The Sky Over Lima (7 page)

To improve their efforts, they consult a book entitled
Advice for a Young Novelist
, a seven-hundred-page tome that is rather short on advice and long on commandments and whose target audience seems to be not a young writer but an elderly scholar. The author, one Johannes Schneider, repeatedly employs the words
dissection
,
exhumation
,
analysis
, and
autopsy
. One could not ask for greater honesty, as indeed the book undertakes with Prussian rigor the task of dismembering World Literature, until everything extraordinary and beautiful in that genre is writhing under its scalpel. The boys take turns reading it aloud, but they always end up dozing off, unable to make it past the one hundred and fourteenth guideline. One inspired night, they decide to light the wood stove in the garret with its pages, timidly at first, but when they see it blaze up they can no longer hold back. Laughing wildly, they burn the seven hundred guidelines, page by page, in a celebration reminiscent of a pagan ritual, of a liberation from the old and the advent of the unknown: a new literature that will have no pages with which to warm oneself, only events and endeavors that will make their mark on the flesh and memory of men. They contemplate this as the flames waver and tremble, and their laughter gradually dies out with them; somewhere the cat scampers and howls, and downstairs the Chinese tenants eat or dream or sing old songs about the Yellow River, or simply continue the business of living without thinking about anything, attempting to remain unaware that they are already starting to forget the faces of their mothers and wives.

◊

Perhaps it is too much to call them writers just because they've authored a few letters. It depends on how much importance we grant their correspondence, not to mention how seriously we take the craft of writing itself, which is not really a profession but something closer to an act of faith. The only thing we can know for sure is this: They believe they are writers. And just as with a hysterical pregnancy, when the body swells to harbor a child that will never be born, their position as hypothetical literary figures brings with it some of the same virtues and defects exhibited by actual writers.

And so it is that their first insecurities and fears arise, the welter of anxieties that every creator must inevitably encounter sooner or later. In the end, no author who isn't an idiot—though we mustn't discount the possibility that a good writer may be one—can blindly trust in something so fragile as words, which after all are the raw material of his work. And so both of them are afraid, but, as no two artists are entirely alike, their fears are quite different.

José fears, among other things, that Juan Ramón will find them out and stop writing letters; that Juan Ramón will not find out but even so will stop writing letters; that the men at the club would rather talk about Sandoval's strike than about their novel; that the Maestro is already engaged, or has a muse, or both; that though he and Carlos believe they are writing a set of letters on the level of Ovid's
Heroides
, in fact their work is fit only for a tawdry melodrama. Most of all, though, he is afraid that Juan Ramón will never write the poem for Georgina—or, worse still, that he will write it and it will be mediocre. To be frank, he is afraid the poem will be awful, a monstrosity, a literary abomination, and that, what's more, the ingrate will dedicate it to her; what good will it do to have authored a muse who inspires not ardent passions but wretched little verses dictated by piety, or boredom, or even friendship, which is what men always seem to talk about when they're really talking about women for whom they feel nothing?

Carlos, for his part, is not worried about the as-yet-unwritten poem. His fears are, in fact, just one alone: That Georgina will not be good enough. That after all the letters, after imagining her for so many sleepless nights, they will have managed to produce only a vulgar, insignificant woman, a woman incapable of piquing Juan Ramón's interest. That she is condemned forever to be a secondary character, one of the countless nondescript women they see pass by from their perch above the garret, nameless, pointless. Where are they going, and why would anyone care? His doubts are reinforced every time they receive a letter that is a little more ceremonious, a little stiffer than usual. How do they know Juan Ramón isn't writing a hundred letters just like these every day? One morning Carlos reads an article in the paper about the assembly lines that automobile manufacturers are starting to use in the United States, and that night he dreams about Juan Ramón sitting in his study, feverishly occupied in assembling polite clichés, sealing envelopes, and tweaking paragraphs that are repeated in identical form in letter after letter.

. . .
This morning I received your letter, which I found most charming, and I am sending you my book at once, regretting only that my verses cannot live up to all that you must have hoped they would be, Georgina/María/Magdalena/Francisca/Carlota
. . .

This is the core of his fear, if fear can have precise contours: that his Georgina will end up meaning more to him than she does to the Maestro.

◊

It doesn't matter who tells them about the scriveners in the Plaza de Santo Domingo. Whoever it is, in any case, quickly convinces them that it's the only place for them to go for help writing their novel. And that Professor Cristóbal, an expert in lovers' notes and epistolary courtship, is just the person they need.

If José and Carlos had seen the Professor pass by from their garret, with his shabby hat and his scribbler's gear on his back, they would have quickly declared him a secondary character. And they would have been right, at least as far as this story is concerned. But if daily life in Lima in 1904 had its own novel, let's say a volume of some four hundred pages, then Professor Cristóbal would certainly deserve a protagonist's role, if only for the secrets that have passed through his hands over the course of two decades. Not even all the priests in the city, compiling all the innumerable tales they've heard in their confessionals, could attain a clearer picture of their parishioners' consciences.

The lives of illustrious men begin with their birth and, in a sense, even earlier, with the feats of the ancestors who bestow upon them their last names and titles. Humble men, however, come into the world much later, once they have hands that are able to work and backs able to bear a certain amount of weight. Some—most—are never born at all. They remain invisible their whole lives, dwelling in miserable corners where History does not linger. You could say that Cristóbal was born at seventeen, when he was given a lowly position in a Lima notary office. All that preceded that moment—his childhood, his longings, the reasons for his indigent family's extraordinary determination to provide him with proper lessons in reading and writing—is a mystery. Or, rather, it would be a mystery if anyone took an interest in finding it out. But no one does; nobody cares. And so his biography begins there, in a dingy room piled with papers where the notary ordered him to steam codicils open and keep certain bits of money apart from the rest of the accounting. Like any newborn, Cristóbal obeyed in silence, not questioning the world around him. We know as little about what passed through his head during this period as we do about what took place before his birth.

In 1879 Professor Cristóbal was called to the front to serve as an infantryman in Arauca during the disastrous war against Chile. At the time, of course, he hadn't yet acquired his nickname. And the war against the Chileans still seemed less like a catastrophe and more like a sporting event or a hunting party, a long pilgrimage made so that the young men could wear trim uniforms with epaulets and have their cries of
Long live this
and
Down with that
ring out across the countryside. With the first shots fired came a number of bitter revelations. After a couple of days of combat, the uniforms were soiled with mire and blood, and the young men no longer seemed so young, and it was those newly fledged men, not ideas or nations, who began to die in the dusty ditches. Many of them were no doubt still virgins, which for some reason Cristóbal found saddest of all. That and the fact that his illiterate comrades, which was most of them, didn't even have the consolation of reading their loved ones' letters before they died. One day, upon hearing the dying wishes of a brother-in-arms, Cristóbal agreed to take dictation as the young man bade his mother farewell. On another occasion he helped his sergeant craft a marriage proposal to his wartime pen pal, and before he knew it he was earning his service pay writing the private correspondence of half the company. He was even made Captain Hornos's personal assistant, a promotion that had a good deal to do with the six sweethearts the captain had left behind in Lima, women who required daily appeasement with promises and poetry.

The war didn't last long. Or, rather, what began as a war and lasted a mere four years on the battlefield became a humiliating loss that would haunt Peruvians' memory for decades. When Cristóbal—now known as Professor Cristóbal—returned to Lima, he did not want to go back to his position in the notary office. It was, it seems, a question of ethics—no more falsified wills for him, no more perjuries to assist the head notary's accumulation of wealth—though, in fact, the matter remains somewhat muddled, as at the time the Professor was really too poor to have principles. What he did have, though, was the firm intention never to serve another master again, and so he began working under the arcades in the Plaza de Santo Domingo.

The letter writers have no superiors and no fixed schedules. In pompous moments, they call themselves public secretaries, a solemn way of saying that they don't even have their own offices, or rather that their offices and the street are one and the same. They occupy a corner under the arches in the square, and there, each morning, they set up their ramshackle desks and wait for customers to come in search of their services. They are sometimes called evangelists because, like the evangelists of the New Testament, their work is to transcribe the words dictated to them by others. And that is all they do from morning to night, at the foot of the columns around the plaza: write letters for the unlettered. They provide a voice to the emigrant who wants to send news home—
Mother, you wouldn't believe how big Juanito's gotten
. They provide eyes to the illiterate young woman who needs to read the note someone slipped under her door. They provide elegant words to the widow or bureaucrat writing to the government to request a pension or a particular post in the provinces.

Professor Cristóbal set up his supplies in an unoccupied corner of the square, and soon that empty space belonged to him so wholly that he even nailed a hook for his hat and jacket into one of the pillars. He has a school desk, its surface marred by scratches and dents, and for twenty years he has arranged the same objects on it, always in the same order: inkwell, pen, penholder, drafting triangles, blotting paper. He also has a case that once contained a Singer sewing machine and now serves as a footstool and occasionally as a storage box where he can keep a few coins. And, finally, there's a portrait of his dead wife, to whom he probably never wrote a single letter or poem.

He accepts only commissions for sentimental correspondence. A cardboard sign on the table states it quite clearly:
PROFESSOR CRISTÓBAL: LOVE LETTERS WRITTEN ON REQUEST
. But the category of love is broad enough to include the old woman who has visited him every Monday for twelve years to have him write a new petition for pardon for her imprisoned son, letters that, Cristóbal would argue, are charged with as much emotion as the most passionate romance. Dozens of customers line up in front of his desk every day, wringing their hands as they wait, or rolling their eyes, or fulfilling some other cliché of their condition, because the lovers of Lima are as unoriginal as those anywhere else in the world. It is not only the illiterate who come to him. He also helps young people who need gallant phrases with which to woo the objects of their affection. In those instances, Cristóbal is not merely an evangelist but also a poet who must imagine what the recipient of the letter is like and then compose verses to which the aspirants contribute only the wordless fever of love.

When he finishes, he places all his drafts and abortive attempts in a wicker basket, to be used later to feed the wood stove in his kitchen. He jokes about it frequently, saying that all winter long he is warmed by the love of strangers. Romance provides only an ephemeral light, one that burns quickly but leaves behind neither heat nor embers.

◊

At first they don't see anything remarkable. Just a gray-haired, bespectacled old man who doesn't even lift his eyes from his papers when their turn comes.

“Good morning, Dr. Professor.”

“Just call me Professor, if you please.”

“We've come to consult with you about a problem, Professor.”

Still without looking at them, Cristóbal spoke again.

“I'll bet you have. And I'll bet your problem wears a skirt and a bodice.”

José smiles a bit late.

“Don't forget the petticoats, Professor.”

At that, Cristóbal looks up. The pause lasts only an instant, but in that instant his gaze seems to take everything in. The imported suits. The silver knob on Carlos's walking stick. The gold cufflinks.

“Expensive petticoats, from the looks of it.” Then he interlocks his fingers and rests his chin on them. “Let me guess. A little young lady from . . . La Punta or Miraflores, but I'd say it's more likely she's from Miraflores. No older than twenty. Quite beautiful. Regular features, shapely, delicate ears, velvety skin, winsome eyes . . .”

José arches his eyebrows.