going to make problems for you..."
"Then you'd control your lust?" Paul laughed. "Don't be a
hypocrite, Ricardo! Take her out, and don't let me know about it.
Afterward, though, you'll tell me everything. And most important,
use a condom."
That same afternoon I went to pick up Comrade Arlette at her
little hotel on Rue Gay Lussac and took her to eat steak frites at La
Petite Hostellerie, on Rue de la Harpe. And then to L'Escale, a small
boite de nuit on Rue Monsieur le Prince, where in those days
Carmencita, a Spanish girl dressed all in black like Juliette Greco,
accompanied herself on guitar and sang, or, I should say, recited old
poems and republican songs from the Spanish Civil War. We had
rum and Coca-Cola, a drink that was already being called a cuba
libre. The club was small, dark, smoky, and hot, the songs epic or
melancholy, not many people were there yet, and before we finished
our drinks and after I told her that thanks to her magical arts and
her rosary I'd done well on the UNESCO exam, I grasped her hand
and, interlacing my fingers with hers, asked if she realized I'd been
in love with her for ten years.
She burst into laughter.
"In love with me without knowing me? Do you mean that for ten
years you've been hoping that one day a girl like me would turn up
in your life?"
"We know each other very well, it's just that you don't
remember," I replied, very slowly, watching her reaction. "Back then,
your name was Lily and you were passing yourself off as Chilean."
I thought that surprise would make her pull back her hand or
clench it convulsively in a nervous movement, but nothing like that
happened. She left her hand lying quietly in mine, not agitated in the
least.
"What are you saying?" she murmured. In the half-light, she
leaned forward and her face came so close to mine that I could feel
her breath. Her eyes scrutinized me, trying to read my mind.
"Can you still imitate the Chilean singsong so well?" I asked, as I
kissed her hand. "Don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking
about. Don't you remember I asked you to go steady three times and
you always turned me down flat?"
"Ricardo, Ricardito, Richard Somocurcio!" she exclaimed,
amused, and now I did feel the pressure of her hand. "The skinny
kid! That well-behaved snot-nose who was so proper he seemed to
have taken Holy Communion the night before. Ha-ha! That was you.
Oh, how funny! Even back then you had a sanctimonious look."
Still, a moment later, when I asked her how and why it had
occurred to her and her sister, Lucy, to pass themselves off as
Chileans when they moved to Calle Esperanza, in Miraflores, she
absolutely denied knowing what I was talking about. How could I
have made up a thing like that? I was thinking about somebody else.
She never had been named Lily, and didn't have a sister, and never
had lived in that neighborhood of rich snobs. That would be her
attitude from then on: denying the story of the Chilean girls, though
sometimes, for instance that night at L'Escale, when she said she
recognized in me the idiotic little snot-nose from ten years back, she
let something slip—an image, an allusion—that revealed she was in
fact the false Chilean girl of our adolescence.
We stayed at L'Escale until three in the morning, and though she
let me kiss and caress her, she didn't respond. She didn't move her
lips away when I touched them with mine but made no
corresponding movement, she allowed herself to be kissed but was
indifferent and, of course, she never opened her mouth to let me
swallow her saliva. Her body, too, seemed like an iceberg when my
hands caressed her waist, her shoulders, and paused at her hard
little breasts with erect nipples. She remained still, passive, resigned
to this effusiveness, like a queen accepting the homage of a vassal,
until, at last, noticing that my caresses were becoming bolder, she
casually pushed me away.
"This is my fourth declaration of love, Chilean girl," I said at the
door to the little hotel on Rue Gay Lussac. "Is the answer finally
yes?"
"We'll see." And she blew me a kiss and moved away. "Never lose
hope, good boy."
For the ten days that followed this encounter, Comrade Arlette
and I had something that resembled a honeymoon. We saw each
other every day and I went through all the cash I still had from Aunt
Alberta's money orders. I took her to the Louvre and the Jeu de
Paume, the Rodin Museum and the houses of Balzac and Victor
Hugo, the Cinematheque on Rue d'Ulm, a performance at the
National Popular Theater directed by Jean Vilar (we saw Chekhov's
Cefou de Platonov, in which Vilar himself played the protagonist),
and on Sunday we rode the train to Versailles, where, after visiting
the palace, we took a long walk in the woods and were caught in a
rainstorm and soaked to the skin. In those days anyone would have
taken us for lovers because we always held hands and I used any
excuse to kiss and caress her. She allowed me to do this, at times
amused, at other times indifferent, always putting an end to my
effusiveness with an impatient expression. "That's enough now,
Ricardito." On rare occasions she would take the initiative and
arrange or muss my hair with her hand or pass a slender finger
along my nose or mouth as if she wanted to smooth them, a caress
like that of an affectionate mistress with her poodle.
From the intimacy of those ten days I came to a conclusion:
Comrade Arlette didn't give a damn about politics in general or the
revolution in particular. Her membership in the Young Communists
and then in the MIR was probably a lie, not to mention her studies
at Catholic University. She not only never talked about political or
university subjects, but when I brought the conversation around to
that terrain, she didn't know what to say, was ignorant of the most
elementary things, and managed to change the subject very quickly.
It was evident she had obtained this guerrilla fighter's scholarship in
order to get out of Peru and travel around the world, something that
as a girl of very humble origins—that much was glaringly
obvious—she never could have done otherwise. But I didn't have the
courage to question her about any of this; I didn't want to put her on
the spot and force her to tell me another lie.
On the eighth day of our chaste honeymoon she agreed,
unexpectedly, to spend the night with me at the Hotel du Senat. It
was something I had asked for—had begged for—in vain, on all the
previous days. This time, she took the initiative.
"I'll go with you today, if you like," she said at night as we were
eating a couple of baguettes with Gruyere cheese (I didn't have the
money for a restaurant) in a bistrot on Rue de Tournon. My heart
raced as if I had just run a marathon.
After an awkward negotiation with the watchman at the Hotel du
Senat—"Pas de visites nocturnes a Vhotel, monsieur!"—which left
Comrade Arlette undaunted, we climbed the five flights with no
elevator up to my garret. She let herself be kissed, caressed,
undressed, always with that curious attitude of nonparticipation, not
allowing me to lessen the invisible distance she kept from my kisses,
embraces, and affection, even though she surrendered her body to
me. It moved me to see her naked on the narrow bed in the corner of
the room where the ceiling sloped and the light from the single bulb
barely reached. She was very thin, with well-proportioned limbs and
a waist so narrow I thought I could have encircled it with my hands.
Under the small patch of hair on her pubis, the skin seemed lighter
than on the rest of her body. Her olive skin, with Oriental
reminiscences, was soft and cool. She allowed herself to be kissed
from head to toe, maintaining her usual passivity, and she heard,
like someone listening to the rain, Neruda's "Material nupcial,"
which I recited into her ear, along with my stammered words of
love: this was the happiest night of my life, I had never wanted
anyone the way I wanted her, I would always love her.
"Let's get under the blanket, it's very cold," she interrupted,
bringing me down to mundane reality. "It's a wonder you don't
freeze in here."
I was about to ask if she ought to take care of me, but I didn't,
confused by her attitude of self-assurance, as if she'd had centuries
of experience in these encounters and I was the novice. We made
love with difficulty. She gave herself without the slightest
embarrassment, but she was very narrow, and in each of my efforts
to penetrate she shrank back, grimacing in pain: "Slower, slower."
Finally, I did make love to her and was happy loving her. It was true
my greatest joy was to be there with her, it was true that in my few
and always fleeting affairs I'd never felt the combination of
tenderness and desire that she inspired in me, but I doubt this was
also the case for Comrade Arlette. Instead, throughout it all she gave
the impression of doing what she did without really caring about it.
The next morning, when I opened my eyes, I saw her at the foot
of the bed, washed and dressed and observing me with a look that
revealed a profound uneasiness.
"Are you really in love with me?"
I said I was, several times, and extended my hand to take hers,
but she didn't hold hers out to me.
"Do you want me to stay here and live with you, in Paris?" she
asked in the tone of voice she might have used to suggest going to
the movies to see one of the nouvelle vague films by Godard,
Truffaut, or Louis Malle, which were at the height of their
popularity.
Again I said yes, totally disconcerted. Did that mean the Chilean
girl had fallen in love with me?
"It isn't for love, why lie to you?" she replied coldly. "But I don't
want to go to Cuba, and I want to go back to Peru even less. I'd like
to stay in Paris. You can help me get out of my commitment to the
MIR. Talk to Comrade Jean, and if he releases me, I'll come and live
with you." She hesitated a moment and, with a sigh, made a
concession: "I might even end up falling in love with you."
On the ninth day I talked to fat Paul during our midday meeting,
this time at Le Cluny, with two croque monsieurs and two espressos
in front of us. He was categorical.
"I can't release her, only the MIR leadership could do that. But
even so, just proposing this would create a huge damn problem for
me. Let her go to Cuba, take the course, and demonstrate she's in no
physical or psychological condition for armed struggle. Then I could
suggest to the leadership that she stay here as my assistant. Tell her
that, and above all, tell her not to discuss this with anybody. I'm the
one who'd be fucked, mon vieux"
With an aching heart I went to tell Comrade Arlette Paul's
answer. And, worst of all, I encouraged her to follow his advice. Our
having to separate hurt me more than her. But we couldn't harm
Paul, and she had to avoid antagonizing the MIR because that could
cause her problems in the future. The course lasted a few months.
Right from the beginning she would need to demonstrate complete
ineptitude for guerrilla life and even pretend to faint. In the
meantime, here in Paris, I'd find work, rent a small apartment, and
be waiting for her...
"I know, you'll cry, you'll miss me, you'll think about me day and
night," she interrupted with an impatient gesture, her eyes hard and
her voice icy. "All right, I can see there's no other way. We'll see
each other in three months, Ricardito."
"Why are you saying goodbye now?"
"Didn't Comrade Jean tell you? I leave for Cuba early tomorrow,
by way of Prague. Now you can begin to shed your goodbye tears."
She did, in fact, leave the next day, and I couldn't go with her to
the airport because Paul forbade it. At our next meeting, the fat man
left me totally demoralized when he announced I couldn't write to
Comrade Arlette or receive letters from her because, for reasons of
security, the scholarship recipients had to cut off all communication
during training. Once the course had ended, Paul wasn't even sure if
Comrade Arlette would pass through Paris again on her way back to
Lima.
For days I was like a zombie, reproaching myself day and night
for not having had the courage to tell Comrade Arlette that in spite
of Paul's prohibition she should stay with me in Paris, instead of
urging her to go on with this adventure that would end only God
knew how. Until, one morning, when I left my garret to have
breakfast at the Cafe de la Marie on Place Saint-Sulpice, Madame
Auclair handed me an envelope with a UNESCO imprint. I had
passed the exam, and the head of the department of translators had
made an appointment with me at his office. He was a gray-haired,
elegant Spaniard whose family name was Charnes. He was very
amiable. He laughed readily when he asked me about my "long-term
plans" and I said, "To die of old age in Paris." There was no opening