Parisian Promises
Page 1
A NOVEL
Cecilia Velástegui
AUTHOR OF AWARD WINNING TRACES OF BLISS
Novels
By Cecilia Velástegui
MISSING IN MACHU PICCHU
TRACES OF BLISS
GATHERING THE INDIGO MAIDENS
En Español
VESTIGIOS DE DICHA
CONVOCANDO A LAS DONCELLAS DEL INDIGO
Children’s Book
OLINGUITO SPEAKS UP!
Olinguito alza la voz
LALO LOVES TO HELP
A Lalo le encanta ayudar
THE HOWL OF THE MISSION OWL
A NOVEL
Parisian
Promises
Cecilia Velástegui
This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known historical people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © Cecilia Velástegui, 2012
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER: 2014934027
Velástegui, Cecilia
Parisian Promises: a novel/Cecilia Velástegui
ISBN: 978-0-9851769-1-4 Hardcover
Published y Libros Publishing
24020 Camino del Avion #A225
Monarch Beach, California 92629 U.S.A.
Printed in the United States of America
Book Designed by Karrie Ross: www.KarrieRoss.com
Author’s photograph: Lisa Renee Photography
George Sand photograph credit: Getty Images
La Belle Otero photograph: Author’s collection
All other images: iStockphoto
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, store in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyright materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
For Loreal
and
Jay-Paul
In honor of their
first wedding
anniversary
Contents
Part One
Chapter:
One: Parisian Promises
Two: The Faux Che
Three: La Belle Otero
Four: Taking Command
Five Trawling for Babes on the Seine
Six: Madame’s Rant
Seven: Le Sept
Eight: Breaking Monica
Nine: Mind Control
Ten: Madame’s Advice
Part Two
Eleven: The Insanity of l’amour
Twelve: L’Amour Fou
Thirteen: Crestfallen or Carefree
Fourteen: Madame la Vicomtesse
Fifteen: No Fool Like and Old Fool
Sixteen: Pure Love and Pure Hate
Seventeen: The Indelible Mark
Eighteen: Inside the Cave
Nineteen: C’est Choutte
Twenty: Madame is in Love
Twenty-One: The Missing
Part Three
Twenty-Two: The Interview
Twenty-Three: The Heart Bleeds
Twenty-Four: Heart Stands Still
Twenty-Five: Heart’s Content
Afterword
About the Author
Il n’y a qu’un bonheur dans la vie,
c’est d’aimer et d’être aimé.
There is only one happiness in life,
to love and to be loved.
George Sand
Part One
CHAPTER ONE
Parisian Promises
Their fervent promises to look out for one another evaporated quickly into the Parisian sky, but Monica and her friends didn’t care. It was a glowing fall afternoon in 1973 and, in their youthful effervescence, the four American college students barely noticed when these promises fizzed away. As they strolled, arm-in-arm, down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, each woman couldn’t help thinking about her own dreams, her own ambitions. Monica would never dare reveal her epic-size goals to her friends––goals for which she would gladly break their frail chain of promises.
With every step, the pretty young women garnered more and more admiring glances, a remarkable feat in a city renowned for its ubiquitous beauty. They giggled as they listened to each other’s rose-tinted visions of Paris, and gasped theatrically at the audacity of how each woman planned to conquer the City of Light. Little did they realize that all eyes on the avenue coveted them thirstily–some with lust, others with barely disguised malice.
The Parisians strolling nearby observed the frolicking American students with a world-weary eye. Their French rationality and cosmopolitan experience had ingrained in them a high degree of skepticism about other people in general and, since the student revolt of 1968, university students in particular. The revolt had begun with reasonable-enough student protests against the ban on visitors of the opposite sex in dormitory rooms, but soon escalated to an all-out general strike with over ten million workers––half the French labor force––demanding societal changes from the French government. Paris had seen many rebellions before, but not on the raucous scale of 1968 ––and this watershed event still whirled the length of the Seine River five years later. So today, on this breezy afternoon, the Parisians walking past could both delight in the Americans’ innocent charm and smirk when they thought of the rude awakening in store for naïve foreigners like these at the hands of haughty, cynical real Parisians.
The coeds glided nonchalantly down the famed avenue, still oblivious to the commotion they were causing. Their tight hip-hugging bell-bottom jeans swayed in the breeze, and their inappropriately skimpy blouses revealed nipples aroused both by the chilly air and by the intoxicating vortex of their own starry-eyed Parisian dreams. Their nubile bodies caught the eyes of a group of well-groomed, tanned young men sitting outdoors at the corner café; its red canvas awning, flapping in a gust of wind, applauded the bewitching women with gusto. Had Monica and her friends returned the men’s intense gazes, they might have detected the danger.
The young men smoked their cigarettes languorously, tired after a long night of posting political pamphlets on the student kiosks and walls in the Latin Quarter––and from their other illicit nocturnal activities. They’d performed the pamphleteering and political activities with conviction, and without any concern about their source of income. After all, they could do as they wished: their daddies’ money from Latin American fortunes would pay for their Parisian indulgences. “Let them sow their wild oats in Paris and not at home where the consequences could cost them their lives,” their fathers had said, imagining their sons’ sexual debauchery abroad. But their families had never imagined that their indulged sons would be more motivated by political objectives than erotic adventures. When their sons boarded a ship to travel from South America to France, their fathers sighed in relief––and they continued to gladly empty their wallets to pay for their sons’ whims in faraway Paris.
Monica couldn’t help but notice one of the young men, the one who had deliberately fashioned himself in the manner of a dapper Che Guevara. To her gullible eyes, he epitomized the suave French man of her dreams. She nervously
stroked her feathered mane, and although his searing stare made her blush, she was spellbound, unconsciously slowing her pace.
“Ssst––compañeros, they’re the ones,” the Che look-alike whispered to his companions.
“Oui, son perfectas,” said one of his compañeros, his comrades, in agreement. Among their clandestine crowd, they spoke in a patois of prep-school French––learned in expensive Swiss schools––and rapid Latin American Spanish, with a sprinkling of tropical expletives that were as attractive to female Sorbonne students (particularly those who wanted to show the world they were liberated) as spicy chocolate-and-chili bonbons. The rage among the left-leaning cliques of the Latin Quarter was to be considered part of this group of captivating Latin American students and their French cohorts. Collectively, these suave, slender men personified the zeitgeist of the tumultuous times. Just like the 1968 protestors, they threatened to rattle the foundations of the international socioeconomic status quo.
Many people were certain that these students were going to change the world somehow, and they yearned to be a part of this vanguard. Others in the Latin Quarter, mostly students from bourgeois families, wished they had been old enough to march with the original Che across the hillsides of Cuba, even if only for a few weeks during their summer vacations. But the Che look-alike and his compañeros understood the other students’ dilettante desires for exotic intrigue, and, when necessary, they knew how to mix their finishing-school manners (something they knew always impressed the more-formal French) with a little revolutionary pizzazz. In this calculated way, the compañeros coursed as naturally as the Seine River from the most elite quartiers of the city to the rowdy Latin Quarter.
“Go. Vite. Before they get away,” whispered the clean-cut compañero.
The Che look-alike jogged up to the women and smiled at Monica. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle. Would you care to join me for refreshments? This table offers a direct view of the Arc de Triomphe. I’d be delighted if you would honor me with your company.”
Monica blushed even more deeply than when she first caught his eye. She wasn’t used to courtliness like this this. She’d never encountered it back at her family’s horse ranch in rural Murrieta Springs, California, where she and her mother silently bumped into each other in the tack room, hanging up the worn saddles and horse blankets that muffled her mother’s cries at the end of a hard day of training. At a moment like this, the contrast between the sadness in her home life and this new world opening up to her in Paris was almost too much to bear. Monica had to clear her throat and dab at her watering eyes, consumed by the memory of her mother’s suffering at the hands of her father. She blinked hard, determined not to let this deep bur under her saddle fester in Paris the way it had back at the ranch, destroying her happiness, her youthful optimism. Then one of her friends nudged her, and Monica opened her eyes: they were all smiling and nodding their approval.
“Well, oui, okay,” she said to the gallant man. “I’d love to. Merci.”
As if on cue, the usually aloof waiter snapped to attention, and shot a smile at Monica and her friends. The American coeds interpreted the smile as friendly, but the other compañeros back at their own table exchanged conspiratorial glances with the waiter.
Monica waved goodbye to her friends and joined the Che look-alike at the table for two. At that moment, Paris seemed to glow with warmth, to become the soft-focus sepia postcard she had always envisioned. Neither she nor her friends yet realized that Paris was in fact a city of gray tones, from the architecture with its famed grisaille, to the constant drizzle, to its contrasting neighborhoods and quartiers of inequality. Each neighborhood was a study in various shades of charcoal, its chiaroscuro nuances revealing the hidden depths of human nature, its malleability and its sometimes-sinister intentions. And at the heart of the Paris quartiers, the green-gray Seine River pulsated, its murky waters and shady quais hiding secrets and camouflaging illicit rendezvous.
In fact, Paris was not quite the city captured in Robert Doisneau’s dreamlike black-and-white photographs. Doisneau himself admitted: “I don’t photograph Parisian life as it is, but life as I would like it to be.” Had another photographer followed Doisneau around the corner of his stylized street settings, he would have captured scenes of melancholy, adversity, and despair.
But for Monica and her friends Lola, Annie, and Karen, Monsieur Doisneau’s was the only accurate picture of Paris. They had come from the States to study French, and to cultivate and transform themselves. They were thirsty for the exquisite champagne bubbling from the swankiest quarters of the city. When Monica listened to her friends share their expectations of a year of studying in Paris, she decided that––unlike the more timid women––she was incapable of reining in her own over-exuberant, grandiose goals, any more than she could control her mares in heat back in California.
The women were determined to make Paris into the experience each one had concocted, like a tipsy bartender, for herself. For Lola, Annie, and Karen, Parisian life would start off with a benign cup of coffee a few blocks away, but Monica’s Paris experience began when the dashing Che look-alike gallantly pulled the café chair out for her and captivated her with his deceitful charm.
Monica’s friends were happy for her and her head start on the nonacademic side of their Paris adventure, singled out by a man they assumed to be a handsome, classy French guy. The other three continued their afternoon walk along one of the most famous of avenues in the world, caught up in their own anticipation of amour and adventure. Monica, Karen, and Lola had met in their French classes at Cal State. Semester by semester, exhausted by full-time work and full-time study, each one revealed a desire to study in France––but none had the funds to make this a reality. One by one, dollar by dollar, they eventually managed to save enough money to participate in a study abroad program. Once in Paris they met Annie, who generously picked up most of the tab on their joint housing.
Deep in their daydreams, the women didn’t notice the shadowy figures skulking at a distance as they walked off down the street. For a split second Lola paused, feeling an infinitesimal gnaw in her gut, and turned back to look at the blushing Monica sitting outside the café. Monica’s face shone with excitement—so much so that Lola ignored her instinct and hurriedly rejoined Annie and Karen. Not in the deepest, darkest recesses of their minds could the women have foreseen the calamity about to befall Monica, blinded as they were by their promises to make this the best year of their lives.
CHAPTER TWO
The Faux-Che
Tell me, Mademoiselle, what brings you to Paris?” asked the Che look-alike, exhaling the aromatic fumes of his thick torpedo cigar.
Ordinarily, Monica may have been repulsed by the cigar’s pungent odor of leather and moist soil, but at this moment she was intrigued by the ritual of lighting the cigar. The suave young man had snipped the cigar’s end deftly with a monogrammed gold cutter, and then lit a cedar stick that he used to ignite the cigar. Even as he performed these tasks, his deep brown eyes remained fixed on her. Monica was lured by the elaborate care he took with everything: the way he held the chair for her and adjusted it so that she had a clear view of the Arc de Triomphe; his courteous but authoritative tone when he ordered a drink for her; and, now, the lighting of the oversize cigar. He twirled the cigar around the ember of the cedar stick in a slow, deliberate way. When his tanned hands caressed the cigar cutter, he seemed unconcerned about its sharp razor edge. His movements reminded Monica a little of her own careful pace grooming her prized horses back in California, but she could hardly compare his immaculately clean hands to the messy cuticles she had sported just a month ago back home, before she packed her clothes and escaped to a new life in Paris. She leaned back in her chair, watching him exhale smoke, attempting to hide her horse-handler fingers, and totally forgot to answer his question. He gave her a quizzical look.
“Please forgive me, I forgot my manners.” His smile, even through a haze of smoke, was dazzling. “Shall I extinguis
h my cigar?”
Monica felt childish and unsophisticated. “Oh, no, not at all,” she said quickly. “It’s just that the smoke somehow reminds me of my horses, and well, I don’t know, I just miss them and I didn’t think I would. I mean, I wanted to get away from my parents’ horse ranch, with its smell of manure, and that’s why I’m here in Paris.” Monica blushed and bit her bottom lip, willing herself to stop babbling. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she folded them in her lap like a schoolgirl. “I didn’t mean to say that your cigar smells like manure, Monsieur, I just…”
He laughed, his voice deep and confident as a ringing bell, and leaned forward. When he reached down to gently touch her hands, his fingertips grazed her thighs.
“Please call me Jean-Michel,” he said, his hand still pressing on hers. “I’m smoking the same style of puro that Che liked to smoke when he was out campaigning in the hills of Cuba.”
“I’m Monica,” she told him, smiling sweetly. Jean-Michel said nothing. He was waiting for the American girl to show off by talking about Che, revolutions, or Marxist-Leninist theory. Invariably, whenever he mentioned Ernesto “Che” Guevara, all the coeds from the Latin Quarter would expose their level of political awareness. In most cases, the women would gush about the iconic photograph of the young revolutionary, garbed in fatigues and smoking his signature cigar. Inevitably, the women would say they admired what Che had tried to do for Latin America’s underclass. That’s why Jean-Michel had applied this personal version of a Rorschach test with dozens of women.
All in all, his Che-Rorschach test usually revealed female personalities that were overeager or too opinionated, traits he abhorred. Bourgeois French women tended to blather on endlessly about how much they admired Che, and how they would have given up their jobs as cigarette girls, coat check girls, shop girls, or the like, to go and fight in Cuba. Jean-Michel used these featherbrained girls for quick afternoon assignations or as bow-wrapped gifts for those of his compañeros lacking his animal magnetism.