"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 teacher?" 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. Away 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 had been 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 himself. 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 mama?" 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."
"Then you're schizophrenic too, Stepmamá." The boy laughed, and again the expression on his face was the look of someone catching her in a mistake.
"A little, no, a lot," she agreed. "Let's not talk about sad things. Tell me about you. Or your papá."
"He misses you too." Fonchito became serious, almost solemn. "That's why he wrote you that anonymous letter. His wound has healed and he wants to make up."
She did not have the heart to argue with him. Now she felt overwhelmed by melancholy, and rather gloomy.
"How is Rigoberto? Living his usual life?"
"From the office to home, and from home to the office, every day," Fonchito agreed. "Sitting in his study, listening to music, looking at his pictures. But it's all an excuse. He doesn't go in there to read or look at paintings or listen to his records, but only to think about you."
"How do you know?"
"Because he talks to you," the boy declared, lowering his voice and looking toward the interior of the house to see if Justiniana was nearby. "I've heard him. I sneak up very slowly and put my ear to the door. It never fails. He's always talking when he's alone. And saying your name, I swear."
"I don't believe you, you're lying."
"You know I wouldn't make up a thing like this, Stepmamá. Do you see now? He wants you to come back."
He spoke with so much certainty that it was difficult not to feel pulled toward his world, so seductive and false, so full of innocence, of good and evil, purity and vileness, spontaneity and calculation. Since this happened, I've stopped grieving about not having my own child, Doña Lucrecia thought. She believed she understood why. The boy, sitting back on his heels, the book of reproductions open at his feet, was scrutinizing her.
"Do you know something, Fonchito?" she said, almost without thinking. "I love you very much."
"And I love you, Stepmamá."
"Don't interrupt. And because I love you, it hurts me that you're not like other boys. Acting so grown-up, you miss something you can only have at the age you are now. The most wonderful thing that can happen to anyone is being young. And you, you're wasting it."
"I don't understand you, Stepmamá," Fonchito said impatiently. "Just a minute ago you said I was the most normal boy in the world. Did I do something wrong?"
"No, no," she reassured him. "I mean that I'd like to see you playing soccer, going to the stadium, going out with kids from the neighborhood and from school. Having friends your own age. Having parties, dancing, falling in love with girls. Aren't you interested in any of those things?"
Fonchito shrugged disdainfully.
"They're so boring," he replied, not giving her words too much importance. "I play soccer at recess, and that's enough. Sometimes I go out with guys from the neighborhood. But I'm bored by the dumb things they like to do. And the girls are even dumber. Do you think I could talk to them about Egon Schiele? When I'm with my friends I feel as if I'm wasting my time. But with you, I'm making good use of it. I like being here and talking to you a thousand times more than smoking with the kids on the Barranco Seawalk. And what do I need girls for if I have you, Stepmamá?"
She did not know what to say. The smile she attempted could not have been more false. The boy, she was sure, was perfectly conscious of the embarrassment she felt. Looking at his upturned face, the features transformed by euphoria, the eyes devouring her with a manly light, she had the impression he was about to get up and kiss her on the mouth. She was relieved to see Justiniana come in just then. But her relief did not last very long, because when she saw the small white envelope in the girl's hand, she guessed what it was.
"Somebody slipped this envelope under the door, Señora."
"I bet it's another anonymous letter from my papá," Fonchito exclaimed, clapping his hands.
An Exaltation and Defense of Phobias
From this remote corner of the world, dear friend Peter Simplon—if that really is your last name and not a perverse alteration by some viper from the journalistic snakepit intending to ridicule you even further—I send you both my solidarity and my admiration. This morning, on my way to the office, I heard the newscast on Radio America reporting that a court in Syracuse, New York, had sentenced you to three months in prison for repeatedly climbing to the roof of your neighbor's house in order to spy on her as she bathed, and since then I have been counting the minutes until the day was over and I could return to my house and write these lines to you. I wish to tell you right now that these effusive feelings for you exploded in my chest (this is not a metaphor, I felt a grenade of friendship go off inside my ribs), not when I learned the sentence, but when I heard your reply to the judge (a reply that the wretched man considered an aggravating factor): "I did it because I found the hair under my neighbor's arms irresistibly attractive." (The rattlesnake of an announcer, when he read this part of the report, put on a mellifluous, joking voice, to let his listeners know he was even more of an imbecile than his profession would oblige one to suppose.)
My fetishist friend, I have never been in Syracuse, a city about which I know nothing except that it is devastated by snowstorms and arctic cold in the winter, but it must have something special at its very core to give birth to a man of your sensibility and fantasy, possessed of the courage you have displayed, risking disgrace and, I imagine, your livelihood, as well as the mockery of friends and family, to defend your small eccentricity (when I say small, I clearly mean inoffensive, benign, exceedingly healthful and beneficial, since you and I both know that no manias or phobias lack grandeur, for they constitute a human being's originality and the supreme expression of his sovereignty).
This being said, and in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I feel obliged to inform you that what you find a delicacy is inedible to me, for in the rich universe of desires and dreams, those clumps of fleece in feminine armpits, the sight (and, I suppose, the taste, touch, and smell) of which brings you the most sublime joy, demoralize and disgust me, and repel me sexually. (Looking at Ribera's Bearded Woman made me impotent for three weeks.) This is why my beloved Lucrecia always made certain that her soft underarms never revealed even the premonition of fleece, and the skin always seemed, to my eyes, tongue, and lips, like the smooth bottom of a cherub. In the matter of a woman's fleece, I find delight only in the pubic, as long as it is well groomed and does not grow excessively dense and long on the sides, or in unkempt tangles that make the act of love difficult and turn cunnilingus into an undertaking that threatens asphyxiation and choking.
Following your lead, having begun this intimate confession, I will add that not only underarms soiled by fleece ("hair" is a word that makes the reality even worse by adding sebaceous material and dandruff) provoke antisexual horror in me, comparable only to that produced by the disgraceful spectacle of a woman who chews gum, or has whiskers on her upper lip, or bipeds of either sex who root about their teeth with that ignoble object called a toothpick, searching for excrescences, or who gnaw at their nails, or who, in full view of the world and without scruple or shame, eat a mango, an orange, a pomegranate, a peach, grapes, custard apples, or any fruit having ghastly hard things—stems, fibers, pits, skins, rinds—the mere mention (not to mention the sight) of which makes my skin crawl and infects my soul with furious homicidal impulses. I in no way exaggerate, my dear companion-in-pride regarding our phantoms, if I say that each time I observe someone eating a fruit and removing the inedible parts from his mouth, or spitting them out, I feel nausea, and even find myself wishing for the death of the guilty party. By the same token, I have always considered any diner to be a cannibal if, when he brings the fork up to his mouth, he raises his elbow at the same time as his hand.
This is how we are, we are not ashamed, and I admire nothing so much as people willing to go to prison and expose themselves to ignominy for the sake of their manias. I am not one of them. I have organized my life secretly, within the bosom of the family, to reach the moral heights you have reached in public. In my case, everything is accomplished with discretion and prudence, with no missionary or exhibitionist spirit, in the most evasive manner, so as not to provoke sarcasm and hostility in those around me, people with whom I am forced to coexist because of professional or familial obligations, or for reasons of social servitude. If you are thinking there is a good deal of cowardice in me—above all when compared to your audacity in standing before the world as the man you are—then you are absolutely correct. I am much less a coward now than when I was young with regard to my phobias and manias—I don't like either term because of the pejorative implications and the association with psychologists or psychoanalytic couches, but what name can I use that would not injure them: eccentricities? private desires? For the moment, let us say that the second is less bad. In those days I was very Catholic, a member, then a leader, of Catholic Action, influenced by thinkers like Jacques Maritain; in other words, a worshipper of social utopias, certain that by means of an energetic apostolate inspired in the Gospels, we could wrest control of human history away from the spirit of evil—we called it sin—and build a homogeneous society based on spiritual values. I spent the best years of my youth working to realize the Christian Republic, that collectivist utopia of the spirit, enduring with all the zeal of a convert the brutal refutations endlessly inflicted on me and my companions by a human reality vexed at the lunacy of every effort to construct something coherent and egalitarian out of the vortex of incompatible particularities which constitute the human conglomerate. It was during those years, my dear Peter Simplon of Syracuse, that I discovered, at first with a certain affection and then with embarrassment and shame, the manias that distinguished me from others and made me a unique specimen. (Many years would have to go by, countless experiences would be necessary, before I finally understood that all human beings are a case apart, which is what makes us creative and gives meaning to our freedom.) How amazed I was when the mere sight of a man, who until then had been a close friend, peeling an orange with his hands, putting the sections into his mouth, not caring that repellent strings of pulp were hanging from his lips, and spitting inedible whitish seeds in all directions, was enough to turn fondness into unconquerable dislike, and a short while later I broke off my friendship with him on some pretext or other.
My confessor, Father Dorante, a good-natured Jesuit of the old school, listened without undue concern to my anxieties and scruples, considering those "little manias" as minor, venial sins, the unavoidable whims of any child of a well-off family who had been excessively catered to by his parents. "You want to be a freak, Rigoberto." He laughed. "Except for your monumental ears and anteater's nose, I've never seen anyone more normal than you. And so when you see someone eating fruit with pulp or pits, look the other way and don't lose any sleep over it." But I did lose sleep, I was frightened and troubled. Above all, after breaking with Otilia on some trivial pretext, Otilia of the braids, the skates, and the little turned-up nose, whom I loved so much and whom I pestered so much to make her notice me. Why did I quarrel with her? What crime was committed by the beautiful Otilia in her white uniform from the Villa María Academy? She ate grapes in front of me. She put them in her mouth one by one, showing her delight, rolling her eyes and sighing to mock my horrified grimaces, for I had already shared my phobia with her. She opened her mouth and made my disgust complete by using her hands to remove the repulsive seeds and obscene skins and tossing them into the garden of her house—we were sitting there, on the fence—with a defiant gesture. I detested her! I hated her! My long-time love melted away like a snowball in the sun, and for many days I hoped she would be hit by a car, knocked down by waves, infected by scarlet fever. "That's not a sin, my boy," Father Dorante thought he was reassuring me. "That's raving lunacy. You don't need a confessor, you need a keeper."
But, dear friend and beau idéal from Syracuse, this all made me feel abnormal. At the time the thought devastated me, because like so many hominids—the majority of them, I fear—I did not associate the notion of being different with a vindication of my independence but only with the social sanctions that inevitably fall on the black sheep of the flock. Being the pariah, the exception to the rule, seemed to me the worst of calamities. Until I discovered that not all manias were phobias; some were also a mysterious source of pleasure. The knees and elbows of girls, for example. My friends liked pretty eyes, a slim or a voluptuous body, a slender waist, and the boldest among them relished a prominent bottom or shapely legs. I alone gave a privileged place to those joints which, as I now confess with no shame in the tomb-like intimacy of my notebooks, I valued more than all the rest of a girl's physical attributes. I say it and will not retract it. Well-cushioned, rounded, satiny knees with no bony protuberances; glossy elbows, unwrinkled, unroughened, smooth and soft to the touch, endowed with the spongy quality of cake; these arouse me to the point of delirium. I am overjoyed to see and touch them; if I kiss them, I am transported to seventh heaven. You probably will not have the opportunity to do so, but if you needed confirmation from Lucrecia, my beloved, she would tell you how many hours I have spent—as many as at the foot of the cross when I was a boy—in ecstatic adoration, contemplating the perfection and unparalleled smoothness of her geometric knees and enchanting elbows, kissing them, biting them like a puppy playing with his bone, utterly intoxicated, until my tongue going to sleep or a labial cramp brings me back to pedestrian reality. Dear Lucrecia! Of all the graces that adorn her, I am most grateful for her understanding of my weaknesses, her wisdom in helping me to realize my fantasies.
On account of this mania, I found myself obliged to examine my conscience. A friend from Catholic Action who knew me very well and was aware of what attracted me most in girls—their knees and elbows—warned me that something was wrong. He was very fond of psychology, which made matters worse, for, in his orthodox way, he wanted to bring human behavior and motivation into harmony with the morality and teachings of the Church. He spoke of deviancy and pronounced the words "fetishism" and "fetishist." They now seem two of the most acceptable in the dictionary (that is what we are, you and I and all sensitive people), but in those days they sounded to me like depravity and abominable vice.
You and I know, my Syracusan friend, that fetishism is not the "cult of fetishes," as the Dictionary of the Academy so unfortunately defines it, but a privileged form of expression of human particularity that allows men and women to define their space, mark their difference from others, exercise their imagination, express their anti-herd spirit, and be free. I would like to recount to you, as we sit in a little cottage in the countryside surrounding your city, which I picture as full of lakes, pine groves, and hills white with snow, and drink a glass of whiskey together and listen to the logs crackling in the hearth, how discovering the central role of fetishism in the individual's life played a decisive role in my disenchantment with social utopias—the idea that it was possible to collectively create happiness and goodness or realize any ethical or aesthetic value—in my journey from faith to agnosticism and the belief that moves me now: since man and woman cannot live without utopias, the only realistic way to create them is by transferring them from the social to the individual sphere. A collective cannot organize to achieve any kind of perfection without destroying the freedom of many and obliterating beautiful individual differences in the name of horrifying common denominators. On the other hand, the solitary individual can—by acting on his appetites, manias, fetishes, phobias, or preferences—create his own world, one that approaches (or eventually incarnates, as it does in saints and Olympic champions) the supreme ideal in which experience and desire are one. Naturally, in certain privileged instances, a happy coincidence—for example, the sperm and ovum meeting to produce fertilization—allows two people to realize their dreams in complementary fashion. This was true in the case (I've just read it in the biography written by his understanding widow) of the journalist, playwright, critic, entertainer, and professionally frivolous man, Kenneth Tynan, a secret masochist to whom chance granted the opportunity of meeting a girl who happened to be a shameless sadist, a fact that allowed them both to be happy two or three times a week in a Kensington basement, he receiving the lash of the whip and she dispensing it, in a bruising game that transported them to heaven. I respect but do not practice games that have Mercurochrome and arnica as their corollaries.
Since we are relating anecdotes—in this sphere there are hundreds of them—I cannot resist describing for you the fantasy that afflicts the libido of Cachito Arnilla, a champion in the verbose profession of selling insurance, with the frenzy of Saint Vitus' dance; it consists—he confessed this to me at one of those abominable Patriotic Festival or Christmas cocktail parties that I cannot avoid attending—of seeing a woman, naked except for stiletto heels, smoking and playing billiards. This image, which he thinks he saw as a boy in some magazine, was associated with his first erections, and since then it has been the polestar of his sexual life. Dear Cachito! When he married a dark little hussy from Accounting, capable, I am sure, of complying with his wishes, I slyly presented him, in the name of La Perricholi Insurance Company—I am the director—with a full-size billiard table, delivered to his house in a van on the day of his wedding. Everyone thought it was an inane gift, but the look in Cachito's eye and the anticipatory salivation with which he expressed his thanks told me I had hit the bull's-eye.
My dear friend from Syracuse, lover of underarm bushes, the exaltation of manias and phobias must have limits. One needs to recognize certain restrictions, for without them crime would be unleashed and we would return to the bestiality of the jungle. But in the private domain, the domain of these phantoms, everything should be permitted between adults who consent to the game and its rules for their mutual pleasure. And though I find many of these games unbearably repugnant (for example, the little pills that produced the noisy farts so beloved of the gallant French century and, in particular, of the Marquis de Sade, who, not content with mistreating women, also demanded that they make him dizzy with artillery explosions of gases) it is equally true that in this sphere such differences deserve consideration and respect, for nothing else so well represents the unfathomable complexity of the human person.
Did you infringe upon the human rights and freedom of your hairy neighbor when you climbed to her roof in order to pay admiring homage to the tufts under her arms? No doubt. Did you deserve to be punished in the name of social harmony? Oh my, of course you did. But you knew that and took the risk, prepared to pay the price for peeping at the overgrown armpits of your neighbors. I've already told you I cannot emulate your courageous extremes. My sense of the ridiculous and my contempt for heroics, not to mention my physical clumsiness, are too great, and I would never dare to climb someone else's roof even for a glimpse, on a hairless body, of the roundest knees and most spherical elbows known to the female gender. My natural cowardice, which may be nothing more than an unhealthy legalistic instinct, leads me to find a propitious corner for my manias, phobias, and fetishes within the confines of what is commonly called the licit. Does this deprive me of a succulent treasure trove of lasciviousness? Of course. But what I do have is sufficient, as long as one derives the pleasure one should from it, which I attempt to do.
May your three months be easy, and may your dreams behind bars be filled with forests of fleece, avenues of silky hair—black, blond, red—along which you gallop, swim, run, frantic with joy.
Goodbye, my brother.
The Professor's Panties
Don Rigoberto opened his eyes: there, draped between the third and fourth stairs, blue and shiny and edged in lace, provocative and poetic, were her panties, the professor's panties. He trembled like one possessed. He had not slept despite spending a long time in the dark, lying in bed, listening to the murmur of the sea, lost in elusive fantasies. Until, suddenly, that phone had rung again, waking him with a violent start.
"Hello, hello?"
"Rigoberto, is that you?"
He recognized the voice of the aging professor, though he spoke very quietly, covering the mouthpiece with his hand and muffling his words. Where were they? In an old university town. In what country? The United States. In which state? Virginia. What university? The state university, the beautiful school built in neoclassic style with rows of white columns and designed by Thomas Jefferson.
"Is that you, Professor?"
"Yes, yes, Rigoberto. But speak slowly. Forgive me for waking you."
"Not at all, Professor. How was your dinner with Professor Lucrecia? Have you finished?"
The voice of the venerable jurist and philosopher, Nepomuceno Riga, broke into hieroglyphic stammering. Rigoberto realized that something serious had happened to his old teacher of Philosophy of Law at Catholic University in Lima, who had come to attend a symposium at the University of Virginia, where Rigoberto was doing graduate work (in legislation and insurance) and acting as his former teacher's chauffeur and guide: he had taken him to visit Monticello, Jefferson's home, now a museum, and to the historical sites of the Battle of Manassas.
"Rigoberto, I apologize for imposing on you, but you're the only person here I can trust. You were my student, I know your family, and you've been so kind these past few days …"
"Please, Don Nepomuceno, don't mention it," the young Rigoberto said encouragingly. "Is something wrong?"
Don Rigoberto sat up in bed, shaken by an anticipatory little laugh. It seemed to him that at any moment the bathroom door would open and the figure of Doña Lucrecia would be sketched there, surprising him with an exquisite pair of panties, in colors, or black or white, with embroidery, openings, silk trim, backstitched or smooth, the kind that covered just enough of her mound of Venus to emphasize it, and at the edges, peeking out to tempt him—wayward, coquettish—some stray pubic hairs. An undergarment like the one that lay so unexpectedly, as if it were a provocative object in a surrealist painting by the Catalonian Joan Ponc or the Romanian Victor Brauner, on the staircase which that good soul, that innocent spirit, Don Nepomuceno Riga, had to climb to reach his bedroom—Don Nepomuceno, who, in his memorable classes, the only ones worth remembering in seven dry-as-dust years studying law, would erase the blackboard with his tie.
"It's just that I don't know what to do, Rigoberto. I find myself in an awkward situation. In spite of my age, I have absolutely no experience in these matters."
"In which matters, Professor? Tell me, don't be embarrassed."
Why, instead of lodging him at the Holiday Inn or the Hilton along with the other scholars attending the symposium, why had they arranged for Don Nepomuceno to stay at the home of the woman who taught International Law II? Surely out of deference to his prestige. Or because the two enjoyed a friendship based on their encounters at law schools throughout the world, and their presence at the same conferences, lectures, and round tables, or perhaps because they had collaborated on an erudite paper abounding in Latin phrases that appeared, with a profusion of notes and an oppressive bibliography, in a professional journal published in Buenos Aires, Tübingen, or Helsinki? Whatever the reason, the esteemed Don Nepomuceno, instead of staying in an impersonal windowed cubicle at the Holiday Inn, spent his nights in Professor Lucrecia's comfortable, rustic-modern house, which Rigoberto knew quite well because this semester he was taking her seminar on International Law II and had gone several times to knock on her door and deliver his papers or return the dense treatises that she, very kindly, had lent him. Don Rigoberto closed his eyes and felt goose bumps as he once again saw the musical hips of the jurist's well-proportioned, erect figure walking away from him.
"Are you all right, Professor?"
"Yes, yes, Rigoberto. Really, it's very silly. You're going to laugh at me. But, as I say, I have no experience. I'm bewildered and confused, my boy."
He did not have to say so; his voice quavered as if he were about to lose it and his words had to be pulled out with forceps. He must have been drenched in icy perspiration. Would he find the courage to tell him what had happened?
"Well, just imagine. Tonight, when I returned from the cocktail party in our honor, Dr. Lucrecia prepared supper here in her house. Just for the two of us; yes, it was very considerate of her. An extremely pleasant meal, served with a bottle of wine. I'm not accustomed to alcohol, and so my befuddlement is probably due to the wine going to my head. A nice little California wine, apparently. Though rather strong, I must say."
"Stop beating about the bush, Professor, and tell me what happened."
"Wait, wait. Think of it, after supper and the bottle of wine, Professor Lucrecia insisted we drink cognac. I couldn't refuse, of course, it would have been impolite. But I saw stars, my boy. It was liquid fire. I began to cough and even thought I might go blind. But something ridiculous happened instead. I fell asleep. Yes, yes, son, right in the chair, right in the living room that is also a library. And when I awoke, I don't know how much later, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, the professor was not there. She must have gone to bed, I thought. And I prepared to do the same. And then, then, just think, as I was climbing the stairs, whoosh, out of the blue, right in front of my eyes, you can't imagine what I saw. Panties! Yes, right in my path. Don't laugh, my boy, because even if it is laughable, I'm terribly upset. I tell you, I don't know what to do."
"Of course I'm not laughing, Don Nepomuceno. You don't think that intimate article of clothing was there by accident?"
"By accident? Not at all! Son, I may not be experienced, but I'm not in my dotage yet. She left it there ex professo, so that I would find it. Only she and I are under this roof. She put it there."
"But then, Professor, the best thing that can happen to a guest is happening to you. You've received an invitation from your hostess. It's as clear as day."
The professor's voice broke three times before he could articulate anything intelligible.
"You think so, Rigoberto? Well, that's what I thought too when I finally could think, after the shock. You'd call it an invitation, wouldn't you? It can't be accidental; this house is a paragon of order, like the professor herself. That garment was placed there intentionally. Even its arrangement on the staircase is no accident, because it is highlighted and carefully displayed, I swear."
"The intent was to trip you up, if you'll permit me the joke, Don Nepomuceno."
"Rigoberto, I'm laughing too, inside. Despite my confusion, I mean. That's why I need your advice. What should I do? I never dreamed I'd find myself in a situation like this."
"What you should do is very clear, Professor. Don't you like Dr. Lucrecia? She's a very attractive woman; I think she is, and so do my classmates. She's the best-looking woman on Virginia's faculty."
"No doubt she is, nobody can deny it. She's a very beautiful lady."
"Then don't lose any more time. Go and knock on her door. Don't you see? She's waiting for you. Go before she falls asleep."
"Can I take that liberty? Knock on her door, just like that?"
"Where are you now?"
"Where would I be? In the living room, at the foot of the stairs. Why do you think I'm talking so quietly? So I just go up and knock on her door? Just like that?"
"Don't waste a second. She's left you a sign, you can't pretend not to understand. Above all, if you like her. Because she appeals to you, doesn't she, Professor?"
"Of course. It's what I must do, yes, you're right. But I feel somewhat constrained. Thank you, my boy. I needn't remind you to keep this in strictest confidence? For my sake, and especially for the sake of the professor's reputation."
"I'll be as silent as a tomb, Don Nepomuceno. Don't hesitate any longer. Go up those stairs, pick up the panties, and take them to her. Knock on her door and begin by making a joke about the surprise you found on your way up. It will all turn out wonderfully, you'll see. You'll always remember this night, Professor."
Before the sound of the click that ended the conversation, Don Rigoberto heard a rumbling stomach and an anguished belch that the aged jurist could not suppress. How nervous and alarmed he must have been in the darkness of that living room filled with law books, in the potency of the Virginia spring night, torn between his hope for an adventure—the first in a lifetime of purely matrimonial and reproductive coitus?—and his cowardice disguised as rigorous ethical principles, religious convictions, and social prejudices. Which of the forces struggling in his spirit would emerge victorious? Would it be desire or fear?
Don Rigoberto, almost without realizing it, engrossed in what had become the totemic image of the panties left on Professor Lucrecia's staircase, got out of bed and went to his study without turning on the light. His body avoided obstacles—the bench, the Nubian sculpture, pillows, the television set—with an ease acquired through assiduous practice, for since his wife's departure not a night had gone by when sleeplessness did not drive him to leave his bed while it was still dark and seek, among his papers and scrawled notes, a balm for his nostalgia and solitude. His mind still fixed on the figure of the venerable jurist assailed by circumstance (embodied in the undergarment of a perfumed and voluptuous woman, which lay before him between two steps of a jurisprudential staircase) and forced into Hamletian uncertainty, but sitting now before the large wooden table in his study and leafing through his notebooks, Don Rigoberto gave a start when the golden cone of light from the lamp revealed the German proverb written at the top of the page: Wer die Wahl hat, hat die Qual ("Whoever must choose must suffer"). Extraordinary! Wasn't this adage, copied from who knows where, a perfect depiction of the state of mind of poor, fortunate Don Nepomuceno Riga, tempted by that well-fleshed academic, Dr. Lucrecia?
His hands, turning the pages of another notebook, challenging chance to see if for a second time he could happen upon, or establish, a relationship between what he found and what he dreamed that would serve as fuel to his fantasy, suddenly stopped ("like the hands of a croupier setting the ball in motion on a spinning roulette wheel"), and he avidly leaned forward. Written on the page was his response to Edith's Diary, by Patricia Highsmith.
He raised his head, disconcerted. He heard the furious waves at the foot of the cliff. Patricia Highsmith? The novelist who wrote about boring crimes committed by Mr. Ripley, an apathetic, unmotivated criminal, did not interest him in the least. He had always reacted with yawns (comparable to the ones produced in him by the popular Tibetan Book of the Living and the Dead) when this crime writer (helped along by Alfred Hitchcock movies) was all the rage a few years back among the hundred or so people who comprised the Limenian reading public. What was a hack writer for movie fans doing in his notebooks? He could not recall when or why he had written his comments on Edith's Diary, a book he did not even remember.
"An excellent novel for understanding that fiction is a flight into the imaginary which emends life. Edith's familial, political, and personal frustrations are not gratuitous; they are rooted in the reality that causes her the greatest suffering: her son Cliffie. Instead of showing him in her diary as he actually is—a weak failure of a boy who was not accepted at the university and does not know how to work—Cliffie breaks free of the original and, in the pages written by his mother, leads the life Edith wanted for him: he is a successful journalist married to a girl from a fine family, he has children and a good job, he is the kind of son who fills his mother with pride.
"But fiction is only a temporary remedy, for though it consoles Edith and takes her mind off her troubles, it removes her from life's struggle, isolating her in a purely mental world. Relationships with her friends are weakened or ended; she loses her job and becomes destitute. Her death seems melodramatic, but from a symbolic point of view it has coherence; Edith moves physically to the place she had already occupied in life: unreality.
"The novel is constructed with deceptive simplicity, beneath which a dramatic context is depicted: the merciless struggle between reality and desire, those sisters who are bitter enemies separated by impassable distances except in the miraculous recesses of the human spirit."
Don Rigoberto felt his teeth chatter, his palms perspire. Now he remembered the insignificant novel and the reason for his reflections. Would he, like Edith, eventually slide into ruin because he abused fantasy? But behind this melancholy hypothesis, the fragrant rose of the panties remained at the center of his consciousness. What had happened to Don Nepomuceno? What did he do and what dilemmas did he encounter after his telephone conversation with the young Rigoberto? Had he followed his student's advice?
He began to tiptoe up the stairs in a relative darkness that permitted him to see bookshelves and the edges of furniture. On the second step he paused, leaned forward, grasped the precious object with stiff fingers—was it silk? linen?—brought it up to his face and buried his nose in it, like a small animal deciding if the strange object was edible. He closed his eyes and kissed it, feeling the beginnings of a vertigo that made him reel as he held on to the banister. He was determined, he would do it. He continued up the stairs, still on tiptoe, the panties in his hand, fearful he would be found out, as if a noise—the steps groaned slightly—might break the spell. His heart was pounding so hard that it crossed his mind how incredibly inopportune and stupid it would be if he were to suffer a heart attack just then. No, it was not an attack; it was curiosity and the sensation (unknown in his life) of tasting forbidden fruit that made his blood race through his veins. He had reached the hall, he was at the jurist's door. He pressed his jaw with both hands, because his grotesquely chattering teeth would make a terrible impression on his hostess. Steeling himself ("summoning all his courage" whispered Don Rigoberto, trembling and dripping with perspiration) he knocked, very slowly. The door was ajar and it opened with a hospitable creak.
What the venerable professor of the Philosophy of Law saw from the carpeted threshold changed his ideas about the world, the human race—most certainly the law—and forced a moan of desperate pleasure from Don Rigoberto. A gold and indigo light (Van Gogh? Botticelli? Some Expressionist like Emil Nolde?) radiating from a round yellow moon in the starry Virginia sky fell, as if arranged by a demanding set designer or a skillful lighting technician, directly on the bed, its sole purpose to highlight the naked body of Dr. Lucrecia. Who could have imagined that the severe clothing she wore at her professor's lectern, those tailored suits in which she expounded her arguments and made her motions at conferences, the waterproof capes she wrapped around herself in winter, concealed a body that would have been claimed by Praxiteles for its harmony, and Renoir for the sumptuous modeling of the flesh. She lay facedown, her head resting on her crossed arms, in a long, extended pose, but it was not her shoulders, morbid arms ("morbid in the Italian sense of the word," Don Rigoberto specified, since he had no liking for the macabre but did relish softness), or curved back that drew the eyes of a dumbfounded Don Nepomuceno like a magnet. Not even her ample milky thighs or small rosy-soled feet. It was those firm spheres which, with a happy lack of shame, rose prominently like twin mountaintops ("the mist-shrouded peaks of mountain ranges in Japanese prints of the Meiji period," Don Rigoberto made the association with satisfaction). But Rubens, Titian, Courbet, Ingres, Urculo, and a half-dozen other master painters of feminine posteriors also seemed to have banded together to give reality, consistency, abundance, and, at the same time, softness, delicacy, spirit, and a sensual vibration to that rump whose whiteness seemed opalescent in the semidarkness. Incapable of restraining himself, not knowing what he was doing, the bedazzled ("corrupted forever after?") Don Nepomuceno took two steps and, when he reached the bed, fell to his knees. The old floorboards groaned.
"Excuse me, Doctor, I found something of yours on the stairs," he stammered, feeling streams of saliva flowing out of the corners of his mouth.
He spoke so softly that not even he could hear what he was saying, or perhaps he moved his lips without making a sound. Neither his voice nor his presence had disturbed the jurist. She breathed quietly, rhythmically, in innocent sleep. But that pose, the fact that she was naked and had left her bedroom door open, had loosened her hair—black, straight, long—so that it swept across her shoulders and back, its blue-tinged darkness contrasting with the whiteness of her skin, could that be innocent? "No, no" was the judgment of Don Rigoberto. "No, no," echoed the stupefied professor, moving his eyes along the undulating surface that, at her flanks, sank and rose like a stormy sea of feminine flesh glorified by moonlight ("more like the oily light and shadow of Titian's bodies," Don Rigoberto amended) a few centimeters from his stunned face: Not innocent, not at all. I'm here because she planned it and brought me here.
And yet he could not derive from that theoretical conclusion sufficient strength to do what his reawakened instincts demanded: pass his fingertips along the satiny skin, rest his matrimonial lips on those hills and dales that he expected to be warm, fragrant, with a taste in which the sweet and salty coexisted but did not combine. Petrified with happiness, he could do nothing but look, look. After traveling back and forth many times between the head and feet of this miracle, passing over it again and again, his eyes stopped moving and rested, like the exquisite palate that does not need to taste any further after identifying the ne plus ultra of the wine cellar, on the independent spectacle of her spherical hindquarters. They stood out from the rest of her body like an emperor among his vassals, Zeus among the minor gods of Olympus. ("A happy union of nineteenth-century Courbet and the modern Urculo," Don Rigobetto ennobled the scene with references.) The eminent professor, overwhelmed by emotion, observed and adored the prodigy in silence. What was he saying to himself? He was repeating the line from Keats ("Beauty is truth, truth beauty"). What was he thinking? "And so these things do exist. Not only in evil thoughts, in art, in the fantasies of poets, but in real life. And so an ass like this is possible in flesh-and-blood reality, in women who inhabit the world of the living." Had he ejaculated yet? Was he about to befoul his shorts? Not yet, though the jurist was aware of new sensations in his groin, an awakening, a roused caterpillar stretching. Was he thinking anything else? This: "And where else would it be but between the legs and torso of my old and respected colleague, this good friend with whom I corresponded so often regarding abstruse philosophical-juridical, ethical-legal, historical-methodological issues?" How was it possible that never, until tonight, not in any of the forums, lectures, symposia, seminars they had both attended and where they had conversed, discussed, and argued, he had never even suspected that those boxy suits, shaggy coats, lined capes, ant-colored raincoats hid a splendor like this? Who could have imagined that this lucid mind, this Justinian intelligence, this legal encyclopedia also possessed a body so overwhelming in its form and abundance? For a moment he imagined—did she see him, perhaps?—that, indifferent to his presence, liberated in the abandon of Morpheus, those serene mountains of flesh released a joyful, muffled little wind that burst under his nose and filled his nostrils with a pungent aroma. It did not make him laugh, it did not make him uncomfortable (It did not excite him either, thought Don Rigoberto). He felt acknowledged, as if, in some way, for intricate reasons difficult to explain ("like the theories of Kelsen that he clarified so well for us" was his comparison), the little fart was a kind of acquiescence shared with him by the splendid body that displayed so intimate an intimacy, the useless gases expelled by an intestinal serpent whose hollows he imagined as pink, moist, free of dross, as delicate and well modeled as the untrammeled buttocks just millimeters from his nose.
And then, in terror, he realized that Doña Lucrecia was awake, for though she had not moved, he heard her say, "What are you doing here, Professor?"
She did not seem angry, much less frightened. The voice was hers, of course, but charged with additional warmth. Something languid, insinuating, a musical sensuality. In his embarrassment, the jurist managed to wonder how his old colleague could have undergone so many magical tranformations in a single night.
"Forgive me, forgive me, Doctor. I implore you not to misinterpret my presence here. I can explain everything."
"Didn't the meal agree with you?" she asked reassuringly. She spoke with absolutely no irritation. "Would you like a glass of water and some bicarbonate?"
She turned her head slightly, and with her cheek still pillowed on her arm, her large eyes, shining through black strands of hair, observed him.
"I found something that belongs to you on the stairs, Doctor, and I came to give it to you," the professor mumbled. He was still kneeling, and now he became aware of a sharp pain in his knees. "I knocked, but you did not answer. And since the door was ajar, I ventured in. I did not mean to wake you. I beg you not to take it the wrong way."
She moved her head, nodding, forgiving him so gently, pitying his confusion. "Why are you crying, my dear friend? What's wrong?"
Don Nepomuceno, defenseless in the face of her fond deference, the caressing cadence of her words, the affection in those eyes gleaming in the shadows, broke down. What until then had been only great silent tears rolling down his cheeks turned into resounding sobs, wrenching sighs, a cataract of slobber and snot that he tried to contain with his hands—in his disordered mental state he could not find his handkerchief, or even the pocket where he kept his handkerchief—while, in a strangled voice, he opened his heart to her.
"Oh, Lucrecia, Lucrecia, forgive me, I cannot control myself. Don't look upon this as an insult. Quite the contrary. I had never imagined anything like this, anything so beautiful, I mean, anything as perfect as your body. You know how much I respect and admire you. Intellectually, academically, juridically. But this, tonight, seeing you like this, it is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I swear, Lucrecia. In exchange for this moment I would throw away all my degrees, the doctorates honoris causa that have been conferred upon me, my decorations and diplomas. ("If I weren't as old as I am, I would burn all my books and go to sit like a beggar at the door of your house"—Don Rigoberto read the poet Enrique Peña in his notebook—"Yes, my child, understand me: like a beggar at the door of your house.") I have never felt such great happiness, Lucrecia. Seeing you like this, without clothes, like Ulysses looking at Nausicaa, is the greatest prize, a glory I don't believe I deserve. I am so moved, so overwhelmed. I am crying because I am moved, because I am grateful. Don't find me contemptible, Lucrecia."
Instead of relieving him, his words moved him even more, and now his sobs were choking him. He rested his head on the edge of the bed and continued to cry, still on his knees, sighing, feeling sad and happy, afflicted and fortunate. Forgive me, forgive me," he stammered. Until, seconds or hours later—his body arched as if he were a cat—he felt Lucrecia's hand on his head. Her fingers stroked his gray hair, consoling him, accompanying him. With a cool caress her voice also soothed the raw wound in his soul.
"Calm yourself, Rigoberto. Don't cry anymore, my love, my heart. It's over, it's finished now, nothing has changed. Haven't you done as you wished? You came in, you saw me, you came near, you wept, I forgave you. Can I ever be angry with you? Dry your tears, sneeze, go to sleep. Hush, baby, hush."
Down below, the sea crashed against the cliffs of Barranco and Miraflores, and a thick cover of clouds hid the stars and moon in the sky over Lima. But the night was coming to an end. Day would break any moment now. One day less. One day more.
What Is Forbidden to Beauty
You will never see a painting by Andy Warhol or Frida Kahlo, or applaud a political speech, or permit the skin on your elbows or knees to roughen, or the soles of your feet to grow hard.
You will never listen to a composition by Luigi Nono or a protest song by Mercedes Sosa, or see a film by Oliver Stone, or chew directly on the leaves of an artichoke.
You will never scrape your knees or cut your hair or have blackheads, dental caries, conjunctivitis, (much less) hemorrhoids.
You will never walk barefoot on asphalt, stone, gravel, flagstone, hard rubber, corrugated iron, slate, or metal, and you will never kneel on a surface that is not as spongy as a sweet bun (before toasting).
You will never use the words telluric, half-breed, consciousness-raising, visualize, statist, pips, rinds, or societal.
You will never own a hamster or gargle or wear dentures or play bridge or wear a hat or a beret or coil your hair in a bun.
You will never bloat with gas, or curse, or dance to rock-and-roll.
You will never die.
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