Michèle: A Novel Translated by Donald Henderson

By Bonifacio Lastra

Michle is a model with a provocative reputation living in Paris during WWI. While posing for preeminent artists in the city, she meets and weds Juan Castro and moves to his enstancia in Argentina. She is soon deeply entangled in a web of romance and intrigue with the Buenos Aires elite. Michles story interweaves with the tragic tale of Lagartija, a boy who relies on his survival skills to scrape out an existence in the Argentine slums. In lyrical prose, Michle captures the struggle between the countrys aristocracy and the harsh reality of its underclass. Michle is a seductive tale that concludes with a most unexpected twist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781496973825

Bonifacio Lastra

Donald C. Henderson served as associate professor and head of the Hispanic Library Program at The Pennsylvania State University from 1969 to 1992. Previously, Henderson was a Fulbright Scholar in South America and Spain focusing on the literature of Chile and Argentina. He also served as a professor of Spanish language and literature at Penn State, Michigan State University, and the State University of New York. Henderson holds an M.A. in Spanish from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. in Latin American History from Michigan State. He currently resides in State College, Pennsylvania.

Book preview

I

Uncle Juan’s getting married! exclaimed Bernabé.

The announcement as the family was gathered about the dining table of the Adrogué quinta was electrifying. Total silence reigned. The clinking of the china ceased along with the slurping noises of the smaller children as they gulped their soup. Even the rhythmic undulations of the ceiling fan seemed to be echoing the pronouncement. Old Francisco, the family butler, hung over Bernabé Lamas’ shoulder, his tureen of steaming soup suspended in precarious equilibrium as he shamelessly attempted to anticipate the news from the letter which the master of the estate kept repeating over and over to himself.

What do you make of this, Clara? What does it all mean? Bernabé asked, directing the questions to his wife. The look of impending disaster on Clara’s face was answer enough.

Now you children will have a new aunt, he joked, attempting with a sly wink to his wife to soften the news, Aunt Michèle.

The angry red flush on Clara’s face heightened to a purple tone as she slammed her fist on the table. So he’s getting married, is he? And to that tramp!

Clara, please ... interjected Bernabé, his glance directed toward the children. Her responding lamentation was half curse, half moan. And with that she stood up, threw her napkin to the floor and strode from the room.

The children exchanged wondering looks among themselves. Mary, the governess, coughed softly, and to relieve the tension gave Manolo a prod on the pretext of removing his elbows from the table. Bernabé remained lost in thought. In a moment the clatter of dishes resumed along with Manolo’s gurgling as he downed his water.

Aunt Michèle, he babbled, his mouth full of water. Aunt Michèle, he repeated again, cheeks puffed out with another swig of water which Mary obliged him to swallow with a warning jab. With the exception of the governess and Bernabé, the group enjoyed a good laugh, but the merriment was promptly quelled by Bernabé’s query:

What’s the joke?

Aunt Michèle, persisted Beto, giving an Argentine pronunciation to that French name, Aunt Michèle, as the laughter resumed, is marrying Uncle Juan!

Your Uncle Juan is not an old man and his intended’s name is Micaela, or Michèle, whichever you prefer.

No! No! It’s Michèle, shrieked Manolo, seeking confirmation from a noncommittal Oscar who broke the silence only to inquire whether she really was French, while Amelia wanted to know why her mother was so disturbed.

Michèle is French, confirmed Bernabé, and your mother was upset because, since she cares so much for your uncle, she was afraid that he might decide to stay on in Paris. But, Uncle Juan, he concluded after a long pause, will soon be back here with his wife, and they will be living with us.

And why did Mamma say that Aunt Michèle is a tramp? demanded Amelia, tugging at a curl.

She didn’t say that at all, you just misunderstood her, my girl. Bernabé arose and, with a sign to the maid to continue serving the meal, left the dining room.

She did too say tramp, mumbled Oscar, stunned by the reproof.

That’s what she said: ‘Tramp, with that tramp!’ chimed in Amelia.

No, interjected Manolo, she said Uncle Juan was the tramp.

She was talking about his intended, about Uncle Juan’s fiancée Michèle. Michèle’s the tramp!

Despite Mary’s energetic efforts to divert the conversation, the children continued to squabble over whether it was Uncle Juan or Aunt Michèle who was the tramp; some had heard it one way, the others another. But with the sound of footsteps in the hall, all discussion came to a halt. Bernabé silently seated his wife at the table, and then himself. Clara, red-eyed, touched not a morsel.

For the remainder of the lunch the children’s prattle filled the vacuum. The only allusion to the earlier subject was Amelia’s inquiry, Is Aunt Michèle pretty?

Very pretty! was her father’s reply with a simultaneous gesture to his wife to withhold comment. Clara sighed audibly, drumming impatiently with her fingertips on the table.

When the coffee was served, Mary departed with her charges for the gazebo and their English lesson. No sooner had the session gotten under way than Oscar escaped under the pretext of going to the bathroom. Dashing back to the house, he tiptoed through the music room to the dining room door where the conversation was progressing at full tilt.

"She’ll never set foot on this quinta!"

"But the quinta belongs to Juan."

If they decide to settle here, we’ll move on to Buenos Aires.

The property on Juncal Street is also your brother’s.

"We could bury ourselves on the estancia, couldn’t we?"

"What estancia? What estancia, woman? There’s only a fragment of it left! Bernabé, punctuating his last comment with a resounding blow on the table, shouted: That’s enough!"

So distraught was his mother’s voice with weeping that Oscar could barely make out her words, but she seemed to be begging her husband’s pardon. She hadn’t meant to imply that he was the one responsible for the loss of all the family property inherited from her father, Oscar’s maternal Grandfather Castro.

The conversation then continued for a lengthy period, and on a more even keel. In spite of the hushed, almost inaudible voices, with what he already knew, Oscar was able to piece together the family situation. He also discovered who Michèle was. It seemed the entire family’s existence, his grandmother’s included, was dependent on Uncle Juan’s benevolence. Bernabé received a paltry sum for his administrative duties, but this along with a few commissions hardly served to cover personal expenses. It was Clara’s pride that prevented her from asking or receiving any money directly from her brother Juan. And thus it was her husband who settled the monthly accounts with a brother-in-law who was continually needing more money to cover his own enormous personal expenses. Over fifty kilometers of the Juárez estancia had been recovered from attachment. Once purchased at auction and registered in his own name, Uncle Juan had had the right of use assigned to his sister. To dignify Bernabé’s services, his brother-in-law recompensed him with a percentage of the income. Actually, however, it was the former majordomo (administrator), dating back to the days of Juan’s father, who managed the estancia.

Bookkeeping! Clara termed it while her husband, defending himself from the charge that they lived on his brother-in-law’s charity, retorted that the monthly pittance was fair compensation for his responsibilities.

As for Michèle, she was a well-known parisienne mannequin who modeled clothes in Lanvin and had posed in the nude for the painter Génoud. All Paris knows her, Oscar heard his mother say, "and naked to boot! Have you seen her in that latest catalogue of her lover/painter’s works? It’s on my dressing table next to Vogue. She didn’t even have the discretion to conceal her name, Michèle Roullin, that’s our future sister-in-law!"

Mary’s summoning voice forced him to abandon the espionage and scurry off to his room, where he gazed out through the half-open window. A bright December sun blazed down on the red paving tiles and reflected from the crystal lamp globes suspended from the ceiling, casting a spectrum of yellows, greens, blues and reds. Beyond, shadows of the enormous trees, distorted by streams of bright light, lay upon the pebbled garden pathways.

Suddenly the stern, severe form of the approaching English governess, books under her arm, shattered the tranquility. Oscar threw himself onto his bed, feigning indisposition, to gain the time necessary to put into perspective the gist of his parents’ conversation. Once Mary had abandoned her attempts to induce him back to the gazebo, he was able to get back to organizing his thoughts.

The revelation that it was Uncle Juan’s charity that sustained the family was unsettling, and at the same time he felt a sense of shame for his father’s behavior. As to his uncle’s marriage, the thought of living under the same roof with such a woman of the world as his uncle’s new wife was repellent to him. Would she be like the one he had once observed with his cousin Luis coming out of a brothel on Junín Street, eyes heavy with mascara, lips a bright shade of carmine, the flimsy evening dress clinging to a graceless body and white satin boots grimy from use? As she moved, a syphilitic aura emanated from her undulations, contaminating the atmosphere. If you catch the syph, boy, you’re done for! You’ll go crazy, or lose your hair, or your teeth will fall out and even that tool between your legs’ll drop off! cautioned Luis.

His father had denied that Michèle was a prostitute, although admitting that she had been the painter’s mistress. But for Oscar the distinction wasn’t all that clear. Maybe it was a matter of whether one lived in a certain house and charged a price. A woman of convenience, his mother had termed her.

Clara, please understand, a model is not a woman of convenience! Bernabé countered.

She’s Génoud’s mistress! A wanton woman! Clara retorted, pounding the table with her fist. In the heat of the conversation, Clara then let fly a word Oscar could never have imagined coming from his mother’s mouth. That whore in this house will alienate all our family and friends!

Bernabé replied that his wife’s fear of loneliness and isolation would be their fate if Uncle Juan’s charity ceased; indeed, they would be reduced to poverty.

According to the details of the letter which Bernabé had read to Clara and which Oscar had overheard from behind the closed door, Uncle Juan’s arrival with his dazzling new wife was imminent. The communication was postmarked London, on the eve of their marriage and subsequent departure by ship for Buenos Aires.

At first Oscar was able to repress his desire to examine the catalogue his mother had mentioned, the one containing the reproduction of Génoud’s painting of Michèle, but little by little that curiosity became a burning obsession. In a flash he was out of bed and opening the door. The hall was deserted, the silence broken only by the hushed voices of his parents’ conversation rising from the music room. Clara’s dressing room, adjacent to her bedroom, was at the opposite end of the house. In a sudden dash he was there. Drenched in nervous sweat, accentuated by the heat, pale and trembling, he began to rummage through the pile of magazines on his mother’s night table. Once he had his hands on the catalogue, he felt as depraved as though he were spying on his future aunt through the bathroom transom. His leaden fingers sought the picture that filled an entire page of the catalogue. Michèle Roullin, read the identifying caption. She appeared as an oriental dancer, her head swathed in an emerald-encrusted vermillion velvet turban beneath which the long blond tresses cascaded to her shoulders. Below those finely arched arms there extended, claw-like, long lacquered nails, a prolongation of the fingers. Her body, naked to the waist, was adorned by a crisscrossed golden girdle, the fringes of which reached scarcely to her thighs. Depicted on the bronze shield covering her modesty there appeared, carved in onyx, a leopard tugging with his talons at the tassel which concealed her sex.

The surge of blood which pounded through Oscar’s body at first glimpse of the print gave way to pallor as he examined it more closely, imagining the details. Then, in a cold sweat, legs atremble, he hastily replaced the catalogue among the pile of other magazines and fled the house.

No sooner had he gotten the heavy stable doors open with much squeaking of the wheels in their tracks, than he felt himself enveloped in the fresh smell of leather harnesses and the sharp odor of manure and hay. In the dim light of the stable with its silent carriages, out of the scorching sun and with his emotions under control, he wandered back toward the horses’ stalls. Apolonio’s sorrel head appeared over his door whinnying softly, the open lips revealing his yellowish teeth.

Discovering the gazebo unoccupied, Oscar surmised that the English lesson must have ended. His siblings and Mary had most likely moved on to the music lesson and his parents were undoubtedly taking a siesta in their enormous bronze canopied bed, enveloped in folds of mosquito netting. His grandmother, Dominga Lamas, was confined to her bedroom in a wheelchair and being fanned by the nurse to keep away any impertinent fly.

The strategy of playing ill had gained Oscar a little respite, as long as it didn’t occur to Mary to inquire more seriously into the nature of his illness.

The shadow of the perfumed jasmines on the gazebo floor was broken only by an occasional sunbeam breaking through the trellis. The pots of ferns with their lacy greenery emitted a scent of damp earth. A sickeningly sweet fragrance of the tuberoses permeated the air, while the languid buzzing of a bumblebee gave credence to the dog days of summer.

Pulling out pencil and paper from his pocket, he began to sketch the outlines of her semblance until he had achieved a fairly good facsimile of the reproduction in the catalogue.

"Michèle ..." he murmured, absorbed in the contemplation of his drawing. Then, overcome by a sudden attack of remorse at what he had done, he crumpled the paper and stuffed it deep into his pocket, to be flushed down the toilet later.

Back in the carriage house, he threw himself down on the coachman’s seat. The scurrying about of a rat with its intermittent gnawing at a grain bag finally brought Oscar back to reality. Floating from the house came the sounds of the piano and the children’s voices with Mary’s corrections. Do, re, mi, mi, re, do. Do, re, mi, ... fa, sol ... la ... ti. The heat of the day together with the rhythmic chirping of a cicada contributed to his afternoon drowsiness, and soon Oscar was lost in sleep.

When he awoke, the sol-fas of his siblings had ceased and the sounds of the cicadas abated. What a dream he had had!

He was at the hippodrome, on Corrientes and Pellegrini Streets, in a front-row seat. He could smell the scent of the animals, the dank odor of the sawdust and the sand. With the last capers of the clown, Michèle appeared in the ring, barefooted, astride a dapple-gray horse, its mane bedecked with gaudy ribbons and a tail that reached to the ground. The animal circled the arena, prancing and cavorting. The crack of the whip in Michèle’s hand signaled the final flourish of the clown’s antics. The dapple-gray began his dance steps at an ever-increasing gallop. Michèle leaped to the ground, and from the center of the ring controlled