The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto Read Online Free PDF

continued, carried away by excitement. “Schiele was an artist, he needed inspiration. Didn’t he paint masterpieces? What was wrong with having them undress?”
    “I’ll take the cups into the kitchen.” Señora Lucrecia rose to her feet. “Help me with the plates and the breadbasket, Fonchito.”
    The boy quickly brushed the crumbs scattered on the table into his hand. Obediently he followed his stepmother. But Señora Lucrecia had not succeeded in tearing him away from his subject.
    “Well, it’s true he did things with some of the women who posed naked for him,” he said as they walked down the hall. “For example, with his sister-in-law Adele. But he wouldn’t have with his sister Gerti, would he, Stepmamá?”
    The cups had begun to clatter in Señora Lucrecia’s hands. The damn kid had the diabolical habit of turning the conversation to salacious topics, playing the innocent all the while.
    “Of course not,” she replied, feeling her tongue stumbling over the words. “Certainly not, what an idea.”
    They had walked into the small kitchen, its floor tiles gleaming like mirrors. The walls sparkled too. Justiniana observed them, intrigued. A light fluttered like a butterfly in her eyes, animating her dark face.
    “With Gerti, maybe not, but he did with his sister-in-law,” the boy insisted. “Adele herself admitted it after Egon Schiele died. The books say so, Stepmamá. I mean, he did things with both sisters. That’s probably where his inspiration came from.”
    “What good-for-nothing are you talking about?” asked the maid. Her expression was very lively. She took the cups and plates, rinsed them in running water, then put them in the washbasin, full to the brim with soapy, blue-tinged water. The odor of bleach permeated the kitchen.
    “Egon Schiele,” whispered Doña Lucrecia. “An Austrian painter.”
    “He died when he was twenty-eight, Justita,” the boy explained.
    “He must have died of all those things he did,” Justiniana said as she washed plates and cups and dried them with a red-checkered towel. “So behave yourself, Foncho, or the same thing will happen to you.”
    “He didn’t die of the things he did, he died of Spanish influenza,” replied the boy, impervious to her mockery. “His wife too, three days before him. What’s Spanish influenza, Stepmamá?”
    “A fatal flu, I guess. It must have come to Vienna from Spain. All right, you have to go now, it’s late.”
    “Now I know why you want to be a painter, you bandit,” an irrepressible Justiniana interjected. “Because painters seem to have so much fun with their models.”
    “Don’t make those kinds of jokes,” Doña Lucrecia reprimanded her. “He’s only a boy.”
    “A nice big boy, Señora,” she replied, opening her mouth wide and showing her dazzling white teeth.
    “Before he painted them, he played with them.” Fonchito took up the thread of his thought again, not paying attention to the dialogue between the señora and her maid. “He had them take different poses, trying things out. Dressed, undressed, half-dressed. What he liked best was for them to try on stockings. Red, green, black, every color. And lie on the floor. Together, separately, holding one another. And pretend they were fighting. He spent hours and hours looking at them. He played with the two sisters as if they were his dolls. Until his inspiration came. Then he painted them.”
    “That’s quite a game,” Justiniana said, teasing him. “Like kids’ strip poker, but for grown-ups.”
    “Enough! That’s enough!” Doña Lucrecia’s voice was so loud that Fonchito and Justiniana stood there openmouthed. More quietly, she said, “I don’t want your papá to start asking you questions. You have to go.”
    “All right, Stepmamá,” the boy stammered.
    He was white with shock, and Doña Lucrecia regretted having shouted. But she could not allow him to go on talking so passionately about the intimate details of Egon Schiele’s