The Way to Paradise

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  After the equatorial heat and a few weeks of dead calm and good weather, in which your seasickness subsided and the voyage became more bearable—you were able to devour the books by Voltaire, Victor Hugo, and Sir Walter Scott that you had brought with you—the Mexicain faced the worst part of its journey: Cape Horn. To round it in July or August was to risk shipwreck at any moment. The gale-force winds seemed to strive to toss the ship against the mountains of ice that loomed to meet them, and snow and hail fell, inundating the cabins and the hold. Day and night they lived half-frozen and in terror. Flora couldn’t sleep for fear of drowning in those terrible weeks, and she admired the way the officers and sailors of the Mexicain, Chabrié first among them, managed to be everywhere at once, hoisting or lowering the sails, bailing water, protecting the machines, and repairing damages for twelve or fourteen hours straight without resting or eating. Most of the crew had little warm clothing. The sailors shivered with cold and were often overcome by fever. There were accidents—an engineer slipped from the mizzenmast and broke his leg—and a skin infection causing itching and boils swept half the ship. When they were at last around the cape and the ship began to sail up the coast of South America through the waters of the Pacific, toward Valparaíso, Captain Chabrié held a ceremony in which he gave thanks to God for bringing them through their trials alive. With the exception of Alfred David, who declared himself agnostic, passengers and crewmen hung on the captain’s words. Flora did too. Until Cape Horn, you had never felt so close to death, Andalusa.

  It was precisely that ceremony and the heartfelt prayers of Zacharie Chabrié that she was thinking of when it occurred to her to spend her few free hours one morning in Avignon on a visit to the old church of Saint-Pierre. The citizens of Avignon considered it one of the jewels of the city. Mass was being held, and Flora sat on a bench at the back of the nave in order not to disturb the faithful. Soon she felt hungry—because of her intestinal troubles, her meals were frugal—and since she had a roll in her pocket, she took it out and began to eat it, discreetly. Her discretion didn’t do her much good, because almost immediately she was surrounded by a chorus of furious women with kerchiefs on their heads and missals and rosaries in their hands, who scolded her for disrespecting a sacred place and offending the worshipers during Holy Mass. She explained that it hadn’t been her intent to offend anyone, that she had to eat something when she was tired because she had a stomach ailment. Instead of placating them, her explanations irritated them even more, and several of them began to call her “Jew,” or “blasphemous Jew,” in French and Provençal. Finally she left the church to keep the altercation from getting out of hand.

  Was the incident she was subjected to the next day as she entered a weavers’ workshop the result of what had happened in the church of Saint-Pierre? Blocking her way menacingly at the door to the workshop was a group of female workers, or the wives and relatives of workers, to judge by the extreme poverty of their attire. Some were barefoot. Flora’s attempts to talk to them and discover why they were displeased with her, why they wanted to keep her from entering the workshop to meet with the weavers, were fruitless. The women, gesticulating furiously and shouting in a mix of French and the regional tongue, drowned her out. In the end, she managed more or less to understand them. They were afraid that their husbands would lose their jobs because of her, or that they might even be sent to prison. Some even screamed “Seductress!” and “Whore, whore!” shaking their fists at her. The two men who were accompanying her, disciples of Agricol Perdiguier, advised her to cancel her meeting with the weavers. With tempers at such a pitch, a physical attack couldn’t be ruled out. If the police came, Flora would take the blame.

  She opted instead to visit the papal palace, now turned into a barracks. She had no interest in the ponderous, ostentatious building, and even less in the paintings by Devéria and Pradier that adorned its massive walls—when one was fighting a war against society’s ills there wasn’t much time or energy to spare for the appreciation of art—but she was captivated by Madame Gros-Jean, the old doorkeeper who led visitors around the palace that so resembled a prison. Fat, blind in one eye, bundled up in blankets despite the fierce summer heat that made Flora sweat, full of energy, and a ceaseless talker, Madame Gros-Jean was a fanatical monarchist. Her commentary served as a pretext for her rant against the Great Revolution. According to her, all of France’s misfortunes had begun in 1789, with those godless demons the Jacobins, especially the monstrous Robespierre. With macabre relish and violent condemnation, she listed the black deeds of the Robespierrian bandit Jourdan, dubbed the Beheader, who personally beheaded eighty-six martyrs in Avignon, and wanted to demolish this very palace. Fortunately, God hadn’t let him and instead caused Jourdan to end his days on the guillotine. When Flora, just to see the look on the doorkeeper’s face, said suddenly that the Great Revolution was the best thing to happen to France since the time of Saint Louis, and the most important event in human history, Madame Gros-Jean had to clutch a column, struck dumb by shock and indignation.

  The last stretch of the Mexicain’s trip, along the South American coast, was the least unpleasant. Living up to its name, the Pacific Ocean was always calm, and Flora could read in greater tranquillity, not just her own books but those in the ship’s little library, which held authors like Lord Byron and Chateaubriand, whom she read now for the first time. As she did, she took notes, studying diligently and discovering riveting ideas on every page. She also discovered the lapses in her education. But you had not really had an education, had you, Florita? That, not André Chazal, was your life’s tragedy. What kind of education did women receive, even today? Would those women at Saint-Pierre have called you Jew, or the women at the weavers’ workshop accused you of being a whore, if they had received an education worthy of the name? That was why the obligatory Workers’ Union schools for women would revolutionize society.

  The Mexicain dropped anchor in the port of Valparaíso 133 days after setting sail from Bordeaux, almost two months behind schedule. Valparaíso was a single long street, running parallel to the black sand beaches that lined the coast, and on it a multifarious crowd bustled, in which all the peoples of the planet seemed to be represented, to judge by the variety of languages that were spoken besides Spanish: English, French, Chinese, German, Russian. The city was the gateway to South America for all the world’s merchants, mercenaries, and adventurers who came to make their fortunes on the continent.

  Captain Chabrié helped her settle in a boardinghouse run by a Frenchwoman, Madame Aubrit. Her arrival caused a stir in the small port city. Everyone knew her uncle, Don Pío Tristán, the richest and most powerful man in the south of Peru, who for a while had been exiled here in Valparaíso. The news of the arrival of Don Pío’s French niece—and she was from Paris, too!—threw the city into tumult. In the three first days, Flora had to resign herself to receiving a constant stream of visitors. The important families wanted to pay their regards to Don Pío’s niece, each swearing that they were acquainted with Don Pío; at the same time, they wanted to see with their own eyes whether what legend said of Parisian women—that they were beautiful, elegant, and wanton—was really true.

  With their visits came a piece of news that dropped on Flora like a bomb. Her old grandmother, Don Pío’s mother, upon whom she had rested her hopes for being recognized and taken in by the family, had died in Arequipa on April 7, 1833, the same day Flora had turned thirty, the same day she had boarded the Mexicain. An inauspicious beginning to your South American adventure, Andalusa. Seeing her turn pale, Chabrié consoled her as best he could. Flora was going to seize the chance to tell him that she was too upset to give an answer to his offer of marriage, but he, guessing what she was about to say, wouldn’t let her speak.

  “No, Flora, don’t say a thing. Not yet. This isn’t the moment to discuss such an important matter. Continue your trip; go on to Arequipa to meet your family; settle your affairs. I’ll come see you there, and then you can let me know your decisio
n.”

  When Flora left Avignon for Marseille on July 18, 1844, she was more cheerful than she had been during her first few days in the papal city. She had established a Workers’ Union committee of ten members—textile workers, railroad workers, and a baker—and attended two intense secret meetings with the Carbonarists, who, despite having been brutally suppressed, were still active in Provence. Flora explained her ideas to them, congratulated them on their courageous defense of their republican ideals, but managed to exasperate them by saying that it was childish foolishness to form secret societies; these were romantic fantasies as outdated as the Icarian plan to found a paradise in America. The fight had to be joined in the full light of day, in view of the whole world, here and everywhere, so that the ideas of the revolution would reach every worker and peasant—all of those who were exploited, without exception—because only they, by rising up, could transform society. The Carbonarists listened, taken aback. Some harshly reproached her for offering criticism no one had asked for. Others seemed impressed by her audacity. “After your visit, perhaps we Carbonarists will have to revise our prohibition on accepting women into our society,” said their leader, Monsieur Proné, as he bade her farewell.

  10

  NEVERMORE

  PUNAAUIA, APRIL 1897

  When Pau’ura told him that she was pregnant, at the end of May 1896, Koké thought little of it. And neither did his vahine; in typical Maori fashion, she accepted her pregnancy with neither joy nor bitterness, but placid fatalism. It had been a terrible time for him, with the return of his sores, the pains in his ankle, and his financial woes after the last cent of Uncle Zizi’s inheritance was spent. But Pau’ura’s pregnancy coincided with a change in his luck. Just as the sores on his legs were beginning to heal again, he received a remittance of fifteen hundred francs from Daniel de Monfreid. Ambroise Vollard had sold a few canvases and a sculpture, at last.

  “Ever since they learned I was going to be the father of a Tahitian, the Arioi have decided to protect me. From now on, with the help of the gods of this land, all will be well,” said Paul, half in jest and half seriously, to the ex-soldier Pierre Levergos, a Frenchman who, after turning in his uniform, had settled on a small orchard on the outskirts of Punaauia and sometimes came to smoke a pipe or drink rum with Paul.

  And all was well, for a while. With money and somewhat improved health—though he knew his ankle would always trouble him, and he would limp for the rest of his life—he could, after paying his debts, once again buy the casks of wine that sat greeting visitors at the door of his hut, and organize those Sunday meals at which the pièce de résistance was a runny, almost liquid omelet that he made himself with all the fanfare of a master chef. The parties again provoked the wrath of Punaauia’s Catholic priest and Protestant minister, but Paul paid them no heed.

  He was in good humor, cheerful, and, to his own surprise, moved to see how his vahine’s waist and belly had begun to thicken. In her first few months, the girl suffered none of the nausea and vomiting that had accompanied all of Mette Gad’s pregnancies. On the contrary, Pau’ura went about her usual routine as if she hadn’t even noticed there was a being germinating inside her. Beginning in September, when her belly began to swell, she acquired a kind of placidity, a cadenced slowness. She spoke slowly, breathed deeply, moved her hands in slow motion, and walked with her feet far apart so she wouldn’t lose her balance. Koké spent much time watching her surreptitiously. When he saw her breathe deeply, bringing her hands to her belly, as if trying to feel the baby’s heartbeat, he was overcome by an unfamiliar feeling: tenderness. Were you getting old, Koké? Maybe. Could a savage be stirred by the universally shared experience of paternity? Yes, evidently, since you were excited about this child of your seed that would soon be born.

  His state of mind was reflected in five paintings that he finished quickly, all on the subject of motherhood: Te arii vahine (The Noblewoman), No te aha oe riri (Why Are You Angry?), Te tamari no atua (The Son of God), Nave nave mahana (Delightful Day), and Te rerioa (The Dream). Paintings in which you scarcely recognized yourself, Koké, since in them life showed itself without drama, tensions, or violence; apathy and tranquillity reigned in sumptuously colored landscapes, and human beings seemed mere reflections of the paradisiacal vegetation. The work of a contented artist!

  The baby, a girl, was born three days before Christmas 1896, at sunset, the birth attended by the village midwife in the hut where they lived. It was a delivery without complications, the sound of the children of Punaauia practicing Christmas carols at the Protestant and Catholic churches in the background. Koké and Pierre Levergos celebrated the event with glasses of absinthe, sitting outside, singing Breton songs accompanied by the painter on his mandolin.

  “A raven,” said Koké suddenly. He stopped playing, and pointed into the big mango tree nearby.

  “There are no ravens in Tahiti,” the ex-soldier exclaimed, surprised, jumping up to see. “No ravens and no snakes, either. Maybe you didn’t know?”

  “It is a raven,” Koké insisted. “I’ve seen many in my life. At Marie Henry’s house—the Doll’s house—in Le Pouldu, one came to sleep on my windowsill every night, to warn me of some misfortune I couldn’t fathom. We became friends. That bird is a raven.”

  But they couldn’t settle the matter beyond a doubt, because as they approached the mango tree, the dark shape took flight, its winged shadow vanishing.

  “The raven is a bird of ill omen, as I know very well,” said Koké. “The one in Le Pouldu came to bring me tidings of a tragedy. This one has come with news of another catastrophe. My eczema will return, or this hut will be struck by lightning in the next storm and burn down.”

  “It was another kind of bird, who can say what kind,” maintained Pierre Levergos. “No raven has ever been seen on Tahiti, or Moorea, or any of these islands.”

  Two days later, as Koké and Pau’ura were arguing over where to take the baby to be baptized—she wanted the Catholic church, but he didn’t, because Father Damian was a worse enemy than Reverend Riquelme, who was more tractable—the child stiffened, began to turn blue as if she couldn’t breathe, and lay still. When they reached the clinic in Punaauia, she was already dead, “of a congenital defect in the respiratory system,” according to the death certificate signed by the public health official.

  They buried the child in the Punaauia cemetery, with no religious ceremony. Pau’ura didn’t cry, not that day or any of the following days, and little by little she resumed her daily life, never mentioning her dead daughter. Paul didn’t speak of her either, but he thought day and night about what had happened. The reflection began to torment him as the Portrait of Aline Gauguin had months before, the whereabouts of which he had never discovered.

  You thought about the dead child, and the sinister bird—it was a raven, you were sure of it, no matter how many times natives and colonists assured you that there were no ravens in Tahiti. The winged silhouette stirred up old memories from a time that now seemed impossibly distant, though it wasn’t so long ago. In the modest library of the Military Club of Papeete, and in Auguste Goupil’s private library—the only collection worthy of the name on the island—he tried to find some publication in which the French translation of “The Raven,” by Edgar Allan Poe, might appear. You had heard the poem read aloud by the translator, your friend the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, in his house on the rue de Rome, at those Tuesday gatherings you once attended. You vividly recalled slim, elegant Stéphane’s description of the grim period of Poe’s life in which—ravaged by alcohol, drugs, hunger, and family troubles in Philadelphia—he wrote the first version of the text. In Stéphane’s translation, so stark and at once so harmonious, sensual, and macabre, Poe’s tremendous poem pierced you to the marrow, Paul. After the reading you were inspired to do a portrait of Mallarmé, in homage to the man who had been capable of rendering Poe’s masterwork so cleverly in French. But Stéphane didn’t like the painting. Maybe he was right; maybe you hadn’t managed to
capture his elusive poet’s face.

  At the farewell dinner his friends had held for him at the Café Voltaire on March 23, 1891, on the eve of his first trip to Tahiti—it was hosted by Stéphane Mallarmé himself—he remembered that the poet read two translations of “The Raven,” his own and that of the fearsome poet Baudelaire, who boasted of having spoken with the devil. Later, in thanks for the portrait, Stéphane gave Paul a signed copy of the small private edition of his translation, published in 1875. Where was that little book? He searched through his chest of odds and ends but couldn’t find it. Which of your friends had taken it? On which of your innumerable moves had you lost the poem you now urgently wanted to read again, as urgently as you craved alcohol and laudanum when your pains returned? The discouraging memory of your failed attempts to recover your mother’s portrait kept you from begging your friends to search for Stéphane’s book.