The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto (5 page)

The following morning—the seventh day, with the word “end” looming on the horizon—we will have to rise early. The plane to Paris leaves at ten, connecting with the Concorde to New York. As we fly over the Atlantic, we will sort through the images and sensations stored in our memories, selecting those that deserve to endure
.

We will say goodbye at Kennedy Airport (your flight to Lima and mine to Boston leave at almost the same time), no doubt never to see one another again. I do not think our paths will cross a second time. I will not return to Peru, and I do not believe you will ever set foot in the remote corner of the Deep South that, beginning in October, will boast of the only Hispanic college president in this country (the 2,500 others are gringos, African Americans, or Asians)
.

Will you come? Your passage is waiting for you in the offices of Lufthansa in Lima. You don’t need to send me a reply. On Saturday the 17th I will be at the appointed place. Your presence or absence will be your response. If you do not come, I will follow this itinerary alone, fantasizing that you are with me, making real this whim that has been my consolation for years, thinking of a woman who, despite the rejection that changed my life, will always be the very heart of my memory
.

Need I point out that this is an invitation to honor me with your company and does not imply any obligation other than your presence? I am in no way asking you, during the days of our travels together—I can think of no other euphemism for saying this—to share my bed. My darling Lucrecia, my only desire is that you share my dream. The suites reserved in New York, Paris, and Venice have separate bedrooms with doors under lock and key, and if your scruples demand it, I can add daggers, hatchets, revolvers, and even bodyguards. But you know none of that will be necessary, and for the entire week this virtuous Modesto, this gentle Pluto, as they called me in the neighborhood, will be as respectful of you as I was years ago in Lima, when I tried to persuade you to marry me and barely had the courage to touch your hand in darkened movie theaters
.

Until we meet at Kennedy, or goodbye forever, Lucre
,

Modesto (Pluto)

Don Rigoberto felt assailed by the high temperature and tremors of tertian fever. How would Lucrecia respond? Would she indignantly reject this letter from Lazarus? Or would she succumb to frivolous temptation? In the milky light of dawn, it seemed to him that his notebooks were waiting for the denouement as impatiently as his tormented spirit.

Imperatives of the Thirsty Traveler

This is an order from your slave, beloved.

Before a mirror, on a bed or sofa adorned with hand-painted silks from India or Indonesian batik with circular eyes, you will lie on your back, undressed, and loosen your long black hair.

You will raise your left leg, bending it until it forms an angle. You will rest your head on your right shoulder, partially open your lips, and, crushing a corner of the sheet in your right hand, you will lower your eyelids, feigning sleep. You will imagine a yellow river of butterfly wings and stardust descending from heaven and entering you.

Who are you?

The
Danaë
of Gustav Klimt, naturally. No matter the model he used to paint this oil (1907-8), the master anticipated you, foretold you, saw you just as you would come into the world, just as you would be half a century later, on the other side of the ocean. He believed he was re-creating a figure from Hellenic mythology with his brushes, when he was actually pre-creating you, future beauty, loving wife, sensual stepmother.

Only you among women, in this painterly fantasy, combine an angel’s virtuous perfection, innocence, and purity with a boldly terrestrial body. Today I pass over the firmness of your breasts and the assertiveness of your hips to pay exclusive homage to the consistency of your thighs, a temple to whose columns I would like to be tied, then whipped because I have misbehaved.

All of you brings joy to my senses.

Velvet skin, aloe saliva, oh delicate lady of unwithering elbows and knees, awaken, regard yourself in the mirror, tell yourself, “I am worshipped and admired above all others, I am desired as watery mirages in the desert are longed for by the thirsty traveler.”

Lucrecia-Danaë, Danaë-Lucrecia.

This is a plea from your master, slave.

The Ideal Week

“My secretary called Lufthansa and, in fact, your paid passage is waiting there,” said Don Rigoberto. “Round trip. First class, of course.”

“Was I right to show you the letter, my love?” exclaimed Doña Lucrecia in great alarm. “You’re not angry, are you? We promised never to hide anything from each other, and I thought I ought to show it to you.”

“You did just the right thing, my queen,” said Don Rigoberto, kissing his wife’s hand. “I want you to go.”

“You want me to go?” Doña Lucrecia smiled, looked somber, then smiled again. “Are you serious?”

“I beg you to go,” he insisted, his lips on his wife’s fingers. “Unless the idea displeases you. But why should it? Even though the plan is that of a rather vulgar nouveau riche, it has been worked out in a spirit of joy and with an irony not at all frequent in engineers. You will have a good time, my dear.”

“I don’t know what to say, Rigoberto,” Doña Lucrecia stammered, making an effort not to blush. “It’s very generous of you, but…”

“I’m asking you to accept for selfish reasons,” her husband explained. “And you know that selfishness is a virtue in my philosophy. Your trip will be a great experience for me.”

Doña Lucrecia knew from Don Rigoberto’s eyes and expression that he was serious. And so she did take the trip, and on the eighth day she returned to Lima. At Córpac she was met by her husband and Fonchito, who was holding a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of flowers with a card that read:
Welcome home
,
Stepmamá
. They greeted her with many displays of affection, and Don Rigoberto, to help her conceal her discomfort, asked endless questions about the weather, going through customs, changes in schedule, jet lag and fatigue, avoiding anything approaching sensitive material. On the way to Barranco he provided her with a meticulous accounting of events at the office and Fonchito’s school, and their breakfasts, lunches, and dinners during her absence. The house sparkled with extravagant order and cleanliness. Justiniana had even had the curtains washed and the fertilizer in the garden replaced, tasks usually reserved for the end of the month.

The afternoon was spent unpacking suitcases, talking to the servants about practical matters, and answering phone calls from friends and relations who wanted to know how she had enjoyed her trip to Miami to shop for Christmas presents (the official version of her adventure). The atmosphere was absolutely uncharged when she took out gifts for her husband, her stepson, and Justiniana. Don Rigoberto liked the French ties, the Italian shirts, and the sweater from New York, and Fonchito looked marvelous in the jeans, leather jacket, and athletic gear. Justiniana gave a cry of enthusiasm when she tried on the duck-yellow dress over her smock.

After supper, Don Rigoberto withdrew to the bathroom and took less time than usual with his ablutions. When he emerged, he found the bedroom in darkness cut by indirect lighting that illuminated only the two engravings by Utamaro depicting the incompatible but orthodox matings of the same couple, the man endowed with a long, corkscrew member, the woman with a Lilliputian sex, the two of them surrounded by kimonos billowing like storm clouds, paper lanterns, floor mats, low tables holding a porcelain tea service, and, in the distance, bridges spanning a sinuous river. Doña Lucrecia lay beneath the sheets, not naked, he discovered when he slipped in beside her, but in a new nightgown—purchased and worn on her trip?—that allowed his hands the freedom necessary to reach her most intimate corners. She turned on her side, and he could slide his arm under her shoulders and feel her from head to foot. He did not crush her to him but kissed her, very tenderly, on the eyes and cheeks, taking his time to reach her mouth.

“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to,” he lied into her ear with a boyish coquetry that inflamed her impatience as his lips traced the curve of her ear. “Whatever you have a mind to. Or nothing at all, if you prefer.”

“I’ll tell you everything,” Doña Lucrecia murmured, searching for his mouth. “Isn’t that why you sent me?”

“That’s one reason,” Don Rigoberto agreed, kissing her on the neck, the hair, her forehead, returning again and again to her nose, cheeks, and chin. “Did you enjoy yourself? Did you have a good time?”

“Whether it was good or bad will depend on what happens now between you and me,” said Señora Lucrecia hurriedly, and Don Rigoberto felt his wife become tense for a moment. “Yes, I enjoyed myself. Yes, I had a good time. But I was always afraid.”

“Afraid I would be angry?” Now Don Rigoberto was kissing her firm breasts, millimeter by millimeter, and the tip of his tongue played with her nipples, feeling them harden. “That I would make a scene and be jealous?”

“That you would suffer,” Doña Lucrecia whispered, embracing him.

“She’s beginning to perspire,” Don Rigoberto observed to himself. He felt joy as he caressed her increasingly responsive body, and he had to bring his mind to bear to control the vertigo that was overtaking him. He whispered into his wife’s ear that he loved her more, much more than before her trip.

She began to speak, pausing as she searched for the words—silences meant to conceal her awkwardness—but little by little, aroused by his caresses and amorous interruptions, she gained confidence. At last, Don Rigoberto realized she had recovered her natural fluency and could tell her story by assuming a feigned distance from the account, clinging to his body, her head resting on his shoulder. The couple’s hands moved from time to time to take possession or verify the existence of a member, a muscle, or a piece of skin.

“Had he changed very much?”

He had become very much a gringo in the way he dressed and spoke, for he continually used English words. But though his hair was gray and he had put on weight, he still had the same long, melancholy Pluto face, and all the timidity and inhibitions of his youth.

“Seeing you arrive must have been like a gift from heaven.”

“He turned so pale! I thought he was going to faint. He was waiting for me with a bouquet of flowers bigger than he was. The limousine was one of those silver-colored ones that gangsters have in movies. With a bar, a television, a stereo, and—this will kill you—leopardskin seat covers.”

“Poor ecologists,” Don Rigoberto responded with enthusiasm.

“I know it’s very parvenu,” Modesto apologized while the chauffeur, an extremely tall Afghani in a maroon uniform, arranged their luggage in the trunk. “But it was the most expensive one.”

“He’s able to laugh at himself,” Don Rigoberto declared. “That’s nice.”

“On the ride to the Plaza he paid me a few compliments, blushing all the way to his ears,” Doña Lucrecia continued. “He said I looked very young and even more beautiful than when he asked me to marry him.”

“You are,” Don Rigoberto interrupted, drinking in her breath. “More and more, every day, every hour.”

“Not a single remark in bad taste, not a single offensive insinuation,” she said. “He was so grateful to me for joining him that he made me feel like the good Samaritan in the Bible.”

“Do you know what he was wondering while he was being so gallant?”

“What?” Doña Lucrecia slipped her leg between her husband’s.

“If he would see you naked that afternoon, in the Plaza, or if he would have to wait until that night, or even until Paris,” Don Rigoberto explained.

“He didn’t see me naked that afternoon or that night. Unless he peeked through the keyhole while I was bathing and dressing for the Metropolitan Opera. What he had said about separate rooms was true. Mine overlooked Central Park.”

“But he must have at least held your hand at the opera, in the restaurant,” he complained, feeling disappointed. “With the help of a little champagne, he must have put his cheek to yours while you were dancing at Regine’s. He must have kissed your neck, your ear.”

Not at all. He had not tried to take her hand or kiss her during that long night, though he did not spare the compliments, but always at a respectful distance. He was very likable, in fact, mocking his own lack of experience (“I’m mortified, Lucre, but in six years of marriage I’ve never cheated on my wife”), and admitting to her that this was the first time in his life he had attended the opera or set foot in Le Cirque and Regine’s.

“The only thing I’m sure of is that I must ask for Dom Pérignon, sniff at the glass of wine as if I suffered from allergies, and order dishes with French names.”

He looked at her with immeasurable, canine gratitude.

“To tell the truth, I’ve come out of vanity, Modesto. And curiosity too, of course. After ten years of our not seeing each other, of our not being in touch at all, is it possible you’re still in love with me?”

“Love isn’t the right word,” he pointed out. “I’m in love with Dorothy, the gringa I married, who’s very understanding and lets me sing in bed.”

“For him you meant something more subtle,” Don Rigoberto declared. “Unreality, illusion, the woman of his memory and desires. I want to worship you the same way, the way he does. Wait, wait.”

He removed her tiny nightgown and then positioned her so that their skin would touch in more places. He reined in his desire and asked her to continue.

“We returned to the hotel just as I was beginning to yawn. He said good night at a distance from my door. He wished me pleasant dreams. He behaved so well, he was so much a gentleman, that the next morning I flirted with him just a little.”

When she appeared for breakfast in the room that separated the two bedrooms, she was barefoot and wearing a short summer wrapper that left her legs and thighs exposed. Modesto was waiting for her, shaved, showered, and dressed. His mouth fell open.

“Did you sleep well?” he managed to articulate, slack-jawed, pulling out a chair for her at the breakfast table, which held fruit juice, toast, and marmalade. “May I say that you look very attractive?”