The Old Man Who Read Love Stories by Luis Sepúlveda

Author:Luis Sepúlveda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Having eaten the tasty crayfish, the old man carefully cleaned his dentures, wrapped them in his handkerchief, and put them away. Then he cleared the table, threw the scraps out the window, opened a bottle of Frontera, and selected one of the novels.

Rain surrounded him on all sides, providing him with unrivaled privacy.

The novel got off to a good start.

Paul kissed her ardently while the gondolier, accomplice in his friend’s escapades, pretended to look the other way, and the gondola, lined with soft cushions, glided peacefully along the canals of Venice.

He read the passage aloud several times.

What on earth were gondolas?

They glided along canals. They must be boats or canoes. As for Paul, he clearly wasn’t at all respectable, since he was kissing the girl “ardently” in the presence of a friend, an accomplice into the bargain.

But he liked the start.

He thought the author was quite right to make it clear from the outset who the bad ones were. That way you avoided misunderstanding and misplaced sympathy.

As for the kissing, what was this “ardently”? How the devil did you do that?

He thought back to the few times he’d kissed Dolores Encarnación del Santísimo Sacramento Estupiñán Otavalo. Probably, without his being aware of it, one of those rare kisses had been ardent, like Paul’s in the novel. Anyway, there hadn’t been many kisses, because his wife either responded with fits of laughter or said they must be sinful.

Ardent kisses. Kisses. He suddenly realized he had hardly ever kissed, and then only his wife, since kissing was a custom unknown to the Shuar.

Their men and women caressed each other, all over the body, and it didn’t matter if there were other people around. But even in the throes of lovemaking they never kissed. The women preferred to sit on top of the men, arguing that in this position they felt their loving was more powerful, and consequently the anents accompanying the act were much more affecting.

No, the Shuar never kissed.

He also remembered that he had once seen a gold prospector lying with a Jibaro woman, a poor creature who hung around the settlers and adventurers begging for a swig of liquor. Anyone who wanted to could take her into a quiet corner and possess her. The poor woman, brutalized by alcohol, didn’t realize what they were doing to her. This time the fortune hunter mounted her on the beach and tried to press his mouth to hers.

The woman reacted like a wild animal. She pushed the man off, threw a handful of sand in his eyes, and went off to vomit, visibly disgusted.

If that was what ardent kissing was about, then Paul in the novel was a real swine.

When siesta time came, he’d read and pondered some four pages, and was worrying about his inability to imagine Venice with the features drawn from other cities he’d also discovered in novels.

In Venice, apparently, the streets were under water, and the people had to move about in gondolas.

Gondolas. He was infatuated with the word “gondola,” and thought it would make a good name for his canoe.

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