Read The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto for Free Online Page A

perhaps you will despise me. But it doesn’t matter. Even if there were only one chance that you would accept my offer against a million that you would reject it, I would take the plunge. I will summarize what would require hours of conversation, accompanied by vocal inflections and persuasive gestures .
    Since leaving Peru (because you turned me down), I’ve been working in the United States and have done fairly well. In ten years I have become a manager and member of the executive board of a thriving electrical-conductor factory in the state of Massachusetts. As an engineer and entrepreneur, I have made my way in this, my second country, for I became an American citizen four years ago .
    I wanted to let you know that I have just resigned my position and am selling my stock in the firm, from which I expect to make a profit of $600,000—with luck, a little more. I am doing this because I have been offered the presidency of TIM (Technological Institute of Mississippi), the college I attended and with which I have maintained a close relationship. A third of the student body is now Hispanic (Latin American). My salary will be half of what I earn here. I don’t care. I look forward to devoting myself to the education of young people from the two Americas, who will build the twenty-first century. I always dreamed of dedicating my life to Academe, and this is what I would have done if I had remained in Peru, that is, if you had married me .
    “What’s the point of all this?” you must be asking yourself. “Why has Modesto returned after ten years to tell me this story?” I’m getting there, my darling Lucrecia .
    I have decided that during the week between my departure from Boston and my arrival in Oxford, Mississippi, I will spend $100,000 of my $600,000 on a vacation. I have, by the way, never taken a vacation and do not plan to take one in the future, because, as you may remember, I’ve always liked working. My job is still my favorite diversion. But if my plans materialize, as I hope they do, this week will be something quite out of the ordinary. Not the conventional Caribbean cruise or beaches with palm trees and surfers in Hawaii. Something very personal, and unrepeatable: the fulfillment of an old dream. This is where you come in, right through the front door. I know you are married to an honorable Limenian gentleman, a widower and an insurance executive. I am married too, to a gringa, a physician from Boston, and I am happy to the modest extent that marriage allows. I am not proposing that you divorce and take up a new life, not at all. Only that you join me for this ideal week, cherished in my mind for so many years, which circumstances now permit me to make a reality. You will not regret sharing these seven days of illusion with me, days you will remember fondly for the rest of your life, I promise .
    We will meet on Saturday the 17th at Kennedy Airport in New York, where you will arrive from Lima on Lufthansa, and I will fly in from Boston. A limousine will take us to the suite at the Plaza Hotel, which I have already reserved, along with the flowers I have selected to perfume it. You will have time to rest, have your hair done, visit a sauna, or go shopping on Fifth Avenue, which is literally at your feet. That night we have tickets to the Metropolitan Opera to see Puccini’s Tosca, with Luciano Pavarotti as Mario Cavaradossi and the Metropolitan Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Edouardo Muller. We will dine at Le Cirque, where, with luck, you can rub elbows with Mick Jagger, Henry Kissinger, or Sharon Stone. We will end the evening at the glamorous and exciting Regine’s .
    The Concorde to Paris leaves at noon on Sunday, and there will be no need for us to rise early. Since the flight takes less than three and a half hours—apparently one is hardly aware of the passage of time, thanks to the luncheon delicacies prepared under the supervision of Paul Bocuse—it will still be day when we reach the