The Sky Over Lima Read Free Page A

matter—and matters a lot—is the way those letters begin and end. The way they transition smoothly and discreetly from
Señor Don Juan R. Jiménez
and
Señorita Georgina Hübner
to
Dearest friend
in only fourteen letters. Not to mention the closings:
Your most attentive servant, Cordially, Fondly, Affectionately, Tenderly.
This shift, which takes place over the course of seven hundred forty-two lines of correspondence, equivalent to about an hour and fifty minutes of conversation in a café, might seem indecorously rapid. But as the Lima–La Coruña route is covered by just two ships a month and a ship rarely carries more than two or three of their letters, in fact the relationship develops quite slowly, very much in keeping with the period. They are rather reminiscent of those lovers who wait six months for permission to speak to each other through a window grating, and at least one full year for their first chaste kiss.
    And of course the word
love
has yet to be said.

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    Whenever José spots the cancellation marks of transatlantic postage amid his correspondence, he rushes off to find Carlos. They have agreed that they will always read the letters together—after all, both of them are Georgina—and Gálvez scrupulously fulfills his promise, though he does occasionally give in to temptation and peek under the flap of the envelope. They read the Maestro’s words aloud on the benches of the university or in the Club Unión billiards room, and then they go to the garret to watch the afternoon fade, deliberating over each word of their response. They often continue writing long past nightfall, and as they polish their final draft, the mosquitoes orbit the oil lamp in smaller and smaller circles until finally burning to a crisp in its flame.
    Both of them think constantly of Juan Ramón, but only Carlos pays any mind to Georgina. For José she is merely a pretext, a means by which to fill his desk drawer with holy relics from the Maestro. A dainty portrait, for example. Or one of the poet’s unpublished poems. That is José’s interest with every letter: how to get more books, more autographs, more Juan Ramón. Carlos, on the other hand, strives to give Georgina a personality and a biography. Perhaps he is beginning to suspect that his character will one day become the protagonist of her own story. So he carefully chooses the words she uses in each letter, giving them the same meticulous concentration he gives his handwriting. He’s attentive to the adverbs, the ellipses, the exclamation points. He says to José: Let me take care of this, you’re an only child and don’t understand the language of women; it’s a good thing I have three sisters and have learned to listen to them. Women sigh a lot, and whenever they sigh they use ellipses. They exaggerate a lot, and when they exaggerate they use exclamation points. They feel a lot, and that’s why their feelings all come with adverbs. José laughs, but he lets Carlos create, cross out, make over his too-manly sentences. Sometimes he teases him, of course. He calls him Carlota, tells him he’s looking particularly comely that night
.
Go to hell, mutters Carlota—mutters Carlos—without lifting his eyes from the paper.
    But José doesn’t go anywhere, of course. Neither of them moves. First they have to work out the answers to a great number of questions. Might Georgina be an orphan? Does she have a splash of indigenous blood or the alabaster complexion of the criolla ladies? How old is she, exactly, and what does she want from Juan Ramón? They don’t know, just as they still don’t know what they’re doing, or why it is so important that Juan Ramón keep writing back. Why don’t they just forget the whole thing and return to their obligations: studying for failed law courses and looking for flesh-and-blood women to take to the spring dance?
    But