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In Praise of the Stepmother: A Novel Paperback – November 1, 2002
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WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE
With meticulous observation and the seductive skill of a great storyteller, Vargas Llosa lures the reader into the shadow of perversion that, little by little, darkens the extraordinary happiness and harmony of his characters. The mysterious nature of happiness and above all, the corrupting power of innocence are the themes that underlie these pages, and the author has perfectly met the demands of the erotic novel, never dimming for an instant the fine poetic polish of his writing.
- Print length160 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPicador
- Publication dateNovember 1, 2002
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inches
- ISBN-100312421303
- ISBN-13978-0312421304
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Review
“Powerful, incendiary...Vargas Llosa is a master storyteller.” ―The Washington Post Book World
“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
“The author is silky....Vargas Llosa has written a genuinely erotic story and a wicked parody of one.” ―Los Angeles Times
“An elaborate and lushly written novel.” ―USA Today
“Vargas Llosa has tickled all our notions of love and lust, felicity and perversity, teased all our ideas of innocence and self-consciousness, and nibbled playful and ambiguous at every romantic fancy, from the classical to the abstract, the ancient to the postmodern, the sacred to the profane.” ―San Francisco Chronicle & Examiner
About the Author
Helen Lane contributed to In Praise of the Stepmother from Picador.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In Praise of the Stepmother
By Mario Vargas LlosaPicador
Copyright © 1988 Mario Vargas LlosaAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-312-42130-4
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,
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.
Product details
- Publisher : Picador; First Edition (November 1, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 160 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0312421303
- ISBN-13 : 978-0312421304
- Item Weight : 6.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.4 x 8.5 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #858,331 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,805 in Deals in Books
- #40,957 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #46,411 in American Literature (Books)
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About the authors
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, nacido en Arequipa, Perú, en 1936, académico de la lengua, crítico literario, periodista, político y escritor, comenzó su carrera literaria y periodística con tan solo dieciséis años de edad. Sus primeras novelas cosecharon un gran éxito en la década de los sesenta, época en la que aprovechando su prestigio, marchó a Europa y Estados Unidos para fijar su residencia durante varios años. Sus obras son una verdadera exhibición de virtuosismo literario y su prosa integra abundantes elementos experimentales, tales como la mezcla de diálogo y descripción y la combinación de acciones y tiempos diversos. Ganador de múltiples galardones, en su haber cuenta con los premios Planeta, Cervantes, Príncipe de Asturias y el Premio Nobel de Literatura 2010.
La Editorial Alvi Books le dedicó, como tributo y reconocimiento, este espacio en Amazon en 2013.
MARIO VARGAS LLOSA was born in Arequipa, Peru, in 1936. In 1958 he earned a scholarship to study in Madrid, and later he lived in Paris. His first story collection, The Cubs and Other Stories, was published in 1959. Vargas Llosa’s reputation grew with the publication in 1963 of The Time of the Hero, a controversial novel about the politics of his country. The Peruvian military burned a thousand copies of the book. He continued to live abroad until 1980, returning to Lima just before the restoration of democratic rule.
A man of politics as well as literature, Vargas Llosa served as president of PEN International from 1977 to 1979, and headed the government commission to investigate the massacre of eight journalists in the Peruvian Andes in 1983.
Vargas Llosa has produced critical studies of García Márquez, Flaubert, Sartre, and Camus, and has written extensively on the roots of contemporary fiction. For his own work, he has received virtually every important international literary award. Vargas Llosa’s works include The Green House (1968) and Conversation in the Cathedral (1975), about which Suzanne Jill Levine for The New York Times Book Review said: “With an ambition worthy of such masters of the 19th-century novel as Balzac, Dickens and Galdós, but with a technical skill that brings him closer to the heirs of Flaubert and Henry James . . . Mario Vargas Llosa has [created] one of the largest narrative efforts in contemporary Latin American letters.” In 1982, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter to broad critical acclaim. In 1984, FSG published the bestselling The War of the End of the World, winner of the Ritz Paris Hemingway Award. The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta was published in 1986. The Perpetual Orgy, Vargas Llosa’s study of Flaubert and Madame Bovary, appeared in the winter of 1986, and a mystery, Who Killed Palomino Molero?, the year after. The Storyteller, a novel, was published to great acclaim in 1989. In 1990, FSG published In Praise of the Stepmother, also a bestseller. Of that novel, Dan Cryer wrote: “Mario Vargas Llosa is a writer of promethean authority, making outstanding fiction in whatever direction he turns” (Newsday).
In 1990, Vargas Llosa ran for the presidency of his native Peru. In 1994, FSG published his memoir, A Fish in the Water, in which he recorded his campaign experience. In 1994, Vargas Llosa was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world’s most distinguished literary honor, and, in 1995, the Jerusalem Prize, which is awarded to writers whose work expresses the idea of the freedom of the individual in society. In 1996, Death in the Andes, Vargas Llosa’s next novel, was published to wide acclaim. Making Waves, a collection of his literary and political essays, was published in 1997; The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto, a novel, was published in 1998; The Feast of the Goat, which sold more than 400,000 copies in Spanish-language, was published in English in 2001; The Language of Passion, his most recent collection of nonfiction essays on politics and culture, was published by FSG in June 2003. The Way to Paradise, a novel, was published in November 2003; The Bad Girl, a novel, was published in the U.S. by FSG in October, 2007. His most recent novel, El Sueño del Celta, will be published in 2011 or 2012. Two works of nonfiction are planned for the near future as well.
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I'ma book junkie but it is often hard to find books that can catch and kkeep my attention, Ido a lot of my book hunting at thrift stores and such and a while back I came acrossthis book.. After buying it from a small bookstore and reading most of it , the book was stolen from me (yes it is that good of a story) so after finding it here for so cheap I HAD to repurchase because (YES it is THAT GOOD) d that's just from reading the first few chapters ! Lolzz
If you like taboo then this is a great book, the author himself is a written genius if u as me !
Haunts, he told me I was bothering him. So fine I went to find my oy own book. Sat down to read, read just far enough that when I got home I couldn't get it off my mind. So Amazon came to my rescue. I never quit a book once I start it, this one was a struggle.