The Way to Paradise

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “If I had intended to be prudent and moderate, I would never have set out on this tour,” Flora said, putting him in his place. “That’s what you’re here for. I’ve come to start a revolution, and I’ll have to tell some hard truths, that’s all there is to it. If it angers the authorities, it’ll improve my standing with the workers.”

  And it did anger the authorities, even before Flora opened her mouth in public. The day after her arrival, the commissioner of Toulon, a bearded man in his fifties who smelled of lavender, came to see her at her hotel and questioned her for half an hour about what she intended to do in the city. Any act that subverted public order would be vigorously punished, he warned her. Hours later, she received a summons from the King’s Counsel ordering her to appear at his office.

  “Tell your master I won’t go,” exploded Madame-la-Colère, indignant. “If I’ve committed a crime, let him have me arrested. But if all he wants is to intimidate me and make me waste my time, he won’t succeed.”

  The Counsel’s assistant, a well-mannered young man, looked at her with surprise and apprehension, as if this woman who was raising her voice and shaking a menacing index finger under his nose might proceed to physically attack him. Ten years ago, Florita, on a morning a few days after first meeting you, your uncle Pío Tristán looked at you with the same astonishment, bewilderment, and fright when the two of you finally addressed the thorny question of your inheritance, in the big house on Calle Santo Domingo in Arequipa. Don Pío, a slight, elegant, suave gentleman with blue eyes and gray hair, had prepared his arguments well. After a friendly preamble, he deluged you with Latinisms and legalese, informing you that since you were the illegitimate daughter of parents whose marriage had no verifiable legal status—as you had confessed in your letter to him—you couldn’t hope to receive a cent of his dear brother Mariano’s inheritance.

  Don Pío had been delayed three months in returning from his Camaná sugar refineries, as if he feared meeting his young niece from France. You, at first sight of this younger brother of your father, whose features reminded you so much of his, were moved to tears. You were still a sentimentalist, Andalusa. You threw your arms around your uncle, trembling, whispering that you wanted to love him and for him to love you; you were so happy to have recovered your father’s family, to once again enjoy the warmth and security you hadn’t known since your childhood in Vaugirard. You said it and you meant it, Florita! And your uncle seemed to be moved, too, embracing you and, his blue eyes clouded with emotion, murmuring, “Good Lord, but you’re the living image of my brother, child.”

  In the next few days, the old man, marvelously well preserved at the age of sixty-four—with an income of three hundred thousand francs, he was the richest of the rich in Arequipa—lavished attentions and affection on his niece. But when he at last consented to speak to her in private, and Flora explained her wish to be recognized as the legitimate daughter of Don Mariano and, as such, to receive an income of five thousand francs from her grandmother’s and father’s legacies, Don Pío was transformed into an icy juridical being, the unyielding representative of legal norms: the law was sacred and must prevail over feelings; if not, there would be no such thing as civilization. According to the law, Florita was owed nothing; if she didn’t believe him, she could consult any number of judges and lawyers. Don Pío had already done so, and he knew of what he spoke.

  Then Flora exploded in one of her rages, the kind that had just caused the young assistant of the King’s Counsel in Toulon to turn pale and depart, nearly fleeing. Ungrateful, ignoble, selfish man—was this how he repaid the efforts of Don Mariano, who had cared for him, protected him, and provided for his education in France? By taking advantage of his helpless daughter, refusing to recognize her rights, condemning her to a life of poverty, when he was an incredibly rich man? Flora’s voice rose to such a pitch that Don Pío, white as a sheet, dropped into an armchair. He seemed defeated and tiny in this room, whose walls were hung with portraits of his ancestors, high officials and court favorites of the colonial administration: magistrates, field marshals, bishops, viceroys, mayors, generals. Later, he confessed to Flora that it was the first time in his sixty-four years, whether inside or outside the family, that he had seen a woman forget her place and disrespect a paterfamilias. Was this common practice in France now?

  Flora burst out laughing. No, Uncle, she thought. Where women are concerned, customs in France are even more reactionary than they are in Arequipa.

  When her Saint-Simonian friends in Toulon heard about the visit from the commissioner and the summons from the Counsel, they were alarmed. Her hotel room would certainly be searched. Captain Joseph Corrèze hid in his house all of Flora’s papers having to do with the operations of the Workers’ Union in the provinces. But for some mysterious reason, there was no search and the King’s Counsel didn’t request Flora’s presence again on her visit.

  To distract her from these upsets, the Saint-Simonians took her to the port to watch the “sea jousting,” an annual entertainment attracting visitors to Toulon from every region of France, and even Italy. Perched on small platforms in the prows of boats that served as seagoing warhorses, two lancers armed with long, sharp-pointed poles and protected by wooden shields were propelled toward each other at full speed in a spirited charge by the dozen rowers in each boat. At the violent collision, one or often both of the lancers fell into the water, amid the roars of the crowd packed on the wharfs and the seaside promenade. After the show, the Saint-Simonians were rather irked when Flora informed them that what had struck her most was seeing that those poor men, attacking each other with lances to amuse the common folk and the bourgeoisie, were falling into filthy water, where the city’s sewers emptied. They would surely catch some disease.

  You had never liked mass entertainments, at which individuals, emboldened by the crowd, were turned into animals, losing control of their instincts and behaving like savages. That was why you were so deeply disgusted when Clemente Althaus took you to see the bullfights in Arequipa’s Plaza de Armas, and the cockfights at which throngs of frenzied men bet on the bleeding birds and urged them on. You went because it was your natural inclination to want to see and know everything, even though it meant you often swallowed some unpleasant drafts.

  Colonel Althaus, who claimed that he, too, was a victim of Don Pío’s greed, tried to console her—and to dissuade her from taking any legal action to secure recognition as a legitimate daughter. She would never find a good lawyer willing to stand up to the most powerful man in Arequipa, he assured her, nor a judge who would dare to declare Don Pío guilty of any crime. “This isn’t France, Florita! This is Peru!” Even the German cherished illusions of France’s superiority.

  And in fact, the half dozen lawyers you consulted were unequivocal: you hadn’t the slightest chance. By writing that naive letter to Don Pío in which you told him the truth about your parents’ marriage, you had sealed your own fate. You would never win the suit if you were so rash as to file it. Flora even consulted a radical lawyer who had been shunned by Arequipan society as a priest-baiter ever since he had dared, two years before, to defend the nun Dominga Gutiérrez, a scandal that was still furnishing grist for the city’s rumor mills. Young, ardent Mariano Llosa Benavides delivered the final blow: “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Doña Flora, but legally, you’ll never win this case. Even if your papers were in order and your parents’ marriage was legitimate, we’d lose it anyway. No one has ever won a lawsuit against Don Pío Tristán. Don’t you realize that one half of Arequipa owes him their livelihood, and the other half dreams of suckling from his teat, too? Although in theory we’re a republic now, the colony lives and thrives in Peru.”

  Brooding over her defeat, she had to give up her dreams of becoming a prosperous little bourgeoise. But wasn’t it all for the best, Flora? It was. And therefore, even though Arequipa had dashed so many of your hopes, you still harbored a stubborn fondness for that city of volcanoes. It was there your eyes were opened to
inequality, racism, the blindness and selfishness of the rich, and the inhumanity of religious fanaticism, the source of all oppression. The story of the nun Dominga Gutiérrez—a cousin of yours, of course, in this city of infinite silent acts of incest—disturbed, astounded, and outraged you. To understand the story, you had to ask a thousand questions. It was also necessary to know the convents, another feature of Arequipa, distinguished not only by its churches and houses of white sillar, its earthquakes, and its revolutions but by its reputation as the most Catholic city in Peru, America, and perhaps the entire world. And you determined to get to know them.

  With her tremendous force of will, powerful enough to move mountains, she begged, pleaded, and conspired with friends and relatives until Bishop Goyeneche gave her the necessary permission to visit Arequipa’s three main convents for cloistered nuns: Santa Rosa, Santa Teresa, and Santa Catalina. The last, where Flora spent five nights, was a small Spanish city hidden away in the center of Arequipa, behind fortified walls: exquisite little streets with Andalusian and Extremaduran names, peaceful squares riotous with carnations and rosebushes, tinkling fountains, and flocks of women circling through the refectories, oratories, recreation halls, chapels, and living quarters with gardens, terraces, and kitchens, where each nun had the right to keep four slaves and four servants cloistered with her.

  Flora couldn’t believe her eyes at the sight of such ostentation. She had never imagined that a convent would be the scene of such luxury. Besides the riches in art—paintings, sculptures, and tapestries; silver, gold, alabaster, and marble objects of worship—the cells were furnished with rugs and cushions, linen sheets, and embroidered coverlets. Refreshments and meals were served on dishes imported from France, Flanders, Italy, and Germany, with cutlery of chased silver. The nuns of Santa Catalina gave her a lively welcome. They were self-assured, cheerful, charming, and as feminine as it was possible to imagine. To learn “how the women in France dress,” they were not satisfied to have Flora take off her blouse and show them her corset and bodice; she had to remove her skirts and sash too, because they were itching with curiosity to touch a Frenchwoman’s intimate garments. Bright-red and mute with shame, Flora, in underthings and stockings, had to subject herself for some time to the nuns’ noisy scrutiny, until the prioress came to rescue her, herself shaking with laughter.

  She spent several instructive and certainly enjoyable days at the aristocratic convent, which only well-born novices, able to pay the high dowries demanded by the order, could enter. Despite the perpetual confinement and the long hours devoted to meditation and prayer, the nuns were never bored. The rigors of the cloister were leavened by its comforts and the nuns’ social activities: they spent a good part of the day feting one another, playing like children, or visiting in the little houses that the black and mixed-blood slaves and Indian servants kept immaculately clean. All the nuns she questioned in Santa Catalina firmly believed that Dominga Gutiérrez was possessed by the devil, and they all said that nothing so grotesque could ever have happened at Santa Catalina.

  It was, of course, at the convent of Santa Teresa that Dominga’s story took place. Run by the Discalced Carmelites, it was more austere and more rigorous than Santa Catalina. Flora spent four days and three nights there, too, stiff with anguish. Santa Teresa had three beautiful cloisters, with neatly clipped climbing vines, tuberoses, jasmine, and rose bushes as well as henhouses and an orchard that the nuns tended with their own hands. But the informal, worldly, playful, and frivolous atmosphere of Santa Catalina did not reign here. At Santa Teresa, no one enjoyed herself; all prayed, meditated, worked in silence, and suffered in body and soul for the love of God. In the tiny cells where the nuns were shut up to pray—they weren’t their bedrooms—there was no luxury or comfort, just naked walls, an ascetic straw-backed chair, a rough wooden table, and, hanging from a nail, the scourge with which the nuns flogged themselves to offer the sacrifice of their mortified flesh to the Lord. From her cell, Flora, horrified, could hear the cries that accompanied the nightly slap of the scourges, and understood what life must have been like for her cousin Dominga Gutiérrez in the ten years she spent here, from the time she was fourteen.

  That was how old she was when, at her mother’s insistence, and after a romantic disappointment—the young man she loved married someone else—she entered Santa Teresa as a novice. After just a few weeks, or maybe even a few days, she realized that she could never adapt to the regimen of sacrifice, extreme austerity, silence, and total isolation, in which one hardly slept, ate, or lived because every moment was devoted to praying, singing hymns, flagellation, confession, and working the earth with one’s own hands. Through the visiting-room screen, she begged and pleaded with her mother to remove her from the convent, but her entreaties were in vain. Her confessor’s arguments reinforced her mother’s, and confused Dominga: she must resist her impulses; the devil was trying to make her abandon her true religious vocation.

  A year later, after taking the vows that would bind her to this place and its routine until her death, Dominga heard—in the reading at a meal of a few pages from Saint Teresa’s Life—the story of a case of possession, of a nun from Salamanca who was inspired by the devil to devise a macabre strategy for fleeing the convent. Dominga, who had just turned fifteen, experienced a moment of illumination. So there was a way to escape, after all. In order to succeed, she had to proceed with infinite caution and patience. It took her eight years to carry out her plan. When you thought what those eight years must have been like for your cousin Dominga, years of plotting the complex scheme step by tiny step, taking infinite precautions, retreating each time she was overcome by fear of discovery, only to begin again the next day—tireless Penelope, weaving, unraveling, and weaving her shroud again—your heart seized. Visited by destructive urges, you dreamed of burning down convents and hanging or guillotining the fanatical oppressors of body and spirit who ran them, like the revolutionaries of 1789. Later, you repented of these secret massacres wrought by your indignation.

  At last, on March 6, 1831, at the age of twenty-three, Dominga Gutiérrez was able to execute her plan. The day before, two of her servants had procured the corpse of an Indian woman, with the complicity of a doctor at the San Juan de Dios Hospital. Under cover of night, they brought it in a sack to a shop rented for the purpose across from Santa Teresa. After the last stroke of midnight, they dragged it into the monastery through the main door, which was left open by the doorkeeper sister, who was also part of the scheme. There Dominga was waiting for them. She and the maids carried the body to the small niche where the nun slept. They dressed the Indian in Dominga’s habit and scapulars. Then they doused the body with oil and set fire to it, making sure that the flames ate away the face until it it was unrecognizable. Before they fled, they left the cell in disarray, to make the feigned accident seem more believable.

  From her hiding place in the rented room, Dominga Gutiérrez observed the funeral service celebrated by the nuns of Santa Teresa before they buried her in the cemetery next to the orchard. It had worked! The young ex-nun didn’t seek refuge at home, for fear of her mother, but at the house of an uncle and aunt who had been very fond of the girl. The couple, frightened by the responsibility, ran to tell Bishop Goyeneche the incredible story. Two years had passed since then, and the scandal still had not abated. Flora found the city divided between those who sympathized with Dominga and those who condemned her. Dominga herself, after being asked to leave her aunt and uncle’s house, had been given refuge by one of her brothers on a small farm in Chuquibamba, where she was living in a different sort of confinement while the legal and ecclesiastical actions against her took their course.

  Did she regret what she had done? Flora went to Chuquibamba to find out. After an arduous journey through the Andean highlands, she came to the simple little country house that served as a lay prison for Dominga. Her cousin received her unhesitatingly. She seemed far older than her twenty-five years. Suffering, fear, and uncertainty had disar
ranged her face with its chiseled features and high cheekbones; a nervous tremor shook her lower lip. She was dressed simply, in a flowered peasant’s dress fastened at the neck and wrists, and her hands were callused from working the earth, her fingernails cut short. There was something evasive and frightened in her deep, serious eyes, the foreboding of some catastrophe. She spoke softly, searching for her words, afraid of making a mistake that would aggravate her situation. At the same time, when she talked about her case, at Flora’s urging, she was firm in her resolve. She had gone about things wrong, undoubtedly. But what else could she have done to escape the imprisonment against which her mind and soul rebelled every second of her life? Succumb to despair? Go mad? Kill herself? Was that what God would have wanted? What saddened her most was that her mother had sent word to tell her that since her apostasy, Dominga was dead to her. What plans did she have? Her dream was that the whole process—the tangled cases before the courts and the curia—would come to an end, and she would be permitted to go and live in anonymity in Lima, in freedom, even if she had to work as a servant. When they parted, she whispered in Flora’s ear, “Pray for me.”

  What must Dominga Gutiérrez have done these past eleven years? Would she at last be living far from Arequipa, where she would always be an object of controversy and public curiosity? Would she have managed to travel to Lima and disappear there as she yearned to do? Would she have learned of the love and solidarity with which you had told her story in Peregrinations of a Pariah? You would never know, Florita. Since Don Pío Tristán had had your memoirs publicly burned in Arequipa, you had never received another letter from the acquaintances and relatives you came to know on your adventures in Peru.

  In her visit to Toulon’s naval armory, which took a full day, Flora had the opportunity to see the prison world from up close again, as she had in England. It wasn’t the kind of prison her cousin Dominga experienced, but something worse. The thousands of inmates who were sentenced to hard labor in the armory works wore chains around their ankles that often tore the skin and left scars. It wasn’t just the chains that distinguished them from the ordinary laborers, with whom they worked side by side in workshops and quarries; it was also the striped smocks they wore and their caps, whose color indicated the sentence they were serving. It was hard to repress a shudder upon seeing an inmate wearing the green cap of perpetual servitude. Like Dominga, these poor wretches knew that unless they escaped, they would live out the rest of their lives in thrall to their soul-destroying routine, watched over by armed guards, until death came to free them from their nightmare.