Free B004QGYWNU EBOK by Mario Vargas Llosa Page A

swear to you I’ll kill myself.”
    And then it was as though a dam had suddenly burst within her and a flood descended upon her prudence and her reason, submerging them, pulverizing ancestral principles she had never doubted, and even her instinct for self-preservation. She squatted down, bent one knee so as to be at the same height as the seated boy, and embraced and caressed him, free of all constraint, a stranger to herself, and as though caught in the eye of a storm.
    “Never again,” she repeated, haltingly, for emotion scarcely permitted her to get the words out. “I promise you I’ll never treat you that way again. The coldness of these recent days was a pretense, lambikins. How stupid I’ve been: I wanted to do you a kindness, and I’ve made you suffer. Forgive me, love…”
    And at the same time she kissed him on his touseled hair, on his forehead, on his cheeks, tasting on her lips the salt of his tears. When the boy’s mouth sought hers, she did not refuse it to him. Half closing her eyes, she let herself be kissed and returned the kiss. After a moment, emboldened, the boy’s lips pressed down hard on hers and then she opened hers and allowed a nervous little viper, clumsy and frightened at first, and then rash, to visit her mouth and explore it, gliding across her gums and her teeth from one side to the other. Nor did she push away the hand she suddenly felt on one of her breasts. It rested there for a moment, perfectly still, as though summoning strength, and then, forming a hollow, caressed it with a delicate, respectful squeeze. Even though, in the depths of her mind, a voice urged her to get to her feet and leave, Doña Lucrecia did not move. Instead, she hugged the boy to her and, with no inhibitions, went on kissing him with an impetuousness and a wantonness that mounted step by step with her desire. Till the moment when, as in dreams, she heard a car brake to a stop and, shortly thereafter, her husband’s voice calling to her.
    She leapt to her feet in terror; her panic communicated itself to the boy, whose eyes were suddenly filled with fear. She saw Alfonso’s clothes in disarray, the traces of lipstick on his mouth. “Go wash your face,” she hurriedly ordered him, pointing, and the boy nodded and ran to the bathroom.
    She came out of the bedroom in a daze and practically staggered across the little sitting room overlooking the garden. She went into the guest bathroom and locked herself in. Her legs were about to give way, as though she had been running. Looking at herself in the mirror, she was seized with a fit of hysterical laughter that she stifled by clapping her hand over her mouth. “You stupid fool, you madwoman,” she berated herself as she wet her face with cold water. Then she sat down on the bidet and let the jet run for a long time. She carefully tidied herself and straightened her clothes and composed her features and stayed there in the bathroom till she felt altogether calm again, in complete control of her facial expression and her gestures. When she came out to greet her husband, she was as fresh and smiling as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened to her. Nonetheless, though Don Rigoberto found her as affectionate and solicitous as always, leaning over backward to pamper and indulge him, and listening, with the same interest as usual, to his stories of how the day had gone, there was a hidden malaise in Doña Lucrecia that did not leave her for an instant, an edginess that, every so often, made her shiver and her stomach feel hollow.
    The youngster had dinner with them. He was polite and nicely behaved, his usual self. He greeted his father’s jokes with bubbling laughter and even asked him to tell some more, “off-color ones, Papa, the kind that are a tiny bit dirty.” When her eyes met his, Doña Lucrecia was surprised not to find in that clear, pale blue gaze the least shadow of a cloud, the slightest gleam of impishness or connivance.
    Hours later, in