The following Tuesday I got a call from Gloria Isabel in Cali, wishing me a happy birthday, and I said, oh, thanks. I’d completely forgotten! That’s how remote from my own life I was in those days. To celebrate, I went to the local store and bought three cans of beer. I drank them in my room, thinking about how solitary and happy my life was and at about nine that night I took out my cell phone and dialed Araceli’s number. Each ring tore at my stomach, but there was no reply, so I left a message.
“I’m the girl who wrote those poems.”
Three minutes later, the phone rang and it was her.
“Hi,” I said, very calmly, although inside I was dying.
“It’s a good thing you decided to call,” she said, “I was going to look for you in your classroom.”
“Today is my birthday, and I’ve drunk three beers. I was feeling a bit nervous. I’m sorry.”
“Many happy returns. Can I buy you a coffee tomorrow?”
We met the following day in a Juan Valdez café near the university. She struck me as very youthful, with her jeans and T-shirt and brightly colored Wayuu shoulder bag. She continued talking to me about my poems, she said she had heard a new voice in them, saying important things and saying them well. She also asked what I thought of her books. I’m no good at lying, so I told her that they had a good rhythm but that there were things in them I didn’t understand. Also that they were cold poems and I had to get used to them. I hadn’t read much and I had everything to learn.
Instead of taking offense at this, Araceli, said she thought the same and, to be honest, couldn’t understand why they were so successful. I told her that people in Bogotá liked the cold, maybe that was why, and anyway that didn’t mean they were bad. They were good, but cold. Just that.
We continued talking and she invited me to lunch at a really nice place near there called Andante, opposite the university. I had a class at three, and since we couldn’t stop talking we decided to continue the following day. So we started seeing each other every day. Araceli was married and had a daughter of fifteen from her first husband. Her current husband was something big in advertising and, from what I gathered, very rich. We always met at Andante, it became a routine. I showed her my new poems and she gave me advice. She said she would help me to put together a book. I wasn’t sure it was what I wanted, but I let her. I liked the fact that she never asked me anything, not who I was or where I came from. We only talked about poetry. And she gave me books. She got me to read a whole lot of poets.
Thanks to that, I understood her poetry better. It was poetry that grew out of things she had read, not experienced. The only thing I had, on the other hand, were the lyrics of songs, and everybody knows, my dear Doctor, that music can make any text go down, however corny or stupid it is. That was my small, or rather, nonexistent education, and that’s why I liked Araceli so much. She was generous not only in a material sense—she always paid—but generous with words, books, and advice. She was interested in me without expecting anything in return.
For quite a while, all she knew was that I was from Cali and lived in a rented room in Chapinero, nothing more, but that seemed to be enough for her, as if she understood that any day now I would start to tell her things about my life, at my own pace, of course, since I felt intimidated. Even though she used a shoulder bag and wore torn jeans, Araceli was a rich lady from the north of Bogotá, famous and respected, and I was a poor young immigrant, fleeing a rough past that I preferred to hide.
After two months, she invited me to her home and that’s when I really did feel embarrassed, because she lived in a huge house in Santa Ana, like my classmate Saúl. But her house was nicer and more elegant, with a kind of turret where her study was, a circular space with wood paneling, lined with books, and with a large window leading out onto a terrace with a view of the whole of Bogotá and the mountains. Even Gloria Isabel’s house, which was really nice, seemed like a ranch house compared with this.
Her husband and daughter were away. He was in Cartagena, in an apartment they had there, and the girl was visiting her father.
“We can be nice and quiet here,” Araceli said, “nobody will interrupt us, and so we can talk about a thousand things.”
I showed her some more of my work. She read it with great concentration and suddenly said, don’t you think that this word is too big? or, don’t you think this verse is too long? She could concentrate for hours. We ate right there, in the study, and then she offered me a drink. I said yes. She confessed that she was a big whiskey drinker but that I could choose something else, and she opened the bar, which was enormous, full of bottles and glasses, and I said, whiskey’s fine, I’ve never tried it but I’m sure I’ll like it, so she filled two glasses with ice and we continued talking until very late, drinking more and more, until suddenly, about midnight, she said, can I confess something to you? She went to a drawer and took out a small wooden box. She opened it and . . . What do I see? A small bag of coke and a complete kit for snorting it, with a silver tube and a mirror, all very professional. She asked me if I’d tried it and I said yes, so she laid out several lines and offered me some. I didn’t know what to do and finally I accepted, I was happy, I felt good with her. Araceli put some in each nostril and we continued drinking and talking until I saw the clock and said, shit! It’s three in the morning, but she said, what’s the hurry? Sleep here, the house is enormous. I accepted and we continued talking and reading poetry.
The next day my head was spinning and when I got back to my little room I had to go back to bed. I slept almost until the day after. In the afternoon, Araceli sent me a number of messages. “Thank you, thank you.” I thought I should ask her why she was so kind to me. What a headache! But I felt happy. Someone appreciated me for my poetry.
The next time I went to her house we started drinking whiskey earlier and she told me about an Argentinian poet named Alejandra Pizarnik. We read a few of her poems aloud and she told me about her life: that she had committed suicide when she was still young, that she was depressive and took pills. Then, already a little bit drunk, I asked Araceli, do you think that poetry is the refuge of the saddest people in the world? Araceli looked at me and, without saying anything, gave me a kiss on the mouth. I felt her lips on mine and quite naturally I opened them and explored them slowly with my tongue. Then we kissed with sudden violence and frenzy, as if we had been waiting a long time, and by the time I realized what was happening, Araceli was already running her hand up my thigh. It struck me that I hadn’t shaved my legs, but she stroked me in a way that only women can do, because they know where everything is and how to do things in the correct order. As she touched me, I kissed her neck and back and breasts, which sagged a little but were beautiful. Then she herself put my hand on her waist and moved it inside her jeans.
This continued for a while, until she took her clothes off and led me to a bedroom. We threw ourselves on the bed and started having some pretty strong sex, with a lot of licking and biting. I liked it. Araceli had a body that was quite loose although beautiful, it was obvious she went to the gym. It was strange after all that excitement that there was no penis involved, I confess, but we both came and it was great and then we continued drinking and sniffing coke in bed, naked, until we fell asleep in each other’s arms.
Obviously, a new phase of my life had started.
11
The same day that young Arthur was taken to Mazas Prison, September 1, 1870, the French armies of Napoleon III fell on the battlefield of Sedan, routed by the forces of King Wilhelm of Prussia and his general Helmut von Moltke, with the modest participation of a twenty-six-year-old soldier and nurse born in Röcken named Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. So it was that Napoleon III handed over his sword to spare the lives of his soldiers, and on September 2 agreed to surrender.
But that defeated France wasn’t the only one, and so, taking advantage of the chaos and confusion, the Republicans proclaimed the Third R
epublic and issued a decree ousting Napoleon III. And to defend the Republic, the Committee of National Defense was created. The French Empire might have lost the war, but there was another France able to rise up and carry the torch.
Faced with this, King Wilhelm I sent troops to encircle Paris. He wasn’t going to have his military triumph spoiled by a handful of romantic Republicans. The recurring problem of struggles between weak Davids and powerful Goliaths is that the Davids usually win, but in this case German foresight, as well as their relentless superiority, managed to overturn the biblical tradition, and in spite of the fact that the Republican Minister of Defense, León Gambetta, was able to break the siege of Paris and organize guerrillas to attack the Prussians from the rear, in the end it was all futile. It merely served to inspire the hearts of men for a time.
Georges Izambard, Rimbaud’s putative father, was one of those men who threw himself into the fight. And even Rimbaud himself, who despite being a minor (he was still only fifteen!) presented himself to the National Guard and took part in training with broomsticks, since there were no weapons available. Who was this young man, ready to give his life for the same France that very soon afterwards he would hate and would leave in a state of bitterness, spitting on its soil before leaving? Let us not forget that in this young man’s story, the army of France represents his absent father, who is still alive in his memory. Arthur longs for the hero to look at him and acknowledge him, perhaps even say a few affectionate words to him. What would art and literature be without absent fathers? What serves literature does not always serve life. But the young Rimbaud does not know that. It is, quite simply, something that is inside him.
At the beginning of the siege of Paris, Arthur returned to Charleville, taken there by Izambard. When Vitalie saw them arrive, she hit her son and confined him to his room, and of course insulted Izambard. As far as she was concerned, the teacher was responsible for everything bad that had happened. She knew that the demon of poetry was inside her son and she wanted to exorcise it. But to no avail, since two weeks later Rimbaud again disappeared. Now he was heading north. Izambard, like a hunting dog, followed him from Charleroi to Brussels, with all the towns in between. The fugitive poet was traveling on foot, like prehistoric men. He himself was his own cart and horse, and he was living . . . on what? According to what he said later in a letter, “on the delicious smells from kitchens.” At each stop he made, Izambard was given information about his pupil, although he was unable to track him down, even in Brussels, so he returned to Douai, and on reaching his house, what a surprise! Arthur opened the door to him.
Izambard hated him, but everyone succumbed to his wicked smile. The world falls in love with certain angels and devils. The poems he had been writing during his wanderings show the impulsive freedom that he felt being alone on the road, sleeping in ditches, perhaps seeking shelter from the rain or the cold or the wind—it was already October—in some abandoned barn.
My shelter was the Great Bear
The stars in the sky emitted soft sighs
And I heard them as I sat by the roadside.
Two weeks of daydreaming, solitude, and travel. It is hard to image a young man of sixteen wandering alone through a country at war. Enid Starkie, his biographer, says that on the way he encountered a dead soldier, who inspired one of the poems he brought with him when he returned, “Le Dormeur du val.”
A young soldier, his mouth open, his head bare,
His neck bathing in cool blue cress,
Sleeps stretched out on the grass, under the sky,
Pale on his green bed where the light pours down.
It is impossible not to think of another, much later poem, written by someone from another world. The scene is almost the same: a dead soldier in a field, perhaps in a ditch. The poet observes the lifeless body and speaks to it. He begs it to come back to life. The poet is César Vallejo, who must have read Rimbaud. There is a kind of music that echoes behind their poems. This is how Vallejo’s vision of a dead soldier begins:
At the end of the battle, with the fighter dead,
a man came to him and said:
“Do not die, I love you so much!”
But alas, the corpse continued to die.
I think Rimbaud would have approved of these lines.
Let us return to his story. Young Arthur is already back home. Vitalie can breathe a little and stop worrying for the moment. Her little genius had always been her biggest headache!
Separated from his idol Izambard (who was at the front), Arthur resumed his old childhood friendship with Ernest Delahaye, with whom he went for walks in the countryside and woods around Charleville and Méziers. It must have been very strange to wander amid beautiful bucolic landscapes while France was heading inexorably toward the abyss. Beauty and horror in the same plowed fields. Two young men strolling, talking endlessly, reading anything they could get from a besieged Paris.
According to a later account by Delahaye, it was on one of these afternoon walks that Rimbaud mentioned his admiration for the poet Paul Verlaine. They read each other poems from two books that could still be obtained, Poèmes saturniens and Fêtes galantes. Verlaine’s work showed Arthur new possibilities of playing games with form. He realized that poetry could be more flexible and sensed that his desire was to blow things up, to destroy the rigid molds in which poetry was traditionally cast. And not just poetry. Life, too, which seemed even more rigid and fixed.
Everything has to be demolished for the world to bloom again, perhaps from the new seeds of poetry! Poets are fiery, arrogant gods who aspire to recreate the universe and elevate the human soul. In a letter to Izambard, Rimbaud talks of “necessary destructions” and claims that in the new free nation (perhaps in its new Republic) luxury and pride will have disappeared.
Rimbaud’s first heroic, death-defying act was on behalf of his friend Delahaye, when the Prussians bombed and burned Méziers in December 1870. Vitalie confined her children to the house, but Arthur got out through a window and went to Méziers to look for Delahaye. I imagine Rimbaud running up a deserted, rubble-strewn street that leads to the hill, between buildings with smoking roofs and walls laid flat by cannon fire. There is a strange smell, like that of damp, rotting vegetables. Where is this young man going, alone amid so much desolation? Couldn’t another burst of gunfire come from some dark corner and finish off anything still alive? We do not know if the young man had these thoughts, but he went on anyway.
The Prussians had taken the city. Seeing a young Frenchman in these parts might upset them, some still nervous soldier might open fire or decide to arrest him. But none of these things happened. Arthur’s childlike appearance, which had made the French army reject him as being too young, even though he was now sixteen, now protected him.
Delahaye and his family had taken refuge in a house in the country and it was there that Rimbaud now arrived. Why was he so determined? He was eager to have his friend read two books he had recently gotten hold of: Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, translated by Baudelaire, and Le petit chose by Alphonse Daudet.
The siege of Paris lasted 135 days, until the lack of food became unbearable, and at the end of January 1871 the armistice and surrender were signed, although the chaos continued. The National Guard refused to withdraw, but the city filled with thieves who came to plunder it, under the pretext of defending it. There were rich pickings to be had! In the rest of France, life returned to a degree of normality. Arthur, though, refused to go back to school. Vitalie tried to force him, but he maintained his position: the country was in danger and he had to take action, join the National Guard, and serve in the defense. On February 25 he returned to Paris, but it was a squalid sojourn. He spent two weeks eating out of trash cans, begging, and sleeping under bridges in the middle of the winter. The cold of February is the worst, but this young man had an unusual ability to bear adversity when he himself had sought it out. W
hen it comes down to it, this is quite natural. When pain depends on you, it is easier for you to bear. Arthur had to coexist with rats and cockroaches, remove strange putrid liquids from the leftover food he put in his mouth. He was training himself to withstand whatever he might have to face. In A Season in Hell he talks of rain-sodden bread that he had to fight the pigeons for.
On March 3, the Germans finally entered Paris with their army, did an about-turn, and left again. Then the Parisians lit fires in the streets they had walked down in order to purify them, but in the end nothing of what had been feared happened. With the setting up of the Commune, France now had two governments: one in Paris and one in Versailles. It is uncertain whether or not Rimbaud was there at this time. Delahaye says yes and that he fought with the Commune until the troops from Versailles overran the city. His biographer Starkie says no, basing her assertion on the dates of some of his letters. What is certain is that his rapidly growing awareness of life, the way he left each stage behind him, and the avalanche of experiences that he incorporated into his poetry in those few months were really remarkable. Given his rebellious spirit, it would be logical to think that he fought with the Commune, but at the same time he was already starting to be a strange Attila leaving devastated fields behind him. It is odd that the biographers cannot agree about this, since in those days something happened that was to leave its mark on his life and even his soul forever. It was the moment when reality decided to lift him up into the air and abruptly let him fall to the ground with a resounding thud. It was as if the tide of life in all its cruelty trapped him, struck him a savage blow, and in doing so, in leaving him hurt and humiliated, awoke completely the poet who was already within him.
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