The Tale of the Rose

by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery

  I lay down again because my legs were wobbling. It hurt, it hurt very badly. We were both crying with desperate sobs, like two children being burned alive in the same fire with no hope for a miracle that might save us.

  In the early morning, I was the one who started talking again.

  “I will be your friend,” I said. “I will go home to my mother’s house the way I did when I skinned my knees as a little girl. I’ll go and let myself be consoled by my roses, my palm trees, my enormous volcanoes in San Salvador. When you are old, maybe you’ll come and see me someday.”

  He left to stay in a hotel, for we couldn’t look at each other without crying, falling into each other’s arms, and losing our days to futile sobs. Nevertheless, he looked happy. I took to my bed. My faithful friend Suzanne took care of me, and I made inquiries about the next boat that could take me back to San Salvador.

  My husband began writing me tender letters that grew more and more loving, and soon he begged me not to leave. He asked me to wait six months for him, “six short months,” he said.

  And he swore that afterward he would take me to China, where we would be happy, the two of us, alone together. I believed in China, in our Chinese happiness, and I waited, still suffering, curled deep in my bed.

  ONE DAY HE REAPPEARED with his suitcases. He was tired of living in a hotel. Like a child, like a student who has gone off to spend a few days in a house of ill repute, he set down his two suitcases at the foot of my bed, stood next to them, and cried, “Here I am!”

  He let his arms drop along his body. “Here I am. I can’t live away from our home anymore. I can no longer live without you. I’m sick. I need you: take me back or I’ll die. I can’t eat in restaurants anymore—everything makes me sick. I’m drinking too much, and I can no longer write a single line. If I don’t work, who’s going to pay for our existence?”

  Boris came in without knocking, thinking I was alone. He was bringing me the mail. When he saw Tonio, he smiled with joy. He cast a quick glance at me and picked up the suitcases as if he were picking diamonds up off the street. All three of us were beaming. Boris disappeared with the suitcases, put away their contents, and gave orders that the quarters of “Monsieur le Comte” be filled with flowers and made comfortable. He finally had his master back. Even the dog was dancing, and, in his joy, leaving little spots on the rug. My husband didn’t want me to punish the poor dog for that; it was in his honor, he said.

  But alas, things took their usual course. Once again I waited for my husband to come home at night. One day the dog sat up at the door until seven in the morning; he caught pneumonia from it (he was a very fragile Pekinese) and died within twenty-four hours. After that I didn’t even have my dog to keep me company.

  The sixth month of this ordeal was drawing to an end. I packed my bags, set the house in order, and, like a soldier who has been conquered but is proud of having done all he could to save his country, I fled.

  My husband understood when he saw my preparations. I bought several collections of dresses for my sisters and myself. Therefore, I was leaving. I stepped out onto the terrace. The lights from the Colonial Exposition were gilding the dome of the Invalides.

  “Tonio, I’m leaving.”

  “Yes,” he said. “When?”

  “I’m sad, but I have to leave you,” I continued. “I think there has been a great earthquake in our life, and I must thank heaven for having saved me. I’ll go and rebuild somewhere else.”

  “Yes, Consuelo,” he said. “Sometimes that is necessary. I will leave for America, too. I’ll make another long-distance flight, and perhaps I will never come back, for I don’t feel like coming back. I feel no love, I no longer love . . .”

  Without discussion, without a single word more, I took the boat at Le Havre, bound for Puerto Barrios, Guatemala—Central America’s only Atlantic port.

  THE SEA WAS GRAY, the sea of Le Havre in winter, but I thought it was a magnificent sight. The seagulls were gray, the boat’s flags were gray, the enormous heaps of cargo were gray, the people who swarmed around me were gray. My coat was gray, too, a coat made of squirrel fur. The moment came to go up the gangway, which was gray as well.

  The horizon the boat headed off into was also gray. My thoughts and my heart alone were sunny, with the sacred light of acceptance. I was being reborn as only Christians can be reborn to another life after leaving this unhappy earth. I might not have deserved this elation, this sense of consolation, but I granted it to myself as a gift, for I had wept so much. I prayed to heaven that I would be worthy of the relief I felt at rolling aside the tombstone of my broken marriage. I promised myself to be happy from then on and never to look back. It was in Paris, and not on the shifting terrain of El Salvador, that I had experienced the greatest earthquake. Now I was going to pick tropical fruit, tame butterflies, and sing along with the rivers. Forever, until the end.

  I wanted to be beautiful for my first evening on the boat. I refused to breathe the air of the past. Everything I wore was new, as if I were a newly engaged girl. The chambermaids helped me unpack my suitcases. I stroked the lovely evening gown I would wear for this, the first evening when I had given myself the right to live again as a woman awaiting a sign, which could come from anywhere, that everything would come alive once more.

  Ribbons, satin slippers, gleaming jewels, feathers in my hair, a lace mantilla for my curls: I had thought of everything. I dressed carefully, I was marrying my new destiny. I was joyful, happy, happy. . . . The dinner gong rang through the passageways between the cabins. A bit more perfume on my hair! I sprayed a little perfume on the chambermaid who had helped me get dressed, too. I detected a certain teasing look in her eyes.

  I walked calmly, with the pleasure and assurance you feel when you know you are well dressed. From my heart to my lace, everything sparkled. I walked through the reception rooms and the bars as if I were dancing, but met only the crew.

  A steward walked up to me. “Are you looking for the other passengers?”

  “Is it too early? The first bell has only just rung for dinner.”

  “No,” he answered with the same amused look I had seen in my chambermaid’s gaze. “You are our only passenger.”

  A gunshot couldn’t have startled me more. I started laughing. I believed and didn’t believe his little sally. Touching my arm familiarly, he went on, “Allow me, madame, to introduce you to the ship’s doctor, the captain, the second mate . . .”

  All of them, standing in a row, greeted me very warmly.

  The captain spoke. “You are our only passenger, and the last woman who will ever travel on this ship. We are making our last voyage as an ocean liner. For twenty years, I have been this ship’s captain. We had a strike that ended badly. The boat has been punished: it will be converted into a freighter. We were permitted to set out on one last voyage, and by a great coincidence, just when we had received permission to accept passengers, you bought your ticket. You are, therefore, the person in charge of this ship. It belongs to you. We are your crew. If you order us to change course, I will obey you. What orders do you want to give us, to start with?”

  “I would like a cold drink, a drink with all of you, to toast our voyage. Dinner can wait.”

  “Dinner will wait,” said the captain.

  “Communiquez,” the first mate ordered the second.

  “Passez les ordres,” someone else repeated, and glasses of champagne were distributed to all “my” crew. I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. After a few glasses, the second mate confided in me, “To tell you the truth, we do have another passenger, traveling third class. He’s a kind of pirate. He doesn’t want to go through Nicaragua, and he is dying. He has a rather strange fixation. He wants to be thrown into the sea before we reach Nicaragua, which is his nightmare. But don’t you worry, we’ll already have left you off in Puerto Barrios!”

  The next day we moved the dining room to the side of the swimming pool, and a greenhouse was built for me. My cabin was next to
the captain’s. He was an old sea wolf with beautiful lines etched on his face, a laugh that had braved endless storms and stars, and a good-heartedness that was like something out of a fairy tale.

  I thought I was dreaming. It was too beautiful to be true. Soon we saw a very colorful island. I asked the captain to set a course for it. He did. It was the island where migrating birds meet. If the captain had asked me to spend my life there, if he had cast the boat’s anchor and his heart’s right there at that island, I would have found it perfectly natural. But we continued serenely on our way to Guatemala. Even so, I felt that my crew was growing increasingly nervous and anguished as we approached Puerto Barrios.

  In the evenings, the captain and I had fallen into our own little habits. We would send away the rest of the crew and, for the thousandth time, tell each other about our childhoods. Like me, he did not want to talk about his adult life. We were grown-ups who were eager to escape reality, especially its ugly side. We spoke in a tone of friendship. He gave me the news of the rest of the world, which reached the ship by radio. I noticed, as we approached Curaçao, that he grew more tender, but his old hands, tanned by the sun, touched me with compassion rather than love when he led me back to the stairs.

  In Curaçao, I decided to go for a little walk by myself, to think about my new life. It all struck me as simply marvelous: I saw trees, a new sky, men. Dressed in white and wearing tennis shoes, I set out over the tarred roads of Curaçao, but soon my crew caught up with me. I turned back and shouted, “I want to be alone, to do a little shopping on my own. I’ll see you again this evening on board.”

  The men moved off, but only to a spot about ten yards away. I understood that I was being followed. It was quite a job to shake them off—sometimes there were seven of them, sometimes ten, walking along behind me, pretending to buy fruit, talking to the natives, giving seashells to the children, decking themselves out in strands of shells and flowers. We all felt transformed into children of the palm trees there. The island belonged to Queen Wilhelmina, and that Dutch colony had a flavor of Holland about it, and fresh tulips.

  At a bank I changed a little money. The first mate raced to the door, not to open it for me but to rush inside himself, ahead of me. I thought he was crazy. I exchanged a few francs for the local currency, and after a while I went back to the boat. I complained about this not very discreet surveillance to the captain. He laughed and cried at the same time. “You’re young and pretty,” he explained to me. “The people of the island might have stolen you and made you a child of Curaçao. We can’t leave our passenger here on this island.”

  I believed the gallant old captain. Oh, Captain, if you’re still alive, I thank you for your laughter and your tears!

  Every day Puerto Barrios drew inexorably closer. When I asked the commander how many miles we had made during the day, he answered sadly, “I would prefer never to reach Puerto Barrios!” The wrinkles didn’t leave his brow for a long time after that, and I didn’t ask any more questions. The crew, impeccably dressed in snow white and gold, explained the mysteries of the Caribbean Sea to me. For by now we had no more stories to tell one another. Each of us was going toward his final destination. The old sailors would navigate no more. Soon their dreams of life on land would begin. And they were afraid. The children in their rooms, the faithful (or unfaithful) wife always following behind them . . . After so many years of waiting, how would they endure this marvelous repose and familial bliss, this paradise where there would be no more departures or arrivals? Yet this really was the end.

  The sailors were transfigured by the overcast sky of the Caribbean Sea. The sky was different in color from the sea. You don’t see it immediately, but the body feels brighter, taller, as if transformed by the new light. You slip into this new light as if you were entering a new world. They call it the magic of the Caribbean. People change: those who are violent become gentle, the weak become strong, and you breathe as if you had just been born into a new embrace, a new love. Sometimes the natives begin to sing to this light, as if to give thanks.

  When I was falling asleep in Paris, I would dream of seeing my sun again, that light, my volcanos thundering like cannons, the eternal summer. . . . I had long imagined finding myself back in this atmosphere, which was my cradle, my blood. Slowly I stretched out on the bridge and spoke to my old captain about the destiny of the stars, which seem so fragile because our eyes cannot penetrate their mystery. They are like giant bees, and there was no better way to taste their honey than to lie down on the bridge next to this old sea wolf and take in deep breaths of the Caribbean Sea, which reflected the imperturbable stars in the depths of its black waters.

  The days were short. We took pictures; we knew that we would soon be leaving these warm waters, that we would soon be separating forever, and we wanted to preserve some trace of this time when our souls met with such intensity, such purity, like the stars mingling in the waters of the sea.

  “You will forget me,” said the captain, “as all my passengers have forgotten me. That’s as it should be. I’ve loved them all, all the women who stayed close to me for an entire voyage, lying on the same deck chair, full of the drama of their lives, full of their fear of dying. They were all as beautiful and as fragile as my boat’s journeys or the life of flowers and butterflies that live only a day, like the glass of champagne you’re holding in your hand that will soon be empty but will live on in the bright glow of your eyes. And always the memory, riveted to this skull here”—and he touched his head—“to this skull that, even now, when it’s virtually a skeleton’s skull, keeps its taste for these fragile journeys, these fleeting lives, the froth of champagne, the glow in your eyes. All of these things are lights—it’s light itself that counts, it’s light that creates, light alone, bright light.”

  My body felt heavy. Soon I would awaken in Puerto Barrios, among the palm trees and my family, to reclaim the sun that had watched me being born. I wasn’t afraid, but I would very much have liked to fall asleep there on the bridge and gently awake next to God, who can do everything. Even so, I was trembling with fright, for buzzers suddenly went off and the siren sounded from the hold, like someone suddenly barging in on our human dreams, the dreams of ephemeral beings. The siren sounded again, along with a thousand shouts and footsteps. The first mate asked, “Mon capitaine, may I come up on your bridge?”

  I wanted to beg him not to allow anyone to join us that night, but he, rising like an animal emerging from sleep, crushed his crystal glass in his hand, squeezing it slowly until it had crumbled to powder, and cried, “Yes, come up!”

  He had hurt himself. Shards of glass were scattered across the ground. He made his way over to my divan and, for the first time, took my hand passionately in his, inundating my dress with blood. He caressed my forehead with his other hand. It lasted only a second, and then he turned to face his sailor who stood at attention, silently waiting.

  “Speak.”

  “We have a visitor. He is two miles from the boat and demands that we go and pick him up . . .”

  “Who is it?”

  “The director of the Compagnie Transatlantique. He has an urgent message for the Comtesse de Saint-Exupéry.”

  “Send for him quickly, reduce speed, lower the anchor in five minutes.”

  A message for me? Who could it be from but the man I had wanted to bury along with my past, the man who had brought me to life and made me die in Paris? I understood my old captain’s tender protectiveness. I felt I was in danger, but what sort of danger?

  The whole boat was coming to life, working for this person who was coming to meet us in his boat.

  “He couldn’t wait until you were in Panama,” the captain said to me. “He couldn’t wait for you to be free. Little girl, I love you as I love the stars, as I love my memories. When you are far away and you have forgotten this journey, please do me the honor of remembering this night, when I wished I were God so as to stop your tears. But tears, you know, are not always murderous. Tears can pur
ify as well, tears may be the path to grace, a way for women to become angels.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “I believe you.”

  A new bottle of champagne refreshed our thirsty wait. Meanwhile, the little lights from the boats that were chasing one another enlivened our view of the tranquil Caribbean. As if on a whim, I tried to pick out the thousand tiny slivers of glass embedded in the captain’s hand, that hand which had been so kind to me. When I had finished taking them all out, he pulled himself up to his full height and we went back into his cabin, where he turned on a light, put a beautiful commander’s cape around my shoulders to hide the bloodstains on my white dress, and called the radioman to ask him to bring in a file. The radioman came in. He was carrying a copper tray burnished so brightly that it looked like gold, on which a dozen telegrams lay.

  “All of them are for you. They arrived during the voyage. I didn’t give them to you because they would have made you cry. I wanted to spare you the tears.”

  Trembling, I picked up the first one:

  PLANE CRASHED IN GUATEMALA SAINT-EXUPERY NEAR DEATH MUST PROCEED TO AMPUTATE RIGHT ARM YOUR MOTHER WITH PATIENT WAITING FOR YOU YOUR DEVOTED DOCTOR GUATEMALA HOSPITAL.

  Then I read the next one:

  YOUR HUSBAND GRAVELY WOUNDED 32 FRACTURES 11 OF WHICH LIFE-THREATENING HAVE PREVENTED AMPUTATION UNTIL YOUR ARRIVAL TAKE PLANE TO PANAMA TO ARRIVE FASTER HOLDING YOU IN OUR HEARTS YOUR MOTHER AND SISTERS.

  18

  THE OTHER TELEGRAMS were from friends and from the tabloid newspapers, which use tragedy as a way of increasing circulation.

  “You’ve never spoken to me of your husband,” said the captain, “your great husband, your famous husband. And there he is, close to death, waiting for you in Guatemala, just where you were going to disembark. You must admit that life is strange.”