The Sky Over Lima

by Juan Gómez Bárcena

  No, she’s not superstitious. But she smiles to discover that there’s no one in the rooms on the second floor. And so she goes down to the bottom floor. She pushes open the only door that’s ajar. And on the other side is the young gentleman, who abruptly drops his hat and lunges at her. It is such an unexpected movement that she instinctively closes her eyes, as if bracing for a blow. But it’s not a blow. It’s a frenzied kiss, one that tastes of alcohol and fever and blood. It takes her a moment to react. Could the gesture mean more than the words he isn’t saying? Is God keeping up His end of the bargain? She doesn’t know. She only feels her body go weak when he begins to press against her, furiously fumbling at the laces of her bodice. For the first time, the young gentleman’s hands aren’t shaking. Indeed, they are quite steady as he takes her in his arms and drops her onto the bed. A little rough, perhaps. The prince would never have done such a thing, but of course she is not an odalisque of the southern seas but just another tart on Calle del Panteoncito.

  She thinks that—just another tart—and the word won’t go away. Tart, while the young gentleman tears at the seams of her dress. Tart when he pulls up her skirt to cover her face. Her, the tart, her legs forced open under the weight of his body. She’s supposed to wash her customers’ cocks in the basin, it’s the house rule, but before she can say anything, he is already inside her, violently driving into her. If she could move her hands . . . but she can’t, because the young gentleman is holding them down. If she could speak . . . but she tries, and the young gentleman—gentleman?—screams at her to shut up, just shut up, you tart. Her, the tart. If she could see—but she can only feel the white gauze of the dress covering her face, the stifling humidity of her own breath. Through the fabric she hears Carlos’s animal panting, his hot gasps and hoarse grunts. If only it hurt a little, but there’s not even that. She barely feels him moving inside her, and that’s the most absurd, horrible part of all. He’s just another customer, murmuring the same old filthy words in her ear, crushing her with his body and digging his fingers into her flesh. Is it really him? He could be anybody. At the very least he’s as repellent as all the others, his movements produce the same nausea, the same need to fly far away in her thoughts. To fly—but where? She has nowhere left: he is not waiting for her in a distant palace with a turban and beautiful poems but instead is right here, holding down her wrists so fiercely that it hurts.

  She has stopped struggling to get free, stopped trying to uncover her face. There is nothing she can say, nothing she can do. She knows that the way to make this finish as soon as possible is to stay very quiet. And since there is no longer any prince to dream of, she finds herself thinking about everything else. About the window bars. About the bed she shares with Mimí and Cayetana, and Madame Lenotre’s account book, and the pieced-together portrait stored under the straw mattress. And she understands for the first time that she will never leave that house, never finish paying off her debts, never see her mother again the way she was in that photograph. She feels an urge to shout. To put her lips close to that body jerking inside her and howl her own name, to shout it out at the top of her lungs so that the stranger hears it, so that he never forgets it. To tell him that she too exists, that she’s there right now. But at the last moment her voice freezes up inside her. The man’s breath gets faster, grows hoarse and staccato—in the end, he’s the one shouting. And she, her mouth still open, murmurs the only words that men want to hear from her lips.

  “Oh, like that, you strong man.

  “Like that, you stud.

  “Like that, faster, harder, deeper—like that. Yes, like that.”

  IV

  A Poem

  ◊

  The novel ends right where its authors leave it—that is to say, one night in the final weeks of 1905. At least that’s what they will believe for the next fifteen years: that they have written a tragedy, and that their tragedy ends with Georgina dying. They are mistaken, but that’s no surprise, as they were never great writers, and perhaps not even good readers. They have not realized that something is still missing, an epilogue that shows up late, when no one is waiting for it anymore. And after that, it’s done.

  It is 1920. Up until very recently, the world seemed to be living out a tragedy worthy of the pages of their novel. In addition to Georgina’s death there was also the Archduke Ferdinand’s, and then the fifteen million dead of the Great War; the massacres of the February and October revolutions; the Spanish flu and its seventy million victims; the execution of Czar Nicholas, the czarina, their five children, and their four servants. But something seems to have changed now. There is no more flu, no more war, no more revolution or counterrevolution. There are even those who claim that the young Princess Anastasia is still alive, hidden away somewhere in Russia. It is not a question of reviving Georgina too—at this point, Georgina is as dead as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But at the very least it is a sign that no catastrophe is absolute, that even in the greatest tragedies there is room for mercy or hope.

  If the ending of their novel is not a tragedy, then what is it?

  The ending is a poem. But it is also a conversation, a reencounter in a café on Calle Belaochaga. A café that did not exist fifteen years earlier. Because Lima has changed a great deal, and José and Carlos have changed along with it. They are fatter, older, better dressed. Time has made them the same in a way, and now it is difficult to tell them apart. Indeed, it is impossible. They are sitting together in a private room in the café, shielded behind identical smiles, and it is impossible to tell which of them is asking the other about his business affairs, which one is answering that he’s muddling along as usual, just muddling along.

  Or maybe it is possible to tell them apart, and the problem is that the distinction no longer matters. That José and Carlos not only look alike but in fact have become the same person.

  But they do not speak or smile with ease. They address each other with the somewhat brusque air of people who do not see each other often. As if this conversation were not the product of an encounter dictated by friendship or chance but a meeting carefully arranged after a lengthy silence. That might be precisely what is happening: that they haven’t spoken in fifteen years or seen each other in nearly nine. And now they have to sum up those years in a few minutes, in a few lines. The answers are as predictable as the questions. They are both married. They both have children. The way they refer to them, the way they describe them in a few sentences, one might think they were talking about the same people. That they have married the same wife and raised the same children. This is not the case, of course; each of them has his own family, his own longings, his own secrets and sorrows, but neither is going to say that. After all, people are members of the bourgeoisie not so much because of what they say aloud but because of what they keep quiet. The vast swath of themselves that they have learned to mask behind a discreet, decorous silence.

  One might say, in fact, that up until now they haven’t talked about anything. That everything worth saying, everything they want to hear from each other, has been hidden beneath a veil. And so it is for the next few minutes, as they idly inquire about the people they knew fifteen years ago. Like two old friends trying to catch up on each other’s lives. Or like a couple of mediocre writers who can’t figure out any better way to mention their novel’s secondary characters one last time. What ever happened to Sandoval? asks one of them, and the other replies that for a few years he was starting up and shutting down newspapers, calling for and calling off strikes, and is now running a doomed campaign for the legislature. But that in the end that nonsense about the eight-hour workday actually came through and has just been passed by the parliament—who would have thought it. And their professors? Most of them retired or dead. And Professor Cristóbal? Who knows. They know only that he no longer comes to the plaza to write—there are fewer and fewer people who need letters written for them, and even fewer who fall in love. Because that’s what getting older means: meeting fewer and fewer people
who are in love.

  And what about the other destitute poets? They’ve had some news of all them, all of it good. What’s more, they no longer have to pretend to be poor—they only have to pretend to be happy. Their fathers? Here the balance is unequal: one is dead, the other still alive. They don’t bother asking after each other’s mothers, who never figured prominently in the novel to begin with. And finally they talk a long while about their business affairs, the companies they head, as if, in a way, the two of them were also characters. But now they’re no longer secondary. Now the plush offices, the stocks and bank drafts, the deals struck at galas and cabarets, the trips to the estate, seem to fill everything, to take center stage.

  Then, all at once, the conversation collapses. Their relationship is paralyzed, nearly dead, sustainable only through endless questions and answers, sips from their coffee cups and drags on their cigarettes, cardboard smiles that make their faces ache. The coffee runs out. They must decide whether to order something else or take advantage of the empty cups to make their excuses and go their separate ways. One of them even starts to make that gesture, to say goodbye, but the other remains seated. He must do one more thing: pull out a book of poetry. Their novel cannot end until he does that: opens the book of poems and places it on the table.

  “A gift,” he says, with the hint of a smile.

  And that is enough. The title of the book, in a mute shout, says the rest.

  Labyrinth.

  Juan Ramón Jiménez.

  He picks up the book cautiously, without asking any questions. And as he flips through it, the other offers irrelevant explanations. That it was published in Spain in 1913. That the Great War had prevented any copies from reaching Peru until now. That it was difficult, incredibly difficult, to find.

  All of a sudden, the rapid turning of pages ceases.

  It is called “Letter to Georgina Hübner in the Sky over Lima.” It is a long poem that takes up three pages, but he manages to read only the title. The rest he takes in all at once, in an instant, as effortlessly as one might contemplate a landscape. First the title and then the ending too, because the last line has a question mark that automatically draws his attention, a rhetorical question—rhetorical?—that he reads once, twice, three times.

  Then he looks down at the blank space that comes after the last line. It is an empty void and yet he stares at it as if it contained something more important than the poem itself, a silence that is somehow the answer to the question he cannot get out of his head. Then he slowly pushes the book away.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?” the other asks. He gives a forced smile, out of a mutual understanding that no longer exists.

  No, he’s not going to read it. He understands a number of things all at the same time, and that is one of them. He will not read it, not ever. He also knows or thinks he knows that they must be very beautiful verses, perhaps the best that Juan Ramón has ever written. Worse still, he knows that the poem that does not belong to them, the poem he’s not going to read, is better than they themselves will ever be. That it is worth more than their wives and children, more than their factories, than the contract to bring Chilean nitrate to market, than their summer residences, their mistresses, their pasts and futures. He understands all that in an instant, just by looking at the last stanza.

  He doesn’t know what to say. And yet something must be said—anything at all—even if it’s inappropriate, even if it will never be as beautiful as what Juan Ramón has written in his poem. For example, he could tell his friend—friend?—that over time he has almost entirely forgotten the women they seduced back then, the games they used to play to amuse themselves, the poems they wrote or read together, the voice of his dead father, but that nevertheless he remembers Georgina’s face in the minutest detail. But he cannot tell him that, because it would be, in some way, like starting the novel over again, and all he wants is to finish it once and for all. Close the book. Finally reach the last page, and then keep on living.

  And for that they need only to write the ending, an answer to the question that the Maestro poses in his poem. And he decides to do that right there, in that blank space, just below the final line: Carlos Rodríguez. A slow, laborious signature that tears at the paper, as if instead of scrawling his name he were carving an epitaph. And in spite of everything, José doesn’t understand at first, and Carlos has to explain it to him again, once, twice, attempting to pass him the pen, to hand back the book: It’s our life, he says, this is the best thing we’ve ever done, the best thing we’ll ever do, so now we’re going to sign it. It seems like a joke, and when he hears it, José laughs. But it’s not a joke, it’s the ending to their novel—quite a serious matter—and when he finally understands, his expression grows sober, concentrated. He, too, takes a long time to sign his name. He, too, is careful to make it a good signature, the one he uses for checks and formal documents.

  Then they pay the bill and walk together three or four blocks to the corner where their paths diverge. Maybe they chat about something else before saying goodbye. They may try to lighten the dramatic tone of their parting, the solemnity of their names interwoven on the page of the book of poems. They will spend the rest of their lives doing that: pretending that the ending has not yet arrived, that a great many things are still to come, that what succeeds that poem and that novel still matters. But they will do all that on their own, once more on their own. Because when the last chapter is over, they will never see each other again. That, then, is their ending: a poem, two signatures, a farewell.

  ◊

  They part on the very corner in San Lázaro where their garret once stood. Like all coincidences, this one is meaningless, but on his way home Carlos amuses himself by coming up with different explanations.

  It is a new brick building with freshly painted bars on the windows and electrical wires running up the walls. He stops and looks at a particular spot on its façade. A place where, in fact, there is nothing to see, somewhere between the third and fourth floors. His memory has to painstakingly rebuild the rest: a crumbling attic, a roof with splintering rafters, a window. Two young men looking down from on high. And it seems to him that if his nearsighted eyes were twenty years old again, he would be able to see their hats and bow ties, all from another era, and, of course, their ridiculous mustaches; and that if it weren’t for the automobiles and the honking horns, he could even make out what the two men are saying to each other.

  “And what about that fellow?”

  “Which one?”

  “The fat one . . . the one looking up at us. The one stopped in the middle of the street, carrying a book under his arm.”

  “Oh! Well . . . he looks like a portly millionaire out of a Dickens novel, don’t you think?”

  “To me he looks more like a bored middle-class man from one of Echegaray’s plays.”

  “Or a greedy landlord out of Dostoyevsky, with the addresses of all the tenants he’s going to evict written in that little book.”

  A silence.

  “Not at all! Take a good look. Now that I observe him more closely, I think he’s really just a secondary character . . .”

  And down there on the sidewalk, the millionaire, the landlord, the secondary character, looks back at them and smiles.

  Letter to Georgina Hübner

  in the Sky over Lima

  JUAN RAMÓN JIMÉNEZ

  The Peruvian consul tells me: “Georgina Hübner is dead . . .”

  . . . Dead! Why? How? On what day?

  What golden rays, departing from my life one eventide,

  would have burnished the splendor of your hands,

  so sweetly crossed upon your quiet breast

  like two lavender lilies of love and sentiment?

  . . . Now your back has felt the white casket,

  your thighs are now forever shut,

  and in the tender green of your new-dug grave

  the sinking sun will set the hummingbirds aflame . . .

  La Punta is
much colder and lonelier now

  than when you saw it, fleeing from the tomb,

  those far-off afternoons when your phantom told me:

  “So often have I thought of you, my dearest friend!”

  And I of you, Georgina? I cannot say what you were like—

  fair? demure? melancholy? I know only that my sorrow

  is a woman, just like you, who is seated,

  weeping, sobbing, beside my soul!

  I know that my sorrow writes in that graceful hand

  that soared across the sea from distant lands

  to call me “friend” . . . or something more . . . perhaps . . . a part

  of all that throbbed in your twenty-year-old heart!

  You wrote: “Yesterday my cousin brought your book to me.”

  Remember? Myself, gone pale: “A cousin? Who is he?”

  I longed to enter your life, to offer you my hand,

  noble as a flame, Georgina . . . In every ship

  that sailed, my wild heart went out in search of you . . .

  I thought I’d finally found you, pensive, in La Punta,

  with a book in your hand, just as you’d told me,

  dreaming among the flowers, casting a spell on my life!