B004QGYWNU EBOK (4 page)
Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
She was half asleep in the tub, immersed up to her neck, stirring the swirls of soap bubbles with a hand or a foot, when Justiniana knocked on the door: might she come in, señora? Doña Lucrecia watched her approach, a towel in one hand and a dressing gown in the other, with a frightened look on her face. She realized immediately what the girl was about to whisper to her: “Fonchito is up there, señora.” She nodded and with an imperious wave of her hand ordered Justiniana out of the room.
She lay in the water without moving for a long time, carefully not looking up. Ought she to look? Should she point her finger at him? Cry out, call him names? She could hear the clatter behind the dark glass cupola overhead; see in her mind’s eye the little kneeling figure, his fright, his feeling of shame. She could hear his strident scream, see him break into a run. He would slip, fall into the garden with the roar of a rocket exploding. The sudden thud of his little body as it hit the balustrade, flattened the croton hedge, caught in the witchy-fingered branches of the datura would reach her ears. “Make an effort, control yourself,” she said to herself, clenching her teeth. “Don’t create a scandal. Keep clear, above all, of something that might end in tragedy.”
She was trembling with anger from head to foot and her teeth were chattering, as though she were chilled to the bone. Suddenly she rose to her feet. Not covering herself with the towel, not cowering so that those invisible little eyes would have no more than an imperfect, fleeting vision of her body. No, quite the contrary; she stood up on tiptoe, parting her legs, and before emerging from her bath she stretched, revealing herself generously, obscenely, as she removed her plastic bath cap and loosed her long hair with a toss of her head. And on stepping out of the bathtub, instead of donning her dressing gown immediately, she stood there naked, her body gleaming with tiny drops of water, tense, daring, furious. She dried herself very slowly, limb by limb, rubbing the towel over her skin again and again, leaning to one side, bending over, halting at times as though distracted by a sudden idea, in a posture of indecent abandon, or contemplating herself carefully in the mirror. And with the same lingering, maniacal care she then rubbed her body with moisturizing lotions. And as she thus displayed herself before the invisible observer, her heart pulsed with wrath. What are you doing, Lucrecia? What is the meaning of these affected poses, Lucrecia? But she went on exposing herself, as she had never done before to anyone, not even to Don Rigoberto, moving from one side of the bathroom to the other at a slow, deliberate pace, naked, as she brushed her hair and her teeth and sprayed herself with cologne. As she played the leading role in this improvised spectacle, she had the presentiment that what she was doing was also a subtle way of punishing the precocious libertine crouched in the darkness up above, with images of an intimacy that would shatter, once and for all, that innocence that served him as an excuse for his boldness.
When she climbed into bed, she was still trembling. She lay there for a long time, unable to sleep, missing Rigoberto. She felt thoroughly displeased with what she had done; she positively detested the boy and forced herself not to divine the meaning of those hot flashes that, from time to time, electrified her nipples. What’s happened to you, woman? She did not recognize herself. Could it be because she’d turned forty? Or a consequence of those nocturnal fantasies and bizarre caprices of her husband’s? But it was all Alfonsito’s fault. That child is corrupting me, she thought, disconcerted.
When, finally, she managed to drop off to sleep, she had a voluptuous dream that seemed to bring to life one of those etchings in Don Rigoberto’s secret collection that he and she were in the habit of contemplating and commenting upon together at night, seeking inspiration for their love.
Diana after Her Bath
That one, the one on the left, is me, Diana Lucrecia. Yes, me, the goddess of the oak tree and of forests, of fertility and childbirth, the goddess of the chase. The Greeks call me Artemis. I am related to the Moon and Apollo is my brother. Among my worshippers are countless women and common folk. There are temples in my honor scattered throughout the wilds of the Empire. On my right, bending over, gazing at my foot, is Justiniana, my favorite. We have just bathed, and are about to make love.
The hare, the partridges, the pheasant I bagged at dawn this morning, with arrows that, drawn from the game and cleaned by Justiniana, have been replaced in their quiver. The hounds are mere decoration; I rarely use them when I hunt. Never, in any event, to retrieve delicate prey such as today’s, since their jaws mangle it so badly it becomes unfit to eat. Tonight we shall eat the tender, tasty flesh of these animals, seasoned with exotic spices, and drink Capua wine, till we fall back exhausted. I know how to enjoy myself. It is an aptitude that I have been continually perfecting, throughout time and history, and I maintain, without boasting, that in this domain I have attained wisdom. By that I mean: the art of sipping the nectar of pleasure from every fruit—even those gone rotten—that life offers.
The main character is not in the picture. Or rather, he is not in sight. He is there in the background, hidden in the shady grove, spying on us. With his beautiful wide-open eyes the color of dawn in the south and his round face flushed with desire, he is surely there, squatting on his heels in a trance, adoring me. With his blond curls entangled in the branches of the bower and his little pale-skinned member raised on high like a banner, drinking us in and devouring us with the fantasy of an innocent child, he is surely there. Knowing that this delights us and adds zest to our sport. He is neither a god nor a little animal, but a member of the human species. He tends goats and plays the panpipes. He is called Foncín.
François Boucher.
Diana at the Bath
(1742), oil on canvas. The Louvre. Paris
Justiniana discovered him, on the Ides of August, as I was tracking a stag through the forest. The little goatherd followed me, enthralled, tripping and stumbling, not taking his eyes off me for a single instant. My favorite says that when he saw me, drawn up to my full height, a ray of sunlight setting my hair afire and kindling a wild gleam in the pupils of my eyes, as all the muscles of my body tensed to let loose the arrow, the little darling burst into tears. She drew nearer to console him, whereupon she saw that the child was weeping for joy.
“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he confessed to her, his cheeks wet with tears, “but every time the lady appears in the forest, the leaves of the trees turn into morning stars and all the flowers burst into song. An ardent spirit steals within me and heats my blood. I see her and it is as if, poised motionless on the ground, I suddenly turned into a bird and began to fly.”
“Despite his tender years, the form of your body has inspired in him the language of love,” Justiniana philosophized, recounting the episode to me. “Your beauty holds him spellbound, as the rattlesnake fascinates the hummingbird. Have pity on him, Diana Lucrecia. Why don’t we play games with the little goatherd? By amusing him, we shall amuse ourselves as well.”
And so it was. A born pleasure-seeker just as I am, and perhaps even more so, Justiniana is never mistaken in matters concerning sensual enjoyment. It is what delights me about her, even more than her luxuriant hips or the silky down of her pubis, so deliciously tickling to the palate: her swift imagination and her unfailing, instinctive recognition, amid the sound and fury of this world, of the sources of diversion and pleasure.
From that moment on, we have played with him, and although quite some time has passed, our sport is so agreeable we never tire of it. Each day is more diverting than the day before, adding novelty and good humor to existence.
Along with his physical charms of a virile little god, Foncín is graced with another that is spiritual: timidity. The two or three attempts I have made to approach him so as to speak to him have been in vain. He pales and, a shy little musk deer, breaks into a run, fading into the network of branches as if by magic. He has intimated to Justiniana that the mere idea, not of touching me, but simply of being close to me, of having me look into his eyes and speak to him, dizzies him, devastates him. “A lady such as that is untouchable,” he has told her. “I know that if I approach her, her beauty will consume me as the sun of Libya consumes the butterfly.”
Hence, we play our games in secret. Each of them different, a simulacrum like those theatrical dramas—so pleasing to the Greeks, those sentimentalists—wherein gods and mortals mingle in order to suffer and kill each other. Justiniana, pretending to be his accomplice and not mine—in point of fact, that clever creature is the accomplice of us both, and above all of herself—installs the little goatherd in a rocky spot, close by the cavern where I shall spend the night. And then, by the light of the fire with its reddish tongues of flame, she disrobes me and anoints my body with the honey of the gentle bees of Sicily. It is a Lacedaemonian formula for keeping the body taut and lustrous, and what is more, it rouses one’s senses. As she leans down over me, rubs my limbs, moves them, and offers them to the curious gaze of my chaste admirer, I half close my eyes. As I descend through the tunnel of sensation and quiver in delicious little spasms, I divine the presence of Foncín. More than that: I see him, I smell him, I caress him, I press him to my bosom and make him disappear within me, with no need to touch him. It makes my ecstasy the keener to know that as I near climax beneath the diligent hands of my favorite, he is doing the same, at the pace I set, along with me. His innocent little body, glistening with sweat as he watches me and takes his pleasure by watching me, contributes a note of tenderness that subtly shades and sweetens mine.
Thus, hidden from me by Justiniana amid the forest greenery, the little goatherd has seen me fall asleep and waken, throw the javelin and the dart, dress and undress myself. He has seen me squat down on two stones and watched my pale gold urine flow into a transparent little brook, whereupon he will immediately hasten downstream to drink from it. He has seen me decapitate geese and eviscerate doves so as to offer their blood to the gods and read in their entrails the hidden mysteries of the future. He has seen me caress and sate myself and caress and sate my favorite, and he has seen Justiniana and me, immersed in the stream, drink the crystalline water of the cascade, each from the mouth of the other, savoring our mingled saliva, our juices, and our sweat. There is no exercise or function, no wanton ritual of body or soul that we have not performed for him, the privileged freeholder enjoying our privacy from his errant hiding places. He is our buffoon; but he is also our master. He is in our service and we in his. Without having ever touched each other or exchanged a single word, we have brought each other to the heights of rapture countless times and it is not inexact to say that, despite the unbridgeable abyss that our different natures and ages open up between him and me, we are more nearly one than the most impassioned pair of lovers.
Now, at this very moment, Justiniana and I are going to perform for him, and Foncín, simply by remaining there where he is, between the stone wall and the grove, will also perform for the two of us.
In a word, this eternal immobility will come to life and be time, history. The hounds will bay, the copse will trill, the water of the river will sing its way amid the pebbles and the rushes, and the full-crowned clouds will drift eastward, driven by the same playful little breeze that will ruffle the madcap curls of my favorite. She will move, will bend down, and her little vermilion-lipped mouth will kiss my foot and suck each one of my toes as one sucks lemons and limes on sultry summer afternoons. Soon our limbs will be intertwined, as we gambol on the whispering silk of the blue coverlet, given over to the intoxication from which life springs. The hounds will circle us, breathing on us the hot vapor of their eager maws, and perhaps lick us excitedly. The grove will hear us sigh as we swoon and, then, each mortally wounded, let out a sudden cry. An instant later it will hear us laughing in boisterous jest. And it will see us slowly drowse off into a peaceful sleep, our limbs still intertwined.