everywhere…”
The memory of it turned Miguel ashen.
Gazing into Rosario's naked eyes was like dropping your vision down a well. The first time I met her, all I saw was a pair of sapphires with a woman appended; they reduced the rest of her face to a mere perfect setting, a blur of high cheekbones framed by lustrous red hair. It helped that, during lessons, she put on glasses for her myopia.
In all but the coldest months, she went about in sleeveless blouses and short skirts. Her arms and legs were slim, sinuous. Matter-of-factly, she would say: “I enjoy looking at them.” It did not occur to her to begrudge others the same pleasure.
Her bearing-back perpendicular, hands folded, thighs together- turned any seat she occupied into a throne. She told me that once, due to some domestic emergency, she had arrived less than prepared for an oral exam at the university, where she was taking courses in pedagogy. “As luck would have it, the professor started ogling my legs. The first tough question he asked me, I put on a meek, respectful expression and opened my knees. He gaped. He stammered. Without realizing that I hadn’t answered, he moved on. The longer I sat like that, the more flustered he became. He had no idea what I was or wasn’t saying. Finally he spluttered, ‘Get out,’ and dismissed me-with the top grade!”
Periodically I invited my students to a class in harmony or analysis. It wasn’t unusual for a dozen or more of them to cram into my studio, pitching on every available chair and scrap of carpet. Prodigies gearing up for international careers, a radiologist mad for Debussy, an octogenarian widow who practiced four hours a day… I wished for them all to cohere, cross-pollinate-and to some extent they did. Their attitudes toward Rosario, however, exposed their frailties like a dye: the women acknowledged her with a sullenness that betrayed their envy, while the men fought shy of her, although they hobnobbed easily enough with Roberto and Miguel.
After concerts, there would be ad hoc suppers at cafes. Roberto, Rosario, and Miguel, who never missed a musical event of any importance, usually took part. It was on these occasions that I observed the mixture of humility and histrionics which Miguel displayed in public toward Rosario. He held her coat, repaired her mussed hair with a deft pat. Once, he sashayed into a ladies’ room with her to help mend a broken spaghetti strap. He used to lift her hands like chalices and venerate them with caresses. Installing himself across from her, he would stare moonily into her eyes: “Think of me as your adoring mirror. I swear I’ll die if you don’t let me have my fill.” One evening our party included another student of mine, an official at the foreign ministry, who witnessed Miguel's behavior with mounting indignation.
“You permit this?” he hissed at Roberto.
“I encourage it! It redounds to my glory.”
Roberto began to mention affairs he was having. He sought out different companions, he claimed, so as to slake his urges without overtaxing his wife. Under the guise of divulgence, he would fish for advice. Describing some demand his mistress was making of him, he might slip in, expectantly: “Have you ever had to cope with that sort of thing?”
I’d laugh: “You need more Schumann!”
Rosario was wise to what was going on and saw no reason to protest. For her, the essence of the marriage was maternity. “I’m a scatterbrain,” she would say, “but
Roberto and Rosario were accustomed to spending a week or two at the beach every summer. This year, one of Roberto's partners had fallen ill, saddling him with an extra load at the office. Also, Roberto had just embarked on a liaison with a young ballerina. If he could persuade Rosario to go on vacation without him, he would provide himself an open field while affording her a rest. Sending her off unprotected would, for him, have been out of the question. He had thought of the ideal escort: Miguel, who combined the most expedient features of a bodyguard and a
I listened to her deliberate: “Naturally, Lili would come with me. But can I trust Roberto to eat properly? And Miguel has been overworked. Wouldn’t he be happier unwinding with his handsome friends than chaperoning me?”
They went. While they were away, I attended a recital by Claudio Arrau. During the intermission I noticed Roberto, at the rail of one of the boxes, deep in conversation with a wiry, chignoned gamine. After the last encore, filing out of the auditorium, we ran into each other. He hesitated for a moment, then introduced his chum, the dancer.
“What a terrific evening!” he said a bit too loudly.
I concurred.
“That
At his next lesson he asked: “Why did you look at me that way when I said I liked his
“You called it charming.”
“Well, sure.
“What are you talking about?” “Listen to
When Miguel returned from the vacation, his playing grew soberer, solider, focused. Some chronic misgiving seemed to have been resolved, some inner reorganization effected: the same chord, voiced more cogently. Yet he was also feverish, brooding; one day a confession, long pent up, gushed out of him:
“We took the train down to the coast. The motion of the carriage kept jogging our arms against each other- hers cool, mine hot. I was in a sweat. The craving in me! What I’d felt for the others was-froth. All that time longing for Rosario, courting her from behind my mask-and now to have this chance. It gave me qualms. And there was Lili, curled up across our thighs, sucking her thumb.
“The train arrived late. The hotel clerk informed us that we’d forfeited our reservations: the only thing he had available was a room with a double bed and a cot for the little girl. Rosario winked at me: ‘I don’t think it would kill either of us to sleep together.’ Was it that I couldn’t bring myself to abuse her naivete? Or pure cowardice? I slipped the clerk a thin wad. Adjacent rooms materialized. Rosario and Lili, at least, got a good night's sleep.
“The next morning, early, I heard them stirring. I washed up and joined them for breakfast on Rosario's terrace. As soon as we’d finished, we grabbed our bathing gear and made for the beach. I hired a cabana. While Rosario and Lili changed, I scanned the panorama. The sand, the air, the sea-all sparkling. I felt sparkling myself. The cabana's door opened, and Lili flittered out. Then Rosario stepped onto the deck. She tossed her mane, loosening it to the breeze. I couldn’t swallow. I could hardly breathe. It hadn’t occurred to me to prepare for this sight-not that I could have. The swimsuit was a sleek one-piece, modest compared to the bikinis that many other women were sporting-but what it concealed, it revealed more than nudity itself, including the precise, sand-dollar forms of the nipples. It was her utter lack of self-consciousness, as much as anything, that undid me. I scuttled into the dressing room.
“When I emerged, Rosario was sitting on the sand, watching Lili romp with some children in a tidal pool. I sank down beside her. She stretched her limbs and let out a groan of relaxation, as if only at that moment had she shed her burdens. ‘Would you rub some lotion on my back?’ she asked, not taking her attention off her daughter. The swimsuit was cut low in the rear, almost to the sacrum. The flesh was smooth as meerschaum, except for a tiny heart-shaped mole near the fifteenth vertebra (I counted them in an effort to calm myself). My hand was on fire. A crushing ache had me in torment. I tried to relieve this through speech, telling Rosario how voluptuous I found her. The liberties I allowed myself only inflamed me more. Of course, I was also testing the waters. ‘Oh, Miguel,’ she said, ‘you and your flattery!’
“We had lunch on the patio. Lili was transfixed by the fan-pleated napkins, the staff's uniforms, the Noah's ark of new faces. A waiter brought her a cushion to perch on and helped her choose from the menu. He was lame. After he left, she said to us, quite stricken: ‘That poor man, he's like Esmeralda’-her doll, who had lost a foot. She laid out the seashells she’d collected, and aligned them by order of preciousness. When the waiter presented the check, she shyly pushed her three prize specimens in his direction.
