Mario Vargas Llosa - The Discreet Hero

“What did she do, for example?” Rigoberto interrupted her again. His voice was slow and thick and his heart was pounding. “Was she provocative with Ismael? Doing what? How?”

“Each morning she’d show up looking much more attractive than before. Her hair arranged, with small flirtatious touches that nobody would notice. And some new movements of her arms, her breasts, her bottom. But old man Ismael noticed. In spite of how he was when Clotilde died — in shock, like a sleepwalker, shattered by grief. He’d lost his compass, he didn’t know who or where he was. But he knew something was going on around him. Of course he noticed.”

“Again you’re moving away from the point, Lucrecia,” Rigoberto complained, holding her tight. “This isn’t the time to be talking about death, my love.”

“Then, oh what a miracle, Armida turned into the most devoted, attentive, and accommodating creature. There she was, always near her employer to prepare a chamomile maté or a cup of tea for him, pour him a whiskey, iron his shirt, sew on a button, put the finishing touches to his suit, give his shoes to the butler to polish, tell Narciso to hurry and get the car right away because Don Ismael was ready to go out and didn’t like waiting.”

“What does all that matter,” Rigoberto said in vexation, nibbling his wife’s ear. “I want to know more intimate things, my love.”

“At the same time, with an intelligence only we women have, an intelligence that comes to us from Eve herself and is in our souls, our blood, and, I suppose, in our hearts and ovaries too, Armida began to set the trap into which the widower, devastated by his wife’s death, would fall like an innocent babe.”

“What did she do to him,” Rigoberto pleaded urgently. “Tell me everything in lavish detail, my love.”

“On winter nights Ismael would shut himself in his study and suddenly start to cry. And as if by magic, Armida would be at his side, devoted, respectful, sympathetic, calling him tender nicknames in that northern singsong that sounds so musical. And shedding a few tears too, standing very close to the master of the house. He could feel and smell her because their bodies were touching. While Armida wiped her employer’s forehead and dried his eyes, without realizing it, you would say, in her efforts to console him, calm him, and be loving toward him, her neckline shifted and Ismael’s eyes couldn’t help but be aware of those plump, dark, young breasts brushing against his chest and face, which, from the perspective of his years, must have seemed like those not of a young woman but of a little girl. Then it must have occurred to him that Armida was not only a pair of tireless hands for making and stripping beds, dusting walls, waxing floors, washing clothes, but also an abundant, tender, palpitating, warm body, a fragrant, moist, exciting closeness. That was when poor Ismael, during his employee’s fond displays of loyalty and affection, probably began to feel that the hidden, shrunken thing between his legs, beyond all help from lack of use, was starting to show signs of life, to revive. Of course, Justiniana doesn’t know this but can only guess. I don’t know either, but I’m sure that’s how it all began. Don’t you think so too, my love?”

“When Justiniana was telling you all this, were you and she naked, my darling?” As Rigoberto spoke, he just barely nibbled at his wife’s neck, ears, and lips, and his hands caressed her back, buttocks, and inner thighs.

“I held her the way you’re holding me now,” responded Lucrecia, caressing him, biting him, kissing him, speaking inside his mouth. “We could hardly breathe, we were drowning, swallowing each other’s saliva. Justiniana thinks Armida made the first move, not him. That she was the one who touched Ismael first. Here, yes. Like that.”

“Yes, yes, of course, go on, go on,” Rigoberto purred, becoming excited, his voice barely making a sound. “That’s how it had to be. That’s how it was.”

For some time they were silent, embracing each other, kissing each other, but suddenly Rigoberto, making a great effort, restrained himself. And moved gently away from his wife.

“I don’t want to finish yet, my love,” he whispered. “I’m enjoying this so much. I want you, I love you.”

“All right, a parenthesis,” Lucrecia said, moving away too. “Let’s talk about Armida then. In a sense what she’s done and achieved is admirable, don’t you agree?”

“In every sense,” said her husband. “A real work of art. She’s earned my respect and reverence. She’s a great woman.”

“By the way,” said his wife, her voice changing, “if I die before you, it wouldn’t bother me at all if you married Justiniana. She already knows all your habits, the good ones and the bad, especially the bad. So keep it in mind.”

“And that’s enough about death,” Rigoberto pleaded. “Let’s go back to Armida and don’t get so distracted, for God’s sake.”

Lucrecia sighed, pressed close to her husband, placed her mouth on his ear, and spoke very slowly.

“As I was saying, she was always there, always near Ismael. Sometimes, as she bent over to remove that little stain on the armchair, her skirt would move up and, without her noticing it — but he would notice — out would peek a rounded knee, a smooth, elastic thigh, a slim ankle, a bit of shoulder, arm, neck, the cleft between her breasts. There never was, there couldn’t be, the slightest hint of vulgarity in these moments of carelessness. Everything seemed natural, casual, never forced. Chance arranged matters in such a way that through these trivial episodes the widower, the veteran, our friend, the horrified father of his children, discovered he was still a man, that he had a live cock, a very live cock. Like the one I’m touching now, my love. Hard, damp, trembling.”

“It moves me to imagine the joy Ismael must have felt when he learned he still had his cock and, though it hadn’t done so for a long time, it began to crow again,” Rigoberto digressed, moving beneath the sheets. “I’m touched, my love, by how tender, how nice it must have been when, still submerged in the bitterness of his widowhood, he began to have fantasies, desires, ejaculations, thinking about his employee. Who touched whom first? Let’s guess.”

“Armida never thought matters would go that far. She hoped that Ismael would become fond of having her near, discovering thanks to her that he wasn’t the human ruin suggested by how he looked, that beneath his wretched look, his uncertain walk, his loose teeth, his poor eyesight, his sex still flapped its wings. That he was capable of feeling desire and, overcoming his sense of the ridiculous, would finally dare one day to take a bold step. And a secret, intimate complicity would be established between them in the large colonial mansion that Clotilde’s death had turned into a limbo. Perhaps she thought that all of this might move Ismael to promote her from servant to lover. Even that he’d set her up in a little house and give her a small allowance. That’s what she dreamed about, I’m certain. Nothing else. She never would have imagined the revolution it would cause in our good Ismael, or that circumstances would transform her into an instrument of revenge for a grieving, vindictive father.

“But, what is this? Who is this intruder? What’s happening here under these sheets?” Lucrecia interrupted her account, turning back and forth, exaggerating, touching him.

“Go on, go on, my darling, for God’s sake,” Rigoberto pleaded, choking, growing more and more excited. “Don’t stop talking now that everything’s going so well.”

“So I see,” Lucrecia said with a laugh, moving to take off her nightgown, helping her husband remove his pajamas, each of them entwined around the other, rumpling the bed, embracing and kissing each other.