The Tale of the Rose (4 page)

He went into the other room. I took a shower, and he gave me a bathrobe. I lay back down. He came and lay beside me, saying, “Don’t be afraid, I won’t rape you.” Then he added, “I like to be liked. I don’t like to steal things. I like to be given them.”

I smiled. “Listen,” I said. “I’ll soon be back in Paris, and in spite of everything our flight will be a nice memory. It’s just that right now my friends are all sick and I am too, a bit.”

“Here,” he said. “Have another pill.”

I took the pill and fell asleep. I woke up during the night, and he gave me some hot broth. Then he had me watch a film he had made. “This is what I watch after my flights,” he told me. The images were accompanied by a strange music, Indian songs. I was utterly worn out. This man was too overwhelming; his inner world was too rich. In some vague way I informed him that Viñes was giving a concert that evening and would have to be taken to the theater. He assured me that Viñes was fast asleep, that it was three o’clock in the morning, and that I should be a good girl and go back to sleep, too.

When I awoke, I was in his arms.

M
EANWHILE
, my friends had disappeared. When I saw them again several days later, they swore to me that they would never ride in an airplane again. Poor Crémieux! Just the word “airplane” made him feel queasy. “There are some kinds of nausea,” he said, “that you never forget.” The day of the revolution was approaching, so I proposed to Crémieux that we leave on the next boat, the following day.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Let’s give it another day. Why don’t you come and have lunch with me at my hotel instead? Are you free?”

“Of course, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow, then!”

I went back to my hotel, where everything was in a state of bubbling agitation. The chambermaids were coming and going and whispering endlessly behind the doors, but I was perfectly happy: the next day, I would have lunch with Crémieux, and then we would leave for Paris.

That evening, I had dinner with Minister G. at the hotel. He was an intelligent man, endowed with a singular liveliness of spirit and great tenderness. He had insisted on inviting me to dinner in memory of Gómez Carrillo. The atmosphere of the hotel contrasted with my state of mind, for I wanted to look lovely in his honor. I wore a white dress and sang as I walked through the corridors, with a veil of black lace over my hair.

I was aware of the political difficulties of the moment and found it very kind of the minister, under the circumstances, to devote his evening to me. He begged my pardon for choosing a table in a side room, as a precautionary measure.

“I’ve invited some friends of Gómez Carrillo,” he said. “Their wives are lovely, and they’re all eager to meet you. They want to see the woman who replaced ‘La Violettera,’ Raquel Meller, in the Master’s heart!”

Gómez Carrillo’s divorce and our subsequent marriage had fired their imagination. I didn’t want to say another word about it and changed the subject to the president.

“But tell me about Don El Peludo. I think he’s very nice. I spent an hour with him, and he talked to me about his hens. ‘I’m getting old, I like fresh eggs,’ he kept saying. I think he’s grown tired of his responsibilities. He signs papers without looking at them.”

Minister G. was a true friend of the president, but even he knew that the revolutionaries were preparing to throw him out of the Casa Rosada.

As we were being served a variety of wonderful dishes and Argentine wines, an urgent letter was delivered to our table, a letter from my pilot, who had just spent a day and a night in the sky. Still in the grip of the flight’s emotions, he wrote about the storms he’d traveled through, the emergency landings. He spoke of flowers, squalls, dreams, and solid ground. He said he had returned to the land of men only in order to see me, to touch me, to take my hand. He begged me to wait for him quietly, like a good girl.

I laughed and read the letter aloud to the table. It began, “Madame, or darling, if you will allow me,” and ended, “Your fiancé, if you will have me.” We all thought the letter was marvelous and inspired.

That night I dreamed of his hands, which were signaling to me. The sky was an inferno. It was a night flight without hope, and I alone had the power to bring back the sun and set him on the right course once more. I awoke so agitated that I phoned Crémieux, good-hearted Crémieux, and woke him up. He reached the conclusion that I should accept Saint-Exupéry’s proposal of marriage. After that dream, he said, I could not leave him on his own. “He has great talent as a writer; if you love him, he will write his book, and it will be magnificent.” And Crémieux was right:
Night Flight
was born from that first love letter.

The next day, Crémieux, Viñes, Saint-Exupéry, and I were all sitting at a table in the Brasserie Munich together, laughing and talking merrily. “You’ll write that great book of yours,” Crémieux told Saint-Ex. “You’ll see.”

“If she is holding my hand,” he answered. “If she will agree to be my wife.”

A
T LAST
I
ACCEPTED HIM
—I think I had run out of arguments. Mad with joy, he wanted to buy me the biggest diamond in all of Buenos Aires. Then he was called to the phone. “I have to go at once,” he said. “Let’s drive out to the airfield together; we’ll celebrate our engagement there since that’s where you first kissed me.”

Crémieux did not want to accompany us on another expedition, so only Viñes came along, telling Saint-Exupéry, “Hurry up, or I’ll start thinking I’m the one who’s the fiancé of ‘la niña del Massilia’! There’s no piano here at your airfield,” he complained once we were there. “You’ll have to have one brought in.”

“For you, I’ll have one brought all the way from Paris,” I laughed.

Tonio came over to us, his face serious. “I have to leave you,” he said.

“But you can’t leave me! We’re supposed to be celebrating our engagement tonight.” I was still laughing. I didn’t understand the situation at all, but I was very happy.

“See that pilot over there, the one who’s leaving? He’s afraid. He already turned back once, out of fear. He claims he won’t be able to get through.”

“Get through what?” I asked.

“The night.” Tonio snorted. “The weather forecast isn’t very good. But it’s always good enough for me. Daurat used to say, ‘They must be saved from their own fear.’ If he won’t do it, I’m going to take his place. The mail has to go out this evening.”

In the meantime, we ate oysters and drank white wine. I was beginning to feel afraid myself, afraid of the night. The telephones were all ringing at once; the telegraph, a couple of yards away, rasped out messages in Morse code. The other pilots were asking for their orders. The halo of light over the radio operator gave him a sinister look.

After some time, we heard the loud roar of an engine. The space in front of my eyes was enveloped in a radiant, milky haze. Tonio rang a bell. An Argentine (the dresser, just like in the theater) arrived, and, quicker than words can say, slipped Tonio’s boots on, wrapped him in a leather coat, and gave him his gloves. Outside, the other pilot clambered down from the plane. He’d turned back.

“Have him go to my office!” Tonio shouted as he gulped down the rest of the oysters, took a huge bite from the loaf of bread, and drank straight from the wine bottle. “I beg your pardon,” he said to me, “I have to rush.”

The frightened pilot came in, accompanied by a secretary. He stood there, ashamed, breathing heavily, no pride left in him. He took off his helmet.

Tonio dictated to the secretary: “Boulevard Haussmann, Paris. Pilot Albert has been dismissed; please send word to all the other aviation companies.”

“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.

T
HE 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.