The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (8 page)

The Picture Game

“How funny, Stepmamá,” said Fonchito. “Your dark green stockings are exactly the same color that one of Egon Schiele’s models wore.”

Señora Lucrecia looked at the heavy wool stockings covering her legs up past the knee.

“They’re very good for Lima’s damp weather,” she said, stroking them. “They keep my feet nice and warm.”

“
Reclining Nude in Green Stockings
,” the boy recalled. “One of his most famous pictures. Do you want to see it?”

“All right, show it to me.”

While Fonchito hurried to open the bag that he had dropped, as usual, on the rug in the dining alcove, Señora Lucrecia felt the vague uneasiness the boy tended to arouse in her with his sudden outbursts of enthusiasm, which always seemed to conceal some danger beneath their apparent innocence.

“What a coincidence, Stepmamá,” said Fonchito as he leafed through the book of Schiele reproductions that he had just taken out of his book bag. “I look like him and you look like his models. In lots of ways.”

“What ways, for example?”

“The green or black or maroon stockings you wear. And the checked cover on your bed.”

“My goodness, how observant you are!”

“And then, you’re so regal,” Fonchito added, not looking up, absorbed in searching for
Reclining Nude in Green Stockings
. Doña Lucrecia did not know if she should laugh or make fun of him. Was he aware of the affected gallantry or had he said it accidentally? “Didn’t my papá always say you were regal? And that no matter what you did, you were never vulgar? Only through Schiele could I understood what he meant. His models lift their skirts, show everything, assume very strange poses, but they never seem vulgar. They always look like queens. Why? Because they’re regal. Like you, Stepmamá.”

Confused, flattered, irritated, alarmed, Doña Lucrecia both wanted and did not want to put an end to his talk. Once again, she was beginning to feel insecure.

“What silly things you say, Fonchito.”

“Here it is!” the boy exclaimed, handing her the book. “Do you see now what I’m saying? Isn’t she in a pose that would seem bad in any other woman? But not in her. That’s what being regal means.”

“Let me see.” Señora Lucrecia took the book, and after examining
Reclining Nude in Green Stockings
for a time, she agreed. “You’re right, they’re the same color as the ones I’m wearing.”

“Don’t you think it’s nice?”

“Yes, very pretty.” She closed the book and quickly handed it back to him. Again she was devastated by the idea that she was losing the initiative, that the boy was beginning to defeat her. But in what battle? Her eyes met his: Alfonso’s eyes were shining with an equivocal light, and the first signs of a smile played across his untroubled face.

“Could I ask you for a big favor? The biggest in the world? Would you do it for me?”

He’s going to ask me to take off my clothes, she thought in terror. I’ll slap his face and never see him again. She hated Fonchito and she hated herself.

“What favor?” she murmured, trying to keep her smile from turning grotesque.

“Would you pose like the lady in
Reclining Nude in Green Stockings?
” intoned the mellifluous young voice. “Just for a minute, Stepmamá!”

“What are you saying?”

“Without undressing, of course,” the boy reassured her, moving eyes and hands, wrinkling his nose. “Just the pose. I’m dying to see it. Would you do that big, big favor for me? Don’t be mean, Stepmamá.”

“Don’t play so hard to get when you know very well you’ll enjoy it,” said Justiniana, walking in and displaying her usual high spirits. “And since tomorrow is Fonchito’s birthday, let this be his present.”

“Brava, Justita!” The boy clapped his hands. “Between the two of us, we’ll persuade her. Will you give me this present, Stepmamá? But you do have to take off your shoes.”

“Admit you want to see the señora’s feet because you know they’re very pretty,” Justiniana teased, bolder than she had been on other afternoons. She placed the Coca-Cola and the glass of mineral water they had requested on the table.

“Everything about her is pretty,” the boy said candidly. “Go on, Stepmamá, don’t be embarrassed with us. If you want, just so you won’t feel uncomfortable, Justita and I can play the game too and imitate another picture by Egon Schiele.”

Not knowing how to respond, what joke to make, how to feign an anger she did not feel, Señora Lucrecia suddenly found herself smiling, nodding, murmuring, “All right, you willful child, it will be your birthday present,” removing her shoes, leaning back, and stretching out on the settee. She tried to imitate the reproduction that Fonchito had unfolded and was showing to her, like a director giving instructions to the star of the show. The presence of Justiniana made her feel safe, even though this madwoman had gotten it into her head to take Fonchito’s part. At the same time, her presence as a witness added a certain spice to the outlandish situation. She attempted to make a lighthearted joke out of what she was doing—“Is this it? No, the shoulder’s a little higher, the neck’s stretched like a chicken’s, the head’s straighter”—while she leaned back on her elbows, extended one leg and flexed the other, carefully imitating the model’s pose. Justiniana and Fonchito looked back and forth from her to the page, from the page to her, the girl’s eyes laughing, the boy’s filled with deep concentration. This is the most serious game in the world, Doña Lucrecia thought.

“That’s it exactly, Señora.”

“Not yet,” Fonchito interrupted. “You have to raise your knee a little more, Stepmamá. I’ll help you.”

Before she had a chance to forbid it, the boy handed the book to Justiniana, walked to the sofa, and placed both hands under her knee at the place where the dark green stocking ended and her thigh began. Very gently, paying close attention to the reproduction, he raised and moved her leg. The touch of his slender fingers on her bare flesh stirred Doña Lucrecia. The lower half of her body began to tremble. She felt a palpitation, a vertigo, something overpowering that brought both distress and pleasure. And just then she met Justiniana’s glance. The eyes burning in that dark face spoke volumes. She knows the way I am was her mortified thought. The boy shouted just in time to save her: “Now we have it, Stepmamá! Isn’t that perfect, Justita? Stay that way for a second, please.”

Sitting cross-legged on the rug like an Oriental, he looked at her in rapture, his mouth partly open, his eyes as round as full moons, ecstatic. Señora Lucrecia let five, ten, fifteen seconds go by, lying absolutely still, infected by how solemnly the boy played the game. Something had happened. The suspension of time? A presentiment of the absolute? The secret of artistic perfection? She was struck by a suspicion: “He’s just like Rigoberto. He’s inherited his tortuous imagination, his manias, his power of seduction. But, fortunately, not his clerk’s face, or his Dumbo ears, or his carrot nose.” She found it difficult to break the spell.

“Enough. Now it’s your turn.”

Disappointment overcame the archangel. But his response was instantaneous: “You’re right. That’s what we agreed.”

“Get to work,” Doña Lucrecia spurred them on. “What picture are you going to do? I’ll choose it. Give me the book, Justiniana.”

“Well, there are only two pictures for Justita and me,” Fonchito advised her. “
Mother and Child
and the
Nude Man and Woman Lying Down and Embracing
. The others are just men, or just women, or two women together. Take your pick, Stepmamá.”

“What a know-it-all!” exclaimed a stupefied Justiniana.

Doña Lucrecia examined the images, and in fact, those mentioned by Alfonsito were the only ones they could imitate. She rejected the second, since how believable would it be if a beardless boy played the part of the bearded redhead identified by the author of the book as the artist Felix Albrecht Harta, who looked out at her from the photograph of the oil painting with an imbecilic expression, indifferent to the faceless nude in red stockings who slithered like an amorous snake beneath his bent leg. At least in
Mother and Child
the age difference was similar to the one that separated Alfonso and Justiniana.

“That mommy and baby are in a nice little pose!” The maid pretended to be alarmed. “I suppose you won’t ask me to take off my dress, you rascal.”

“Only to put on black stockings,” the boy replied with absolute seriousness. “I’ll take off just my shoes and shirt.”

There was no nasty undercurrent in his voice, not a shadow of malicious intent. Doña Lucrecia sharpened her ears and scrutinized his precocious face with suspicion: no, not a shadow. He was a consummate actor. Or merely an innocent boy and she an idiotic, dirty old woman? What was the matter with Justiniana? In all the years she had known her, she could not recall seeing her so impertinent and bold.

“How can I put on black stockings when I don’t even own any?”

“My stepmamá will lend you some.”

Instead of cutting the game short, as her reason told her to, she heard herself saying, “Of course.” She went to her room and returned with the black wool stockings she wore on cold nights. The boy was removing his shirt. He was slim and well proportioned, his skin between white and gold. She saw his torso, his slender arms, his thin shoulders with the fine little bones protruding, and Doña Lucrecia remembered. Had it all really happened? Justiniana had stopped laughing and was avoiding her eyes. She must be on edge as well.

“Put them on, Justita,” the boy urged her. “Shall I help you?”

“No, thanks very much.”

The girl had also lost the naturalness and assurance that rarely abandoned her. Her fingers were fumbling, and the stockings were crooked when she put them on. As she straightened and tugged at them, she bent over in an effort to hide her legs. She stood on the rug next to the boy, looking down and moving her hands, to no discernible effect.

“Let’s begin,” said Alfonso. “You’re facedown, resting your head on your arms; they’re crossed, like a pillow. I have to be on your right. My knees on your leg, my head on your side. Except, since I’m bigger than the boy in the painting, my head reaches to your shoulder. Are we getting it, Stepmamá?”

Holding the book, caught up in a desire for perfection, Doña Lucrecia leaned over them. His left hand had to be under Justiniana’s right shoulder, his face turned more this way. “Lay your left hand on her back, Foncho, let it rest on her. Yes, now you’re getting it.”

She sat on the sofa and looked at them, without seeing them, lost in her own thoughts, astonished at what was happening. He was Rigoberto. Improved and corrected. Corrected and improved. She felt impetuous, and changed. The two of them lay still, playing the game with utter gravity. Nobody was smiling. The pose revealed only one of Justiniana’s eyes, and it no longer flashed mischievously but was like a pool, languid and indolent. Was she excited too? Yes, yes, like her, even more so. Only Fonchito—eyes closed to heighten the resemblance to Schiele’s faceless child—seemed to play the game openly, with no hidden agenda. The atmosphere had thickened, the sounds from the Olivar were muffled, time had slipped away, and the little house, San Isidro, the world, had evaporated.

“We have time for one more,” Fonchito said at last as he got to his feet. “Now you two. What do you think? It can only be—turn the page, Stepmamá—it can only be that one, it’s perfect.
Two Girls Lying in an Embrace
. Don’t move, Justita. Just turn a little, that’s it. Lie down beside her, Stepmamá, hover over her, your back to me. Your hand like this, under her hip. You’re the one in the yellow dress, Justita. Imitate her. This arm here, and your right arm, just pass it under my stepmamá’s legs. Bend a little, let your knee brush against Justita’s shoulder. Raise this hand, put it on my stepmamá’s leg, spread your fingers. That’s it, that’s it. Perfect!”

They were silent, obedient, bending, straightening, turning on their sides, extending or withdrawing legs, arms, necks. Docile? Bewitched? Enchanted? “Defeated,” Doña Lucrecia admitted to herself. Her head was resting on her maid’s thighs and her right hand held her waist. From time to time she pressed it to feel the moist heat emanating from her, and in response to that pressure, Justiniana’s fingers clasped her right thigh and made her feel what she was feeling. She was aroused. Of course she was; that intense, heavy, disturbing odor, where would it come from if not Justiniana’s body? Or did it come from her? How had they ever gone so far? What had happened? How, without realizing it—or realizing it, perhaps—had the boy made them play this game? Now she didn’t care. She felt content to be in the picture. To be with her, her body, Justiniana, in this situation. She heard Fonchito leaving.

“What a shame I have to go. Everything was so nice. But you two go on playing. Thanks for the present, Stepmamá.”

She heard him open the door, she heard him close it. He had gone. He had left them alone, lying entwined, abandoned, lost in a fantasy of his favorite painter.

The Rebellion of the Clitorises

I understand, Señora, that the feminist sect which you represent has declared a war of the sexes, and that the philosophy of your movement is based on the conviction that the clitoris is morally, physically, culturally, and erotically superior to the penis, ovaries more noble than testicles.

I grant that your theses are defensible. I do not attempt to make the slightest objection to them. My sympathies for feminism are profound, though subordinate to my love for individual freedom and human rights, which means that those sympathies are bounded by limits I should specify so that my subsequent remarks make sense. Speaking generally, and beginning with the most obvious point, I will state that I am in favor of eliminating every legal obstacle to a woman’s accepting the same responsibilities as a man, in favor of the intellectual and moral struggle against the prejudices upon which restrictions to women’s rights rest, and let me add, among these I believe the most important, for women as well as men, is not the right to employment, education, health, and so forth, but the right to pleasure, and here, I am certain, is where our first disagreement arises.