The Sky Over Lima (28 page)

José vacillates. He doesn't speak immediately. In the glow from the stove, his face is full of oscillations, of flickering dark shadows and red light. But Carlos doesn't need to hear what he's about to say. He knows that his hesitation is only a mirage—that in fact the decision has already been made, just as Román always knew that his friend Carlos would end up accommodating all his desires. It cannot be otherwise. And so he takes another drag on his cigarette, and as he does, he seems to anticipate everything that will follow: His father bribing the consul, or even the Peruvian ambassador to Madrid (
Tell me, you leeches, how much this poet's heart is going to cost me
); if necessary, forging a death certificate for Georgina, just as he previously invented the records of all those illustrious ancestors. Georgina's death contained in the space of a telegram, because her final words will journey not in the hold of a ship but in a diplomatic cable. Thirteen words, to be exact, the maximum allowed in urgent messages, and he and José scrawling on sheets of paper, crumpling them up until they find the right ones. Thirteen words, perhaps something like these:
Please inform poet Juan Ramón Jiménez that Señorita Georgina Hübner of Lima is dead
—“That's fourteen,” the telegraph operator will point out, and Carlos, after thinking a moment: “Then cross out the
poet
bit.” And the telegram, without the word
poet
, traveling across the ocean as Georgina dies in a tuberculosis hospital—or, better still, Georgina dying and in her delirium dreaming of a telegram that travels across the ocean; the nuns coming and going with their white wimples and surgical trays and cold compresses; electric pulses rattling down thousands of miles of undersea cable, invisible as a dream; Georgina awake, in the throes of death, and behind her eyes a telegram soaring over ocean ridges and shipwrecks, seaweed forests and mud flats, shelves and trenches briefly illuminated by a feverish lucidity; her nightmare spinning the telegraph bobbin, the inked roller, the strip of paper that is filling up with words, with silences, with dots and dashes so much like her broken breathing. The nun's hand reaching out to close her eyelids, and the strip of paper in the hands of the telegraph operator, in the hands of the messenger boy, in the hands of the guard, of the servant, of Juan Ramón at last; once more his fingers unrolling the telegram, his hands steady at first, though soon they begin to tremble.

◊

Somebody is pounding on the door. It is six in the morning, and the noise is so loud, it sounds like whoever it is is trying to tear the house down. The gendarmes again, thinks Madame Lenotre as she hurries downstairs, attempting to fasten her shawl. It's been four years since the incident, but impossible to forget—a squad of armed men rapping sharply on the door to arrest one of her customers, a tiny man, almost a dwarf. They took him into custody right then and there, his cock still erect and a look on his face like he'd never broken a dish in his life. Seeing him so defenseless, so small, so childlike in the hands of all those men, some of the girls wept. Finally someone explained that he'd escaped from the penitentiary, and that on previous nights he'd attacked four women at other brothels, slitting their throats and hacking them to pieces. The girl who'd been with him was dumbstruck when she found out, and the other girls peppered her with questions about him. They wanted to know what he was like, how to distinguish a normal customer from a deviant, a madman. Her eyes still wide and her tongue stiff and clumsy, she answered that he was just a man. No gentler or rougher, no chattier or quieter than any of the other customers she saw, some two dozen a week.

But tonight there are no fugitive prisoners in the house; there aren't even any customers. The last one left at least a couple of hours ago, and Lenotre told the girls they could go to bed, that nobody else was likely to come. So there are no men, and no girls awake to see them, and when she opens the street door it turns out there aren't any gendarmes either. Just young Master Carlos, thoroughly soused, clinging to the knocker to keep from falling down. It's hard to believe this polite, formal boy has caused such a ruckus. And yet there he is, his chin held high and his gaze defiant. There's a new determination in his voice and expression, a profound gravity that comes not just from drunkenness but from something else, someone else. Yes. That's exactly what Lenotre finds herself thinking for a moment:
Young Master Rodríguez has become another man.
And this stranger needs to see the girl—he's yelling it at the top of his lungs. He knows that it's six in the morning and the house is closed, but he must see her immediately; he is very sorry, it must be at once. His money is as good as anyone else's, and as he says this he pulls wads of bills out of his pocket like fruit rinds. Empty casings that first spill into Lenotre's bony hand and then fall across the rug.

The girl is sound asleep, and everything that happens after that seems to her like the continuation of a dream. Lenotre claps loudly at her bedside, shouting that the young gentleman is here. What young gentleman? Well, who else, the young gentleman is the young gentleman, Mr. Gob-Smacked, the one with the hymen, the son of the rubber magnate. He's out of his mind, he says he must see you at once and he's brought a pile of cash—put on one of those dresses he likes so much and do whatever he wants. She jumps to her feet in a flash; she almost leaps across Cayetana's body. She runs to look at herself in the cracked moon of the mirror. Why would the young gentleman be in such a hurry? His desperation, his urgency can mean only one thing. Only one? As she hastily applies makeup and gets dressed, she makes a deal with God: if he is waiting for her in the private rooms on the ground floor and not on the second, then it means he's come to say to her what she so longs to hear. It's a fair deal; not having a crucifix, she seals it with a kiss on her fist. As she descends the staircase, everything around her seems unreal: the carpeted stairs, the still-life paintings on the walls, the sickly light that is beginning to sift in through the windows, giving the house a dreamlike atmosphere. No, it's not a dream—it is a passage from one of those novels Mimí is always reading to her. And she is the protagonist, of course; she looks like a young lady and everything, with her white dress and her matching hat and gloves. His favorite outfit. She has opened the parasol, too, and is carrying it against her shoulder. She's not superstitious about that, at least; how could she be, when lately only good things have been happening to her, even when she opens umbrellas that aren't really umbrellas indoors.

No, she's not superstitious. But she smiles to discover that there's no one in the rooms on the second floor. And so she goes down to the bottom floor. She pushes open the only door that's ajar. And on the other side is the young gentleman, who abruptly drops his hat and lunges at her. It is such an unexpected movement that she instinctively closes her eyes, as if bracing for a blow. But it's not a blow. It's a frenzied kiss, one that tastes of alcohol and fever and blood. It takes her a moment to react. Could the gesture mean more than the words he isn't saying? Is God keeping up His end of the bargain? She doesn't know. She only feels her body go weak when he begins to press against her, furiously fumbling at the laces of her bodice. For the first time, the young gentleman's hands aren't shaking. Indeed, they are quite steady as he takes her in his arms and drops her onto the bed. A little rough, perhaps. The prince would never have done such a thing, but of course she is not an odalisque of the southern seas but just another tart on Calle del Panteoncito.

She thinks that—
just another tart
—and the word won't go away.
Tart
, while the young gentleman tears at the seams of her dress.
Tart
when he pulls up her skirt to cover her face. Her, the tart, her legs forced open under the weight of his body. She's supposed to wash her customers' cocks in the basin, it's the house rule, but before she can say anything, he is already inside her, violently driving into her. If she could move her hands . . . but she can't, because the young gentleman is holding them down. If she could speak . . . but she tries, and the young gentleman—gentleman?—screams at her to shut up, just shut up, you tart. Her, the tart. If she could see—but she can only feel the white gauze of the dress covering her face, the stifling humidity of her own breath. Through the fabric she hears Carlos's animal panting, his hot gasps and hoarse grunts. If only it hurt a little, but there's not even that. She barely feels him moving inside her, and that's the most absurd, horrible part of all. He's just another customer, murmuring the same old filthy words in her ear, crushing her with his body and digging his fingers into her flesh. Is it really him? He could be anybody. At the very least he's as repellent as all the others, his movements produce the same nausea, the same need to fly far away in her thoughts. To fly—but where? She has nowhere left: he is not waiting for her in a distant palace with a turban and beautiful poems but instead is right here, holding down her wrists so fiercely that it hurts.

She has stopped struggling to get free, stopped trying to uncover her face. There is nothing she can say, nothing she can do. She knows that the way to make this finish as soon as possible is to stay very quiet. And since there is no longer any prince to dream of, she finds herself thinking about everything else. About the window bars. About the bed she shares with Mimí and Cayetana, and Madame Lenotre's account book, and the pieced-together portrait stored under the straw mattress. And she understands for the first time that she will never leave that house, never finish paying off her debts, never see her mother again the way she was in that photograph. She feels an urge to shout. To put her lips close to that body jerking inside her and howl her own name, to shout it out at the top of her lungs so that the stranger hears it, so that he never forgets it. To tell him that she too exists, that she's there right now. But at the last moment her voice freezes up inside her. The man's breath gets faster, grows hoarse and staccato—in the end, he's the one shouting. And she, her mouth still open, murmurs the only words that men want to hear from her lips.

“Oh, like that, you strong man.

“Like that, you stud.

“Like that, faster, harder, deeper—like that. Yes, like that.”

 

IV

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The novel ends right where its authors leave it—that is to say, one night in the final weeks of 1905. At least that's what they will believe for the next fifteen years: that they have written a tragedy, and that their tragedy ends with Georgina dying. They are mistaken, but that's no surprise, as they were never great writers, and perhaps not even good readers. They have not realized that something is still missing, an epilogue that shows up late, when no one is waiting for it anymore. And after that, it's done.

It is 1920. Up until very recently, the world seemed to be living out a tragedy worthy of the pages of their novel. In addition to Georgina's death there was also the Archduke Ferdinand's, and then the fifteen million dead of the Great War; the massacres of the February and October revolutions; the Spanish flu and its seventy million victims; the execution of Czar Nicholas, the czarina, their five children, and their four servants. But something seems to have changed now. There is no more flu, no more war, no more revolution or counterrevolution. There are even those who claim that the young Princess Anastasia is still alive, hidden away somewhere in Russia. It is not a question of reviving Georgina too—at this point, Georgina is as dead as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But at the very least it is a sign that no catastrophe is absolute, that even in the greatest tragedies there is room for mercy or hope.

If the ending of their novel is not a tragedy, then what is it?

The ending is a poem. But it is also a conversation, a reencounter in a café on Calle Belaochaga. A café that did not exist fifteen years earlier. Because Lima has changed a great deal, and José and Carlos have changed along with it. They are fatter, older, better dressed. Time has made them the same in a way, and now it is difficult to tell them apart. Indeed, it is impossible. They are sitting together in a private room in the café, shielded behind identical smiles, and it is impossible to tell which of them is asking the other about his business affairs, which one is answering that he's muddling along as usual, just muddling along.

Or maybe it is possible to tell them apart, and the problem is that the distinction no longer matters. That José and Carlos not only look alike but in fact have become the same person.

But they do not speak or smile with ease. They address each other with the somewhat brusque air of people who do not see each other often. As if this conversation were not the product of an encounter dictated by friendship or chance but a meeting carefully arranged after a lengthy silence. That might be precisely what is happening: that they haven't spoken in fifteen years or seen each other in nearly nine. And now they have to sum up those years in a few minutes, in a few lines. The answers are as predictable as the questions. They are both married. They both have children. The way they refer to them, the way they describe them in a few sentences, one might think they were talking about the same people. That they have married the same wife and raised the same children. This is not the case, of course; each of them has his own family, his own longings, his own secrets and sorrows, but neither is going to say that. After all, people are members of the bourgeoisie not so much because of what they say aloud but because of what they keep quiet. The vast swath of themselves that they have learned to mask behind a discreet, decorous silence.

One might say, in fact, that up until now they haven't talked about anything. That everything worth saying, everything they want to hear from each other, has been hidden beneath a veil. And so it is for the next few minutes, as they idly inquire about the people they knew fifteen years ago. Like two old friends trying to catch up on each other's lives. Or like a couple of mediocre writers who can't figure out any better way to mention their novel's secondary characters one last time. What ever happened to Sandoval? asks one of them, and the other replies that for a few years he was starting up and shutting down newspapers, calling for and calling off strikes, and is now running a doomed campaign for the legislature. But that in the end that nonsense about the eight-hour workday actually came through and has just been passed by the parliament—who would have thought it. And their professors? Most of them retired or dead. And Professor Cristóbal? Who knows. They know only that he no longer comes to the plaza to write—there are fewer and fewer people who need letters written for them, and even fewer who fall in love. Because that's what getting older means: meeting fewer and fewer people who are in love.