been pleased by how vivacious the cook's little girl was. They would
have given her the shoes and dresses that the real daughter of the
house, Lucy, the other Chilean girl, had outgrown. This was how
Arquimedes' little daughter had climbed up, achieving a place in the
Arenas family. Until, finally, she won the right to play and go out as
an equal, a friend, a sister, with the daughter of the house, though
Lucy attended a private academy and she went to a state school.
Now, after thirty years, it was clear why Lily, the Chilean girl of my
childhood, didn't want to have a boyfriend and didn't invite anyone
to her house on Calle Esperanza. And, above all, it was exceedingly
clear why she had decided to stage that performance, to de-
Peruvianize herself, to transubstantiate into a Chilean girl so she
would be accepted in Miraflores. I felt moved to tears. I was mad
with impatience to hold my wife in my arms, I wanted to caress her,
stroke her, beg her pardon for the childhood she'd had, tickle her,
tell her jokes, play the clown to hear her laugh, promise her that she
never would suffer again.
Calle Esperanza hadn't changed very much. I walked up and
down twice, back and forth from Avenida Larco to Zanjon. The
Minerva Bookstore was still on the corner across from Parque
Central, though the Italian woman with white hair, the widow of
Jose Carlos Mariategui, always so serious as she stood behind the
counter and waited on customers, was not there now. Gambrinus,
the German restaurant, no longer existed, and neither did the ribbon
and button shop where I sometimes went with Aunt Alberta. But the
three-story building where the Chilean girls lived was still there.
Narrow, squeezed between a house and another building, faded,
with little balconies that had wooden railings, it looked very poor
and old-fashioned. In the apartment with its dark, narrow rooms, in
the tiny hole of a maid's room where her mother would lay a pallet
on the floor for her every night, Otilita would have been infinitely
less unfortunate than in Arquimedes' house. And, perhaps, right
here, when she was still very young, she already had made the rash
decision to move forward and do whatever she had to do to no
longer be Otilita, daughter of the cook and the builder of
breakwaters, to flee forever the trap, the prison, the curse that Peru
meant for her, and go far away and become rich—that above all: rich,
very rich—though to accomplish this she would have to engage in
the worst escapades, run the most awful risks, do anything at all
until she became a cold, unloving, calculating, and cruel woman. She
achieved this only for short periods of time and paid dearly for it,
leaving pieces of her skin and her soul along the way. When I
thought of her in the worst moments of her crises, sitting on the
toilet, trembling with fear, clutching my hand, I had to make a great
effort not to cry. Of course you were right, bad girl, to refuse to
return to Peru, to despise the country that reminded you of all you
had accepted, suffered, and done to escape. You did very well not to
come with me on this trip, my love.
I took a long walk on the streets of Miraflores, following the
itineraries of my youth: Parque Central, Avenida Larco, Parque
Salazar, the seawalls. My chest was tight with the urgent need to see
her, hear her voice. Naturally, I never would tell her I met her
father. Naturally, I would never confess I knew her real name. Otilia,
Otilita, how funny, it didn't suit her at all. Naturally, I would forget
about Arquimedes and everything I had heard this morning.
When I reached his house, Uncle Ataulfo was already in bed.
Anastasia, the old servant, had left my supper on the table, under a
napkin to keep it warm. I ate no more than a mouthful, and as soon
as I got up from the table, I went into the living room and closed the
door. I was sorry to make an international call, because I knew
Uncle Ataulfo wouldn't allow me to pay for it, but I had such a great
need to talk to the bad girl, hear her voice, tell her I missed her, that
I decided to do it. Sitting in the armchair in the corner where Uncle
Ataulfo read his papers, next to the telephone table, with the room
in darkness, I called her. The phone rang several times and nobody
answered. The time difference, of course! It was four in the morning
in Paris. But precisely for that reason, it was impossible for the
Chilean girl—Otilia, Otilita, how funny—not to hear the phone. It
was on the night table, next to her ear. And she slept very lightly.
The only explanation was that Martine had sent her on one of those
business trips. I went up to my room, dragging my feet, frustrated
and dejected. Naturally, I couldn't close my eyes because each time I
felt sleep coming on I awoke, startled and lucid, and saw the face of
Arquimedes sketched in the darkness, looking at me mockingly and
repeating the name of his oldest daughter: Otilita, Otilia. Was it
possible? No, a stupid idea, an attack of jealousy, ridiculous in a
fifty-year-old man. Another little game to keep you worried,
Ricardito? Impossible. How could she have suspected that you
would phone her now, at this time of night? The logical explanation
was that she wasn't home because she had gone on business to
Biarritz, Nice, Cannes, any of the beach resorts where they hold
conventions, conferences, meetings, weddings, and other pretexts
the French find for drinking and eating like gluttons.
I continued calling for the next three days, and she never
answered the phone. Consumed by jealousy, I didn't see anything or
anybody else; all I did was count the eternal days left until I could
take the plane back to Europe. Uncle Ataulfo noticed my nervous
state, though I made exaggerated efforts to seem normal, and
perhaps that was precisely the reason. He limited himself to asking
me two or three times if I felt all right, because I hardly ate and
turned down an imitation from the amiable Alberto Lamiel to go
out to eat and then \isit an unpretentious club to hear my favorite
singer, Cecilia Barraza.
On the fourth day I left for Paris. Uncle Ataulfo wrote to the bad
girl in his own hand, apologizing for stealing her husband for the
past two weeks but, he added, this \isit by his nephew had been
miraculous, helping him through a difficult time and assuring him a
long life. I didn't sleep, I didn't eat for the nearly eighteen hours of
the flight because of a very long layover of the Air France plane in
Pointe-a-Pitre, to repair something that had broken down. What
would be waiting for me this time when I opened the door of my
apartment in Ecole Militaire? Another note from the bad girl, telling
me, with the coldness of the old days, that she had decided to leave
because she was sick of the boring life of a petit bourgeois
housewife, tired of preparing breakfasts and making beds? Could
she go on with those tricks at her age?
No. When I opened the door to the apartment on Rue Joseph
Granier—my hand was trembling and I couldn't fit the key into the
lock—there she was, waiting for me. She opened her arms to me
with a big smile.
"At last! I was getting tired of being alone and abandoned."
She looked as if she were going to a party, wearing a very low-cut
dress that bared her shoulders. When I asked her why all the finery,
she said, nibbling at my lips, "Because of you, idiot, what else? I've
been waiting for you since early this morning, calling Air France
over and over again. They said the plane had been delayed in
Guadeloupe for several hours. Come on, let me see how they treated
you in Lima. You're grayer, I think. From missing me so much, I
suppose."
She seemed happy to see me, and I felt relieved and ashamed.
She asked if I wanted anything to drink or to eat, and since she saw
me yawning, she pushed me toward the bedroom. "Go on, get some
sleep, I'll take care of your suitcase." I took off my shoes, trousers,
and shirt, and pretending to sleep, I watched her through half-closed
eyes. She unpacked slowly, in a very orderly way, concentrating on
what she was doing. She separated the dirty clothes and put them in
a bag she would take to the laundry afterward. The clean things she
carefully arranged in the closet. Socks, handkerchiefs, suit, tie. Once
in a while she would glance at the bed, and I thought her expression
grew calmer when she saw me there. She was forty-eight years old,
and no one seeing her model's figure would believe it. She looked
very attractive in the light green dress that left her shoulders and
part of her back bare, and with her face so beautifully made-up. She
moved slowly, gracefully. Once I saw her approach—I closed my eyes
completely and partially opened my mouth, pretending to
sleep—and I felt her cover me with the quilt. Could it all be a farce?
Absolutely not. But why not, at any moment life with her could turn
into theater, into fiction. Should I ask why she hadn't answered the
phone these past few days? Try to find out if she had been on a
business trip? Or would it be better to forget all about it and sink
into this tender lie of domestic happiness? I felt an infinite
weariness. Later, when I was beginning to really fall asleep, I felt her
lie down beside me. "What an idiot, I woke you." She turned toward
me and with one hand rumpled my hair. "You have more and more
gray hair, old man," she said with a laugh. She had taken off her
dress and shoes, and the slip she wore was a light matte color,
similar to her skin.
"I missed you," she said unexpectedly, becoming very serious.
She fixed her honey-colored eyes on mine in a way that suddenly
reminded me of the stare of the builder of breakwaters. "At night I
couldn't sleep, thinking about you. I masturbated almost every
night, imagining you were making me come with your mouth. One
night I cried, thinking something might happen to you, a sickness,
an accident. That you would call to say you had decided to stay in
Lima with some Permian and I'd never see you again."
Our bodies didn't touch. She kept her hand on my head, but now
she passed the tips of her fingers over my eyebrows, my mouth, as if
to verify I was really there. Her eyes were still very serious. In their
depths was a watery gleam, as if she were holding back a desire to
cry.
"Once, so many years ago, in this very room, you asked me what
I thought happiness was, do you remember, good boy? And I said it
was money, finding a man who was powerful and very rich. I was
wrong. Now I know that you're happiness for me."
And at that moment, when I was going to take her in my arms
because her eyes had filled with tears, the telephone rang, startling
both of us.
"Ah, at last!" the bad girl exclaimed, picking up the receiver. "The
damn phone. They finally fixed it. Oui, oui, monsieur. Qa marche
tres bien, maintenant! Merci."
Before she hung up I threw myself at her and put my arms
around her, holding her as tight as I could, kissing her with fury and
tenderness, telling her in a rush, "Do you know the nicest thing, the
thing that's made me the happiest of all the things you've said to
me, Chilean girl? Oui, oui, monsieur. Qa marche tres bien,
maintenant."
She started to laugh and murmured that this was the least
romantic cheap, sentimental thing I had said to her so far. While I
undressed her and got undressed myself, I said into her ear, as I
kept kissing her, "I called you four days in a row at all hours, at
night, at dawn, and when you didn't answer I went mad with
desperation. I didn't eat, I didn't live until I could see that you
hadn't left, that you weren't with a lover. The life's come back to my
body, bad girl." I heard her roll with laughter. When she used both
hands to oblige me to move my face away so she could look into my
eyes, her laughter kept her from speaking. "Were you really mad
with jealousy? What good news, you're still head over heels in love
with me, good boy." It was the first time we made love and didn't
stop laughing.
Finally we fell asleep, entwined and content. In my sleep I
opened my eyes from time to time to see her. I would never be as
happy as I was now, I never would feel so fulfilled again. We awoke
when it was dark, and after we showered and dressed, I took the bad
girl to have supper at La Closerie des Lilas, where, like two lovers on
their honeymoon, we spoke softly, looking into each other's eyes,
holding hands, smiling, and kissing as we drank a bottle of
champagne. "Tell me something nice," she would say from time to
time.
When we left La Closerie des Lilas, on the small square where
the statue of Marshal Ney menaces the stars with its sword, along
Avenue de l'Observatoire, two clochards were sitting on a bench. The
bad girl stopped and pointed at them.
"It's him, the one on the right, the clochard who saved your life
that night on the Pont Mirabeau, isn't that right?"