“Possible and probable.”
“Probable or certain?”
“Only death is certain. In any case, your hypothesis seems sound.”
“Sound? The adjective falls short, friend; I’d say it’s genius. Keepin mind that nobody other than me has made this discovery or written about it anywhere, because it’s my own exclusive deduction. And now you, for a modest sum, share the secret with me.”
“It’s an honor.”
“I see you’re moved, friend. Let me make another proposal. I’ll keep this first revelation free, paid for by this round of coffee. Give me ten euros and I’ll give you another revelation.”
“What would that be?”
“I can tell you about the inheritance Arthur left for Djami.”
“That one interests me less. I’ll exchange it for another coffee.”
“Fine, but this time with a dash of cognac.”
“Is alcohol allowed?”
“Of course, Ethiopia is an officially Christian nation. All the vices are allowed.”
“And you’d like a shot in your coffee...”
“Here it’s called a ‘French coffee.’”
I order two French coffees and Jean-Blaise tells me that Rimbaud is nearing the end when, a few days before dying, he changes his will and testament with Djami in mind, making him heir to part of the small fortune he’s managed to amass.
“The most interesting part,” my informer goes on, “is that this bequest never reaches Djami’s hands. Aha! I see you’re curious, friend, you’re dying for more details!”
Jean-Blaise assures me that a receipt exists, signed by the French bishop in Harar, stating that Djami’s relatives were the true intended recipients and that they got the funds.
“And why not Djami himself?”
“It’s known that he died almost at the same time as his master, but nobody knows how. He might have been one of many victims of the famine that ravaged Harar in that time. Or maybe he passed away in an attack by savage tribes. Or he could have fallen ill, left out on the street to be devoured by hyenas. He was very young and wasn’t sick, so he must have suffered one of those tragic deaths. Allthree were common in Harar,” says Mr. Crocodile Shoes, shrugging in a gesture of, I’m sorry, friend, that’s life, what can you do.
In the third or fourth round of French coffees, the explosive mix of alcohol and caffeine has a strange effect on me: I come close to dozing, then wake in a flash with all neurons firing. Jean-Blaise is dead set on getting a tip out of me at any cost, and with that sole aim he lets loose with more and more stories about Rimbaud. Revelations, he calls them, and they come in droves, each one more dramatic than the last. He’s been spinning them on the way to a supreme revelation of the third degree, a thing that borders on metaphysical and leaves me gobsmacked.
His tale takes a vertiginous turn when I tell Jean-Blaise, to jab at him, that I don’t plan on giving him the whole ten euros, first because a good amount of it is paid in French coffees, and second because I’m disappointed.
“I came here seeking a lady muse, and you gave me a boy.”
“I see, I see. So you demand a female muse. Well, let’s cure your disappointment, if what you want to know is who Rimbaud’s feminine muse was.”
“Let’s say I want to know who Rimbaud’s Queen of Sheba was.”
“I know where you could find her. In the brothels of Harar.”
“Brothels? But Rimbaud has been compared to Trappist monks, they say he became abstinent, chaste, and ascetic.”
“People will say anything, but the truth is that Rimbaud was no stranger to the low places in this city. If you wish, we could go to the whore’s street together. Ask any of them, they all know the story, from the oldest to the youngest among them. Even today they revere his memory and recall his anecdotes. Rimbaud, abstinent and ascetic and chaste? Come on, give me a break. For starters, you should know that when he first arrived in Harar, the poet Arthur Rimbaud caught a case ofTreponema pallidumthat gave him chancres on his penis and red stains on his face. The fearsome syphilis, the burning curse, the French evil. He healed spontaneously inthe first phase, at least in appearance; beneath the skin, the disease kept invading little by little, undetected, until it rotted his leg and forced its amputation. The first syphilis reached a second phase, and then, after latency, burst into a third phase that finished him off. Scholars like to say that cancer caused his damaged knee, physical paralysis, mental confusion, incurable sadness, unbearable pain, loss of appetite, cholera outbreaks, rivers of tears, crises of remorse, and senile states. All of that they blame on cancer. A lie to end all lies, one among so many lies used to hide the truth. Rimbaud died of syphilis, which he caught in a Harar brothel. Or maybe a little earlier in one in Java. It’s the same.”
“Listen, Jean-Blaise, don’t disrupt the story. Let’s leave it there, I was enjoying the Myriam/Djami version. And now you’re coming at me with the idea that Rimbaud’s true love was a whore?”
“Whore yes, love no. They called her the Hyena, and he was wild about her, or maybe she was a he, you never know for sure. But it wasn’t out of sexual interest, it was for her gifts as a witch and healer. Healer and witch, she (or he), the Hyena, Amharic hetaera of the Ankober region.”
To this day no one knows any other name for her, it’s only known in the taverns that people called her the Hyena, that she passed through death and lost all fear, that she chanted reckless spells she learned in the volcanic lands of Danakil. And that only she was able to calm the horrific pain in Rimbaud’s diseased leg. And if she couldn’t cure it, she at least could alleviate it, and with her hair she dried the drops of his vast grief and sadness: spilled tears or liquid diamonds that burned like acid.
