The News from Paraguay

by Lily Tuck

  Gone was a great deal of Ella’s jewelry, including the aquamarine necklace that Franco had given her and the two bracelets made from Corinna Adelaida’s and Miguel Marcial’s hair; the gold and diamond diadem; the dozen gold watch guards, chains and watches. Fortunately, the silver gourds for maté, the crucifix and rosaries, Franco’s gold cigar holder and snuffboxes as well as his diamond-encrusted marshal’s baton and his whip with F.S.L. engraved in diamonds, were packed in trunks and were in the luggage car.

  Crossing Paris, Ella found that there was a large hole in the middle of Place Vendôme where the column had been and, like the palace of the Tuileries, her old house on rue du Bac was a burned-out ruin; most of the buildings on Boulevard Raspail had been destroyed and there was no sign of the fruit merchant, a big, good-natured man whose name Ella had forgotten. No fraises des bois either. The fruit merchant reminded Ella of Marie. If she shut her eyes, Ella could picture Marie exactly: how briskly she walked down the avenue, swinging her hips and holding her shopping basket. She could also hear how Marie both argued and flirted with all the shopkeepers. Afterward, Marie would report back the neighborhood gossip—or some of it—and make Ella laugh. Just then a woman dressed in rags approached Ella; she was begging. As Ella reached into her purse to give the woman a few centimes, she saw that half the woman’s face was missing.

  “Vieille conne!” the woman screamed at Ella, grabbing the money.

  When Ella walked down rue de Courcelles, Princess Mathilde’s house looked shut and unoccupied. Ella had to bribe the concierge in the building next door before the concierge told her that Princess Mathilde had escaped to Brussels and had not yet returned.

  Next, Ella tried to contact Monsieur Gelot about the trunk full of valuables she had sent him from Paraguay:

  PARIS

  12 September 1871

  Dear Monsieur Gelot,

  I am writing in regard to the trunk I had sent to you from my home in Paraguay. I am now residing in the city and am eager to recover my belongings. If you would be so kind as to contact me at the address below so that I may do so without further delay I would be most grateful. Meantime, I send my cordial greetings and salutations, etc., etc.

  Her letter came back, stamped “Addressee Unknown.” When Ella went to the address, a woman answered the door and told her that she did not know of any Monsieur Gelot. The woman looked worn and angry and when Ella tried to insist, the woman told Ella that if she did not leave immediately, she would call her husband, who was in the next room and who was a police officer. Ella did not believe the woman—she heard a child crying in the next room—but suddenly she felt tired and she no longer had the energy or the desire to pursue the matter.

  Leopoldo did not feel well. He could not concentrate on the book of arithmetic in front of him; the numbers on the page jumped up and down in a way that made him feel nauseated—the number three and the number five especially, also the number eight. One moment he was sweating, the next he was shivering with cold. In class he kept his head down, he did not want to draw attention to himself. The master, Mr. Phillips, would cane him. His hands too were shaking and Leopoldo dropped his pen.

  “Lopez!” Mr. Phillips said.

  “Sir?”

  “Look at me when I speak to you!” Mr. Phillips said louder.

  The room began to spin as Mr. Phillips advanced toward Leopoldo. Mr. Phillips wore some sort of scent—lavender or rose water, Leopoldo could not tell the difference, only that it was too sweet—the scent made him gag. Leopoldo fainted.

  Leopoldo was taken to the infirmary and since, when he fainted he fell forward and hit his head on the wooden desk, the nurse of Saint Joseph College attributed his fever to a concussion. In any event, unfamiliar with diseases not native to England, she would not have diagnosed malaria. Although fairly compassionate, the nurse also had certain prejudices. Leopoldo’s skin was darker than the other students’; in his delirium, he spoke different languages—the Spanish she was able to recognize but not understand, the other language was even more foreign and guttural—so that when, in the night, Leopoldo cried out as if he were singing:

  Tovena Tupa~tachepytyvo~

  ha’emi hag~ua che py’arasy

  to the nurse, it sounded like a language the devil himself might speak.

  Leopoldo died alone in the middle of the night while the nurse was asleep. Ella was informed of her youngest son’s death by telegram the next day. Leopoldo’s brothers, Enrique, Federico and Carlos Honorio, unaware that their brother had been ill—the reason given that the boys were in different forms—were likewise informed too late. (Had the brothers been told earlier, they might have been able to save Leopoldo, who they knew already had had several malaria attacks in Paraguay.)

  During the seven years that Frederick Masterman spent in Paraguay, Mrs. Masterman worried a great deal about her son. His letters—in some he had enclosed sketches—came irregularly, and once the war began, Mrs. Masterman had not heard from her son in three years, when she received the ominous-sounding letter that upset her greatly. She read and reread the last two sentences in particular—“I hope I will be pardoned by the President. I hope my life may be spared, so I may see you again”—trying to make sense of them. Thus great was her happiness and relief when finally Frederick Masterman—although ill and half starved—returned to Croydon (coincidentally, Mrs. Masterman lived in the same suburb of London where Saint Joseph College was situated), and she was able to devote herself entirely to the care of her son. Meantime, Frederick Masterman, when he was sufficiently recovered, was able to apply himself to his memoir, which he entitled Seven Eventful Years in Paraguay.

  As a physician (before he became assistant military surgeon and apothecary general to the Paraguayan Army, he had been a member of the medical staff of Her Majesty’s 82nd Regiment), Frederick Masterman felt duty-bound to record and describe the diseases he had encountered in Paraguay: afflictions of the lungs, consumption, pneumonia, influenza, yellow fever, typhus, enteric fever, cholera and measles—introduced during the war by the Allies, cholera and measles cost the lives of sixty thousand persons—and, finally, numerous cases of ague, goiter and elephantiasis. Despite the long list, Frederick Masterman concluded his study on a note of optimism:

  I must add that Paraguay is one of the healthiest countries in the world, if one will but adopt reasonable sanitary precautions: that is to say, live temperately, wear flannel next to the skin, bathe frequently, avoid the sun during the hotter part of the day and keep out of the marshy districts. Except the epidemics I have mentioned, there was scarcely an ailment which could not be referred either to indolence, gluttony, or immorality…. I am certainly of the opinion that one has a better chance of a healthy life, and of dying of that malady, not so common with us as it might be, called old age, in Paraguay than in England.

  In his study of diseases in Paraguay, Frederick Masterman failed, however, to mention malaria.

  In the carriage, Ella remembered, they had in fact spoken a little.

  “You’ll see, he’ll catch up to us,” she said, trying to comfort Pancho, her stubborn and grieving firstborn son.

  When Carlos Honorio said he had to go to the toilet, Ella said, “Can you wait a few minutes?”

  To his shame, Carlos Honorio could not.

  A few minutes before the Brazilian cavalry detachment caught up with their carriage, Rosaria, to take Carlos Honorio’s mind off his wet pants, softly began to sing:

  Tovena Tupa~tachepytyvo~

  ha’emi hag~ua che py’arasy,

  ymaiteguivema an~andu

  heta ara nachemongevei

  Jean-Pierre, the fruit merchant, had a dream that was so vivid and seemed so real that when he woke up he started to tell it to his wife.

  “In the dream, I was running down the Boulevard Raspail where I once kept my stall.”

  “Monique, my cousin, lives nearby on Boulevard Saint-Michel,” his wife said.

  “And as I ran past each house, the house burst into fla
mes, almost as if it was happening spontaneously.”

  “I haven’t seen Monique in months, I hope she is all right. One of these days I should go and visit her.”

  “Then I noticed a woman running ahead of me—” Changing his mind, Jean-Pierre stopped telling his wife about his dream.

  “What woman?” Suddenly his wife was paying attention.

  “I don’t know. Just a woman.”

  In the dream the woman was wearing a red-checkered kerchief but underneath it Jean-Pierre could see that her hair was blond, a beautiful golden blond. She carried a tin can that, he knew right away in the dream, contained kerosene, and she was setting the houses on fire. Jean-Pierre managed to catch up with the woman and when he did he recognized her, although he realized that it had been years since he had last seen her. “Marie,” he called out to her in the dream, “why do you burn Paris?” And Marie answered him, “We must start over if we want to live.” Her answer made perfect sense in the dream and Jean-Pierre took Marie by the hand. Then he must have kissed Marie and he must have begun to unbutton her dress and make love to her because when he woke up, he had an erection.

  From her window, Ella watched Sacré Coeur being built. On Boulevard Pereire, her apartment consisted of two furnished rooms and was situated above a boulangerie—the smell of fresh bread early in the morning almost made Ella feel sick with hunger. Ella had had to pawn the rest of her possessions: the head combs, the crucifix and rosaries, Franco’s gold cigar holder, the silver gourds and straws (although she did keep a set for herself; one of the few pleasures she still had was to prepare and drink maté) and Franco’s whip with F.S.L. engraved in diamonds. The whip was considered such a precious oddity that she received several hundred francs for it, more money than for the crucifix and rosaries. She gave Enrique, Federico and Carlos Honorio each a gold snuffbox so that they would have something to remember their father by; the marshal’s baton she kept for herself, although she did not need anything to remember Franco by.

  In the carriage, while Pancho bled to death on her lap, she was made to drive back to the banks of the Aquidaban, to where Franco lay on his back in the mud. Flies were buzzing around the wounds on Franco’s stomach, a swarm were flying in and out of his open mouth. Tied nearby to a mimosa tree, Linda was pawing the ground and snorting impatiently, already someone had taken Franco’s saddle off the mule’s back. The day was unseasonably warm and steam was rising from the riverbank and Ella was sweating.

  While the Brazilian soldiers stood around and watched her (for the time being, they had stopped jeering) and with Rosaria’s help, Ella moved Franco’s body to higher, drier ground—his body all of a sudden felt small and light—and she laid Pancho out next to his father. Then, with her bare hands, Ella began to cover their bodies with earth. She was halfway finished when Carlos Honorio called out to her and looking up to where he was pointing—by then she could hear their shrill screeches—Ella saw a flight of parrots go by overhead. The parrots were so numerous—hundreds, perhaps thousands—that for a few seconds the parrots mercifully blocked out the sun.

  On January 5, 1875, from her box at the gala opening of the new Opéra, Princess Mathilde could survey tout Paris, as well as the King of Hanover, King Alfonso XII of Spain, the Ali Pasha, the Prince and Princess of Hohenlohe, the Count of Paris (the Orléanist pretender to the throne), the Duke of Nemours and the Lord Mayor of London; also a Peruvian who, it was rumored, in the fever for acquiring tickets had paid 700 francs on the black market for a box. The Peruvian—Princess Mathilde looked through her glasses searching the boxes for a darker, swarthier face—made her think of Ella. Several years had passed since she had heard from her friend—the reason she assumed was her own flight from Paris—and she hoped that Ella and her Emperor or whatever he had become were well. She had forgotten the name of the country: it was not Peru, it was not Brazil—nonetheless, a country that sounded quite agreeable. Her eyes turned back toward the stage and to Madame Krauss, who was playing Rachel in Halévy’s La Juive—an exceptional performance! Yet, in spite of herself, Princess Mathilde’s thoughts went again to Ella. She had a premonition, a vague feeling of unease that something was wrong—had she not perhaps read in Le Monde illustré that there had been a battle? a war? Also, she just then remembered the blond woman she had seen in the crowd standing outside the Opéra and how the blond woman had stood out in the crowd—not only was she better dressed than most of the people pushing and shoving trying to catch a glimpse of someone well-known, but there was a stillness about her (Princess Mathilde could not think of any other way to describe her) that had caught Princess Mathilde’s eye. At the time, she could not think of who the woman reminded her of; now of course she knew. Ella.

  Princess Mathilde could not concentrate on the next act and on Mademoiselle Sangalli’s dancing the role of Naila in Delibes’s ballet La Source. As soon as the curtain came down—the clapping had not yet stopped—Princess Mathilde took the arm of her escort, Monsieur Popelin, with one hand and with the other clutched the rosso antico and Algerian onyx balustrade as she almost ran down the white marble staircase and out the door of the Opéra. In the street, the crowd was smaller, a lot of people had gone home, also it was cold—it had begun to snow. Princess Mathilde stood for quite some time, long enough for snowflakes to settle on her velvet cape and on the ostrich plumes in her hair, searching the faces for Ella, until Monsieur Popelin became quite impatient, complaining of the cold, and almost had to force her inside her carriage and home.

  When Enrique turned twenty and Carlos Honorio was seventeen, the two brothers went back to Buenos Ayres to make their claim on properties in Paraguay that Ella had signed over to them. Like their mother nearly a quarter of a century earlier, Enrique and Carlos Honorio stayed at the Hotel de la Paix on Calle Cangallo. Monsieur Maréchal was the proprietor still and right away, too, Madame Maréchal inquired about Ella.

  “Does she still play the piano?” Madame Maréchal wanted to know. “I remember as if it was yesterday how beautifully she played. We hardly dared to breathe. A sonata by Liszt, I believe.”

  “These days unfortunately she doesn’t have much opportunity to play,” Enrique answered.

  “What a pity,” Madame Maréchal sighed. “I told Monsieur, my husband, that in my opinion, she could have easily been a concert pianist.” Madame Maréchal hummed a little tune to herself.

  “A very elegant woman. I said so right away,” Monsieur Maréchal also said.

  Over eighty and very frail, Colonel Enrique von Wisner de Morgenstern lived by himself in a small house on Calle Cuyo near the Italian vegetable market. In honor of his namesake, Enrique, and Carlos Honorio’s visit, he had put on his uniform which had grown too large for him—Colonel von Wisner continued to dye his hair a light brown and in the afternoon light his hair looked pink. To celebrate, he offered the two brothers slivovitz, Hungarian brandy, although they would have preferred plain tea.

  “Not only was Madame Lynch beautiful,” Colonel von Wisner began, “but she was the most physically coordinated woman I have ever met—without being at all masculine, you understand.” Colonel von Wisner paused to drink some brandy. “And you should have seen how quickly she learned to fence! Truly amazing! She was far quicker and stronger than most men. Also, she was determined. That was the key.” Colonel von Wisner took another sip. “She practiced every day, running forward and backward, extending her arms and legs thus—” Colonel von Wisner extended his thin arms and some of the brandy in his glass spilled, but he did not appear to notice. “This is called flèching, a very difficult position because the fencer cannot protect himself and he cannot stop halfway. It’s a total commitment to attack.”

  “What I wanted to ask you, sir, did my mother actually do battle with…” Enrique trailed off; Colonel von Wisner was not listening.

  “Madame Lynch chose the sabre, which of course is the most difficult weapon and much heavier than the epée. With the sabre I taught her never to swing her arm to deliver a cut, she
had to learn to extend it, like this—” Again Colonel von Wisner demonstrated. “The other thing, which I had nearly forgotten, that you reminded me of was that she was left-handed.” Colonel von Wisner refilled his brandy glass and, smiling, he shook his head as if in amazement. “The left-handed fencer must always be careful to cover the elbow of his fighting arm against a right-handed fencer, although the left-handed fencer has the possibility of scoring with cuts to the shoulder or to the cheek. But more important—and I told Madame Lynch this—the left-handed fencer has the initial advantage of looking strange to his right-handed opponent.” Colonel von Wisner paused to lift the glass to his lips.