The Tale of the Rose

by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery

  One day, on one of our walks through the hot streets among the snake charmers, I caught a strange microbe that began to eat into my foot, making a little hole half an inch wide that smelled awful and seemed to be rotting. My dog caught it after I did. He cried even harder than his mistress. I couldn’t wear shoes. My foot was wrapped in bandages. The doctors held a lengthy conference about me, at which Tonio was present. He came out of the meeting a changed man. He said, “I won’t go on my mail flight tomorrow.”

  “Why, Tonio?”

  “Because I want to take care of you, to look after you. You won’t heal if you’re alone for long nights. I don’t want to fly anymore.”

  “Then how will we live, Tonio?”

  “Oh, we’ll always find a way to eat. I know how to drive a truck.”

  “But no, Tonio, I’d rather you be a pilot. I want you to leave tomorrow on your mail flight. The vegetables have already been bought and packed up, I’ve made all the soups, everything is ready. Take this cake to Madame la Capitaine, please . . .”

  “As you command, my wife. And when I come back we will leave for the islands.” I thought he was joking.

  Youti was moaning all the time. I sang songs to him. My Fatima and Ahmed took us to a veterinary sorcerer, and I gave him fifty francs for an ointment that smelled very good. My dog healed in three days. The hole he had had for a month went away, and the skin grew back; there was no more pus. I was delighted, but my own foot wasn’t healing at the same rate. It smelled worse and worse. A second hole had appeared, on my calf. I was shaking, and I prayed to God to heal me. I became very melancholy and stayed home all day. To distract myself, I reread some pages my husband had just written, which he had left scattered across the table. As I was putting away his papers, I saw a word written in larger letters than the others: “Leprosy.” I read it again: yes, “Leprosy.” It was a letter to God, no less, in which he pleaded with the Lord not to abandon me because the doctor didn’t want me to have any further contact with other people. He would, he wrote, go away with me to the islands where lepers live.

  I understood why my friends were no longer visiting as often. I was afraid. Youti gave me a kiss. I cried.

  We had come to this country to work, full of hope, full of energy. I never complained about anything. I had no money to buy new dresses or perfumes, but it didn’t matter; the flowers smelled wonderful, and in my white summer dresses I was as elegant as my friends in Casa who wore the latest styles from Paris. My husband loved me. Could I destroy his life because of my leprosy? Had I infected him already? I should run away with an Arab who would accept me with my foot like that. In any case, I could go and beg in Fez, but what if I gave my disease to everyone? No, I had to leave for the islands all alone, to wait and see if Tonio had been infected.

  I looked at my little hole as if I were looking at my coffin. It was time to take care of Youti—I had his bandages ready—and I decided to use the same ointment on myself. What did it matter? Things couldn’t possibly get any worse. During the night, I couldn’t breathe. I was purple, feverish. I put on more of the ointment, then took a hot bath, leaving my foot dangling outside the tub. Morning found me there, my body covered in red spots. The next day, same treatment. But my hole was clean. The itching was gone. The day Tonio came back from his mail flight, I was at the airfield, wearing my walking shoes, without a cane. And with Youti. He saw that the dog had recovered and understood at once.

  “You used the same medicine as Youti?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It’s over, but my whole body aches.”

  My husband took me in his arms and carried me off the airfield to the car. “Where is the sorcerer who saw to Youti?”

  “Near Bousber.”

  We found him in a brothel; the girls served us tea. The Arab was very calm. “What your wife and your dog were suffering from is going to be cured,” he said. “You must bathe your wife’s body in milk. And then it will be over.”

  Tonio took baths in boiling milk with me. The remedy was a little costly, so we mixed some goat’s milk in with the cow’s milk. But I was well again.

  Tonio told me, “I would have gone with you to the islands, ma femme. You are my reason for living. I love you as much as life itself.”

  Part Three

  Paris–Côte d’Azur, 1932–1937

  11

  WE WERE STILL LIVING in Casablanca when Night Flight finally went on sale in the Paris bookstores.* We were worried about how it would be received. Every day, I bought the most important newspapers—Comœdia, Le Figaro, Les Nouvelles Littéraires. I cut out all the good reviews and pasted them in a notebook—sometimes two copies of them, because it tickled me to see so many photos of Tonio. When he came back, he laughed to see the same photos, the same articles. Then Night Flight won an important literary prize, the Prix Fémina, and became a favorite for the Prix Goncourt. Gringoire printed a funny cartoon that showed a winged aviator being ravished by the female judges of the Prix Fémina. They had changed the date of their meeting for him. In general, they awarded their prize after the Goncourt, but that year they met before the Goncourt was announced. Tonio and I were very pleased by this distinction.

  Tonio’s publisher called him back to Paris again. Tonio was beginning to find all the traveling back and forth quite an impediment to his sense of freedom. What was more, he couldn’t get the company to give him more leave every month. So he decided, without telling me, to be a pilot no more. One day out of the blue he announced that we were leaving. And I followed . . .

  THIS TIME WE WERE SETTLING in Paris for good. The apartment on rue de Castellane was far too small, but it was impossible to find a place to rent at that time—the prices were unbelievable. You had to bribe the concierges, pay key money, and run all over Paris, only to find nothing.

  By chance we stumbled on a lovely apartment not far from where André Gide lived that was available, though many people were eager to rent it. But my husband was the man who had won the Prix Fémina, and the owner gave us his preference. The street was pleasant, and the apartment overlooked a garden, but we had to wait several months before moving in.

  Tonio was overextended, forever busy with appointments, visits to the ladies of the Prix Fémina, photo sessions, invitations, and admirers, male and female. His success grew greater by the day. Distant cousins who had never before noticed that they were related to him were suddenly laying claim to the succesful writer. They even came to wish him a happy birthday, which they had never done before. Importunate lady admirers besieged us from all sides. I could no longer keep track of all the names, and we missed half our appointments. Tonio wasn’t writing anymore; we spent our life in other people’s houses; we didn’t even have lunch alone together anymore.

  Finally, one of his cousins took us off to her château, six hours out of Paris. At last, some green, some peace! Little old ladies sat by the fireside in the château’s large, chilly rooms; I was delighted. But our stay ended all too quickly and our return to Paris was a nightmare once more. My husband was constantly on the telephone, even in the bathtub. My nerves could no longer take it. In the evening, we had to travel to Deauville, Honfleur, or Bagatelle, a constant coming and going that made no sense. There was talk of seizing the moment to make films of Southern Mail in France and of Night Flight in America. Editors, journalists, and agents were all sitting on his bed. We no longer had a single minute alone. At three in the morning, when the telephone finally quieted down, Tonio would fall into a dead sleep, and then, very early, the telephone would start in again. He had no secretary, there were only he and I, doing our best. After the calm of the white villas of Morocco and my anguish over his night flights, I was becoming almost hysterical. He would often ask me, “What can we do?”

  He couldn’t walk ten yards down the street without meeting up with some intellectual who spent his life in a café, such as Léon-Paul Fargue* and countless others. And then they would go off drinking and talking. It was hellish. No more home life, no more time spe
nt thinking; we lived as if we were on public display in a shopwindow.

  But Tonio loved the sky too much. He knew how the clouds changed, how the winds could be treacherous. He saw himself at the apogee of his career, but he also knew that everyone was waiting, watching, always hoping for the vertiginous fall of the current man of the hour. That was why he decided one day to run away from Paris. But it was harder now than it had been before. Rivière, the great Rivière of Night Flight, who was none other than Didier Daurat, director of the French airmail service, the Aéropostale, had been threatened with the worst: imprisonment based on false evidence, false testimony. He was accused of having stolen some mail, he had been dismissed from his position as head of the airmail service in Toulouse, and he was being called a forger. Chaumié, the head of civil aviation at the Ministry of Aviation, had been charged as well. Daurat and Chaumié: two men whose honesty could withstand any ordeal. The newspapers were full of the latest news of their trials. My husband stood firmly behind them; his confidence in the two accused men never wavered. He was right. It was like something from a Sherlock Holmes mystery: the real forger was finally discovered, and Daurat and Chaumié were acquitted. But the company had changed hands and would now belong to the state. Those who wanted to fly for it would have to meet special, very exacting requirements. Tonio did not persist. An airplane manufacturer had asked him to come to Saint-Laurent-de-La-Salanque, near Toulouse, to help perfect the prototype of a new plane. He accepted. He told me he had found work again, somewhat difficult work. The prototype had already drowned several of its crews. The manufacturer had tinkered with the motor a little and wanted to take the plane through some new tests with new pilots. Tonio left for Saint-Laurent. He gave me as his address the Hôtel Lafayette in Toulouse and begged me to stay in Paris. It was winter, but the apartment was heated only by two fireplaces. I was too weak to bear the chill, so he put me up in a room in a charming hotel on the Left Bank, the Hôtel du Pont-Royal.

  I had asthma. I didn’t know much about the disease and thought Morocco had given me its last gift: sand in my lungs. I couldn’t breathe; I thought I was dying. My husband had disappeared to Toulouse a week before. I was going mad. I heard nothing from him. I asked my sister in Central America to come and help me, and fifteen days later she disembarked in Le Havre. On the telephone, my husband’s voice was always half asleep and absent; by night he wrote or did whatever he wanted, and by day he was working in Toulouse. He very rarely flew the plane, which had endless mechanical problems.

  “Little sister?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said.

  I was shaking.

  “Lie down,” she told me.

  “Little sister, do you love me?”

  “Yes, I love you. Now lie down. The doctor said you have to sleep.”

  “Little sister, I want to speak to my husband.”

  “If you’re a good girl, I’ll get him on the phone for you.”

  I could hear the distant voice of my husband saying, “Yes, Consuelo, I know, you’re ill. Your sister is taking care of you. I’m not worried.”

  “Little sister, how long have I been sick? Three weeks? Four? Oh, little sister, why doesn’t my husband come to see me?”

  “Because he’s working,” she said.

  “Little sister, I don’t have any letters from my husband. He left a long time ago. Little sister, I know: he has nothing more to say to me.”

  “Don’t think like that. I’m tempted to be angry with you. You are ill. You must not think of anything, anything . . .”

  “Little sister, I feel better. For four days now, I haven’t had asthma. Why do you keep me lying in bed with the shutters closed?”

  “It’s the doctor’s orders.”

  “Little sister, ask him if I can get up.”

  The next day, I went to see the doctor.

  “Madame, I do not invite all my patients to my home,” the doctor told me. “But you are so alone. I’ve asked a very intelligent friend to dinner tonight. Promise me that you will not refuse to join us.”

  “I feel so unhappy, Doctor,” I whispered. “I’m miserable.”

  “These things can happen to the happiest couples: distances, misunderstandings. Two people sometimes grow tired of each other. C’est la fatigue à deux.”

  That evening, at dinner, the doctor’s friend was there.

  “May I introduce my patient, Madame de Saint-Exupéry, wife of the famous writer and pilot,” he said with a flourish. “She thinks she is very sick, in other words, no longer loved by her husband. I’ve allowed her to get out of bed, and she’s begun taking flying lessons. She wants to run away into the sky.”

  After dinner, the doctor’s friend, André, a poet, took me back to my hotel. All the lights in the generally lackluster lobby were glowing. I asked him to join me in the bar for a moment, and he was happy to do so. We talked for a long time. Both of us had been despondent before we met, but by the end of the evening we found ourselves comforted and increasingly cheerful.

  André came with me to my flying lessons, which he found absurd. He gave me poems to read, wonderful stories, and soon I was well again. I wanted to live, to play, to read more and more poems, more and more stories, ever more marvelous. With him I had found magic. I began to dream again. Through him I found the strength to go back to the apartment on rue de Castellane.

  One evening after dinner, when I was back home, he told me the story of his last love. She was a married woman. He swore to me that never again did he want to love a married woman. I was in despair: I knew what he was driving at. He told me that he loved me, that I must go and see my husband in Saint-Laurent, or wherever he was, and tell him good-bye, tell him that I loved another man. That day, André believed I was free.

  I was young, and André’s wonderful nature ruled my heart. I left for Toulouse on a third-class ticket. My husband did not come to the train station, where I was expecting him to meet me. I went to his hotel. He asked me to let him sleep until one o’clock. I waited in his room, which smelled strongly of smoke, stale air, and leather flying gear. I shivered at the thought of the speech I would have to give him when he woke up. In my head, I repeated André’s words. I wanted to carry my mission through to its end. But suddenly there was our friend Dubordier, another pilot, coming into the room.

  “Do you want to have lunch?” he asked Tonio.

  “No, but take my wife,” Tonio yawned. “It’s Sunday. I don’t like taking my wife to restaurants on Sunday. You’re granting me some time to sleep—thank you. She has to go back after that, take her to the train station. I’ve got to leave for Saint-Laurent in an hour. Good-bye, Consuelo. Kiss me, dear wife, and give your sister a kiss for me, too.”

  “But Tonio, I didn’t come all the way here for this,” I said. “I want to speak to you.”

  “I understand. You probably need money. Take all you want, chérie. I live on café au lait and croissants.”

  I went back to Paris.

  “Oh, André, I couldn’t tell him anything,” I said miserably.

  “Why?”

  “He was asleep.”

  “You don’t love me, but if you tell me that you do, I’ll believe it. So write him, then.”

  “Yes,” I said with new determination. “I can do that.”

  And the letter went off. When it reached Tonio, he hopped on a plane at once and came back to me.

  “Yes, yes,” I told him. “I’m leaving you for André.”

  “I’ll die if you leave. Stay with me, I beg you. You are my wife!”

  “But I love André, Tonio. I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any pain. I had no news of you from Saint-Laurent. I thought I was nothing more than a thing to you. A thing that you leave parked in a hotel. And André loves me. He’s waiting for me.”

  “Then tell him to come and get you.”

  “Yes, I’ll ask him to come.”

  I called him, and a few minutes later, André was at my house. He came with some of his friends. We talked, we dr
ank. Tonio received them bare-chested. He looked very strong with his hairy chest, and he was also very cheerful. He served them Pernod on a silver tray. We all drank together, and I stayed with my husband for life.

  We never mentioned it again.

  THE NEXT DAY we flew to the south of France, where he wanted finally to fly in his great monster of a hydroplane. We arrived in Saint-Raphaël while my little sister, her role as nurse at an end, sailed back to her volcano in San Salvador.

  “Tonio, I’m afraid of that plane of yours; it doesn’t want to swim,” I told him.

  “I’m not,” he said. “Every day, I fly a few minutes longer over the water. It groans, it cracks. You see how my arm is swollen, almost black and blue; well, that’s because I had to hold the door shut—it was coming open. It needs a certain number of hours in flight; after that it’s the manufacturer’s business.”

  “But this whole comedy with the little boat that tracks your flights, the deep-sea diver, the nurse, the respirator, and you up in the air, it drives me crazy. You know, I would like to see you open up a shoe repair shop on some street corner.”

  “But today I know many things,” he said. “I’m no longer afraid to go far away from you. You love me as if I were your father, you take better care of me than a wife your age should know how to. And it’s a bald man you’re mothering. Look at me: I really am bald. Darling, today I’m going to finish testing our monstrous creature. Come and see it; tell it to behave itself.”