Unlike Porras, Sánchez rarely prepared a class beforehand. He trusted in his powerful memory and improvised, but he had read a great deal and loved books, and he knew the innermost depths of Darío, for example, and was able to reveal him in all his secret grandeur hidden under the modernist tinsel of a fair part of his works.
Thanks to that course, I decided that my thesis in literature would deal with Darío, and in 1957 I began, in my free moments, to take notes and make file cards. I was going to need that degree if I wanted to pursue the career as a university professor toward which, thanks to Augusto Tamayo Vargas, I had taken the first step. And furthermore, I couldn’t wait to finish my studies in Letters and present my thesis in order to become a candidate for the Javier Prado Fellowship, which would enable me to study for my doctorate in Spain.
The dream of that fellowship never left me. It was the only way I could make the trip to Europe, now that I was married. For the other literary fellowships, those in Hispanic Culture, hardly provided a living for just one person, let alone two. The Javier Prado, on the other hand, paid for a plane ticket to Madrid, which could be exchanged for two third-class boat tickets, and paid $120 a month for living expenses which, in the Spain of the 1950s, was a fortune.
The idea of going to Europe had stuck in my mind through all those years, even in those periods when, thanks to love or friendship, I lived intensely and felt happy. A worm kept gnawing at my conscience with the questions: “Weren’t you going to be a writer? When are you going to start being one?” Because, even though the articles and the short stories of mine that were published in the Sunday supplement of El Comercio, in Cultura Peruana, or Mercurio Peruano, gave me for a moment the sensation that I had already begun to be a writer, I soon opened my eyes. No, I wasn’t one. Those texts on the side, written by leaps and bounds, in the gaps of time that was devoted entirely to other work, were those of a simulacrum of a writer. I would be a writer only if I devoted myself to writing morning, noon, and night, putting into that undertaking all the energy that I was now wasting on so many things. And only if I felt myself surrounded by a stimulating milieu, an ambiance where writing did not seem to be such an odd, marginal activity, so lacking in harmony with the country in which I lived. To me, this ambiance had a name. Would I manage to live in Paris someday? Depression seeped down into my bones when I thought that if I didn’t win that Javier Prado Fellowship that would catapult me to Europe, I would never get to France, and hence I would be as frustrated as so many other Peruvians whose literary vocation never got beyond the rudimentary stage.
This was, needless to say, a constant subject of conversation with Lucho and Abelardo. They used to drop by my shack at Panamericana after the 6 p.m. news bulletin and, until the next one, we could spend a little while together, having coffee in one of the old places on the Plaza de Armas or La Colmena. I spurred them on to go to Europe with me. We would face up to the problem of survival better if we were together; we would write there the volumes we yearned to write. The objective would be Paris, but if there was no way of getting there, we would stop for a while in Monte Carlo, principality of Monaco. This place, phrased as a name and surname, turned into our trio’s password, and sometimes, when we were with other friends, one of the three of us would pronounce the emblematic formula — Monte Carlo, principality of Monaco — leaving all the others puzzled.
Lucho was determined to leave. His law practice had convinced him, I believe, that that profession repelled him as much as it did me, and the idea of spending some time in Europe cheered him up. His father had promised to help him financially, once he’d graduated. This encouraged him to begin work on the thesis he needed to write so as to get his degree.
Abelardo’s trip was more complicated, since Pupi had just had a little girl. And with a family, everything became risky and costly. But Abelardo allowed himself to be infected at times by my enthusiasm and also began to dream: he would try for the postgraduate fellowship in law that got the winner to Italy. With that and some money he’d saved he’d have enough for the trip. He too would get to the Europe des anciens parapets and would show up at the rendezvous of literary honor, in Monte Carlo, principality of Monaco.
In addition to our shared projects and fantasies, certain skirmishes of the guerrilla warfare on the local literary scene contributed to reinforcing our friendship. I remember one episode in particular, because I was the one who lit the fuse that set it off. From time to time I wrote book reviews. Abelardo gave me an assignment to review an anthology of Hispano-American poetry, compiled and translated into French by the Hispanist Mathilde Pomès. In my review, a rather fierce one, I wasn’t content to limit myself to criticizing the book, but also slipped in several very harsh sentences about Peruvian writers in general, the “tellurics,” the indigenists, regionalists, and local colorists in particular, and above all the modernist José Santos Chocano.
Several writers submitted a rebuttal — among them Alejandro Romualdo, with an article in the review 1957 entitled “No sólo los gigantes hacen la historia” (“Not Only Giants Make History”), and the poet Francisco Bendezú, a great exponent of bad taste in literature and in life, who accused me of having offended the nation’s honor by abusing the eminent bard Santos Chocano. I answered him in a long article and Lucho Loayza intervened with a lapidary volley. Augusto Tamayo Vargas himself wrote a text in defense of Peruvian literature, reminding me that “adolescence ought to be over soon.” At that point I recalled that I was an assistant to the holder of the chair in that literature that I had just attacked (I believe that in my articles the only ones who were spared in the genocide were the poets César Vallejo, José María Eguren, and César Moro) and I was afraid that Augusto, in the face of such an incongruity, would take my job away from me. But he was too decent to do a thing like that, and no doubt thought that with the passage of time I would become more considerate and charitable toward native writers (and that is what has happened).
Although these petty controversies and literary and artistic fracases — they happened often — had very limited repercussions, they suggest that, however minor it might be, there was a certain cultural life in the Lima of that day. It was possible because Prado’s administration brought an economic bonanza to the country, and for some time Peru opened up and had interchanges with the world. It happened, to be sure, despite the fact that the discriminatory mercantilist structure of institutions scarcely changed at all — the poor Peruvians of the C and D sectors continued to be hemmed in by poverty, with few opportunities to climb higher — but it brought the middle and upper classes a period of prosperity. It was owed, basically, to one of those bold and surprising initiatives of which that clever, cunning scoundrel of a politician (what in Peru they call a really foxy one!) whose name was Manuel Prado was capable. The severest critic his administration had was the owner of La Prensa, Pedro Beltrán, who in his newspaper mounted a daily attack on the economic policy of the regime. One fine day, Prado called Beltrán and offered him the Ministry of Finance and the premiership, with carte blanche to do what he thought best. Beltrán accepted and for two years applied the conservative monetarist policy that he had learned during his years as a student at the London School of Economics: fiscal austerity, balanced budgets, opening up the country to international competition, encouragement of private enterprise and investment. The economy responded admirably to this treatment: Peruvian currency became stronger — the country has never again had the solvency it did at that time — and domestic and foreign investment grew, employment increased, and the country lived for several years in a climate of optimism and security.