The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (22 page)

On account of this mania, I found myself obliged to examine my conscience. A friend from Catholic Action who knew me very well and was aware of what attracted me most in girls—their knees and elbows—warned me that something was wrong. He was very fond of psychology, which made matters worse, for, in his orthodox way, he wanted to bring human behavior and motivation into harmony with the morality and teachings of the Church. He spoke of deviancy and pronounced the words “fetishism” and “fetishist.” They now seem two of the most acceptable in the dictionary (that is what we are, you and I and all sensitive people), but in those days they sounded to me like depravity and abominable vice.

You and I know, my Syracusan friend, that fetishism is not the “cult of fetishes,” as the Dictionary of the Academy so unfortunately defines it, but a privileged form of expression of human particularity that allows men and women to define their space, mark their difference from others, exercise their imagination, express their anti-herd spirit, and be free. I would like to recount to you, as we sit in a little cottage in the countryside surrounding your city, which I picture as full of lakes, pine groves, and hills white with snow, and drink a glass of whiskey together and listen to the logs crackling in the hearth, how discovering the central role of fetishism in the individual’s life played a decisive role in my disenchantment with social utopias—the idea that it was possible to collectively create happiness and goodness or realize any ethical or aesthetic value—in my journey from faith to agnosticism and the belief that moves me now: since man and woman cannot live without utopias, the only realistic way to create them is by transferring them from the social to the individual sphere. A collective cannot organize to achieve any kind of perfection without destroying the freedom of many and obliterating beautiful individual differences in the name of horrifying common denominators. On the other hand, the solitary individual can—by acting on his appetites, manias, fetishes, phobias, or preferences—create his own world, one that approaches (or eventually incarnates, as it does in saints and Olympic champions) the supreme ideal in which experience and desire are one. Naturally, in certain privileged instances, a happy coincidence—for example, the sperm and ovum meeting to produce fertilization—allows two people to realize their dreams in complementary fashion. This was true in the case (I’ve just read it in the biography written by his understanding widow) of the journalist, playwright, critic, entertainer, and professionally frivolous man, Kenneth Tynan, a secret masochist to whom chance granted the opportunity of meeting a girl who happened to be a shameless sadist, a fact that allowed them both to be happy two or three times a week in a Kensington basement, he receiving the lash of the whip and she dispensing it, in a bruising game that transported them to heaven. I respect but do not practice games that have Mercurochrome and arnica as their corollaries.

Since we are relating anecdotes—in this sphere there are hundreds of them—I cannot resist describing for you the fantasy that afflicts the libido of Cachito Arnilla, a champion in the verbose profession of selling insurance, with the frenzy of Saint Vitus’ dance; it consists—he confessed this to me at one of those abominable Patriotic Festival or Christmas cocktail parties that I cannot avoid attending—of seeing a woman, naked except for stiletto heels, smoking and playing billiards. This image, which he thinks he saw as a boy in some magazine, was associated with his first erections, and since then it has been the polestar of his sexual life. Dear Cachito! When he married a dark little hussy from Accounting, capable, I am sure, of complying with his wishes, I slyly presented him, in the name of La Perricholi Insurance Company—I am the director—with a full-size billiard table, delivered to his house in a van on the day of his wedding. Everyone thought it was an inane gift, but the look in Cachito’s eye and the anticipatory salivation with which he expressed his thanks told me I had hit the bull’s-eye.

My dear friend from Syracuse, lover of underarm bushes, the exaltation of manias and phobias must have limits. One needs to recognize certain restrictions, for without them crime would be unleashed and we would return to the bestiality of the jungle. But in the private domain, the domain of these phantoms, everything should be permitted between adults who consent to the game and its rules for their mutual pleasure. And though I find many of these games unbearably repugnant (for example, the little pills that produced the noisy farts so beloved of the gallant French century and, in particular, of the Marquis de Sade, who, not content with mistreating women, also demanded that they make him dizzy with artillery explosions of gases) it is equally true that in this sphere such differences deserve consideration and respect, for nothing else so well represents the unfathomable complexity of the human person.

Did you infringe upon the human rights and freedom of your hairy neighbor when you climbed to her roof in order to pay admiring homage to the tufts under her arms? No doubt. Did you deserve to be punished in the name of social harmony? Oh my, of course you did. But you knew that and took the risk, prepared to pay the price for peeping at the overgrown armpits of your neighbors. I’ve already told you I cannot emulate your courageous extremes. My sense of the ridiculous and my contempt for heroics, not to mention my physical clumsiness, are too great, and I would never dare to climb someone else’s roof even for a glimpse, on a hairless body, of the roundest knees and most spherical elbows known to the female gender. My natural cowardice, which may be nothing more than an unhealthy legalistic instinct, leads me to find a propitious corner for my manias, phobias, and fetishes within the confines of what is commonly called the licit. Does this deprive me of a succulent treasure trove of lasciviousness? Of course. But what I do have is sufficient, as long as one derives the pleasure one should from it, which I attempt to do.

May your three months be easy, and may your dreams behind bars be filled with forests of fleece, avenues of silky hair—black, blond, red—along which you gallop, swim, run, frantic with joy.

Goodbye, my brother.

The Professor’s Panties

Don Rigoberto opened his eyes: there, draped between the third and fourth stairs, blue and shiny and edged in lace, provocative and poetic, were her panties, the professor’s panties. He trembled like one possessed. He had not slept despite spending a long time in the dark, lying in bed, listening to the murmur of the sea, lost in elusive fantasies. Until, suddenly, that phone had rung again, waking him with a violent start.

“Hello, hello?”

“Rigoberto, is that you?”

He recognized the voice of the aging professor, though he spoke very quietly, covering the mouthpiece with his hand and muffling his words. Where were they? In an old university town. In what country? The United States. In which state? Virginia. What university? The state university, the beautiful school built in neoclassic style with rows of white columns and designed by Thomas Jefferson.

“Is that you, Professor?”

“Yes, yes, Rigoberto. But speak slowly. Forgive me for waking you.”

“Not at all, Professor. How was your dinner with Professor Lucrecia? Have you finished?”

The voice of the venerable jurist and philosopher, Nepomuceno Riga, broke into hieroglyphic stammering. Rigoberto realized that something serious had happened to his old teacher of Philosophy of Law at Catholic University in Lima, who had come to attend a symposium at the University of Virginia, where Rigoberto was doing graduate work (in legislation and insurance) and acting as his former teacher’s chauffeur and guide: he had taken him to visit Monticello, Jefferson’s home, now a museum, and to the historical sites of the Battle of Manassas.

“Rigoberto, I apologize for imposing on you, but you’re the only person here I can trust. You were my student, I know your family, and you’ve been so kind these past few days…”

“Please, Don Nepomuceno, don’t mention it,” the young Rigoberto said encouragingly. “Is something wrong?”

Don Rigoberto sat up in bed, shaken by an anticipatory little laugh. It seemed to him that at any moment the bathroom door would open and the figure of Doña Lucrecia would be sketched there, surprising him with an exquisite pair of panties, in colors, or black or white, with embroidery, openings, silk trim, backstitched or smooth, the kind that covered just enough of her mound of Venus to emphasize it, and at the edges, peeking out to tempt him—wayward, coquettish—some stray pubic hairs. An undergarment like the one that lay so unexpectedly, as if it were a provocative object in a surrealist painting by the Catalonian Joan Ponc or the Romanian Victor Brauner, on the staircase which that good soul, that innocent spirit, Don Nepomuceno Riga, had to climb to reach his bedroom—Don Nepomuceno, who, in his memorable classes, the only ones worth remembering in seven dry-as-dust years studying law, would erase the blackboard with his tie.

“It’s just that I don’t know what to do, Rigoberto. I find myself in an awkward situation. In spite of my age, I have absolutely no experience in these matters.”

“In which matters, Professor? Tell me, don’t be embarrassed.”

Why, instead of lodging him at the Holiday Inn or the Hilton along with the other scholars attending the symposium, why had they arranged for Don Nepomuceno to stay at the home of the woman who taught International Law II? Surely out of deference to his prestige. Or because the two enjoyed a friendship based on their encounters at law schools throughout the world, and their presence at the same conferences, lectures, and round tables, or perhaps because they had collaborated on an erudite paper abounding in Latin phrases that appeared, with a profusion of notes and an oppressive bibliography, in a professional journal published in Buenos Aires, Tubingen, or Helsinki? Whatever the reason, the esteemed Don Nepomuceno, instead of staying in an impersonal windowed cubicle at the Holiday Inn, spent his nights in Professor Lucrecia’s comfortable, rusticmodern house, which Rigoberto knew quite well because this semester he was taking her seminar on International Law II and had gone several times to knock on her door and deliver his papers or return the dense treatises that she, very kindly, had lent him. Don Rigoberto closed his eyes and felt goose bumps as he once again saw the musical hips of the jurist’s well-proportioned, erect figure walking away from him.

“Are you all right, Professor?”

“Yes, yes, Rigoberto. Really, it’s very silly. You’re going to laugh at me. But, as I say, I have no experience. I’m bewildered and confused, my boy.”

He did not have to say so; his voice quavered as if he were about to lose it and his words had to be pulled out with forceps. He must have been drenched in icy perspiration. Would he find the courage to tell him what had happened?

“Well, just imagine. Tonight, when I returned from the cocktail party in our honor, Dr. Lucrecia prepared supper here in her house. Just for the two of us; yes, it was very considerate of her. An extremely pleasant meal, served with a bottle of wine. I’m not accustomed to alcohol, and so my befuddlement is probably due to the wine going to my head. A nice little California wine, apparently. Though rather strong, I must say.”

“Stop beating about the bush, Professor, and tell me what happened.”

“Wait, wait. Think of it, after supper and the bottle of wine, Professor Lucrecia insisted we drink cognac. I couldn’t refuse, of course, it would have been impolite. But I saw stars, my boy. It was liquid fire. I began to cough and even thought I might go blind. But something ridiculous happened instead. I fell asleep. Yes, yes, son, right in the chair, right in the living room that is also a library. And when I awoke, I don’t know how much later, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, the professor was not there. She must have gone to bed, I thought. And I prepared to do the same. And then, then, just think, as I was climbing the stairs, whoosh, out of the blue, right in front of my eyes, you can’t imagine what I saw. Panties! Yes, right in my path. Don’t laugh, my boy, because even if it is laughable, I’m terribly upset. I tell you, I don’t know what to do.”

“Of course I’m not laughing, Don Nepomuceno. You don’t think that intimate article of clothing was there by accident?”

“By accident? Not at all! Son, I may not be experienced, but I’m not in my dotage yet. She left it there ex professo, so that I would find it. Only she and I are under this roof. She put it there.”

“But then, Professor, the best thing that can happen to a guest is happening to you. You’ve received an invitation from your hostess. It’s as clear as day.”

The professor’s voice broke three times before he could articulate anything intelligible.

“You think so, Rigoberto? Well, that’s what I thought too when I finally could think, after the shock. You’d call it an invitation, wouldn’t you? It can’t be accidental; this house is a paragon of order, like the professor herself. That garment was placed there intentionally. Even its arrangement on the staircase is no accident, because it is highlighted and carefully displayed, I swear.”

“The intent was to trip you up, if you’ll permit me the joke, Don Nepomuceno.”

“Rigoberto, I’m laughing too, inside. Despite my confusion, I mean. That’s why I need your advice. What should I do? I never dreamed I’d find myself in a situation like this.”

“What you should do is very clear, Professor. Don’t you like Dr. Lucrecia? She’s a very attractive woman; I think she is, and so do my classmates. She’s the best-looking woman on Virginia’s faculty.”

“No doubt she is, nobody can deny it. She’s a very beautiful lady.”

“Then don’t lose any more time. Go and knock on her door. Don’t you see? She’s waiting for you. Go before she falls asleep.”

“Can I take that liberty? Knock on her door, just like that?”

“Where are you now?”

“Where would I be? In the living room, at the foot of the stairs. Why do you think I’m talking so quietly? So I just go up and knock on her door? Just like that?”

“Don’t waste a second. She’s left you a sign, you can’t pretend not to understand. Above all, if you like her. Because she appeals to you, doesn’t she, Professor?”