the last book I ever read (I Give You My Silence: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, excerpt seven)

from I Give You My Silence: A Novel by Mario Vargas Llosa:

He told Collau and Matilde that night that he’d filled an entire notebook with a prologue and several chapters. He was happy, and his wife and friend noticed, remarking that they’d never seen him so euphoric. He spent an entire week like that, writing morning, noon, and night, and on Sunday, he read through all that he had written. Then, feeling content, deeply satisfied, even, he carefully tore all his notebooks into tiny pieces. He would have to change everything. The book would instead have an anodyne beginning, kids playing soccer, a ball rolling across a field, a boy sending it flying with his head. Lalo Molfino would be there, sympathetic, lively. Then someone would tell him where he’d come from. The story would move backward from that point to Father Molfino giving Domitila her last rites.

He spent a few days on this new version and informed Collau and his wife one night that now his book had truly taken off and the wind was in his sails. Again, they remarked on how pleased he seemed, if a little overexcited. The next day, he tore everything into pieces once more and dropped them into his wastebasket. He started over with his dialogue with Maluenda at a table in the Bransa. He would explain early on that Lalo suffered from a sexual trauma. A revelation like that would trap readers right at the start. From his intimate wound, everything would unfold: the guitar, his experiences at school; only at the very end of the book, with a wealth of detail, would he recount Lalo’s sordid beginnings.

Toño’s fascination with his subject didn’t flag, and each night, Collau and Matilde listened to him patiently, respectfully, nodding along as he rambled in yet another fit of euphoria, sensing already that once more, he would tear up his work and start over, and not understanding why. But Toño knew. He was searching for the perfect way to begin his book, which he knew would be the first and last he wrote, despite his many years as a critic and scholar; he was sure that he would finish it and die, exhausted, of stomach cancer or something like that, leaving those pages behind for Matilde and Collau to publish when he was gone. The book would appear posthumously, when the worms would already be eating him, unless he were cremated—how much would that cost? He didn’t want Matilde to have to go on paying for him even after he was gone—but of course, the book would be a great success. Not initially: it would first make inroads among the “intellectuals,” who would recognize Toño Azpilcueta’s great talent, the originality of his ideas, the brilliance of his theories on the origins of the Peruvian national character, the importance of mestizos in the country’s history, his message about unity in diversity. All this would come across in time to the music of Lalo Molfino, the poet, that extraordinary guitarist who took up his instrument by chance and out of nowhere became the symbol of everything Toño wished to express. Toño Azpilcueta was happy.