Read Online The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa - Free Book Online
Authors: Mario Vargas Llosa
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must make love to you.”
“Then imagine the night poor Pluto must have spent.”
“Poor?” Don Rigoberto pondered after love, as they, exhausted and satisfied, were recovering their strength. “Why poor?”
“I’m the happiest man in the world, Lucre,” Modesto declared that night in the interval between two striptease shows at the Crazy Horse Saloon, which was packed with Japanese and Germans, and after they had consumed a bottle of champagne. “Not even the electric train that Father Christmas brought me on my tenth birthday can compare to your gift.”
During the day, as they had walked through the Louvre, lunched at La Closerie de Lilas, visited the Centre Pompidou, or lost their way in the narrow, reconstructed streets of the Marais, he had not made the slightest allusion to the previous night. He continued to act as her well-informed, devoted, obliging traveling companion.
“The more you tell me, the better I like him,” remarked Don Rigoberto.
“The same thing happened to me,” Doña Lucrecia acknowledged. “And so that day I went a step further, to reward him. At Maxim’s he felt my knee against his during the entire meal. And when we danced, my breasts. And at the Crazy Horse, my legs.”
“I envy him,” exclaimed Don Rigoberto. “To discover you serially, episodically, bit by bit. A game of cat and mouse, after all. A game not without its dangers.”
“No, not if it’s played with gentlemen like you,” Doña Lucrecia said coquettishly. “I’m glad I accepted your invitation, Pluto.”
They were back at the Ritz, drowsy and content. They were saying good night in the sitting room of their suite.
“Wait, Modesto,” she improvised, blinking. “Surprise, surprise, close your little eyes.”
Pluto obeyed instantly, transformed by expectation. She approached, pressed against him, kissed him, lightly at first, noticing that he hesitated to respond to the lips brushing his, and then to the thrusts of her tongue. When he did, she sensed that with this kiss the engineer was giving her the love he had felt for so long, his adoration and fantasy, his well-being and (if he had one) his soul. When he caught her around the waist, cautiously, prepared to let go at the first sign of rejection, Doña Lucrecia allowed him to embrace her.
“May I open my eyes?”
“You may.”
And then he looked at her, not with the cold eyes of the perfect libertine, de Sade, thought Don Rigoberto, but with the pure, fervent, impassioned eyes of the mystic at the moment of his ascent and vision.
“Was he very excited?” The question escaped his lips, and he regretted it. “What a stupid question. Forgive me, Lucrecia.”
“He was, but he made no attempt to hold me. At the first hint, he moved away.”
“You should have gone to bed with him that night,” Don Rigoberto admonished her. “You were being abusive. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you were doing just the right thing. Yes, yes, of course. The slow, the formal, the ritualized, the theatrical—that is eroticism. It was a wise delay. Rushing makes us more like animals. Did you know that donkeys, monkeys, pigs, and rabbits ejaculate in twelve seconds, at the most?”
“But the frog can copulate for forty days and nights without stopping. I read it in a book by Jean Rostand: From Fly to Man .”
“I’m envious.” Don Rigoberto was filled with admiration. “You are so wise, Lucrecia.”
“Those were Modesto’s words.” His wife confused him, returned him to an Orient Express hurtling through the European night on its way to Venice. “The next day, in our belle époque compartment.”
And the words were reiterated by a bouquet of flowers waiting for her at the Hotel Cipriani, on sun-filled Giudecca: To Lucrecia , beautiful in life and wise in love .
“Wait, wait.” Don Rigoberto brought her back to the rails. “Did you share the compartment on the train?”
“It had two beds. I was in the upper berth and he was in the lower.”
“In
“Then imagine the night poor Pluto must have spent.”
“Poor?” Don Rigoberto pondered after love, as they, exhausted and satisfied, were recovering their strength. “Why poor?”
“I’m the happiest man in the world, Lucre,” Modesto declared that night in the interval between two striptease shows at the Crazy Horse Saloon, which was packed with Japanese and Germans, and after they had consumed a bottle of champagne. “Not even the electric train that Father Christmas brought me on my tenth birthday can compare to your gift.”
During the day, as they had walked through the Louvre, lunched at La Closerie de Lilas, visited the Centre Pompidou, or lost their way in the narrow, reconstructed streets of the Marais, he had not made the slightest allusion to the previous night. He continued to act as her well-informed, devoted, obliging traveling companion.
“The more you tell me, the better I like him,” remarked Don Rigoberto.
“The same thing happened to me,” Doña Lucrecia acknowledged. “And so that day I went a step further, to reward him. At Maxim’s he felt my knee against his during the entire meal. And when we danced, my breasts. And at the Crazy Horse, my legs.”
“I envy him,” exclaimed Don Rigoberto. “To discover you serially, episodically, bit by bit. A game of cat and mouse, after all. A game not without its dangers.”
“No, not if it’s played with gentlemen like you,” Doña Lucrecia said coquettishly. “I’m glad I accepted your invitation, Pluto.”
They were back at the Ritz, drowsy and content. They were saying good night in the sitting room of their suite.
“Wait, Modesto,” she improvised, blinking. “Surprise, surprise, close your little eyes.”
Pluto obeyed instantly, transformed by expectation. She approached, pressed against him, kissed him, lightly at first, noticing that he hesitated to respond to the lips brushing his, and then to the thrusts of her tongue. When he did, she sensed that with this kiss the engineer was giving her the love he had felt for so long, his adoration and fantasy, his well-being and (if he had one) his soul. When he caught her around the waist, cautiously, prepared to let go at the first sign of rejection, Doña Lucrecia allowed him to embrace her.
“May I open my eyes?”
“You may.”
And then he looked at her, not with the cold eyes of the perfect libertine, de Sade, thought Don Rigoberto, but with the pure, fervent, impassioned eyes of the mystic at the moment of his ascent and vision.
“Was he very excited?” The question escaped his lips, and he regretted it. “What a stupid question. Forgive me, Lucrecia.”
“He was, but he made no attempt to hold me. At the first hint, he moved away.”
“You should have gone to bed with him that night,” Don Rigoberto admonished her. “You were being abusive. Or perhaps not. Perhaps you were doing just the right thing. Yes, yes, of course. The slow, the formal, the ritualized, the theatrical—that is eroticism. It was a wise delay. Rushing makes us more like animals. Did you know that donkeys, monkeys, pigs, and rabbits ejaculate in twelve seconds, at the most?”
“But the frog can copulate for forty days and nights without stopping. I read it in a book by Jean Rostand: From Fly to Man .”
“I’m envious.” Don Rigoberto was filled with admiration. “You are so wise, Lucrecia.”
“Those were Modesto’s words.” His wife confused him, returned him to an Orient Express hurtling through the European night on its way to Venice. “The next day, in our belle époque compartment.”
And the words were reiterated by a bouquet of flowers waiting for her at the Hotel Cipriani, on sun-filled Giudecca: To Lucrecia , beautiful in life and wise in love .
“Wait, wait.” Don Rigoberto brought her back to the rails. “Did you share the compartment on the train?”
“It had two beds. I was in the upper berth and he was in the lower.”
“In
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