always by my nickname. They weren't exaggerating at all: I was so
hot for Lily I was burning up.
That summer, because of her, I had a fistfight with Luquen, one
of my best friends. During one of those get-togethers the girls and
boys of the neighborhood would have at the corner of Colon and
Diego Ferre, in the garden of the Chacaltanas, Luquen, trying to be
smart, suddenly said the Chilean girls were cheap because they were
bleached blondes, not real ones, and in Miraflores, behind my back,
people had started to call them the Camp Followers. I aimed one
straight at his chin, which he ducked, and we went to settle our
differences in a fight at the corner of the Reserva seawall, next to the
cliffs. We didn't speak to each other for an entire week until, at the
next get-together, the girls and boys of the neighborhood made us be
friends again.
Every afternoon Lily liked to go to a corner of Parque Salazar
overgrown with palm trees, floripondios, and bellflowers, and from
the redbrick wall we would contemplate all of Lima bay like the
captain of a ship contemplating the sea from the bridge. If the sky
was clear—and I'd swear the sky was cloudless all that summer and
the sun shone on Miraflores every single day—in the background, on
the ocean's horizon, you could see the red disk in flames, taking its
leave with blazing beams and fiery lights as it sank into the waters of
the Pacific. Lily's face focused with the same fervor she brought to
taking communion at twelve o'clock Mass at the Parque Central
church, her gaze fixed on the incandescent ball, waiting for the
moment when the sea swallowed up the last beam to formulate the
wish that the great star, or God, would grant. I had a wish too, only
half believing it would come true. Always the same one, of course:
that she would finally say yes, that we'd go steady, make out, love
each other, become engaged, and marry and end up in Paris, rich and
happy.
From the time I reached the age of reason I had dreamed of
living in Paris. My papa was probably to blame, and those books by
Paul Feval, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas, and so many others he
made me read before he died in the accident that left me an orphan.
Those novels filled my head with adventures and convinced me that
in France life was richer, happier, more beautiful, more everything
than anywhere else. That was why, in addition to my English classes
at the Instituto Peruano Norteamericano, I persuaded my aunt
Alberta to enroll me at the Alliance Fran^aise on Avenida Wilson,
where I'd go three times a week to learn the language of the
Frenchies. Though I liked to have a good time with my pals from the
neighborhood, I was a real bookworm, got good grades, and loved
languages.
When my funds allowed, I'd invite Lily to have tea—to say louche
hadn't become fashionable yet—at the Tiendecita Blanca, with its
snow-white facade, its little tables and umbrellas on the sidewalk, its
pastries out of the Arabian Nights—iced ladyfingers! almond-andhoney
cakes filled with blancmange! cream puffs!—bounded by
Avenida Larco, Avenida Arequipa, and the Alameda Ricardo Palma
shaded by exceedingly tall Ficus trees.
Going to the Tiendecita Blanca with Lily for ice cream and a piece
of pastry was a joy almost always clouded by the presence of Lucy,
her sister, whom I also had to drag along every time we went out.
She was not at all uncomfortable being the third wheel, interfering
with my making out, preventing me from talking alone with Lily and
telling her all the pretty things I dreamed of murmuring into her
ear. But even though our conversation had to avoid certain subjects
because Lucy was nearby, it was priceless to be with her, to see how
her curls danced whenever she moved her head, the
mischievousness in her eyes the color of dark honey, to hear that
way she had of talking, and at certain careless moments, at the lowcut
neckline of her close-fitting blouse, to catch a glimpse of the tops
of those round little breasts that were already pointing out, tender
buds undoubtedly as firm and soft as young fruits.
"I don't know what I'm doing here like a third wheel with you
two," Lucy would sometimes say apologetically. I lied to her: "What
an idea, we're happy to have your company, aren't we, Lily?" Lily
would laugh with a mocking demon in her eyes and that
exclamation: "Sure, puuuuu..."
Taking a stroll along Avenida Pardo under the alameda of Ficus
trees invaded by songbirds, between the houses on both sides of the
street where little boys and girls, watched over by nannies in
starched white uniforms, ran around gardens and verandas, was a
ritual of that summer. Since Lucy's presence made it difficult for me
to talk to Lily about the things I would have liked to talk about, I
steered our conversation toward insipid subjects: plans for the
future, for example, like going to Paris to fill a diplomatic post when
I had my law degree—because there, in Paris, living was living,
France was the country of culture—or perhaps going into politics to
help our poor Peru become great and prosperous again, which would
mean I'd have to postpone traveling to Europe for a little while. And
what about them, what would they like to be, to do, when they grew
up? Sensible Lucy had very precise objectives: "First of all, finish
school. Then, get a good job, maybe in a record store, that must be a
lot of fun." Lily was thinking of a travel agency or being a stewardess
for an airline, if she could convince her parents, that way she'd
travel free all around the world. Or maybe a movie star, but she'd
never let them take a picture of her in a bikini. Traveling, traveling,
seeing every country was what she'd like the most. "Well, at least
you've already seen two, Chile and Peru, what else do you want?" I'd
say. "Compare that to me, I've never even left Miraflores."
The things Lily recounted about Santiago were for me a foretaste
of Parisian heaven. I listened to her with so much envy! In that city,
unlike here, there were no poor people or beggars in the streets,
parents allowed boys and girls to stay at parties until dawn and
dance cheek to cheek, and unlike here, you never saw old people like
mothers and aunts spying on young people when they danced just to
scold them if they went too far. In Chile boys and girls were allowed
to see adult movies and, from the time they were fifteen, smoke
without hiding. Life was more fun there than in Lima because there
were more movies, circuses, theaters, shows, and parties with live
orchestras, and ice-skating shows and ballet companies and
musicals were always coming to Santiago from the United States,
and no matter what job they had, Chileans earned two or three times
more than Peruvians did.
But if all this was true, why had the parents of the Chilean girls
left that marvelous country and come to Peru? Because at first
glance they weren't rich but very poor. For the moment they didn't
live the way we did, the girls and boys of Barrio Alegre, in houses
with butlers, cooks, maids, and gardeners, but in a little apartment
in a narrow, three-story building on Calle Esperanza, near the
Gambrinus restaurant. And in the Miraflores of those years, in
contrast to what would happen sometime later when tall buildings
began to spring up and the little houses disappeared, the only people
who lived in apartments were the poor, that diminished species of
human to which—ah, how sad—the Chilean girls seemed to belong.
I never saw their parents. They never took me or any
neighborhood girl or boy home. They never celebrated a birthday or
gave a party or invited us to have tea and play, as if they were
ashamed to let us see the modesty of the place where they lived. The
fact that they were poor and embarrassed by everything they didn't
have filled me with compassion, increased my love for the Chilean
girl, and inspired me with altruistic plans: "When Lily and I get
married, we'll bring her whole family to live with us."
But my Miraflores friends, especially the girls, were suspicious
about Lucy and Lily never opening their doors to us. "Are they so
hungry they can't even organize a party?" they asked. "Maybe it's not
because they're poor, maybe they're just stingy," said Tico Tiravante,
trying to make things better and only making them worse.
The kids in the neighborhood suddenly began to speak badly of
the Chilean girls because of their makeup and the clothes they wore,
making fun of their scant wardrobe—we all knew by heart those
skirts, blouses, and sandals that they combined in every possible
way to hide the fact they had so little—and filled with righteous
indignation, I'd defend them saying that this talk was just envy,
green envy, poisonous envy, because at parties the Chilean girls
never sat out a dance, all the boys lined up to dance with
them—"They let them rub up, of course they don't sit out a dance,"
replied Laura—or because, at the get-togethers in the neighborhood,
at games, at the beach, or in Parque Salazar, they were always the
center of attention and all the boys crowded around them, while the
rest of the girls..."They're show-offs and brazen and with them you
boys dare to tell the dirty jokes we wouldn't let you tell us!" Teresita
counterattacked. And, finally, because the Chilean girls were greatlooking,
modern, smart, while the Barrio Alegre girls were prudish,
backward, old-fashioned, narrow-minded, and bigoted. "And proud
of it!" said Use, mocking us.
But even though they gossiped about them, the girls from Barrio
Alegre kept inviting the Chilean girls to parties and going with them
in a group to the Miraflores beaches, to twelve o'clock Mass on
Sundays, to matinees, and to take the obligatory stroll around
Parque Salazar from dusk until the first stars came out, which
twinkled in the Lima sky that summer from January to March
without, I'm certain, being hidden for a single day by clouds,
something that happens four-fifths of the year in this city. They did
this because we boys asked them to, and because, at heart, the girls
of Miraflores were as fascinated by the Chileans as the bird is by the
cobra that hypnotizes it before swallowing it, as the saint is by the
sinner, the angel by the devil. They envied in these foreigners from
the remote land of Chile the freedom they didn't have to go
everywhere, to stay out walking or dancing until very late without
asking permission for just a little while longer, and without their
papa, their mama, their older sister or aunt coming to spy through
the windows at a party7 to see with whom they were dancing and
how, or to take them home because it was already midnight, a time
when decent girls weren't dancing or talking on the street with
men—that's what show-offs, cheap girls, and mixed breeds did—but
were in their own houses and their own beds, dreaming of the
angels. They envied the fact that the Chilean girls were so free and
easy and danced so boldly, not caring if they showed their knees, and