Free The Discreet Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa Page A

him, speaking inside his mouth. “We could hardly breathe, we were drowning, swallowing each other’s saliva. Justiniana thinks Armida made the first move, not him. That she was the one who touched Ismael first. Here, yes. Like that.”
    “Yes, yes, of course, go on, go on,” Rigoberto purred, becoming excited, his voice barely making a sound. “That’s how it had to be. That’s how it was.”
    For some time they were silent, embracing each other, kissing each other, but suddenly Rigoberto, making a great effort, restrained himself. And moved gently away from his wife.
    “I don’t want to finish yet, my love,” he whispered. “I’m enjoying this so much. I want you, I love you.”
    “All right, a parenthesis,” Lucrecia said, moving away too. “Let’s talk about Armida then. In a sense what she’s done and achieved is admirable, don’t you agree?”
    “In every sense,” said her husband. “A real work of art. She’s earned my respect and reverence. She’s a great woman.”
    “By the way,” said his wife, her voice changing, “if I die before you, it wouldn’t bother me at all if you married Justiniana. She already knows all your habits, the good ones and the bad, especially the bad. So keep it in mind.”
    “And that’s enough about death,” Rigoberto pleaded. “Let’s go back to Armida and don’t get so distracted, for God’s sake.”
    Lucrecia sighed, pressed close to her husband, placed her mouth on his ear, and spoke very slowly.
    “As I was saying, she was always there, always near Ismael. Sometimes, as she bent over to remove that little stain on the armchair, her skirt would move up and, without her noticing it—but he would notice—out would peek a rounded knee, a smooth, elastic thigh, a slim ankle, a bit of shoulder, arm, neck, the cleft between her breasts. There never was, there couldn’t be, the slightest hint of vulgarity in these moments of carelessness. Everything seemed natural, casual, never forced. Chance arranged matters in such a way that through these trivial episodes the widower, the veteran, our friend, the horrified father of his children, discovered he was still a man, that he had a live cock, a very live cock. Like the one I’m touching now, my love. Hard, damp, trembling.”
    “It moves me to imagine the joy Ismael must have felt when he learned he still had his cock and, though it hadn’t done so for a long time, it began to crow again,” Rigoberto digressed, moving beneath the sheets. “I’m touched, my love, by how tender, how nice it must have been when, still submerged in the bitterness of his widowhood, he began to have fantasies, desires, ejaculations, thinking about his employee. Who touched whom first? Let’s guess.”
    “Armida never thought matters would go that far. She hoped that Ismael would become fond of having her near, discovering thanks to her that he wasn’t the human ruin suggested by how he looked, that beneath his wretched look, his uncertain walk, his loose teeth, his poor eyesight, his sex still flapped its wings. That he was capable of feeling desire and, overcoming his sense of the ridiculous, would finally dare one day to take a bold step. And a secret, intimate complicity would be established between them in the large colonial mansion that Clotilde’s death had turned into a limbo. Perhaps she thought that all of this might move Ismael to promote her from servant to lover. Even that he’d set her up in a little house and give her a small allowance. That’s what she dreamed about, I’m certain. Nothing else. She never would have imagined the revolution it would cause in our good Ismael, or that circumstances would transform her into an instrument of revenge for a grieving, vindictive father.
    “But, what is this? Who is this intruder? What’s happening here under these sheets?” Lucrecia interrupted her account, turning back and forth, exaggerating, touching him.
    “Go on, go on, my darling, for God’s sake,”