L'eau Vivre in Lima

Lima was an engaging city. The saffron colored San Franciso Cathedral, emblem of the capital, could have been just as easily named after Pizzaro as much as the saint from Asissi. I remember the vibrant yellows of the historic city center, Spanish Neoclassical and baroque architecture, and the sunniness of the Peruvian disposition. And above all, a French restaurant.

L'eau Vivre, Living Water, was an elegant, high end joint boasting the best French cuisine in the city, run by French Carmelite nuns. Housed in a exquisite pale pink palace, the walls were reminiscent of salmon and delectable strawberry macaroons. Rumors of a serenade of Ave Maria accompanied dinner, but we went for the far less expensive lunch menu. L'agneau and vin du rose. For the dessert, les crepes au Cointreau en flambe. The match lit the alcohol, and I saw my partner on the other side of the dancing flame, his features somehow blurred by the proximate heat. I blinked and continued to eat, the flavor of intoxication burning my tongue. Suddenly, I realized he was not what I wanted, the very fundamental fiber of his being was so different from mine. I swallowed as he continued to talk, to charm the nuns with his fluent French. I nodded, catching a word here and there about adventures and promises and oh so many wondrous things. When they wished us a lovely future together, I began to feel sick inside.

Then we were promptly ushered out, as the lunch hours were 11am-1pm and we had apparently overstayed our welcome. The guests dissipated and I took an inordinately long time in the rest room, as ladies sometimes do. The restaurant was sealed shut, and we sat on the bench across the street, deciding where to go next. The nuns scurried to the side of the building, where a queue was already beginning to form. The men and women who gathered were dirty, unkempt, and their stench was unmistakable, drifting across the thoroughfare. They carried stained bags and tattered parcels, and we knew they were homeless. Then the nuns began distributing soup, a piece of bread, and a potato to all who waited. The line magnified and stretched as we watched, and they ate ravenously, perhaps it was their first meal in a while. Yet they all had the same hungry look in their eyes, even after their appetites were satiated.

I had seen that look before, in ubiquitous places and on the faces of strangers as well as friends. Then I thought about hunger, my own hunger for the wonders of this world, and intangible things that my partner could never understand, as he hungered for things equally alien to me. I thought about all things that one would risk to fulfill that hunger, an amorphous spirit that always seems to plague us, all the things that we want. Want. Desire. Desperation. Perhaps we are all hungry.