The Sky Over Lima Read Free Page B

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.

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    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