Free B004QGYWNU EBOK by Mario Vargas Llosa

making an effort to appear pleased. “May I read it?”
    Alfonso put his hand over the paper. His hair was touseled, his face grave. “Not yet.” There was an adult determination in his eyes and his tone of voice was defiant. “It’s a farewell letter.”
    “A farewell letter? Does that mean, then, that you’re going off somewhere, Fonchito?”
    “I’m going to kill myself,” Doña Lucrecia heard him say, his gaze riveted on her, not moving a muscle. Yet, after a few seconds, his composure suddenly left him and his eyes brimmed with tears. “Because you don’t love me anymore, stepmother.”
    Hearing herself told that in this way, half in grief and half in anger, the boy’s little face puckering into a pout that he tried in vain to control, in the words of a dejected lover which sounded so incongruous coming from this beardless figure in knee pants, left Doña Lucrecia dumbfounded. She stood there openmouthed, not knowing what to say in reply.
    “What do you mean by such foolishness, Fonchito?” she finally murmured, only halfway pulling herself together. “I don’t love you, you say? But, darling, how can that be, if you’re like my own son. You’re the one I…”
    She fell silent, because Alfonso, flinging himself upon her and putting his arms around her waist, burst into tears. Pressing his face against Doña Lucrecia’s belly, he sobbed and sobbed, his little body shaken with sighs, his panting like a famished puppy’s. Yes, at this moment, no doubt about it, he was a child, given the despair with which he wept and the shamelessness with which he manifested his suffering. Fighting not to allow herself to be overcome by the emotion that gripped her throat and filled her eyes with tears, Doña Lucrecia stroked his hair. Confused, a prey to contradictory feelings, she listened to him unburden himself, in a rush of stammered complaints.
    “You haven’t spoken to me for days now. I ask you something and you turn away. You don’t let me kiss you good night or good morning, and when I come back from school you look at me as if it annoyed you to see me come home. Why, stepmother? What have I done?”
    Doña Lucrecia contradicted him and kissed his hair. No, Fonchito, none of that is true. You are hurt much too easily, sweetie! And, searching for the kindest way to put it, she tried to explain. Of course she loved him! A whole lot, darling! She worried about him all the time and thought about him every minute when he was at school or playing soccer with his friends. It was just that it wasn’t good for him to be so attached to her, to love his stepmother to distraction like that. It could do him harm, silly boy, if he allowed himself to be so impulsive, to have such strong feelings. It would be better for him emotionally if he didn’t depend on someone like her so much, someone so much older than he. His affection, his interests ought to be shared with other people, be directed above all toward boys his own age, his friends at school, his cousins. He would grow up sooner that way, with a personality of his own, be the upright young man that she and Don Rigoberto would have every reason to be so proud of later.
    But as Doña Lucrecia spoke, something in her heart belied what she was saying. She was certain, moreover, that the boy wasn’t listening to her. Perhaps he didn’t even hear her. I don’t believe a single word of what I’m telling him, she thought. Now that his sobs had ceased, though every so often he heaved a deep sigh, Alfonsito’s attention appeared to be riveted on his stepmother’s hands. He had seized them and was kissing them lingeringly, timidly, with fervent devotion. Then, as he rubbed them against his satiny cheek, Doña Lucrecia heard him murmur in a very soft voice, as though he were addressing only the slender fingers that he was squeezing so hard: “I love you a lot, stepmother. A whole lot… Don’t ever treat me again the way you have lately, because I’ll kill myself. I