“It’s my writing,” Don Rigoberto murmured, going beyond what he believed was the limit of his capacity for astonishment, and then feeling even more astounded. He had read the first letter with great care, almost ignoring what it said, concentrating only on the calligraphy. “Well, the fact is that my handwriting is the most conventional in the world. Anybody can imitate it.”
“Especially a young boy with a passion for painting, a child-artist,” concluded Doña Lucrecia, flourishing the anonymous letters supposedly written by her, which she had just leafed through. “On the other hand, this is not my writing. That’s why he didn’t give you the only letter I really wrote. So you wouldn’t compare it to these and discover the deception.”
“They’re vaguely similar,” Don Rigoberto corrected her; he had picked up a magnifying glass and was examining the letter, like a collector with a rare stamp. “It is, in any case, a round hand, very clear. The writing of a woman who studied with nuns, probably at the Sophianum.”
“And you didn’t know my handwriting?”
“No, no, I didn’t,” he admitted. It was the third surprise on this night of great surprises. “I realize now that I didn’t. As far as I recall, you never wrote me a letter before.”
“I didn’t write these to you, either.”
Then, for at least half an hour, they sat in silence, reading their respective letters, or more precisely, each one read the other, unknown half of this correspondence. They were sitting next to one another on the large leather sofa with pillows, beneath the tall floor lamp whose shade had drawings of an Australian tribe. The wide circle of light reached both of them. From time to time they drank warm lemonade. From time to time one of them chuckled, but the other asked no questions. From time to time the expression on one of their faces would change, showing amazement, anger, or a sentimental weakness, tenderness, indulgence, a vague melancholy. They finished reading at the same time. They looked at one another obliquely; they were exhausted, perplexed, indecisive. Where should they begin?
“He’s been in here,” Don Rigoberto said at last, pointing at his desk, his shelves. “He’s looked through my things and read them. The most sacred, secret things I have, these notebooks. Not even you have seen them. My supposed letters to you are, in reality, mine. Though I didn’t write them. Because I’m certain he transcribed all those phrases from my notebooks. Making a mixed salad. Combining thoughts, quotations, jokes, games, my own reflections and other people’s.”
“And that’s why those games, those orders, seemed to come from you,” said Doña Lucrecia. “But these letters, I don’t know how you could have thought they were mine.”
“I was going crazy, wanting to know about you, to receive some sign from you,” Don Rigoberto apologized. “Drowning men grab on to whatever’s in front of them, they don’t turn up their noses at anything.”
“But all that vulgarity, that sentimentality? Don’t they sound more like Corín Tellado?”
“They are Corín Tellado, some of them,” said Don Rigoberto, remembering, associating. “A few weeks ago her novels began to show up around the house. I thought they belonged to the maids or the cooks. Now I know whose they were and what they were used for.”
“I’m going to murder that boy,” exclaimed Doña Lucrecia. “Corín Tellado! I swear I’ll murder him.”
“You’re laughing?” he said in astonishment. “You think it’s funny? Should we congratulate him, reward him?”
She really laughed now, for a longer time, more openly than before.
“The truth is, I don’t know what I think, Rigoberto. It certainly is nothing to laugh at. Should we cry? Get angry? All right, let’s get angry, if that’s what must be done. Is that what you’ll do tomorrow? Scold him? Punish him?”
Don Rigoberto shrugged. He wanted to laugh as well. And he felt stupid.
“I’ve never punished him, much less hit him, I wouldn’t know how to do it,” he confessed with some embarrassment. “That’s probably why he’s turned out the way he has. To tell you the truth, I don’t know what to do with him. I suspect that whatever I do, he’ll always win.”
“Well, in this case we’ve won something too.” Doña Lucrecia leaned against her husband, who put his arm around her shoulders. “We’re together again, aren’t we? You never would have dared to call me or ask me to tea at the Tiendecita Blanca without those letters. Isn’t that so? And I wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t for the letters. I’m sure not. They prepared the way. We can’t complain, he helped us, he brought us together. I mean, you’re not sorry we made up, are you, Rigoberto?”
In the end, he laughed too. He rubbed his nose against his wife’s head, feeling her hair tickling his eyes.
“No, I’ll never be sorry about that,” he said. “Well, after so many emotions, we’ve earned the right to sleep. All of this is very nice, but tomorrow I have to go to the office, my dear wife.”
They returned to the bedroom in the dark, holding hands. And she still had the heart to make a joke: “Are we taking Fonchito to Vienna in December?”
Was it really a joke? Don Rigoberto immediately pushed away the evil thought as he proclaimed: “In spite of everything we’re a happy family, aren’t we, Lucrecia?”
By Mario Vargas Llosa
The Cubs and Other Stories
The Time of the Hero
The Green House
Captain Pantoja and the Special Service
Conversation in The Cathedral
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
The War of the End of the World
The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta
The Perpetual Orgy
Who Killed Palomino Molero?
The Storyteller
In Praise of the Stepmother
A Fish in the Water
Death in the Andes
Making Waves
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
19 Union Square West, New York 10003
Copyright © 1997 by Mario Vargas Llosa
Translation copyright © 1998 by Edith Grossman
All rights reserved
Library of Congress catalog card number: 98-070961
First published in Spanish in 1997 under the title Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto by Alfaguara, Madrid
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0064-5
The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto Page 33