We made love until dawn. When we were done he lit a Bali and asked me whether I'd read the Marquis de Sade's plays. I said I hadn't, that it was the first I'd heard that de Sade wrote plays. Not only did he write plays, said Arturo, he wrote lots of letters to theater impresarios urging them to stage what he'd written. But of course, no one dared to put on anything by him, since they would have ended up in prison (we laughed), although the incredible thing is that the marquis persisted, making all kinds of calculations in his letters, down to how much should be spent on wardrobe, and the saddest thing of all is that his figures add up, they're good! the plays would have made money. But were they pornographic? I asked. No, said Arturo, they were philosophical, with some sex.
We were lovers for a while. Three months, to be exact, the time I had left before I went back to Paris. We didn't make love every night. We didn't see each other every night. But we did it every way possible. He tied me up, hit me, sodomized me. He never left a mark, except a reddened ass, which says something about how gentle he was. A little bit longer and I would have ended up getting used to him. Needing him, in other words, and he would've ended up getting used to me. But we didn't give ourselves time. We were just friends. We talked about the Marquis de Sade, Agatha Christie, life in general. When I met him he was a Mexican like any other Mexican, but toward the end he felt more and more like a foreigner. Once I said: you Mexicans are like this or that, and he said I'm not Mexican, Simone, I'm Chilean, a little sadly, it's true, but like he meant it.
So when Ulises Lima showed up at my place and said I'm a friend of Arturo Belano's, I felt a rush of happiness, although later, when I found out that Arturo was in Europe too and hadn't even had the courtesy to send me a postcard, I was annoyed. By then I had an essentially boring, bureaucratic job at the anthropology department at the Université Paris-Nord, and with Ulises there at least I could practice my Spanish, which was getting a little rusty.
Ulises Lima lived on the Rue des Eaux. Once, just once, I went to visit him there. I'd never seen a worse chambre de bonne. It had one tiny window, which didn't open and looked out onto a dark, filthy airshaft. There was hardly room for a bed and a kind of ramshackle nursery table. There was no wardrobe or closet, so his clothes were still in suitcases or strewn around the room. When I came in I felt like throwing up. I asked him how much he paid for it. When he told me, I realized that someone was ripping him off. Whoever found you this room cheated you, I told him, this is a dump, the city is full of better rooms. I'm sure it is, he said, but then he argued that he didn't plan to stay long in Paris and he didn't want to waste time looking for anything better.
We didn't see each other often, and when we did it was always his doing. Sometimes he'd call and other times he just showed up at my building and asked if I felt like a walk, or coffee, or a movie. I usually said I was busy, studying or working on something for the department, but sometimes I agreed and we'd take a walk. We always ended up at a bar on the Rue de la Lune, eating pasta and drinking wine and talking about Mexico. He usually paid, which is odd now that I think about it, since as far as I know he wasn't working. He read a lot. He always had several books under his arm, all in French, though truth be told he was far from mastering the language (as I said, we made a point of speaking Spanish). One night he told me his plans. He was going to spend some time in Paris and then head for Israel. I smiled in shock and disbelief when he told me. Why Israel? Because he had a friend there. That's what he said. Is that the only reason? I asked incredulously. The only one.
As a matter of fact, nothing he did ever seemed to be planned out.
What was he like as a person? He was laid-back, calm, somewhat distant but not cold. Actually, he could be very warm, unlike Arturo, who was intense and sometimes seemed to hate everybody. Not Ulises. He was respectful. Ironic but respectful. He accepted people for what they were and never seemed to be trying to invade your privacy, which was often not the case with Latin Americans, in my experience.
Hipólito Garcés, Avenue Marcel Proust, Paris, August 1977. When my buddy Ulises Lima showed up in Paris I was thrilled, honest to God. I found him a nice little chambre on the Rue des Eaux, close to where I was living. From Marcel Proust to his place it was hardly any distance at all. You went left, toward Avenue René Boylesve, then turned onto Charles Dickens, and you were on the Rue des Eaux. So we were practically next door, as they say. I had a hot plate in my room and I cooked every day, and Ulises would come eat at my place. But I said: you've got to let me have a little something for it, pues. And he said: Polito, I'll give you money, don't worry, that seems fair, since you buy the food and you cook it too. How much do you want? And I said give me one hundred dollars, pues, Ulises, and that'll be the end of it. And he said that he didn't have any dollars left, all he had were francs, so that was what he gave me. He had the cash and he was a trusting guy.
One day, though, he said: Polito, I'm eating worse every day, how can a goddamn plate of rice cost so much? I explained to him that rice in France was expensive, not like in Mexico or Peru, here a kilo of rice costs an arm and a leg, pues, Ulises, I told him. He gave me this look, in the brooding kind of way Mexicans do, and he said all right, but at least buy a can of tomato sauce because I'm sick of eating white rice. Of course, I said, and I'll buy wine too, which I forgot because I was in a hurry, but you have to give me a little more money. He gave it to me and the next day I made him his plate of rice with tomato sauce and poured him a glass of red wine. But the next day the wine was gone (I drank it, I admit) and two days later the tomato sauce ran out and he was back to eating plain white rice. And then I made macaroni. Let's see, I'm trying to remember. Then I made lentils, which have lots of iron and are nutritious. And when the lentils were gone I made chickpeas. And then I made white rice again. And one day Ulises stood up and half jokingly let me have it. Polito, he said, I get the feeling you're pulling a fast one. You make the plainest and most expensive food in Paris. No, man, I told him, no, mi causita, you have no idea how expensive things are, but the next day he didn't come to eat. Three days went by and there was no sign of him. After that I stopped by his room on the Rue des Eaux. He wasn't there. But I had to see him, so I sat in the hall waiting for him to get home.