The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto by Mario Vargas Llosa

Her eyes met his: Alfonso’s eyes were shining with an equivocal light, and the first signs of a smile played across his untroubled face.
    “Could I ask you for a big favor? The biggest in the world? Would you do it for me?”
    He’s going to ask me to take off my clothes, she thought in terror. I’ll slap his face and never see him again. She hated Fonchito and she hated herself.
    “What favor?” she murmured, trying to keep her smile from turning grotesque.
    “Would you pose like the lady in Reclining Nude in Green Stockings? ” intoned the mellifluous young voice. “Just for a minute, Stepmamá!”
    “What are you saying?”
    “Without undressing, of course,” the boy reassured her, moving eyes and hands, wrinkling his nose. “Just the pose. I’m dying to see it. Would you do that big, big favor for me? Don’t be mean, Stepmamá.”
    “Don’t play so hard to get when you know very well you’ll enjoy it,” said Justiniana, walking in and displaying her usual high spirits. “And since tomorrow is Fonchito’s birthday, let this be his present.”
    “Brava, Justita!” The boy clapped his hands. “Between the two of us, we’ll persuade her. Will you give me this present, Stepmamá? But you do have to take off your shoes.”
    “Admit you want to see the señora’s feet because you know they’re very pretty,” Justiniana teased, bolder than she had been on other afternoons. She placed the Coca-Cola and the glass of mineral water they had requested on the table.
    “Everything about her is pretty,” the boy said candidly. “Go on, Stepmamá, don’t be embarrassed with us. If you want, just so you won’t feel uncomfortable, Justita and I can play the game too and imitate another picture by Egon Schiele.”
    Not knowing how to respond, what joke to make, how to feign an anger she did not feel, Señora Lucrecia suddenly found herself smiling, nodding, murmuring, “All right, you willful child, it will be your birthday present,” removing her shoes, leaning back, and stretching out on the settee. She tried to imitate the reproduction that Fonchito had unfolded and was showing to her, like a director giving instructions to the star of the show. The presence of Justiniana made her feel safe, even though this madwoman had gotten it into her head to take Fonchito’s part. At the same time, her presence as a witness added a certain spice to the outlandish situation. She attempted to make a lighthearted joke out of what she was doing—“Is this it? No, the shoulder’s a little higher, the neck’s stretched like a chicken’s, the head’s straighter”—while she leaned back on her elbows, extended one leg and flexed the other, carefully imitating the model’s pose. Justiniana and Fonchito looked back and forth from her to the page, from the page to her, the girl’s eyes laughing, the boy’s filled with deep concentration. This is the most serious game in the world, Doña Lucrecia thought.
    “That’s it exactly, Señora.”
    “Not yet,” Fonchito interrupted. “You have to raise your knee a little more, Stepmamá. I’ll help you.”
    Before she had a chance to forbid it, the boy handed the book to Justiniana, walked to the sofa, and placed both hands under her knee at the place where the dark green stocking ended and her thigh began. Very gently, paying close attention to the reproduction, he raised and moved her leg. The touch of his slender fingers on her bare flesh stirred Doña Lucrecia. The lower half of her body began to tremble. She felt a palpitation, a vertigo, something overpowering that brought both distress and pleasure. And just then she met Justiniana’s glance. The eyes burning in that dark face spoke volumes. She knows the way I am was her mortified thought. The boy shouted just in time to save her: “Now we have it, Stepmamá! Isn’t that perfect, Justita? Stay that way for a second, please.”
    Sitting cross-legged on the rug like an Oriental, he looked at her in rapture,