I tended to be more obsessive and workaholic. When I was with her I relaxed, forgot about my studies, and allowed myself the occasional indulgence in leisure; a lesson that, once learned, I never forgot, even when Valérie was no longer around. In any case, it never mattered; I always excelled beyond everyone else in all my premed courses.
The poor or mediocre students develop early on the ability to latch on to the more outstanding students as a means of survival within the university context. Timid and compulsive students almost always trade popularity for academic triumph. Seen from this perspective, our friendship was an impeccable symbiotic relationship. Although the initial reasons we were drawn together were, at first, opportunistic, in the end we were bound together by sincere affection. We were inseparable.
We always studied at her house; my neighborhood would have scared her to death. Her mother would have preferred a different best friend for her daughter, someone of considerably more noble appearance, but she appreciated my intellectual superiority and the positive influence I had on Valérie. Her name was Adeline, and she was a high-yellow Fula with ironed hair and a narrow backside. A high-assed Negress, as my mother would say—one of those who came to our country fleeing from Nevis and Virgin Gorda two centuries ago. Adeline, of course, would have taken offense at that, given that she traced her lineage, circuitously but with insufferable arrogance, back to a medieval family from Aix-en-Provence.
She couldn’t stand to be spoken to in Creole and pretended that she didn’t understand me when I did. She spoke Spanish if it was strictly necessary, but she exaggerated her accent in order to lend an exotic and snobbish air to her speech, and she used, without apparent justification, the Peninsular Spanish declensions. She was a source of fascination to her friends, high society white matrons from the capital. Spending time in the company of such a woman—black, exquisite, French, and wealthy—awoke in them a rare nostalgia, a melancholy for times they never lived through, and they imagined themselves part of an Algerian or Moroccan colonial tableau. But these are only guesses.
One evening Valérie and I were studying in the living room at her house when Adeline came in and asked us to move to the dining room table because she was expecting company. Valérie protested, not wanting to relinquish the comfort of the sofa and, especially, access to the television, without which she couldn’t concentrate. I was happy to move, since I find tables better suited for studying. Sofas make me sleepy.
Having evacuated us, Adeline covered the end tables and the coffee table with all manner of hors d’oeuvres: pâté, cheeses, grapes, cured ham, cold cuts. There were also sweets and liqueurs. She stocked the bar with ice; set out wine glasses, tumblers, and highball glasses; and finally lined up two bottles of Grey Goose, one twelve-year-old Chivas Regal, a bottle of Barbancourt Estate Reserve, and several bottles of wine that had already been uncorked to allow them to breathe. She declined all of our offers to help and warned us not to even think of touching anything.
We were halfway through an endocrinology review when Adeline’s friends, a select group of her most refined cohorts from the health club, began to arrive. Represented were the nearby and fluvial Cuesta Hermosa, the melodic Arroyo Hondo, the lively Piantini, and the distant and palatial Los Cacicazgos neighborhoods. These were followed by Bella Vista, Evaristo Morales, and Los Ríos.
Shortly thereafter, Adeline and her friends declared a quorum, officially opened the bar, attacked the trays, and got the party started. It was a boisterous group of eight. They made it impossible for us to concentrate. At first I found their conversation unbearable for its barefaced banality. It wasn’t long, however, before the same shamelessness with which they discussed every trifling detail of their lives as though it were a transcendental landmark event in the history of the universe became irresistible to me, and I began to listen with rapt fascination. Throughout the course of the evening, as they diminished considerably the bar’s provisions, their topics of conversation were the following:
Husbands
“Felipe is insufferable,” declares Cuesta Hermosa. “You ladies have no idea how many times I’ve told that man to get a new golf bag, and he simply won’t hear of it. I just die of embarrassment every time I have to go to a tournament with him. I tell him: Felipe, in these types of events winning is not the most important thing. A man like you can’t neglect his appearance. Your golf bag is super old fashioned. And do you know what he says to me?”
“What?”
“That it’s his lucky golf bag. That I should forget about it, he’s never going to get rid of it.”
“What you need to do,” recommends Evaristo Morales, “is throw it away. Take out all the clubs and put them in a new bag. Throw the old one in the trash.”
“Oh!” complains Arroyo Hondo. “If only mine were like yours and even took an interest in golf. But what can you do? These days he’s all caught up in another blessed charity to help I don’t know which nuns who have I don’t know what foundation. I swear . . . It’s as though he’s forgotten he has children of his own! Tell me, at the rate he’s going, what will be left for those boys to inherit? And in any case, you give the poor the things they need and what do they do? They sell it all. And the women popping out baby after baby. There’s no help for them. The poor love being poor.”
Children
“And who is Estefanía dating these days?” asks Bella Vista.
“Jan Luis,” replies Los Cacicazgos, “the eldest son of the Menicuccis who own the Formosa Supermarkets.”
“Jan Luis?” wonders Piantini. “But doesn’t he have Down syndrome?”
“That’s just gossip,” chides Cacicazgos. “You know how people are. It was those rumors that broke them up the first time. . . . Okay, the boy does look odd, and he may have a speech impediment and a learning disability, but he comes from a good family and, most importantly, he’s completely in love with my daughter. I told her the same thing. But no, no matter how much I tried to talk some sense into her, the little fool could not be dissuaded: she did not want to be a “retard’s” girlfriend. I left her alone, because love can’t be forced—until I found out that she’d been seen with a boy from Alma Rosa, perish the thought. I picked up the phone and called Jan Luis, I did. I stuck my nose in where it wasn’t my business, but isn’t that why we’re mothers? I told him that if he really loved my daughter that he should come to her birthday party that Friday. It worked wonders. The boy arrived with a brand new BMW, a pink bow on the hood. Ah, such a nice touch. . . . They made up then and there and I told her to thank the Lord for sending her a man who loves her so much, because not even her father, in his entire life, has ever given me such a gift. I even gave them permission to take it for a spin—with the chauffeur, of course, because Estefanía doesn’t have her license and the boy is forbidden to go anywhere near a steering wheel. . . .
Daily Life
“Today I needed to go to Prin to exchange a little dress I bought for Paola’s baby, but, really, who can find the time?”
“The same thing happened to me, darling. I mean, imagine: I leave the house first thing to go to the gym, then stop off to pick up my evening gown from the cleaners. From there to Zara to see if I can find a belt to go with the shoes Sandrita brought me from Miami. By then it’s two o’clock, I’ve got an armload of packages, and just ask me if I found the darned belt. And the 27 de Febrero in such gridlock that, if I didn’t have Henry, the chauffeur, I’d have left the Mercedes right there in the middle of the road and walked home. Needless to say, I’m dead tired by the time I get through the front door.”
Many