by Eduardo Lalo
At the appointed hour I went up to the third floor. The smiling corpulence of Didier Pétrement appeared in the doorway. On all the shelves in the apartment there were books and papers, as well as large clay pottery without the glossy finish of enamel or the usual polish of Chinese or Japanese porcelain, which, judging by their rustic look and tarnished coloring, must have belonged to more ancient cultures. We went to sit around their work desk. Behind Pétrement was a canvas painted in dark ochers and reds with scenes from the life of the Buddha. Sometime later I would learn that the unframed silk wall hanging was a Tibetan tanka created in Dharamsala by artists in the Dalai Lama’s circle. On the table were piles of thick books. Some of those lying opened contained illustrations of works of art and texts written in Oriental alphabets. I was expecting to enter a world like the one the character of Neptune encounters when he follows Klok, but here I did not see any object from the Amazon or anything remotely American. Pétrement must have noticed my surprise because he took the initiative to explain.
“As you can see, Pierre and I took different paths. He went toward America, and I toward Asia. I studied at the School of Eastern Languages and specialized in the Far East, especially the Khmer and Vietnamese cultures, even though I originally studied Chinese and Sanskrit.”
“I see.”
“Don’t feel cheated. The Tupi-Guarani peoples resemble the ethnicities of the Golden Triangle more than one might assume, and I followed Pierre’s research for something more than friendship. Later, Son will show you the photographs we promised you. But let me offer you coffee, and do tell me who you are, and why you’re here in Paris.”
In over a year no French person had asked me this question. Such courtesy was considered unnecessary because the city was one of the centers of the world, and my wanting to be there, like any foreigner, was taken for granted. We were attracted to French culture and its natives did little to inquire about our circumstances.
I began giving Pétrement some basic information. I spoke of my studies, of my desire to write, of the interests that had led me to become enthusiastic about Plon; but the warmth of his listening encouraged me to enter into personal details. I spoke of my hard times, of Marie’s suicide attempt, of the loneliness I had experienced in the city and how reading Neptune and the world Plon had opened to me had made it possible, in so many ways, for me to keep going.
Pétrement listened to me, smoking one of the pipes he had lined up on his desk, sipping the coffee that Son, his wife, had brought with a smile and a slight bow, before sitting down to participate in the conversation and also to light up her long pipe.
When I had finished, Pétrement responded: “I see that at your age you have lived a lot and suffered quite a bit. It must not have been easy for you to remain in this city, which in so many ways is not welcoming. It’s true that here there are, as everywhere, good people. But I must add that they are also well hidden.”
“I met a Puerto Rican in Saigon,” said Son. “He was with the Americans, fighting.”
“He was forced to,” I said.
“I know; that’s why war is tragic.”
“I don’t know if you know,” said Pétrement, “that Pierre did not get to teach in the university until shortly before he died. For the academy, the cultures of the Amazon were almost totally lacking in interest. They didn’t have the prestige of the great pre-Columbian civilizations. Many still share the viewpoint of the conquistadores, except that now they’re looking for the gold of the dead. The Indians who interested Pierre were nomads; they didn’t build anything lasting and walked around naked. Lévi-Strauss opened a theoretical path, but Pierre’s writings were groundbreaking, that is, his complex and human portrait of those beings on the verge of extermination. Our spiritual poverty, I mean the typical Westerner’s, even among the well educated, is a bottomless pit.”
After striking a match and lighting his pipe again, he added: “To a certain extent I was prey to those prejudices. I began studying Chinese and Sanskrit, the Buddhist and Taoist cultures, and all this was worthwhile. It has greatly enriched me. However, one day I obtained a position at the Alliance Française and they sent me to Phnom Penh in Kampuchea. Over the years I traveled in Laos, Thailand, Burma, and Vietnam. Aside from the national languages, I learned the languages of the mountain villages, and after leaving the Alliance, I spent long periods of time with some of them. I didn’t have the confidence to make myself the voice of Pierre’s memory and carry out his legacy. Besides, many of those peoples are still living, though they grow more and more bitter and alienated by modernity. Anyway, in France and in other parts of Europe, we lack the obsessive passion for archeology. If a culture works in stone or metals, we can dig up its knickknacks and put them in a museum. What hasn’t been noted is that those institutions are gigantic mausoleums. There is nothing living there. The story of Neptune you refer to is divine but tragically describes an impossible wish.”
I would soon find out that Pétrement earned his living taking care of and cataloging those knickknacks whose conceptual status he condemned. He worked with temporary contracts in museums, feeling perpetually exploited by those he called “catalog scribes.”
Son brought in an envelope that contained twenty odd photos. Plon appeared on beaches, in restaurants, on mountaintops, and in the jungle surrounded by children of all ages or perched on the branch of a tree, making notes in a notebook. One of the photos showed the ethnologist and Pétrement, their arms around each other’s shoulders, smiling at the camera. They seemed very young. Didier took it from the table and looked at it a long while. Then he stood up and went to find something in a wardrobe. He returned with a notebook with stains on the cover. Those patches of dampness and mold looked tropical, like those growing on my old books and drawings left in San Juan.
“Before you leave, I’d like to show you . . .” he said while he opened it. “Here Pierre wrote a draft of the myths and legends. Take a look: from this side, on the pages on the left, is the original, recorded phonetically, and on the right, you can see the first French version. I don’t know if you know that he wasn’t the first to undertake this task.”
“Helvio Piglia.”
“I see that your interest is serious. Few people know that Paraguayan priest who ruined his reputation by dedicating himself to the Indians. Unfortunately, I don’t know Spanish, but at some point Pierre showed me those very poor editions, printed in Asunción at the clergy’s expense, in which some of the myths and stories of the hunters came out for the first time. Pierre got to meet him and was very impressed. I am convinced that one of the merits of my friend’s work was to give continuity to those efforts of Piglia’s which otherwise would have remained in the darkest obscurity. Life moves in mysterious ways. Can you imagine Piglia thinking that one day his books would reach the hands of an anthropology student in Paris and that the latter would decide to abandon the usual routes of his profession and end up taking a plane to go and meet the man who had gathered the Word from a people lost in the Chaco jungle?”
Pétrement spoke with the gestures and portentous intonation of the educated French, who, even before the Enlightenment, had inherited the enjoyment of words and an intellectual tradition. It was fascinating. I felt honored by the Orientalist’s generosity but at the same time realized that his devotion to knowledge, in particular a specialized knowledge that belonged to a minority, would find in French culture and society the kind of support that made it intelligible and even prestigious. In my country such an attitude was impossible. This scholarly outlook might be sustainable in certain great cities, in which curiosity could lead one to exercise any geographical, cultural, linguistic, or historical vocation. In my world, cultural space was too small and fragile, and the idea of pursuing poetry, dance, art, or anything not connected to business and dreams of financial fortune, seemed laughable.
Our conversation had lasted a couple of hours, and the moment to take my leave was approaching. I didn’t want this to be our only encounter, but I had
nothing to offer Pétrement.
“Dear friend, I must return to the pains of my labor. Monsieur Dors wants, without delay, to sign off on a research project that will establish the mediocrity with which the foundational text of Pantanjali has been approached, and he is being so beastly that I have no relief. Let me assure you that we have enjoyed your visit and we would love to see you again.”
“Perhaps our friend,” Son interrupted, “would like to come join us at Monsieur Nan’s lecture?”
“He’s a Buddhist monk from Vietnam,” explained Pétrement. “He has lived in France since the war: an admirable man, a man engaged in contemporary culture besides being a great master and poet. Next week he will give a talk in Paris. We would love you to join us.”
“Thank you so much. Do give me the information and I’ll be sure to be there.”
Before we said good-bye, Son gave me a piece of paper in which she had noted down—with the difficulty of one who, rather than write, draws each letter—the name of the lecture hall, the street, and number.
I walked a while before returning to Impasse de l’Astrolabe. What I had just experienced as a Caribbean with my interests and background was a dream: talking about the Vedas, the Chan tradition, or the mythology of the Amazon tribes with all naturalness, as if these were everyday matters. Here, while I was in Paris, such flirtations with a scholarly vocation seemed possible. One day, however, I would return to San Juan. It was one thing to be interested in Neptune, who doubtlessly some people there might have heard of, and a very different thing to study cultures or areas of knowledge that were unknown or nonexistent to most of my countrymen. I had suffered a great deal because of my difference, but that didn’t matter then. I was far away and could allow myself everything, even what I had always yearned for.
Immersed in these thoughts, I arrived home. Simone was listening to a detestable cassette at top volume: a selection from early rock, teenage dance music which, in France, anachronistically, still created a furor. I turned the volume down and lay in bed. I had no desire to tell her about my afternoon, and pretending to be exhausted, I tried to hide the fact that Simone’s presence, at such moments, was as unpleasant as the music.
Almost without noticing, we began to spend less time together. One day she went to see her father and told me she would spend the weekend with him and I did nothing to stop her; on another occasion I came up with an excuse so as not to go to a party with her, and after that the excuses weren’t difficult.
Sometimes we’d go to bed and make love with a heartbreaking intensity. We’d look at each other, conscious of what was happening, but wouldn’t say a word. I didn’t want to lose her, but I couldn’t change her. And this was new, because despite what I would have been willing to admit to myself, I had tried to change Marie. But with Simone, from the start I knew I was defeated. All my persuasiveness would never make her budge.
The Pétrements contributed, without any intention on their part, to the decline of our relationship. Their world, in which Simone hadn’t the remotest interest, was too persistently appealing to me. And on the other hand, letters and cassettes kept arriving from New York. I’d answer them on the sly, informing Marie of my new acquaintances and of the direction my interests were taking. I didn’t share my intellectual life with Simone, nor had I found any other woman I could connect with in that way.
One day the inevitable happened. I left a cassette from Marie on the recorder and Simone, who wanted to listen to music and was alone in the studio, heard it from beginning to end. She didn’t know Spanish but it wasn’t difficult to interpret the intonations, the playful tenderness, or to understand the conjugations of the verbs for love. When I arrived, I found her waiting in bed.
“What’s this?” she asked with the cassette in her hand.
Despite the impact of the surprise, which at first left me speechless, awkwardly trying to come up with reasons, I tried to be honest. But it was too late, as I had hidden from her the very existence of the letters. I said nothing, avoiding her eyes. This was easier, and perhaps also better. Simone got out of bed and went to get her bag.
“I’m leaving. Don’t come near me. I don’t want to see you.”
In spite of her words, she seemed calm.
“Don’t come looking for me at my father’s house. Keep dreaming of your nana. Keep making your love tapes for her.”
Near the door we bumped into each other head on. I went to hug her and received a push followed by a rain of blows mixed with moans. Simone must have had in her bag, which she used almost like a whip, some of her Stendhal and Balzac novels, probably in the Classiques Garnier critical editions, because a few of her blows left my skull vibrating. I finally managed to grab her and, with difficulty, while she kicked and cursed her head off, I picked her straight up until the two of us fell onto the bed. The struggling continued a bit more, and when I finally became concerned that she was seriously fighting me, I saw she was smiling and crying all at once. All I could do was smile, too, at which point I received a punch, the only real blow in the whole scene.
“Don’t you dare smile, because then I really won’t forgive you!”
We were both motivated by love, which despite it all, understands.
We ended up stripping each other naked and staying in bed until nightfall. I told her what I knew of Marie. She listened to me in silence, sometimes playing with my hair, smoking one cigarette after another. I never knew what she really thought, but there’s no doubt that when I recall my love affairs, the fact that Simone didn’t leave that evening was a high point, poignant and vivid.
They called him Monsieur Nan or Le Petit Vietnamien, and the patronizing touch contained tenderness much more than contempt. He was a sixty-year-old man who looked surprisingly young. Dozens of enthusiasts had come to listen to him in a union hall. Later I would learn that the choice of venue wasn’t accidental. Monsieur Nan, despite the ethereal aura he produced, had been an indefatigable social worker. He had protested at the United Nations and the European Parliament, organized and participated in expeditions to save the boat people, written dozens of books, and founded a monastic community in Switzerland in which there were equal numbers of men and women from West and East.
I had never heard of him before and watched his attendants in their long dark robes, and the audience, which seemed like a pretty eccentric gathering, with unease. Nan appeared on the platform, greeting the audience with his hands together. The spectators did not applaud; many of them, including the Pétrements, stood up and returned his greeting with their hands joined and a bow of the head. The Vietnamese man went to sit on a low podium covered by a rug, upon which there was a meditation cushion. Beside him were a large metal bowl and a wooden mallet with which Nan rubbed the edge, creating a sound that filled the room with a lingering vibration.
“Let us be conscious of our breathing,” he spoke with a thick accent. “If our breaths are short and nervous, we feel this short and nervous breathing. If it is long and peaceful, we also feel it enter, course through our body, and leave.”
The hall remained silent. Nan had collected himself without transition, feeling the breath pass through his body. Pétrement had warned me. He invited me not to be prejudiced by the technique’s apparent simplicity. Behind its modest façade one would find knowledge acquired over the millennia. The Buddha had done nothing but breathe, and had understood. Thus he liberated himself, on a memorable night, beneath the shelter of a tree, by conquering the hordes of Maya, hence dispelling the mirror of illusion.
After a few minutes, Nan rubbed the vessel again, and when the sound faded out in the hall, he began his talk. His discussion was not esoteric claptrap. Without any drama, without shouldering the suffering of the world, he spoke with amazing lucidity, illustrating the connection between emotion, word, and action with the following: the rain, an exploited third-world peasant, and the plate of food on a French table that one took for granted. He saw the relationship between war and inner confusion, between unconsc
iousness and error. He questioned the coordinates of personal identity upon which almost all of Western civilization had been erected. He asked who suffers when we suffer. Do we suffer? Or is suffering the set of circumstances and inner space we create for it?
My ignorance was total. I had only vague ideas about the East. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism were, at that time, an undifferentiated whole for me, doubtlessly worthy of appreciation and respect, but very remote. I was, however, struck by Didier Pétrement’s reverence for this man. In Son one could assume devotion to her own culture, but the Orientalist had demonstrated a dedication I couldn’t dismiss.
The evening ended with a longer meditation followed by a Q&A in which Nan was brilliant. The Pétrements invited me to come with them to greet him, as they also wanted to introduce me. Totally embarrassed by how he bowed to me smiling, I watched him take my hands in his. At the hall entrance, his collaborators were selling his books and I bought one. In this way I began to develop an enthusiasm equal to my involvement with indigenous cultures and literature.
A few days later I found in my mailbox a package from Marie. After the argument with Simone, and with her full knowledge, I had sent Marie Neptune’s novel and copies of some of my texts. For most of my life abroad, Marie had been my first and sometimes my only reader. I valued her opinions and criticism, especially since none of my French friends could read in Spanish. Simone didn’t object, accepting, at least for now anyway, that between Marie and myself there was a bond she couldn’t surpass.
Marie wrote to me after having devoured Rue de Babylone. The range of characters and stories in Neptune’s world had given her a whiff of another atmosphere and an opportunity to lay aside her preoccupations. And she had read my texts and responded with disproportionate enthusiasm, which was probably a form of gratitude and seduction rather than critical appraisal. However, a young writer’s thirst for approval didn’t allow me to notice such subtleties, and I took pleasure in reading her letter several times, as if Marie’s response could be that of all possible and imaginable readers. The package also contained a hardcover notebook of very fine paper and a small box with a fountain pen. On it she had written a note: “So that you will write and write and write.”
