Of all the stories told about her, there were two you had never forgotten, because—it was true, wasn’t it, Florita?—you would have loved to have been the protagonist of both. La Mariscala was visiting the grounds of the Real Felipe Fort in Callao, in the president’s stead. Suddenly, among the officers receiving her with full military honors, she noticed one who had boasted, or so it was rumored, of having been her lover. Without a moment’s hesitation, she rushed at him, marking his face with a blow of her whip. Then, still seated on her horse, she ripped off his stripes with her own hand.
“You could never have been my lover, Captain,” she declared. “I don’t go to bed with cowards.”
The other story took place in the palace. Doña Pancha was giving a dinner for four army officers. She was a charming hostess, joking with her guests and treating them with exquisite courtesy. When it came time for coffee and cigars, she dismissed the servants. Closing the doors, she turned to face one of her guests, assuming the cold voice and pitiless gaze common to all her rages.
“Did you tell these three friends of yours here present that you were tired of being my lover? If they have slandered you, you and I will give them their just deserts. But if it is true, and by your pallor I fear it is, these officers and I are going to whip you to within an inch of your life.”
Yes, Florita, that woman—who, as you once witnessed, was plagued by epileptic attacks, which, together with her defeats and sufferings, would send her to her death before she was thirty-five—taught you an unforgettable lesson. There were women, then—and one in this backward, uncivilized country still in the making, at the ends of the earth—who refused to be humbled or treated like serfs, who managed to make themselves respected, who were worthy in and of themselves, not as appendages of men, even when it came to handling a whip or firing a pistol. Was Colonel Bernardo Escudero La Mariscala’s lover? For three years, the Spanish adventurer—who, like Clemente Althaus, had come to Peru to enroll as a mercenary in the country’s internal wars to try to make his fortune—had been Doña Pancha’s shadow. When Florita asked him outright, he denied it, indignantly: lies of the Señora Gamarra’s enemies, of course! But you weren’t entirely convinced.
Escudero wasn’t handsome, but he was very attractive. Thin, smiling, gallant, he had read more and seen more of the world than the other men around Flora, and she enjoyed herself thoroughly in his company as Arequipa adjusted, grudgingly, to its occupation by San Román’s troops. They saw each other morning and evening, and rode together around Tiabaya, to the thermal springs of Yura, and to the slopes of the Misti, the volcano presiding benevolently over the city. Flora barraged him with questions about Doña Pancha, and Lima and its inhabitants. He answered with infinite patience and an abundance of wit. His remarks were intelligent, and his attentions subtle. In all, he was a supremely appealing man. What if you were to marry Colonel Bernardo Escudero, Florita? And what if, like Doña Pancha, you became the power behind the throne, using your intelligence and influence to institute from above the reforms society required in order to ensure that women would no longer be the slaves of men?
It wasn’t a passing fancy. The temptation—to marry Escudero, stay in Peru, be a second Mariscala—took hold of you so thoroughly that you flirted with the colonel as you had never flirted with any man before, or ever would again, bent on seducing him. He suspected nothing, and was snared in an instant. Closing her eyes—a breeze had sprung up, bringing relief from the scorching summer heat of Nîmes—she relived that evening. She and Bernardo were alone together, at the Tristán house. Her words echoed under the vaulted ceiling. Suddenly, the colonel took her hand and lifted it to his lips, in great earnest. “I love you, Flora. I’m mad about you. You can do what you like with me. I’ll always be yours.” Were you pleased by this rapid victory? At first you were. Your ambitious plans were becoming reality, and it was all happening so fast. But a little while later, in the dark hallway of the house on Santo Domingo, when the colonel, as he was leaving, took you in his arms, pressed you to him, and lowered his mouth to yours, the spell was broken. No, no, my God, what madness! Never, never! To suffer that again? To feel, at night, a hairy, sweaty body on top of you, riding you like a filly? Not for all the gold in the world, Florita! The next day, you informed your uncle that you wanted to return to France. And on April 25, to Escudero’s surprise, you bade farewell to Arequipa. Riding along with an English trader’s mule train, you traveled to Islay, and then to Lima, where, two months later, you would take ship for Europe.
This tumult of Arequipan memories distracted her from the unpleasantness of her meeting with the poet-baker Jean Reboul. She walked slowly back to the Hôtel du Gard, along streets crowded with people speaking the regional language she didn’t understand. Her tour had taught her that French was far from being the language of all Frenchmen, no matter what was thought in Paris. On many corners, she saw the tumblers, magicians, clowns, and fortune-tellers who in this city nearly outnumbered the beggars with outstretched hands offering to “pray a Hail Mary for the good lady’s soul” in exchange for a coin. Begging was one of her chief frustrations: at every meeting, she tried to instill in the workers the idea that this sort of solicitation, a practice encouraged by the cassock-clad, was as repugnant as charity; both morally degraded the poor and served only to soothe the conscience of the bourgeoisie. Poverty had to be fought by reform, not by alms. But her relief and good humor were short-lived, because on the way to the hotel, she decided to stop by the pool where washerwomen laundered the city’s clothes. It was a spot that had filled her with rage ever since her first day in Nîmes. How was it possible that in 1844, in a country that prided itself on being the most civilized in the world, such a cruel and inhuman spectacle should exist, and that no one in this city of clerics and pious folk should do anything to put an end to it?
The pool, sixty feet long and one hundred feet wide, was fed by a spring that flowed from the rocks. It was the only laundering place in the city. In it, the clothing of the people of Nîmes was washed and wrung out by three or four hundred women, who, given the absurd shape of the pool, had to stand in water up to their waists in order to lather and scrub the clothes on the washboards, the only ones in the world that, instead of being tilted toward the water so that the women could remain kneeling on the shore, were set the opposite way. What stupid or wicked mind had conceived this design, which left the unfortunate women swollen and deformed like toads, and covered with rashes and blotches? The problem wasn’t just that the washerwomen spent so many hours in the water, but that the water, which was also used for the local industry’s dyeing of shawls, was full of soap, potassium, caustic soda, Javelle water, tallow, and dyes like indigo, saffron, and ruby. Several times Flora had spoken to some of these unhappy women, who suffered from rheumatism or infections of the uterus, and complained of miscarriages and difficult pregnancies. The pool was never empty. Many of the washerwomen preferred to work by night, when the absence of dye workers allowed them to choose a good spot. Despite their dramatic plight, and her efforts to explain that she was striving to improve their lot, she wasn’t able to convince a single washerwoman to attend the Workers’ Union meetings. They always seemed wary, and resigned. At one of her meetings with the doctors Pleindoux and Castelnaud, she mentioned the pool. They were surprised that Flora found the working conditions inhumane. Weren’t clothes washed the same way everywhere? They saw no cause for alarm. Naturally, after discovering what the pool in Nîmes was like, Flora decided that while she was staying in the city, she would never send her clothes out to be cleaned. She would wash them herself, at the hotel.
The Hôtel du Gard wasn’t exactly Madame Denuelle’s guest house, was it, Andalusa? It was with Madame Denuelle, a former Parisian opera singer who had been stranded in Lima and had become an innkeeper, that Flora spent her last two months on Peruvian soil. Captain Zacharie Chabrié had recommended the place, and indeed, Madame Denuelle, who had heard about Flora from Chabrié, received her very graciously, offe
ring her a comfortable room and excellent meals at a modest price (Don Pío had given her a parting gift of four hundred francs, as well as paying for her passage). In those eight weeks, Madame Denuelle introduced her to the cream of society, who came to the boardinghouse to play cards, converse, and engage in what Flora discovered were the principal pursuits of Lima’s wealthy families: frivolity, social life, dances, luncheons, dinners, and worldly gossip. An odd city this Peruvian capital. Though its population was only eighty thousand, it could not have been more cosmopolitan. Along its little streets, intersected by channels into which residents tossed their refuse and emptied their chamberpots, there passed sailors from ships anchored in the harbor of Callao, hailing from all over the world—English, Americans, Dutch, French, Germans, Orientals—so that when Flora went out to visit the countless colonial monasteries, convents, and churches, or to walk around the Plaza Mayor, a sacred pastime of the well-dressed, she heard more languages around her than she had on the boulevards of Paris. Surrounded by groves of orange trees, banana trees, and palms, and built with spacious single-story houses, each with a large patio for sitting outside in the fresh air—it never rained here—and two courtyards, the first for the masters and the second for the slaves, this small, provincial-looking city, with its forest of steeples standing defiantly against the perpetually gray sky, had the most worldly, inviting, and sensual culture that Flora could have imagined.
Between Madame Denuelle’s friends and her own relatives (she had brought letters for them from Arequipa), Flora was swamped every day of her two months in the city by invitations to sumptuous houses where lavish dinners were served. And then there were visits to the theater, the bullring (at one of the detestable fights a bull disemboweled a horse and gored a bullfighter), cockfights, the obligatory Paseo de las Aguas, where families went on foot or in calèches to see and be seen, to court, or to gossip, the hills of Amancaes, processions, services (women attended two or three every Sunday), and the beaches of Chorrillos; she also visited the dungeons of the Inquisition, and saw the horrifying instruments of torture that were used to wring confessions from the accused. She met everyone, from the president of the republic, General Orbegoso, and the most popular generals—some of them, like Salaverry, were little more than callow youths, amiable and gallant but shockingly ignorant—to an eminent thinker, the priest Luna Pizarro, who invited her to a session of Congress.
It was the Lima society women who impressed her the most. True, they seemed blind and deaf to the misery that surrounded them, the streets full of beggars and barefoot Indians who, squatting and motionless, seemed to be waiting for death, before whom the women shamelessly flaunted their elegant clothing and riches. But the freedom they enjoyed! In France, it would have been inconceivable. Dressed in tapadas, the typical garb of Lima, and the cleverest and most provocative attire ever devised—it consisted of a narrow skirt, the saya, and a shawl that, like a hood, covered shoulders, arms, and head, delicately tracing the outline of the body and covering three quarters of the face, leaving just one eye visible—the women of Lima, so arrayed (or so disguised), were able to pretend that they were beautiful and mysterious, and at the same time become invisible. No one could recognize them—least of all their husbands, as Flora heard them boast—and this made them uncommonly bold. They would go out alone, although followed at a distance by a slave, and they loved to play jokes or poke fun at acquaintances whose paths they crossed. They all smoked, bet heavily at cards, and were always flirting, sometimes outrageously. Madame Denuelle kept her informed about the secret love affairs, the romantic intrigues in which husbands and wives were embroiled, and which, if scandal erupted, would sometimes end in saber or pistol duels on the banks of the sluggish Rímac. As well as going out alone, the women of Lima rode horseback dressed like men, played the guitar, and sang and danced—even the old ladies—with bold insouciance. So emancipated were they that Florita found herself in difficulties at gatherings and soirees, when, with eager eyes and lips parted expectantly, they asked her to tell them “the terrible things Parisian women do.” They had an unhealthy passion for satin slippers in daring shapes and every color, a key tool in their arsenal of seduction techniques. They gave you a pair, and you, Florita, would give them years later to Olympia, as a token of your love.
When Flora had been in Lima for four weeks, Colonel Bernardo Escudero appeared at Madame Denuelle’s guest house. He was on his way through the capital, accompanying La Mariscala, who, taken prisoner in Arequipa, was waiting at the port of Callao for the ship that would carry her into exile in Chile, where she would of course also be escorted by Escudero. Her husband, General Gamarra, had fled to Bolivia after his uprising against Orbegoso ended in sorry fashion—in Arequipa, of course. La Mariscala and Gamarra had entered the city, conquered for them so buffoonishly by General San Román, just a few days after Flora left. The Gamarrista troops had multiplied the payments exacted from the residents of Arequipa, which inflamed the population. Then, two Gamarrista battalions, headed by Sergeant Major Lobatón, decided to rise up against Gamarra and pledge their loyalty to Orbegoso. They took over the command posts and raised a cheer to their former enemy, the rightful president. Upon hearing shots, the people of Arequipa misunderstood what was happening and, having had enough of the occupation, armed themselves with stones, knives, and hunting rifles and charged the rebel troops, thinking they were still Gamarristas. By the time they realized their error, it was too late, because they had already killed Sergeant Major Lobatón and his main collaborators. Then, more incensed than ever, they attacked the disconcerted army of Gamarra and San Román, which collapsed before the general onslaught. The soldiers changed sides or fled. General Gamarra managed to escape, disguised as a woman, and took asylum in Bolivia with a small entourage. La Mariscala, whom the furious masses were seeking to hang, jumped down from the roof of the house where she was staying and hid in the house next door, where hours later she was captured by Orbegoso’s regular troops. Always skillful and quick at adapting himself to new political circumstances, Don Pío Tristán now presided over the Provisional Governing Committee of Arequipa, which declared itself Orbegosista and put the city under the command of the constitutional president. This committee had decreed that La Mariscala should be exiled, and the government in Lima had confirmed it.
Florita begged Bernardo Escudero to take her to see Doña Pancha. The two women met on board the English ship William Rushton that served as her prison. Although La Mariscala was defeated and half-destroyed (she would die a few months later), Flora had only to see her—a sturdy woman of medium height with wild hair and quicksilver eyes—and meet her proud, defiant gaze to feel the force of her personality.
“I am the savage, the fierce, the terrible Doña Pancha who eats children alive,” she joked, in a gruff, dry voice. She was dressed with ostentatious elegance, wearing rings on all her fingers, diamond earrings, and a pearl necklace. “My family has asked me to dress this way in Lima, and I do it to indulge them. But the truth is that I feel more comfortable on horseback, in boots, jacket, and trousers.”
They were talking cordially on deck, when Doña Pancha suddenly blanched. Her hands, lips, and shoulders began to shake, her eyes turned up in their sockets, and a white froth appeared on her lips. Escudero and the women traveling with her had to carry her into her cabin.
“Since the disaster in Arequipa, she has these attacks every day,” Escudero told Flora that night. “Often several times a day. She was very sorry that she wasn’t able to speak longer with you. She asked me to invite you to return to the ship tomorrow.”
Flora returned, and was met with a shattered woman, a specter with bloodless lips, sunken eyes, and trembling hands. In a single night, Doña Pancha had aged terribly. She even had difficulty talking.
But this wasn’t Flora’s final memory of Lima. That was her visit to the Lavalle plantation, the largest and most prosperous in the region, at two leagues from the capital. The owner, Señor Lavalle, a man of exquisite refin
ement, spoke to her in good French. He took her to see the cane fields, the mills where the cane was ground, and the cauldrons at the refinery where the sugar was separated from the molasses. Flora desperately wanted to make him talk about his slaves. Finally, at the end of her visit, Señor Lavalle touched on the subject.
“The scarcity of slaves is ruining planters,” he complained. “Imagine, I used to have fifteen hundred, and now I have scarcely nine hundred. They’re so dirty and careless and idle, and their customs so barbaric, that they catch all sorts of illnesses and die like flies.”
Flora dared to hint that perhaps the miserable existence they led, and their ignorance due to their complete lack of an education, might explain why the slaves were so liable to fall ill.
“You don’t know these blacks,” replied Señor Lavalle. “They’re so lazy that they let their children die before their eyes. Their sloth is boundless. They’re even worse than the Indians. Unless they’re whipped, they can’t be made to do anything.”
The Way to Paradise Page 28