‘He’s got Peruvian blood, a criollo soul and wears the local garb, but he has the heart of a Turk,’ they ragged him. The school’s annual magazine, Centauro, published a profile in its 1947 issue:
The Peruvian’s favourite dance is Arabian Boogie and he has found his love in the land where God is God and Mohammed is his prophet. We are told that the first time he went to tea, his future father-in-law asked: ‘What’ll you have, Luis?’ Seeking to find favour, he replied: ‘Croissants, please, sir, croissants.’
According to the first account I heard of the break-up between the Gaucho and Beatriz, Abdulá senior opposed his daughter pursuing a romantic relationship with a young soldier, one who – worse still – was the son of a couple of exiled Peruvians. It was her family’s disapproval and the agony of not being able to carry on with Betty that had brought about the Gaucho’s journey to Peru.
Now I know that this version distorted the facts. After two and a half years, the Gaucho and Beatriz had decided to marry. They took it very seriously, aware that if they lacked determination, if they wavered even a little, everyone else would try to convince them they were crazy. And perhaps they were, but they were set on upholding their right to be crazy.
The plan was as follows: the Gaucho would go to Peru and wait for a month or two before informing his family of the decision. Then he would ask for permission from his superiors, return to Buenos Aires to speak to Betty’s parents, and following a religious ceremony they would travel to Lima to set up home. The plan, however, failed to reckon with one detail. Not long after arriving in Peru, the Gaucho became aware of an Army regulation that prohibited officers from changing their marital status during their first five years of service. Five long years. Sixty months. Two hundred and sixty weeks. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days. Let’s not even go into the hours or the minutes. Regardless of how in love Betty and he were, it would prove too long a wait. The distance, or the physical absence of the other, or the parental pressure to abandon the engagement would cause them to falter sooner or later. That’s why the Gaucho wrote the following to the Ministry of War:
I, Luis Federico Cisneros Vizquerra, second cavalry lieutenant, having graduated from the Argentinian National Military College on 22 July this year, an institute I joined as a cadet on 25 February 1944, having travelled to Peru on 2 September this year and currently being deployed as a deputy officer at the Chorrillos Military School, address myself to you with due respect on account of the following:
That having formalised my engagement to be married on 30 August this year in the Republic of Argentina, not having been notified before this date by any of the Senior Officers who held the position of military attachés at our Embassy of the law prohibiting marriage for officers of the Armed Forces during the first five years of service, I entreat you to consent to have the necessary authorization granted to me in order to contract this marriage, in the understanding that only in this way will I uphold the prestige of my honour and my good name. In the hope that my request meets with a just response from your dignified office,
Second Lieutenant Luis Federico Cisneros V.
Beneath its veil of solemnity, this letter concealed a cry for help. My father needed to return quickly to Buenos Aires, marry and put an end to this oppression that prevented him from studying or sleeping. Requests such as his, however, were not resolved directly by the Minister of War, but by the subordinate body, the Inspectorate. Upon learning this, he hastened to seek the intervention of the Director of the Officers’ School, who promised to call the Inspector General and ask him to give special consideration to his request. Meanwhile, letters travelled back and forth between Lima and Buenos Aires: they left the house on Paseo Colón where the Gaucho was staying with an aunt and uncle, and six or seven days later arrived at the door of the Abdulá family in verdant Villa Devoto, before beginning the return journey a short time later.
The Gaucho also wrote to his brothers Juvenal and Gustavo, whom he begged to take care of Beatriz in Buenos Aires, to keep her occupied, to invite her to lunch or to take her to hear Leo Marini sing their favourite bolero, ‘Dos almas’, and to talk to her about him while everything got sorted out. But there was to be no solution. The response of the Army took a month and arrived in the form of a circular, almost a telegram, in which the Inspector General communicated the following:
The request presented by second lieutenant Luis Federico Cisneros Vizquerra, of the Chorrillos Military School, is dismissed. Pass this document to the cavalry office to be appended to the personal file of the abovementioned officer.
That day in the Little Pentagon sixty years later, the missive’s curtness remained intact. Its harshness hadn’t aged. The revelation led to a storm of speculation on my part. Did my father renounce Betty, given the impossibility of abandoning his military education? Or was it she who ended the engagement, upon learning of the Army’s response? Did they try to carry on? Did they make any promises to each other? Where might those letters be? Did the family get involved? How long did they remain in touch? Did they ever see each other again? Which of the two was the first to embark on a new life?
I felt that I was peering into a ravine at night, blindfolded. I took a few further pictures of the file, swapped numbers with deputy official Pazos and left the headquarters building as fast as I could. I decided to walk home. I suppose there must have been cars and people on the streets, but I remember nothing. I can just about picture myself advancing down the narrow, tree-lined streets that run parallel to Angamos Ave., then crossing under the Primavera bridge, turning the corner onto El Polo Ave., thinking about the randomness of this story, of the direct repercussion its conclusion had on my existence. What would have happened if the Inspector General had woken up in a better mood that day in 1947 and, persuaded by the Director of the Officers’ School, given my father the green light to marry? Would the plan with Beatriz have come together? Would they have married? Would they have had as many children as they ended up having with other people? Who would I be? In which of these imaginary children would I have been incarnated? Would they have divorced, or grown old together, looking at those photos of their summer in Mar del Plata from time to time? Were there even photos of their summer in Mar del Plata?
As these questions piled up in my head, I was suddenly moved by a sense of sadness at this frustrated marriage, as well as shame or anger at discovering like this – snooping – the reasons why it had never taken place. I also felt I was betraying someone with all this digging around, though I wasn’t sure who. From the moment I left the military headquarters I was obsessed with Beatriz Abdulá. Before I rang the doorbell at my mother Cecilia Zaldívar’s house, where she was waiting for me to have lunch, I had enough energy left to fire off another burst of internal questions. Is Betty still alive? Is she in Buenos Aires? Perhaps in Villa Devoto? What if I were to look for her? What if I were to write to her? What if she were to reply to me?
Chapter 4
Twenty years can pass since you buried your father without asking yourself anything specific about the ravages caused by his absence. But just when you think you’ve grown used to it, just when you’re certain that you’ve got over his disappearance, an ache begins to eat away at you. The ache awakens your curiosity. The curiosity leads you to ask questions, to seek out information. Little by little you come to realise that you’re no longer convinced by what you’ve been told for so many years about your father’s life. Or worse: you realise that what your own father said about his life no longer seems trustworthy. The accounts that always sounded accurate and sufficient become confused and contradictory, no longer add up, collide noisily with the questions that have been amassing inside you since he died. Once these emerge and rise to the surface, they eventually form a solid islet on which you find yourself washed up, a sole survivor of the wreck.
The thing that gets to you is not knowing. Not being certain and yet suspecting so much. Not knowing means you lack refuge, and a lack of refuge leaves you exposed to the elements: which is why it troubles
