Return to the Dark Valley

by Santiago Gamboa

  “Look after yourself, I’ll take care of Manuel.”

  “If anything happens to me, protect him. But don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen.”

  “You’re not obliged to do this,” I said.

  “Yes, I am obliged because it’s the right thing to do, wasn’t it you who said that? I think it was.”

  “When you know the right thing to do, the hard thing is not to do it. Jewish proverb.”

  She gave me a big hug. Her body clung fiercely to mine.

  “I like your smell, Consul.”

  “Look after yourself and come back safely. You still haven’t told me anything.”

  “I know you really love the boy. Keep him entertained.”

  “I’ll be with him every second.”

  Then she hugged Manuela. I thought I saw a few tears, and looked away. Nothing of what we were doing was irreversible, but it didn’t seem possible to change anything.

  Then Tertullian came up to me and said:

  “Consul, I know this is all a bit different than what you’re used to, but here you are, by their side, taking responsibility. You’re a good man, I say that in all seriousness. Let me hug you.”

  His belly forced me to twist my waist rather uncomfortably, but I managed to get to his neck. He was sweating profusely and seemed rock hard.

  “Let’s go, Juanita,” he said. “Don’t spend too much time saying goodbye, it’s bad luck. We’ll be back in a week, all right?”

  Manuela and I watched them walk down the steps beside the swimming pool and out onto the street. In the house, silence reigned.

  Cali had a pleasant smell. It reminded me of Delhi because of the trees and the unruly vegetation sprouting through the cracks in the asphalt and climbing the walls. Also because of the heat and the feeling that the temperature changes the state of your soul. There was everything we needed in the house, but I decided to take a walk and buy provisions: a little milk, bread, cheese rolls, fruit; Manuela swam in the pool with the boy.

  A little later I said to Manuela:

  “What do you talk about when you’re waiting for something?”

  She looked up for a while and said:

  “I don’t know, all kinds of things. Wild animals, murderous insects, one-celled organisms. How about you, Consul?”

  “The same things as you. Also about frankly impossible adventures.”

  “Impossible?” she laughed. “Why talk about them if they’re impossible? Let’s see, tell me one.”

  I had already imagined her question.

  “For example, the idea of returning.”

  “Returning where?”

  “Anywhere, just returning.”

  She looked at the city on the other side of the window and nodded. Then she said:

  “And you never talk about poetry? Tell me about Rimbaud.”

  “Rimbaud . . . ” I thought about it for a moment. “He wanted to return, except that for most of his life he didn’t know where. And when he finally realized, he couldn’t. They amputated his leg, he lost one arm and part of the other. He died in the attempt.”

  “And where did he want to return?”

  “To Harar. That was his only home.”

  Manuela looked at me questioningly.

  “It’s in Ethiopia, near Somalia,” I said.

  “What about you, Consul, where would you like to return?”

  “I don’t know. I still haven’t found a place.”

  “Then we should go there.”

  “Where?”

  “To Harar,” Manuela said, “where Rimbaud wanted to go. Maybe I’ll recover the poetry that was stolen from me by that old bitch.”

  I shrugged. It might be so.

  Outside, there was Cali.

  At about five in the afternoon there’s a breeze that revives the spirits. Manuela and I would go out on the terrace to feel it while the boy played with some Lego aircraft bought at the airport. The maid Tertullian had hired told us that the wind came from the sea, behind the mountains. The Pacific Ocean was there. And it was true: some dusks, we saw seagulls flying. But none of these things that excited us could dispel the fear.

  “Are you writing?” I asked her one afternoon.

  “No, not at all,” Manuela said. “Until this is sorted, I can’t. The day after the revenge will be the first day of my new life. Perhaps then I’ll be able to. I’ve thought about it, Consul. That day I’ll be free.”

  The date was coming closer.

  I was obsessed with the news: radio, papers, TV. If Freddy was to come to Cali things might happen that would make us abort our plan. For example, the police might grab him while he was on the move. The most desirable thing of all was that the army would ambush him on the freeway, he and his bodyguards would resist, and he would die riddled with machine-gun bullets fired from a military helicopter, like the trafficker Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha. It was an unlikely idea, but possible. That way Juana and Manuela would be saved from having to do what they were planning to do.

  Waiting, waiting . . .

  The day is marked out with floating buoys you have to make an effort to reach: lunch, dinner, sleep, breakfast. Anyone who waits—this text is full of unbearable waits—feels the passing of time and its speed in a physical way. It is slow and laborious.

  I don’t know who felt the weight of this stillness most, Manuela or me; what is certain is that by always being in the house—except for my brief morning excursion for provisions, which Manuela denied herself for fear that someone might recognize her—each of us ended up marking our territory, and she practically imprisoned herself in her room.

  The child was spending more time with me, which made it easier for me to endure the hours. For children, time is like an accordion, it opens and closes; their one objective is to enjoy themselves, to play and keep their minds occupied. To spend time well. That’s why a child is the ideal companion for a wait. I spent hours making rockets out of Lego, strange combat vehicles and spaceships, or reading stories about fantasy characters. We watched episodes of Animal Planet on TV, and his great discovery in Colombia, El Chavo del Ocho! At first it struck him as strange, but once he got used to it he started watching it for hours on end and gradually took to repeating its catchphrases.

  At night, when the child was asleep, I would go back to my Rimbaud notes and lose myself in that strange, sad life full of hopes and desires and dreams that almost never came true.

  On the appointed day, Manuela and I looked like two ghosts, going out again and again to watch the street from the terrace. We barely exchanged a word.

  I didn’t want to leave the house in case something unusual happened, and for the first time I was grateful that a child could spend twenty-four hours engrossed in the games on his tablet. That allowed me to concentrate on the news and check what was happening in Cali.

  There was no news during the day and until well into the night, so I tried to sleep, which was impossible, as it was for Manuela, who decided to sit on one of the deck chairs by the swimming pool with her cell phone beside her.

  I was reading in bed when they burst into the house.

  Tertullian wasn’t with them, only Juana and three strange characters. It must have been about four in the morning, day hadn’t broken yet. Manuela came out of her room with a T-shirt down to her navel and boxer shorts, but seeing the strangers she went back to get dressed.

  Juana had a bandage on one arm.

  “Did something happen to you? How did it go?” I asked anxiously.

  “It’s nothing, just something dumb. We have him.”

  “Was it difficult?”

  “Difficult, no, almost impossible! Let me rest and I’ll tell you tomorrow. How’s Manuelito?”

  “Sleeping, no problem.”

  “Thanks, Consul, you’re a guardian angel.”

 
“So—the plan worked?”

  “Something unexpected happened . . . We’ll talk when I wake up,” she said, “right now I’m half drunk and a bit high. Manuela has to go with them now.”

  Manuela came out of her room in jeans, tennis shoes, and a black T-shirt. She gave me a hug and left with the three men.

  “Take care,” I said.

  “Yes, Consul. Thank you,” said Manuela.

  She hugged Juana and said:

  “You’re great, I owe you my life.”

  “You don’t yet know how it went.”

  “You’ll tell me when I get back.”

  She walked around the swimming pool and went down the stairs. Juana went to look at the boy, who was still asleep; she gave him a kiss on the forehead.

  “He’s going to wake up in a while and I’m exhausted, Consul, I don’t want him to see me like this.”

  “I’ll take care of him, you go rest.”

  Before she went, she gave me a kiss on the mouth. I felt her nervous tongue. She suddenly pulled away.

  “Forgive me, Consul, I told you I was drunk and high.”

  She went to her room and closed the door.

  I touched my lip where she had kissed me. The next day she wouldn’t remember, I thought. I, too, would do well to forget about it. I had to fight against another idea, which was to go into her room, kiss her, and have wild sex with her, as I had dreamed of doing so many times in the past few years.

  I went back to bed and tried to sleep.

  I got up after seven. I switched on the TV in the kitchen to watch the news program and at last found something. There was an item about a massacre in a luxury house to the south of Cali, “a property that was subject to judicial process because it had belonged to a person extradited to the United States,” according to the reporter presenting the item.

  The head of the police, speaking live, said the following:

  “What we’ve been able to establish so far, from the first evidence and a number of testimonies, is that two criminal groups, apparently connected with the traffic in synthetic drugs, as well as normal drugs, met in that house for a party as well as to reach an agreement on the dividing up of the territory. There must have been an argument or perhaps one of the groups went in planning to cause trouble, we don’t know that for sure, what we do know is that there was an exchange of gunfire among those present, resulting in six dead and three badly wounded. Among the dead bodies are two women, apparently sex workers who had been hired to liven up the party. Another woman is in serious condition. When the police entered the property, the criminals retaliated and there was a lengthy exchange of gunfire, until most of the gangsters escaped between the neighboring houses, which has made the search operation difficult. The actions of the police resulted in the capture of three men, who are currently being questioned. Rifles, automatic weapons, grenades, and ammunition of various calibers were seized. The type of wounds suggests that those killed were executed at close range, while others have gunshot wounds in various parts of their bodies. Alcohol and drugs were found on the premises, which were clearly being consumed by the guests, for their own recreation, at the time of the quarrel. Large quantities of pink and white cocaine, crack, marijuana, and ecstasy pills were seized. Our first hypotheses point to a vendetta, or a restructuring of the distribution side of the synthetic drug trade. One of those killed, Néstor Pombo Holguín, also known as Cusumbosolo, second in command in the organization of the paramilitary Freddy Otálora, is famous in the underworld for his scientific knowledge about the crystalizing of drugs. It’s worth remembering that the last of these factories destroyed in a controlled explosion by the police was on the banks of the River Cupí, on the road to El Zunjal, in the municipality of Timbiquí, Cauca, a wild area that the troops could only reach by helicopter and descend to on ropes. As for the paramilitary Freddy Otálora, who we are absolutely certain was at the party, he may have escaped and his whereabouts are unknown.”

  On another news channel, there were further details:

  “According to information from the police, the ex-paramilitary and drug trafficker Freddy Otálora was negotiating an alliance with criminal gangs in the north of Cauca aimed at putting pink cocaine on the market and then exporting it to South American countries such as Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, but it seems they were unable to reach an agreement, which is what caused the quarrel and the subsequent violent outcome. We are also informed that bags of white cocaine were seized on the property, which were presumably being tested with a view to future business, since there were eight different brands, which might mean that it was going to be given to eight drug cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, of which, according to the latest reports, Freddy Otálora was a representative.”

  PLAYING TO KILL

  (JUANA’S STORY)

  When I left here, Tertullian took me to a house on the outskirts of Cali where there was a group of women, all young and very sexy, most of them from Cali or Antioquia, who are the best women in this country, some of them normal, like me, but most with huge asses and silicon boobs and with lips, Consul, that didn’t look like mouths so much as vaginas they could talk and eat through. I was there one whole evening, for the others to see me. It was all under the control of Tertullian’s contacts, that’s what he told me we should call them, contacts, and without names either, just Contact A, Contact B, and I said sure. We had to talk as little as possible. From the start, I saw that they were real hookers, because almost none of them was sober after five in the afternoon and by midnight they had so much coke in their brains they could barely control their jaws and the cigarettes fell out of their mouths. You know me, Consul, I’m a warrior, so I put on a pair of low-riding shorts and a top and launched myself into that jungle; I’m not as young as I was, the calendar was having its effect on my body, bombs have exploded and there have been collapses, but I keep going, I hang in there, so I sat down with them. Contacts A and B told them that I was here to work, that I was from Bogotá, and they all looked at me a bit suspiciously, you know nobody likes us in the rest of the country, but since they’re professional hookers, they know they mustn’t ask questions and nobody said anything and I didn’t ask anything either, except their names, because we all know they’re fake names anyway, so I said, my name’s Susan. Susan? the girls said, and I said, yes. There was one whose name was Stephany, another was Lady Johanna, and one was simply called Pussy. She laughed when she said this was her work name, she’d chosen a direct marketing tactic, I’m Pussy and that’s it, and the girls from Antioquia said to her, did you hear that, and why didn’t you just choose Cunt? or Vagina? and another said, what about Thrush, why not? and the girls laughed, you know, Consul, I know that world, I’m good at blending in, my brain is like a computer that goes into sleep mode and I go off to another place, far away; I leave just an office with the light on, just enough to stay behind and socialize with these poor girls who aren’t the brightest sparks intellectually, poor things, and what brains they have go out the door with their fourth aguardiente or their second line of coke.

  Somewhere around the third day Contact A came and took some photographs of me to put on a cell phone that was going to be mine; Tertullian said: it isn’t credible for you not to have a cell phone, and the cell phone of a woman like you has to have photographs one way or another, and I said, of course, and he told me that when we got to the house the likeliest thing was that they would confiscate all the girls’ phones for security reasons, and that meant the phone would stay there, so the photos shouldn’t be of faces; they also put a whole lot of fake names on the contacts list, just so the traffickers or even the police, if they wanted to investigate, wouldn’t find anything compromising; then he told me about the cyanide pills, he said that in such cases the best thing was to carry one in the gums, under the upper lip: the contents only spilled out if you bit into it or broke it with your nail, and it was the only thing that could pass the inspe
ction, it’s the only thing you can use there, he said, you take it out of your mouth, you break it and pour the powder into a glass, the person dies after twelve minutes, more or less, depending on the composition, but I’m not stupid so I asked him, isn’t that a suicide pill? and he said to me, good, that’s another thing I want to talk to you about, Juanita, which is that if you find yourself in a very bad situation, where they could do you a lot of harm or threaten you with things, you know you have a way out, you just have to lower it into your mouth with your tongue and bite into it, and you’ll be free of everything, it’s just hypothetical, the pill is coated with a layer of rubber, and nothing will happen to you just keeping it there, if you don’t use it you just have to spit it out, and I said, right, got it, and then we went on to the other pill I had to hide in my mouth, on the other side, which contained an extract of diethyl ether and was for the same purpose: when I went to the room with the target, in other words, Freddy, I would have to put it in his drink to knock him out and go on with the plan, switch the light on and off three times, to signal to Contacts A, B, and C which bedroom I was in, and they could come in in their ninja costumes, get him out of there, and take him away. The plan was quite simple; if there were bodyguards or security staff it wasn’t my problem, the contacts would deal with them, it was a well-trained group, better than the army’s “jungle men,” Tertullian said, and so we continued with the training, although sometimes all this hush-hush stuff made me laugh, he showed me various photographs of what he called Target 1 and his followers, the second and third in command, and some of the bodyguards, the guy they had in there undercover knew he was supposed to call me Susan, but he didn’t know why, so I couldn’t count on him, in case of problems; he didn’t have any orders or instructions about protecting me, so when I went into the house I’d be on my own, he told me that a whole lot of times, and I said, yes, I know, I’ve known it from the first day, and then he said again that as soon as I gave the signal with the light they would come to the window, and he said, if before they went in there was any emergency I had two options, either to switch the light on and off twice, or to cry out, “I’m coming, sexy,” have you got that?