“I,” he thought, smiling, “am a man who washes his hands before, not after, he urinates.”
A Superlative Menu
I know you like to eat just small quantities of food that is nice and healthy, but tasty, and I am ready to please you at a beautifully set table as well.
Bright and early in the morning I’ll go to market and buy the freshest milk, a hot, crusty bread straight out of the oven, and the juiciest orange. I’ll wake you with the prettiest breakfast tray, the most fragrant flower, the sweetest kiss. “Here is your lovely juice without seeds, your delicious toast with yummy strawberry marmalade, and your wonderful coffee with milk and absolutely no sugar, my darling señor.”
For your lunch, a salad and some yogurt, just the way you like it. I’ll rinse the crispy lettuce leaves until they sparkle, and I’ll cut the red ripe tomatoes artistically, taking my inspiration from the pictures in your library. I’ll dress them with a sprinkle of vinegar, just a touch of oil, a few drops of my saliva, and my own tears instead of salt.
And every single night, one of your favorites (I have marvelous menus for the whole blessed year, with absolutely no repetitions). Olluco root with wonderful sun-dried charqui, a perfect puree of green beans, special Indian fricassee, a spicy casserole of mashed potato, savory tripe-and-potato stew, a mouth-watering ragout of pork and kid in wine sauce, tender beefsteak Chorrillan-style, a fabulous ceviche of corvina, rich prawn stew, or phenomenal prawns Limenian-style, a magnificent rice and duck, luscious smothered rice, a delectable refried rice-and-bean omelet, spectacular stuffed chicken with garlic. But I had better stop so I won’t make you hungry. And, naturally, your choice of fine red wine or refreshing, ice-cold beer.
For dessert, sweet pineapple fritters, scrumptious Limenian ladyfingers,fabulous deep-fried crullers with honey, fantastic honey-drizzled crêpes, delicious doughnuts, memorable nun’s breath, marvelous marzipan, terrific twisted pastry, sensational meringues, superb golden honey candies, Doña Pepa’s outstanding almond nougat, lip-smacking blue-corn pudding, and unforgettable fig turnovers with rich ricotta cheese.
Will you accept me as your gourmet cook? I’m exceptionally clean, for I take a nice bath at least twice a day. I don’t chew gum, or smoke cigarettes, or have hairy underarms, and my lovely hands and feet are as perfect as my beautiful breasts and buttocks. I will work all the hours needed to keep your taste buds and tummy happy. If necessary, I will also dress you, undress you, wash you, shave you, trim your nails, and wipe your ass when you make number two. At night I’ll warm you with my very own body so that you feel no nasty chill in your bed. In addition to preparing your meals, I will be your humble valet, your hot little stove, your first-class razor, your super-sharp scissors, and your downy-soft toilet paper.
Will you take me on, my darling señor?
Yours, yours, all yours,
The Stupendous Cook Without Bunions
VI
The Anonymous Letter
Instead of the anger she had felt the night before, when she had gone to bed clutching the crumpled paper in her fist, Señora Lucrecia awoke content, in a good humor. A lightly voluptuous sensation hovered around her. She stretched out her hand and picked up the missive written in block letters on pale blue textured paper, pleasing to the touch.
“Before the mirror, on a bed or sofa…” She had a bed, but not one covered with hand-painted Indian silks or an Indonesian batik, which meant she would not be able to fulfill that demand of her faceless master. But she could satisfy him by lying down naked, on her back, loosening her hair, raising her leg, focusing her mind on thinking she was Klimt’s Danaë (though she didn’t really believe it), and feigning sleep. And, of course, she could look into the mirror and say to herself: “I am enjoyed and admired, I am dreamed and loved.” A mocking little smile and eyes flashing like fireflies were repeated in the dressing-table mirror as she pushed back the sheets and amused herself by following the instructions. But only half her body was visible, and she could not tell if she had imitated with any verisimilitude the posture in the painting by Klimt that her phantom correspondent had sent to her in a crude postcard reproduction.
As she ate breakfast and chatted distractedly with Justiniana, and then as she showered and dressed, she re-evaluated her reasons for giving only one name and one face to the author of the letter. Don Rigoberto? Fonchito? Suppose they had planned it together? How absurd! No, that made no sense at all. Logic inclined her to think this was Rigoberto’s way of letting her know that despite what had happened, despite their separation, she was always present in his ecstatic passions. His way of testing the possibility of a reconciliation. No. It had all been too hard on him. He would never be able to make peace with the woman who had deceived him with his own son, in his own house. His pride, that gnawing worm, would not permit it. Well then, if the anonymous letter had not been sent by her ex-husband, the author had to be Fonchito. Didn’t he have the same fascination with painting as his father? The same good or bad habit of intermingling the life of paintings with real life? Yes, it had been Fonchito. And he had given himself away when he brought up Klimt. She would let him know she knew and make him feel ashamed. That very afternoon.
The hours she spent waiting seemed very long to Doña Lucrecia. Sitting in the dining alcove, glancing at her watch, afraid that today of all days he would not come. “Good Lord, Señora, one would think your lover was visiting you for the first time,” Justiniana teased her. She blushed instead of reprimanding her. As soon as he arrived, his face beautiful, his delicate body encased in a disheveled school uniform, and dropped his book bag on the rug and greeted her with a kiss on the cheek, a stern Doña Lucrecia confronted him: “You and I have something very unpleasant to talk about, young man.”
She saw his intrigued expression, the troubled blue eyes opening wide. He was sitting in front of her with his legs crossed. Doña Lucrecia noticed that one of his shoelaces was untied.
“What’s that, Stepmamá?”
“Something very unpleasant,” she repeated, showing him the letter and postcard. “The most cowardly, most despicable thing in the world: sending anonymous letters.”
The boy did not turn pale, or blush, or blink. He continued to look at her with curiosity, not at all disconcerted. She handed him the letter and the card and did not take her eyes off him while a very serious Fonchito, the tip of his tongue between his teeth, read the letter as if he were spelling it out word by word. His alert eyes moved back and forth, reading the lines again and again.
“There are two words I don’t understand,” he said at last, bathing her in his limpid glance. “Helen and batik. A girl at the academy is named Helen. But it’s used with a different meaning here, isn’t it? And I’ve never heard of batik. What do they mean, Stepmamá?”
“Don’t play the fool,” Doña Lucrecia said irritably. “Why did you write this to me? Did you think I wouldn’t know it was you?”
She felt rather uncomfortable at the open perplexity now displayed by Fonchito, who, after shaking his head a few times in bewilderment, began to read the letter again, silently moving his lips. And she was caught completely off guard when the boy raised his head and she saw that he was grinning from ear to ear. In a transport of joy he held out his arms, threw himself on her, and embraced her with a little cry of triumph.
“We did it, Stepmamá! Don’t you see?”
“What is it I’m supposed to see, smarty?” She pushed him away.
“But Stepmamá,” he said, with a tender, pitying look. “Our plan. It’s working. Didn’t I say we had to make him jealous? Be happy, we’re doing very well. Don’t you want to make up with my papá?”
“I’m not so sure this anonymous letter is from Rigoberto,” said a dubious Doña Lucrecia. “I tend to suspect you, you little hypocrite.”
She fell silent, because the boy was laughing, looking at her with the affectionate benevolence due someone not very bright.
“Did you know that Klimt was Egon Schiele’s teac
her?” he exclaimed suddenly, as if responding to a question that had not yet crossed her lips. “He admired him. He sketched him on his deathbed. A very nice charcoal, Agony, 1912. And that same year he also painted The Hermits, where he and Klimt appear in monks’ habits.”
“I’m convinced you wrote it, Mr. Know-it-all.” Doña Lucrecia felt angry again, torn by conflicting suppositions, irritated by Fonchito’s untroubled face and the way he spoke, so pleased with himself.
“But Stepmamá, instead of thinking the worst, be happy. My papá has sent you this note to let you know he’s forgiven you and wants to make up. As if you didn’t know that already.”
“Nonsense. It’s nothing but an insolent anonymous letter, and a dirty one at that.”
“Don’t be so unfair,” the boy protested vehemently. “It compares you to a painting by Klimt; it says that when he painted that girl he was foreseeing what you would look like. What’s dirty about that? It’s a very pretty compliment. A way for my papá to be in touch with you. Are you going to answer it?”
“I can’t, I have no proof it’s from him.” But now Doña Lucrecia was more convinced. Did he really want them to reconcile?
“You see, making him jealous worked brilliantly,” the boy repeated happily. “Ever since I told him I saw you arm in arm with a gentleman, he’s been imagining all kinds of things. It scared him so much he wrote you this letter. Aren’t I a good detective, Stepmamá?”
A thoughtful Doña Lucrecia folded her arms. She had never taken seriously the idea of a reconciliation with Rigoberto. She had played along with Fonchito simply to pass the time. Suddenly, for the first time, it seemed a possibility rather than a remote daydream. Is that what she wanted? To go back to the house in Barranco and take up the old life again?
“Who else but my papá could compare you to a painting by Klimt?” the boy insisted. “Don’t you see? He’s reminding you of those little picture games you two played at night.”
Señora Lucrecia felt as if she were suffocating.
“What are you talking about?” she stammered, too faint to deny it.
“But Stepmamá,” the boy replied, gesturing with his hands. “You know the games. When he would say today you’re Cleopatra, or Venus, or Aphrodite. And you’d imitate the paintings to give him pleasure.”
“But, but…” In her utter mortification, Doña Lucrecia could not even become angry; she felt as if anything she said would incriminate her further. “Where did you get that idea; your imagination is very twisted, very, very…”
“You told me so yourself,” the boy said, confounding her. “What a scatterbrain, Stepmamá. Did you forget so soon?”
She fell silent. Had she told him? She raked her memory, but it was useless. She did not remember bringing up the subject with Fonchito, not even indirectly. Never, not ever, of course not. But then how did he know? Could Rigoberto have taken him into his confidence? Impossible; Rigoberto never spoke to anyone about his fantasies and desires. Not even to her, during the day. That had been a rule both had respected during their ten years of marriage; never, either in jest or seriously, to allude during the day to what they said and did at night in the privacy of their bedroom. So as not to trivialize their love, in order to preserve its magical, sacred aura, Rigoberto would say. Doña Lucrecia recalled their early days together, when she was first discovering the hidden side of her husband’s life and they’d had a conversation about the book by Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, one of the first he had asked her to read, assuring her that in the notion of life as play, and the sacred space, she would find the key to their future happiness. The sacred space turned out to be our bed, she thought. They hadbeen happy playing those nocturnal games, which at first merely intrigued her but gradually won her over, spicing her life—her nights—with endlessly renewed fictions. Until her moment of lunacy with this boy.
“He who laughs alone remembers evil things he’s done.” The impudent voice of Justiniana, who was carrying in the tea tray, brought her back from her ruminations. “Hello, Fonchito.”
“My papá has written a letter to Stepmamá and they’ll be making up any day now. Just like I told you, Justita. Did you fix sweet buns for me?”
“Nicely toasted, with butter and strawberry marmalade.” Justiniana turned to Doña Lucrecia, her large eyes opening wide. “You’re going to make up with the señor? So we’ll be moving back to Barranco?”
“It’s all foolishness,” said Señora Lucrecia. “Don’t you know him yet?”
“We’ll see if it’s foolishness,” Fonchito protested, attacking the buns while Doña Lucrecia poured his tea. “How about a bet? What will you give me if you make up with my papá?”
“Burnt crumbs,” said Señora Lucrecia, already beginning to yield. “And what will you give me if you lose?”
“A kiss.” The boy laughed, winking at her.
Justiniana burst into laughter. “I’d better go and leave you two lovebirds alone.”
“Be quiet, you fool,” Doña Lucrecia chided her, but the girl was out of hearing.
They drank their tea in silence. Doña Lucrecia, still imbued with reminiscences of her life with Rigoberto, grieved over everything that had happened. The break could not be repaired. It had been too awful, there was no way back. Would it even be possible for the three of them to live together again under one roof? Then it occurred to her that Jesus, at the age of twelve, had confounded the doctors in the temple when he discussed theological matters with them as their equal. Yes, but Fonchito was not a child prodigy like Jesus. He was more like Lucifer, Prince of Darkness. Not she but he, he, the supposed child, was to blame for everything.
“Do you know another way I’m like Egon Schiele, Stepmamá?” The boy brought her out of her reverie. “He and I are both schizophrenics.”
She could not suppress her laughter. But it broke off abruptly because, as on other occasions, Doña Lucrecia sensed that beneath apparently childish chatter something darker might be lurking.
“Do you even know what a schizophrenic is?”
“It’s when you’re only one person but think you’re two different people, or even more.” Fonchito was pompously reciting a lesson. “My papá explained it to me last night.”
“Well then, you might be one,” Doña Lucrecia said softly. “Because there’s a grown man and a boy inside you. An angel and a devil. What does that have to do with Egon Schiele?”
Once again Fonchito’s face broke into a satisfied smile. And after murmuring a rapid “Wait just a minute, Stepmamá,” he pawed through his bag to find the inevitable book of reproductions. Books, rather, for Señora Lucrecia recalled having seen at least three. Did he always have one in his bag? He was carrying his mania too far, always identifying in everything with that painter. If she were in touch with Rigoberto, she would suggest he take him to a psychologist. But she immediately laughed at herself. What an insane idea, giving advice to her estranged husband about rearing the boy who had caused the rift between them. Lately she was becoming downright idiotic.
“Look, Stepmamá. What do you think of that?”
She took the book, open at the page Fonchito was pointing to, and for some time she turned the pages, trying to concentrate on those hot, unsettling images, those male figures in groups of two or three who looked at her impassively, fully dressed or draped in tunics, naked or half-naked, sometimes covering their sex or displaying it, erect and enormous, with a total lack of shame.
“Well, they’re self-portraits,” she commented at last, for the sake of saying something. “Some good, others not so good.”
“He did more than a hundred,” the boy informed her. “After Rembrandt, Schiele is the artist who painted the most self-portraits.”
“That doesn’t mean he was a schizophrenic. More like Narcissus. Aren’t you a narcissist too, Fonchito?”
“You haven’t looked carefully enough.” The boy opened to another page, and then another, explaining as he pointed. “Don’t you see? He doubles, even triples himse
lf. This one, for example. The Seers of Themselves, 1911. Look. It’s him, naked and dressed. Triple Self-portrait, 1913. Him, three times. And three more over here, very small, on the right. That’s how he saw himself, as if he had several Egon Schieles inside him. Isn’t that being schizophrenic?”
He spoke in a rush, his eyes flashing, and Doña Lucrecia attempted to mollify him.
“Well, he may have had a tendency to schizophrenia, like many artists,” she conceded. “Painters, poets, musicians. They have many things inside, so many that sometimes they don’t all fit in a single person. But you, you’re the most normal boy in the world.”
“Don’t talk to me as if I were retarded, Stepmamá,” Alfonso said angrily. “I’m like him and you know I am, because you just told me so. A grown man and a child. An angel and a devil. In other words, a schizophrenic.”
She caressed his hair. The soft, tousled blond ringlets slipped between her fingers, and Doña Lucrecia resisted the temptation to take him in her arms, sit him on her lap, and croon a lullaby.
“Do you miss your mamá?” she blurted out. She tried to amend the question: “I mean, do you think about her often?”
“Hardly ever,” said Fonchito very calmly. “I wouldn’t remember her face except for photographs. The person I miss is you, Stepmamá. That’s why I want you to hurry and make up with my papá.”
“It’s not that easy. Don’t you see? Some wounds are difficult to heal. What happened with Rigoberto is one of those wounds. He was deeply offended, and with good reason. What I did made no sense, it was inexcusable. I don’t know, I’ll never know what came over me. The more I think about it, the more incredible it seems. As if it hadn’t been me, as if another person had been inside me, taking my place.”
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto Page 17