Gentleman From Peru (eBook)

The next evening the group of young Americans walked into the dining area just about when everyone else in the hotel was finishing dessert. Raúl, as always, was starting his second course by himself. As soon as the Americans spotted him, they greeted him. Mark even patted him on the back with a jovial, hail-fellow, semi-patronizing gesture meant both to express his abiding gratitude and to erase the pitiable figure he must have cut the day before as the injured athlete of the group. They asked if he would like to join them for drinks at the hotel pub after he was done with dinner. With pleasure, replied the gentleman from Peru.

They had planned on going to one of the clubs around the hill, but had eventually decided to stay put on the hotel grounds. ‘You’ll be our guest. Or, rather, Malcolm’s guest. We’ve told him about you – he’s sorry he couldn’t be here to meet you.’

Raúl gave the invitation to the bar table some thought, almost as though he regretted having accepted so readily and should have reconsidered. Then he added: ‘Tell Malcolm to beware of any last-minute transaction before the markets close today. He may not be able to avert or reverse its course, but he can certainly take provisions by hedging against the risks. Don’t forget.’

Basil made an it’s-been-duly-noted gesture, but Raúl, pointing his fork at him, insisted: ‘Tell him now, as in this minute.’

‘Now, as in now?’

‘Exactly,’ said Raúl. ‘Call him!’

‘He’s involved in crazy ventures,’ Raúl explained to those around him, ‘but I know that this one is dangerous and he needs to sell before the markets close today.’

The call was made. It lasted no more than a few seconds. Angelica grabbed the phone and told him she missed him. He missed her too.

‘Malcolm thanks you,’ she told Raúl a moment later.

Later in the evening, as they gathered in the tiny pub and ordered drinks, Mark remarked that if Raúl was so good at forecasting volatile shifts in the market, why hadn’t his skills helped him make a fortune himself?

‘Because I know nothing about the markets. Besides, I’m always afraid of risking the funds my good parents left me. I often know what dangers lie in store or what people are planning or plotting to do. But I’ve been tragically blind in the past – the greatest catastrophe in my life caught me totally by surprise. There’ve been other, terrible instances where my predictions simply proved totally wrong. But birthdays and past events are not difficult for me. Still, I know something is afoot in New York today. You watch: something will happen just before the market closes in half an hour.’

As they were relishing their drinks, Raúl told them he’d take them to see something special in the coming days if they had nothing better to do. Had any of them read the Aeneid?

Many of them had read bits and pieces. ‘Courtesy of our liberal arts education which cost our parents a fortune,’ said Oscar, ‘and yet it all boils down to bits and pieces. Which is why we know nothing.’

‘Exactly,’ said Margot.

‘They taught us contemporary poetry and contemporary issues, even contemporary grammar. But ultimately, like Margot says, nothing,’ said Oscar.

‘Like Margot says?’ she asked, making fun of him. ‘As Margot says. Apologizomai.’

Everyone laughed. ‘Courtesy of college Greek 101.’

All toasted their alma mater.

Raúl didn’t quite understand why they were laughing but let the matter pass. He simply added that, if they wanted, he would take them to where Cuma was, one of the spots where Aeneas stopped on his travels after leaving Carthage. There, incidentally, lies the entrance to Avernus, the doorway to the world of the dead, on Lake Avernus.

‘Have you been there?’ asked Margot.

‘Yes. But never alone.’

‘Why? I’d like to go,’ said Paul.

‘Me too,’ said Angelica.

‘It’s the kind of thing Fellini would have loved, a group of friends working their way down a craggy passage into the underworld where we’re told Styx, the sacred river, ran. There you’ll see the mourning fields, the Lugentes campi,’ explained Raúl. ‘This is where all broken hearts tell their woebegone tales of love to anyone who passes by and cares to stop to listen: Phaedra, who took her own life for loving her stepson after she opened up her heart to him; Dido, who lit a fire and threw herself into it while Aeneas watched her burn from aboard his ship to Italy; Procris, who was mistakenly speared by her lover, and poor Caenis, raped by a god and begging to be turned into a man so as never to be raped again. Haven’t you all been burnt and speared and raped in your hearts at least once?’

‘No comment,’ said Oscar, which made everyone burst out laughing. But no one answered.

‘Which means all of you have,’ said Raúl.

‘Everyone’s been hurt. But I still can’t believe that people actually take their own lives for love. It’s so kitsch, so camp.’

That was Margot.

‘I almost did once. At least I thought of it very, very seriously,’ said Emma. ‘But I wasn’t going to do it with violence or with pills, so I decided to starve myself. And I almost did. Then one day I saw someone eating country bread with triple-cream cheese and drinking a glass of red, and I said: Enough!’

‘It would be just like Emma to be saved by cheese,’ said Oscar.

‘Not for me either the Lugentes fields,’ interrupted Claire, the quiet one who was a teacher, ‘even though I spent two years on those fields obsessing over a woman who’ll never know how much I ached for her.’

‘Marisol? Are we back to Marisol? Why am I not surprised? Claire, get over it, please, you’ve been bellyaching for years.’

That was Margot again.

But Claire didn’t seem to hear Margot.

‘We always know when someone loves us, even when we don’t want their love. Marisol knows,’ said Claire. ‘I know she knows.’

‘And what about you, Raúl? Have you crossed the Lugentes campi?’ Claire asked Raúl.

Raúl did not answer right away. But then: ‘Yes, I have. We never recover. Whoever bruised us left a mark that stays there forever. Do we ever recover from our parents? Or from the cruelty of our first arithmetic teacher? Or from someone loved in adolescence? You may seek to recover, and many of us are persuaded we have, until we realize that if we commit the same mistakes time and time again, it’s not because we keep choosing the wrong partner or because we don’t know how to love, but because new loves won’t help us heal from that one ancient wound. All new love can do is mask the wound – and for some, this is good enough.’

‘Did someone hurt you that much?’ asked Margot.

‘Yes, once. But only once.’

‘And?’

‘I never discuss it.’

‘Which tells us you’ve never recovered,’ said Margot, clearly pleased to score a point at the expense of the gentleman from Peru.

‘It was fate that hurt me, not her. But back to Avernus,’ he said, clearly trying to change the subject; ‘if you visit the site of the entrance to the underworld you’ll see where dead souls shamble about complaining of this and that, some with remorse in their hearts, others with regrets, each waiting to be called up to have a say on who they’ll want to be once they’re brought back to life, not realizing why most keep making the wrong choice each time they’re alive again. We come back to correct our lives, because most lives are lived imperfectly.’

‘Why do they keep making the wrong choice?’

‘Why? Because no one wants to accept who they truly are. Everyone requests the self they believe is the very best, hoping to be loved for who they’re not and could never be. And the tiny miracle of life, the tiniest yet most imponderable miracle, is when we stumble on people who see us for who we are and want us just for who we are – and these are the ones we spurn the most, the ones we let into our lives with resentment, scorn and boundless apathy, sometimes even with hatred. But the moment two individuals love each other for who each truly is then time for them stops, and if these two don’t die together, then the partner who lives on never recovers, never forgets, and keeps waiting until they meet again in who knows how many lifetimes. In Shakespeare’s own words, either is the other’s mine. The beloved always comes back. Always will. But the wait is excruciating – they wait not just to live together but also to die together....