“You haven’t given me an answer, guerrilla fighter. This must be the fifteenth declaration of love I’ve made to you. Are you going to marry me or not?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, very seriously, her arms around me. “I still have to think about it.”
The Gravoskis left for the United States on a sunny spring day when the first green buds were coming out on the chestnuts, beeches, and Lombardy poplars of Paris. We saw them off at the Charles de Gaulle Airport. When she embraced Yilal, the bad girl’s eyes filled with tears. The Gravoskis had left us a key to their apartment so we could look in once in a while and keep the dust from invading. They were good friends, the only ones with whom we had that South American kind of visceral friendship, and for the two years of their absence we would miss them very much. When I saw the bad girl so downhearted over Yilal’s departure, I suggested that instead of going home we take a walk or go to a movie. Then I’d take her to have supper at a small bistrot on the Île Saint-Louis that she liked very much. She had become so fond of Yilal that as we strolled around Notre Dame on our way to the restaurant, I said, jokingly, that if she’d like, once we were married we could adopt a child.
“I’ve discovered a maternal vocation in you. I always thought you didn’t want children.”
“When I was in Cuba, with Comandante Chacón, I had my tubes tied because he wanted a child and the idea horrified me,” she replied, drily. “Now I’m sorry.”
“Let’s adopt one,” I encouraged her. “Isn’t it the same thing? Haven’t you seen the relationship Yilal has with his parents?”
“I don’t know if it’s the same,” she murmured, and I heard her voice become hostile. “Besides, I don’t even know if I’ll marry you. Let’s change the subject, please.”
She was in a very bad mood, and I understood that, without meaning to, I had touched a wounded place deep inside her. I tried to distract her and took her to look at the cathedral, a sight that never failed to overwhelm me even after all the years I had been in Paris. And that night more than other times. A faint light, with a slightly pink aura, bathed the stones of Notre Dame. The large mass seemed light because of the perfect symmetry of its parts, delicately balanced and sustained so that nothing was disordered or disarranged. History and the sifted light charged the façade with allusions and resonances, images and references. There were many tourists taking pictures. Was this same cathedral the setting for so many centuries of French history, the inspiration for the novel by Victor Hugo that excited me so when I read it as a boy, in Miraflores, in my aunt Alberta’s house? It was the same one and a different one that had accrued more recent mythologies and events. Extraordinarily beautiful, it transmitted an impression of stability and permanence, of having escaped the usury of time. The bad girl, lost in her own thoughts, heard me praise Notre Dame as if she were hearing the rain. During supper she was dejected, peevish, and hardly ate a bite. And that night she fell asleep without saying good night, as if I were responsible for Yilal’s departure. Two days later, I went to London with a contract for a week’s work. When I said goodbye, very early in the morning, I said, “It doesn’t matter if we don’t get married if you don’t want to, bad girl. It isn’t necessary. I have to tell you something before I leave. In my forty-seven years I’ve never been as happy as in these months we’ve been together. I don’t know how to repay the happiness you’ve given me.”
“Hurry, you’ll miss the plane, you tiresome man,” she said, pushing me toward the door.
She was still in a bad mood, withdrawn day and night. Since the departure of the Gravoskis, I almost hadn’t been able to talk to her. Did Yilal’s leaving affect her so much?
My work in London was more interesting than at other conferences and congresses. The meeting had one of those innocuous titles, tirelessly repeated with different topics: “Africa: An Impetus to Development.” It was sponsored by the Commonwealth, the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, and several independent institutes. But unlike other debates, there were very serious testimonies by political, business, and academic leaders from African countries regarding the calamitous state in which the former French and British colonies had been left when they achieved independence, and the obstacles they were confronting now in their efforts to order society, stabilize institutions, eliminate militarism and local strongmen, integrate into harmonious unity the distinct ethnicities in each country, and move forward economically. The situation in almost all the represented nations was critical, yet the sincerity and lucidity with which the Africans, most of them very young, described their reality had something vibrant that injected a hopeful energy into their tragic condition. Though I was also using Spanish, for the most part I had to interpret from French to English or the reverse. And I did it with interest, curiosity, and a desire to take a vacation one day in Africa. I couldn’t forget, however, that the bad girl had made her trips to that continent in the service of Fukuda.
Whenever I left Paris for a job, we spoke every other day. She called me since it was cheaper; hotels and pensions charged a fortune for international calls. But even though I left her the telephone number at the Hotel Shoreham, in Bayswater, the bad girl didn’t call on my first two days in London. On the third, I called her, early, before I left for the Commonwealth Institute where the conference was being held.
She seemed very strange. Laconic, evasive, irritated. I was frightened, thinking the old panic attacks had returned. She assured me that they hadn’t, that she felt fine. Then did she miss Yilal? Of course she missed him. And did she miss me a little too?
“Let’s see, let me think,” she said, but her tone wasn’t that of a woman who’s joking. “No, frankly, I don’t miss you very much yet.”
I had a bad taste in my mouth when I hung up. Well, everybody had periods of neurasthenia, when they chose to seem hateful in order to establish their disgust with the world. It would pass. Since she still hadn’t called two days later, I called her again, very early this time too. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t possibly have gone out at seven in the morning: she never did that. The only explanation was that she was still in a bad mood—but over what?—and didn’t want to answer, since she knew very well I was the one calling. I called again at night and she still didn’t pick up the phone. I called four or five times in the course of a sleepless night: total silence. The intermittent screech of the phone pursued me for the next twenty-four hours until, as soon as the last session ended, I hurried to Heathrow Airport to catch my plane to Paris. All kinds of gloomy thoughts made the flight, followed by the cab ride from Charles de Gaulle to Rue Joseph Granier, seem infinite.
It was a little after two in the morning when, under a persistent drizzle, I opened the door to my apartment. It was dark, empty, and on the bed was a note written in pencil on the lined yellow paper we kept in the kitchen to jot down daily reminders. It was a model of laconic iciness: “I’m tired of playing the petit bourgeois housewife you’d like me to be. That’s not what I am or what I’ll ever be. I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me. I’m sorry. Take care of yourself and don’t suffer too much, good boy.”
I unpacked, brushed my teeth, lay down. And spent the rest of the night in thought, my mind wandering. You’ve been expecting this, fearing this, right? You knew it would happen sooner or later, ever since you moved the bad girl to Rue Joseph Granier seven months ago. Though out of cowardice you tried not to assume it, to avoid it, deceive yourself, tell yourself that finally, after those horrible experiences with Fukuda, she had renounced adventures, dangers, and resigned herself to living with you. But you always knew, in your heart of hearts, the illusion would last only as long as her convalescence. You knew the mediocre, boring life she had with you would weary her, and once she recovered her health and self-confidence, and remorse or her fear of Fukuda had vanished, she would arrange to meet someone more interesting, richer, less a creature of habit than you, and undertake a new escapade.
As soon as some light app
eared in the skylight I got up, prepared coffee, and opened the little security box where I always kept cash for the month’s expenses. She had taken it all, naturally. Well, in reality, it wasn’t very much. Who could the lucky man be this time? When and how had she met him? During one of my business trips, no doubt. Perhaps at the gym on Avenue Montaigne while she was doing aerobics and swimming. Perhaps one of those playboys without an ounce of fat on his body, and good muscles, one of those who tan under ultraviolet lights and have their nails manicured and their scalps massaged in barbershops. Had they made love yet, while she, maintaining the pantomime of staying with me, prepared her flight in secret? Of course. And no doubt her new lover would be less careful than you, Ricardito, with her damaged vagina.
I looked through the apartment and there was no trace of her. She had taken everything down to the last pin. One could say she never had been here. I showered, dressed, and went out, fleeing those two and a half small rooms where, just as I told her when I said goodbye, I had been happier than anywhere else, and where from now on—once again!—I would be immensely miserable. But, isn’t it what you deserved, Peruvian? Didn’t you know, when you wouldn’t answer her calls, that if you did, if you succumbed again to this stubborn passion, it would all end the way it has now? There was nothing to be surprised at: what you always knew would happen, had happened.
It was a nice day, with no clouds and a coldish sun, and spring had filled the streets of Paris with green. The parks blazed with flowers. I walked for hours, along the quays, through the Tuilleries and the Luxembourg Gardens, going into a café for something when I felt as if I would drop with fatigue. At dusk I had a sandwich and a beer and then went into a movie without even knowing what film they were showing. I fell asleep as soon as I sat down and woke only when the lights went on. I don’t remember a single image.
When I left night had fallen. I was filled with despair, afraid I would begin to cry. You’re not only capable of saying cheap, sentimental things but of living them too, Ricardito. The truth, the truth was that this time I wouldn’t have the strength necessary to pull myself together as I had the other times, to react and go on pretending I had forgotten about the bad girl.
I walked along the quays on the Seine to the distant Pont Mirabeau, trying to remember the first lines of the poem by Apollinaire, repeating them in a murmur:
Sous le Pont Mirabeau
Coule la Seine
Faut-il qu’il m’en souvienne
de nos amours
Ou après la joie
Venait toujours la peine?
I had decided coldly, unmelodramatically, that this was, after all, a worthy way to die: jumping off the bridge, dignified by good modernist poetry and the intense voice of Juliette Gréco, into the dirty waters of the Seine. Holding my breath or gulping down water, I would lose consciousness quickly—perhaps lose it with the force of my body hitting the water—and death would follow immediately. If you couldn’t have the only thing you wanted in life, which was her, better to end it once and for all and do it this way, little pissant.
I reached the Pont Mirabeau literally soaked to the skin. I hadn’t even realized it was raining. There were no pedestrians or cars anywhere nearby. I walked to the middle of the bridge and without hesitating climbed to the metal ledge, where, as I stood on tiptoe to jump—I swear I was going to do it—I felt a gust of wind in my face and, at the same time, two large hands encircling my legs and with a tug making me lose my balance and fall backward onto the asphalt of the bridge.
“Fais pas le con, imbécile!”
He was a clochard who smelled of wine and grime, half lost inside a large plastic raincoat that covered his head. He had an enormous beard that looked grayish, turning white. Without helping me up, he placed his bottle of wine in my mouth and made me swallow: something hot and strong that stirred up my intestines. A turned wine becoming vinegar. I felt a wave of nausea but didn’t throw up.
“Fais pas le con, mon vieux,” he repeated. And I saw him turn and move away, staggering, his bottle of sour wine dancing in his hand. I knew I would always remember his shapeless face, his bulging bloodshot eyes, his hoarse human voice.
I walked back to Rue Joseph Granier, laughing at myself, filled with gratitude and admiration for that drunken yagabond on the Pont Mirabeau who saved my life. I was going to jump, I’d have done it if he hadn’t stopped me. I felt stupid, ridiculous, ashamed, and had begun to sneeze. All this cheap clownishness would end in a cold. The bones in my back ached because of my fall onto the pavement, and I wanted to sleep, sleep the rest of the night, the rest of my life.
As I was opening the door to my apartment I saw a thin line of light inside. I crossed the living room in two strides. From the door to the bedroom I saw the back of the bad girl, standing in front of the bureau mirror and trying on the Arab dancer’s outfit I bought her in Cairo and didn’t think she had put on before. She had to have heard me but didn’t turn to look at me, as if a ghost had entered the room.
“What are you doing here?” I said, shouted, or roared, paralyzed in the doorway, hearing how strange my voice sounded, like a man being strangled.
Very calmly, as if nothing had happened and the entire scene was the most trivial in the world, the dark, half-naked figure, wrapped in veils, from whose waist hung strips that could have been leather or chains, turned slightly and looked at me, smiling.
“I changed my mind and here I am back again.” She spoke as if she were telling me a bit of casual gossip. And, moving on to more important things, she pointed at her dress and said, “It was a little big but now I think it fits well. How do I look?”
She couldn’t say anything else because I, I don’t know how, crossed the room in a single stride and slapped her with all my strength. I saw a gleam of terror in her eyes, I saw her rock back, lean against the bureau, fall to the floor, and I heard her say, maybe shout, without losing any of her serenity, her theatrical calm, “You’re learning how to treat women, Ricardito.”
I dropped to the floor next to her and took hold of her shoulders and shook her, crazed, vomiting up my indignation, my fury, my stupidity, my jealousy.
“It’s a miracle I’m not at the bottom of the Seine because of you, of you”—the words crowded together in my mouth, my tongue became thick. “These last twenty-four hours you’ve made me die a thousand times. What game are you playing with me, tell me, what game? Is that why you called me, looked for me, when I finally had freed myself of you? How long do you think I’ll put up with it? I have my limits too. I could kill you.”
At that moment, in fact, I realized I could have killed her if I went on shaking her. Frightened, I let her go. She was livid and looked at me openmouthed, protecting herself with both arms raised.
“I don’t recognize you, you’re not yourself,” she murmured, and her voice broke. She began to rub her cheek and right temple, which, in the half-light, looked swollen.
“I was on the verge of killing myself over you,” I repeated, my voice saturated with rancor and hate. “I climbed onto the railing of the bridge to throw myself in the river and a clochard saved me. A suicide, the thing that was missing in your résumé. Do you think you can go on playing with me this way? It’s clear I’ll be free of you forever only by killing myself or killing you.”
“That’s a lie, you don’t want to kill yourself or kill me,” she said, crawling toward me. “You just want to ball me. Isn’t that right? And I want you to ball me too. Or if that language bothers you, to make love to me.”
It was the first time I heard her use that word, a Peruvianism I hadn’t heard for centuries.
She had risen partially to throw herself into my arms and touched my clothing, horrified. “You’re soaked, you’ll catch a cold, take off that wet clothing, idiot. If you like, you can kill me later, but right now make love to me.” She had recovered her serenity and was mistress of the situation. My heart was in my mouth and I could barely breathe. I thought how stupid it would be for me to have a hear
t attack just at that moment. She helped me take off my jacket, trousers, shoes, shirt—everything looked as if it had just come out of the water—and as she helped me undress, she passed her hand over my hair in that single, rare caress she sometimes deigned to give me. “How your heart is pounding, you little fool,” she said a moment later, placing her ear on my chest. “Have I done that to you?” I had begun to caress her too, even though I hadn’t yet taken control of my rage. But those feelings were mixing now with a growing desire that she inflamed—she had pulled off the dancer’s outfit and, stretching out on top of me, dried me by moving her body along mine, putting her tongue in my mouth, making me swallow her saliva, grasping my sex, caressing it with both hands, and, finally, curling around herself like an eel, placing it in her mouth. I kissed her, caressed her, embraced her, without the delicacy of other times but roughly, still wounded and hurt, and finally I forced her to take my sex out of her mouth and lie under me. She spread her legs, docilely, when she felt my hard sex forcing its way into her. I entered her brutally and heard her howl with pain. But she didn’t push me away, and with her body tense, moaning, sobbing softly, she waited for me to ejaculate. Her tears wet my face and I kissed them away. She was pale, her eyes popping, her face distorted by pain.
“It’s better if you go, if you really leave me,” I implored, trembling from head to foot. “Today I was ready to kill myself and I almost killed you. I don’t want that. Go on, find someone else, a man who’ll make you live intensely, like Fukuda. A man who’ll beat you, lend you to his pals, make you swallow powders so you’ll fart in his filthy face. You’re not the woman to live with a tiresome hypocrite like me.”