Françoise Grisard doesn’t talk just for the sake of it, she’s an insider, her observations are firsthand. Nevertheless, her rosy story doesn’t add up with the abrupt end of the live-in relationship, when Rimbaud declares out of the blue that it’s time to stop the ridiculous farce, and he proceeds to repatriate (Mr. Bardey’s expression) Myriam, giving her a sum of money in compensation and returning her to her native town.10
From then on, you might say he forgets her. He doesn’t mention her even in passing in his letters to his mother or sister, but, in contrast, he does mention Djami, his young Harari servant and only friend, whom he refers to frequently and with deep appreciation. During his final days in France, already in his death throes, Rimbaud says and repeats that he misses this Djami, his only friend, whom heleft in Harar, to the point that he confuses him with his own sister Isabelle.
And in all that, what about Myriam? It’s as if she’d never existed. Or perhaps she never did exist.
As a love story, Rimbaud and Myriam’s is a harsh one, moving swiftly from everything to nothing, from resolve to disappointment, from welcome to rejection, from love to farce. What happened? It’s possible that the good Grisard is lying to hide the failure of her role as go-between. A frustrated romance novelist of Corín Tellado’s caliber, she’d fabricated a happy ending that never actually comes to pass.
I linger another minute in front of Myriam’s portrait. I wish her eyes could confess the truth to me. Did she go home humiliated and brokenhearted, or free of her ex-lover’s weirdness and glad to bring some money back to loved ones?
In the Abdulwasi Adus Café, where we’d agreed to meet, the man who smokes and steps on cigarette butts with pointy fake crocodile shoes is waiting for me. He shakes my hand; his fingers are stained with nicotine. He has an inquisitive gaze, copious dyed hair, and tangled eyebrows. He says he’s Algerian and that his name is Jean-Blaise.
“What do you think of Myriam?” Crocodile Shoes asks me, inviting me to his table and ordering two coffees. “I noticed that in the museum you seemed curious about her photo.”
“What do I think? I think Rimbaud got tired of the farce of living the way God demands, as a married man with a good woman. He must have realized he’d never get his mother to approve of Myriam as a daughter-in-law, because Myriam wasn’t white, nor did she speak French, nor was she learning to cook or sew.”
“I agree with you. Myriam didn’t have those skills, and yet she fenced like a pro. She could wield a saber with exquisite skill.”
This Jean-Blaise is pulling my leg. I’m about to pay for the coffees, get up, and split when the man opens a book and shows me the photograph printed inside.
Do my eyes deceive me? It’s a picture of Myriam. I recognize her, though now she’s a young man with a martial air holding a saber, drawn and ready for attack. It’s Myriam and also not her but a kind of Abyssinian samurai or swashbuckler out of a novel. The similarity between them is striking.
“What do you think of this other image?” The man places another photo before my eyes, a copy of what I saw in the museum.
“That’s Myriam, as a woman.”
“It must have been Rimbaud himself who took both photos, take a good look, same camera, same technique, identical form. And now look at this, she and he wear the same white kerchief tied to their heads with the very same cord. Look at that square face and bulging forehead: They’re the same in her and him. As well as the classical line of the nose, the slant of the eyebrows, the sensual shape of the mouth, the full lower lip. The eyes are identical. And the visible ear, a crucial detail: Both have attached earlobes and a prominent helix that pokes out from the white kerchief; keep in mind, my friend, that at least forty-nine genes are involved in the formation of the ear, which is why no two beings in the world have identical ones. He and she do have them because they share those forty-nine genes in the same exact configuration. Essential conclusion: It’s the same person. That is, my friend—may I call you friend?—that is, you had it right. They’re two photographs of the same person. The same Myriam, here as a man, there as a woman. As I told you before, Myriam’s name is not Myriam.”
“What’s her name, then?”
“Djami. Her name isn’t Myriam, but Djami.”
“Djami, like Rimbaud’s Harari servant?”
“The same. They’re one and the same.”
“You’re telling me that Myriam and Djami are a single person?”
“Exactly. Djami/Myriam, like Djami/Isabelle: sometimes man, sometimes woman.”
“So who’s the person he returns to their village?”
“Nobody, he doesn’t return anybody, he simply goes back to Djami in his original clothes. He lets Djami be who he is. Djami, his servant-lover. Djami, the young man he loves. Myriam was no more than a costume. A convenient costume for living together without breaking the law. But Djami’s the one who shares a lovers’ bed with Rimbaud. Poor Mrs. Grisard, no wonder she couldn’t teach that boy to sew.”
It’s all very curious. As a woman, Myriam isn’t pretty, nor attractive, nor even interesting; as a man, though, he’s gorgeous, sensual, and mysterious, even dangerous and provocative.Un bel ragazzo, without a doubt.
“But the photo is anonymous.” Nowhere is a name specified. “Where did you get the idea that it’s Djami?”
“From my sharp powers of observation, and from daring to interpret what I see. He’s exactly like Myriam, ergo he must be Djami.”
He wins, I surrender. If his story isn’t true, it’s at least well told. They say photos silence their own memories, but for this Jean-Blaise guy, they talk. Visionary charlatan, able to invent anything to get my ten euros into his pocket.
“And you want me to buy that rambling story?” I say, pretending to be skeptical.
“If you still doubt me, compare the two photos closely.” He pushes them toward me, side by side. “Consider this undeniable detail, the funny crack between the nose and upper lip, that nasolabial area: It’s exactly the same. Better put, it’s the same one. That and the attached earlobe are the trademark features you need to be persuaded. These are one person.”
“It’s possible.”
“Possible? Or probable?”
