The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (3 page)

“Open your legs, my love,” asked the faceless man.

“Open them, open them,” pleaded Don Rigoberto.

“They’re very small, they don’t bite, they won’t hurt you,” the man insisted.

“Were you enjoying it?” asked Don Rigoberto.

“No, no,” replied Doña Lucrecia, who had again resumed her hypnotic walking. The murmurous ermine reawakened his suspicions: was she naked beneath the fur? Yes, she was. “The tickling drove me crazy.”

But in the end she had consented, and two or three felines rushed eagerly to lick the hidden backs of her thighs, the little drops of honey that sparkled on the silken black hairs of her mound of Venus. The chorus of licking tongues seemed like celestial music to Don Rigoberto. Pergolesi returned, faintly now, sweetly, moaning slowly. The firm body, licked clean, lay still, in deep repose. But Doña Lucrecia was not sleeping, for Don Rigoberto’s ears could detect the discreet eddies escaping, without her realizing it, from her depths.

“Were you over your revulsion?” he inquired.

“Of course not,” she replied. And, after a pause, with some humor: “But it didn’t matter so much anymore.”

She laughed, this time with the open laugh she reserved for him on their nights of shared intimacy, the fantasy without awkwardness that made them happy. Don Rigoberto desired her with all the mouths of his body.

“Take off the coat,” he pleaded. “Come, come to my arms, my queen, my goddess.”

But he was distracted by the vision that at precisely this instant had doubled. The invisible man was no longer invisible. His long, oiled body silently infiltrated the image. Now he was there too. Dropping onto the red cover, he embraced Doña Lucrecia. The screeching of the kittens squashed between the lovers and struggling to escape with bulging eyes, wide-open jaws, tongues hanging out, hurt Don Rigoberto’s eardrums. He covered his ears, but he could still hear them. And though he closed his eyes, he saw the man covering Doña Lucrecia. He seemed to sink into the robust white hips that received him with pleasure. He kissed her with the avidity displayed by the kittens when they licked her, and he moved on her, with her, imprisoned by her arms. Doña Lucrecia’s hands clenched his back, and her raised legs fell on his and her proud feet rested on his calves, one of Don Rigoberto’s most erogenous zones. He sighed, struggling to control an overwhelming desire to cry. He caught sight of Doña Lucrecia slipping away toward the door.

“Will you come back tomorrow?” he asked anxiously.

“And the day after and the day after that,” the silent, vanishing figure replied. “Have I even left?”

The kittens, recovered from their surprise, returned to their duties and dispensed with the final drops of honey, indifferent to the couple’s fierce struggles.

The Name Fetishist

I have a name fetish, and your name captivates me and drives me mad. Rigoberto! It is virile, it is elegant, it is Bronzinian, it is Italian. When I say it quietly, just for myself, a shiver snakes all the way down my spine and these rosy heels that God (or Nature if you prefer, unbeliever!) gave me turn to ice. Rigoberto! A laughing cascade of transparent waters. Rigoberto! The yellow joy of a goldfinch celebrating the sun. Wherever you may be, I am there too. Silent and loving, I am there. Do you sign a bill of exchange or a promissory note with the four syllables of your name? I am the dot over the
i
, the tail of the
g
, the little horns on each side of the
t
. The spot of ink on your thumb. Do you appease the heat with a glass of mineral water? I am the tiny bubble that refreshes your palate, the cube of ice that makes your viper-tongue shiver. I, Rigoberto, am the laces in your shoes, the cherry-extract lozenge you take each night to prevent constipation. How do I know this detail of your gastroenterological life? She who loves, knows, and considers everything that concerns her love as worthwhile knowledge, sanctifying the most trivial aspect of his person. Before your portrait I cross myself and pray. To learn about your life I have your name, the numerology of the Cabalists, the divinatory arts of Nostradamus. Who am I? One who loves you as the foam loves the wave and the cloud the rosy dawn. Seek, seek and find me, beloved.

Yours, yours, yours,
The Name Fetishist

Egon Schiele’s Things

“Why are you so interested in Egon Schiele?” asked Doña Lucrecia.

“It makes me sad that he died so young and that they put him in prison,” Fonchito replied. “His pictures are really beautiful. I spend hours looking at them in my papá’s books. Don’t you like them, Stepmamá?”

“I don’t recall them very well. Except for the poses. The bodies are strained and twisted, aren’t they?”

“And I like Schiele because, because…” The boy interrupted her, as if he were about to reveal a secret. “I’m afraid to tell you, Stepmamá.”

“You know how to say things very well when you want to, so don’t play the fool.”

“Because I have a feeling that I’m like him. That I’m going to have a tragic life, like his.”

Doña Lucrecia laughed out loud. But then a feeling of uneasiness came over her. How did the boy ever think up an idea like that? Fonchito continued to look at her, very seriously. After a while, making an effort, he smiled. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the dining alcove; he was still wearing the blue jacket and gray tie of his uniform but had taken off the peaked cap, which lay beside him along with his book bag and the portfolio and box of pencils from the academy. Just then, Justiniana came in with the tea tray. Fonchito welcomed her with glee.

“Toasted sweet buns with butter and marmalade.” He clapped his hands, suddenly freed from care. “What I love best in the whole world. You remembered, Justita!”

“I didn’t fix this for you, it’s for the señora,” Justiniana lied, pretending severity. “Not even a burned crumb for you.”

She began to serve the tea, arranging the cups on the coffee table in the living room. In the Olivar some boys were playing soccer, and their enthusiastic silhouettes could be seen through the curtains; inside the house they could hear, in muted form, their curses, resounding kicks, and shouts of triumph. Soon it would be dark.

“Won’t you ever forgive me, Justita?” The boy grew sad. “Learn from my stepmamá she’s forgotten what happened and now we get along fine, just like before.”

No, not just like before, thought Doña Lucrecia. A hot wave lapped at her all the way from her feet to the ends of her hair. She concealed it and sipped at her tea.

“I guess the señora is very, very good and I’m very, very bad,” Justiniana said mockingly.

“Then you and I are alike, Justita. Because you think I’m very, very bad, don’t you?”

“You win, that’s another goal for you,” the girl said in parting as she disappeared into the hallway to the kitchen.

Doña Lucrecia and the boy did not speak as they ate their buns and drank their tea.

“Justita just says she hates me,” Fonchito declared when he had finished chewing. “But deep down I think she’s forgiven me too. Don’t you think so, Stepmamá?”

“Maybe, maybe not. She doesn’t let herself be taken in by your good-little-boy ways. She doesn’t want what happened to happen again. And even though I don’t like to think about it, I suffered a great deal because of you, Fonchito.”

“Do you think I don’t know that, Stepmamá?” The boy turned pale. “That’s why I’m going to do everything, everything, to make it up to you.”

Was he serious? Or was he playing a part, using words that were too mature for him? There was no way to tell in that young face, where the eyes, mouth, nose, cheekbones, ears, even the tousled hair, seemed the work of a scrupulous aesthete. He was as beautiful as an archangel or a little pagan god. And the worst thing, the very worst thing, Doña Lucrecia thought, was that he seemed the incarnation of purity, a model of innocence and virtue. “The same halo of chastity that Modesto had,” she said to herself, recalling the engineer, so fond of sentimental songs, who had courted her before she married Rigoberto, and whom she had rejected, perhaps because she could not truly appreciate his propriety and goodness. Or had she turned down poor Pluto precisely because he was so good? Because what appealed to her heart were those murky depths sounded by Rigoberto? With him, she had not hesitated for an instant. In the excellent Pluto, his chaste expression was a reflection of his soul; in this little devil Alfonso, it was a strategy for seduction, a siren song calling her down to the abyss.

“Do you love Justita very much, Stepmamá?”

“Yes, very much. She’s more than an employee to me. I don’t know what I would have done without Justiniana all these months, when I had to get used to living alone again. She’s been a friend, an ally. That’s how I think of her. I don’t have the stupid prejudices against servants that other people in Lima have.”

She almost told Fonchito about the eminently respectable Doña Felicia de Gallagher, who boasted at her tea and canasta parties that she had forbidden her chauffeur, a robust black man in a navy-blue uniform, to drink water when he was working so that he would not feel the need to urinate and have to stop the car, find a bathroom, and leave his employer alone in those streets crawling with thieves. But she stopped herself, sensing that even an indirect allusion to a bodily function in front of the boy would be like stirring up the fetid waters of a swamp.

“Shall I pour you more tea? The buns are delicious,” said Fonchito, flattering her. “When I can get away from the academy and come here, I feel happy, Stepmamá.”

“You shouldn’t cut so many classes. If you really want to be a painter, you’ll find those classes very useful.”

Why, when she spoke to him like a child—which is what he was—why was she overcome by a feeling of duplicity, of lying? But if she treated him like a young man, she had identical misgivings, the same sense of mendacity.

“Do you think Justiniana is pretty, Stepmamá?”

“Yes, yes I do. She’s a very Peruvian type, with her cinnamon skin and pert look. She must have broken a few hearts along the way.”

“Did my papá ever tell you he thought she was pretty?”

“No, I don’t think he ever did. Why so many questions?”

“No reason. Except you’re prettier than Justita, prettier than all of them, Stepmamá,” the boy exclaimed. And then, frightened, he immediately begged her pardon. “Was I wrong to say that? You won’t get angry, will you?”

Señora Lucrecia tried to keep Rigoberto’s son from noticing how perturbed she was. Was Lucifer up to his old tricks? Should she pick him up by the ear and throw him out and tell him never to come back? But now Fonchito seemed to have forgotten what he had just said and was looking for something in his portfolio. At last he found it.

“Look, Stepmamá,” and he handed her the small clipping. “Schiele when he was a boy. Don’t I look like him?”

Doña Lucrecia examined the painfully thin adolescent with the short hair and delicate features, tightly encased in a dark turn-of-the-century suit with a rose in the lapel and a high stiff collar and bow tie that seemed to be strangling him.

“Not at all,” she said. “You don’t look anything like him.”

“Those are his sisters standing beside him. Gertrude and Melanie. The smaller one, the blonde, is the famous Gerti.”

“Why famous?” asked Doña Lucrecia, feeling uncomfortable. She knew very well she was entering a minefield.

“What do you mean why?” The rosy little face showed amazement; his hands made a theatrical gesture. “Didn’t you know? She was the model for his best known nudes.”

“Oh, really?” Doña Lucrecia’s discomfort intensified. “I see you’re very familiar with Egon Schiele’s life.”

“I’ve read everything there is about him in my papá’s library. Lots of women posed naked for him. Schoolgirls, streetwalkers, his lover Wally. And also his wife, Edith, and his sister-in-law, Adele.”

“All right, all right.” Doña Lucrecia looked at her watch. “It’s getting late, Fonchito.”

“Didn’t you know he had Edith and Adele pose for him together?” the boy went on enthusiastically, as if he hadn’t heard her. “And the same thing happened when he was living with Wally, in the little village of Krumau. He posed her naked with some schoolgirls. That’s why there was such a scandal.”

“I’m not surprised, if they were schoolgirls,” Señora Lucrecia remarked. “Now, it’s getting dark and you’d better go. If Rigoberto calls the academy, he’ll find out you’re missing classes.”

“But the whole thing was unfair,” the boy continued, carried away by excitement. “Schiele was an artist, he needed inspiration. Didn’t he paint masterpieces? What was wrong with having them undress?”

“I’ll take the cups into the kitchen.” Señora Lucrecia rose to her feet. “Help me with the plates and the breadbasket, Fonchito.”

The boy quickly brushed the crumbs scattered on the table into his hand. Obediently he followed his stepmother. But Señora Lucrecia had not succeeded in tearing him away from his subject.

“Well, it’s true he did things with some of the women who posed naked for him,” he said as they walked down the hall. “For example, with his sister-in-law Adele. But he wouldn’t have with his sister Gerti, would he, Stepmamá?”

The cups had begun to clatter in Señora Lucrecia’s hands. The damn kid had the diabolical habit of turning the conversation to salacious topics, playing the innocent all the while.

“Of course not,” she replied, feeling her tongue stumbling over the words. “Certainly not, what an idea.”

They had walked into the small kitchen, its floor tiles gleaming like mirrors. The walls sparkled too. Justiniana observed them, intrigued. A light fluttered like a butterfly in her eyes, animating her dark face.

“With Gerti, maybe not, but he did with his sister-in-law,” the boy insisted. “Adele herself admitted it after Egon Schiele died. The books say so, Stepmamá. I mean, he did things with both sisters. That’s probably where his inspiration came from.”

“What good-for-nothing are you talking about?” asked the maid. Her expression was very lively. She took the cups and plates, rinsed them in running water, then put them in the washbasin, full to the brim with soapy, blue-tinged water. The odor of bleach permeated the kitchen.

“Egon Schiele,” whispered Doña Lucrecia. “An Austrian painter.”

“He died when he was twenty-eight, Justita,” the boy explained.

“He must have died of all those things he did,” Justiniana said as she washed plates and cups and dried them with a red-checkered towel. “So behave yourself, Foncho, or the same thing will happen to you.”

“He didn’t die of the things he did, he died of Spanish influenza,” replied the boy, impervious to her mockery. “His wife too, three days before him. What’s Spanish influenza, Stepmamá?”

“A fatal flu, I guess. It must have come to Vienna from Spain. All right, you have to go now, it’s late.”

“Now I know why you want to be a painter, you bandit,” an irrepressible Justiniana interjected. “Because painters seem to have so much fun with their models.”

“Don’t make those kinds of jokes,” Doña Lucrecia reprimanded her. “He’s only a boy.”

“A nice big boy, Señora,” she replied, opening her mouth wide and showing her dazzling white teeth.

“Before he painted them, he played with them.” Fonchito took up the thread of his thought again, not paying attention to the dialogue between the señora and her maid. “He had them take different poses, trying things out. Dressed, undressed, half-dressed. What he liked best was for them to try on stockings. Red, green, black, every color. And lie on the floor. Together, separately, holding one another. And pretend they were fighting. He spent hours and hours looking at them. He played with the two sisters as if they were his dolls. Until his inspiration came. Then he painted them.”

“That’s quite a game,” Justiniana said, teasing him. “Like kids’ strip poker, but for grown-ups.”

“Enough! That’s enough!” Doña Lucrecia’s voice was so loud that Fonchito and Justiniana stood there openmouthed. More quietly, she said, “I don’t want your papá to start asking you questions. You have to go.”

“All right, Stepmamá,” the boy stammered.

He was white with shock, and Doña Lucrecia regretted having shouted. But she could not allow him to go on talking so passionately about the intimate details of Egon Schiele’s life; her heart warned her that a trap, a danger lay there, one she absolutely had to avoid. What had gotten into Justiniana to make her egg him on that way? The boy left the kitchen. She heard him picking up his book bag, portfolio, and pencils in the dining alcove. When he came back, he had straightened his tie, put on his cap, and buttoned his jacket.

Standing in the doorway, looking into her eyes, with utter naturalness he asked, “May I kiss you goodbye, Stepmamá?”

Doña Lucrecia’s heart, which was returning to normal, began to race again; but what disturbed her most was Justiniana’s little smile. What should she do? It was ridiculous to refuse. She nodded, bending her head down. A moment later she felt a baby bird’s peck on her cheek.

“May I kiss you too, Justita?”

“Make sure it’s on the mouth,” and the girl burst out laughing.

This time the boy joined in the joke, laughed, and stood on tiptoe to kiss Justiniana on the cheek. It was foolish, of course, but Señora Lucrecia did not dare to meet the eyes of her servant or reprimand her for carrying her tasteless jokes too far.

“I could kill you,” she said finally, half seriously, half in jest, when she heard the street door close. “Have you lost your mind, making jokes like that with Fonchito?”

“Well, there’s something about that boy,” Justiniana apologized with a shrug. “I don’t know what it is, but it fills your head with sin.”

“Whatever,” said Doña Lucrecia. “But where he’s concerned, it’s better not to throw fuel on the fire.”

“Fire is what’s on your face, señora,” replied Justiniana, with her customary impudence. “But don’t worry, you look terrific in that color.”

Chlorophyll and Dung

I am sorry I must disappoint you. Your impassioned arguments in favor of preserving nature and the environment do not move me. I was born, I have lived, and I will die in the city (in the ugly city of Lima, to make matters worse), and leaving the metropolis, even for a weekend, is a servitude to which I submit occasionally because of family or professional obligations, but always with distaste. Do not count me as one of those bourgeois whose fondest wish is to buy a little house on a southern beach where they can spend summers and weekends in obscene proximity to sand, salt water, and the beer bellies of other bourgeois identical to themselves. This Sunday spectacle of families fraternizing beside the sea in a
bien pensant
exhibitionism is, in the ignoble annals of gregariousness, one of the most depressing offered by this pre-individualist country.