The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (24 page)

“Oh, Lucrecia, Lucrecia, forgive me, I cannot control myself. Don’t look upon this as an insult. Quite the contrary. I had never imagined anything like this, anything so beautiful, I mean, anything as perfect as your body. You know how much I respect and admire you. Intellectually, academically, juridically. But this, tonight, seeing you like this, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I swear, Lucrecia. In exchange for this moment I would throw away all my degrees, the doctorates
honoris causa
that have been conferred upon me, my decorations and diplomas. (“If I weren’t as old as I am, I would burn all my books and go to sit like a beggar at the door of your house”—Don Rigoberto read the poet Enrique Peña in his notebook—“Yes, my child, understand me: like a beggar at the door of your house.”) I have never felt such great happiness, Lucrecia. Seeing you like this, without clothes, like Ulysses looking at Nausicaa, is the greatest prize, a glory I don’t believe I deserve. I am so moved, so overwhelmed. I am crying because I am moved, because I am grateful. Don’t find me contemptible, Lucrecia.”

Instead of relieving him, his words moved him even more, and now his sobs were choking him. He rested his head on the edge of the bed and continued to cry, still on his knees, sighing, feeling sad and happy, afflicted and fortunate. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he stammered. Until, seconds or hours later—his body arched as if he were a cat—he felt Lucrecia’s hand on his head. Her fingers stroked his gray hair, consoling him, accompanying him. With a cool caress her voice also soothed the raw wound in his soul.

“Calm yourself, Rigoberto. Don’t cry anymore, my love, my heart. It’s over, it’s finished now, nothing has changed. Haven’t you done as you wished? You came in, you saw me, you came near, you wept, I forgave you. Can I ever be angry with you? Dry your tears, sneeze, go to sleep. Hush, baby, hush.”

Down below, the sea crashed against the cliffs of Barranco and Miraflores, and a thick cover of clouds hid the stars and moon in the sky over Lima. But the night was coming to an end. Day would break any moment now. One day less. One day more.

What Is Forbidden to Beauty

You will never see a painting by Andy Warhol or Frida Kahlo, or applaud a political speech, or permit the skin on your elbows or knees to roughen, or the soles of your feet to grow hard.

You will never listen to a composition by Luigi Nono or a protest song by Mercedes Sosa, or see a film by Oliver Stone, or chew directly on the leaves of an artichoke.

You will never scrape your knees or cut your hair or have blackheads, dental caries, conjunctivitis, (much less) hemorrhoids.

You will never walk barefoot on asphalt, stone, gravel, flagstone, hard rubber, corrugated iron, slate, or metal, and you will never kneel on a surface that is not as spongy as a sweet bun (before toasting).

You will never use the words telluric, half-breed, consciousness-raising, visualize, statist, pips, rinds, or societal.

You will never own a hamster or gargle or wear dentures or play bridge or wear a hat or a beret or coil your hair in a bun.

You will never bloat with gas, or curse, or dance to rock-and-roll.

You will never die.

Egon Schiele’s Thumb

“All of Egon Schiele’s girls are skinny and bony and look very pretty to me,” said Fonchito. “But you’re plump, and I think you’re very pretty too. Can you explain the contradiction, Stepmamá?”

“Are you calling me fat?” Doña Lucrecia became livid.

She had been distracted, hearing the boy’s voice as if it were background noise, thinking about the anonymous letters—seven in just ten days—and the letter she had written to Rigoberto the night before, which was now in the pocket of her robe. She recalled only that Fonchito had begun to talk and talk, about Egon Schiele, as usual, until “plump” had caught her attention.

“Not fat, no. I said plump, Stepmamá,” he apologized, gesturing.

“It’s your papá’s fault I’m like this,” she complained, looking at herself. “I was very slender when we married. But Rigoberto had the notion that being fashionably slim destroys a woman’s body, that the great tradition in beauty is abundance. That’s what he called it: ‘the abundant form.’ To make him happy I put on weight. And I haven’t been thin since.”

“You look terrific just the way you are, I swear, Stepmamá,” Fonchito continued to apologize. “I said what I did about Egon Schiele’s skinny girls because don’t you think it’s odd for me to like them and like you too when you’re at least twice their size?”

No, he couldn’t be the author. The anonymous letters complimented her figure, and in one of them, entitled “In Praise of the Beloved’s Body,” each part mentioned—head, shoulders, waist, breasts, belly, thighs, legs, ankles, feet—was accompanied by a reference to a poem or emblematic painting. The invisible lover of her abundant forms could only be Rigoberto. (“That man is crazy about you,” Justiniana declared after reading it. “How well he knows your body, Señora! It must be Don Rigoberto. Where would Fonchito find those words no matter how grown-up he is? Though he knows you pretty well too, doesn’t he?”)

“Why are you so quiet? Why aren’t you talking to me? You look at me as if you didn’t see me. You’re acting very strange today, Stepmamá.”

“It’s those letters. I can’t get them out of my head, Fonchito. You have your obsession with Egon Schiele, and now I have mine: those damned letters. I spend the whole day waiting for them, reading them, remembering them.”

“But why damned, Stepmamá? Do they insult you or say ugly things?”

“Because they’re not signed. And because sometimes I think a phantom is sending them, not your papá.”

“You know very well they’re from him. Everything’s working out perfectly, Stepmamá. Don’t worry. You’ll make up with him soon, you’ll see.”

The reconciliation of Doña Lucrecia and Don Rigoberto had become the boy’s second obsession. He spoke of it with so much certainty that his stepmother no longer had the heart to argue or to tell him it was nothing but another daydream of the inveterate daydreamer he had become. Had she been right to show him the anonymous letters? Some were so bold in their intimate references that after reading them she promised herself: “I certainly won’t let him see this one.” And each time she did, watching his reaction to find out if some gesture betrayed him. But no. Each time he reacted with the same surprise, the same excitement, and he always came to the same conclusion: the letter was from his papá, one more proof he wasn’t angry with her anymore. She noticed that now Fonchito also seemed distracted, far removed from the dining alcove and the Olivar, caught up in some memory. He was looking at his hands, bringing them close to his eyes. He clasped them, extended them, spread his fingers, hid the thumb, crossed and uncrossed them in unusual positions, as if projecting figures on the wall with his hands. But on this spring afternoon Fonchito was not trying to create shadow figures; he was scrutinizing his fingers like an entomologist examining an unknown species through a magnifying glass.

“Can I ask what you’re doing?”

The boy’s expression did not change, and he continued his movements as he replied with another question: “Do you think my hands are deformed, Stepmamá?”

What was the little devil up to today?

“Let’s see, let’s have a look at them,” she said, playing at being a specialist. “Put them here.”

Fonchito wasn’t playing. He was very serious as he stood, walked over to her, and placed both hands on her extended palms. At the touch of smooth, soft skin, the fragile bones in his fingers, Doña Lucrecia felt a shiver run down her spine. He had delicate hands, thin pointed fingers, pale pink fingernails, neatly trimmed. But there were ink or charcoal stains on the fingertips. She pretended to subject his hands to a clinical examination as she stroked them.

“They’re not at all deformed,” she declared at last. “Though a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt.”

“What a shame,” the boy said without a trace of humor, pulling his hands away from Doña Lucrecia’s. “It means I don’t resemble him at all as far as that’s concerned.”

“There it is. It was bound to happen.” The game they played every afternoon.

“Explain what you mean.”

The boy quickly complied. Hadn’t she noticed that hands were Egon Schiele’s mania? His hands and the hands of girls and men he painted. If not, she ought to now. And in the blink of an eye Doña Lucrecia had a book of reproductions on her knees. Did she see how much Egon Schiele hated thumbs?

“Thumbs?” and Doña Lucrecia began to laugh.

“Look at his portraits. The one of Arthur Roessler, for example,” the boy insisted passionately. “Or this one: the
Double Portrait of Inspector General Heinrich Benesch and His Son Otto
; the one of Enrich Lederer; his self-portraits. He shows only four fingers. The thumb is always out of sight.”

Why would that be? Why did he hide it? Was it because the thumb is the ugliest finger on the hand? Did he prefer even numbers and think that odd numbers brought bad luck? Was his own thumb disfigured, did it embarrass him? Something was wrong with his hands; if not, why, when he had his picture taken, did he conceal his hands in his pockets or twist them into such ridiculous poses, curling the fingers like a witch’s, placingthem right in front of the camera, or raising them over his head as if he wanted to let them fly away? His hands, the men’s hands, the girls’ hands. Hadn’t she noticed? Those naked girls with their well-formed little bodies, wasn’t it inconceivable for them to have masculine hands with rough bony knuckles? For example, this engraving from 1910:
Standing Nude with Black Hair
, weren’t those mannish hands with their square-cut fingernails out of place, weren’t they identical to the ones Egon painted in his self-portraits? Hadn’t he done the same thing with almost all the women he painted? For example,
Standing Nude
, 1913. Fonchito took a breath. “I mean, he was Narcissus, just like you said. He always painted his own hands, even if the person in the painting was someone else, another man or a woman.”

“Did you find this out on your own? Or did you read it somewhere?” Doña Lucrecia was disconcerted. She leafed through the book, and what she saw confirmed what Fonchito said.

“Anybody who looks at his pictures a lot can see it,” the boy said with a shrug, not giving the matter much importance. “Doesn’t my papá say that if an artist doesn’t develop motifs he never becomes inspired? That’s why I always pay attention to the manias that painters reflect in their pictures. Egon Schiele had three: he put the same out-of-proportion hands, with the thumb missing, on all his figures. He had the girls and men show their things by lifting their skirts and spreading their legs. And third, in his self-portraits, he shows his own hands in forced positions that are very conspicuous.”

“All right, all right, if you wanted to leave me dumbfounded, you’ve succeeded. Do you know something, Fonchito? You certainly have your motif. If your papá’s theory is correct, you already have one of the requirements for being inspired.”

“All I need to do is to paint the pictures,” he said with a laugh. He lay down again and resumed looking at his hands. He moved them about, imitating the extravagant poses displayed in Schiele’s pictures and photographs. Doña Lucrecia was amused as she observed his pantomime. And suddenly she came to a decision: “I’m going to read him my letter and see what he says.” Besides, if she read it aloud she would know if what she had written was all right, could decide if she should send it to Rigoberto or tear it up. But when she was about to begin, she lost her courage. Instead, she said, “It worries me that all you think of night and day is Schiele.” The boy stopped playing with his hands. “I’m saying this with all the affection I have for you. At first I thought it was nice for you to like his pictures so much and identify with him. But because you try to resemble him in everything, you’re not being yourself anymore.”

“But I am him, Stepmamá. Even though you take it as a joke, it’s true. I feel that I’m him.”

He smiled to reassure her. “Wait a minute,” he murmured, and as he stood, he picked up the book of reproductions, turned the pages as he looked for something, and placed the open book on her knees again. Doña Lucrecia saw a plate in color; against an ocher background a sinuous woman wore a carnival costume with zigzag stripes of green, red, yellow, and black. Her dark hair was under a kind of turban, she was barefoot, she looked out with a languid sadness in her large dark eyes, and her hands were raised over her head as if she were about to play castanets.

“Looking at that picture, I knew,” she heard Fonchito say with utter seriousness. “I knew I was him.”

She tried to laugh but failed. What was the kid up to? Trying to frighten her? He plays with me like a little kitten with a big mouse, she thought.

“Is that so? And what in this picture revealed to you that you’re the reincarnation of Egon Schiele?”

“You still don’t understand, Stepmamá,” Fonchito said with a laugh. “Look again, at each part. And you’ll see that even though he painted it in his studio in Vienna in 1914, Peru is here in this woman. Repeated five times.”

Señora Lucrecia examined the image again. From top to bottom. From bottom to top. Finally she noticed that on the multicolored clown costume of the barefoot model, there were five minute figures, at the height of both arms, on her right side, on her leg, and on the hem of her skirt. She raised the book to her eyes and examined the figures calmly. Well, it was true. They did look like Indian women. They were dressed like campesinas from Cuzco.

“That’s what they are, little Indian women from the Andes,” said Fonchito, reading her thoughts. “Do you see? Peru is there in Egon Schiele’s paintings. That’s how I knew. For me, it was a message.”

He continued speaking, showing off a prodigious knowledge of the painter’s life and work that left Doña Lucrecia with the impression of omniscience, and the suspicion of a scheme, a feverish ambush. “There’s an explanation, Stepmamá. The lady was named Frederike María Beer. She was the only person whose portrait was painted by the two greatest painters in Vienna at the time: Schiele and Klimt. The daughter of a very wealthy cabaret owner, she had been a great lady who helped artists and found buyers for their work. A little while before Schiele painted her, she traveled to Bolivia and Peru and brought home those little Indian rag dolls that she probably bought at some fair in Cuzco or La Paz. And Egon Schiele had the idea of painting them into her dress. I mean, it was no miracle that made five little Indian women appear in the painting. But, but…”

“But what?” Doña Lucrecia encouraged him, fascinated by Fonchito’s story, hoping for a great revelation.

“But nothing,” the boy added, with a weary gesture. “The Indians were placed there so that I would find them one day. Five little Peruvians in a painting by Schiele. Don’t you see?”

“Did they start talking to you? Did they say that you painted them eighty years ago? That you’ve been reincarnated?”

“Well, if you’re going to make fun of me, let’s talk about something else, Stepmamá.”

“I don’t like to hear you talking nonsense,” she said. “Or thinking nonsense, or believing nonsense. You are you, and Egon Schiele was Egon Schiele. You live here, in Lima, and he lived in Vienna at the beginning of the century. There’s no such thing as reincarnation. So unless you want me to get angry, don’t say stupid things anymore. Okay?”

The boy nodded reluctantly. His face looked very sad, but he did not dare to respond, because she had spoken with unusual severity. She tried to make peace.

“I want to read you something I’ve written,” she said softly, taking the rough draft of the letter from her pocket.

“You’ve answered my papá?” The boy was overjoyed and sat on the floor, craning his head forward.

Yes, last night. She didn’t know yet if she would send it. She couldn’t bear any more. Seven, that’s a lot of anonymous letters. And the writer was Rigoberto. Who else could it be? Who else could speak to her in that familiar, exalted way? Who else knew her so well? She had decided to end the farce. She wanted to know what he thought of her letter.

“Read it to me right now, Stepmamá,” the boy said impatiently. His eyes were shining and his face revealed enormous curiosity, as well as a hint, a hint of—Doña Lucrecia searched for the words—mischievous, even wicked, delight. Clearing her throat before she began, and not looking up until she had finished, Doña Lucrecia read:

Darling:

I’ve resisted the temptation of writing to you ever since I learned you were the author of the ardent letters that for the past two weeks have filled my house with flaming joy, nostalgia, and hope, and my heart and soul with the sweet fire that consumes without burning, the fire of love and desire joined in happy wedlock
.

Why would you sign letters that you alone could write? Who has studied me, shaped me, invented me as you have? Who but you could speak of the little red marks under my arms, the pink tracery of nerves in the hidden spaces between my toes, that “puckered little mouth, bluish-gray, surrounded by a circle in miniature of happily wrinkled flesh to which one ascends by scaling the smooth marble columns of your legs’? Only you, my love
.

From the first lines of the first letter, I knew it was you. And for that reason, before I finished reading it, I obeyed your instructions. I took off my clothes and posed for you, in front of the mirror, imitating Klimt’s Danaë. And once again, as on so many nights so profoundly missed in my present solitude, I soared with you through the realms of fantasy we explored together during the years we shared, years that are now, for me, a spring of consolation and life from which I drink again in memory in order to endure the empty routine that has replaced the adventure and plenitude I enjoyed at your side
.