Why didn’t Juan have a steady partner, like so many other hippies? At the parties he took me to he almost always disappeared with a girl, sometimes with two. But one night I was amazed to see him caress and kiss on the mouth with a good deal of passion a redheaded boy, as slim as a reed, whom he crushed in his arms with amorous frenzy.
“I hope you weren’t shocked by what you saw,” he said to me later, somewhat peevishly.
I said that at the age of thirty-five nothing in the world shocked me, least of all whether human beings made love from the front or the back.
“I do it both ways and that makes me happy, my friend,” he confessed, proudly. “I think I like girls better than boys, but in any case I wouldn’t fall in love with one or the other. The secret to happiness, at least to peace of mind, is knowing how to separate sex from love. And, if possible, eliminating romantic love from your life, which is the love that makes you suffer. That way, I assure you, you live with greater tranquility and enjoy things more.”
A philosophy the bad girl would have subscribed to down to the crossed t’s and dotted i’s, since she no doubt had always practiced it. I believe this was the only time we spoke—I should say, that he spoke—about intimate matters. He led a totally free and promiscuous life, but at the same time he preserved that widespread urge among Peruvians to avoid confidences in sexual matters and always to touch on the subject in a veiled, indirect way. Our conversations dealt principally with far-off Peru, where the news we received was increasingly disastrous regarding the sweeping nationalizations of farms and businesses by the military dictatorship of General Velasco Alvarado, which, according to my uncle Ataúlfo’s letters, were more and more demoralizing and would drive us back to the Stone Age. On this occasion Juan also confessed that though in London he pursued every opportunity to satisfy his appetites (“So I’ve seen,” I joked), in Newmarket he behaved like a chaste gentleman even though there was no lack of possibilities for amusement. But he didn’t want some bedroom complication to compromise the work that had provided him with the security and income he never thought he’d attain. “I’m thirty-five, too, and as you’ve seen, here in Earl’s Court that counts as old age.” It was true: the physical and mental youth of the inhabitants of this London neighborhood sometimes made me feel prehistoric.
It cost me a good amount of time and a delicate tangle of insinuations and apparently innocent questions to keep pushing Juan Barreto to take me to Newmarket, the celebrated town in Suffolk that since the middle of the eighteenth century had incarnated the English passion for thoroughbreds. I asked him endless questions. What were the people like there, the houses where they lived, the rituals and traditions that surrounded them, the relations among owners, jockeys, and trainers. And what happened at the auctions at Tattersalls, where extraordinary sums were paid for star horses, and how was it possible to auction a horse by parts, as if it could be disassembled. In response to what he told me, I did everything but applaud—“Man, that’s interesting”—and put on an enthusiastic face: “How lucky you are, old friend, to know a world like that from the inside.”
At last it produced results. After an end-of-season horse auction, an Italian breeder married to an Englishwoman, Signor Ariosti, was giving a dinner in his house to which he had invited Juan. My friend asked if he could bring along a compatriot, and the host said he’d be delighted. I recall that for the seventeen days I had to wait until the moment arrived, I was in a daze and suffered sudden cold sweats, an adolescent’s excitement as I imagined seeing the Peruvian girl, and a few sleepless nights during which I did nothing but reproach myself: I was a hopeless imbecile to still be in love with a madwoman, an adventurer, an unscrupulous female with whom no man, I least of all, could maintain a stable relationship without eventually being stepped on. But in the intervals between these masochistic soliloquies, others came into play, full of joy and hope: Had she changed very much? Did she still have the bold manner that attracted me so much, or had life in the stratified English world of horses domesticated and nullified it? The day we took the train to Newmarket—we had to change lines at the Cambridge station—I was assailed by the notion that all of this was a figment of my imagination and Mrs. Richardson was in fact nothing more or less than some ordinary woman of Mexican background. What if you’ve been chasing an illusion all this time, Ricardito.
Juan Barreto’s house in the country, a few miles from Newmarket, was a one-story wooden structure surrounded by willows and hydrangeas that looked more like an artist’s studio than a residence. Crowded with jars of paint, easels, canvases mounted on stretchers, sketchbooks, and books about art, there were also a good number of records strewn on the floor around a wonderful sound system. Juan had a Mini Minor that he never brought to London, and that afternoon he gave me a ride in his small vehicle around Newmarket, a mysterious, scattered city with practically no center. He took me to see the blue-blood Jockey Club and the National Horseracing Museum. The real city wasn’t the handful of houses around Newmarket High Street where there was a church, a few shops, some Laundromats, and a couple of restaurants, but the beautiful residences dispersed over the flat countryside and surrounded by the stables, outbuildings, and training tracks that Juan pointed out to me, naming their owners and recounting anecdotes about them. I barely heard him. All my attention was focused on the people we passed in the hope that the female form I was searching for would suddenly appear among them.
She didn’t appear, not on that drive, and not in the small Indian restaurant where Juan took me that night for tandoori curry, and not the next day, either, during the long, interminable auction of mares and fillies and racehorses and studhorses held at Tattersalls under a huge canvas tent. I was stupendously bored. It surprised me to see the number of Arabs, some in jellabas, who raised the bids at each sale and sometimes paid astronomical sums that I never suspected could be paid for a quadruped. None of the many people Juan introduced me to during the auction, or the rest periods when attendees drank champagne from paper cups and ate carrots, cucumbers, and sardines from paper plates, mentioned the name I was waiting for: Mr. David Richardson.
But that night, as soon as I entered the sumptuous mansion of Signor Ariosti, I suddenly felt my throat go dry and my finger- and toenails begin to ache. There she was, less than ten meters away, sitting on the arm of a sofa, holding a tall glass in her hand. Before I could say a word or get close enough to her face to kiss her cheek, she extended an indifferent hand and greeted me in English as if I were a perfect stranger: “How do you do?” And without giving me time to reply, she turned her back and resumed her conversation with the people around her. Soon I heard her recounting, with absolute confidence and in an approximate but very expressive English, how, when she was a girl, her father would take her to Mexico City every week to a concert or the opera. In this way he instilled in her an early passion for classical music.
She hadn’t changed very much in these four years. She had the same slim, graceful appearance, with a narrow waist, slender shapely legs, and ankles as fine and delicate as wrists. She seemed more sure of herself and more confident than before, and she moved her head at the end of each sentence with studied nonchalance. She had lightened her hair a little and wore it longer than in Paris, with waves I didn’t recall; her makeup was simpler and more natural than the heavy application Madame Arnoux was in the habit of using. She wore a skirt that was fashionably short and showed her knees, and a low-cut blouse that bared her smooth, silky shoulders and emphasized her throat, an elegant column encircled by a thin silver chain from which hung a precious stone, perhaps a sapphire, that with her movements swayed roguishly over the opening where arrogant breasts peeked out. I saw the wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand, in the Protestant manner. Had she converted to Anglicanism too? Mr. Richardson, to whom Juan introduced me in the next room, was an exuberant man in his sixties wearing an electric-yellow shirt and a handkerchief of the same color that spilled out over his smart blue suit. Drunk and euphoric
, he was telling jokes about his travels in Japan, which greatly amused the circle of guests around him as he filled their glasses from a bottle of Dom Perignon that appeared and reappeared in his hands as if by magic. Juan explained that he was a very rich man who spent part of the year in Asia on business, but that the guiding star of his life was the aristocratic passion par excellence: horses.
The hundred or so people, who filled the rooms and the veranda that opened onto a vast garden with a lighted tiled swimming pool, corresponded more or less to what Juan Barreto had described: a very English world that had been joined by some foreign horse people, like the owner of the house, Signor Ariosti, or my exotic compatriot disguised as a Mexican, Mrs. Richardson. Everyone had consumed a fair amount of drink, and they all seemed to know one another very well and communicate in a coded language whose recurrent theme was horse racing. Once, when I had managed to sit in the group around Mrs. Richardson, I learned that several of them, including the bad girl and her husband, had recently flown to Dubai in a private plane as the guests of an Arab sheikh for the opening of a racetrack. They had been treated like royalty. As for Muslims not drinking alcohol, they said, it might be true for poor Muslims, but the others, the horse people of Dubai, for instance, drank and served their guests the most exquisite French wine and champagne.
In spite of my efforts, in the course of the long night I couldn’t exchange a single word with Mrs. Richardson. Each time I approached her, observing certain forms, she moved away on the pretext of wanting to greet someone, or to go to the buffet or the bar, or to have a private chat with a friend. I couldn’t exchange glances with her either, and though I had no doubt she was perfectly aware of my constantly following her with my eyes, she never looked at me but always arranged to show me her back or her profile. What Juan Barreto had said was true: her English was elementary and at times incomprehensible, full of mistakes, but she spoke with so much freshness and conviction, and her Latin American musicality was so attractive, that the result was charming as well as expressive. To fill in the gaps she constantly accompanied her words with gestures, looks, and expressions that were a consummate display of coquetry.
Charles, Mrs. Stubard’s nephew, turned out to be a charming boy. He told me that because of Juan, he had begun to read books by English travelers to Peru and was planning to spend a vacation in Cuzco and hike up to Machu Picchu. He wanted to persuade Juan to go with him. If I wanted to join the adventure, I was welcome.
At about two in the morning, as people were beginning to say good night to Signor Ariosti, on a sudden impulse that must have been brought on by the countless glasses of champagne I had consumed, I moved away from a couple who were asking me about my experiences as a professional interpreter, avoided my friend Juan Barreto, who, for the fourth or fifth time that evening, wanted to pull me into a room to admire the full-length portrait he had painted of Belicoso, one of the stars of the stables belonging to the master of the house, and crossed the salon to the group that included Mrs. Richardson. I grasped her arm with some force, smiled, and obliged her to move away from the people around her. She looked at me with a displeasure that twisted her mouth, and I heard her pronounce the first swear word I had ever heard her use.
“Let go of me, you fucking beast,” she whispered through clenched teeth. “Let go of me, you’ll make trouble for me.”
“If you don’t call me, I’ll tell Mr. Richardson you’re married in France and are wanted by the Swiss police for emptying out the secret bank account of Monsieur Arnoux.”
And I put a piece of paper in her hand with the telephone number of Juan’s pied-à-terre in Earl’s Court. After a moment of astonishment and silence—her face frozen in a rictus—she burst into laughter, opening her eyes wide.
“Oh my God! You’re learning, good boy,” she exclaimed in a tone of professional approval, recovering from her surprise.
She turned and went back to the small group I had pulled her away from.
I was absolutely sure she wouldn’t call me. I was a discomfiting witness to a past she wanted to erase at any cost; if not, she never would have behaved as she had all evening, avoiding me. But she did call me at Earl’s Court two days later, very early. We could barely speak because, as always, she did nothing but give orders.
“I’ll wait for you tomorrow at three, at the Russell Hotel. Do you know it? In Russell Square, near the British Museum. English punctuality, please.”
I was there half an hour early. My hands were perspiring and it was hard for me to breathe. The place couldn’t have been better. The old belle époque hotel, its façade and long hallways in the Oriental pompier style, seemed half empty, especially the bar with its high ceiling, wood-paneled walls, small widely spaced tables, some of them hidden among screens, and thick carpets that muffled footsteps and conversation. Behind the bar, a waiter leafed through the Evening Standard.
She arrived a few minutes late, dressed in a tailored outfit of mauve suede, shoes and handbag of black crocodile, a single strand of pearls, and on her hand a flashing solitaire. Over her arm she carried a gray raincoat and an umbrella of the same color and fabric. How far Comrade Arlette had come! Without greeting me, or smiling, or extending her hand, she sat across from me, crossed her legs, and began to berate me.
“The other night you did something so stupid I can’t forgive you. You shouldn’t have said a word to me, you shouldn’t have taken my arm, you shouldn’t have spoken to me as if you knew me. You might have compromised me. Didn’t you realize you had to pretend? Where’s your head, Ricardito?”
It was the bad girl, no question about that. We hadn’t seen each other for four years and she didn’t think to ask me how I was, what I had been doing, or even to give me a smile or a pleasant word on our meeting. She went straight to what concerned her without being distracted by anything else.
“You look very pretty,” I said, speaking with some difficulty because of my emotions. “Even prettier than four years ago when your name was Madame Arnoux. I forgive your insults the other night and your insolent remarks now because of how pretty you look. Besides, in case you want to know, yes, I’m still in love with you. In spite of everything. Crazy about you. More than ever. Do you remember the toothbrush you left me as a memento the last time we saw each other? Here it is. Since then I carry it everywhere in my pocket. I’ve become a fetishist because of you. Thanks for being so pretty, Chilean girl.”
She didn’t laugh, but the ironic gleam of past times flashed in her eyes the color of dark honey. She took the toothbrush, examined it, and returned it to me, murmuring, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” With no discomfort at all she allowed me to look at her as she observed me, studying me. My eyes looked her over from top to bottom, from bottom to top, stopping at her knees, her throat, her ears half covered by locks of her now light-colored hair, her carefully tended hands and long nails with natural polish, her nose that seemed to have sharpened. She allowed me to take her hands and kiss them but with her proverbial indifference, without the slightest gesture of reciprocity.
“Was that a serious threat you made the other night?” she finally asked.
“Very serious,” I said, kissing each finger, the knuckles, the back and palm of each hand. “Over the years I’ve become like you. Anything to get what you want. Those are your words, bad girl. And as you know very well, the only thing I really want in this world is you.”
She slipped one of her hands from mine and passed it over my head, mussing my hair, in that slightly pitying semi-caress she had used with me on other occasions.
“No, you’re not capable of those things,” she said quietly, as if lamenting a lack in my personality. “But yes, it must be true you’re still in love with me.”
She ordered tea with scones for two and said her husband was a very jealous man and, what was worse, sick with retrospective jealousy. He sniffed out her past like a predatory wolf. Which was why she needed to be very careful. If he had suspected the other night that we knew
each other, he would have made a scene. I hadn’t been imprudent enough to tell Juan Barreto who she was, had I?
“I wouldn’t have been able to tell him even if I wanted to,” I reassured her. “Because the truth is, I still don’t have the slightest idea who you are.”
Finally she laughed. She let me hold her head in both my hands and bring our lips together. Beneath mine, which kissed her avidly, tenderly, with all the love I felt for her, hers were unyielding.
“I want you,” I murmured, nibbling the edge of her ear. “You’re more beautiful than ever, Peruvian girl. I love you, I want you with all my heart, with all my body. In these four years all I’ve done is dream about you, and want you, and love you. And curse you too. Each day, each night, every day.”
After a moment she moved me away with her hands.
“You must be the last person on earth who still says those things to women,” she said with a smile, amused, looking at me as if I were an exotic animal. “What cheap sentimental things you tell me, Ricardito!”
“The worst thing isn’t that I say them. The worst thing is that I feel them. It’s true. You turn me into a character in a soap opera. I’ve never said them to anybody but you.”
“Nobody can ever see us like this,” she said suddenly, changing her tone, very serious now. “The last thing I want is my pain of a husband to have a jealous fit. And now I have to go, Ricardito.”
“Will I have to wait another four years to see you again?”
“Friday,” she specified immediately with a mischievous little laugh, passing her hand over my hair again. And after a dramatic pause: “Right here. I’ll reserve a room in your name. Don’t worry, little pissant, I’ll pay for it. Bring an overnight bag, to make it look good.”