The Tale of the Rose Read online

  “So what you’re saying,” he answered, “is that somehow you think I have too many good qualities to be your husband?”

  “To make a good husband, perhaps,” I said pensively.

  “Oh, women are all alike! They love to hear about other people’s love, but to live it, to love with their own hearts, that’s something else entirely—something that is given only by the grace of God. Why don’t you believe in love?” he asked, holding my hand very tightly. “Why, young as you are, are you so mistrustful of life? Why are you so bitter about the sweetness of living?”

  “How many women have you wanted to marry, Tonio? How many fiancées have you had?”

  “I’ll tell you. Only one, when I was very young. I was engaged to a young girl who was paralyzed, in a body cast. The doctor said she might never again be able to walk, but I played with her and I loved her. She was the fiancée of my games and my dreams. Only her head could move, outside the plaster, to tell me her dreams. But she also told me lies. She was engaged to all my friends, and she made each one of them believe he was the one master of her heart. And in a sense we all were. But later the other fiancés married women who could walk, and I was the only one who stayed with her. So she loved me for my fidelity. Then the grown-ups started interfering in our engagement. The grown-ups found another, richer fiancé, and I wept. Yes, I wept. I was useless, but the time had come for me to do my military service. I chose aviation. I was just at the age limit, I had to work miracles. . . . In Morocco, a colonel wanted to take me under his wing. I came back as a commercial pilot and I’ve never left aviation, because I’m faithful. I haven’t forgotten my first fiancée; this is the first time I’ve wanted another one.”

  “And your parents?”

  “Oh, my mother is a very good woman. I’ll ask her to come to our wedding. She’ll understand.”

  “But my family is waiting for me in San Salvador. I was widowed a very short time ago, and we hardly know each other. What’s more, I’m practically engaged to Lucien, a friend of my late husband’s. You, you’re always busy with your flights.”

  “No, no, I’m not always flying, I only fly when something goes wrong. I have several pilots who fly into the interior of South America. But if you want, I’ll take you to visit each of the stops on the France–South America line: Paraguay, Patagonia, and farther still. . . . I’ve built airfields, seen little villages, but it’s all starting to function on its own. I’ll stay in Buenos Aires to supervise the lines. I’ll write. I haven’t written anything since Southern Mail. Except the forty-page letter I wrote for you. And to say that I admire you, that I love you. Every day I’ll ask you to be my companion for life. I need you. I swear to you, I know you are the woman for me.”

  “I’m overwhelmed,” I said. “If I believed I could bring you something fine, something beautiful, I might be able to decide to remarry—but not so quickly. Tonio, are you sure you want a wife for your whole life?”

  “Consuelo,” he said, “I want you for all eternity. I’ve thought of everything. Here’s the telegram I sent to my mother. It went out yesterday. I cannot leave you for a single day. Look at the letters I’ve sent you every day—I can’t do anything now but love you. If you love me, I will strive to give you a famous name, a name as celebrated as your husband, Gómez Carrillo’s. You will be far better off giving up a life as a great man’s widow to become the wife of a living man who will protect you with all his strength. To convince you of this, I’ve just written you a letter a hundred pages long. Read it, please, I beg you. It is the storm in my heart, the storm in my life, which comes to you from far, far away. Believe me: before you, I was alone in the world, desperate. That was why I went to live in the desert as an airplane mechanic. I had no woman, no hope, no purpose. Then I was posted here, where I earn a handsome living. I have a bank account. I’ve been saving money for twenty-six years. I live in a little bachelor flat on the passage Geremez, a place where only birds live, and a few people from time to time. I took the flat for a week and stayed on. I will faithfully carry out my duty to those I love. And my life as a pilot—well, you know it has its risks, like all professions. I haven’t even bought myself a winter coat yet, for fear I won’t manage to make it through till winter.”

  I think I interested him because, like him, I could do things my own way if I wanted to. The two of us could form a new kind of union; we could be free together.

  Crémieux approved of our plans. “You’re going to live an intense life,” he said to Tonio. “Don’t let jealous people get to you, always keep moving ahead.” And he confided to me, “He’s a great fellow: make him write, and people will talk about the two of you.” A few days later, Crémieux left.

  At the Brasserie Munich, my big Tonio, in a white suit, pretended he couldn’t sleep and that soon, in just a few days, we would be married. His mother was coming. A pretty house had been rented for us, in Tagle. And if I was good, he told me, I could live there right away, without hiding from Buenos Aires society, because he would be my life, my whole life.

  So I went to Tagle. Some friends came for a housewarming party, and Ricardo, who was still giving concerts, came to our home and staggered us with his immense talent, which fired Tonio’s imagination. Marriage would wait until my future mother-in-law had arrived.

  The house in Tagle was small, but it had spacious terraces and an isolated study where I put a small cask of port with a golden tap. I also hung a guanaco’s skin on the wall, along with some animal heads and a few of my own drawings. Our friends called it “the room of the enfants terribles.”

  I was happy. “When you look deep inside yourself for marvels, sometimes you find them. I could say, as a Christian, that when you seek the divine, you shall find it.”

  5

  “WHERE DOES ALL THIS BELONG, Tonio?” I said, eying his suitcases and trunks full of papers in the entryway of our new house.

  “It doesn’t much matter. In the garage, so as not to clutter up the house. All ten trunks are made of wood and nailed shut, so the papers are safe. In any case, I don’t remember what I can possibly have put in there. But this is all I have, darling. I take them from one place to the next. Every trunk is a stopover, a hotel I’ve stayed in since I became a pilot. But I haven’t always been a pilot—I was also a mechanic on the Río de Oro once . . . I was young then!”

  “When was that, Tonio?”

  “Three years ago. Life goes fast, you know. I can still remember when Monsieur Daurat called me into his office one day. He doesn’t say much as a rule. He acts, he thinks. He loves his work because it connects him to the forward surge of humanity. He always seems to set in motion whatever is best in a man. The pilots don’t much like him, but they want to be like him. . . . And I do, too. I’d done a few flights on the line, here and there. Then one day in Toulouse, he wanted me in his office. ‘You’re going to leave for Port-Etienne, in Mauritania,’ he tells me. ‘Takeoff is at three-fifteen. You’ll spend a few months there. The work is easy, but we often lose planes.’ I say to Daurat, ‘But I’ll be far away from my family!’ ‘You’ll write to them by airmail,’ he snaps back. ‘But my luggage?’ I protested. ‘Don’t take much, we’ve got a lot of mail to carry on the plane. You can take your razor and your toothbrush. It’s hot there: ninety degrees in the shade.’ Then, very loudly, he says, ‘Be there on time. Next!’

  “And another pilot came in. I was floored. Should I go? I knew perfectly well that if I refused, I’d be fired. It would mean the end of my career as a pilot. I put all my plans and appointments out of my mind and asked my conscience: Refuse or accept? I had to accept: refusal would be too easy. I could always say no once I was there and come back. After all, it wasn’t a jail. I wrote to my mother and my friends, and there I was, on time, at the airfield. Monsieur Daurat walked me to the plane without a word. Once I was in the air, he waved.

  “The next evening we were in Port-Etienne. We drank coffee, ate some chocolate. The radioman had a good supply. As usual, I hadn’t brought
a thing. But I’ve kept you standing there, my darling. Let’s sit on my trunks, just as we did in Port-Etienne. Monsieur Daurat sent them to me, one by one, and I had them nailed shut like that. Everything I had was inside them. But at Port-Etienne I didn’t need anything. I’d wrap a towel around my head for long walks, but more often than not I was naked. I always had a rifle with me; it was dangerous to go too far from the hangar. The Maures were and still are the Christians’ enemies, but they were the purest people I have ever known.

  “We had to negotiate with them very adroitly in order to build a hangar. The talks were like the intrigues of the Thousand and One Nights. They asked for the hangar’s weight in gold before they would let us set up a base there. Later I learned that the trick was always to say yes and to discuss the real price afterward. They demanded a thousand camels and a thousand slaves armed with nine thousand rifles, two thousand pounds of sugar and of tea—and we said yes to everything. Finally we met with the tribe’s chief, who showed up to hear our response with his face covered, accompanied by two of his men bearing loaded guns. We offered them mint tea, which they never refused. We all had to squat down on our haunches, and that gave them confidence. In the end: a hundred pesetas, ten pounds of tea, and the same of sugar, and as for the slaves, we would buy them when we could find some, which wasn’t easy. Do you know the proper way to make a slave?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not tired of this?”

  “No,” I said. “I love your stories, I feel as though there’s no end to them.”

  “Well, then: the Maures send their most trusted men to buy tea, dried mint, sugar, and guns. These men reach the pasturelands full of flocks that belong to rich merchants who deal in rugs, honey, or copper, and they are very friendly. The herdsmen let themselves be charmed, even though they know that these Maures, disguised as Moroccans, are wolves. But an Arab loves to play. Then the Maure sets his trap: ‘Come with me,’ he says. ‘You know the region well. I have a little flock in such and such a place, I’ll trust you with it. You’ll be my friend.’

  “And the herdsman gathers up his provisions, says good-bye to his wife, and leaves. Once they’re on rebel territory, the Maures run into other Maures, as if by chance. They say to the shepherd, ‘Ah, we’re going to make a good slave of you, you’re solid, we like you.’ They put him in a hole for several days, taking him out for one hour each day in order to put another slave in and to beat him with a stick. They give him a good thrashing. He receives a glass of water and is then returned to the hole to stand with a box over his head. After the full moon, there’s a ceremony. He’s taken out of the hole, and this time there are no beatings. He’s dressed in new clothes, and he’s allowed to sleep. A beautiful female slave massages him—she’s his new wife—and everyone is his friend. It’s up to him now to be a good and faithful slave. If he tries to escape, as they expect him to, he’ll be caught by another tribe, where he can expect the same treatment. After three or four times, even the most hardened man will indeed become a good slave. If he’s young, he’ll become the lover of his master’s wife; then he’ll poison the water and escape with her to another tribe . . .”

  “Yes,” I said, “there are ways and ways of making slaves of all of us, even in the Bible. I would like to be your slave, but for love.”

  “Petite fille,” Tonio said with a laugh, “you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  Standing among all those trunks he looked immense to me, a giant. He had the strength of a Maure. We decided that the trunks would go into his study, on the second floor. He carried them up effortlessly, as if each one were a single book. I was ashamed, I felt unworthy of him. I thought I should have moved them long before, to make him finally feel at home.

  The next day, after he had left for the airfield at five in the morning, I started opening his trunks. It took three days of such hard work that I thought my head would explode. I forbade him to go up and see what I was doing, and then, on the third day, I announced, “Go to your study.”

  “If you want me to,” he said, pensive.

  He went in.

  “Oh! No more trunks!” he cried, going red with anger. “But who has touched my things?”

  “Me.”

  “You, my sweet?”

  “Everything has been organized on this big worktable here. It wasn’t easy. Look: the thickest files are over here, and these little papers are the radiotelegrams you’ve received on your flights. Each bundle is pinned to a page and then placed in a folder, numbered in red ink in the following order: (1) letters from Moroccan women; (2) letters from French women; (3) letters from your family; (4) business letters and old telegrams; (5) notes on flying; (6) unfinished letters, handwritten manuscripts, rough drafts, notes on fear, family photos, photos of cities, photos of women, old newspaper clippings.

  “And in here I put books, notebooks, flight logbooks, and some stacks of files—on music, on songs, on cameras and lenses. And in the bookshelf’s compartments, an album of collages. And the little things, the souvenirs, are on the bookshelf. The trunks are all empty now. Nothing’s been left out, I swear. All that remains are the envelopes from a few letters, with some old newspapers in one of them. I’ve done my best so that you’ll have all your things here in our house.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said. “But would you mind leaving me now? I need to be alone. I’m very grateful. I’ll work night and day on your book.”

  “On your tempest,” I said.

  “No, the tempest is over, but I must tell its story, to make you happy. Give me some tea, I don’t want any dinner. I want to stay up here with my papers.”

  So I shut my fiancé in his study. Only if he showed me five or six pages of work did he have the right to come into the future newlyweds’ bedroom. Not before. He liked my little game.

  Our Czech servants, Léon and his wife, often asked me about our marriage. There had been no word from Tonio’s mother. We had learned from some friends at the consulate that his family was making inquiries about my origins. That bothered me, and for the first time sadness overcame us. I was beginning to feel stifled, but I didn’t slow the pace of his mandated task. He buckled down to work and even thanked me for my severity.

  My friends in Argentina kept asking, “So when is the wedding?” Two of my former husband’s friends came to tell us that we were the scandal of Buenos Aires, that I owed it to the memory of Gómez Carrillo not to behave like this. I let Tonio answer them.

  The date we had set for our wedding was not far off. When it arrived, we went to city hall together to put our names down in the register. I was glad. If his mother wasn’t coming . . . well, we’d wait for her to arrive before having the church wedding. We were in agreement about this, and our diplomat friends agreed with us, too. After all, we were in charge of our own lives. I was wearing a new outfit that day, and so was he. When our business at city hall was over, we had decided to go to the Brasserie Munich, just the two of us.

  “Name? Address? The woman first.”

  I gave my name and address, then it was his turn. He was shaking. He looked at me, crying like a child. I couldn’t do it. No, it was too sad. “No, no,” I blurted, “I don’t want to marry a man who’s weeping. No.”

  I tugged at his sleeve, and we careened down the steps of city hall as if we’d both lost our minds. It was over. I could feel my heart beating in my throat. He took both my hands and said, “Thank you, thank you, you are good, you are very good. I can’t get married so far from my family. My mother will arrive soon.”

  “Yes, Tonio,” I said quietly, “it will be better that way.”

  Neither of us was crying anymore.

  “Come,” he said, “let’s have lunch.”

  In secret, I swore to myself that I would never go back up the stairs to city hall. I was still shaking. I was certain that I had come to the end of my adventure.

  THE HOUSE IN TAGLE, which had trilled and warbled with birds and with our dreams, became gloomy. I felt as if I could no lon
ger breathe. Our friends stopped coming to visit as often, and I spent hours looking out across the plains in front of the house, my head empty, my heart shattered. I was in love with a boy who was afraid to get married. He had seduced me, and now he was growing more and more distant.

  My Argentine friends no longer invited me to their homes. In their eyes I was shameless, a merry widow. My pilot went out alone. I prayed to God and decided never again to speak to Tonio about our botched plan to marry. After he thanked me outside city hall, he didn’t bring the subject up again. I had lost my return ticket to France. As the widow of an Argentine diplomat, I should have been entitled to a pension, but I no longer dared ask Gómez Carrillo’s friends for anything.

  I shut myself up in the house in Tagle. Tonio often found reasons not to be there for meals. It was like an unspoken agreement between us; even if he was staying in Buenos Aires, he no longer ate any of his meals at home. He would come home at night to change his shirt and shave, while I stayed in my little boudoir, pretending to read a newspaper or a book. He would say, “I’ll see you soon, chérie,” and give me a guilty kiss, then flee into the night, trembling.

  He would come home very late and find me waiting for him, always wearing an evening gown, smiling as if I were on my way to a ball; I would have a literary anecdote at the ready, a story from former days. We would drink very cold champagne, he would relax a little, and though I was dying of sadness I pretended nothing had changed between us. I would say, “Only five pages of tempest this evening.” And he would go to his study.