You Shall Leave Your Land by Renato Cisneros

Author:Renato Cisneros
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: you shall leave your land;Renato Cisneros;charco press
Publisher: Charco Press
Published: 2023-01-20T14:41:35+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Paris, 1882

Luciano did his best to distract Luis Benjamín from the loss of his son, and took him on walks around the Quartier Latin, to attend the Universal Expositions, the comedies at the Théâtre Historique, the musicals at the Théâtre du Vaudeville, to visit clandestine gambling halls, and even to observe the prostitutes who swarmed the Tuileries, Notre-Dame and the Italian quarter, but none of it softened in his younger brother’s face the sorrow that began to seem indelible.

Luis Benjamín was not only downhearted but had also lost his appetite, barely touching the dishes Luciano prepared for him at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and nor did bottles of bourbon or gin, once synonymous with celebration, and which he was always the first to open and serve, do anything to revive him or get him out of his funk.

The Poet fell into depression when he thought about returning to Le Havre, so he stayed in Paris, moving with Cristina, their children and the tireless Clodomira Bustíos to number 59, Avenue Marceu, and later a fifth-floor flat at 16, Rue Christophe Colomb, where they lived in some austerity, since the Dreyfus Company continued to dodge the debts they owed.

Meanwhile, back in Lima, his remaining uncles were dying one after another: first Gerónimo and then Pedro, the general with the abundant sideburns, the man lacking both a finger and his hearing who tried but failed to take revenge on Gregorio Cartagena, the only uncle who saw the bastard children grow up and by far the one who loved them the most.

Luis Benjamín didn’t smile again until November 1882 on the day his sixth and penultimate child was born: Fernán, my grandfather.

Without money to pay school fees, he took the risk of home-schooling the older children himself, preparing a strict routine two or three days a week from nine in the morning until lunchtime. He took them to see museums, monuments, factories, libraries, historical buildings and gardens whose significance and development he described in advance. He patiently gave them general lessons in art, history, geography and literature, as well as on how paper, porcelain, chocolate and bread were made, while asking them to repeat together each explanation and then write it down in their notebooks. He taught them to keep themselves well-groomed, brush their clothes, snip dangling threads from jackets and dresses, sew buttons, tie their shoelaces, and walk with the proper bearing, without hugging the walls or dragging their feet, however tired they were. When they arrived home he wouldn’t tolerate anyone sitting down to eat at the table without brushing their hair, and checked their hands and fingernails for the least sign of muck. Each child had to speak in turn, but if they did so with their mouth full they would receive a rap on the head with his knuckles; likewise if they expressed themselves unclearly once corrected. As a good nineteenth-century man, Luis Benjamín distrusted casual language, which he saw as vulgar, and obliged the children to use pompous or outlandish nouns and adjectives, such as latent, impious, irate, stupefaction, vainglorious.

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