The Way to Paradise

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  As in the English prisons, here, too, she was surprised by the number of prisoners who at first glance seemed to be feebleminded—miserable creatures suffering from cretinism, delirium, or other forms of alienation. They stared at her spellbound, with the empty, glassy eyes of those who have lost all use of reason, their mouths open and threads of saliva hanging from their lips. It must have been a long time since many of them had seen a woman, to judge by the expressions of ecstasy or terror on their faces as they watched Flora pass. And some of the idiots lowered their hands to their private parts and began to masturbate, with animal naturalness.

  Was it right for the mentally unfit, the impaired, and the insane to be tried and convicted like individuals who were in full possession of their faculties? Was it not a monstrous injustice? What responsibility for his acts could a deranged person have? Instead of being imprisoned here, many of these men sentenced to hard labor should be sent to asylums. Although, remembering England’s psychiatric hospitals and the treatment madmen were obliged to undergo, it was preferable to be convicted as a “normal” delinquent. Here was a subject on which to reflect and seek a solution for the society of the future, Florita.

  The officials of the Toulon armory warned her not to speak to the laborers—prisoners or ordinary workers—because uncomfortable situations could arise. But, true to her nature, Flora approached various groups, asking questions about their working conditions and the relations between the men in chains and the workingmen; suddenly, to the dismay of the two naval officers and the civil servant accompanying her, she was presiding over a heated open-air debate about the death penalty. She defended the abolishment of the guillotine as a means of administering justice, and announced that the Workers’ Union would outlaw it. Many of the workers protested, incensed. Considering the number of crimes and robberies that were already committed despite the existence of the guillotine, what would happen when criminals were no longer deterred by the threat of death? The debate was interrupted in ludicrous fashion when a group of madmen, drawn by the discussion, tried to join in. Overexcited, they gestured wildly, bounced up and down, talked all at once—each rivaling the next in outrageousness—or sang and capered to call attention to themselves, amid general laughter, until the guards imposed order, brandishing their batons.

  For Flora, the experience was extremely useful. Many workers, on the basis of what they had heard on her visit to the armory, became interested in the Workers’ Union and asked where they could speak with her at greater length. From that day on, and to the surprise of her Saint-Simonian friends who had scarcely been able to organize a few gatherings with a handful of bourgeois, Flora was able to congregate two or three times a day with groups of workers who, full of curiosity, came to meet this strange person in skirts who was determined to bring about justice for all in a world where there were no exploiters or rich men, and where, among other peculiarities, women would have the same rights as men before the law, in the family, and even in the workplace. From the pessimism she had felt upon her arrival in this city of soldiers and sailors, Flora proceeded to an enthusiasm that even brought her relief from her maladies. She felt refreshed, and possessed with the energy of her best years. From dawn until midnight she was engaged in frenetic activity. As she undressed—oh, the constricting corset, against which you had launched a diatribe in your novel Méphis, and which would be prohibited in the society of the future as an unworthy garment, since it made women feel cinched like mares!—and took stock of her day, she was happy. The results could not have been better: fifty copies of The Workers’ Union sold—she would have to order more from the printer—and more than a hundred new members for the movement.

  To the meetings in private houses, workers’ societies, Masonic halls, or artisans’ workshops there sometimes came immigrants who spoke no French. With the Greeks and Italians it was no problem, since some bilingual person always appeared to act as interpreter. It was more difficult with the Arabs, who remained squatting in a corner, infuriated by their inability to participate.

  At these gatherings of people of different races and languages, incidents often arose that Flora had to stifle by speaking out forcefully against racial, cultural, and religious prejudices. You were not always successful, Florita. How difficult it was to convince many of her compatriots that all human beings were alike, regardless of the color of their skin, the language they spoke, or the god they prayed to! Even when they seemed to accept this, scorn, contempt, insults, and racist and nationalist declarations flowed forth the moment some disagreement arose. In one of these arguments, Flora indignantly reproached a French caulker for asking that “Mahometan pagans” be barred from the meetings. The worker got up and left, slamming the door behind him and shouting, “Nigger slut!” Flora took the opportunity to encourage the group to exchange ideas on the subject of prostitution.

  It was a long, complicated discussion, in which, owing to Flora’s presence, the men in attendance took a while to gather their courage and speak frankly. Those who condemned prostitution did so without conviction, more to flatter Flora than because they truly believed what they were saying, until a gaunt ceramicist with a slight stutter—he was called Jojó—dared to contradict his companions. With his eyes cast down, in the midst of a dead silence followed by malicious giggles, he said that he didn’t approve of all these attacks on prostitutes. They were, after all, “the mistresses and lovers of the poor.” Did the poor have the means of the bourgeoisie to keep women? Without prostitutes, the lives of the humble folk would be even drearier and duller.

  “You say that because you are a man,” Flora interrupted him, indignant. “Would you say the same if you were a woman?”

  A violent argument broke out. Other voices spoke up in defense of the ceramicist. During the debate, Flora learned that the bourgeois of Toulon had the habit of forming societies to keep mistresses jointly. Four or five businessmen, industrialists, or men of independent means would establish a common fund for the maintenance of a corresponding number of lovers, whom these scoundrels would share. Thus they saved money, and each enjoyed a little harem. The session ended with a speech by Flora, her listeners skeptical if not derisive, in which she expounded her idea—diametrically opposed to Fourierist notions—that in the society of the future, thieves and prostitutes would be sent to remote islands, far from everyone else, so that they could no longer corrupt others with their bad behavior.

  Your long-standing hatred of prostitution had to do with the distaste and repugnance sex aroused in you from the time you married Chazal until you met Olympia Maleszewska. No matter how often you told yourself rationally that it was hunger and desperation that drove so many women to spread their legs for money, and that therefore prostitutes like the poor creatures you had seen in London’s East End were more deserving of pity than disgust, something instinctive, a visceral repudiation, a burst of rage, surged through you, Florita, when you thought how women who sold their bodies to satisfy men’s lustful desires abdicated all moral standing and renounced their dignity. “At bottom you are a puritan, Florita,” joked Olympia, nibbling your breasts. “I defy you to say you aren’t enjoying yourself at this instant.”

  And yet, in Arequipa, during the civil war between Orbegosistas and Gamarristas that Flora observed in the first months of 1834, she came—for the first and last time in her life—to feel respect and admiration for the female camp followers, who were, after all, a kind of prostitute. You wrote as much in Peregrinations of a Pariah, in your fervent homage to them.

  What a journey it was to your father’s native land, Andalusa! You were fortunate to have witnessed a revolution and a civil war, and you even participated in the conflict, in a way. You hardly remembered the causes and circumstances, which anyway were a mere cover for the insatiable appetite for power that afflicted all the generals and petty tyrants who had been disputing the presidency of Peru since independence—by legal means and, more frequently, with gunfire and cannon blasts. This time, the revolution began when
the National Convention in Lima chose Grand Marshal Don Luis José de Orbegoso to succeed President Agustín Gamarra, who was finishing up his term, rather than General Pedro Bermúdez, protégé of Gamarra and, especially, of Gamarra’s wife, Doña Francisca Zubiaga de Gamarra. This woman, known as Doña Pancha but also called La Mariscala (the Lady Marshal), possessed an aura of adventure and legend that had fascinated you ever since you first heard talk of her. She dressed in military attire, had fought on horseback alongside her husband, and governed beside him. While Gamarra was president, La Mariscala wielded as much power or more in government affairs than the marshal did, and she never hesitated to draw her pistol or flourish her whip to uphold her authority, or strike anyone who disobeyed her or failed to treat her with respect, like the most aggressive of men.

  When the National Convention chose Orbegoso instead of Bermúdez, the Lima garrison, at the urging of Gamarra and La Mariscala, staged a military uprising on January 3, 1834. But it was only partially successful, because Orbegoso managed to escape Lima with part of the army to organize the opposition. The country was divided into two camps, according to which garrisons declared themselves on Orbegoso’s side, and which on Bermúdez’s. Cuzco and Puno, headed by General San Román, chose to support the coup, or in other words Bermúdez, Gamarra, and La Mariscala. Arequipa, meanwhile, went to Orbegoso, the legitimate president, and, under the military command of General Nieto, began preparing to repel the attack of the upstarts.

  Exciting times, weren’t they, Florita? Carried along by the thrill of events, she never felt herself to be in danger, even during the battle of Cangallo, three months after the beginning of the civil war, which decided the fate of Arequipa. From her uncle Pío’s roof terrace, Flora watched the battle with binoculars, as if she were at the opera, while her uncle, her other relatives, and all of Arequipan society crowded into the monasteries, convents, and churches, fearing the sack of the city—which would inevitably follow the action no matter who won—more than they feared bullets.

  By then, Flora and Don Pío had made peace, miraculously. Once Florita accepted that she couldn’t take any legal action against her uncle, he took pains to pacify her, afraid of the scandal she had threatened him with the day of their fight, rallying his wife, children, nieces, and especially Colonel Althaus to convince her to abandon her plans to leave the Tristán household. She should stay here, where she would always be treated as Don Pío’s beloved niece, cherished and cared for by the whole clan. She would never lack for anything, and everyone would love her. You consented—what choice did you have?

  And you never regretted it. What a pity it would have been to miss those three months of indescribable ferment, upheaval, turmoil, and social unrest in Arequipa, from the outbreak of revolution to the Battle of Cangallo.

  General Nieto had hardly begun to militarize the city and prepare it to resist the Gamarristas when Don Pío was seized by hysterics. For him, civil war meant the combatants would pillage his fortune under the guise of collecting contributions for the defense of freedom and the nation. Sobbing like a child, he told Florita that General Simón Bolívar had extracted a sum of twenty-five million pesos from him, and General Sucre had taken ten thousand more, and of course neither blackguard had returned a cent. What would he be expected to pay now to General Nieto, who was, besides, the puppet of that diabolical revolutionary priest, the ruthless Dean Juan Gualberto Valdivia, who, in his newspaper El Chili, accused Bishop Goyeneche of stealing from the poor and protested the celibacy of priests, which he intended to abolish? Flora advised him to go in person and donate five thousand pesos in an act of spontaneous allegiance, before General Nieto fixed a sum. In doing so, he would win over the general and be safe from new revolutionary bleedings.

  “Do you think so, Florita?” murmured the miser. “Wouldn’t two thousand be enough?”

  “No, Uncle, you must give him five thousand, to disarm him completely.”

  Don Pío did as she said. And after that, he consulted Flora on every action he took in a conflict in which his only concern, like all the wealthy citizens of Arequipa, was not to be stripped bare by the warring factions.

  Colonel Althaus obtained the post of chief of staff under General Nieto after he considered the possibility of entering the service of Nieto’s adversary, General San Román, who was on his way from Puno with the Gamarrista army to invade Arequipa. Delighted by the prospect of war, Althaus shared all sorts of confidences with Flora. He cruelly mocked General Nieto, who, with the funds he had raised in hard cash from Arequipa’s men of means—Flora watched as the downcast gentlemen filed along Calle Santo Domingo toward the general headquarters, the prefecturate, carrying their sacks of money—had bought “twenty-eight hundred sabers for an army of just six hundred soldiers, rounded up by force on the streets, who don’t even have shoes to wear.”

  The military encampment was set up at a league’s distance from the city. Under Althaus’s command, some twenty officers instructed the recruits in the arts of war. In their midst, mounted on a mule and wrapped in a purple cape, with a rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip, the solemn Dean Valdivia paraded. Though he was only thirty-four, he looked much older. After exchanging a few words with him, Flora came to the conclusion that this swashbuckling priest was probably the only person fighting the revolution in the service of an ideal, not petty interests. After they had finished their drills, Dean Valdivia addressed the yawning soldiers in ringing speeches, exhorting them to fight to the death for freedom and the Constitution, incarnated in the person of Marshal Orbegoso, and inveighing against “Gamarra and his slut, La Mariscala,” those coup plotters and subverters of democratic order. Judging by the conviction with which he spoke, Dean Valdivia believed wholeheartedly in everything he said.

  Besides the regular army, made up of the recruits levied against their will, there was a battalion of young volunteers from the well-to-do families of Arequipa. They had baptized themselves “the Immortals,” another proof of the spell cast by all things French. As young men of the upper classes, they had brought with them to the camp their slaves and servants, who helped them dress, prepared their meals, and carried them in their arms across muddy fields and the river. When Flora visited the camp, they threw a banquet for her, with bands of musicians and native dances. Would these society boys be capable of fighting, when at first glance they seemed to regard the camp as just another of the genteel parties at which they whiled away their lives? Althaus said that half of them would fight and be killed, not out of idealism but because they wanted to be like the heroes of French novels; and the other half would run like hares as soon as they heard the whistle of the bullets.

  The camp followers were something else. Concubines, mistresses, wives, or lovers of the recruits and soldiers, these Indian and mixed-blood women—barefoot, in brightly colored skirts, and with long braids hanging down under their picturesque country hats—made the camp work. They dug trenches, built barricades; cooked meals for their men, washed their clothes, and deloused them; acted as messengers, lookouts, nurses, and healers; and were always available for the sexual relief of the combatants. Many of them, despite being pregnant, continued to work as hard as the others, followed by small children in rags. According to Althaus, when it came time to fight the women were the most warlike, and were always on the frontlines, escorting, assisting, and spurring on their men, and taking their places when they fell. On marches, the military commanders sent them ahead to occupy villages and confiscate foodstuffs and supplies to assure the provision of the troops. They might be whores—but wasn’t there a great difference between whores like these Indian women and whores like the ones who prowled the environs of the naval armory in Toulon as soon as night fell?

  When Flora left for Nîmes on August 5, 1844, she told herself that her stay in Toulon had been more than profitable. The Workers’ Union committee had not only a board of eight but also a membership of 110, among them eight women.

  14

  WRESTLING WITH
THE ANGEL

  PAPEETE, SEPTEMBER 1901

  When Paul called a meeting of the Catholic Party in Papeete’s city hall on September 23, 1900, against “the Chinese invasion,” many people, among them the ex-soldier Pierre Levergos, his Punaauia friend and neighbor, and even Pau’ura, his wife, concluded that the eccentric, scandal-rousing painter had finally lost his mind. Teng, the Chinese storekeeper of Punaauia, had stopped greeting him long ago, and refused to sell him anything. But otherwise, even Paul himself, in his intervals of rationality and lucidity, realized that his disease and the remedies for it had impaired his thinking, and that often he was no longer capable of controlling his actions; he made decisions by instinct or intuition, like a small child or a senile old man. Truly, you weren’t what you used to be, Koké. It had been months, perhaps even years, since you painted Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, and you hadn’t finished a single new work. When you weren’t laid low by illness, alcohol, or drugs, you spent all your time working on the satirical, demagogic little monthly paper Les Guêpes (The Wasps), mouthpiece of François Cardella’s Catholic Party, in which you fiercely attacked Governor Gustave Gallet, the Protestant colonists headed by your old friend Auguste Goupil, and the island’s Chinese tradesmen, against whom you worked yourself into a rage, accusing them of being the advance guard of a “barbarian invasion worse than Attila the Hun’s” that intended to supplant French rule of Polynesia with “the yellow plague.”