Bryce Echenique in the red: his retirement money disappears from a French bank

In the image, Alfredo Bryce Echenique, at the Hay de Arequipa in 2016. Daniel Mordzinski

Alfredo Bryce Echenique retired from writing three years ago.

Since then, he has spent his life in what his friends know as El Rincón de Bryce, a table for four at the back of La Bonbonniere, a restaurant in Lima.

The 83-year-old Peruvian novelist drinks vodka with tonic and has a light lunch, just a

.

At dessert he lets go like a child and orders four cups of glacé coffee.

The placidity with which he lives his retirement, however, has been broken lately by a surprising discovery: the French bank account where he keeps his pension money is empty.

The author of

, the novel with which he debuted and became known 50 years ago, was for 20 years a professor at four French universities (La Sorbonne, Nanterre, Vincennes and Paul Valery de Montpellier).

That trajectory as a teacher earned him a French social security pension and a complementary amount from the teachers' mutual, Ircantec.

A dear friend, also Peruvian Cecilia Hare, a linguist at the University of Versailles, was in charge of transferring that money from time to time to Bryce's accounts in Barcelona or Lima, depending on the need.

Hare fell ill and died in 2017. That same year Bryce traveled to France accompanied by his Peruvian editor, Germán Coronado, director of the Peisa publishing house.

They went to the Banque Populaire Rives in Paris to withdraw 20,000 euros.

The idea was that the editor and the writer would each return with 10,000 euros, the maximum amount allowed to cross customs.

They were speechless when the cashier, after checking Bryce's documentation, told them that he did not have enough balance, he barely had 2,000 left.

Since then, an operation began to try to recover the money that deserves to be a story by Bryce himself, with doses of humor and unexpected twists.

The financial entity has recognized the stolen money, according to the documentation to which EL PAÍS has had access.

Although it has taken five years to return it due to a series of legal procedures that have been lengthening to the despair of its rightful owner.

The impossibility of the writer being able to travel to Paris due to pulmonary fibrosis and the breakage of two vertebrae resulting from a fall delayed the entire process.

When checking the bank statements of the last five years, it is revealed that someone unidentified has been making weekly withdrawals of 500 euros.

“You can't steal these sausages from me.

I don't know if we'll be able to get every penny out of him.

Every day they make one more excuse and require a lot of paperwork, ”Bryce complains in his corner, spoon in hand.

The waiters have a reverential respect for him because he is one of the greatest writers in Peru, and surely because he is also the client with the simplest taste in the place: he calls them only and exclusively to ask for more vodka or coffee. icing

You don't need a notebook to memorize it.

Your publisher has borne the brunt of the litigation with the bank.

Coronado learned from his leaders that the robbery had been carried out by a dishonest worker.

He would have done the same with other immobile accounts of foreign and elderly holders.

In the documentation sent to the writer, where the subtraction is recognized, the entity is very careful not to give details about it.

And he agrees to return the money shortly as long as Bryce doesn't sue them for what happened.

“Give him back his money,” insists Coronado.

“Alfredo has waived damages and prejudices and interests.

It's the last straw, they are savages.

It is his retirement.

His silver is basic to have a shelter resource.”

Bryce made a lot of money selling his books.

It was a

in its time .

In 2002, she won the Planeta Prize with

, endowed with 600,000 euros.

Accusations of plagiarism that earned him a fine from the Peruvian government took him out of the literary circuit for a time and kept him in the shadows.

His retirement has not been as comfortable as expected.

“I have wasted everything.

I've spent it on friends and drinks.

And in travel, I have been a traveler”, he is sincere, and links to a voyage he made on a sailboat around Cuba with Fidel Castro and García Márquez.

He has stopped writing, but he has not lost his talent for telling anecdotes.

She keeps

.

In 30-40 seconds she spins a story with a surprising beginning, middle and end.

For example, one about her love affair, a constant in her non-fiction work: “I fell in love with a Puerto Rican 30 years younger than me.

She came with me to Peru.

She had OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder.

She was in the shower all day.

She bathed 20 times.

She was always on her way to the shower.

She drove me crazy.

This is not functional.

He now he has married another woman.”

The missing money keeps him awake at night, although the bank has already assured that it will return about 18,500 euros.

—Until Cecilia Hare died, everything worked perfectly.

What a wonderful teacher!

We made great friends.

Unfortunately, she passed away and I was left at the mercy of this shitty bank.

"It's a great bank, Alfredo," Coronado intercedes.

It is one of the largest in France.

-Oh yeah?

—Yes, that's where the pensions go there.

The days at his age, Bryce explains, seem very long.

Before, he used to walk along the Lima boardwalk until noon, when he had lunch and, without a break, he would write.

He was a writer on fire at the time when the rest of us take a nap or think about her.

When he finished he would go down to a restaurant to have dinner in a catatonic state.

One place owner, he says, would tell him that he was the only customer who seemed to come in drunk and leave sober after a couple of drinks.

That life is now behind.

He does not write or read, although he says that the other day he took a look at a passage from

in which Roberto Bolaño describes him walking through Paris with Julio Ramón Ribeyro (“He didn't know us, what an imagination that Bolaño” ).

"I'm not doing anything," he insists and is silent for a while.

And he ends: "That's how life goes, so silent."