widow, wasting no time, issued a notice, that is, she posted papers on doors, in squares, town halls, in which she claimed she would marry the person who came forward and confessed to being the perpetrator of the crime. A young farmhand from the area around her village came forward, confessed, and together they lived as a happy couple for many years. I imagine that Michel de Montaigne would watch them go by from the vantage point of his tower, beneath beams engraved with phrases of his favorite Latin authors, arm in arm, speaking excitedly and he would smile, content, grateful for life. With a pen in his hand, perhaps.
Jules Michelet, the great nineteenth century historian of the French Revolution, of the History of France, of Joan of Arc, of Henry IV, of Louis XI, of so many things and so many people, passionate, ebullient, romantic, admired Michel de Montaigne’s prose, he couldn’t help admiring it, but he felt very little affection for the author. He argued that he, Michelet, was the historian of la foule, the masses, the multitudes, the people, and that Montaigne, on the other hand, was the historian of himself. In other words, Michelet was an epicist, a rhapsode, a visionary, a creator of worlds, while Montaigne (his Montaigne) was a subjectivist, an intimist, a dandy, completely indifferent to popular voices. I’ve heard arguments in this vein many times and referring to many writers. Of course, I always fare badly. To put it another way, the subjectivist, the intimist, the limited, is I. Do you think, from here on out, I’m going to maintain that I am Montaigne, as they say Flaubert declared, that Madame Bovary c’est moi? Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not a madman who from remote, dreadful Chile (as the other said), believes himself to be Michel de Montaigne. You’re not going to catch me in this unspeakable weakness. No, gentlemen.
But the story about the young widow who got drunk at a party in the countryside, of the notice she issued, of their marital happiness over the years, opens up a whole new world to us. Not in the manner of Jules Michelet, the epicist: in another way. Michelet’s narrative prose moves enormous masses, human strength that suddenly seems more than human. When he describes the events of 1588 in France, during the decline of Henry III and the Valois dynasty, at the time of religious wars, on the eve of the arrival of Henry IV of Navarre and the Bourbons to the throne, and relates the steps that Philip II of Spain’s Invincible Armada is taking, what happens with his hundred and fifty-odd ships of great importance off the Breton coast, and Elizabeth of England’s defensive preparations, and the consequences that the victory of the Invincible might have had for France and for all of Europe, we witness an enormous movement, a grand drama. The Invincible Armada, carrying in its core the Spanish inquisitional darkness, is, in Michelet’s narrative, a gigantic bird, spreading its black, ominous wings, over all of northern France and the British Isles. And when Queen Elizabeth descends from a white horse and announces the disaster of the enemy fleet, the English soldiers fall to their knees, weep with emotion, revere their still-beautiful monarch of fifty years of age. It is an opera on a global scale, an astonishing scene. And yet, the thighs of the young widow, who in her misfortune found her happiness, do not move me any less. Montaigne’s smile persists, prevails, overcomes all. We have an organ, Montaigne says, that does not always obey us, that leaves us high and dry at the least opportune times, that answers only to itself. Here there are no palaces like El Escorial, no invincible armadas, no white horses of significance. We find ourselves in the realm of the individual soul, and of the body, no less individual. A kidney stone lying across the urethral canal can send us straight to hell in life. During his trip to Italy, and during his 1588 trip to Paris and Chartres on horseback, Montaigne, because of his repeated kidney stones, was subjected to unbearable suffering. The Invincible sailed along the course of its black destiny, and he, on his horse, was sweating from a cold pain. One of the stones that he passed, according to his detailed description, had the exact shape of his phallus in miniature. Can we contrast a phallus in miniature to the massive movements Michelet recounted? No, probably, and, in some sense, yes. Montaigne, from his tower, from his distance, glimpses the fires of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, the commotion of battles, the crimes in alleys or in palace verandas. And Michelet, suddenly, precisely, renders a single dignified brushstroke of Montaigne, unforgettable. When he tells, for example, that Louis XVI, already at the gallows, approached a corner, looked at the crowd attending his execution and released a terrible “moo.”
They are startling, profound episodes, that cut through us like daggers. For my part, at the end of the readings, opening pages, suddenly closing books, I always return, with delight, with true voluptuousness, to the acerbic, sardonic, incisive, harsh style of the Lord of the Mountain. In one of the essays, a character with an intense, gallant, adventurous life approaches his old age, his retirement, and decides to marry a prostitute who is also on the path to retirement. Once married, Montaigne asserts, they’ll be able to greet each other every morning, with good reason, in the following manner:
Good morning, whore.
Good morning, cuckold.
Translated by Lisa Boscov-Ellen
•
[A NOVEL]
We got into Meléndez’s chocolate-colored Volkswagen, the same car that had taken me off to meet Fidel the night I arrived in Havana. My Alfa, driven by Isidoro, followed.
The Ministry of Foreign Relations was located in a building whose Greek columns and neoclassical sobriety made it resemble every millionaire’s mansion in Latin America—and in fact it had once belonged to a sugar magnate. There were three or four lighted windows in the building that night, and two Alfa Romeos parked beside the entrance. In the shadows I made out the darker figures of several soldiers armed with machine guns.
My aide in the Protocol section, who had often attended me before, led me to the diplomats’ reception room. After that piece of paper that had been handed me in my hotel room, I could well imagine the nature of this untimely summons. I was exhausted, and depressed, but during the three-minutes’ wait for the minister I managed to collect my energies and calm myself. The door opened and the aide showed me into the minister’s office.
Standing in the middle of the room, dressed in olive-green fatigue uniforms and with pistols strapped to their waists, Fidel Castro and Raúl Roa were awaiting me.1 Fidel gestured to a place on the couch and when I was seated took the chair to my left. Roa had always been cordial with me, and we had gotten on well, but now he was extremely tense and serious-looking. According to the notes I made three or four days later, I had entered the Ministry building at exactly 11:25 P.M. I will now try to reproduce that meeting, which though one or another detail may escape me is forever engraved on my memory.
“You recall our conversation that first night that you arrived,” began the Prime Minister.
“Of course!” I replied.
“That night I took quite a liking to you. I enjoyed that conversation, and I was, as you will recall, quite courteous. But now I must tell you that we were mistaken about you. Because you have shown yourself to be a person hostile to the Cuban Revolution! And hostile to the Chilean Revolution as well! From the first day, you allowed yourself to be surrounded by counterrevolutionary elements, enemies of the Revolution, persons whose interest it was that you be given a negative view of the current Cuban situation, so that you might communicate those views to Chile. We learned all this immediately. As you will fully understand, it would have been stupid of us not to have kept you under a degree of surveillance. We have followed every detail of your meetings, your walks, your conversations—we have followed your every step. By the time of the arrival of the Esmeralda, I was already quite well informed about you, and you will have noted that I made my displeasure with you evident when I shook your hand on the deck of the ship. Now, after the warmth I showed you on the day of your arrival, I did not want to let you leave without telling you how deeply displeased and disappointed we have been by your behavior here. We should, no doubt, have
