The Distance Between Us. Renato Cisneros

Ema about exactly where to lay out a huge red towel that resembled the flag of Morocco. The boys approached. Who knows which of them spoke first. Most likely it was El Chino Falsía, who never lost a second when it came to girls, unlike with his schoolwork. Or perhaps it was Tito Arenas, whose smile – more roguish than sensual – awoke a tenderness in girls that he found hateful and depressing. The last to open his mouth was undoubtedly the Gaucho, but all it took was a glimpse of Beatriz’ eyes for him to fall in love as if struck by a hammer blow. He would never recover from the vision of those two pupils, dark as grottoes, their depths pierced by the incipient beam of an unblinking lighthouse. The gaze, the perfect arcs of the eyebrows, the pointy, mouse-like nose. There the cadet Cisneros Vizquerra stood, paralysed, shredded by this girl wrapped in the clarity of daylight, who was now saying her name was Betty, addressing them with gracious gestures from the centre of that African flag. He found her so expansive, so fragile and so proud that he immediately longed to adore her to the end of his days.

      Over that summer the three of them would pay regular visits to Beatriz’s parasol. The three boys would take her to dance at the Casino dance hall, to eat ice cream in cafés on the seafront promenade, to watch boat races from the top of the stands at the nautical club, to walk to the far ends of the resort’s less popular beaches, where the sea broke against the shore with greater power, to watch the latest films at the Ambassador or Sacoa cinemas, from which Beatriz always emerged teary-eyed and upset, sure that she would have played the leading role better than the actress in question. On one such afternoon the Gaucho must at last have opened his mouth to seduce her, to make her his girlfriend and kiss her against the walls, the rocky outcrops, the revolving doors, the trees, the boats pulled up on the shore, and to tell her that he wanted life to stop right there, because what would come later, however good it might be for both of them, would always be inferior, as it would lack the sparkle of that summer. To Beatriz – who at the age of fifteen had never lacked for male attention – this primitive and unconditional emotion was something new and different. Used to her beauty attracting a different kind of approach and endless frivolities – which she had been known to cultivate – she had never imagined that she could inspire a kind of love that was tinged with religious adoration. The Gaucho told her: ‘A woman like you shouldn’t sleep in a bedroom, but in a sanctuary.’ And some nights, in the darkness of the bedroom she shared with her sister Ema, Beatriz would smile as she imagined that her little room was actually a jewel case or a music box, and she would quickly fall asleep to the thought of herself as a miniature dancer who stood up tall, stretched her arms, took hold of one calf and raised her leg into the air, revolving before the bejewelled sea of the mirror.

      The relationship between the Gaucho and Betty continued after they returned to Buenos Aires. The Abdulá family lived in Villa Devoto, a neighbourhood close to El Palomar, the headquarters of the military college. The Gaucho would visit her there on weekends when he had leave. He’d take the first tram on Saturday morning and after forty minutes – passing through the stations of Caseros, Santos Lugares and Sáenz Peña – he’d reach Villa Devoto, where he’d remain until evening fell at about seven. Juvenal and Gustavo, the only brothers who knew about the existence of Beatriz, covered for him whenever their mother, Esperanza, asked out loud where the devil the Gaucho had got to. Their father, Fernán – at that point the Peruvian Ambassador to Mexico and shortly afterwards to Brazil, appointed by President Bustamante y Rivero, fully occupied by the organisation of a conference at which the countries of Latin America would establish a continent-wide position in response to Germany and Italy’s defeat in the Second World War – remained wholly oblivious to the small events that marked the inner lives of his children in Buenos Aires.

      The Gaucho would speak to his friends in the Army not only of Betty, but of the Abdulá family; above all her father, a Syrian-Lebanese man who was very strict or at least pretended to be in order to frighten off his eldest daughter’s suitors. Any allusion to Arab culture or symbols made in the classrooms of the military college provided an excuse for the cadets to tease the Peruvian about his girlfriend. ‘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