The Tale of the Rose Read online

  “If you send that message, I’ll kill you!” Albert shouted. He moved toward Tonio, who was dashing to his plane.

  “You, a man who is afraid of the night, you want to kill me?” Saint-Ex lashed out at him. “Wait until I get back!”

  The pilot had a gun in his hand. He was weeping.

  “You won’t get through, you’ll be crushed,” he said, still weeping.

  Viñes and I were paralyzed. A sip of white wine loosened the knots around our throats. “Niña, niña, ¿nos vamos a casa?” Viñes whispered to me, eager to leave.

  “No, Ricardo. Tonight is my engagement party.”

  Ricardo smoothed his mustache. A shout rang across the hangar: “Ricardo Viñes!”

  Viñes jumped. “What did I do wrong? I certainly have no wish to fly.”

  “A radiogram for you.”

  “For me?”

  Ricardo was puzzled. He searched for his glasses, which refused to emerge from his pocket. Meanwhile, Pilot Albert was swearing as he headed off into the darkness, his head hanging low.

  Ricardo finally read the message: “A thousand pardons for my absence. Go on with the engagement party at the airfield until I return. Clearer sky and better wind for my return. Around midnight, I hope. Your friend, Saint-Ex.”

  “A telegram, as fast as that? Bravo!” Viñes exclaimed, laughing from the quick sequence of conflicting emotions. “Well, after an engagement party like this one, the wedding promises to be una boda magnífica, inesperada—magnificent and unusual!”

  That was the first of the night flights that would disturb my sleep from then on.

  THE NEXT DAY we celebrated our engagement with a café au lait at the airfield. Tonio had flown the mail to the next station, where he found a replacement pilot. Someone announced that the revolution was going to break out that very day. I took the information calmly. Nothing could worry me, now that my pilot had come back.

  Viñes and I returned to Buenos Aires to sleep. Tonio had to stay at the airfield, waiting for news about the mail delivery.

  The telephone startled me out of my sleep. It was Crémieux. “Wake up! The revolution is here!” he shouted. “They’re shooting in your street—can you hear it?”

  “Oh, really?” I mumbled. “I got to bed very late last night . . . wait a second, I’m going over to the window. Yes, there are shots. I guess it is the revolution, but I’ll come and have breakfast with you. Wait for me.”

  Hardly had I dressed when I realized that all the servants had disappeared. There was just one old man in a corner, who wanted nothing but handed me an urgent letter, which I tore out of his hands. Then Tonio suddenly appeared out of nowhere, like a devil, running into my room.

  “Oh, there you are! I’ve been so afraid for you. The airfield is a long way from Buenos Aires. . . . The thought of getting here too late and losing you caused me more anguish than all my flights put together. Come!”

  “But why? It’s nothing, just a revolution. I saw revolutions in Mexico when I was fifteen, with my classmates. From time to time a bullet goes astray, but hardly anyone ever dies of it. Civilians don’t know how to shoot. It takes years of practice for people to learn how to kill.”

  Tonio laughed. “Good, if you’re not afraid, then I won’t be either. Anyway, look, I’ve brought my camera. I want to film the revolution from down there, where the shooting is. My friends back in France will love it. You remember the short films I made that I showed you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but first come with me to see Crémieux. He’s waiting to have breakfast with us.”

  “He’s waiting for you, not me.”

  “But we’re engaged!”

  “No one would think so,” he said, staring into my eyes. “I have very little free time, but when I come to see you, you have other social engagements.”

  “Yes, if you can call a revolution a social engagement.”

  At this point we were walking slowly down the street and had started to argue. He didn’t give me time to think. I wanted to protest. I told him I didn’t want to spend my life at an airfield or sitting in a chair somewhere waiting for him. But the bullets whizzed past faster than my thoughts. He was squeezing my arm very hard.

  “Hurry up!” he said. “We’re going to get killed. Look, there are two, no, three men fallen in battle, right there.”

  “Maybe they’re only wounded . . .”

  “Walk, walk faster, petite fille! Or I’m going to have to carry you on my back.” He gave the order very seriously, eyeing my high heels and the short steps I was taking.

  “You must never run when crossing a street through gunfire,” I told him. “The men on the opposite sidewalk, the revolutionaries, will be more likely to pick us out. Anyway, you don’t look at all like an Argentine. The soldiers in the trucks aren’t taking any notice of us, they’re only shooting at armed men.”

  “If that’s how you see it, why don’t we dance down the middle of the street, little one?”

  Some of the revolutionaries were forcing their way into private buildings; others were shooting from the rooftops. A man armed with a rifle suddenly threatened us, but Tonio, in a strong, calm voice that resonated over the sound of gunfire, announced, “I am French. Look,” he added, showing his Legion of Honor medal.

  That gesture sufficed to resolve the situation, but I was still frightened. “Quick, let’s run and hide behind that garage door.”

  We spent a good hour behind the door, watching the revolution. Men fell without a sound, they were quickly picked up and carried away, and others appeared from a tunnel to replace them. Then it became clear that we couldn’t stay there any longer. We were growing nervous, so we walked to the corner. There was no revolution there, but the windows were shut and heads could be seen behind them, peering out: the agitation of an anthill in turmoil.

  We finally reached Crémieux’s hotel. He was glad to be able to discuss the morning’s events with us. “El Peludo is your friend,” he told me. “The people staying at this hotel are against him, so be careful what you say.” He was laughing; it was his first revolution. A few planes were still threatening Buenos Aires, in case the government resisted. But at the Casa Rosada, El Peludo had surrendered unconditionally.

  By late afternoon the revolutionaries had won. The insurgents began to throw the furniture of people who belonged to the president’s party out into the streets. They tied a rope to his statue and dragged it along the ground, and set fire to all the ministries. Tonio and I ran back to my hotel to save my luggage and then went back to stay with Crémieux. Suddenly, a siren rang out. It belonged to a newspaper called Crítica, the government organ.

  “Oh, no,” I said. “What if that’s the counterrevolution?”

  “Where should we go?” Crémieux cried.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” I said firmly. “I’m appalled by all this upheaval. I came to Buenos Aires to relax!”

  Tonio and Crémieux laughed. In the end we decided to go up to the roof, where Tonio could use his camera. “It would be such a pity not to film this,” he said. We went from rooftop to rooftop. Tonio wanted to go down to the street. Crémieux advised me to keep my cool and let him take his pictures. “We’ll stay tucked away in a little corner of the roof to keep an eye on the situation.”

  As it turned out, the offices of Critíca, located right next to the hotel, were engulfed in flames. The smoke choked us, forcing us to retreat.

  That evening we drank cocktails at the hotel bar. Crémieux had definitely decided to leave the following Monday. No longer quite sure where I was or what I should do, I sat there in my torn dress, lost between the smoke from the burning newspaper offices and the flowers of the piano bar.

  4

  AS I WALKED through the city, each step a new adventure, I wondered why it had befallen me to witness these strange things: the revolution, my visit to the president, his statue dragged through the street amid the nervous laughter of a young nation that believed itself to be free for the first time. The top
pled statue was the symbol of that freedom. The marble had stood through fair weather and foul, but the storms in the students’ hearts had done more damage than all the tempests of the pampas.

  The real Don El Peludo would go to prison a few days later, on a boat that journeyed in darkness among islands where nothing could ever bring peace to his heart. He was old, and the plan was to have him “suicided” there, in the implacable winds that blow across the seas. Whole nights had been spent in discussion of where to send this dictator, whom the Argentine people themselves had engendered. No more lugubrious spot could be found for a man who, as even decent people said, was innocent but had neglected his duties as the father of his people.

  I was afraid of the strange atmosphere hovering over Buenos Aires. No door offered any security, every window looked like a trap. It was all too much for a free citizen like me, arriving from Paris, where everything, even death, even misery and injustice, was so simple. Here everything had yet to be discovered or invented. I walked slowly. Why had I arrived at the exact moment when the anthill had exploded? Perhaps I was unlucky. I had come to find friends, to find peace to soothe my young widow’s heart, and everywhere I found the discontent of this tropical race, which was boiling over for the first time.

  In my pocket I could feel the love letter from my Flying Knight. I touched it with my fingertips and could sense it there with every step, every movement, every quiver of my hips. I told myself that it was a love letter. And love . . . love . . .

  I went on walking.

  Too many emotions were sweeping through me. It was time for me to think, to grow up. I wanted to understand. I knew there was something in this whole story that I had yet to decipher. I didn’t know if it was just me or if it was life in general that was making me listen so attentively to the rhythm of the new era that had come to meet me. I slowed down further, watching the gray sky that hung low over the mansard roofs of Buenos Aires: there was no shade in this landscape, no trees, only a few passersby. I dreamed of the beautiful chestnut trees of Paris, the Seine that curves through the city, the booksellers with their stalls along the quais who could always distract and calm me at times like these.

  An Argentine friend once told me she owned five thousand trees. In Buenos Aires, the trees are numbered. All the trees you see there come from far away; they are brought to the city like prisoners, and promised that they will receive all kinds of love and care if they will only grow. In that country, men go out to find trees and ask them to come and grow back home, to give shelter and shade. I knew of some estates where the trees flourished under the constant care of gardeners. But the pampa is hard. It doesn’t want to give anything away; it wants to be solitary, it wants to be the pampa. There’s something quite magical about the effort the landowners expend to make anything green grow there. A harvest is a miracle. But the more obstacles man faces, the more worthy he becomes of bringing about miracles.

  Tonio’s letter was still rustling against my dress, against my hip, speaking to me even though I didn’t want to listen. I was trying to understand what was happening to me in that hard and tender country. I felt alone, orphaned, far from the chestnut trees of avenue Henri-Martin in Paris, exiled from the Luxembourg Gardens. The haughtiness that arose from my solitude and my difficulty in seeing things clearly at least gave me the feeling that I really did exist.

  I was being offered the role of the wife in a play. Was I right for the part? Did I really want to play it? I was starting to get a migraine from thinking so hard when, if only to relax a little, I finally yielded to the call of my love letter. I put my hand in my pocket and slowly drew it out. He, my Flying Knight, was offering me everything: his heart, his name, his life. He told me that his life was a flight and he wanted to sweep me off with him, that he found me light and delicate but believed that my youth could withstand the surprises he promised me: sleepless nights, last-minute changes of plan, never any luggage, nothing at all except my life, suspended from his. He said again that he was sure of coming back to earth to find me, to snatch me up with dizzying speed, that I would be his garden, that he would give me light and I would give him solid ground on the earth, among men, the solid ground of a home, a cup of hot coffee made just for him, flowers always waiting for him on the table. I was afraid of reading these words; they made me want to look back, all the way back to my country, where the houses and people were safe.

  The gloomy streets yielded up no sign to calm my fears. Suddenly I was overcome with exhaustion. I didn’t even cry. I tore at my hair like an animal caught in a trap. Why should I accept this impossible union with a wild bird who would fly across skies that were too high for me? Why was my childlike soul allowing itself to be tempted by his promises of clouds and tomorrows full of rainbows? I closed my eyes, put the letter back in my pocket, and walked on toward a church to ask God for guidance. Only He could heal the wound that had opened in my heart. I remembered what my mother used to tell me: “God,” she would say, “does not want us to be sad and confused. He wants us to be cheerful and strong.” Then why do you perplex me like this, Lord? I shivered with fear. I was feverish, I couldn’t go on thinking any longer, but my heart was whispering, “If Crémieux leaves without me, I’ll be all alone, with no advice or protection. I’ll be nothing more than a doll in the arms of the great aviator, the man who travels through the skies.” The letter kept on murmuring with every step I took.

  Finally I reached the church. It was Père Landhe’s parish. He was there, as if he had been waiting for me. Immediately I told him about my lightning-fast engagement and took the letter from my pocket. He read it aloud, slowly, as if to inform me of its contents. Looking into my eyes, he said, “If you love him, I advise you to marry him. He is a force of nature, an honest man, a bachelor; with God’s help you will found a happy home.”

  I took the letter from his hands and left him.

  I found myself alone again, making my way through the sounds of Buenos Aires. By chance I happened to pass my former hotel, the Hotel España. Curious, I went in and asked to see my room. No one objected. The lobby and the stairways were a little chaotic, but the staff seemed calm and resigned. I pushed open the door of my room, where I had heard so much talk of the revolution. I found my trunk there, intact but too heavy for me to carry. A letter addressed to me lay on top. The envelope was stained, as if from drops of water. I opened it and began to read. It was another letter from my pilot, telling me once more that he wanted to marry me, that he refused to let me go back to France, that he knew very well I was a guest of the government and advised me not to get mixed up in the politics of the country, but to take the love he bore me seriously. Our friend Crémieux, he told me, was in favor of this marriage, which would be for life. He asked me to be a grown-up for him and to take care of his heart. I put this letter away in my pocket with the other one, and as the pages of the two letters slid against each other, they seemed to let out a soft lament.

  Finally I left the hotel. In the street, I talked to myself. I saw his tender face again, his dark, round, piercing eyes. The last time I had seen him awake, after days and nights of flying, he had been as fresh as an angel who had passed through a stormy night but was ready to go dancing or take off and fly again. He could eat once a day or not at all; he could guzzle a barrel of liquid or go several days without swallowing a single drop. His only schedule was set by the storms in the sky and the tempests in his heart. Once, arriving at my hotel and watching me drink a glass of water, he said, “Oh! I know what I need. I haven’t drunk anything since yesterday. Pour me a drink.”

  I handed him a glass of water and a bottle of cognac. He poured the whole bottle of cognac down his throat, and then the water, without thinking. He had forgotten that the other people who were there might also want a drink. He didn’t even bother to excuse himself for this because he hated to lose the thread of the conversation. That really irritated him. If he was interrupted during one of his stories, he would sometimes remain silent for the rest of the evenin
g. Or I should say for the whole night, since he never had any notion of what time it was. His visits would last until breakfast—he found such a pace entirely natural. Sometimes sleep caught up with him, and then he would sleep wherever he was and no one could wake him.

  One day he was delivered from the airfield. He had given my address to his driver, who brought him to me fast asleep, as if dropping off a package. At the hotel, the staff said to me teasingly, “Your pilot is asleep, someone has just brought him for you. He sleeps! He sleeps!” What was I to do with this man? I stretched him out on a sofa, asked my chambermaid to take care of him when he awoke, and, to protect my reputation, left my room to him and took another one.

  Tireless as he was, he could be annoyed at having to make the simplest gestures. For example, he hated to go to the trouble of tapping the ashes from his cigarette into an ashtray. Even if they were dropping into the folds of his pants, he would ignore them to keep from interrupting a conversation, seemingly oblivious to the fate of his clothing. So what if his pants caught fire!

  I continued to walk alone through the streets, dreaming of my sleeping pilot. I must have looked like a fool, wandering around, bumping into passersby, not knowing where I was going. Suddenly a man took hold of my arm and shouted, “Get in! Get into the car.”

  “Is that you, Tonio?”

  “Yes, it’s me. I’ve been looking all over for you. You look wretched, you’re all hunched over. What’s wrong? Have you lost something?”

  “I think I’ve lost my head.”

  He laughed exuberantly and said, “My driver was the one who recognized you. I wouldn’t have known it was you. Why are you so sad? You look like an orphan.”

  “I look sad because I don’t have the courage to escape from you,” I said. “And I think I don’t want to understand the truth: for you, I am nothing but a dream. You like to play with life, you’re not afraid of anything, not even of me. But I want you to know that I am not an object or a doll: I don’t change faces on command, I like to sit down every day in the same place, on my own chair, and I know that you, you like to leave, to go to a new place every day. If you tell me honestly that your letter and your declaration of love are nothing more than an essay on love, a fairy tale, a dream of love, I won’t be angry. You’re a great poet, a flying knight, a handsome fellow, strong and smart. Don’t mock a poor girl like me who has no treasure other than her heart and her life.”