The War Of The End Of The World - Mario Vargas Llosa [364]
He rose to his feet: he had no idea as yet what he was going to do, what he wanted to do, but he was aware of a stirring deep within him, and it seemed to him that he had arrived at a crucial moment in which he was obliged to come to a decision that would have incalculable consequences. What was he going to do, what was it he wanted to do? He set the glass of cognac down on top of the liquor cabinet, and feeling his heart, his temples pounding, his blood coursing through the geography of his body, he crossed the study, the enormous living room, the vast entry hall—with not a soul around at this hour, and everything in shadow, though there was a faint glow from the street lamps outside—to the foot of the staircase. There was a single lamp lighting the way up the stairs. He hurried up, on tiptoe, so softly that even he was unable to hear his own footfalls. Once at the top, without hesitating, instead of heading for his own apartments, he made his way toward the room in which the baroness was sleeping, separated only by a screen from the alcove where Sebastiana had installed herself so as to be close at hand if Estela needed her in the night.
As his hand reached out toward the latch, the thought occurred to him that the door might be locked. He had never entered the room without knocking. No, the door was not barred. He entered, closed the door behind him, searched for the bolt, and slid it home. From the doorway he spied the yellow light of the night lamp—a candlewick floating in a little bowl of oil—whose dim light illuminated part of the baroness’s bed, the blue counterpane, the canopy overhead, and the thin gauze curtains. Standing there in the doorway, without making the slightest sound; without his hands trembling, the baron slowly removed all his clothes. Once he was naked, he crossed the room on tiptoe to Sebastiana’s little alcove.
He reached the edge of her bed without awakening her. There was a dim light in the room—the glow from the gas lamp out in the street, which took on a blue tinge as it filtered through the curtains—and the baron could make out the woman’s sleeping form, lying on her side, the sheets rising and falling with her breathing, her head resting on a little round pillow. Her long loose black hair fanned out across the bed and over the side, touching the floor. The thought came to him that he had never seen Sebastiana standing up with her hair undone, that it must no doubt reach to her heels, and that at one time or another, before a mirror or before Estela, she must surely have played at enveloping herself in this long hair as though in a silken mantle, and the image began to arouse a dormant instinct in him. He raised his hands to his belly and felt his member: it was flaccid, but in its warmth, its complaisance, the swiftness and the feeling close to joy with which he unsheathed the glans from the prepuce, he sensed a profound life, yearning to be called forth, reawakened, poured out. The things he had been afraid of as he approached—what would the servant’s reaction be? what would Estela’s be if Sebastiana woke up screaming?—disappeared instantly and, as startling as a hallucination, the face of Galileo Gall flashed before his mind and he remembered the vow of chastity that the revolutionary had sworn to himself in order to concentrate his energies on things he believed to be of a higher order—action, science. “I have been as stupid as he was,” he thought. Without ever having sworn to do so, he had kept a similar vow for a very long time, renouncing pleasure, happiness, in favor of that base occupation that had brought misfortune to the person he loved most dearly in this world.
Without thinking, automatically, he bent over and sat down on the edge of the bed, at the same time moving his two hands, one downward to pull back the sheets covering Sebastiana, and the other toward her mouth to stifle her cry. The woman shrank away, lay there rigid, and opened her eyes,