Return to the Dark Valley

by Santiago Gamboa

  This has still to be demonstrated.

  He may have come across books in Aden, in the Grand Hôtel de l’Univers, through which many foreigners passed; he might have had a personal library. It is hardly credible that someone like him could really have abandoned literature to the point of no longer reading it. Stopping writing is possible, but stopping reading?

  That is more difficult.

  On this subject there are, as far as I know, no precedents. Readers who abandon reading? Someone who has read and loved books is like someone who has tried the coolness of water or the pleasures of sex or good food. He may stop cooking, but not eating. A chef may stop inventing delicious and sophisticated dishes, but I doubt he can do without decent food and willingly decide to spend the rest of his life on bread and water.

  For now, his great objective, the telltale heart that never stopped beating, was his desire to become rich, perhaps with the idea of returning to Charleville or Paris surrounded with luxuries; repay his family; and take revenge on the Parisian intelligentsia. That must have resonated in the young man’s mind or even in his guts, which was why he decided to go for broke.

  The war in Abyssinia was still continuing, and in 1884 Egypt lost control of the area. The British preferred to withdraw, leaving Harar in a chaotic state. Rimbaud quickly moved to Aden, but with a surprise. On this occasion he arrived with a young Abyssinian girl! We do not know her name, just that she was tall and slim, like all Harari women, and with relatively light skin for an Abyssinian. The Europeans who saw her thought she was a slave, but it has been confirmed that Rimbaud led a conjugal life with her, although without children. They seemed happy and Rimbaud sent her to the school of the French mission. After spending some months with her in Aden, he gave her some money and sent her back to her home. Presumably when the situation had settled down in Harar.

  Arthur needed all his concentration to undertake his next project, his most ambitious commercial exploit, which consisted of selling a shipment of arms from France and Belgium to King Menelik of Soa, who was at war with the emperor of Ethiopia and king of Tigré. Rimbaud calculated that he could earn five times his investment, and he threw himself headlong into this new scheme. In October 1885, he had a violent argument with his employer, Bardey, and gave up his job with the company.

  As he himself told his mother:

  “I have performed many services for them and it was assumed, to please them, that I would spend the rest of my life with them. They did all they could to keep me, but I told them to go to hell, with all their privileges, their trade, their awful store, and their dirty city.” (Letter of October 22, 1885.)

  That monstrous pride that in its various guises takes the name of “dignity” had again seized Arthur. What did a modest job as a commercial agent matter when he was on the verge of becoming rich? The idea was to buy the arms in Europe, unload them in Aden, and take them to the Somali coast, from where he himself would take them in a caravan to Menelik’s kingdom. He was investing a capital of six hundred pounds. According to Starkie, that amounted to six years’ savings.

  No sooner had he started preparations than a thousand problems arose. First, he had to obtain a special permit from the British authorities to unload the rifles, something he managed after an enormous number of difficulties and a great deal of wasted time. Then he decided to start the expedition from the French concession of Tadjoura, an inhospitable and unhealthy little town, famous for its role in the slave trade. He had to wait a year before leaving, a time that must have seemed hellish to him. To speed things up and feel more secure in his dealings with Menelik, he joined forces with another French trader named Labatut, who had relations with Menelik and seemed to be a good ally. At the beginning of 1886, the arms were ready in Tadjoura and Rimbaud took on the task of finding camels for the caravan, but the natives of the area, the Danakils, used them in their daily chores and were not ready to rent them out. It took him several months to gather what he needed, having to incur expenses he had not reckoned with.

  Time was passing and things were becoming ever more desperate.

  The figures must have been dancing in his mind while the seasons turned. As well as camels, he needed to find porters prepared to make the journey, which was one of the most dangerous in the region. Other caravans had been attacked and one of them, led by the explorer Barral, ended in a bloody massacre, with mutilated bodies left to be devoured by the vultures and the beasts of the desert.

  To complete the somber outlook, his partner Labatut fell ill with cancer and died before the expedition could set off. What could he do now? Labatut had been his best link with Menelik, the guarantee that the devious king would pay for the arms they were about to take him. The solution was to join forces with another French arms trafficker, named Soleillet, but once again he was out of luck: in September 1886, Soleillet suddenly died on a street in Aden!

  Again, thoughts of a metaphysical conspiracy, anxiety attacks.

  Then Rimbaud decided to go alone to see Menelik, and so it was that at the beginning of October 1886, the caravan set off.

  I can imagine him in the convoy, on horseback, watching the silhouettes of the camels advance in a line at sunset and thinking that in that moving line lay his destiny, his immediate future. The suppositions he had made regarding these arms that were swaying on the backs of the camels! Now he had to make a final effort, to trust in luck. The most important thing was to get across Danakil territory alive, reach the kingdom of Soa, and hope that Menelik was a man of his word and would do what he had promised more than a year earlier to a partner who was now dead.

  No, young Arthur, it wasn’t going to be easy.

  The terrain was almost impassible, most of it black volcanic lava. They could only count on the water they carried in their goatskin flasks, which, when warmed up, became poisonous. And then there was the danger of attacks by the Danakil or other tribes considered “savage.” Starkie says that for one of these tribes the greatest reward of war was to cut off the enemy’s genitals, which must have been somewhat unsettling.

  Among the curiosities of the journey, which Rimbaud later wrote about, was the crossing of the saltwater Lake Assal, a kind of Dead Sea in Abyssinian—or habesha—territory surrounded by basalt stone and lava. Reaching the river Hawache, Rimbaud already felt close to success, since on coming down from the mountains they again encountered fertile land and greenery. They floated the camels across the river and soon arrived in Ankober, capital of the kingdom of Soa. The journey had lasted four months!

  But when they arrived, King Menelik was not there.

  A new setback, a new feeling that fate was playing him dirty tricks. Could he not hear the strange language of fate? For some years now, a voice had been pursuing him, telling him: keep calm, take deep breaths, stay in one place.

  But nothing could stop this restless young man, so he urged the caravan on to the town of Entoto, where the king now was. When he got there he still had to wait several days to see him. So far, the entire undertaking had consumed a year and a half. And he still didn’t have the money in his bag!

  His interview with the king saw his tribulations enter a new phase. The hard journey through Danakil territory had been the easiest part. Menelik proved to be a tough character, a quick-witted and demanding negotiator. Plus, he had an excellent memory. The first thing he did was to confiscate the arms and tell young Arthur that he would not pay for them per unit but would pay an overall price, which reduced the total amount. Then he pointed out that Rimbaud’s first partner, Labatut, had an outstanding debt toward him, which he now deducted from the payment. In fact, Arthur’s ex-partner had contracted debts toward many other people, and he soon found himself besieged by creditors. Even Labatut’s widow demanded her share of the profits. Rimbaud did not know what to do. The final straw came when Menelik told him that he had no cash, but would have to pay in kind, particularly in ivory.

  Rimbaud could
not accept this and so Menelik told him to go to Harar, since the new governor, Ras Makonen, did have cash available and would be able to pay the balance of what was owed.

  This was the sad end of his dreams of wealth. After deducting the countless debts and sharing out the profits, the net earnings were quite meager. He recouped his investment, but had obtained little for the two years of hard work, expense, and red tape.

  One fine day, in Aden, Rimbaud woke up to the fact that he had spent seven years in the Red Sea area and his financial situation wasn’t getting any better.

  The laconic letter he sent his mother says:

  “My life is drawing to a close. Enough of how you’d imagine a person should be after exploits like the following: journeys by land, on horseback, in a rowing boat, without a change of clothes, without food, without water, etc.

  “I’m terribly weary. I have no job and it terrifies me to lose the little I have left.” (Letter of August 23, 1887.)

  Thanks to his recklessness and his constant abuse of his physical strength Rimbaud was physically weary. There is a testimony about him from the beginning of 1888, provided by Ato Joseph, the consul of Ethiopia in Djibouti, and quoted by the researcher Charles Nicholl: the impressions of a number of travelers and of a French couple named Dufaud who ran a hotel in Obock and knew Rimbaud as a guest.

  “Physically, Rimbaud was quite a thin man, of slightly above average height, with an emaciated and not very attractive, even ugly face, which made his hoteliers say: ‘Abyssinia won’t form a very good impression of the French race through him.’”

  This was what remained, three years before his death, of that angelic young man with blue eyes and golden curls who had charmed everyone with his intelligence and beauty. The only beneficial result of that crazy expedition was that between August 25 and 27, 1887 the Egyptian French language newspaper, Le Bosphore Egyptien, published his report on the journey from Tadjoura, advising against the route described. That autumn, from Aden, his articles were submitted to newspapers in Paris, such as Le Temps and Le Figaro. Nothing came of it. He also offered his services as a war correspondent—on the conflict between Italy and Abyssinia—but Le Temps did not consider him, even though Rimbaud was already well known in literary circles in Paris. It is worth remembering that one year earlier, in 1886, Verlaine had published the Illuminations with that famous introduction in which he says he does not know if “Monsieur A. Rimbaud is still alive.”

  Arthur’s dreams of grandeur did not end there. Something told him that, because of the instability in the region and the growing European military involvement, arms would continue to be a good business. And once again he threw himself into it. He obtained something that was quite difficult to get: a license to import arms to the Kingdom of Soa, in other words, Menelik’s territory, and with this valuable document he went and knocked at the door of the two biggest arms traffickers in Aden. Two Frenchmen named Tian and Savouré.

  He now returned to Harar to run a branch of Tian and Savouré’s business in terms very similar to those of his former boss Bardey.

  This cheered Rimbaud. After all, Harar had been the place where he had created something, where he’d had a lover, and where the wind from the mountains cooled the air, far from the ferocious heat of the coastal towns in which he’d been forced to spend a large part of those years. In the new Harar there was already trade, alcohol could be obtained, and something he might have considered a sign of a civilized life: brothels. Rimbaud had already contracted syphilis, so he must have been an assiduous visitor. There may have been a great deal of the mystic and the dreamer in him, but when it came down to it, he was a poet.

  7

  The hurricane of national goodness completely enveloped reality, disguising it. The enjoyment of that longed-for peace was too big a phenomenon to be disturbed by the daily evidence that, here and there, serious new conflicts were emerging.

  It was hardly normal. Nations are populated by human beings who are dreamers, egotists, highly-strung people aware of their finite nature and their problematic claims to happiness. And there is nothing more likely to generate conflict, socially speaking, than the pursuit of happiness. Many people didn’t see it because they didn’t want to see it, but the world was still substantially the same.

  All the same, the index of self-esteem had never been as high as it was during those months. It was as if the whole population was experiencing the artificial high caused by certain recreational drugs, like Freddy Otálora’s famous pink cocaine. People were happy because they wanted to be happy, and would never allow anything to hinder this induced and, for that very reason, precarious joy.

  Displaying great patriotism, and respecting their constitutional duty to support the evolution of the nation, the Armed Forces joined in the construction of a new, happy, active, and healthy society. Their contribution consisted of channeling the excess of collective love toward physical disciplines, establishing sports routines to build healthy minds and consecrating exercise as a way of forging a bond between the current self-esteem and faith in the future. Their motto might have been: “The passing of time will not weaken our convictions!”

  That was why, from very early, the sports fields and gymnasiums of the various battalions were opened to the public, providing opportunities for citizens to exercise alongside the soldiers of the Fatherland, with military instructors providing guidance in all kinds of activities: racing, high jump, weightlifting, team sports such as basketball and soccer, and even riding in some cases (insofar as this activity, in which it is the horse that moves its muscles, can be called a sport).

  Everything began at six in the morning, when the country’s radio stations broadcast the national anthem. In every barracks, the sporting day opened with the soldiers singing Rafael Núñez’s words at the tops of their voices, with their hands on their chests, feeling proud of that music and those lines in every fiber of their being. The army also felt proud of seeing the population increasingly healthy, unreservedly expressing its love for its country. A joy so unexpected and pure that it produced vigor.

  Returning from my morning walk, a little shaken by the previous night’s gins—Víctor and Quitzé, as far as I knew, had embarked on a complete blinder, which consists of drinking until you’re dead drunk, then going to La Piscina and ending up in the arms of some murky beauty—I had a coffee in the kitchen with Manuela.

  “Are you still determined?”

  “I haven’t thought any more about it, Consul. It’s what I have to do, and that’s it.”

  “I found out a few things about Freddy last night,” I said. “He really is a very dangerous guy. I respect your views, but just remember, there is another possibility, which is to go back to Madrid, continue building something that’s yours and yours alone, and get away from the sickness of the past. Your poetry is good, you should continue with it. I think that’s the way forward.”

  “I can’t,” Manuela said. “This is something that hurts me every day. It won’t let me breathe. Knowing he’s at large chokes the air in me. The thought that he’s alive is so invasive it obscures any other thoughts, I don’t know if you understand what I mean. I’m sorry that Juana is going to take such a risk for me, and believe me, I’m asking her every way I can not to do it.”

  “I know her and she’s going to do it. Let’s hope nothing happens to her.”

  The boy was still asleep and Juana hadn’t come back during the night. The training must have gone on until very late. It wasn’t until midmorning that she called and told us to get ready, we were traveling to Cali that very night.

  “Well, it’s starting,” I said to Manuela, “we’re going tonight.”

  “To Cali?”

  “Yes.”

  I saw her give a strange, complex smile. Cali was the realm of her nightmare, but also of her childhood. And we are all of us products of where we were children, even if we weren’t happy there.

&
nbsp; Juana and Tertullian arrived at noon for the preparations. Manuelito Sayeq was ready with his satchel and his tablet. We would travel separately. Tertullian under his own steam. Manuela on one plane and Juana, the boy, and I on another.

  “It’s better to be compartmentalized, you do understand that, don’t you, Consul?” Tertullian said.

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  When we got to El Dorado airport, I saw our image reflected in one of the glass doors: the child, Juana, and I, holding hands. The flight was very short, and at Bonilla Aragón airport we were aware of a different smell and the warmth of the air. Immediately, Manuelito cheered up.

  “Summer is coming.”

  “Here, it’s summer all year round,” his mother said.

  We took a taxi to a place in the west of the city, an old house in the hills. From the street, all that could be seen was a stone wall reached through a side gate. The house was farther up, covered by trees, only visible from the upper floors of the neighboring buildings. It had a garden and a terrace with a swimming pool. It was a solid middle-class house from the 1940s. Soon afterwards Manuela arrived, and we awaited instructions. Tertullian came after nightfall.

  “Is it all right? Do you like it? Are you comfortable?” Tertullian asked, bowing. “It’s just for you. I’m not going to stay here. You, Juanita, come with me. There are things we have to prepare, and you’ll need to get into the swing of things beforehand. The party is in eight days’ time and we have to be sure of everything. Consul, Manuela, you wait here with the child. When the meat is in the sandwich, you’ll go into action, Manuelita, do I make myself clear?”

  Juana said goodbye to her son. It wasn’t the first time she had been away from him and the child accepted it easily. They set off into the shadows. When I said goodbye to Juana, I said to her: