But for some reason they keep writing long after it has grown dark. They don’t seem to know why, and if they do know, neither of them says.
~ ~ ~
◊
They fancy themselves poets.
They met in the lecture halls of the University of San Marcos at that critical age when students begin to cultivate ideas of their own along with their first sparse facial hair. For both young men, one of those first interests — the reluctant mustaches would come much later — was poetry. Up until that point, all their life decisions had been made by their families, from their enrollment in law school to their tedious piano lessons. Both wore suits purchased through catalogs in Europe, they recited the same formulaic pleasantries, and at social gatherings they had learned to offer similar opinions on the Chilean war, the indecent nature of certain modern dances, and the disastrous consequences of Spanish colonialism. Carlos was to become a lawyer to see to his father’s affairs, and José—well, all José had to do was get the degree, and his family’s contacts would do the rest. Their love of poetry, on the other hand, had not been imposed on them by anyone, nor did it serve any practical purpose. It was the first passion that belonged entirely to them. Mere words, perhaps, but words that spoke to them of somewhere else, a world beyond their comfortable prison of folding screens and parasols, of Cuban cigars in the guest parlor and dinners served at eight thirty on the dot.
Though they’re not poets, at least not yet, they have learned to behave as if they were, which is almost as good. They frequent the salons of Madame Linard on Tuesdays and those of the Club Unión on Thursdays; they rummage in their armoires and dig out scarves and hats and ancient topcoats so they can dress up as Baudelaire at night; they grow increasingly thin — alarmingly so, according to their mothers. In a pub on Jirón de la Unión, they draw up a solemn manifesto with three other students in which they swear never to return to their law studies as long as they all shall live, under pain of mediocrity. Sometimes they even write: appallingly bad poetry, verses that sound like an atrocious translation of Rilke or, worse still, an even more atrocious translation of Bécquer. No matter. Writing well is a detail that will no doubt come later, with the aid of Baudelaire’s wardrobe, Rimbaud’s absinthe, or Mallarmé’s handlebar mustache. And with each line of poetry they write, the convictions they have inherited from their fathers become a bit more tattered; they begin to think that Chile might have been in the right during the Chilean war, that perhaps what is truly indecent is to keep dancing their grandparents’ dances well into the twentieth century, and that Spanish colonialism — well, actually, in the case of Spanish colonialism, they have to admit that they continue to share their fathers’ views, much as it pains them.
How long have they considered themselves poets? Not even they could say for sure. Perhaps that’s what they’ve always been, albeit unknowingly — the possibility of this pushes them to reexamine the trivial anecdotes of their childhoods with fresh eyes. Did Carlos not utter his first poem that morning when, on an outing to the countryside, he asked his governess whether the mountains had a mommy and daddy too? And the gaze with which José, having barely spoken his first words, contemplated the Tarma twilight — was that not already the gaze of a poet? In these moments of revelation, they are certain that, yes, they have indeed always been poets, and so they spend hours combing their past for those signs of brilliance that blossom early in the lives of great geniuses, then pat each other on the back when they find them and declare themselves ardent admirers of each other’s poems after yet another long, pisco-soaked night. All at once they are the vibrant future of Peruvian poetry, the torch that will light the way for new literary traditions. Both of them, but especially the grandson of the illustrious José Gálvez Egúsquiza, whose light for some reason seems to shine a little more brightly.
~ ~ ~
◊
The garret is in one of the many buildings the Rodríguez family owns in Lima’s San Lázaro neighborhood, aging properties they don’t bother restoring and that seem on the verge of collapsing with their freight of tenants inside them. The building’s other floors are rented out to thirty or so Chinese immigrants who work in the noodle factory nearby, but the garret is too dilapidated even for them. Not even those sallow men who slept on the ships’ gunwales on their Pacific crossing want it, so José and Carlos are free to visit it whenever they wish.
Its windows are broken, and sunlight streams in through gaps between the planks in the walls. The floorboards are pockmarked with neglect, and somewhere a cat has miraculously survived, even though rumor has it that the Chinese eat cats and it’s certainly the case that these particular Chinese are in dire need of sustenance. It is, in short, the perfect place for two young men bored with sleeping in canopy beds and admonishing the maids for failing to polish the silver wine pitchers. They are thrilled by the sensation of poverty, and they roam among the burlap sacks and heaps of dusty junk like the lucky survivors of a shipwreck.
It is there that Georgina is born. A birth marked by words and laughter, tenuously illuminated by light flickering from bottles deployed as makeshift candlesticks.
They visit the garret every afternoon. They enjoy walking through Lima’s poor neighborhoods on their way to that building that might have been taken directly from the pages of a Zola novel. A humble murmuring issues from within, muffled by threadbare curtains and rice-paper screens. Two women fighting over a serving of soup. A long monologue in a strange language that could be a madman’s rant or maybe a prayer. A child sobbing. They take it all in with a mix of eagerness and pleasure, searching for traces of the poetry that Baudelaire was the first to find in poverty, or perhaps they are searching through poverty in hopes of finding Baudelaire himself. Their visits distress the building’s watchman, who as he opens the door for them always pleads, “Master Rodríguez, Master Gálvez, for the sake of all that is holy, please be careful.” He worries, of course, that the floorboards in the attic will give way and the young men will be injured, but more unnerving still is the vague, mysterious threat posed by the Chinese tenants.
José and Carlos laugh. They know full well that the tenants are harmless: sad-faced men and women who don’t even dare to raise their eyes when they encounter them on the landings. “But they’re quiet people, really,” they respond, still laughing, from the stairs. The watchman clucks his tongue. “Too quiet,” he adds before letting them go. “Too quiet…”
Some afternoons they clamber up from the garret to the rooftop. They loosen their cravats and take swigs from a shared bottle. Clustered below them are the houses, the humble little squares, the cathedral’s spires. In the distance, the somber silhouette of the University of San Marcos, which they’re skipping again. They see the denizens of Lima walking rapidly, slightly hunched, most of them oppressed by burdens that José and Carlos neither understand nor judge. The young men make an odd sight in their smudged white linen suits and their walking sticks, hanging over the abyss as if they were newly bankrupt millionaires threatening to leap into the void. But nobody sees them. In the poor neighborhoods, people walk with their eyes on the ground and look up only occasionally to ask the dear Lord to grant them some mercy, which He rarely does.