The News from Paraguay
Page 25
“Do you know if she ever did battle?” Carlos Honorio tried to ask again. “If she ever had to kill anyone?”
“How old are you, my boy? Seventeen? Eighteen?” Colonel von Wisner looked over at Carlos Honorio. “Come here and give me a hand, for a minute.”
Carlos Honorio stepped up to Colonel von Wisner’s chair, his hand extended, and Colonel von Wisner, as if he were fencing, lunged forward and grabbed at the crotch of Carlos Honorio’s pants.
“Touché!” he cried and fell back coughing into his chair.
“We should be leaving,” Enrique said.
When Colonel von Wisner had recovered and had stopped coughing, he frowned all of a sudden. He looked at Enrique and Carlos Honorio as if he was seeing them for the first time. “Who are you anyhow? What are you doing in my house?” he shouted.
Enrique and Carlos Honorio started to answer, “The sons of Madame—”
“I know who you are, you are thieves, you are murderers! I am going to call the police.” This time Colonel von Wisner managed to stagger up from his chair. He reached for his cane and brandished it like a sword at Enrique and Carlos Honorio. “Thieves, murderers!” he shouted at them again.
Enrique and Carlos Honorio’s claims required expensive and extensive litigation and most of their remaining money was spent on attorneys’ fees. Before returning home, they boarded a boat for the upriver journey to Asunción; on their way, they found nothing but desolation. Along the banks of the Paraguay River, the fields were not tilled, the orange trees had been chopped down or uprooted, the houses appeared looted and burned, the walls filled with bullet holes; all the animals they saw—a few cows, some horses, homeless dogs—appeared to be either ill or starving. Of the original population of nearly a million, fewer than two hundred thousand people were left; and there were no men, only women and children.
Enrique and Carlos Honorio had hoped to find Rosaria, their old wet nurse, but when they reached Asunción they were not allowed to disembark. They were ordered back to Buenos Ayres on the next tide.
Ella no longer saw anyone but ghosts. She had lost weight and had become thin—she hardly ate, her stomach hurt and most of the day she was in pain. She herself looked like a ghost—a ghost of herself. From the window of her rooms on the Boulevard Pereire, she watched people in the street go to market, to work, and the children go to school. She watched one girl in particular. The girl was long legged and had black hair, her thick eyebrows nearly met. Ella watched as the girl hurried to school in the morning—the girl was always late—then as she walked back home in the afternoon—then the girl was in no hurry and she often stopped to buy a pastry, she had a sweet tooth—in the boulangerie below where Ella lived. Ella thought the girl might be Corinna Adelaida. Each day she was tempted to rush down the stairs to the street and call out to her—tell her who she really was and that she, Ella, was her mother. One day—perhaps tomorrow or the day after—when she was feeling stronger and no longer in pain, she would do that.
“Corinna Adelaida, Corinna Adelaida.” Sitting at the window, Ella repeated the name to herself.
There were other people in the street whom Ella recognized.
The cambâs, the black Brazilian soldier she had killed with her sabre, had come back. Once a week, Ella heard him calling outside her window. He pushed a cart and sharpened knives and scissors. From time to time, too, she caught a glimpse of Señora Juliana Martinez. Señora Juliana Martinez had not changed a bit; she looked just as pretty, just as elegant, as when she had been Ella’s lady-in-waiting. Ella watched her step gracefully out of a carriage, carrying a basket, and watched her disappear inside a house across the street. An hour or so later, Ella watched her come out of the house, still holding the basket—but from the way she held it, the basket looked empty. Clearly she had been visiting a sick or an old relative, proof of her kindness, and, again, Ella wanted to run out into the street and kiss Señora Juliana Martinez’s hand.
Several times, it also happened that while Ella was not at her window but was occupied making maté—if she was fortunate and Federico had remembered to bring her some—which acted like a mild narcotic and eased the pain in her stomach, and she was grinding the leaves and placing them in the gourd and pouring boiling water over them or perhaps, she had just begun to sip the tea through the silver bombilla, she heard a familiar tune: ta dum ta dum ta dum dum dum. Quickly, she would put down the maté to go to the window and have a look but each time she was too late, she was too slow, the person playing the harp was gone.
Ta dum ta dum ta dum dum dum, Ella hummed to herself.
Always, every day, as well, in Paris, she looked out of her window for Franco, only Ella never saw him again.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Of course there was an Ella Lynch who was beautiful and misguided, there was a Francisco Solano Lopez who was cruel and ambitious, there were family members, generals, good and bad diplomats and their wives (even so I have taken certain liberties: for instance, I have no idea what Mrs. Charles Washburn looked like, I have her blond and fragile but she might well have been a strapping brunette), and of course there never was a Doña Iñes or Fulgencio and his brother, Gaspar. Nonetheless, I have tried to keep to historical facts where I find them to be important and necessary. The events that take place, especially those dealing with the war, are complicated and, for the most part, not well known, which means that the need to explain and the need to dramatize are often at odds. What then, the reader may wonder, is fact and what is fiction? My general rule of thumb is whatever seems most improbable is probably true. Also I would like to quote a friend who cautions his readers with these words: “Nouns always trump adjectives, and in the phrase ‘historical fiction’ it is important to remember which of the two words is which.”
I am particularly indebted to the following works: Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay, by Captain Richard F. Burton, F.R.G.S., etc., whose keen observations on flora and fauna and human nature were most edifying; Seven Eventful Years in Paraguay: A Narrative of Personal Experience amongst the Paraguayans, by George Frederick Masterman, whose quaint anecdotes and quirky illustrations greatly animate his woeful tale; The War in Paraguay, by George Thompson, C.E., to whom I am grateful for much, including his appreciation of the Whitworth cannon and Paraguayan cigar; and The History of Paraguay, by Charles A. Washburn, where I found much valuable information, including the journal excerpts quoted.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply grateful to Terry Karten, Georges Borchardt, Frances Kiernan and Michelle Huneven; and most especially to Edward Tuck.
I want to thank Trent Duffy, Andrew Proctor; Wayne Furman for the use of the Frederick Lewis Allen Memorial Room at the New York Public Library; and Lolin Perera for her translations.
About the Author
LILY TUCK was born in Paris and is the author of three previous novels—Interviewing Matisse, The Woman Who Walked on Water, and the PEN/Faulkner finalist Siam—and a collection of stories, Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Fiction, The Paris Review, and the Antioch Review. She lives in New York City.
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PRAISE FOR
The News from Paraguay
“Decorous detail and vivid imagery…. Reading The News from Paraguay feels like looking into a crystal ball: seeing pieces of a garden, storm clouds building, lives passing.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Brimming with rich descriptions of a beautiful country…The News from Paraguay evolves from a quirky, elegant tale of an unconventional love affair into a sweeping epic.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“The episodic style achieves many lovely moments…. Images are so vivid you can almost smell them.”
—Washington Post Book World
“As this biting, elegant novel examines the corrosive effects of a delusional dictator, it illuminates both a little-kn
own corner of history and the world we live in now.”
—Andrea Barrett, author of Servants of the Map
“Compelling…the stuff that good fiction is made of: complex characters and an intricate narrative.”
—Newsday
“Tuck’s prose is elegant, the subject well researched.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Impressively researched, lushly written…a splendid realization of its rich subject, and Tuck’s best so far.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“The News from Paraguay captures the physical beauty of an exotic land in Tuck’s characteristically exact, evocative prose.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Charming.”
—Vogue
ALSO BY LILY TUCK
Interviewing Matisse, or the Woman Who Died Standing Up
The Woman Who Walked on Water
Siam, or the Woman Who Shot a Man
Limbo, and Other Places I Have Lived
Credits
Map by Nick Springer
Copyright
THE NEWS FROM PARAGUAY. Copyright © 2004 by Lily Tuck. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition April 2007 ISBN 9780061750304
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