A Thousand Forests in One Acorn. Valerie Miles
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
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[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 declared you persona non grata, but we didn’t want to do that; it would have damaged our relations with Chile. But you should know that we have communicated our opinion of your mission here to Salvador Allende.”
Fidel seemed to want to make his point about his irritation and end the conversation there. He supposed, I imagine, that the news that I had been reported to Salvador Allende would be a mortal blow to me, at least as far as my career was concerned, and that I would be dumbstruck by it. I think that mistaken belief stemmed in the final analysis from his ignorance of Chile and the Chilean way of life. In Chile one can survive even inside the administration in spite of the enmity of the head of state.2
I took advantage of the first pause that offered, and I said:
“Prime Minister, I don’t think I have allowed myself to be surrounded by a group of counterrevolutionaries, as you call them. I am a writer first and a diplomat second, and I have socialized with the Cuban writers who are friends of mine, and who have been my friends since before my diplomatic posting here, from the time I first came to Cuba as a guest of the Casa de las Américas in January 1968—in some cases, since even before that. I am convinced that I have not met with any counterrevolutionary or enemy of the Revolution. It may be that these friends have critical views of the Revolution’s present moment; but there is a very clear difference to me between an intellectual who criticizes a regime and a counterrevolutionary or an agent of the enemy.”
Fidel was listening gravely. Suddenly, in fury, he interrupted me and began to openly attack. In spite of this, I insisted that he let me continue, and finally, led perhaps by curiosity to learn my version of things, he did.
“With regard to my alleged hostility to the Cuban Revolution,” I went on, “I can tell you, Prime Minister, that the major difficulties I have experienced in my diplomatic career have been due precisely to my support for the Cuban Revolution. In 1965 and 1966, after relations were broken off, at a time when you were violently attacking the Frei government, I was the only South American diplomat in Paris3 who maintained ties with the Cuban Embassy. The American invasion of the Dominican Republic occurred, and I signed the manifesto published by Cuban intellectuals. My signature appeared in Le Monde, and that, as you may imagine, did not sit very well with my boss, the ambassador from the Frei regime. During those years I accepted an invitation from the Casa de las Américas and I came to Cuba in early 1968 even though relations had been broken off between Chile and Cuba and even though I was a career diplomat for the government of Chile. It is true