“I didn’t just turn the page, I changed the book,” Isabel Preysler explained earlier this year, shortly after her split from Mario Vargas Llosa. But she’s not the only one who changed books. In October the Peruvian writer will publish his new novel, I dedicate my silence to him (Alfaguara). The title may or may not be confusing. I dedicate my silence to him not about the outcome of his relationship with the queen of coated paper, a chapter about which he has not said a word, but about a more lasting passion: the Peruvian waltz. “Here I tell this story and thank a secret love that has accompanied me all my life: what I feel about Creole music,” explained the Nobel Prize winner for literature himself, dispelling all doubts and suspicions.
At 87, Vargas Llosa has turned the page, changed the book and is already thinking about writing the next one. This newspaper has learned that the author has spent the entire summer re-reading and studying the extensive work of Jean-Paul Sartre as he intends to develop an essay or book about the author of Nausea. Not only does he feel that Sartre had a major influence on him, but he also shares with the French existentialist a devotion to Flaubert and Madame Bovary (Vargas Llosa resurfaced after his breakup with Preysler and read a few paragraphs from the story by Emma Bovary, an allegorical novel, a criticism of bourgeois society). He is said to be an expert in Sartrean thought, a great connoisseur of existentialist ideas: “being-in-itself,” “being-for-itself,” “being-for-others”… According to those around him, he is now a “ His for Patricia”. Patricia Llosa, his ex-wife, whom he described in 2010 as “the cousin with the button nose and the indomitable character.” “So generous that even when she thinks she is scolding me, she praises me wholeheartedly,” she said in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech this year in a Stockholm concert hall packed with cameras and microphones.
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Vargas and Llosa, husband and wife of 50 years and cousins forever, spent the entire summer together. He wrote about her again. In his latest edition of Touchstone, published this Sunday in EL PAÍS, he meticulously recounts his summer vacation with Patricia, the first he enjoys with her after an eight-year break. “After eight years I returned to paradise,” he says in the first sentence of the text entitled “Return to Paradise” (in case there was any doubt). He then talks in detail about his everyday life over the last two weeks in the Austrian city of Salzburg: long morning walks with his ex-wife on the banks of the Salzach and walks through the alleys of Mozart’s village, afternoons dedicated to intensive reading of novels, lunch and dinner in typical restaurants, opera and concert evenings in the company of friends and family. “The two weeks we spend here compensate us for the frustrations and bad times of the year because they are dedicated to pure unreality,” explains the author, who began the year by breaking up with Preysler and fleeing the paparazzi in the month of July he was hospitalized. in a Madrid clinic for Covid.
The cousins have given themselves over to the pure unreality of Salzburg and its most real and carnal pleasures: the gastronomic ones. They ate the juicy sausages from Café Tomaselli, Mozart’s favorite sausages; They had a snack at the magnificent Sacher Hotel, where the Sachertorte, Empress Sissi’s favorite cake, was served; and they drank Italian wine from Trattoria Pan e Vin… and in between enjoyed a musical feast that included a montage of Les Troyens. It was the first time that Mario Vargas Llosa saw Hector Berlioz’s monumental opera in Austria, popularized in the 1960s, at the height of the Latin American boom, by the great soprano Régine Crespin. He also saw Verdi’s Macbeth with Patricia and the two concerts of the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the extraordinary Kirill Petrenko. “It was exciting to see them together again at the music festival. “They haven’t missed a date in 25 years and Mario hasn’t missed a date in the almost eight years he’s been with Isabel,” his friends say. “Seeing Patricia and Salzburg again is a great joy for everyone,” they added.
The couple prepared thoroughly for this vacation. Quarantining food to eliminate metabolic waste is another ancient tradition that was revived this summer. Before traveling to Austria, they fasted for three weeks at the Buchinger Clinic in Marbella (Málaga). The writer acquired this habit not as a result of a medical recommendation, but rather through literary means. His editor, the late Carmen Balcells, and his friends Juan Marsé and the poet Jaime Gil de Biedma introduced him to the rite, a remedy invented by Otto Buchinger at the beginning of the 20th century. “This summer, Mario followed a low-calorie diet and Patricia followed therapeutic fasting,” her entourage tells EL PAÍS. They weren’t just starving. They also swam, did relaxation exercises, drank tea and chamomile, practiced oriental gymnastics such as Chi Kung, got massages, and took restful naps that left them feeling rejuvenated. “Both of them are doing very well physically,” those close to them conclude.
Twice in his life Vargas Llosa was offered courtship and both times he declined. The only time he promoted something unsolicited and spontaneously was in the Buchinger case. “Fasting made me discover how delicious it is to eat,” he said in one of those promotional interviews. After breaking up with Patricia, he seems to have rediscovered how “rich” it is to be with her.