according to excited rumors, she was having a passionate love affair
with Comandante Chacon, second-in-command to Osmani
Cienfuegos, the younger brother of Camilo, the great hero of the
Cuban Revolution who had disappeared. Comandante Osmani
Cienfuegos was head of the organization that lent assistance to all
revolutionary movements and related parties, and the man who
coordinated rebel actions in every corner of the world. Comandante
Chacon, veteran of the Sierra Maestra, was his right arm.
"Can you imagine, that tremendous piece of news was the first
thing I heard." Paul scratched his head. "That skinny thing, that
absolutely ordinary girl, having an affair with one of the historic
comandantes! Comandante Chacon, no less!"
"Couldn't it just be gossip, Paul?"
He shook his head remorsefully, and patted my arm in
encouragement.
"I was with them myself at a meeting in Casa de las Americas.
They're living together. Comrade Arlette, even if you don't believe it,
has become an influential person, sharing bed and table with the
comandantes."
"It's just wonderful for the MIR," I said.
"But shit for you." Paul gave me another little pat. "I'm damn
sorry to have to give you the news, mon vieux. But it's better for you
to know, isn't it? Okay, it's not the end of the world. Besides, Paris is
full of damn fine women. Just look around."
After attempting a few jokes, with absolutely no success, I asked
Paul about Comrade Arlette.
"As the companion of a comandante of the revolution she doesn't
need a thing, I suppose," he said evasively. "Is that what you want to
know? Or if she's richer or uglier than when she was here? Just the
same, I think. A little more tanned by the Caribbean sun. You know,
I never thought she was anything special. I mean, don't make that
face, it's not that important, my friend."
Often, in the days, weeks, and months that followed that meeting
with Paul, I tried to imagine the Chilean girl transformed into
Comandante Chacon's lover, dressed as a guerrilla fighter with a
pistol at her waist, a blue beret, boots, alternating with Fidel and
Raul Castro in the big parades and demonstrations of the revolution,
doing voluntary work on weekends and toiling like a slave in the
cane fields while her small hands with their delicate fingers
struggled to hold the machete and, perhaps, with that facility of hers
for phonetic metamorphosis which I already knew about, speaking
with that lingering, sensual music of people from the Caribbean. The
truth is, I couldn't envision her in her new role: her image trickled
away as if it were liquid. Had she really fallen in love with this
comandante? Or had he been the instrument for her getting out of
guerrilla training and, above all, out of her commitment to the MIR
to wage revolutionary war in Peru? It did me no good at all to think
about Comrade Arlette, since each time I did I felt as if a new ulcer
had opened in the pit of my stomach. To avoid this, and I wasn't
completely successful, I dedicated myself zealously to my classes in
Russian and simultaneous interpretation whenever Senor Charnes,
with whom I got on very well, had no contract for me. And I had to
tell Aunt Alberta—to whom I'd confessed in a letter, in a moment of
weakness, that I was in love with a girl named Arlette, and who was
always asking for her photograph—that we had broken up and from
now on she should put the matter out of her mind.
It must have been six or eight months following the afternoon
that Paul gave me the bad news about Comrade Arlette when, very
early one morning, the fat man, whom I hadn't seen for a while,
came by the hotel so we could have breakfast together. We went to
Le Tournon, a bistrot on the street of the same name, at the corner
of Rue de Vaugirard.
"Even though I shouldn't tell you, I've come to say goodbye," he
said. "I'm leaving Paris. Yes, mon vieux, I'm going to Peru. Nobody
knows about it here, so you don't know anything either. My wife and
Jean-Paul are already there."
The news left me speechless. And suddenly I was filled with a
terrible fear, which I tried to conceal.
"Don't worry," Paul said to calm me, with that smile that puffed
up his cheeks and made him look like a clown. "Nothing will happen
to me, you'll see. And when the revolution triumphs, we'll make you
ambassador to UNESCO. That's a promise!"
For a while we sipped our coffee in silence. My croissant was on
the table, untouched, and Paul, bent on making jokes, said that since
something apparently was taking away my appetite, he'd make the
sacrifice and take care of that crusty half-moon.
"Where I'm going the croissants must be awful," he added.
Then, unable to control myself any longer, I told him he was
going to commit an unforgivable act of stupidity. He wasn't going to
help the revolution, or the MIR, or his comrades. He knew it as well
as I did. His weight, which left him gasping for breath after walking
barely a block on Saint-Germain, would be a tremendous hindrance
to the guerrillas in the Andes, and for that same reason, he'd be one
of the first the soldiers would kill as soon as the uprising began.
"You're going to get yourself killed because of the stupid gossip
of a few rancorous types in Paris who accuse you of being an
opportunist? Think it over, Fats, you can't do something as mindless
as this."
"I don't give a damn what the Peruvians in Paris say, compadre.
It isn't about them, it's about me. This is a question of principle. It's
my obligation to be there."
And he started to crack jokes again and assure me that, in spite
of his 120 kilos, he had passed all the tests in his military training
and, furthermore, had demonstrated excellent marksmanship. His
decision to return to Peru had provoked arguments with Luis de la
Puente and the leadership of the MIR. They all wanted him to stay
in Europe as the movement's representative to friendly
organizations and governments, but he, with his bulletproof
obstinacy, finally got his way. Seeing there was nothing I could do,
and that my best friend in Paris had practically decided to commit
suicide, I asked him if his departure meant that the insurrection
would break out soon.
"It's a question of a couple of months, maybe less."
They had set up three camps in the mountains, one in the
department of Cuzco, another in Piura, and the third in the central
region, on the eastern slope of the Cordillera, near the edge of the
Junin forest. Contrary to my prophecies, he assured me that the
great majority of scholarship recipients had gone to the Andes.
Fewer than ten percent had deserted. With an enthusiasm that
sometimes verged on euphoria, he told me the recipients' return
operation had been a success. He was happy because he had directed
it himself. They had gone back one by one or two by two, following
complicated trajectories that made some of the kids go halfway
around the world to hide their tracks. No one had been found out. In
Peru, De la Puente, Lobaton, and the rest had established urban
support networks, formed medical teams, installed radio stations at
the camps and at scattered hiding places for supplies and explosives.
Contacts with the peasant unions, especially in Cuzco, were
excellent, and they expected that once the rebellion began, many
members of the village communities would join the struggle. He
spoke with joy and certainty, convinced of what he was saying,
exalted. I couldn't hide my sorrow.
"I know you don't believe me at all, Don Incredulous," he finally
murmured.
"I swear I'd like nothing better than to believe you, Paul. And
have your enthusiasm."
He nodded, observing me with his affectionate, full-moon smile.
"And you?" he asked, grasping my arm. "What about you, mon
vieux?"
"Not me, not ever," I replied. "I'll stay here, working as a
translator for UNESCO, in Paris."
He hesitated for a moment, afraid that what he was going to say
might hurt me. It was a question he undoubtedly had been biting his
tongue over for a long time.
"Is this what you want out of life? Nothing but this? All the
people who come to Paris want to be painters, writers, musicians,
actors, theater directors, or get a doctorate, or make a revolution.
You only want this, to live in Paris? I confess, mon vieux, I never
could swallow it."
"I know you couldn't. But it's the truth, Paul. When I was a boy, I
said I wanted to be a diplomat, but that was only so they'd send me
to Paris. That's what I want: to live here. Does it seem like a small
thing to you?"
I pointed at the trees in the Luxembourg Gardens: heavy with
green, they overflowed the fences and looked elegant beneath the
overcast sky. Wasn't it the best thing that could happen to a person?
To live, as Vallejo said in one of his lines, among "the leafy chestnut
trees of Paris"?
"Admit that you write poetry in secret," Paul insisted. "That it's
your hidden vice. We've talked about it often, with other Peruvians.
Everybody thinks you write and don't dare admit it because you're
self-critical. Or timid. Every South American comes to Paris to do
great things. Do you want me to believe that you're the exception to
the rule?"
"I swear I am, Paul. My only ambition is to go on living here, just
as I'm doing now."
I walked with him to the Metro station at Carrefour de l'Odeon.
When we embraced, I couldn't stop my eyes from filling with tears.
"Take care of yourself, Fats. Don't do anything stupid up there,
please."
"Yes, yes, of course I will, Ricardo." He gave me another hug. And
I saw that his eyes were wet too.
I stood there, at the entrance to the station, watching him go
down the steps slowly, held back by his round, bulky body. I was
absolutely certain I was seeing him for the last time.
Fat Paul's departure left me feeling empty because he was the
best friend I had during those uncertain times of my settling in
Paris. Fortunately, the temp contracts at UNESCO and my classes in
Russian and simultaneous interpretation kept me very busy, and at
night I returned to my garret in the Hotel du Senat and hardly had
the energy to think about Comrade Arlette or fat Paul. Without
intending to, at that time I believe I began to move away
unconsciously from the Peruvians in Paris, whom I had previously
seen with a certain degree of frequency. I didn't look for solitude,
but after I became an orphan and my aunt Alberta took me in, it
hadn't been a problem for me. Thanks to UNESCO, I no longer
worried about surviving; my translator's salary and occasional
money orders from my aunt were enough for me to live on and to
pay for my Parisian pleasures: movies, art shows, plays, and books. I
was a steady customer at La Joie de Lire bookshop, on Rue Saint-
Severin, and at the bouquinistes on the quays along the Seine. I
went to the National Popular Theater, the Comedie-Fran^aise,
l'Odeon, and from time to time to concerts at the Salle Pleyel.
And during that time I also had the beginnings of a romance with
Carmencita, the Spanish girl who, dressed in black from head to toe
like Juliette Greco, sang and accompanied herself on the guitar at
L'Escale, the little bar on Rue Monsieur le Prince frequented by
Spaniards and South Americans. She was Spanish but had never set
foot in her country* because her republican parents couldn't or
wouldn't go back while Franco was alive. The ambiguity of that
situation tormented her and frequently appeared in her
conversation. Carmencita was tall and slim, with hair cut a la garqon
and melancholy eyes. She didn't have a great voice, but it was very
melodious, and she gave marvelous performances of songs based on
roundels, poems, verses, and refrains of the Golden Age, murmuring
them with very effective pauses and emphasis. She had lived for a
couple of years with an actor, and the break with him hurt her so
much that—she told me this with the bluntness I initially found so
shocking in my Spanish colleagues at UNESCO—she didn't "want to
hook up with any guy right now." But she agreed to my taking her to
the movies, to supper, and to the Olympia one night to hear Leo
Ferre, whom we both preferred to Charles Aznavour and Georges
Brassens, the other popular singers of the moment. When we said
good night after the concert, at the Opera Metro station, she said,
brushing my lips, "I'm beginning to like you, my little Permian."
Absurdly enough, whenever I went out with Carmencita I was filled
with disquiet, the feeling I was being unfaithful to the lover of
Comandante Chacon, an individual I imagined as sporting a huge
mustache and strutting around with a pair of pistols on his hips. My
relationship with the Spanish girl went no further because one night
I discovered her in a corner of L'Escale melting with love in the
arms of a gentleman with a neck scarf and heavy sideburns.