by Lily Tuck
Irène, Liliane, and Jeanne spend three days in the United States—in Riverdale, New York—with friends of Rudy. Rudy’s friends take Irène to the World’s Fair and Irène can’t help but notice how carefree and prosperous everyone looks. The most memorable exhibit was the Futurama ride sponsored by General Motors, which carried Irène past an American utopian landscape that focused on transportation, roadways, and modernist buildings while a narrator described the world of tomorrow—the year 1960. But by far Irène’s favorite exhibit is the Aquacade—the lights, the waterfalls, the hundreds of nearly identical beautiful girls diving and swimming in perfect sync.
Jeanne takes Liliane for walks in a borrowed stroller past well-tended gardens and large, expensive-looking houses. Rudy’s friends’ house is large as well and has a solarium filled with exotic plants and a built-in basin filled with orange carp. Liliane is fascinated by the carp and, holding on to the rim of the basin to stand—she has just learned how—she watches the carp for hours at a time.
On the third day, Rudy’s friends drive Irène, Liliane, and Jeanne to the airport, and they fly to Miami. From Miami, they fly to Lima, Peru.
Panagra, short for Pan American–Grace Airways, was the first U.S. airline carrier to schedule passenger, mail and freight flights across the equator and link the west coast of South America to the east coast across the Andes, the highest mountain range in the Americas. From the late 1920s to the mid-1960s, Panagra planes were such a regular presence in the skies that to even the remotest tribes in the jungles of Ecuador and Peru, the word “panagra” meant “high.” At the time all trans-Andean flights were made under visual conditions; route maps and aeronautical charts were primitive at best, and the pilots had to be able to recognize geographic landmarks over which they were flying—mountain peaks, rivers, lakes. One Panagra pilot, according to popular legend, when repeatedly asked by a radio operator for his position, answered crossly, “Tell them we are east of the moon and slightly under it.” The plane, a DC-3, Irène, Liliane, and Jeanne are on tosses and bucks its way over the Andes so violently that most of the passengers are sick. Jeanne, who has only flown once before from New York to Miami, is sick as well. Irène, too, is afraid that she is going to throw up—the smell in the cabin is enough to make anyone vomit—but she is holding Liliane on her lap and that distracts her. Luckily, Liliane is asleep. Once the plane has crossed the Andes and is out of the turbulence, the pilot, a tall, blond American with a crew cut, walks down the aisle to check on the passengers. He stops to talk to Irène.
“Sorry about that,” he tells her. “Air pockets,” he explains.
“Where are you folks from?” he continues.
Irène tells him.
“Are you getting off in Lima?”
Perched on Irène’s armrest, the pilot takes out a pad and pencil from his pocket and writes addresses down. “I’ll be seeing you,” he also says, patting Irène’s arm, before he gets up and goes back to the cockpit.
Lima, a city Irène has barely heard of; a city where it never rains; a city where it is always hot, exceedingly hot; a city where she does not speak the language and where she knows no one—including her husband’s relatives, whom she has yet to meet—and a city where there are frequent earthquakes. A few weeks earlier a powerful earthquake—8.2 on the Richter scale—caused massive damage to the city, nearly destroying the Cathedral of Lima, and killing and injuring more than three thousand people. Most of the earthquakes occur in the middle of the night and Jeanne will have to quickly get out of bed with just enough time to find and put on her glasses but not enough time to find and put on her robe, then run into Liliane’s room and wake her so that, together, they can go stand in the doorway of the bedroom, said to be the safest place in the house.
The rented house is in the upscale Miraflores district of Lima. The house has a large garden surrounded by a high stone wall, topped with shards of broken glass to keep out thieves. The servants—the cook, the maid, the part-time gardener and chauffeur, Mañuel—talk constantly about how, at night, all the thieves need do is climb over the garden wall to rob the houses of the rich. They give examples: only two weeks ago, the Martinez house, down the street, the cook says, pointing a greasy finger, was robbed. All the jewelry, all the silverware was taken. Another house, the house directly in back of us, Mañuel says, while the Gomez family was out for only a few hours at the movies, was robbed. Of everything—the furniture, the paintings, the curtains. Toto—everything.
Liliane’s mother and her friends talk about how unreliable the servants are and how they are certain that the servants are robbing them.
Liliane is more afraid of thieves than she is of earthquakes.
“Jeanne!” she calls out in the middle of the night. She is having a nightmare. And Jeanne comes running into her room.
Taking Liliane in her arms, Jeanne rocks her until she is comforted and calm. It is then, too, in the darkened room, that Jeanne tells Liliane about her family in Brittany.
“Tell me again about Annick,” Liliane begs her.
“Oh, Annick, she is the naughty one . . .” Jeanne begins.
Soon after Jeanne leaves, Annick bicycles the twenty-five kilometers to Quimper and, leaving her bicycle at the train station, she buys a third-class ticket to Paris. Once in Paris, she walks aimlessly from the Gare Montparnasse down Rue de Vaugirard. It is late and she is tired and hungry. Eventually, she finds a café that is open and goes inside. She orders coffee and a ham sandwich. At this hour, the café is not very crowded—in fact, it is about to close—and since the bartender who is also the proprietor of the café does not have much to do, he watches Annick as she eats her sandwich. She is very pretty and he has a special fondness for redheads.
Annick, when she has finished eating her sandwich and drinking her coffee and is ready to pay for her meal, summons up her courage to ask the bartender —she cannot help noticing that he has been looking at her—whether he needs help in his café. She can waitress, she tells him. The bartender seems to give it some thought and lights a cigarette.
He also offers Annick a cigarette and she takes one, although she does not yet smoke.
Lighting her cigarette, the bartender smiles and asks Annick where she is from.
Blowing out smoke without inhaling it, Annick tells him. She also explains how she felt as if she would suffocate in Douarnenez—I could not breathe, she tells the bartender, fanning her face with her free hand, and she had to leave.
The bartender says he understands; he, too, comes from a small village, in Burgundy, and left when he was sixteen years old. Village life is not very amusing, he says, while life in Paris is.
He then says that he would like to help Annick and, if she can, as she says, wait on tables, wash up, and serve drinks, he will hire her on a trial basis.
Does she have a place to stay? He asks her.
Not yet, Annick answers. She has saved a little money and she is planning on finding a cheap hotel.
The bartender says he has a better idea.
“And tell me about Daniel.” Liliane likes Daniel.
“Oh, Daniel,” Jeanne says, “Daniel is the clever one and you should see how handsome he is. For miles around Douarnenez, all the girls are in love with Daniel.”
Jeanne kisses Liliane, once, twice on the cheek, before she falls asleep.
Most of the time, Jeanne is not affectionate. She is a disciplinarian. Rarely does Liliane disobey her. If she tries to play a trick or fool Jeanne in a silly way, Jeanne is not amused. For instance, once, while they are taking a walk, Liliane sees a dog turd lying on the ground, brown, fresh, perfectly formed and still steaming. “Look,” she tells Jeanne, pointing, “une saucisse”—a sausage, and, stretching down her hand, Liliane makes as if to pick it up. Yanking her hard by the arm—so hard, she leaves a red mark—Jeanne threatens to tell Liliane’s mother.
Liliane’s mother is out a great
deal. She has joined the Lima Country Club and has made friends—Peruvian as well as American friends. During the day, she swims, plays tennis and golf; in the evening, she plays bridge, then she goes out to dinner. Mañuel, the chauffeur, drives her to the club in the morning and picks her up later in the afternoon. In the evening, Irène makes other arrangements—Liliane often overhears the maid announce that Señor Jerry, the American Panagra pilot, is waiting downstairs for her or, at other times, that a Señor Diego is downstairs.
Occasionally, Irène brings Liliane to the Lima Country Club pool. If Jerry is not flying a plane, he is swimming laps or doing perfect jackknives from the high diving board.
Drink trays in hand, the Peruvian waiters stop to watch him.
“Mira a ese hombre!”—Look at that man! one of them says.
“Come on in,” Jerry calls out to Liliane’s mother.
Adjusting the straps to her two-piece suit and putting on her bathing cap, Irène stands up and dives neatly into the pool, but just before she hits the water, her feet cross. When she surfaces, Jerry splashes water at her and, laughing, Irène splashes back, then, disappearing, Jerry dives down in the pool, which makes Irène yelp and swim away. Resurfacing and shouting something that Liliane does not understand, Jerry catches up with Irène and they both go under. They remain underwater for such a long time that Liliane wonders if they have drowned. When, at last, Irène and Jerry come up for air, they let out their breaths in noisy gasps, spit water, and laugh.
Irène is in her early twenties. Until now, in Peru, she has never had fun. Life growing up in the apartment on Karolinger Platz in Berlin was, at best, somber. Her father, Waldemar, is a stern, humorless, unapproachable presence, except, when, in the evening, after he has had a few drinks, he tries to cajole little Rehlein to sit on his lap. Listless and depressed, Irène’s mother, Louise, often stays in bed all day, complaining of a migraine. She cannot tolerate the slightest noise in the apartment—a door shutting, a toilet flushing down the hall—and Irène and her sisters have to tiptoe from room to room and speak in whispers. And, as sometimes happens, should Barbara forget and laugh too loudly or should Uli drop her books on the dining room table, invariably, their governess or, if he is at home, their father—as if each has been waiting for just such an infraction—angrily shouts: Ruhe!—Quiet!
One time, Louise takes too many sleeping pills—it is never clear whether she does so on purpose—and the doctor who is called in has to pump out her stomach. Irène, who is fifteen at the time and the only daughter still at home, is made to assist the doctor. She watches as he quickly, almost callously, strips Louise of her nightgown—Irène has never seen her mother naked and the sight of her small, limp breasts and the indecent amount of curly light brown pubic hair that spreads nearly to Louise’s belly button embarrasses her. She watches as the doctor inserts a tube in Louise’s mouth and works it down to her stomach—he has to be careful, he observes almost offhandedly, not to insert it into her lungs—and as he administers small amounts of warm saline solution into the tube, which he then siphons back up into the basin that Irène is holding. Irène’s hands tremble so violently that the water sloshes back and forth ready to spill out. Fortunately, Louise is unconscious during the procedure.
Life in Paris is only a slight improvement for Irène: she has to learn to speak French and she has to behave like an adult and a wife—look after the apartment on Rue Raynouard, plan menus, entertain. Also—although she does not like to admit this—she is a bit afraid of Rudy and his indifference to household matters unnerves her. “Do what you like,” he tells her whenever Irène asks for his advice about, for instance, a dinner menu or what clothes to wear. “Do what you think is best.” And, although generous—he buys her the Revillon fur coat, the Patou suits, a gold Cartier pin with rubies in the shape of a bird—most of Rudy’s attention is on his work, on his deals, and Irène is lonely. When she becomes pregnant, much of the nine months she feels sick—so sick that once, after lunch at Fouquet’s, she throws up on the Champs-Élysées.
Jerry tries to coax Liliane into the pool with him—by then she is nearly four years old.—Time you learned how to swim, he tells her and, without waiting for an answer, he picks her up. Jerry’s body feels lean and warm and Liliane wraps her arms tightly around his neck.
“Kick,” Jerry says as he lowers Liliane into the water. He has forgotten that Liliane does not speak English. “Patear con las piernas”—Kick with your legs, he repeats in Spanish, motioning with his hands.
“Thatta girl,” Jerry says, although Liliane has begun to sink in the water and he has to grab her and bring her back to the surface.
When Irène receives a letter in Lima from Rudy, the letter is dated weeks earlier and heavily censored—entire lines are crossed out in black ink. Irène has difficulty reading it and she can never make out where he is or whether he can get the necessary papers—at present, he still has no passport—to join them in South America.
Je t’aime—I love you, he writes to Irène.
Embrasses Liliane de ma part—Kiss Liliane for me, he writes.
Only a few months old when she saw her father, Liliane does not remember him. In her mother’s bedroom in the house in Miraflores there is a framed photo of him on the bureau. In the photo, Rudy, unsmiling, is looking straight into the camera; his hands are in his pockets and he is wearing his Foreign Legionnaire’s uniform: a dark jacket, dark jodhpurlike pants and puttees. The harder Liliane looks at the photograph, the less familiar Rudy becomes.
On her mother’s bedside table, in a silver frame, there is another photo. In it, Irène and Rudy are smiling and walking arm in arm in the snow; they are wearing knickers and Irène is holding a little white dog on a leash.
“We were in Saint-Moritz,” Irène tells Liliane.
“Oh, Hansi! He’s so cute,” picking up the photo, Liliane exclaims about the dog. “What happened to him?”
“We had to leave him. Leave him with the concierge in Paris. She promised to take good care of him.”
“I want a dog,” Liliane says. “Can I have a dog?” she repeats.
“Careful,” Irène tells Liliane. “The frame is silver.”
From time to time, Irène leaves Lima for a few days to go to a beach resort with her friends. One time, she is gone for a week on a trip to Cuzco and Machu Picchu. There are more photographs: Irène on horseback, sitting uncomfortably in the saddle—she is afraid of horses; a photo of a young boy wearing a poncho and a knitted cap; someone—perhaps Irène—bathing in a hot spring; a photo of a bunch of vicuñas; a photo showing the train that goes from Cuzco to Machu Picchu; a photo of the Urubamba River and the Sacred Valley; three photos of the ruins of Machu Picchu covered by a low cloud bank, with a sharp peak rising through the clouds in the distance.
It is hard to tell from the photos whether Irène is having a good time on the trip. Is she interested in the ancient civilization? Does she think it a mystical site?
“Follow me, señor, and I will show you the palace of Inti, the Sun God” is what the eleven-year-old Quechua boy, Pablito Alvarez, told Hiram Bingham as he led him up the steep canyon to discover the Machu Picchu ruins in 1911.
“No one knows for certain whether Machu Picchu was built as a symbol of Inca power or whether it was built as a sacred place,” the guide is saying.
Standing at the site of the sacred pillar aligned with the four highest Andean peaks, Irène, on account of the cloud bank, can only see one of them.
“The intihuatana stone,” the guide continues tonelessly and by rote, pointing to the pillar, “is the precise indicator of the equinoxes. At midday, on March 21 and on September 21, the sun stands at the top of the pillar and casts no shadow. The Incas observed this and tried to stop the progress of the sun by holding ceremonies on those days.”
The guide adds, “Sacrificial ceremonies.”
“What sort of sacrifices?” Irène a
sks.
“Virgins. Virgins of the Sun, as the young girls chosen to serve the Inca emperor were called. Most of the skeletons found in Machu Picchu were small and of women, which shows that—”
“Nonsense,” Diego interrupts. “The Inca people are small—small-boned.”
The guide says nothing.
“The skeletons belonged to the emperor’s servants,” Diego continues, with authority. “The bones were analyzed and found to be full of the carbon 13 isotope which is produced by corn. Corn is bad for the teeth and their teeth were full of cavities.”
Still the guide says nothing.
“I liked the Virgins of the Sun theory,” Irène says, laughing. “It’s more romantic.”
Irène met Diego at a polo match at the Lima Country Club, on a Sunday, Palm Sunday. Since Jeanne has the day off, Irène takes Liliane with her.
“You have to behave,” she warns Liliane. “You cannot wander off. You have to hold my hand.
“Horses are dangerous,” she adds.
Irène and Liliane watch the polo match standing on one side of the polo field—the side where the wives and friends of the polo players stand and the side where the grooms hold the extra horses and equipment—only a few feet away from where the game is being played. Horses gallop toward them and only at what seems the last possible moment, their hooves clattering, bridles jangling, do they stop short, wheel around, doing an intricate quick dance of balance and of changing leads in midair on their slender bandaged legs, then gallop off in another direction.