Free The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

placated, and their laughter had subsided, and their impulses had quieted, and they were wrapped in the white Cipriani bathrobes and had begun to talk. “Do you mind if we don’t speak of it? As you can imagine, it embarrasses me…Well, let me tell you one more time that I’ll never forget our week together, Lucre.”
    “Neither will I, Pluto. I’ll always remember it. And not only for the concert, I swear.”
    They slept the sleep of the just, knowing they had fulfilled their obligations, and they were on the dock in good time to catch the vaporetto to the airport. Alitalia was meticulous as well, and the plane left with no delays, allowing them to connect with the Concorde from Paris to New York, where they said goodbye, knowing they would never see each other again.
    “Tell me it was a horrible week, that you hated it,” Don Rigoberto suddenly moaned, grasping his wife around the waist and pulling her down on him. “Didn’t you, Lucrecia, didn’t you?”
    “Why don’t you try singing something at the top of your lungs,” she suggested in the velvety voice of their finest nocturnal encounters. “Something really vulgar, darling. ‘ La flor de la canela ,’ ‘ Fumando espero ,’ ‘ Brasil , terra de meu coração .’ Let’s see what happens, Rigoberto.”

III
    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?