The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  “Excuse me, Doctor, I found something of yours on the stairs,” he stammered, feeling streams of saliva flowing out of the corners of his mouth.

  He spoke so softly that not even he could hear what he was saying, or perhaps he moved his lips without making a sound. Neither his voice nor his presence had disturbed the jurist. She breathed quietly, rhythmically, in innocent sleep. But that pose, the fact that she was naked and had left her bedroom door open, had loosened her hair—black, straight, long—so that it swept across her shoulders and back, its blue-tinged darkness contrasting with the whiteness of her skin, could that be innocent? “No, no” was the judgment of Don Rigoberto. “No, no,” echoed the stupefied professor, moving his eyes along the undulating surface that, at her flanks, sank androse like a stormy sea of feminine flesh glorified by moonlight (“more like the oily light and shadow of Titian’s bodies,” Don Rigoberto amended) a few centimeters from his stunned face: Not innocent, not at all. I’m here because she planned it and brought me here.

  And yet he could not derive from that theoretical conclusion sufficient strength to do what his reawakened instincts demanded: pass his fingertips along the satiny skin, rest his matrimonial lips on those hills and dales that he expected to be warm, fragrant, with a taste in which the sweet and salty coexisted but did not combine. Petrified with happiness, he could do nothing but look, look. After traveling back and forth many times between the head and feet of this miracle, passing over it again and again, his eyes stopped moving and rested, like the exquisite palate that does not need to taste any further after identifying the ne plus ultra of the wine cellar, on the independent spectacle of her spherical hindquarters. They stood out from the rest of her body like an emperor among his vassals, Zeus among the minor gods of Olympus. (“A happy union of nineteenth-century Courbet and the modern Urculo,” Don Rigoberto ennobled the scene with references.) The eminent professor, overwhelmed by emotion, observed and adored the prodigy in silence. What was he saying to himself? He was repeating the line from Keats (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”). What was he thinking? “And so these things do exist. Not only in evil thoughts, in art, in the fantasies of poets, but in real life. And so an ass like this is possible in flesh-and-blood reality, in women who inhabit the world of the living.” Had he ejaculated yet? Was he about to befoul his shorts? Not yet, though the jurist was aware of new sensations in his groin, an awakening, a roused caterpillar stretching. Was he thinking anything else? This: “And where else would it be but between the legs and torso of my old and respected colleague, this good friend with whom I corresponded so often regarding abstruse philosophical-juridical, ethical-legal, historical-methodological issues?” How was it possible that never, until tonight, not in any of the forums, lectures, symposia, seminars they had both attended and where they had conversed, discussed, and argued, he had never even suspected that those boxy suits, shaggy coats, lined capes, ant-colored raincoats hid a splendor like this? Who could have imagined that this lucid mind, this Justinian intelligence, this legal encyclopedia also possessed a body so overwhelming in its form and abundance? For a moment he imagined—did she see him, perhaps?—that, indifferent to his presence, liberated in the abandon of Morpheus, those serene mountains of flesh released a joyful, muffled little wind that burst under his nose and filled his nostrils with a pungent aroma. It did not make him laugh, it did not make him uncomfortable (It did not excite him either, thought Don Rigoberto). He felt acknowledged, as if, in some way, for intricate reasons difficult to explain (“like the theories of Kelsen that he clarified so well for us” was his comparison), the little fart was a kind of acquiescence shared with him by the splendid body that displayed so intimate an intimacy, the useless gases expelled by an intestinal serpent whose hollows he imagined as pink, moist, free of dross, as delicate and well modeled as the untrammeled buttocks just millimeters from his nose.

  And then, in terror, he realized that Doña Lucrecia was awake, for though she had not moved, he heard her say, “What are you doing here, Professor?”

  She did not seem angry, much less frightened. The voice was hers, of course, but charged with additional warmth. Something languid, insinuating, a musical sensuality. In his embarrassment, the jurist managed to wonder how his old colleague could have undergone so many magical tranformations in a single night.

  “Forgive me, forgive me, Doctor. I implore you not to misinterpret my presence here. I can explain everything.”

  “Didn’t the meal agree with you?” she asked reassuringly. She spoke with absolutely no irritation. “Would you like a glass of water and some bicarbonate?”

  She turned her head slightly, and with her cheek still pillowed on her arm, her large eyes, shining through black strands of hair, observed him.

  “I found something that belongs to you on the stairs, Doctor, and I came to give it to you,” the professor mumbled. He was still kneeling, and now he became aware of a sharp pain in his knees. “I knocked, but you did not answer. And since the door was ajar, I ventured in. I did not mean to wake you. I beg you not to take it the wrong way.”

  She moved her head, nodding, forgiving him so gently, pitying his confusion. “Why are you crying, my dear friend? What’s wrong?”

  Don Nepomuceno, defenseless in the face of her fond deference, the caressing cadence of her words, the affection in those eyes gleaming in the shadows, broke down. What until then had been only great silent tears rolling down his cheeks turned into resounding sobs, wrenching sighs, a cataract of slobber and snot that he tried to contain with his hands—in his disordered mental state he could not find his handkerchief, or even the pocket where he kept his handkerchief—while, in a strangled voice, he opened his heart to her.

  “Oh, Lucrecia, Lucrecia, forgive me, I cannot control myself. Don’t look upon this as an insult. Quite the contrary. I had never imagined anything like this, anything so beautiful, I mean, anything as perfect as your body. You know how much I respect and admire you. Intellectually, academically, juridically. But this, tonight, seeing you like this, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I swear, Lucrecia. In exchange for this moment I would throw away all my degrees, the doctorates honoris causa that have been conferred upon me, my decorations and diplomas. (“If I weren’t as old as I am, I would burn all my books and go to sit like a beggar at the door of your house”—Don Rigoberto read the poet Enrique Peña in his notebook—“Yes, my child, understand me: like a beggar at the door of your house.”) I have never felt such great happiness, Lucrecia. Seeing you like this, without clothes, like Ulysses looking at Nausicaa, is the greatest prize, a glory I don’t believe I deserve. I am so moved, so overwhelmed. I am crying because I am moved, because I am grateful. Don’t find me contemptible, Lucrecia.”

  Instead of relieving him, his words moved him even more, and now his sobs were choking him. He rested his head on the edge of the bed and continued to cry, still on his knees, sighing, feeling sad and happy, afflicted and fortunate. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he stammered. Until, seconds or hours later—his body arched as if he were a cat—he felt Lucrecia’s hand on his head. Her fingers stroked his gray hair, consoling him, accompanying him. With a cool caress her voice also soothed the raw wound in his soul.

  “Calm yourself, Rigoberto. Don’t cry anymore, my love, my heart. It’s over, it’s finished now, nothing has changed. Haven’t you done as you wished? You came in, you saw me, you came near, you wept, I forgave you. Can I ever be angry with you? Dry your tears, sneeze, go to sleep. Hush, baby, hush.”

  Down below, the sea crashed against the cliffs of Barranco and Miraflores, and a thick cover of clouds hid the stars and moon in the sky over Lima. But the night was coming to an end. Day would break any moment now. One day less. One day more.

  What Is Forbidden to Beauty

  You will never see a painting by Andy Warhol or Frida Kahlo, or applaud a political speech, or permit the skin on your elbows or knees to roughen, or the soles of your feet to grow hard.

&n
bsp; You will never listen to a composition by Luigi Nono or a protest song by Mercedes Sosa, or see a film by Oliver Stone, or chew directly on the leaves of an artichoke.

  You will never scrape your knees or cut your hair or have blackheads, dental caries, conjunctivitis, (much less) hemorrhoids.

  You will never walk barefoot on asphalt, stone, gravel, flagstone, hard rubber, corrugated iron, slate, or metal, and you will never kneel on a surface that is not as spongy as a sweet bun (before toasting).

  You will never use the words telluric, half-breed, consciousness-raising, visualize, statist, pips, rinds, or societal.

  You will never own a hamster or gargle or wear dentures or play bridge or wear a hat or a beret or coil your hair in a bun.

  You will never bloat with gas, or curse, or dance to rock-and-roll.

  You will never die.

  VII

  Egon Schiele’s Thumb

  “All of Egon Schiele’s girls are skinny and bony and look very pretty to me,” said Fonchito. “But you’re plump, and I think you’re very pretty too. Can you explain the contradiction, Stepmamá?”

  “Are you calling me fat?” Doña Lucrecia became livid.

  She had been distracted, hearing the boy’s voice as if it were background noise, thinking about the anonymous letters—seven in just ten days—and the letter she had written to Rigoberto the night before, which was now in the pocket of her robe. She recalled only that Fonchito had begun to talk and talk, about Egon Schiele, as usual, until “plump” had caught her attention.

  “Not fat, no. I said plump, Stepmamá,” he apologized, gesturing.

  “It’s your papá’s fault I’m like this,” she complained, looking at herself. “I was very slender when we married. But Rigoberto had the notion that being fashionably slim destroys a woman’s body, that the great tradition in beauty is abundance. That’s what he called it: ‘the abundant form.’ To make him happy I put on weight. And I haven’t been thin since.”

  “You look terrific just the way you are, I swear, Stepmamá,” Fonchito continued to apologize. “I said what I did about Egon Schiele’s skinny girls because don’t you think it’s odd for me to like them and like you too when you’re at least twice their size?”

  No, he couldn’t be the author. The anonymous letters complimented her figure, and in one of them, entitled “In Praise of the Beloved’s Body,” each part mentioned—head, shoulders, waist, breasts, belly, thighs, legs, ankles, feet—was accompanied by a reference to a poem or emblematic painting. The invisible lover of her abundant forms could only be Rigoberto. (“That man is crazy about you,” Justiniana declared after reading it. “How well he knows your body, Señora! It must be Don Rigoberto. Where would Fonchito find those words no matter how grown-up he is? Though he knows you pretty well too, doesn’t he?”)

  “Why are you so quiet? Why aren’t you talking to me? You look at me as if you didn’t see me. You’re acting very strange today, Stepmamá.”

  “It’s those letters. I can’t get them out of my head, Fonchito. You have your obsession with Egon Schiele, and now I have mine: those damned letters. I spend the whole day waiting for them, reading them, remembering them.”

  “But why damned, Stepmamá? Do they insult you or say ugly things?”

  “Because they’re not signed. And because sometimes I think a phantom is sending them, not your papá.”

  “You know very well they’re from him. Everything’s working out perfectly, Stepmamá. Don’t worry. You’ll make up with him soon, you’ll see.”

  The reconciliation of Doña Lucrecia and Don Rigoberto had become the boy’s second obsession. He spoke of it with so much certainty that his stepmother no longer had the heart to argue or to tell him it was nothing but another daydream of the inveterate daydreamer he had become. Had she been right to show him the anonymous letters? Some were so bold in their intimate references that after reading them she promised herself: “I certainly won’t let him see this one.” And each time she did, watching his reaction to find out if some gesture betrayed him. But no. Each time he reacted with the same surprise, the same excitement, and he always came to the same conclusion: the letter was from his papá, one more proof he wasn’t angry with her anymore. She noticed that now Fonchito also seemed distracted, far removed from the dining alcove and the Olivar, caught up in some memory. He was looking at his hands, bringing them close to his eyes. He clasped them, extended them, spread his fingers, hid the thumb, crossed and uncrossed them in unusual positions, as if projecting figures on the wall with his hands. But on this spring afternoon Fonchito was not trying to create shadow figures; he was scrutinizing his fingers like an entomologist examining an unknown species through a magnifying glass.

  “Can I ask what you’re doing?”

  The boy’s expression did not change, and he continued his movements as he replied with another question: “Do you think my hands are deformed, Stepmamá?”

  What was the little devil up to today?

  “Let’s see, let’s have a look at them,” she said, playing at being a specialist. “Put them here.”

  Fonchito wasn’t playing. He was very serious as he stood, walked over to her, and placed both hands on her extended palms. At the touch of smooth, soft skin, the fragile bones in his fingers, Doña Lucrecia felt a shiver run down her spine. He had delicate hands, thin pointed fingers, pale pink fingernails, neatly trimmed. But there were ink or charcoal stains on the fingertips. She pretended to subject his hands to a clinical examination as she stroked them.

  “They’re not at all deformed,” she declared at last. “Though a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt.”

  “What a shame,” the boy said without a trace of humor, pulling his hands away from Doña Lucrecia’s. “It means I don’t resemble him at all as far as that’s concerned.”

  “There it is. It was bound to happen.” The game they played every afternoon.

  “Explain what you mean.”

  The boy quickly complied. Hadn’t she noticed that hands were Egon Schiele’s mania? His hands and the hands of girls and men he painted. If not, she ought to now. And in the blink of an eye Doña Lucrecia had a book of reproductions on her knees. Did she see how much Egon Schiele hated thumbs?

  “Thumbs?” and Doña Lucrecia began to laugh.

  “Look at his portraits. The one of Arthur Roessler, for example,” the boy insisted passionately. “Or this one: the Double Portrait of Inspector General Heinrich Benesch and His Son Otto; the one of Enrich Lederer; his self-portraits. He shows only four fingers. The thumb is always out of sight.”

  Why would that be? Why did he hide it? Was it because the thumb is the ugliest finger on the hand? Did he prefer even numbers and think that odd numbers brought bad luck? Was his own thumb disfigured, did it embarrass him? Something was wrong with his hands; if not, why, when he had his picture taken, did he conceal his hands in his pockets or twist them into such ridiculous poses, curling the fingers like a witch’s, placingthem right in front of the camera, or raising them over his head as if he wanted to let them fly away? His hands, the men’s hands, the girls’ hands. Hadn’t she noticed? Those naked girls with their well-formed little bodies, wasn’t it inconceivable for them to have masculine hands with rough bony knuckles? For example, this engraving from 1910: Standing Nude with Black Hair, weren’t those mannish hands with their square-cut fingernails out of place, weren’t they identical to the ones Egon painted in his self-portraits? Hadn’t he done the same thing with almost all the women he painted? For example, Standing Nude, 1913. Fonchito took a breath. “I mean, he was Narcissus, just like you said. He always painted his own hands, even if the person in the painting was someone else, another man or a woman.”

  “Did you find this out on your own? Or did you read it somewhere?” Doña Lucrecia was disconcerted. She leafed through the book, and what she saw confirmed what Fonchito said.

  “Anybody who looks at his pictures a lot can see it,” the boy said with a shrug, not giving th
e matter much importance. “Doesn’t my papá say that if an artist doesn’t develop motifs he never becomes inspired? That’s why I always pay attention to the manias that painters reflect in their pictures. Egon Schiele had three: he put the same out-of-proportion hands, with the thumb missing, on all his figures. He had the girls and men show their things by lifting their skirts and spreading their legs. And third, in his self-portraits, he shows his own hands in forced positions that are very conspicuous.”

  “All right, all right, if you wanted to leave me dumbfounded, you’ve succeeded. Do you know something, Fonchito? You certainly have your motif. If your papá’s theory is correct, you already have one of the requirements for being inspired.”

  “All I need to do is to paint the pictures,” he said with a laugh. He lay down again and resumed looking at his hands. He moved them about, imitating the extravagant poses displayed in Schiele’s pictures and photographs. Doña Lucrecia was amused as she observed his pantomime. And suddenly she came to a decision: “I’m going to read him my letter and see what he says.” Besides, if she read it aloud she would know if what she had written was all right, could decide if she should send it to Rigoberto or tear it up. But when she was about to begin, she lost her courage. Instead, she said, “It worries me that all you think of night and day is Schiele.” The boy stopped playing with his hands. “I’m saying this with all the affection I have for you. At first I thought it was nice for you to like his pictures so much and identify with him. But because you try to resemble him in everything, you’re not being yourself anymore.”

  “But I am him, Stepmamá. Even though you take it as a joke, it’s true. I feel that I’m him.”