B004QGYWNU EBOK (10 page)

Much later, as, after talking and laughing together, they prepared to take their rest, exhausted and happy, Don Rigoberto kissed his wife’s hand with deep emotion:

“How much you’ve changed, Lucrecia. Not only do I love you with all my heart and soul now. I also admire you. I’m certain I have a great deal to learn from you still.”

“At forty, people learn lots of things,” she said tersely, caressing him. “Sometimes, Rigoberto, now for instance, it seems to me that I’m being born again. And that I’ll never die.”

Was that what sovereignty was?

At first, you will not see me or hear me, but you must be patient and keep looking. With perseverance and without preconceptions, freely and with desire, look. With your imagination unleashed and your penis ready and willing—preferably erect—look. One enters there as the novice nun enters the cloister or the lover the cavern of his beloved: resolutely, without petty calculations, giving everything, demanding nothing, and in one’s soul the certainty that it is forever. Only on that condition, very gradually, the surface of dark purples and violets will begin to move, to become iridescent, to take on meaning and reveal itself to be what it in truth is, a labyrinth of love.

The geometrical figure in the middle band, at the exact center of the painting, that flat silhouette of a three-legged pachyderm, is an altar, a tabernacle, or if your mind is allergic to religious symbolism, a stage set. An exciting ceremony, with delightful and cruel reverberations, has just taken place, and what you see are its vestiges and its consequences. I know this because I have been the fortunate victim; the inspiration, the actress as well. Those reddish patches on the feet of the diluvial form are my blood and your sperm flowing forth and coagulating. Yes, my treasure, what is lying on the ceremonial stone (or, if you prefer, the pre-Hispanic stage prop), that viscous creature with mauve wounds and delicate membranes, black hollows and glands that discharge gray pus, is myself. Understand me: myself, seen from inside and from below, when you calcine me and express me. Myself, erupting and overflowing beneath your attentive libertine gaze of a male who has officiated with competence and is now contemplating and philosophizing.

“Isn’t stepmother here?” Fonchito asked, disappointed.

“She’ll be back shortly,” Don Rigoberto answered, hurriedly clapping shut Sir Kenneth Clark’s
The Nude
, lying open on his lap. With a brusque start of surprise, he returned to Lima, to his house, to his study, from the damp female vapors of Ingres’s crowded
Turkish Bath
, in which he had been immersed. “She’s gone off to play bridge with her lady friends. Come in, come in, Fonchito. Let’s talk for a while.”

The boy accepted the invitation with a nod of his head, his face wreathed in smiles. He came into the room and sat down on the edge of the big olive-colored leather easy chair, beneath the twenty-three hardbound volumes of the “Maîtres de l’amour” series, edited, with a preface, by Guillaume Apollinaire.

“Tell me how things are going at Santa María,” his father encouraged him, as, hiding the book from sight behind his back, he crossed the room to replace it in the locked case where he kept his erotic treasures. “Are you keeping up with your studies all right? Are you having any trouble with English?”

He was doing very well and the teachers were very nice, Papa. He understood everything and had long conversations in English with Father Mackey; he was sure he’d be first in his class this year. He might even win the school prize for excellence.

Don Rigoberto beamed with satisfaction. Really, the boy brought him nothing but happiness. A model son; a good student, obedient, affectionate. He’d been lucky with him.

“Would you like a Coca-Cola?” he asked him. He had just poured himself two fingers of whiskey and was getting out ice. He handed Alfonso his glass and sat down beside him. “I must tell you something, son. I am very pleased with you and you can count on getting the motorcycle you asked me for. It’ll be yours next week.”

The youngster’s eyes lighted up. He broke into a radiant smile.

“Thanks, Papa dear!” He put his arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. “The motorcycle I wanted so badly! That’s super, Papa!”

Don Rigoberto disentangled himself, laughing. He smoothed the boy’s touseled hair, in a discreetly affectionate gesture.

“You have Lucrecia to thank for it,” he added. “She insisted that I buy you your motorcycle right away, without waiting till exams were over.”

“I knew it!” the boy exclaimed. “She’s so good to me. Even better, I think, than my mama was.”

“Your stepmother loves you a whole lot, my boy.”

“And I love her lots,” the youngster declared immediately, in fervent tones. “Why wouldn’t I love her if she’s the best stepmother in the world!”

Don Rigoberto took a sip of his whiskey and savored the taste of it: an agreeable fire ran down his tongue, his throat, and was now descending to his ribs. “Most pleasant lava,” he extemporized. Who had this pretty son of his inherited his looks from? His face seemed to be surrounded by a radiant halo and was brimming over with freshness and wholesomeness. Not from him, surely. Nor from his mother, since Eloísa, though attractive and charming, had never had features as delicate as that, or such bright eyes and such transparent skin, or those curly locks of purest gold. A cherub, an adorable child, an archangel in a First Communion holy picture. It would be better for him if some little thing marred his perfect good looks just a bit when he grew up: women don’t like doll-faced men.

“You don’t know how happy it makes me that you get along so well with Lucrecia,” he added after a moment. “I can tell you now that it was something that scared me a whole lot when we got married. That the two of you wouldn’t be congenial, that you wouldn’t accept her. That would have been most unfortunate for the three of us. Lucrecia, too, was very much afraid. Now, when I see how well you get along together, those fears make me laugh. In fact, the two of you love each other so much that, every so often, I’m downright jealous, since it seems to me that your stepmother loves you more than she does me and that you, too, are fonder of her than you are of your father.”

Alfonso burst out laughing, clapping his hands, and Don Rigoberto imitated him, amused at his son’s explosion of high spirits. A cat meowed somewhere in the distance. A car went past on the street with the radio turned up full blast, and for a few seconds they heard the trumpets and maracas of a song with a tropical beat. Then came the voice of Justiniana, humming in the pantry as she did a load of laundry in the washer.

“What does orgasm mean, Papa?” the boy suddenly asked.

Don Rigoberto was overtaken by a fit of coughing. He cleared his throat as he reflected: What should he answer? He did his best to assume a natural expression and managed not to smile.

“Well, it’s not a bad word,” he explained warily. “Certainly not. It has to do with sex life, with sensual enjoyment. It might be said, perhaps, that it is the peak of physical pleasure. Something that not only humans experience but many species of animals as well. They’ll tell you about it in biology class, I’m sure. But, above all, don’t get the idea that it’s a dirty word. Where did you happen to come across it, my boy?”

“I heard my stepmother say it,” Fonchito said. With an impish look, he raised a finger to his lips, enjoining him to secrecy. “I pretended I knew what it was. Don’t let on to her that you explained to me what it was, Papa.”

“No, I won’t tell her,” Don Rigoberto murmured. He took another sip of whiskey and, intrigued, looked closely at Alfonso. What was hiding there in that rosy-faced little head, behind that unfurrowed brow? Heaven only knew. Didn’t they say that the soul of a child was a bottomless well? He thought: I mustn’t ask one question more. He thought: I must change the subject. But morbid curiosity or the instinctive attraction of danger got the better of him, and, pretending indifference, he asked: “You heard that word you mentioned from your stepmother? Are you sure?”

The child nodded several times, with the same gay or roguish expression, or both at once. His cheeks were flushed and mischief twinkled in his eyes.

“She told me she had had a really splendid orgasm,” he explained, in the eternally melodious voice of a nightingale. This time, Don Rigoberto’s whiskey slipped out of his hands; numb with surprise, he saw the glass roll onto the lead-colored figures in the carpet of his study. The boy immediately bent down to pick it up. He handed it back to him, murmuring: “A good thing it was almost empty. Can I get you another, Papa? I know just how you like it—I’ve seen how my stepmother does it.”

Don Rigoberto shook his head. Had he heard rightly? Yes, of course: that was what his big ears were for. To hear things properly. His brain had begun to crackle like a bonfire. This conversation had gone too far and it must be cut off once and for all, if something imponderable and extremely grave were not to occur. For an instant, he had the vision of a beautiful house of cards collapsing. His mind was totally clear as to what he ought to do. Enough of this: let’s talk of something else. But this time, too, the siren song of the depths was more powerful than his reason and his good sense.

“What figment of your imagination is this, Foncho?” He spoke very slowly, but even so, his voice trembled. “How can you have heard your stepmother say such a thing? That can’t be, my son.”

The boy protested, vexed, with one hand upraised. “Oh, yes, it can, Papa. I certainly did hear her say it. And what’s more, I was the one she said it to. Just yesterday afternoon. I give you my word. Why would I lie? Have I ever lied to you?”

“No, no, you’re right. You always tell the truth.”

He was unable to control the malaise that had come over him like a fever. The uneasiness was a bumbling blowfly that kept bumping into his face, his arms, and he could neither swat it dead nor chase it away. He got to his feet and, walking slowly, went to fix himself another drink, something quite unlike him, since he never had more than one whiskey before dinner. When he returned to his chair, his eyes met Fonchito’s blue-green ones: they were following his evolutions about the study with their usual gentle gaze. They smiled at him, and making an effort, he returned the smile.

“Ahem, ahem,” Don Rigoberto cleared his throat, after a few seconds of ominous silence. He did not know what to say. Could it be possible that Lucrecia had shared confidences of that sort with him, that she had talked to the child about what they did at night? Of course not, what nonsense. They were products of Fonchito’s imagination, something quite typical of his age: he was discovering wickedness, his sexual curiosity was surfacing, his awakening libido was prompting him to fantasize so as to bring conversations around to the fascinating taboo. Best to forget all that and dissolve the bad moment in trivial concerns.

“Don’t you have homework for tomorrow?” he asked.

“I’ve already done it,” the boy answered. “I had only one assignment, Papa. Free composition.”

“Ah, I see. And what subject did you choose to write about?” Don Rigoberto persisted.

The boy’s face flushed once again with innocent joy and Don Rigoberto suddenly felt a deerlike fear. What was happening? What was going to happen?

“Well, about her, Papa, about who she was going to turn out to be,” Fonchito said, clapping his hands. “I called it ‘In Praise of the Stepmother.’ What do you think of that for a title?”

“Very good. Just fine,” Don Rigoberto replied. And almost without thinking, with a hearty laugh that rang false, he added: “It sounds like the title of a little erotic novel.”

“What does erotic mean?” the child asked gravely.

“Having to do with physical love,” Don Rigoberto enlightened him. He was taking one sip of his drink after another, without noticing. “Certain words such as that take on their full meaning only with the passage of time, thanks to experience, something far more important than definitions. All that will come about little by little; there is no reason for you to be in a hurry, Fonchito.”

“Whatever you say, Papa,” the child agreed, blinking: his lashes were enormous and cast an iridescent violet-tinged shadow on his pupils.

“Do you know what? I’d like to read that ‘Praise of the Stepmother.’ May I?”

“Of course, Papa dear,” the child said enthusiastically. He leapt to his feet and went off at a run. “That way, if there’s a mistake anywhere, you’ll correct it for me.”

In the few minutes that it took Fonchito to return, Don Rigoberto felt his malaise grow. Too much whiskey perhaps? No, what a thought. Did that pressure on his temples mean that he was becoming ill? At the office, there were several people down with the flu. No, that wasn’t it. Well, then, what was it? He remembered the verse from
Faust
that had moved him so deeply when he was a boy: “I love him who desires the impossible.” He would have liked that to be his motto in life, and, in a certain way, though secretly, he harbored the feeling that he had attained that ideal. Why, then, did he now have the distressing premonition that an abyss was opening at his feet? What sort of danger threatened? How? Where? He thought: It is absolutely impossible that Fonchito could have heard Lucrecia say: “I had a splendid orgasm.” An irresistible fit of laughter came over him and he laughed, though joylessly, with a painful grin that the glass of the bookcase full of erotica beamed back at him. There Alfonso was, with a notebook in his hand. He handed it to his father without a word, looking him straight in the eye, with that pure-blue gaze of his, so calm and candid that, as Lucrecia said, “it made people feel dirty.”

Don Rigoberto put on his glasses and turned on the floor lamp. He began to read aloud the clear letters so carefully traced in black ink, but in the middle of the first sentence he fell silent. He went on reading to himself, moving his lips slightly and blinking frequently. Soon his lips stopped moving. They slowly gaped open, sagging at the corners, giving his entire face a dull, stupid expression. A little thread of saliva drooped from between his teeth and stained the lapels of his suit coat, though he did not appear to notice, since he did not wipe it away. His eyes moved from left to right, now rapidly, now slowly, and at times they went back from right to left, as if they had not understood correctly or as if they were unable to accept that what they had read was really written there on the page. Not once, as the slow, endless reading proceeded, did Don Rigoberto’s eyes leave the notebook to look at the child, who, doubtless, was still there in the same place, keeping a close watch on his reactions, waiting for him to finish reading and say and do what he ought to say and do. What ought he to say? What ought he to do? Don Rigoberto could feel that his hands were soaking wet. A few drops of sweat slid down his forehead onto the notebook and made the ink spread in formless blots. Swallowing hard, he managed to come up with the thought: Loving the impossible has a price that must be paid sooner or later.

He made a supreme effort, closed the notebook, and looked up. Yes, there Fonchito was, watching him with his beautiful, beatific face. That’s what Lucifer must have looked like, he thought as he raised the empty glass to his mouth to take a swallow. From the tinkle of the crystal against his teeth he realized how badly his hand was trembling.

“What does this mean, Alfonso?” he blurted. His back teeth, his tongue, his jaw hurt. He did not recognize his own voice.

“What, Papa?”

The boy looked at him as though he did not understand what had come over him.

“What’s the meaning of these…fantasies?” he stammered, from amid the terrible confusion that was torturing his soul. “Have you gone mad, child? How could you have made up such filthy stories?”

He fell silent because he did not know what else to say and felt disgusted and completely taken aback by what he had said. The radiance of the child’s face began to slowly fade as a sad expression came over it. He contemplated him, not understanding, with a vague look of pain in his eyes, and bewilderment as well, but not a shadow of fear.

Finally, after a few seconds, Don Rigoberto heard him say what, amid the horror that froze his heart, he was waiting for him to say. “What do you mean, stories I made up, Papa? When everything I tell about is true, when it all happened just the way I say.”