To Melisa Elo�sa - Softcover

Bravo, Jos� Antonio; Henrie, Samuel N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587360004 ISBN 13: 9781587360008

Publisher: Hats Off Books, 2000

A novel portraying a love triangle, as two Peruvian protagonists, Melisa, a young artist, and Miguel, a middle-aged writer, jaunt about Europe in search of themselves and their roots, finding the joy of love and the anxiety of its dissolution.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Jos� Antonio Bravo was born in Tarma, Jun�n, Peru in 1937, and grew up in a fishing village on the outskirts of Lima, which is the setting for his novel, Barrio de Broncas (1971). In 1973, he was granted the National Prize for Literature of Peru for this book and has recently earned an international citation for literary works from the United Nations; Barrio de Broncas having been re-published in Buenos Aires. Other works include the novels Las Noches Hundidas (1968), Un Hotel Para el Oto�o (1977), Cuando la Gloria Agoniza (1989), La Quimera y el Extasis (1996) and the critical essay Lo Real Maravilloso en la Novela Latinoamericana Contempor�nea (1984). Twice a Fulbright Scholar, Bravo is now Professor Emeritus at La Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima. He is also an Honorary Fellow in Writing in the University of Iowa International Writing Program and a visiting professor at a number of prestigious universities throughout the world. In 1975, Bravo and others founded the journal, Revista de Cr�tica Literaria Latinoamericana. He also founded and directed the journal, Revista Cultural Cielo Abierto. Bravo will soon release a new novel entitled Percanta.

At that particular moment you were Melisa to me--that's the name you gave, and I started weaving a myth around it. It was the night I read my pieces at the Art Center, while all the upper crust of Lima and Miraflores milled around, trying to get infected with a little culture by rubbing elbows with us, the intelligentsia. Afterwards, you and I made our flight to Egypt, to "La Huida," a sleazy bar in the Surquillo district, and you fed me a crock of stories from your life history. It was only the end of November, but heat was already upon us and you pulled off your sweater and I shed mine, and we drank a lot of beer. You went off your diet, decided to get fat, because every time you spoke of your childhood you got this intense thirst for beer; it's a well-known fact that storytelling parches one's throat. You were laughing because you pictured your buddy Mauricio frantically searching for you among the cocktail drinkers--crashing through the gardens and calling at the bathroom doors back at the Art Center Gallery. And all those tales about growing up in Arequipa, because your grandfather had moved you from Moquegua to Arequipa. It was in those lukewarm years of your girlhood, with Mount Misti, an enormous volcano, looking down on you--details you tossed off so easily. You chattered on about your mineral-prospector grandfather, godson of Buffalo Bill, and I didn't believe one word of it. The audacious deeds of this grandpa, his rambles in the North American West, obsessed with gold, one of the greatest gunfighters; anything that popped into your head, Melisa, spinning out wild fantasies, your astounding capacity to put together such towering fabrications; well, your grandpa had been a sheriff and that wasn't all, he had also managed to fight for the independence of the Philippines and Cuba, and had parlayed a truce with the savage Geronimo. And his poker playing, the ample fortunes he gained and lost repeatedly from the Mississippi to the R�o Bravo. That amazing fellow, who could have a grandpa like that; and then, that he carried off your grandmother in the Mexican Revolution, fabulous. And by this time I was swallowing everything; if you had told me your grandfather was a jewel smuggler in Macao I would have believed you. But soon you got annoyed with me, Melisa--because you were Melisa then--; you resented my laughing so much, and you flipped some foam from your beer at me with a tapered forefinger as long as one of the Virgin of Remedios. That was an endless night, Melisa--your name--. And I really began to believe you or I didn't care anymore. But you probably saw a hint of incredulity in my eyes, because when we finally arrived at your place you invited me in to show me something; and I thought I'd die laughing when you brought out a daguerreotype of Buffalo Bill with a baby boy in his arms and on the back in crooked, misformed letters: "TO WILLY PARKER WITH LOVE, WILLY F. CODY, BUFFALO BILL," and then the faded date: "1876, NEVADA." What an expression I must have had on my face. We couldn't stop laughing, it was too funny, do you remember? Do you remember all that laughter, now?

When we went for a drive around La Herradura it was already past four in the morning and the fog was crowding in on that part of the shoreline. And so, between one thing and another, you were talking about Willy Parker, prospector of minerals in Peru, and about the fortune that he made in spite of himself; that he was the discoverer of manganese. "Do you know what manganese is?" Yes, in the Madre de Dios Province, close to the Bolivian border. And between grandfather-this and grandfather-that you filtered in Mauricio's life story, and somehow the sound of your voice changed, became conspiratorial, as though you wanted to scheme with someone. At that point it was hard to tell what was going on; your smile, your mystery, the sound of your voice, your flagrant imagination. To be completely candid, do you know what you were? Affected, tasteless: a romantic kid of fifteen caught up in a bolero, all that song and dance. And oh, those eyelashes! Which I later found out were false--like your name--, but how they dressed up your eyes. Truly, it was a bolero by don Am�rico and the Caribbeans with Hugo Roman� doing the vocal.

And so Mauricio crept in, invaded the conversation, your conversation, with biographical enthusiasm, as we stopped at a spot overlooking Las Gaviotas beach: "This is where I met Mauricio, in May; as the summer was ending. He had traveled all over the Americas trying to find himself. The poor guy, he had a very sad childhood." Then a long pause. Well, at that point the conspiracy was already in motion. Mauricio would be part of us both in some way, even then I could feel it; although at that moment I might just as well have expected to be confronted with another daguerreotype, of Mauricio, or of you--or, who knows, of myself; it was difficult to tell. And you suspected what I was thinking, because you looked at me and said with conviction: "Yes, that's the way it is." And you lowered your fluttering eyelashes, raised your mouth to me so I could give you a deep kiss, and I, I was digging around with my free hand to make a nest among the overcoats and sweaters that filled your car, because this was what I had waited for with so much patience during the whole evening: "You have to understand about Mauricio, you know; we have to agree on it," you breathed; and I: "Yeah, sure, of course, of course," filled with fresh urges and stirrings, I was groping among the knitwear for you.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.