The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa [91]
This sudden decision to come to Santo Domingo, to visit your father, does it mean you’re cured? No. You must have felt happy, been moved, at seeing Lucinda again, she was so close to you, your companion in rounds of vermouth, and at the matinees at the Olimpia and Elite movie theaters, on the beach or at the Country Club, and you must have felt sorry for the apparent mediocrity of her life, her lack of hope that it would improve. No. She didn’t make you happy, she didn’t move you, she didn’t make you feel sorry. She bored you because of that sentimentality and self-pity you find so objectionable.
“You’re an iceberg. You really don’t seem Dominican. I’m more Dominican than you are.” Well, well; imagine remembering Steve Duncan, her colleague at the World Bank. 1985 or 1986? Around then. They had been in Taipei that night, having supper together in the Grand Hotel, shaped like a Hollywood pagoda, where they were staying; through its windows the city looked like a blanket of fireflies. For the third, fourth, or tenth time, Steve proposed marriage and Urania, more categorically than before, told him no. Then, in surprise, she saw Steve’s ruddy face contort. She couldn’t contain her laughter.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to cry, Steve. For love of me? Or have you had too much whiskey?”
Steve did not smile. He sat looking at her for a long time, without answering, and then he said those words: “You’re an iceberg. You really don’t seem Dominican. I’m more Dominican than you are.” Well, well; the redhead fell in love with you, Urania. Whatever happened to him? A wonderful person, with a degree in economics from the University of Chicago, his interest in the Third World encompassed its problems of development, its languages, and its women. He finally married a Pakistani, an official of the Bank in the area of communications.
Are you an iceberg, Urania? Only with men. And not with all of them. With those whose glances, movements, gestures, tones of voice announce a danger. When you can read, in their minds or instincts, the intention to court you, to make advances. With them, yes, you do make them feel the arctic cold that you know how to project around you, like the stink skunks use to frighten away an enemy. A technique you handle with the mastery you’ve brought to every goal you set for yourself: studies, work, an independent life. “Everything except being happy.” Would she have been happy if, applying her will, her discipline, she had eventually overcome the unconquerable revulsion and disgust caused by men who desired her? You could have gone into therapy, seen a psychologist, an analyst. They had a remedy for everything, even finding men repugnant. But you never wanted to be cured. On the contrary, you don’t consider it a disease but a character trait, like your intelligence, your solitude, your passion for doing good work.
Her father’s eyes are open, and he looks at her with a certain fear.
“I was thinking about Steve, a Canadian at the World Bank,” she says in a quiet voice, scrutinizing him. “Since I didn’t want to marry him, he told me I was an iceberg. An accusation that would offend any Dominican woman. We have a reputation for being ardent, unbeatable in love. I earned a reputation for being just the opposite: prudish, indifferent, frigid. What do you think of that, Papa? Just now, for my cousin Lucinda, I had to invent a lover so she wouldn’t think badly of me.”
She falls silent because she notices that the invalid, shrinking in his chair, seems terrified. He no longer shakes off the flies that walk undisturbed across his face.
“A subject I would have