The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  The first thing to go wrong was the highway in the center of town; it was so crowded that they made very slow progress, when they could move at all, surrounded by trucks, buses, and all kinds of shabby vehicles that not only clogged the highway and brought traffic to a standstill for long periods of time but also belched out of their exhausts a thick black smoke and a stink of burning gasoline that made them dizzy. They were exhausted and flushed when they finally reached Chaclacayo after twelve o’clock.

  Finding a clear space near the river turned out to be more difficult than they had imagined. Before taking the secondary road that would bring them close to the banks of the Rímac—as opposed to its appearance in Lima, out here it seemed a real river, broad and full, the water foaming and forming playful little waves when it ran into stones and rocky places—they had to make turn after turn that always brought them back to the damned highway. When, with the help of a kindly Chaclacayan, they found a turnoff that led down to the river, things got worse, not better. In that spot the Rimac was used as a garbage dump (as well as a urinal and outhouse) by local residents, who had tossed every imaginable kind of trash there—from papers and empty cans and bottles to rotting food, excrement, and dead animals—so that in addition to the depressing view, the place was tainted by an unbearable stench. Swarms of aggressive flies obliged them to cover their mouths with their hands. None of this appeared to conform to the pastoral expedition anticipated by Don Rigoberto. He, however, armed with unassailable patience and a crusader’s optimism that astounded his wife and son, persuaded his family not to let themselves be disheartened by difficult circumstances. They continued their search.

  After some time, when it seemed they had found a more hospitable spot—that is, one free of foul smells and garbage—it was already taken by countless family groups who sat under beach umbrellas, ate pasta smeared with red sauces, and played tropical music at full volume on portable radios and cassette players. Don Rigoberto held sole responsibility for their next mistake, though his motive was sound: to find a little privacy and move away from the crowd of pasta eaters, who apparently could not conceive of leaving the city for a few hours without bringing along noise, that urban product par excellence. Don Rigoberto thought he had found the solution. As if he were a Boy Scout, he proposed that they take off their shoes, roll up their trousers, and wade a small stretch of river out to what looked like a tiny island of sand, rock, and sparse undergrowth which, by some miracle, was not overrun by the large Sunday collectivity. And that is what they did. Rather, that is what they began to do, carrying the bags of food and drink prepared by the cook for their rustic outing. Just a few meters from the idyllic little island, Don Rigoberto—the water came only to his knees, and until this point they had followed their route without incident—slipped on something cartilaginous. He lost his balance and sat down in the cool waters of the Rímac River, which, in and of itself, would have been of no importance considering the hot weather and how much he was perspiring if, at the same time, the picnic basket had not also gone down and, adding a comic touch to the accident, had not scattered everything it contained before coming to rest on the riverbed, strewing spicy ceviche, rice and duck, and crêpes with blancmange, along with the exquisite red-and-white-checkered cloth and napkins selected by Doña Lucrecia for the picnic, all across the turbulent waters that were already carrying them away toward Lima and the Pacific.

  “Just go ahead and laugh, don’t hold back, I won’t be angry,” said Don Rigoberto to his wife and son, who, as they helped him to his feet, were making grotesque faces in an effort to suppress their howls of laughter. The people on shore, seeing him soaked from head to toe, were laughing too.

  Inclined toward heroism (for the first time in his life?), Don Rigoberto suggested they persevere and stay on, claiming that the Chaclacayo sun would dry him before they knew it. Doña Lucrecia was categorical. That she would not do, he could catch pneumonia, they were going back to Lima. And they did, defeated, but not despairing. And laughing affectionately at poor Don Rigoberto, who had taken off his trousers and drove in his shorts. It was almost five when they reached the house in Barranco. While Don Rigoberto showered and changed, Doña Lucrecia, with the help of Justiniana, who had just returned from her day off—the butler and cook would not be back until later that night—prepared chicken and avocado-with-tomato-and-egg sandwiches for their belated and eventful lunch.

  “Since you made up with my stepmamá you’ve become so good, Papá.”

  Don Rigoberto moved the half-eaten sandwich away from his mouth. He grew thoughtful. “Are you serious?”

  “Very serious,” the boy replied, turning toward Doña Lucrecia. “Isn’t it true, Stepmamá? For two days he hasn’t grumbled or complained about anything, he’s always in a good mood and saying nice things. Isn’t that being good?”

  “It’s only been two days,” Doña Lucrecia said with a laugh. But then, becoming serious and looking tenderly at her husband, she added, “In fact, he always was very good. It’s just taken you a while to realize it, Fonchito.”

  “I don’t know if I like being called good,” Don Rigoberto reacted at last, his expression apprehensive. “All the good people I’ve known were pretty imbecilic. As if they were good because they lacked imagination and desire. I hope I’m not becoming more of an imbecile than I already am simply because I feel happy.”

  “No danger of that.” Señora Lucrecia put her face close to her husband’s and kissed him on the forehead. “You may be everything else in the world, but not that.”

  She looked very beautiful, her cheeks colored by the Chaclacayo sun, her shoulders and arms bare in a light dress of flowered percale that gave her a fresh, healthy air. How lovely, how youthful, thought Don Rigoberto, delighting in his wife’s slender throat and the charming curve of one of her ears where a stray lock of hair curled, having escaped the ribbon—the same yellow as the espadrilles she had worn on the outing—that held her hair at the nape of her neck. Eleven years had gone by, and she looked younger and more attractive than on the day he met her. And this health and physical beauty that defied time, where were they best reflected? “In her eyes,” he answered his own question. Eyes that changed color from pale gray to dark green to soft black. Now they looked very light under her long, dark lashes, and animated by a merry, almost flashing sparkle. Unaware that she was the object of contemplation, his wife ate her second avocado-with-egg-and-tomato sandwich with good appetite, and from time to time took sips of cold beer that left her lips wet. Was it happiness, this feeling that overwhelmed him? This grateful admiration and desire he felt for Lucrecia? Yes. Don Rigoberto wished with all his heart that the hours till nightfall would fly by. Once again they would be alone and he would hold in his arms his adored wife, here, in flesh and blood, at last.

  “The only thing that sometimes makes me think I’m not so similar to Egon Schiele is that he liked the country a lot, and I don’t at all,” said Fonchito, speaking a thought he’d begun to turn over in his mind some time before. “I’m a lot like you that way, Papá. I don’t like seeing trees and cows either.”

  “That’s why our picnic turned out topsy-turvy,” Don Rigoberto philosophized. “Nature’s revenge against two of her enemies. What did you say about Egon Schiele?”

  “I said that the only way I don’t resemble him is that he liked the country and I don’t,” Fonchito explained. “He paid a price for loving nature. They arrested him and put him in prison for a month, and he nearly lost his mind. If he had stayed in Vienna, it never would have happened.”

  “You’re very well informed about the life of Egon Schiele, Fonchito,” Don Rigoberto said in surprise.

  “You can’t imagine,” Doña Lucrecia interjected. “He knows by heart everything he did, said, wrote, everything that happened to him in his twenty-eight years. He knows all the paintings, drawings, engravings, their titles and dates too. He even thinks he’s the reincarnation of Egon Schiele. I swear, it frightens me.”

  Don Rigo
berto did not laugh. He nodded, as if pondering this information with the greatest care, but, in fact, he was concealing the sudden appearance in his mind of a tiny worm, the stupid curiosity that was the mother of all vices. How did Lucrecia know that Fonchito knew so much about Egon Schiele? Schiele! he thought. A perverse variant of Expressionism whom Oskar Kokoschka rightly called a pornographer. He found himself possessed by a visceral, biting, bilious hatred for Egon Schiele. Blessed be the Spanish influenza that carried him off. How did Lucrecia know that Fonchito thought he was this misbegotten hack spawned in the death throes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that, just as fortunately, had been carried off by deceit? Worst of all, unaware she was sinking into the fetid waters of self-incrimination, Doña Lucrecia continued to torture him.

  “I’m glad the subject has come up, Rigoberto. I’ve wanted to talk to you about this for a long time; I even thought of writing to you. The boy’s mania for that painter has me very worried. Yes, Fonchito. Why don’t the three of us talk it over? Who can give you better advice than your father? I’ve already said it several times. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your passion for Egon Schiele. But it’s becoming an obsession. You don’t mind if the three of us discuss it, do you?”

  “I don’t think my papá’s feeling very well, Stepmamá” was all that Fonchito would say, with an innocence that Don Rigoberto took as a further affront.

  “My God, how pale you are. You see? I told you so. That little dip in the river has made you sick.”

  “It’s nothing, nothing,” Don Rigoberto vaguely reassured his wife in a strangled voice. “Too big a mouthful and I choked. A bone, I think. It’s gone down, I’m all right now. I’m fine, don’t worry.”

  “But you’re trembling,” Doña Lucrecia said in alarm, touching his forehead. “You’ve caught a cold, I knew it. A nice hot cup of tea and a couple of aspirin, right now. I’ll get it for you. No, don’t say anything. And straight to bed, no arguments.”

  Not even the word “bed” could raise Don Rigoberto’s spirits, for in just a few minutes his mood had changed from vital joy and enthusiasm to bewildered demoralization. He saw Doña Lucrecia hurrying to the kitchen. Fonchito’s transparent glance made him uneasy, and to break the silence he said, “Schiele was arrested because he went to the country?”

  “Not because he went to the country, what an idea,” his son said, bursting into laughter. “Because he was accused of immorality and seduction. In a little village called Neulengbach. It never would have happened if he had stayed in Vienna.”

  “Really? Tell me about it,” Don Rigoberto urged, aware that he was trying to gain time, though he didn’t know for what. Instead of the glorious, sunny splendor of the past two days, his state of mind was now a disastrous storm with heavy rain, thunder, lightning. Calling on a remedy that had worked on other occasions, he tried to calm himself by mentally listing mythological figures. Cyclops, sirens, Lestrigons, lotus-eaters, Circes, Calypsos. He got no further.

  It happened in the spring of 1912, in the month of April, to be exact, the boy rambled on. Egon and his lover Wally (a nickname: her real name was Valeria Neuzil) were out in the country, in a rented cottage on the outskirts of the village whose name was so difficult to pronounce. Neulengbach. Egon would frequently paint outdoors, taking advantage of the good weather. And one afternoon a young girl appeared and struck up a conversation with him. They talked, that was all. The girl returned several times. Until one stormy night, when she showed up soaking wet and announced to Wally and Egon that she had run away from home. They tried to change her mind, you’ve done a bad thing, go home, but she said no, no, let me at least spend the night with you. They agreed. The girl slept with Wally; Egon Schiele was in another room. The next day…But the return of Doña Lucrecia, carrying a steaming infusion of lemon verbena and two aspirin, interrupted Fonchito’s story, which, as a matter of fact, Don Rigoberto had barely heard.

  “Drink it all up while it’s nice and hot,” Doña Lucrecia pampered him. “And take the two aspirin. Then beddy-byes. I don’t want you to catch a cold, baby.”

  Don Rigoberto felt—his great nostrils inhaled the garden fragrance of the lemon verbena—his wife’s lips resting for a few moments on the sparse hairs at the top of his skull.

  “I’m telling him about Egon going to prison, Stepmamá,” Fonchito explained. “I’ve told you so many times you’d be bored hearing it again.”

  “No, no, of course, go on,” she urged him. “Though you’re right, I do know it by heart.”

  “When did you tell your stepmother this story?” The question escaped between Don Rigoberto’s teeth as he blew on the lemon verbena tea. “She’s been home barely two days and I’ve monopolized her day and night.”

  “When I visited her in her little house at the Olivar,” the boy replied with his customary crystalline frankness. “Didn’t she tell you?”

  Don Rigoberto felt the air in the dining room turn electric. So he wouldn’t have to talk to his wife or look at her, he took a heroic swallow of the burning lemon verbena, scalding his throat and esophagus. The inferno settled in his innards.

  “I haven’t had time,” he heard Doña Lucrecia whisper. He looked at her and—oh! oh!—she was livid. But of course she intended to tell him. There was nothing wrong about those visits, was there?

  “Of course there was nothing wrong,” Don Rigoberto declared, swallowing another mouthful of the hellish perfumed liquid. “I think it’s fine that you went to your stepmamá’s house to give her my news. And the story about Schiele and his lover? You stopped in the middle, and I want to know how it ends.”

  “Can I go on?” Fonchito asked happily.

  Don Rigoberto felt his throat as a burning wound; his wife stood mute and frozen at his side, and he guessed that her heart was racing. Just like his.

  Well, so…The next day Egon and Wally took the girl by train to Vienna, where her grandmother lived. She had promised she would stay with that lady. But in the city she changed her mind and spent the night with Wally, in a hotel. The next morning Egon and his lover took the girl back to Neulengbach, and she stayed with them another two days. On the third day her father showed up. He confronted Egon outdoors, where he was painting. He was very angry and said he had denounced him to the police, accusing him of seduction, because his daughter was a minor. While Schiele tried to calm him, explaining that nothing had happened, the girl spied her father from inside the house, picked up a pair of scissors, and tried to slash her wrists. But Wally, Egon, and her father all stopped her, they helped her, and she and her father talked and made up. They left together, and Wally and Egon thought everything had been settled. But of course it wasn’t. The police came to arrest him a few days later.”

  Were they listening to his story? Apparently they were, for both Don Rigoberto and Doña Lucrecia found themselves petrified, and seemed to have lost the ability not only to move but even to breathe. Their eyes were fixed on the boy, and throughout his tale, recited without hesitation, with the pauses and emphasis of a good storyteller, neither one blinked an eye. But what about their pallor? Those intense, absorbed stares? Were they so moved by an old story about a painter long ago? These were the questions that Don Rigoberto thought he could read in the great, sparkling eyes of Fonchito, who was now calmly looking from one to the other, as if waiting for some comment. Was he laughing at them? At him? Don Rigoberto looked into his son’s clear, limpid eyes, searching for the malevolent glint, the wink, the flicker of light that would betray his Machiavellian duplicity. He saw nothing: only the healthy, innocent, beautiful gaze of a clear conscience.

  “Shall I go on or are you bored, Papá?”

  He shook his head and, making a great effort—his throat was as dry and rough as sandpaper—he murmured, “What happened to him in prison?”

  “They kept him behind bars for twenty-four days, charged with immorality and seduction. Seduction because of the episode with the girl and immorality because of some paintings and drawings of
nudes that the police found in the house. It was proven that he hadn’t touched the girl, and he was cleared of the first charge. But not the second. The judge ruled that since girls and boys who were minors visited the house and could have seen the nudes, Schiele deserved to be punished. How? By having his most immoral drawings burned.

  “In prison his suffering was unspeakable. The self-portraits he painted in his cell show him as terribly thin, with a beard, sunken eyes, a cadaverous expression. He kept a diary, and in it he wrote (wait, wait, I know the sentence by heart): ‘I, who am by nature one of the freest of creatures, am bound by a law that is not the law of the masses.’ He painted thirteen watercolors, and that saved him from going mad or killing himself: he painted the cot, the door, the window, and a luminous apple, one of those that Wally brought him every day. Every morning she would stand outside the prison, strategically placed so that Egon could see her through the bars of his cell window. Wally loved him dearly and behaved wonderfully during that terrible month, giving him all her support. But he must have loved her less. He painted her, yes; he used her as a model, yes; but not only her, many others too, especially those little girls he picked up in the streets and kept there, half naked, while he painted them in every imaginable pose from the top of his ladder. Little girls and boys were his obsession. He was crazy about them, and, well, not only about painting them, it seems he really liked them, in the good and bad senses of the word. That’s what his biographers say. He may have been an artist, but he was also something of a pervert, because he had a predilection for boys and girls…”