MISFORTUNES OF A BEAUTY

She was a real Spanish beauty: she had long jet black hair, brown eyes and good looks. As she walked down the street, or on riding a bus; men would tell her:”- lady, you are beautiful!”She was in her late forties or early fifties, but she looked much younger. The Sangha had already moved to Ribeyro street, and it was growing.

Giselle was a new arrival .She came for a Phowa and stayed. She got along well with everybody because of her outgoing personality. She was a hot little divorcee with two grown children. She had married really young, in her teens.

We practiced together and later started going out with other members of the Sangha. She was a really good cook and enjoyed preparing fabulous dishes for us. After meditation, on weekends, we usually shared some food. She was eager to help with that. What she didn’t understand well was Buddhism .  She liked Lama Ole but still was a devout of Little Jesus of Prague, a small image  of whom she had in her bedroom. Now next to it she had placed a picture of Lama Ole and an illustration of Mahakala . She enjoyed meditation though, and was trying hard to finish Small Refuge.

She had had several boyfriends after she divorced ; and she didn’t enjoy being alone. So one evening I offered a dinner party, I was glad to see her with an escort. The man was plain, chubby and had a moustache. Giselle had bright a delicious souflée and he a bottle of wine.

That day of spring there was a beautiful moon in the sky, but early in the evening there was an eclipse. There were a dozen friends over and as we chatted, I hadn’t realized Giselle and he beau  were arguing until they raised their voices. “Bad omen” I thought.

The next morning she called me and told me how she had met him. She had gone to visit a friend and she had been introduced to her brother. They had instantly liked each other and started dating. He had been very protective to her and helped her with fixing her car, which had been giving her problems lately. Though it was only the beginning of spring and it was not so warm, they had spent a weekend in his sister’s beach house South of Lima.

He had been the favorite grandson of a very rich man, and had been brought up accordingly. After his grandfather died when he was in his twenties, he had lost all privileges .He was in his early forties and still hadn’t found himself. Though Giselle was happy, there was something I didn’t like about him. I just didn’t know what it was.

Time went by and it was the end of December. We were going to celebrate New year’s Eve in the Center on Ribeyro street. Somebody was baking the turkey. We needed a side-dish so I remembered Giselle knew how to make  wonderful rice with black olives. I rang her up to ask her for the recipe and she sounded distressed at the other end. Her suitor had revealed his true self. He had become violent one evening scaring the wits out of her and had even locked her up in the bedroom. After the row she had tried to break up, but he was obsessed with her and had started stalking her. As she rejected him, he would call her several times during the night to insult her and he seemed to have a large repertoire of denigrating  names, specially lots of synonyms for prostitute. He would also do the same with e-mails. He sent them with all types of letters and in all colors.

Giselle asked her friend information about her brother and it turns out he had done time in jail for something related to drugs. Our Cinderella’s prince had turned out to be an ogre. He was more than forty years old and still lived off his mother. He had made plans to work with her, but he had only been using her.

As I prepared the rice I got a call. Giselle was desperate because he was on the intercom of her apartment building, calling her names. After a while she called again. He had managed to get into the building and was yelling insults at her door. I told her to call the police.

We had a nice evening at the Buddhist center with Carmen Salas and Rosa Rivas, Javier, Alfredo and all the other good friends. We talked and danced all night.

The next day I called to find out what had happened .It seems after a while the man had left all of his own. Still our beauty felt in peril.

After a few weeks she managed with a lawyer cousin  , to get a restraining court order to keep the man away. He now couldn’t get close to her. She thought that had done it, but that was far from true.

The man started calling in turn all the members of the Sangha to “·talk about Giselle”. He said he was madly in love with her, that he didn’t know what she had done to him, but that she had bewitched him. That she had done the Kamasutra to him and that he couldn’t forget her. The more she rejected him the more he insisted.

He would call us with the excuse of talking about Buddhism, then as soon as he was in he would change the subject. Carlos, a psychologist volunteered to give him therapy. We all listened to him but tried to make him understand there was no hope. In the end I begged him not to call me anymore.

Giselle started dating a blonde surfer. One day as she was getting into his car to go to the beach, she saw the man standing in the corner of the street looking at her window. Soft kitty tough kitty, she pretended not to see him.

Sometimes when I look at the moon I remember that lunar eclipse and all the misfortune it brought to our beauty. What was important is that we reacted as one and helped her during that period. We stood by her until the jilted beau faded into oblivion.