together, in bars, drinking and reciting. Thanks to his aristocratic manners and his long hair, he was incredibly successful with women. We conceived a thousand crazy projects, like one to learn Latin so that we’d gain more respect in bars. We drank, we read, we visited brothels, we listened to classical music on his portable record player, we got all excited over Butragueño’s goals for Real Madrid (him) and Baltazar’s goals for Atlético de Madrid (me), we exhausted the city by night, the whole of it, thousands of times.

  Overcoming my shyness, I read him my first stories, and much to my surprise he approved of them. And in those years I was the first to read everything he wrote. I’ve never again known anybody so convinced of his own genius.

  Sometimes he would say:

  “Listen to this, you have good taste, you’ll appreciate it,” and he would read me his latest poem.

  A modest publication of his called Pericoloso sporgersi dates from those years, but I was particularly enthusiastic about his early books, especially Las berlinas del sueño, for which he was awarded the Adonais Prize at the age of eighteen. He was twenty-three now, and death was his great theme, his lover, his obsession.

  We shared the old apartment for five years, until Visichu’s grandchildren threw us out in order to refurbish it and get a higher rent. Then I went to Paris and we lost touch with each other, as people did in those days, before e-mail and social networks.

  We met a few times by chance, here and there, but never with the same intensity as in our crazy youth. That was only natural. He died while I was living in India and I didn’t even know. Then the poet Luis García Montero confirmed to me that he had committed suicide.

  “He got out of the way,” Luis said.

  “Excuse me, another shot of JB, please.”

  “And another beer?”

  “No, thanks. Just the whiskey.”

  In spite of everything, I told myself, Miguel achieved his goal: to leave an oeuvre behind him and to melt into death, as in that poem by Emerson that he loved and we so often repeated together:

  When me they fly, I am the wings;

  I am the doubter and the doubt,

  And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

  Suddenly a group of quite angry young people passed by. One of them said:

  “Fuck it, they cut someone else’s throat!”

  “Seriously? Someone else?”

  “Yes, man, have a look . . . ”

  They walked up toward the Teatro Español. One of them was showing the others something on his smartphone, but then they laughed.

  Over there on Paseo de la Castellana the siege was following its course, but the JB was having its effect and starting to take me to other places, distant in time, like a submarine that closes its hatches and dives down into the waters. But the dive stopped abruptly when at the table next to mine a woman yelled at the man who was with her:

  “How can you say that, you son of a bitch?”

  Reality had imposed itself again: the shouting, the brazenness of the communicating masses. It struck me that the best thing I could do was get out of here, go back to the hotel, and stay there until Juana showed up.

  The man was older than the woman: maybe about forty-five, although well-preserved and athletic. I could only see him from the back. He was wearing one of those tweed jackets that lend a vaguely intellectual air, but his narcissism was evident in the kerchief around his neck. Maybe he was a bit older, fiftysomething. Seeing them together, I got the impression they were lovers.

  “After all the fucking lies you’ve told me!”

  I could see her from the front. Her beautiful dark eyes were spitting fire, and I sensed that she might start crying at any moment. I would have sworn she was Colombian. Her muscles tightened and she continued saying things to him, but in a low voice now, as if she’d suddenly realized she wasn’t in her own home. But then she raised her voice again:

  “You pig! You disgust me!”

  The man was American, with a red neck and fair hair that was already graying a little. In his right hand he was holding a glass of something yellow that I assumed was whiskey. He was looking nervously around him, fearful of the other customers’ reactions, but without losing his composure. Even from behind, I was aware of his efforts to remain calm, and I calculated that he wouldn’t be able to do so for much longer.

  “I thought you were a good man, not a fucking pig!”

  I imagined them a little while later, making violent love in some hotel or in the backseat of his car.

  There are couples for whom arguing is the only valid way to get to a certain kind of brutal, satisfying sex. Later, he would go back to his wife, and she would sleep alone and hopeful.

  “You’re not even ashamed of yourself . . . ”

  Her anger was starting to weaken. I imagined that the first night, when he seduced her at some business party and penetrated her standing up, in some empty office or in a third-floor bathroom with a view of the parking lot, he had told her he was separated, but then, a few days later, he’d had to explain that he was still living with his wife for the sake of the children.

  Instead of calming down, she took a deep breath and started shouting again.

  “You fucking coward! You pig!”

  The man was scratching something behind his ear. He asked her to moderate her tone. His reserves of calm seemed to have reached their limit. He spoke very good Spanish and I assumed she must be a student of his, of course. Young women often confuse love with admiration. Yes. She was a girl in love with her teacher. At any second, I thought she was going to burst into tears. Suddenly she looked for something in her bag, nervously; she took out a glasses case and a pack of Kleenex. Finally she found it: a little box from which she extracted a brooch that, at least from where I was sitting, looked quite glossy and expensive. Gold, maybe, with a jewel mounted in it.

  “I’m giving you back this crap, I don’t want it!”

  The brooch ricocheted and fell to the ground. He bent down to pick it up and put it back on the table, still without saying anything.

  “You filthy fucking pig! Give it to your wife!”

  His calm needle was already moving into the red. Then he put his glass of whiskey down on the coaster, flexed the fingers of his right hand several times, as if testing them, and gave the young woman a slap. She wasn’t able to dodge it in time, and the impact propelled her aga
inst the back of the chair and the window.

  “You son of a bitch! You coward!”

  Once she had recovered she grabbed a glass that contained the remains of what might have been a Cuba Libre, and flung it in his face. The man grabbed a napkin, wiped his forehead and cheeks; he even took advantage to wipe behind his ears. In a flash he hit her again, this time with his fist closed. Then he grabbed her by the neck, pulled her over the table, and landed her another punch.

  “That’ll teach you to behave yourself!”

  The man’s voice was strong, his breathing heavy. When the girl recovered and made to speak, the man’s fist again collided with her jaw. Twice, three times, until she started to bleed.

  “I don’t want you to open that fucking mouth again, you want to go back to the jungle?”

  He punched her a fifth time, on the eyebrow, and she started crying.

  Nobody apart from me seemed to be following the fight. Now the man’s neck was redder than ever. He hadn’t finished. He loosened his tie completely, grabbed her by the dress, and resumed hitting her on her left eye, which was already starting to become inflamed.

  I left my shot glass on the table and stood up. The man looked at me in surprise.

  “That’s enough,” I said.

  He looked at her and let out a laugh.

  “And who’s this gallant knight, come to protect the damsel? Maybe you want to fuck her? Sure, that’s easy enough.”

  “You son of a bitch!” she cried.

  He stopped looking at me and gave her another punch in the face. I would have sworn he broke a tooth or her nose.

  I put a hand on his arm and said:

  “Listen, at least pick on someone your own size.”

  He stood up like a shot, and seeing him on his feet I realized that he meant business.

  He kicked me in the groin and when I doubled up in pain he landed me a punch to the jaw that made me fall backwards. When I was on the ground, he came and gave me more kicks. I tried to shield myself. At last I was able to stand, but when I turned more punches rained down on me. How many arms did he have? My nose started bleeding. I hadn’t been in a fight since I was a teenager. Why had nobody come to separate us? We were out on the street! Instead, people were just watching. Maybe there was an unwritten rule to avoid sticking your nose into other people’s business.

  I launched a punch, but it fell short and I felt a yanking in my collarbone. Then I received another couple of blows that opened my left eyebrow. I also noticed that something didn’t feel right between my ribs and I thought, okay, that’s it, it’s time to stop this, but when I tried to move away the guy grabbed me by the neck and knocked my head against the wooden buffet that the waiters took the cutlery and napkins from.

  Then came more blows to the face.

  My nose made a sharp noise, but I didn’t have time to analyze it because more blows hit my eyebrows. My mouth filled with blood. My cheeks were bruised, my left eye practically closed, and the right wasn’t too good. The eyelid was broken.

  I thought it was going to end there, but the man hadn’t finished. Far from it. Like a tiger, he leapt on me and tried with all his strength to choke me, as if determined to finish the job. I attempted to push him off, but he was strong and he was beside himself with anger. I was finding it difficult to breathe, since the blood was running into my broken septum. Desperately, I held out my arms. A reflex gesture, I suppose, caused by the asphyxia, until I touched and grabbed something solid: it was a big glass ashtray. I lifted it and, with my last strength, brought it down behind me, more or less blindly. Once, twice. Suddenly the pressure on my neck stopped and the man rolled to one side, lifeless. Falling to the ground, I was able to see him: he had a huge gash on his forehead and his eyes were blank. I heard screams. A siren.

  I got up as best I could, gushing blood, and groped my way to my table. Before reaching it, a shadowy figure moved toward me. It was the girl who was with him. I didn’t even see that she had picked up a stool and was aiming it with all her strength at my head.

  10

  I got to Cali an hour later. My beloved Gloria Isabel had landed much earlier but stayed there with her chauffeur, waiting for me, because I’d managed to tell her what had happened, and so from Palmaseca Airport we went straight to Imbanaco Hospital. The city awaited me with a somewhat grim and threatening expression, as if the Glorieta de Cencar, the Poker beer factory, the River Cali, and Fifth Street held me responsible for what had happened and were blaming me for my neglect. It was hot, more than hot, it was sweltering. It had rained all morning.

  What I felt at that moment, Doctor, was that somehow my mother had burst back aggressively into my life in order to harm me. As if the acid had been thrown in my face, not hers. When we arrived, Gloria Isabel went with me to the Intensive Care waiting room and there she stayed, while I went in with a nurse. As soon as I saw her from the door my legs started shaking. Her face was bandaged, with holes for the nose, eyes, and mouth. I took her hand and stroked it. She could hardly speak, but I went close to her mouth and she said in what was not much more than a sigh: at last you came, my girl, at last, look what that bastard did to me, it was him, my girl, don’t forget it was him . . .

  The attacker had been Freddy, her boyfriend. I later found out the whole story. When he did too much crack or drank aguardiente, a disgusting drink that people get drunk on in Colombia, he would come back home and start to beat her. He would get the typical paranoia of the jealous drunk and drug addict. My mother didn’t know what he was talking about and of course, he’d get even angrier, and this went on until the day of the tragedy. Apparently, that night there was a Colombia soccer match and the team lost, and so Freddy, who couldn’t keep away from those things, like a calf with an udder, got home very drunk and very frustrated and came out with the usual crap, except that this time Mother told him to shut up and get out. Of course he started hitting her and throwing lamps and plates at her. He really let her have it, but fortunately the neighbors came to the door, which he had left open, and she was able to get out of the house and escape.

  For a week she was hidden at the house of a friend from work until they saw Freddy going around the block on his motorcycle and asking people questions. So that same night, toward morning, she ran off to the house of another friend, and then to a third. This last one convinced her to go to the police and report him, and I think that was the big mistake, because the police there are really dangerous. One night she and her friend were washing the dishes when there was a knock at the door. When they opened it, two armed men came in, pushed the friend onto the couch, and said to her, keep quiet, woman, this is nothing to do with you, and they went for my mother, who had run to lock herself in her room but the door didn’t have even a lock. The two of them grabbed her and then Freddy came in, high as a kite, with his eyes red from drinking for God knows how many days in a row, and then he said to the guys, put her on her back to keep her still, and when she was like that he took out the bottle of acid and poured it over her face, head, and chest, and then, frightened by her screams, they ran out.

  The police had been looking for him ever since, but Freddy must already have gone to Ecuador or Venezuela, which is where all the drug traffickers, bastards, and killers in this country go to hide. Mother tried to tell me all this in her thin voice, and then she said to me, girl, if you ever find him kill him for all the harm he’s done us, but then I said to her, Mother, that guy burned you on the outside, but me he burned on the inside and you know what I’m talking about, that’s what I said to her, Doctor, and now, yes, here comes the most painful part of my life, I don’t have any alternative, I must tell it to you, but I’m going to tell it as I’d tell it to a girlfriend if I had one or a lover if I had one, or even to my mother, if she was still alive and was my friend.

  This is what happened.

  A few months after Freddy moved in with us, Mother called to say she w
as coming home late and told me to warm up the food. I obeyed her, but the guy spent the whole meal drinking aguardiente and when he finished he went to the door and locked it, and then he came to me and said, we’re going to have a little private party, just you and me, that’s what he said, and right then and there he grabbed me by force and took down my panties, a child’s panties, Doctor, because I’d only just turned twelve, and he told me not to scream, that we were going to do something that was perfectly natural between people who live together, and that if I screamed he was going to squeeze my throat very hard, he already had his hand around it. I could barely breathe because with the fear I was gasping for breath, because I already knew what it was the guy wanted, oh, yes, though I couldn’t believe he wanted it from me, because I was still a child. I believed, in my innocence, that God wouldn’t allow something so terrible to happen, that He was going to defend me, but God did nothing, He didn’t give a damn and left me alone for the guy to abuse me in the most humiliating manner: first he stuck a disgusting finger in me, hurting me, and moved it back and forth for a while, digging it into me, while he drank sips of aguardiente with the other hand; then, when he got bored with what was hurting me so much, he tore off the skirt of my uniform and dragged me to the bed, and when we were there, oh, God, he took out his filthy cock and brought it close to my face, and forced me to touch it first, with my hand, and then to suck it, can you imagine, I couldn’t stop crying but the guy didn’t care about that, and I remember that I thought, this is pure wickedness, there can’t be anything beyond this, anything worse than this, how innocent I was, believing that this was the filthiest thing of all, but I had to be prepared to go deeper into the wickedness because the guy said, we have all the time in the world, darling, your mother won’t be back until late because she’s gone out for a night on the town with some of her workmates and left us alone, but we’re going to have a better time than she’s having, aren’t we? That’s what he said while he continued taking sips from that bottle of aguardiente and suddenly he grabbed my mouth and said, open your mouth, darling, take a sip of this, it’s really good, and he forced me to drink from that nauseating brew, and said as if he was talking to himself, you like it, don’t you? it makes you feel good, it makes parties go with a swing, and in this way he was taking me deeper and deeper into his wickedness, and I tried to put up with it, I knew that if I screamed really loudly the neighbors would come, I could hear them, but Freddy had locked the door and would have time to do something even worse to me, something more painful, and I was scared of the pain because I was still a child, and in addition he told me that he’d asked my mother’s permission to do what he was doing to me, and according to him, she’d said, of course, the girl’s already big and it’s good for her to learn about life, that’s what the son of a bitch told me and I believed him, or rather, I can’t remember if I believed him or if my brain was paralyzed and those words weren’t really going into my head anymore, I was so mixed up, and so I felt guilty even though I didn’t quite understand why, in all this there was something bigger that my poor little head couldn’t figure out, something very . . . How can I explain it to you? A man will never be able to understand a rape even if he knows all the details, even if he hears a meticulous description. He’ll never be able to understand.