Return to the Dark Valley

by Santiago Gamboa

  Unlike cities such as Paris or Rome, Bogotá is a city of memory. Anyone looking at a corner is seeing something else: what was there before, what was demolished to give way to something new.

  It was very late when we got to the Nogal.

  Manuela was looking after the boy, who was having fun playing that game that consists of building islands and shelters. She herself was reading one of the many books there were in the apartment. I looked at the spine and felt something: A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud.

  “Do you like it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Manuela said, “I read it years ago.”

  “Doesn’t it make you want to write when you read it?”

  She looked in the air for a few seconds. “I feel betrayed, so right now I can’t even think about continuing. Sorry to talk like this, Consul.”

  “You were betrayed by a friend, not by poetry.”

  “The old bitch. I hope she rots and turns really ugly.”

  My situation in that apartment was increasingly strange, but even so I didn’t want to call any of my old friends. I liked the idea of being incognito in my own city. In addition, it was essential I didn’t lose sight of the fundamental point, which was that we had come on a mission of revenge. Although I still hoped that Manuela would change her mind. I still thought she would when the time came.

  Watching television and reading a little of the press, I realized that in post-conflict Colombia, the new hero was the man who opened his arms and found someone to reconcile with. The ethic of forgiveness had replaced the old local Darwinism and become a kind of policy. Rather than receiving forgiveness, everyone wanted to give it. That’s what taking action meant. The new aspirational prototype was the status of victim, real or symbolic. Never before had the fact that you had suffered terrible things brought so much prestige.

  The Colombians were inundated with these feelings, caught up in a vortex of kindness and tolerance. That’s why the TV program makers had drastically changed the formats of their reality shows. They were looking for the new man, the new woman. The models with their sinuous curves, the boys with their gym-toned muscles, now had another project, a new aspiration in life: to be tremendously understanding and tolerant.

  The new national capitalism tended to reward the paradigm of a responsible, caring agent, in opposition to the previous model of a successful, misanthropic metrosexual who abstained in elections. These were the new social codes you needed in order to accede to respectability. The advertising agencies understood that the change of model involved modifying the old parameters, and instead of the strong young white Caucasian male of Blumenbach’s craniology, they now looked for a male of mixed features, a somewhat bigger body structure and a round face, more Homo familiaris than Homo faber, who, according to studies, corresponded to the modern image and psychosocial brand.

  Everywhere, this strange hurricane of goodness blew, although if you opened your eyes on the street, on certain corners of the city, you again encountered the baleful looks there had always been and the sensation that at any moment, without warning, horror could be unleashed. Bogotá had always been like that, which made it a perfect reflection of the country, in its capacity for indifference and its occasional cruelty, even though this was currently concealed by the joy and the desire for redemption.

  It was strange. We had come from another atmosphere, unbreathable and sick, with the aim of eliminating someone in the very place where humanity seemed most cheerful and reconciled. When it came down to it, Manuela was the only one who could really forgive, but . . . was she ready to do that?

  The next day, halfway through the morning, Manuela arrived from the street with a book.

  “These are my poems, Consul.”

  The title was Songs of the Equinox, and the author, Araceli Cielo.

  I knew her. We had met at a conference some years ago. Perhaps in Puerto Rico or México, I couldn’t remember, but of course I remembered her: proud, oracular, elegant, every phrase laced with an enigma or a metaphorical perception. On the cover of the book there was a sticker that said “Third Edition,” which wasn’t common with poetry books.

  I started to read and discovered a very powerful voice, so much so that I doubted it could really be Manuela. Was her story of plagiarism true? I have learned that people without parents have a marked tendency to invent lives that, over time, stop being parallel and get confused with their own until they replace them. As if the biography truncated by the absence of a father or a mother created a void that can only be filled with words.

  Many writers, like Rimbaud, have looked untiringly for their father: they have created nets to trap that figure that abandoned them, or they have run away themselves, in search of something still without a face or substance, perhaps hoping themselves to personify the absent one. Manuela’s poems showed that wound at the center of her life, a scar that reopened several times. Absent father, treacherous mother, aggression. Pain was the origin of her creativity, but she could not continue until she had taken her revenge.

  That’s what she believed.

  Reading the book, I became convinced that the author could only be Manuela. Everything corresponded to her life. The strange thing is that nobody in Araceli Cielo’s poetic circle had suspected a thing; after all, the references in the poems didn’t have much to do with her, a poet who was more whimsical and frivolous, her women halfway between objects and symbols. That’s what I remembered, although it’s possible that the image derived from the harsh portrait that Manuela drew of her in her memoir. I don’t know.

  Tertullian appeared at last. He spoke with Juana and said that things were almost ready. He brought news.

  When he came in, I didn’t recognize him. He was wearing a diamond-patterned sweater, a high-necked shirt, a coffee-colored jacket, corduroy pants, and Clarks chukkas. He looked like an architect. A silk scarf around his neck and a hat completed the image. As if straight out of the Gun Club.

  “How elegant,” I said.

  “It’s a mimetic disguise. You know, the best way for nobody to see you, here in Bogotá, is to dress like a bourgeois preppy from the Center-Left, or as a Francophile intellectual. I chose a mixture of the two. Does it suit me?”

  “You look like an executive from Canal Capital,” Manuela said.

  Tertullian didn’t laugh. He went straight to the dining room table, looked up at the ceiling, checked the corners, then went over to the window and looked out.

  “Are we safe here? There’s nobody listening to us?”

  Juana assured him the apartment was completely safe.

  “Look, this is a very complex thing, right?”

  “It’s one hundred percent safe,” Juana insisted, “let’s cut to the chase.”

  Tertullian left his jacket, scarf, and hat on hangers, took some folded sheets of paper from his pocket, and spread them on the table.

  “Good, we have something concrete. Look here, it’s a house on the outskirts of Cali, in the Pance area. A swish neighborhood. In ten days’ time, they’re holding a meeting, followed by a party, and Freddy’s invited. The aim of the meeting is to divide up the sale and distribution of pink cocaine, practically throughout the country, with two other bosses.”

  “Pink cocaine?” Juana said.

  “It’s an alkaloid,” Tertullian said, “a recreational drug, I mean, I’m not sure what the hell it is, but it’s not the usual cocaine. What I do know is that it’s more expensive. It’s worth a hundred fifty thousand Colombian pesos, and outside, something like seventy-five dollars a dose. It’s for yuppies and daddy’s boys, for rich and androgynous young men who still haven’t discovered their true sexuality; also for the young second wives of elderly tycoons, you know? The kind who spend the morning fucking their Pilates instructor, half the afternoon fucking their tennis instructor, early evening sucking their yoga instructor’s cock, and at night tell their husbands they p
refer not to fuck because they don’t want to feel they’re being treated like objects, do you copy me? I’m sorry, Juana, and you too, Manuela, you already know I’m politically incorrect.”

  Tertullian took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat already appearing on his bare cranium.

  “Right, there are two options. We have an infiltrator in the group that’s organized the party, the one in charge of getting hold of girls. You know what I mean, right, Consul?”

  “I get you,” I said.

  “Right. Those parties always end up the same way, with the guys drunk, doing coke or amphetamines or crack, until each of them goes to a room with two or three bitches to fuck. That’s how it works.”

  He pointed to the second sheet, which had a sketch of the house.

  “This is how it is: we have to put a girl in there who, when the time comes and the guy has his pants down, neutralizes him, gives him a substance that knocks him out. Then that girl will open a window and let in my team to get the target out of the house and put him in the van.”

  He placed his finger on the map and moved it across the sketch of the house.

  “All of the rooms, including those on the upper floor, have big windows that look out on the inner garden, but since we can’t know which room he’ll use we’ll need the girl to tell us. Once we get him, everything’s arranged. There’s a place ready where Manuela can be with him and do whatever she wants to do: a soundproof cellar in the middle of the countryside.”

  “And what’s the second option?” I asked.

  “Well, the second is a bit more like in a movie, if you like. It consists of intercepting him on the way and opening fire on him. He always takes two cars, with escorts, but we can have long-range weapons ready on the road. Of course, this has the disadvantage of noise, plus it’s risky. If the police happen to pass by, we’re screwed. And if he realizes that someone’s after him, he’ll hide and we won’t be able to grab him for God knows how long.”

  “So you’re inclined to the first option,” I said.

  Tertullian again hit the table with his thumbs.

  “Yes, I am. It’s the kind of plan I like because the risk is contained within relatively calculable vectors, and the operation depends entirely on the talent of those involved, not on firepower or other variables. Even intelligence plays a role. It’s like microsurgery, while the other way is like fumigating from above or fishing with dynamite, know what I mean?”

  All eyes, naturally, turned to Manuela.

  “Let’s do it the first way,” she said, “I’ll get myself into the party.”

  Tertullian was surprised.

  “Look, I don’t know if you’ll be able to, because if he recognizes you, you won’t get out alive. You’re not only a witness, but from what you told me, you gave his name to the police. You’re an enemy. However much we change you, he can still recognize you, and everything will go to hell.”

  “Before he can kill me I’ll knock him out.”

  Tertullian scratched his chin and neck.

  “In those parties, they give the girls a thorough inspection, they check their vaginas and their colons, you understand? You won’t be able to sneak in even a pin. That’s the problem. It’s better if you stay in the house and when we have him you go into action.”

  Juana had been watching all this from the back. She took a step toward the table and said:

  “I’ll do it, I’ll go.”

  I’d imagined she might suggest this. I thought it was madness, but I preferred Tertullian to be the one to tell her so.

  “Are you crazy? You have a kid, and this is a dangerous game. Right now my contacts are looking for women to train.”

  “I know these guys, I can do it,” Juana said. “I’ve been a hooker, and in worse situations than this. Only the consul knew that, but now you know. I know what to do to get him to come with me to the room. I’ll do it.”

  The coldness and conviction in her voice left us speechless. And it left me scared, powerless, desperate. How could she want to do something like that? How to dissuade her? Juana liked putting herself to the test. The idea of taking part in a revenge attack on a murderer and rapist excited her. I was afraid for her and the child, but saying something would be like screaming underwater.

  Manuela looked at her in surprise.

  “You were a hooker?” she said.

  “For revenge, not for money,” Juana said. “And this is the same thing, isn’t it? I also have plenty of reasons.”

  Tertullian looked at her admiringly, grabbed her by the arm, and said:

  “So are we all on the same page here? Idealism is important. Believing in things out of principle, not out of self-interest. Great. All right, Juanita, if your mind is made up, the mission is yours. Taking those human containers of radioactive garbage out of circulation is my mission on earth. But first of all we have to give you training, are you sure?”

  Juana looked at me. “Consul, what do you say?”

  I said nothing for a moment, my heart racing slightly. I thought about Manuelito Sayeq playing with the tablet in his room. About Juana’s parents, alone in that sad house. I even thought about myself. In a way I had caused all this.

  “If anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “Of course you will,” Juana said, “this is the country of forgiveness.”

  “The only thing I ask is that afterwards, when this is over, we go to see your parents. Could you do that?”

  Juana’s cheeks tinged with scarlet. She was about to say something and stopped. She walked to the window. Finally she returned to the table and said:

  “All right, Consul, I promise.”

  The next day, Tertullian came for Juana very early, to begin what he called pre-operational training, starting with a series of physical exercises.

  When they had left, I spent a while looking at the rain. Its strange capacity to distance us from reality, to make it lighter, less uncontrollable.

  It occurred to me that I should do some research of my own on the guy we were supposed to be removing from circulation, and about his business, so I made an exception and called someone I trusted absolutely.

  He was an old journalist from the same generation as me, who had worked as a crime reporter for a number of national dailies and for some years now had been the correspondent for a Mexican newspaper group. I opened an old file on my computer and found his details. I sent him a message saying that I’d like to speak with him and to my surprise he replied within ten minutes.

  “This is my number: 317 . . . Call me.”

  I called him immediately.

  “Víctor?” I said.

  “Yes, speaking,” he replied at the other end. “What a fantastic surprise, when did you get back?”

  “I’m passing through,” I said.

  “Right now everybody’s coming back,” Victor said, like in the song by Rubén Blades. “Are you still a diplomat?”

  “No,” I said, “I gave that up more than five years ago.”

  “And are you writing? Are you here for a book?”

  “More or less,” I said. “I’m doing some research and that’s why I called you, can we meet?”

  “Sure, how about the Juan Valdez on Seventh and Sixty-first?”

  “I’d rather go somewhere we can be sure we won’t see anybody we know. I’ll explain later.”

  “Perfect, tell me where I can pick you up and we’ll go to a non-place that I know.”

  An hour later he picked me up on the corner of Avenida Chile and Seventh. Víctor had changed a lot. His hair and beard were white. He hadn’t put on weight. He was doing well judging by his car, a black Jeep. He leaned back in his seat and gave me a hug.

  “It’s great to see you, brother!” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He turned a couple of corners onto what, I later rea
lized, was Avenida Suba, and finally drove into the garage of one of those houses in the old residential area of Niza IV.

  “This is my house,” he said, “bienvenu!”

  We sat down on a wicker couch in the inner garden, beside a grill and a barbecue. Víctor went for an ashtray and came back pushing a little table on casters on which were various bottles: whiskey, gin, vodka, aguardiente, tequila, Kahlúa, Bailey’s, Havana Club.

  “Hell, the bar of the Ritz,” I said.

  “With ice or without?

  “Two cubes, double gin, tonic,” I said.

  We toasted, then Víctor said:

  “All right, maestro, now tell me, how can I help you?”

  “You can ask questions that I can’t and you have the contacts, but let’s take it one bit at a time.”

  My first question was about pink cocaine. What the hell was it, where did it come from, and who sold it in Colombia?

  Víctor made a few calls to journalists he trusted and then explained. This is how I recorded it in my notebook:

  The chemical name is 2C-B, which explains the other generic name TwoCB, or in the vernacular: tusibí.

  Formula: 4-bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine of the family 2C.

  The effects of tusibí? Halfway between LSD and ecstasy, but not equal to the mixture of those two substances. Not as intense as LSD and less stimulating and euphoric than ecstasy.

  It is called “pink cocaine” because of its synthetic color, produced by aniline, and its presentation in powdered form. Why that color and not another? A marketing ploy. There’s a clear sexual metaphor, in that it disinhibits and powers the stimuli. It also suggests “pink Viagra.” It’s inhaled as powder; it can also be smoked, taken in tablet form, or injected. When it reaches the brain it attaches itself to the dopamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline receptors. It produces dizziness, a feeling of flight, hyper-confidence, a love of oneself and others, and overestimation of one’s own ideas.