The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Hit him, you hit him too, get back at him,” shouted Doña Lucrecia, dealing violent blows with the tireless rolling pin to the blob in the soiled blue suit who, attempting to stand, raised his arms to fend off the blows.

  “Justiniana smashed the stool on his head?” asked an overjoyed Don Rigoberto.

  It broke and splinters flew up to the ceiling. She raised it with both hands and brought it down with all the weight of her body behind it. Don Rigoberto saw the slender figure, blue uniform, white apron, rising up like a meteor. The stentorian “Ohhhh!” of a horrified Fito Cebolla almost shattered his eardrums. (But not the cook’s, or the butler’s, or Fonchito’s?) He covered his face, and there was blood on his hands. He passed out for a few seconds. Perhaps the shouts of the two women, who were still insulting him, brought him back to consciousness: “You degenerate, drunken, abusive faggot!”

  “Revenge is so sweet.” Doña Lucrecia laughed. “We opened the back door and he crawled away. On all fours, I swear. Whimpering, ‘Oh, my poor head, oh, they’ve cracked it open.’”

  At that moment the alarm went off. What a scare. But not even that woke up Fonchito or the butler or the cook. Hard to believe? No. But very convenient, thought Don Rigoberto.

  “I don’t know how we turned it off, but we went back inside, locked the door, and reset the alarm.” Doña Lucrecia was laughing, without restraint. “Until, little by little, we began to calm down.”

  Then she realized what that brute had done to poor Justiniana. He had ruined her dress. The girl, still terrified, burst into tears. Poor thing. If Doña Lucrecia had gone up to her bedroom, she wouldn’t have heard her screams, since the butler and the cook and the boy hadn’t heard anything either. That pig would have raped her to his heart’s content. She consoled her, she embraced her: “It’s over now, he’s gone, don’t cry.” The girl’s body, pressed against hers—she seemed much younger like this, so close—trembled from head to foot. She could feel her heart beating and how she tried to control her sobs.

  “It made me sad,” whispered Doña Lucrecia. “Besides ruining her uniform, he had hit her.”

  “He got what he deserved,” Don Rigoberto said with a gesture. “He left humiliated and bleeding. Well done!”

  “Look what he’s done to you, that wretch.” Doña Lucrecia held the girl at arm’s length. She examined the uniform that hung in tatters, she lovingly stroked the face that now showed not a trace of its usual exuberant good humor; fat tears were running down Justiniana’s cheeks, a grimace convulsed her lips. Her eyes were dimmed.

  “Did anything happen?” Don Rigoberto insinuated, very discreetly.

  “Not yet,” Doña Lucrecia replied, just as discreetly. “In any case, I didn’t realize what was happening.”

  She didn’t realize. She thought the feeling of restlessness, the nervous exaltation were the result of fear, and they undoubtedly were, in part; she felt an overpowering sense of affection and compassion, she longed to do something, anything, to get Justiniana out of the state she was in. She took her by the hand and led her to the stairs. “Come take off those clothes, we’d better call a doctor.”

  As they left the kitchen, she turned off the downstairs light. In darkness, holding hands, one step at a time, they climbed the circular staircase that led to the study and bedroom. When they were halfway up, Señora Lucrecia put her other arm around the girl’s waist. “What a fright you’ve had.” “I thought I would die, Señora, but I’m feeling better now.” It wasn’t true; she clutched at her employer’s hand and her teeth were chattering, as if she were cold. Holding hands, their arms around each other’s waist, they made their way past the shelves filled with art books, and in the bedroom they were greeted by the lights of Miraflores spread across the window, the streetlamps along the Seawalk, the white crests of waves advancing toward the cliffs. Doña Lucrecia turned on the floor lamp, which illuminated the spacious crimson chaise longue with its clawed feet, the small table with its magazines, the Chinese porcelains, the pillows and poufs strewn over the carpet. The wide bed, the bedside lamps, the walls covered with Persian, Tantric, and Japanese engravings were in darkness. Doña Lucrecia went to the dressing room. She handed a robe to Justiniana, who remained standing, covering herself with her arms, somewhat embarrassed.

  “We have to throw those clothes into the trash and burn them. Yes, burn them, the way Don Rigoberto burns the books and pictures he doesn’t like anymore. Put this on, and I’ll see what I can find to make you feel better.”

  In the bathroom, while she was soaking a cloth in cologne, she saw herself in the mirror (“Beautiful,” Don Rigoberto complimented her). She too had been frightened out of her wits. She looked pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes; her makeup was smeared, and she had not realized that the zipper on her dress had broken.

  “I’m one of the wounded too, Justiniana.” She spoke through the door. “Because of that revolting Fito, my dress is torn. I’m going to put on a robe. Come in, there’s more light here.”

  When Justiniana came into the bathroom, Doña Lucrecia, who was stepping out of her dress—she wore no bra, just the triangle of black silk panties—could see her reflected in the mirror over the sink and repeated in the one by the tub. In the white robe that reached to her thighs, she seemed slimmer and darker. Since there was no belt, she held the robe closed with her hands.

  Doña Lucrecia took down her Chinese after-bath wrap—“the red silk, with two yellow dragons joined by the tail on the back,” Don Rigoberto insisted—put it on, and called to her, “Come a little closer. Are you bruised anywhere?”

  “No, I don’t think so, just two little ones.” Justiniana extended a leg through the folds of the robe. “These black-and-blue marks, where I banged into the table.”

  Doña Lucrecia bent down, rested one of her hands on the smooth thigh, and delicately rubbed the purplish skin with the cloth soaked in cologne.

  “It’s nothing, it’ll go away before you know it. And the other one?”

  On her shoulder and part of her arm. Opening the robe, Justiniana showed her the bruise, which was beginning to swell. Doña Lucrecia saw that the girl wore no bra either. Her chest was very close to Doña Lucrecia’s eyes. She saw the tip of her nipple. It was a young, small breast, well formed, with a light granulation on the corolla.

  “This looks more serious,” she murmured. “Does it hurt here?”

  “Just a little,” said Justiniana, not pulling back the arm that Doña Lucrecia rubbed carefully, more attentive now to her own perturbation than to the bruises on her employee.

  “In other words,” insisted, implored Don Rigoberto, “something happened then.”

  “Yes, something happened then,” his wife conceded this time. “I don’t know what, but something. We were so close, in robes. I’d never had intimacies like that with her. Or perhaps it was because of what happened in the kitchen. Whatever the reason, suddenly I was no longer myself. I was on fire from head to toe.”

  “And she?”

  “I don’t know, who knows, I don’t think so.” Doña Lucrecia seemed bewildered. “Everything had changed, I know that. Do you understand, Rigoberto? After a fright like that. Imagine what was happening to me.”

  “That’s the way life is,” Don Rigoberto murmured aloud, listening to his words resonate in the solitude of the bedroom filled with daylight. “That is the wide, unpredictable, marvelous, terrible world of desire. Dear wife, I have you so close to me, now that you are so far.”

  “Do you know something?” said Doña Lucrecia to Justiniana. “What you and I need to calm us after all the excitement is a drink.”

  “So we won’t have nightmares about that animal.” The employee laughed, following her into the bedroom. Her expression was animated. “The truth is, I think getting drunk is the only way I won’t dream about him tonight.”

  “Let’s both get drunk, in that case.” Doña Lucrecia walked toward the little bar in the study. “Do you want whiskey? Do you like whiskey?�
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  “Anything, whatever you’re going to have. Leave it, leave it, I’ll bring it to you.”

  “You stay there,” Doña Lucrecia interrupted her from the study. “Tonight I’ll do the serving.”

  She laughed, and the girl did the same, amused. In the study, feeling that she could not control her hands, not wanting to think, Doña Lucrecia filled two large glasses with a generous amount of whiskey, a splash of mineral water, and two ice cubes. She came back, slipping like a feline among the pillows scattered on the floor. Justiniana was resting against the back of the chaise longue, but her feet were still on the floor. She made a move to stand up.

  “Just stay there,” Doña Lucrecia interrupted her again. “Move over, we’ll both fit.”

  The girl hesitated, disconcerted for the first time, but immediately regained her composure. Taking off her shoes, she raised her legs and moved toward the window to make room for Doña Lucrecia, who lay down beside her. She arranged the pillows beneath her head. There was room for both of them, but their bodies brushed lightly. Shoulders, arms, legs, hips were sensed, and touched briefly.

  “What shall we drink to?” asked Doña Lucrecia. “The beating we gave that animal?”

  “My stool.” Justiniana had recovered her high spirits. “I was so angry I could have killed him, I swear. Do you think I split his head open?”

  She sipped again at her drink and was overcome by laughter. Doña Lucrecia began to laugh too, a little half-hysterical laugh. “You split it, and with my rolling pin I split a few other things for him.” And so they passed the time, like two friends sharing a good-natured, rather risqué confidence, shaken by outbursts of laughter. “I promise you that Fito Cebolla has more black-and-blue marks than you do, Justiniana.” “And what excuses do you think he’ll give to his wife for all those cuts and bruises?” “That he was attacked by muggers who kicked him.” In a counterpoint of banter and laughter, they finished their glasses of whiskey. They grew calmer. Little by little they caught their breath.

  “I’m going to pour two more,” said Doña Lucrecia.

  “I’ll do it, let me, I swear I know how to fix them.”

  “All right, go on; I’ll put on some music.”

  But instead of getting up from the chaise longue to let the girl by, Señora Lucrecia took her by the waist with both hands and helped Justiniana slide across her, not holding her back but slowing her down in a motion that, for a moment, meant that their bodies—the mistress below, the employee above—were entwined. In the semidarkness, as she felt Justiniana’s face over hers—her breath warming her face, entering her mouth—Doña Lucrecia saw an alarmed light flash in the girl’s jet-black eyes.

  “And at that moment, what was it you noticed?” Don Rigoberto prompted her in a strangled voice, feeling Doña Lucrecia move in his arms with the animal sloth her body sank into when they made love.

  “She wasn’t offended; maybe just a little frightened. Though not for long,” she said, her voice husky. “Frightened that I had taken those liberties, holding on to her waist and sliding her over me. Maybe she realized. I don’t know, I didn’t know anything, I didn’t care about anything. I was flying. But I do know one thing: she didn’t get angry. She took it with good grace, with that mischievousness she brings to everything. Fito was right, she is attractive. Even more so half-naked. Her café con leche skin contrasting with the white silk…”

  “I would have given a year of my life to see the two of you at that moment.” And Don Rigoberto found the reference he had been seeking for some time: Sloth and Lust, or The Dream, by Gustave Courbet.

  “Aren’t you seeing us now?” Doña Lucrecia asked mockingly.

  With absolute clarity, despite the fact that unlike his daylit bedroom, this one was nocturnal, and the part of the room beyond the circle of light shed by the floor lamp lay in darkness. The atmosphere had grown heavy. That penetrating, dizzying perfume intoxicated Don Rigoberto. His nostrils breathed it in, exhaled it, reabsorbed it. In the background he heard the sound of the sea and, in the study, Justiniana preparing the drinks. Half hidden by the plant with narrow, tapering leaves, Doña Lucrecia stirred and, as if shaking off her lassitude, started the phonograph; the music of Paraguayan harps and a Guarani chorus floated through the room, while Doña Lucrecia returned to her place on the chaise longue and, with lowered eyelids, waited for Justiniana with an intensity that Don Rigoberto could smell and hear. The Chinese robe revealed a white thigh and bare arms. Her hair was tousled, her eyes watchful behind their silky lashes. An ocelot stalking her prey, thought Don Rigoberto. Justiniana appeared, carrying the two glasses, smiling, moving easily, accustomed now to their complicity, to not maintaining a proper distance from her employer.

  “Do you like this Paraguayan music? I don’t know what it’s called,” murmured Doña Lucrecia.

  “Yes, I do, it’s pretty, but you can’t dance to it, can you?” Justiniana commented as she sat on the edge of the chaise longue and handed her a glass. “Is that all right, or does it need more water?”

  She did not dare to slide over her, and Doña Lucrecia moved toward the corner that the girl had occupied before. With a gesture she encouraged her to take her place. Justiniana did, and when she lay down beside her, the robe slipped so that her right leg was also uncovered, just millimeters from the bare leg of her señora.

  “Cin-cin, Justiniana,” said Doña Lucrecia, tapping her glass against hers.

  “Cin-cin, Señora.”

  They drank. As soon as they moved their glasses away, Doña Lucrecia joked, “Fito Cebolla would have given a lot to have the two of us the way we are now.”

  She laughed, and Justiniana laughed too. Their laughter rose and fell. The girl dared to make a joke: “If at least he had been young and good-looking. But with that frog-face, and drunk besides, who would let him do anything?”

  “At least he has good taste.” Doña Lucrecia’s free hand ruffled Justiniana’s hair. “You really are very pretty. It doesn’t surprise me that you drive men wild. Only Fito? I’ll bet you’ve made a lot of conquests out there.”

  She continued to stroke her hair as she extended her leg until it touched Justiniana’s. Justiniana did not move hers away. She lay still, her mouth fixed in a half smile. After a few seconds Señora Lucrecia’s heart skipped a beat when she realized that Justiniana’s foot was moving, slowly, very slowly, until it made contact with hers. Timid fingers were passing over hers in an imperceptible scratching motion.

  “I love you very much, Justita,” she said, calling her for the first time by the nickname that Fonchito used. “I realized tonight. When I saw what that fat slob was doing to you. It made me so angry! As if you had been my sister.”

  “I love you too, Señora,” Justiniana whispered as she turned slightly, onto her side, so that now, in addition to their feet and thighs, their hips, arms, and shoulders were also touching. “I don’t know how to say it, but I’m so envious of you. Because of the way you are, because you’re so elegant. The best-looking woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Will you let me kiss you?” Señora Lucrecia lowered her head until it brushed against Justiniana’s. Their hair became entwined. She could see her deep, wide-open eyes, observing her without blinking, without fear, but with some uneasiness. “Can I? Can we? Like friends?”

  She felt uncomfortable, regretful, for the seconds—two, three, ten?—that it took Justiniana to reply. And her soul returned to her body—her heart beating so fast she could hardly breathe—when, at last, the dear face beneath hers nodded and moved upward, offering her lips. As they kissed, passionately, their tongues intertwining, separating and reuniting, their bodies embracing, Don Rigoberto exulted. Was he proud of his wife? Of course. More in love with her than ever? Naturally. He drew back in order to see and hear them.

  “I have to tell you something, Señora,” he heard Justiniana whisper into Lucrecia’s ear. “For a long time I’ve had a dream. The same dream, again and again, until I wake up. I dream that one night
it’s cold and the señor is away on a trip. You’re afraid of thieves and ask me to stay with you. I want to sleep on this chair and you say, “No, no, come here, come here.” And you have me lie down with you. And when I dream that, while I’m dreaming, I don’t know how to tell you, I get wet. I’m so embarrassed!”

  “Let’s do the dream.” Señora Lucrecia stood up, pulling Justiniana after her. “Let’s sleep together, but in the bed, it’s softer than the chaise longue. Come, Justita.”

  Before they slipped under the sheets they took off their robes and left them at the foot of the king-size bed, which was covered with a spread. The harps had been followed by an old-fashioned waltz, violins whose rhythms were attuned to the rhythm of their caresses. What did it matter that they had turned off the light as they were playing and loving, hidden beneath the sheets, and that the busily moving bedspread twisted, wrinkled, swayed back and forth? Don Rigoberto did not miss a single detail of their onslaughts and attacks; he entangled and disentangled along with them; he was at the side of the hand that encircled a breast, in each finger that caressed a buttock, in the lips that, following several skirmishes, dared at last to sink into that hidden darkness, searching out the crater of pleasure, the warm hollow, the throbbing entrance, the small, quivering muscle. He saw everything, smelled everything, heard everything. His nostrils were enraptured by the perfume of their skin, his lips drank in the juices that flowed from the charming pair.

  “She had never done that before?”

  “And neither had I,” Doña Lucrecia confirmed. “Neither of us had, not ever. A couple of novices. We learned on the spot. I enjoyed it, we both enjoyed it. That night I didn’t miss you at all, my love. Do you mind my telling you that?”

  “I like your telling me,” and her husband embraced her. “And she, did she feel regret afterward?”

  Not at all. She displayed a naturalness and discretion that impressed Doña Lucrecia. Except for the next morning, when the bouquets of flowers arrived (the card for the employer read: From beneath his bandages, Fito Cebolla sends heartfelt thanks for the well-deserved lesson received from his beloved and admired friend Lucrecia, and for the employee: Fito Cebolla greets and humbly begs the pardon of the Cinnamon Flower) and they showed them to one another, the subject was never mentioned again. Their relationship, the way each behaved toward the other and treated the other, did not change for those who observed them from the outside. True, Doña Lucrecia occasionally showed a certain weakness for Justiniana, giving her new shoes or a dress or taking her along on her outings, but though this caused some jealousy in the butler and cook, it came as no surprise to anyone, since the entire household, from the chauffeur to Fonchito and Don Rigoberto, had noticed for some time that with her quick wit and ready flattery, Justiniana had completely won over the señora.