◊

 

 

Two postal employees, a customs officer who peeks inside the parcel to confirm it does not contain contraband, another sack in which bad news (deaths, miscarriages, unforeseen confinements in sanatoriums and nursing homes, a honeymoon on which the bride’s jewelry is gambled away in the Estoril casino) is again more plentiful than good (a traveler who has reached his destination safe and sound, an indigenous man who accepts his mestizo son as his own). By sea to Montevideo in a hold free of stowaways and rats; from the ship to the post office, and from there to the docks once more to set sail for Lima, this time by the correct route, as the nearsighted postal worker has been pensioned and is now enjoying a humble retirement in the neighborhood of Pocitos; from the port in Lima to the local post office, and eight hands later in the leather pouch of the very same errand boy, who again charges half a sol and another tweak of the housemaid’s haunches. Except this time the package does not fit in her bodice, and she leaves it on young Master José’s desk without bothering to glance at the scribbles that she would not be able to read anyway.

 

This morning I received your letter, which I found most charming, and I am sending you my Sad Arias at once, regretting only that my verses cannot live up to all that you must have hoped they would be, Georgina . . .

 

That night in the taverns the young men celebrate their signed book and this letter written in the Maestro’s own hand. They invite their friends, other poets as destitute as they, who arrive at the pub in their horse-drawn carriages. While helping their friends out of their overcoats, José and Carlos urge them to drink, drink as much they like, Georgina Hübner is treating tonight. Then come the explanations, and the toasts, and the letter read aloud; those who believe the story and those who do not, Stop pulling our leg, Carlitos, those stilted lines could not possibly have been written by the author of Water Lilies and Violet Souls. But then they see the poet’s signature and the book that can be found only in the bookstores of Madrid and Barcelona, and they begin clapping one another on the back and laughing uproariously.

 

Your letter is dated March 8, but I received it only today, May 6. Please do not fault me for the delay. If you keep me apprised of your address—if ever you plan to change residences—I will send you my books as I publish them, always, of course, with the greatest of pleasure . . .

 

Their friends insist that they must answer the letter; that they must not answer the letter; that Georgina should repay the Maestro’s kindness with a photograph, or at least a few postcards of Lima; that great poets do not deserve to be mocked and Carlos and José must confess the truth straightaway; that telling the truth will achieve nothing; that they should put a stop to the joke before things end badly; that things will end badly regardless, so what does it matter. Finally it is José who proclaims, pounding the table with his fist: I say we respond, damn it. And respond they will, but that will be the next day, when the two friends return to the garret in a bleary-eyed haze, armed with the rose-scented paper they’ve purchased for the occasion.

Tonight, though, they prefer to enjoy themselves. To propose possible responses to the poet, which start out more or less sensible and then grow gradually worse under the counsel of alcohol and euphoria. To emerge into Lima’s first light lustily reciting the Sad Arias, which, with a bottle of chicha in hand, don’t seem so sad anymore. And afterward—and for this they must be forgiven, as by this point they are more drunks than they are poets—to address one another as ladies, loudly calling one another Georgina, pitching their voices higher, hiking up skirts they aren’t wearing, and feigning dizzy spells and fainting fits, until finally they squat down to urinate, all together and dying of laughter, in the Descalzos rose garden.

 

Thank you for your kindness. And believe me to be utterly yours, who kisses your feet.

Juan Ramón Jiménez