In Praise of the Stepmother: A Novel
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In Praise of the Stepmother: A Novel
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Overview
Mario Vargas Llosa lures readers into a passionate world of family life and erotic love with the story of Don Rigoberto, his second wife, Lucretia, and Rigoberto’s prepubescent son, Alfonso. Although the group appears to be a happy household, within this small constellation lurk the shadows of perversion and the limitless boundaries of familial passion.
“Vargas Llosa is a writer of promethean authority, making outstanding fiction in whatever direction he turns. . . . Erotically stimulating, artfully self-assured, In Praise of the Stepmother is a steamy as it is intelligent.” —Newsday
“Startling . . . Not only would an American presidential candidate not have written it, but the National Endowment for the Arts wouldn’t have given it a grant.” —The New Yorker
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429921831 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| Sales rank: | 280,457 |
| File size: | 585 KB |
About the Author
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010 "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat." Peru's foremost writer, he has been awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and the Jerusalem Prize. His many works include The Feast of the Goat, The Bad Girl, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The War of the End of the World, and The Storyteller. He lives in London.
Read an Excerpt
In Praise of the Stepmother
By Mario Vargas Llosa
Picador
Copyright © 1988 Mario Vargas LlosaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-2183-1
CHAPTER 1
Doña Lucrecia's Birthday
* * *
The day she turned forty, Doña Lucrecia found on her pillow a missive in a childish hand, each letter carefully traced with great affection:
Happy birthday, stepmother! I haven't any money to buy you a present, but I'll study hard and be first in my class, and that will be my present. You're the best and the fairest one of all, and I dream of you every night.
Happy birth day again!
Alfonso
It was past midnight and Don Rigoberto was in the bathroom performing his ablutions, slow-paced and complicated, before going to bed. (Next to erotic painting, bodily cleanliness was his favorite leisure-time pursuit; spiritual purity concerned him far less.) Touched by the little boy's letter, Doña Lucrecia felt an irresistible impulse to go to him, to thank him for it. Those lines were really her acceptance within the family. Would he be awake? No matter! If he wasn't, she would kiss him on the forehead, very gently, so as not to wake him.
As she descended the carpeted stairs of the darkened town house on her way to Alfonso's room, she thought to herself: I've won him over. He loves me now. And her old fears about the child began to evaporate like a light snow gnawed away by the summer sun of Lima. She had neglected to put on a dressing gown; she was naked beneath her thin black silk nightdress, and the full white curves of her body, firm still, seemed to float in the shadow illuminated here and there by glancing reflections from the street. Her long hair hung loose and she had not yet removed the teardrop pendants at her ears, the rings and the necklaces that she had worn for the party.
There was a light still on in the youngster's room — Foncho certainly read far into the night! Doña Lucrecia knocked softly and went in: "Alfonsito!" In the yellowish cone of light from the little bedside lamp, there appeared, from behind a book by Alexandre Dumas, the startled little face of a Child Jesus. Rumpled golden curls, mouth agape in surprise baring a double row of gleaming white teeth, big wide-open blue eyes trying to bring her forth from the shadow of the doorway. Doña Lucrecia did not move, observing him with tender affection. What a lovely child! A born angel, one of those court pages in the elegant erotic etchings that her husband kept under quadruple lock and key.
"Is that you, stepmother?"
"What a nice letter you wrote me, Foncho. It's the best birthday present anybody has ever given me, I swear."
The boy had leapt from under the covers and was now standing on the bed. He smiled at her, his arms opened wide. As she came toward him, smiling too, Doña Lucrecia surprised — divined? — in the eyes of her stepson a gaze that changed from happiness to bewilderment and riveted itself, in astonishment, on her bosom. Good heavens, you're practically naked, she suddenly thought. How could you have forgotten your dressing gown, you idiot. What a sight for the poor boy. Had she had more to drink than she should have?
But Alfonsito's arms were now about her: "Many happy returns, stepmother!" His voice, fresh and carefree, made the night young again. Doña Lucrecia felt the slender silhouette of frail bones against her body and was reminded of a little bird. The thought crossed her mind that if she hugged him tightly to her, the child would break like a reed. With him standing on the bed, the two of them were the same height. He had twined his thin arms around her neck and was lovingly kissing her on the cheek. Doña Lucrecia embraced him, too, and one of her hands, gliding beneath his navy-blue pajama top with red stripes, made its way up his back, her fingertips feeling the delicate gradations of his vertebrae. "I love you lots, stepmother," the little voice whispered in her ear. Doña Lucrecia felt two tiny lips linger on her earlobe, warming it with their breath, kissing it and nibbling it, playing. Alfonsito appeared to her to be laughing as he caressed her. Her breast was filled to overflowing with emotion. To think that her women friends had prophesied that this stepson would be the major obstacle for her, that because of him she would never be able to be happy with Rigoberto. Deeply moved, she kissed him back, on the cheeks, the forehead, the tousled hair, as, vaguely, as though come from afar, without her having really noticed, a different sensation suffused every last confine of her body, becoming most densely concentrated in those parts — her breasts, her belly, the backs of her thighs, her neck, shoulders, cheeks — exposed to the child's touch. "Do you really love me lots?" she asked, trying to free herself from his embrace. But Alfonsito would not let her go. Instead, as he sang out in answer: "Lots and lots, stepmother, more than ..." he clung to her. Then his little hands grasped her by the temples and thrust her head back. Doña Lucrecia felt herself being pecked on the forehead, the eyes, the eyebrows, the cheek, the chin ... When the thin lips brushed hers, she clenched her teeth in confusion. Did Fonchito know what he was doing? Ought she to push him brusquely away? No, of course not. How could there be the least perversity in the mad fluttering of those mischievous lips that twice, three times, wandering over the geography of her face, alighted on hers for an instant, hungrily pressing down on them.
"All right, to bed with you now," she finally said, freeing herself from the boy's embrace. She did her best to appear more self-assured than she felt. "Otherwise, you won't get up in time for school, sweetie."
Nodding his head, the boy got into bed. He eyed her, laughing, his cheeks flushed a rosy pink, an ecstatic look on his face. How could there be anything perverse about him? That pure little face, those eyes filled with joy, that little body tucking itself in between the sheets and snuggling down: weren't they the personification of innocence? You're the corrupted one, Lucrecia! She pulled the covers over him, straightened his pillow, kissed his curls, and turned out the lamp on the night table.
As she was leaving the room, she heard him trill: "I'll be first in my class and that will be my present for you, stepmother."
"Is that a promise, Fonchito?"
"Word of honor!"
In the intimate complicity of the staircase, on her way back to the master bedroom, Doña Lucrecia felt on fire from head to foot. But it's not a fever, she said to herself in a daze. Could a child's unthinking caress have put her in such a state? You're becoming depraved, woman. Could this be the first symptom of old age? Because there was no question about it: she was all aflame and her thighs were wet. How disgraceful, Lucrecia, shame on you! And all of a sudden there came back to her the memory of a licentious friend who, at a benefit tea for the Red Cross, had given rise to flushed cheeks and nervous titters at her table when she told them that taking afternoon naps naked, with a young stepson raking her back with his nails, made her as hot as a firecracker.
Don Rigoberto was stretched out on his back, naked, on top of the garnet-colored bedspread with its repeated pattern of what appeared to be scorpions. In the dark room, lighted only by the glow from the street, his long, pale white silhouette, with a thick patch of hair at his chest and pubis, remained motionless as Doña Lucrecia took off her slippers and lay down at his side, not touching him. Was her husband already asleep?
"Where were you?" she heard him murmur, in the thick, drawling voice of a man speaking from out of a dream-fantasy, a voice she knew so well. "Why did you leave me, darling?"
"I went to give Fonchito a kiss. He wrote me a birthday letter you wouldn't believe. So affectionate it almost made me cry."
She sensed that Don Rigoberto scarcely heard her. She felt his right hand stroking her thigh. It burned, like a steaming-hot compress. His fingers fumbled about amid the folds of her nightdress. "He's bound to notice that I'm soaking wet," she thought uneasily. But it was a fleeting uneasiness, for the same violent wave that had startled her so on the staircase washed over her body once more, giving her gooseflesh all over. It seemed to her that all her pores were opening, waiting anxiously.
"Did Fonchito see you in your nightdress?" her husband's voice dreamed aloud, in passionate tones. "You may have given the boy wicked thoughts. Perhaps he'll have his first erotic dream tonight."
She heard him laugh excitedly, and she laughed, too. "Whatever are you saying, you idiot?" At the same time, she pretended to slap him, letting her left hand fall on Don Rigoberto's belly. But what it touched was a human staff, rising and pulsing.
"What's this? What's this?" Doña Lucrecia exclaimed, grasping it, pulling on it, letting it go, catching hold of it again. "Look what I've found. What a surprise." Don Rigoberto had already lifted her up on top of him and was kissing her with delight, sipping her lips, separating them. For a long time, with eyes closed, as she felt the tip of her husband's tongue exploring the inside of her mouth, gliding along her gums and her palate, striving to taste all of it, know all of it, Doña Lucrecia was immersed in a happy daze, a dense, palpitating sensation that seemed to make her limbs go soft and disappear, so that she felt herself floating, sinking, whirling around and around. At the bottom of the pleasant maelstrom that she found herself, found life to be, as though appearing and disappearing in a mirror that is losing its silver backing, an intrusive little face, that of a rosy-cheeked angel, was discernible from time to time. Her husband had lifted her nightgown and was stroking her buttocks, with a methodical, circular movement, as he kissed her breasts. She heard him murmur that he loved her, whisper tenderly that for him real life had begun with her. Doña Lucrecia kissed him on the neck and nibbled his nipples till she heard him moan; after that, she very slowly licked those exalted nests that Don Rigoberto had carefully washed and perfumed for her before coming to bed: his armpits.
She heard him purr like a pampered cat, wriggling beneath her body. His hands hurriedly parted Doña Lucrecia's legs, with a kind of exasperation. They placed her astride him, seated her in the proper position, opened her. She moaned, in pain and pleasure, as, in a confused whirlwind, she glimpsed an image of Saint Sebastian riddled with arrows, crucified and impaled. She had the sensation that she was being gored in the center of her heart. She could contain herself no longer. With her eyes half closed, her hands behind her head, thrusting her breasts forward, she rode that love-colt as it rocked to and fro with her, following her rhythm, mumbling words just barely articulated, till she felt herself dying, fainting, failing.
"Who am I?" she inquired blindly. "Who is it you say I've been?"
"The wife of the King of Lydia, my love," Don Rigoberto burst out, lost in his dream.
CHAPTER 2Candaules, King of Lydia
* * *
I am Candaules, King of Lydia, a little country situated between Ionia and Caria, in the heart of that territory which centuries later will be called Turkey. What I am most proud of in my kingdom is not its mountains fissured by drought or its goatherds, who, if need be, do battle with Phrygian and Aeolian invaders and Dorians come from Asia, and rout bands of Phoenicians, Lacedaemonians, and the Scythian nomads who come to sack our borders, but the croup of Lucrecia, my wife.
I say and repeat the word. Not behind, or ass, or buttocks, or backside, but croup. For when I ride her the sensation that comes over me is precisely this: that of being astride a velvety, muscular mare, high-spirited and obedient. It is a hard croup and as broad, perhaps, as it is said to be in the legends concerning it that circulate throughout the kingdom, inflaming my subjects' imaginations. (These accounts all reach my ears, but rather than angering me, they flatter me.) When I order her to kneel and touch her forehead to the carpet to kiss it, so that I may examine her at will, the precious object attains its most enchanting volume. Each hemisphere is a carnal paradise; the two of them, separated by a delicate cleft of nearly imperceptible down that vanishes in the forest of intoxicating whiteness, blackness, and silkiness that crowns the firm columns of her thighs, put me in mind of an altar of that barbarous religion of the Babylonians that ours expunged. It feels firm to my touch and soft to my lips; vast to my embrace and warm on cold nights, a most comfortable cushion on which to rest my head and a fountain of pleasures at the hour of amorous assault. Penetrating her is not easy; painful, rather, at first, and even heroic, in view of the resistance that those expanses of pink flesh offer to virile attack. What are required are a stubborn will and a deep-plunging, persevering rod, which shrink from nothing and from no one, as is true of mine.
When I told Gyges, the son of Dascylus, my personal guard and minister, that I was prouder of the feats performed by my rod with Lucrecia in the sumptuous, full-sailed vessel of our nuptial bed than of my valorous deeds on the battlefield or of the impartiality with which I mete out justice, he whooped with laughter at what he took to be a jest. But it was not; I truly take more pride in such exploits. I doubt that many inhabitants of Lydia can equal me. One night — I was drunk — I summoned Atlas, the best endowed of my Ethiopian slaves, to my apartments, merely to confirm that this was so. I had Lucrecia bow down before him and ordered him to mount her. Intimidated by my presence, or because it was too great a test of his strength, he was unable to do so. Again and again I saw him approach her resolutely, push, pant, and withdraw in defeat. (Since this episode vexed Lucrecia's memory, I then had Atlas beheaded.)
For it is beyond question that I love the queen. Everything about my spouse is soft, delicate, by contrast to the opulent splendor of her croup: her hands and her feet, her waist and her mouth. She has a turned-up nose and languid eyes, mysteriously still waters troubled only by pleasure and anger. I have studied her as scholars ponder the ancient volumes of the Temple, and though I think I know her by heart, each day — each night, rather — I discover something new about her that touches me: the gentle curve of her shoulders, the mischievous little bone in her elbow, the delicacy of her instep, the roundness of her knees, and the blue transparency of the little grove of her armpits.
There are those who soon tire of their lawfully wedded wife. The routine of married life kills desire, they philosophize: what illusory hope can swell and revive the veins of a man who sleeps, for months and years, with the same woman? Yet, despite our having been wed for so long a time, Lucrecia, my lady, does not bore me. I have never grown weary of her. When I go off on tiger and elephant hunts, or to make war, the memory of her makes my heart beat faster, just as in the first days, and when I caress a slave girl or some camp follower so as to relieve the loneliness of nights in a field tent, my hands always experience keen disappointment: those are merely backsides, buttocks, rumps, asses. Only hers — O beloved! — is a croup. That is why I am faithful to her in my heart; that is why I love her. That is why I compose poems to her that I recite in her ear and when we are alone prostrate myself to kiss her feet. That is why I have filled her coffers with jewels and precious stones, and ordered for her, from every corner of the world, slippers and sandals, garments, priceless ornaments she will never get around to wearing. That is why I care for her and venerate her as the most exquisite possession in my kingdom. Without Lucrecia, life would be death to me.
The real story of what happened with Gyges, my personal guard and minister, bears little resemblance to the idle rumors that have made the rounds concerning the episode. None of the versions I have heard comes even close to the truth. That is always the way it is: though fantasy and truth have one and the same heart, their faces are like day and night, like fire and water. There was no wager or any sort of exchange involved: it all happened quite spontaneously, on a sudden impulse of mine, the work of chance or a plot by some playful little god.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from In Praise of the Stepmother by Mario Vargas Llosa. Copyright © 1988 Mario Vargas Llosa. Excerpted by permission of Picador.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
One: Doña Lucrecia's Birthday,Two: Candaules, King of Lydia,
Three: The Wednesday Ear Ritual,
Four: Eyes Like Fireflies,
Five: Diana after Her Bath,
Six: Don Rigoberto's Ablutions,
Seven: Venus, with Love and Music,
Eight: The Salt of His Tears,
Nine: Profile of a Human Being,
Ten: Tuberous and Sensual,
Eleven: After Dinner,
Twelve: Labyrinth of Love,
Thirteen: Bad Words,
Fourteen: The Rosy Youth,
Epilogue,
Reading Group Guide
The Notebooks
of Don Rigoberto and
In Praise of
the Stepmother
by Mario Vargas
Llosa
INTRODUCTION
The Notebooks
of Don Rigoberto and
In Praise of
the Stepmother
What is the value of art over ideology? How far can our quest for individual liberties take us? Can a man who collects—and burns—precious books and paintings be considered civilized? These are just some of the questions posed by the erudite and endlessly entertaining Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa in his two books about the life and marriage of Don Rigoberto.
A wealthy insurance executive, Don Rigoberto is a member of Lima's well-heeled bourgeois society—the kind of man one sees at board meetings and cocktail parties. But by night Don Rigoberto sheds his conventional skin to pursue his true passions: erotic art and sexual fantasy. In the privacy of his small library Don Rigoberto pores over a considerable collection of erotica that, by self-imposed dictum, must always consist of exactly four thousand volumes and one hundred canvases. Upon acquiring a new book or painting, he consigns an old one to the fireplace he has built as a "crematorium" for such abandoned works. In The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, Vargas Llosa has chosen a rather shocking idiosyncrasy with which to introduce his hero. The book-burning, fantasy-spinning Don Rigoberto rails against anyone who would denounce his secretive passions; rotary club members, sports enthusiasts, feminists, animal-rights activists, and patriots are all dismissed as mindless adherents to a hoard mentality, and therefore deserving of Don Rigoberto's scorn. In fact, there are few people Don Rigoberto would consider worthy of his admiration. Among them are his beautiful—currently estranged—second wife, Lucrecia, and his precocious, cherubic teen-aged son, Alfonso. Both wife and son, it seems, possess Don Rigoberto's appetite for sensual pleasures. Unfortunately, they have found satisfaction for their cravings in each other's company—a fact that even a non-conventionalist like Don Rigoberto finds hard to digest.
As a literary figure, Don Rigoberto embodies several such contradictions. He is both scrupulously clean and remarkably ugly; he embraces personal freedom, yet has no tolerance for any art form or intellectual idea that opposes his tastes or beliefs. Most of all he is a formidable man who is also helplessly in love with his wife. Night after night Don Rigoberto professes his love for Lucrecia in a series of imagined erotic scenes in an attempt to duplicate the couple's nightly habit of sharing fantasies with each other. As the book progresses, Don Rigoberto's hunger for his wife intrudes into his fantasies—at times he is too debilitated by grief and desire to go on. Interspersed with these messages of longing are Don Rigoberto's diatribes against the world that would dare to condemn his passions and a series of intimate love letters reflecting the playful, sensuous relationship that the two lovers shared. Pulling together the novel's intellectually driven components is a narrative which concerns Alfonso's attempts to forge a reconciliation between Lucrecia and Don Rigoberto, the boy's own obsession with the erotic painter Egon Schiele, and his efforts to play out this obsession in a series of Schiele-inspired tableaux featuring the enticing Lucrecia.
Vargas Llosa's elaborate novel brilliantly combines elements of two disparate art forms. In alternating styles and themes he assembles the novel much like an abstract painter will "build" a canvas through color and composition. And like a classical symphony comprised of various movements, the novel gains force through the serial repetition of its components. Don Rigoberto is revealed as a man who is greater than the sum of his parts: art lover, fetishist, bureaucrat, libertarian, and, we grow to understand, vulnerable, hopeless romantic. Lucrecia is clearly a devoted wife who nonetheless rivals her husband in his passions and fantasies. Only Alfonso remains a cipher. At times bewitching and strangely endearing, at times almost malevolent in his ability to manipulate and seduce, this young boy of uncertain age has a power over the people around him. Is he a true innocent or a pathological schemer? How does he embody his father's beliefs in individual liberty? Vargas Llosa is cleverly ambiguous about the fate of the "happy triad." As in the previous adventures of the Rigoberto family, he leaves us wondering about the boundaries of personal freedom, the force of our erotic desires, and the power of art to inspire and motivate us to pursue our most beloved fantasies.
About
In Praise of the Stepmother
Vargas Llosa introduces this extraordinary triad with a series of vignettes that start out as a portrait of upper-crust domestic bliss, but soon evolve into a fevered story of an unusual seduction. As we learn more about Don Rigoberto and Lucrecia's erotic ardor we grow increasingly confounded by Alfonso's power over them both. How can such a young boy seem so mature? Is he innocent or evil? At the same time, this erotic masterpiece provides a surprising tour of some of the world's artistic treasures. Vargas Llosa's unique rendering of classical and modern art is both revealing and hilarious, but his use of six masterpieces as a means of moving the story along is as bold as it is ingenious. Readers will certainly differ in their opinions about the "happy" family of Don Rigoberto, but no one can argue that Vargas Llosa's playful interpretations of his selected paintings are as entertaining as they are eye-opening.
ABOUT MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
Peru's foremost writer, Mario Vargas Llosa is the author of ten novels, including Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The War of the End of the World, Death in the Andes, and The Storyteller. He has also written the memoir A Fish in the Water, three plays, and several volumes of literary essays. In 1995 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize and the Cervantes Prize. In 1998 he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Making Waves. He now lives in London
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
- What distinctions does Don Rigoberto make between erotica and pornography? Do you agree or disagree with his opinions?
- Discuss the use of art in one or both books. How do the three main characters use art to communicate their feelings toward each other? What do you think Vargas Llosa is saying about art's place in our lives?
- Is Don Rigoberto someone we can admire? Is he a good husband to Lucrecia, or a good father to Alfonso? How do you think he would be perceived by co-workers, friends, or neighbors who knew little about his romantic life? Does Don Rigoberto strike you as a civilized man? Why or why not?
- "I don't know if I like being called good," comments Don Rigoberto, "All the good people I've known were pretty imbecilic." What distinction is Vargas Llosa making between morality and behavior? Is being happy a necessary consequence of being good? What's the point of being good if one isn't happy? How do you think author and/or character would define "good"?
- What do you think of Alfonso? What role does he play in Lucrecia and Rigoberto's reconciliation? If he did write the letters, should the couple be grateful to him for bringing them back together, or condemn him for his dishonesty? What do you think Alfonso's motives were for wanting the two lovers to be reunited? Do you think he has inherited his father's appreciation for individual liberty?
- Why do you think Vargas Llosa chose Egon Schiele as an alter ego for Alfonso? What similarities are there between the two men's lives? How does Schiele's artistic style fit in with the themes of the novel?
- What do you think of Lucrecia's relationship with Alfonso in In Praise of the Stepmother? Do you think Don Rigoberto should forgive her for sleeping with her stepson? What limits should we place—if any—on sexual freedom? What, besides the "inappropriateness" of their relationship would a man like Don Rigoberto object to?
- Vargas Llosa offers a rare glimpse into Lucrecia's past: "Ever since she was a girl [she] had felt a fascination for standing on the edge of the cliff and looking down into the abyss, for keeping her balance on the railing at the side of the bridge." What does this tell us about Lucrecia's relationships with Don Rigoberto? With Alfonso?
- Discuss the narrative structure of one or both books: why do you think Vargas Llosa chose to structure his stories so precisely? How does the use of alternating sections or chapters contribute to the story in terms of pacing, character development and plot?
- How does Vargas Llosa make use of real and imaginary worlds? What is more "real" to Don Rigoberto: his life as an insurance executive and member of Lima's high society, or his pursuit of erotic pleasure through painting, literature, and his fantasies about Lucrecia?
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