The Tale of the Rose (21 page)

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 purify 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.

T
HE 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.”

I no longer knew how to cry—I knew nothing at all. I went on looking at the stars, with death in my heart. The boat had come to a sudden stop. We could hear the straining of the winches, the chains, the ladders that were being made ready to help the Central American director of the Compagnie Transatlantique climb aboard.

I was lying down as the captain paced through his cabin with long steps. Daylight was just beginning to illuminate our drama.

“My name is Luis,” cried a man more than six feet tall in a tender, tropical voice. “I’ve come to take you to your husband as quickly as possible. The president of Guatemala and I, with the help of the Compagnie Transatlantique, are offering you this plane trip, which will allow you to rejoin your wounded husband.”

He was a fair-skinned man, still young despite his white hair. He had a laugh that one who was in pain could recognize as that of a kindred spirit. As I was trying to stand up and thank him, I fell into his arms. The captain’s cough reminded me that I had to be more of a brave-little-soldier-on-a-battlefield-where-the-enemy’s-blows-must-be-born-with-dignity.

“Thank you, monsieur; I am greatly touched by your company’s kindness,” I told him. “I am glad to have your help. When are we leaving?”

“The boat is waiting for us. We can be in port within an hour.”

The captain had pushed all his control buttons, and the entire staff was quietly coming into the cabin.

“One of the directors of the Transatlantique is on board,” said the captain sternly. “He will grant us the pleasure of showing him our ship. I place him in your hands, messieurs.”

The crew took charge of the visitor. The two nurses, who had no patients except the man in third class, were wearing what amounted to evening gowns. Now, for once, it was their turn to act the part of lovely passengers pampered by the crew—those holiday Don Juans.

I lay down again. The captain paced the cabin as if nothing were wrong. In the distance we heard langorous, intoxicating music, songs, life. I fell asleep, I don’t know for how long. I woke up to the eyes of my captain, who gently took my hand.

“Sleep, sleep,” he said. “I’ll come and wake you at dinnertime. There are no seats available on the plane. Luis will be our guest until Puerto Barrios. This evening, in the great dining hall, we will have our final dinner. We’ll even have some passengers from Panama: a group of young women, members of an athletic team. The evening will be a merry one for our guests. You and I—we will command our hearts to wait and sleep. Sorrow is full of mystery. Would you like to be my companion for this dinner?”

I could not refuse such an offer from a man who had shared my pain so deeply and yet would not show me his own.

He kissed my hand. A nurse fetched a bag of ice for my head, the doctor gave me some shots, and a chambermaid laid out an evening gown for me, with flowers embroidered on a fabric as white as hope.

It was hot that evening. The sailors wanted no woman but me at the large table where we customarily sat. They had made a throne for me out of fresh flowers, white flowers they had bought in Panama and had managed to preserve despite the heat. At my place, they had put a simple little inscription: “A fairy.” How best to accept this extraordinary gift? How could I help but feel like a flower, even if flowers are sometimes bruised by the night?

Our eyes were radiant, and we were bathed in admiration by those who gave speeches. Oh, how our guest was pampered that evening! Our first mate, the most lovable conversationalist on the Pacific Ocean, asked him questions. Little by little, Luis told us the whole story of his life. He confessed himself to us, to these sailors, who were trying hard to assuage the sadness that the white flowers bedecking this throne had made me feel. Don Luis was crazy about all of us, drunk with the message he was bearing, drunk with his role, drunk with the protection he could give me.

“You see, my captain,” he said with all the arrogance of an emperor, “I myself am married, married, married. I have three daughters. One day, I wanted to have my wife and children brought to El Salvador. I waited for the passengers to disembark. My wife was not among them. And yet, the day before, I had received a telegram saying that she was a passenger on that ship. She couldn’t possibly have evaporated—when I left her in Paris she weighed more than four hundred pounds! It wouldn’t be easy for her to run away. I waited a few more minutes, perplexed, and then I was summoned to the place where the animals were being unloaded. There I said hello to my wife, along with several cows and a horse. Two of my daughters helped her into the passengers’ waiting room. She had grown even fatter in the two years since I had last seen her. She spoke in a very sweet voice. At the hotel the door had to be removed so that she could enter the room. And she has stayed there ever since, in that room, and will for a long time to come, no doubt. She can’t even turn over or sit down. That, monsieur, is my wife.
Eh oui!
”

This slender, agile, elegant man, married to a monster who couldn’t pass through doorways, moved us deeply. Each of the sailors in turn told his story, as sad a story as possible. They were all trying to demonstrate that people sometimes have sorrows that are even harder to bear than the death of a loved one.

O
NCE IN
P
UERTO
B
ARRIOS
, I thought I was dreaming. I was back in my native country, the country of volcanoes and beloved songs. The president of the Republic had sent a car escorted by two motorcyclists from his official retinue to accompany me on the road so that I would be able to travel more quickly. But I refused to go at such hellish speed. I wanted to stop and drink coconut milk at a little farm where the natives were breaking coconuts open with their teeth and drinking the milk straight from the shell. I took a fresh coconut away in my arms, to drink the milk in the comfortable presidential car. We couldn’t leave the windows open because our mouths filled with dust; even with the windows closed we could see nothing but a yellow cloud. I was choking.

We arrived, Don Luis and I, at the military hospital. A little white-haired old woman, very stooped, thin, and sweet, wrapped her arms around me as hard as she could and burst into tears. I hadn’t had time to see her face or recognize her: she was my mother.

Our embrace lasted a long time. I was used to so many shocks by now that I thought her sobs were announcing Tonio’s death. But no. She led me slowly to a room where a doctor wearing a major’s uniform was waiting for me.

“Madame, welcome to the hospital of Guatemala. Your husband has been hospitalized here. He is in room seventy-seven. Come. The danger, the great danger, has been averted, I believe: I mean the danger of death. However, he is very sick. He has many wounds. If you will authorize it, this evening we will amputate his hand, perhaps up to the elbow. It is necessary. I know you are a very courageous woman; I am sure you will share my opinion. A living man with a single arm is preferable to a corpse with two.”

I went into the room, which was threadbare but clean. A nurse was watching over the patient. I could hardly recognize Tonio’s head, it was so swollen. It was, without exaggeration, the size of five heads. The doctor assured me that they had done all that was necessary and everything had been put back in place. There were devices to realign his jaws in his mouth; his lips were nothing more than mucus membranes dangling above his chin. One eye was almost on his forehead; the other hung down toward the mouth, swollen and purple. He could hardly be seen beneath the cotton and bandages soaked in disinfectants of all colors. Bottles, strung along a complicated system of wires, continuously distilled drops into his wrists, elbows, head, and ears. I had never seen anything like it in my life. And this man was my husband! From time to time he opened a single eye; the other one was completely immobilized by the compresses. Whenever light touched him, something happened in his brain that was impossible to understand: he would start to howl. I sensed that he was battling to save this precious matter that destiny plays at molding, wounding, breaking, transforming. Deep inside his human consciousness—if he still had one—a terrible struggle was going on. Soon I could feel all his wounds within my own being. Sitting next to his bed, on a straight-backed chair, I watched that eye, which sometimes flickered over my clothing or my face. Several weeks went by like this.

I began to feed him, as if he were a baby being given his first spoonful of milk, his first bit of bread dipped in honey. The swelling in his head began to go down. He was very thin. Day by day, he lost more weight. Under the effects of morphine, he often told stories that were so complicated I wondered if I wasn’t the one who was sick.

Eventually the doctor authorized me to take him home since there was nothing left but a wound on his hand that would not heal. That hand didn’t seem to want to be part of his arm. That was our biggest worry.

The day he left the hospital, our friends thought they would cheer us up by waiting for us at the Palace de Guatemala Hotel with a marimba, a champagne cocktail party, and a hundred waiters. My husband told me, “I’m just going to walk straight through that crowd. Put me to bed in the hotel tonight and put me on a plane for New York tomorrow. I’ll have an operation on my face to arrange my teeth and put my eye back in its place, since you can’t live with a monster who has one eye on his cheek and the other on his forehead. Don’t be upset, everything will be fine.”