Everything in the life of Madame Arnoux remained extremely
mysterious, as it had been in the lives of Lily the Chilean girl and
Arlette the guerrilla fighter. If what she told me was true, she now
led an intense social life of receptions, dinners, and cocktail parties,
where she rubbed elbows with le tout Paris; for example, yesterday
she had met Maurice Couve de Murville, General de Gaulle's
minister of foreign relations, and last week she had seen Jean
Cocteau at a private screening of To Die in Madrid, a documentary
by Frederic Rossif, on the arm of his lover, the actor Jean Marais,
who, by the way, was extremely handsome, and tomorrow she was
going to a tea given by friends for Farah Diba, the wife of the Shah of
Iran, who was on a private visit to Paris. Mere delusions of grandeur
and snobbery, or had her husband in fact introduced her to a world
of luminaries and frivolity that she found dazzling? And she was
constantly making, or she told me she was making, trips to
Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, for just two or three days, and for
reasons that were never clear: expositions, gala events, parties,
concerts. Since her explanations seemed so obviously fantastic to
me, I chose not to ask more questions about her trips, pretending to
believe absolutely the reasons she occasionally deigned to give me
for those glittering excursions.
One afternoon in the middle of 1965, at UNESCO, a colleague at
the office, an old Spanish republican who years ago had written "a
definitive novel on the Civil War that corrected Hemingway's
errors," entitled For Whom the Bells Don't Toll, handed me the copy
of Le Monde he was leafing through. The guerrillas of the Tupac
Amaru column of the MIR, led by Lobaton and operating in the
provinces of La Conception and Satipo, in the department of Junin,
had plundered the powder magazine of a mine, blown up a bridge
across the Moraniyoc River, occupied the Runatullo ranch, and
distributed the provisions to the peasants. And a couple of weeks
later, it ambushed a detachment of the Civil Guard in the narrow
Yahuarina pass. Nine guards, among them the major in command of
the patrol, died in the fighting. In Lima, there had been bombing
attacks on the Hotel Crillon and the Club Nacional. The Belaunde
government had decreed a state of siege throughout the central
sierra. I felt my heart shrink. That day, and the days that followed, I
was uneasy, the face of fat Paul etched in my mind.
Uncle Ataulfo wrote to me from time to time—he had replaced
Aunt Alberta as my only correspondent in Peru—his letters filled
with commentary on the political situation. Through him I learned
that although the guerrilla war was very sporadic in Lima, military
actions in the central and southern Andes had convulsed the
country. El Comercio and La Prensa, and Apristas and Odristas now
allied against the government, were accusing Belaunde Terry of
weakness in the face of the Castrista rebels, and even of secret
complicity with the insurrection. The government had made the
army responsible for suppressing the rebels. "This is turning ugly,
nephew, and I'm afraid there may be a coup at any moment. You can
hear the sound of swords crossing in the air. When don't things go
badly in our Peru!" To his affectionate letters Aunt Dolores would
always add a message in her own hand.
In a totally unexpected way, I ended up getting along very- well
with Monsieur Robert Arnoux. He showed up one day at the Spanish
office at UNESCO to suggest that, when it was time for lunch, we go
to the cafeteria to have a sandwich together. For no special reason,
just to chat for a while, the time needed to have a filtered Gitane, the
brand we both smoked. After that, he stopped by from time to time,
when his commitments allowed, and we'd have coffee and a
sandwich while we discussed the political situation in France and
Latin America, and cultural life in Paris, about which he was also
very knowledgeable. He was a man who read and had ideas, and he
complained that even though working with Rene Maheu was
interesting, the problem was that he had time to read only on
weekends and couldn't go to the theater and concerts very
frequently.
Because of him I had to rent a dinner jacket and wear formal
dress for the first and undoubtedly the last time in my life in order
to attend a benefit for UNESCO—a ballet, followed by dinner and
dancing—at the Opera. I had never been inside this imposing
building, adorned with the frescoes Chagall had painted for the
dome. Everything looked beautiful and elegant to me. But even
more beautiful and elegant was the ex-Chilean girl and ex-guerrilla
fighter, who, in an ethereal strapless gown of white crepe with a
floral print, an upswept hairdo, and jewels at her throat, ears, and
fingers, left me openmouthed with admiration. The old men who
were friends of Monsieur Arnoux came up to her all night, kissed
her hand, and stared at her with glittering, covetous eyes. "Quelle
beaute exotique!" I heard one of those excited drones say. At last I
was able to ask her to dance. Holding her tight, I murmured in her
ear that I'd never even imagined she could ever be as beautiful as
she was at that moment. And it tore my heart out to think that, after
the dance, in her house in Passy, it would be her husband and not
me who would undress her and make love to her. The beaute
exotique let herself be adored with a condescending little smile and
then finished me off with a cruel remark: "What cheap, sentimental
things you say to me, Ricardito." I inhaled the fragrance that floated
all around her and wanted her so much I could hardly breathe.
Where did she get the money for those clothes and jewels? I was
no expert in luxury items, but I realized that to wear those exclusive
models and change outfits the way she did—each time I saw her she
was wearing a new dress and exquisite new shoes—one needed more
money than a UNESCO functionary could earn, even if he was the
director's right hand. I tried to learn the secret by asking her if,
besides occasionally deceiving Monsieur Robert Arnoux with me,
she wasn't also deceiving him with some millionaire thanks to
whom she could dress in clothes from the great shops and wear
jewels from the Arabian Nights.
"If you were my only lover, I'd walk around like a beggar, little
pissant," she replied, and she wasn't joking.
But she immediately offered an explanation that seemed perfect,
though I was certain it was false. The clothes and jewels she wore
weren't bought but lent by the great modistes along Avenue
Montaigne and the jewelers on Place Vendome; as a way to publicize
their creations, they had chic ladies in high society wear them. And
so because of her social connections, she could dress and adorn
herself like the most elegant women in Paris. Or did I think that on
the miserable salary of a French diplomat she'd be able to compete
with the grandes dames in the City of Light?
A few weeks after the dance at the Opera, the bad girl called me
at my office at UNESCO.
"Robert has to go with the director to Warsaw this weekend," she
said. "You won the lottery, good boy! I can devote all of Saturday and
Sunday to you. Let's see what you arrange for me."
I spent hours thinking about what would surprise and amuse
her, what odd places in Paris she didn't know, what performances
were being-offered on Saturday, what restaurant, bar, or bistrot
might appeal to her because of its originality* or secret, exclusive
character. Finally, after shuffling through a thousand possibilities
and discarding all of them, I chose for Saturday morning, if the
weather was good, an excursion to the Asnieres dog cemetery on a
tree-filled little island in the middle of the river, and supper at
Allard, on Rue de Saint-Andre-des-Arts, at the same table where one
night I had seen Pablo Neruda eating with two spoons, one in each
hand. To enhance its stature in her eyes, I'd tell Madame Arnoux it
was the poet's favorite restaurant and invent the dishes he always
ordered. The idea of spending an entire night with her, making love
to her, enjoying on my lips the flutter of her "sex of nocturnal
eyelashes" (a line from Neruda's poem "Material nuptial" that I had
murmured in her ear the first night we were together in my garret at
the Hotel du Senat), feeling her fall asleep in my arms, waking on
Sunday morning with her warm, slim body curled up against mine,
kept me, for the three or four days I had to wait until Saturday, in a
state in which hope, joy, and fear that something would frustrate
our plan barely allowed me to concentrate on my work. The reviewer
had to correct my translations several times.
That Saturday was a glorious day. At midmorning, in the new
Dauphine I had bought the previous month, I drove Madame
Arnoux to the Asnieres dog cemetery, which she had never seen. We
spent more than an hour wandering among the graves—not only
dogs but cats, rabbits, and parrots were buried there—and reading
the deeply felt, poetic, cheerful, and absurd epitaphs with which
owners had bid farewell to their beloved animals. She really seemed
to be having a good time. She smiled and kept her hand in mine, her
eyes the color of dark honey were lit by the springtime sun, and her
hair was tousled by a breeze blowing along the river. She wore a
light, transparent blouse that revealed the top of her breasts, a loose
jacket that fluttered with her movements, and brick-red high-heeled
boots. She spent some time contemplating the statue to the
unknown dog at the entrance, and with a melancholy air lamented
having "so complicated" a life, otherwise she would adopt a puppy. I
made a mental note: that would be my gift on her birthday, if I could
find out when it was.
I put my arm around her waist, pulled her to me, and said that if
she decided to leave Monsieur Arnoux and marry me, I'd undertake
to see that she had a normal life and could raise all the dogs she
wanted.
Instead of answering, she asked, in a mocking tone, "The idea of
spending the night with me makes you the happiest man in the
world, Miraflores boy? I'm asking so you can tell me one of those
cheap, sentimental things you love saying so much."
"Nothing could make me happier," I said, pressing my lips to
hers. "I've been dreaming about it for years, guerrilla fighter."
"How many times will you make love to me?" she continued in
the same mocking tone.
"As many as I can, bad girl. Ten, if my body holds out."
"I'll allow you only two," she said, biting my ear. "Once when we
go to bed, and another when we wake up. And no getting up early. I
need a minimum of eight hours' sleep so I'll never have wrinkles."
She had never been as playful as she was that morning. And I
don't think she ever was again. I didn't remember having seen her
so natural, giving herself up to the moment without posing, without
inventing a role for herself, as she breathed in the warmth of the day
and let herself be penetrated and adored by the light that filtered
through the tops of the weeping willows. She seemed much younger
than she actually was, almost an adolescent and not a woman close
to thirty. We had a ham sandwich with pickles and a glass of wine at
a bistrot in Asnieres, on the banks of the river, and then went to the
Cinematheque on Rue d'Ulm to see Marcel Carne's Les enfants du
paradis, which I had seen but she hadn't. When we came out she
spoke about how young Jean-Louis Barrault and Maria Casares
looked, and how they didn't make movies like that anymore, and she
confessed that she had cried at the end. I suggested we go to my
apartment to rest until it was time for supper, but she refused: going
home now would give me ideas. Instead, the afternoon was so nice
we ought to walk for a while. We went in and out of the galleries
along Rue de Seine and then sat down at an open-air cafe on Rue de
Buci for something cold to drink. I told her I had seen Andre Breton
around there one morning, buying fresh fish. The streets and cafes
were full of people, and the Parisians had those open, pleasant
expressions they wear on the rare days when the weather's nice. I
hadn't felt this happy, optimistic, and hopeful for a long time. Then
the devil raised his tail and I saw the headline in Le Monde, which
the man next to me was reading: A R M Y DESTROYS HEADQUARTERS O F
PERUVIAN G U E R R I L L A S . The subtitle said: "Luis de la Puente and Other
MIR Leaders Killed." I hurried to buy the paper at the stand on the
corner. The byline was Marcel Niedergang, the paper's
correspondent in South America, and there was an inset by Claude
Julien explaining what the Permian MIR was and giving
information about Luis de la Puente and the political situation in
Peru. In August 1965, special forces of the Permian army had
surrounded Mesa Pelada, a hill to the east of the city of