Vargas Llosa: swan or owl?

As a reader, I find it interesting to see that, in a span of 62 years, at the beginning and at the end of his literary career, Mario Vargas Llosa writes two separate stories in which the protagonist is an old man. The first, entitled “El Abuelo”, was published in “El Comercio” in Lima in 1958, and would be incorporated into the collection “Los Jefes”, published the following year. It is a short story, written in the third person, with an omniscient narrator, who narrates the trap that an old man sets for his grandson, whom he refers to as the “child”, without naming him.

As a 22-year-old rookie, Vargas Llosa did not have the life experience or the weapons to create a character endowed with feelings and thoughts, but like good storytellers, he developed an intrigue that remains floating in the reader’s mind after reading, the so-called blind spot in history, to which Javier Cercas refers: what could be the motives that the grandfather had for this reprehensible behavior against his heir? Revenge for some mistreatment suffered? Deep envy with those who will remain in the world, while he will become a skull? Do you protest against the new generations with whom he has broken communication, because they think he is crazy?

The second, entitled “Los Vientos”, published in the literary magazine “Letras Libres” in Madrid in October 2021, although it was finished in December 2020. As a result of his sentimental disagreement with Mrs. Preysler, a couple of paragraphs from him They have been widely quoted by the tabloids. Believing that the feelings of the character corresponded with those of the author. Big mistake of naive journalists and readers who remained in the superfluous and banal, without allowing themselves to penetrate the kaleidoscope that the text brings. And enjoy -it is a saying-, because the passages of him must have generated disgust in the readers, despite the euphemism of the title.

Undoubtedly, there is a very close connection between author and character: both are elderly, “irredeemed conservatives.” With a vast relationship with the world of culture, living in Madrid. And it could even be said that the man in the story is also Peruvian like the author. Because throughout the text it is expressed with some Peruvian Spanish words such as “cojudo”, “huevón” or “pichula”. But one must not fall into the deception of realistic literature. Since the classics Flaubert, Víctor Hugo and Balzac – the teachers of Vargas Llosa -, we know that the world of literary fiction, in order for it to have the capacity to envelop and “hook” readers, must be the closest thing to the real world. And any unaware reader or viewer will always know how to recognize the border between what is real and what is imaginary. Unless his name is Alonso Quijada, Quijano or Quesada.

The story is narrated in the first person by the protagonist, a “hundred-year-old biped” with no family and no friends who lives in a Madrid of the future. One in which foxes and rats have taken over its parks, as a helpless witness to the passing or collapse of its time. The action takes place over the course of a day, when the protagonist has lost his way and does not know how to return to his house. Or, rather, to “my room and my bathroom”.

The narration is a counterpoint between the unliterary theme of his uncontrolled sphincters and his diatribes, claims, protests against the technological revolution and the novelties of that postmodern world (“for people like me, from another era, life without bookstores, without libraries and without cinemas is a life without a soul”). All in the midst of the “rheumy swamp of his memory” that makes her repeat many times what he already said.

It is not surprising that, in the forced confinement of the pandemic, Vargas Llosa has thought about the possibility of his death, as happened to millions of us in the world (“I thought, scared: “Am I going to die?” I had thought about it many times , especially in recent times, whenever I had a malaise”). But in his case, he overcame the anguish with his literary imagination that led him to build an old man benefited by science with the prolongation of his life for decades until he was left alone, without relatives or friends.

The anecdote that kicks off the story occurs when he realizes that he has forgotten where he lives, accompanied by unpleasant digestive events. There comes a time when after hours of fruitless wandering through the historic center of Madrid, she plunges into the anguish of imagining a sad, street death, abandoned “like a stray dog”. And smeared with poop, as the horrible death suffered by the writer Abraham Valdelomar could have been, a century before, according to legend. Due to its plot and content, this is an ideological story, because MVLL through his alter ego exposes his ideas.

Actually, nothing happens in the story, except the long walk of the lost old man. Nothing similar to an incident or accident, not even a stumble, a dialogue with a passerby or the barking of a Batuque. Instead, the bulk of the narrative deals with his ideas about artificial intelligence and literature (“The only novelist left alive and kicking on this planet is the computer”). Painting and postmodern art in general (“everything that was artistic in the past, such as ballet, opera, painting, sculpture, literature, classical music, the humanities, has deteriorated to the point of disappearing or change nature for the worse”). On technology, freedom and dictatorships, (“we are more or less happy slaves and content with their lot.

Orwell did not imagine that this could be the evolution of that “free socialism” that he imagined and that it was simply impossible. Well, now we have lost our freedom without realizing it, and, worst of all, we are happy and we even think we are free. What a jerk!”); progressive theologies -although it does not question the existence of God-, (“I suspect that the Catholic Church sealed its death certificate when it began to modernize itself, when that bastion of machismo and conservatism, intolerance and dogmatism that was once, began to relax, to to crack, to make concessions to progressive priests and laymen”) and the ideas of some young dissidents of the social system. These are ideas that, in some way, repeat those that Vargas Llosa has been expounding in his journalistic essays in recent decades. Although, without a doubt, they must be interesting for those who have not followed them.

As for the language, like most of MVLL’s works, the narration is flat, probably due to his journalistic practice. That does not mean that journalistic texts cannot be literary. It is enough to remember those of Azorín, the master of brief but brilliant phrases. Paco Threshold, Norman Mailer or those of Jaime Bedoya or Víctor Hurtado, among the Peruvians.

The last story of Vargas Llosa is not exactly the song of the (European) swan, beautiful and last. It is rather the hooting of the wise owl (Arequipa) that has flown and senses the end. I don’t find in him, as might be foreseeable, an internal monologue or sparkling dialogues, only flashbacks and repetitions. Nor do I find the metaphors, the similes, the wide, arborescent sentences that leave ideas and sensations scattered in their subordinate sentences, stimulating the reader. Rather, towards the end, he slips into less verisimilitude by pretending that the reader believes that the neighbor invites an old stranger to his elevator who stinks of poop. Perhaps what critics say about him is true: he is exhausted and has been repeated for three decades. Probably the conservative drift of his thinking has made him lose his creative freedom and audacity and, with it, many readers.