The decision of Mario Vargas Llosa leave the house with which he shared Isabella Preisler for eight years on the outskirts of Madrid to return to his home on Calle Flora in the capital of Spain, he found in a story, The windspublished two years ago in the magazine Letras Libres, a forge for once again relating the literature he does with the life of the Peruvian writer.
That story was published in the face of a certain public or literary indifference, because, like the same character that the author of The puppies in the aforementioned story we read less and less and, moreover, every time we write worse. In any case, history and life seemed to go hand in hand, which is why they now collect newspapers, magazines, television programs dedicated to the comings and goings of hearts.
According to these interpretations, what the protagonist of the story tells, a lost man whose advanced age forces him to put up with his own farts and makes him forget the way home, is a metaphor for the drama that Vargas Llosa himself was experiencing.
History, The winds, would then be the chronicle of an announced event: the breaking of that relationship. It can therefore be deduced that in the two years that have passed since the magazine founded by the Mexican Enrique Krauze and directed in Spain by Daniel Gascón, author of The city and the dogs he would have been chained beside himself experiencing a tragedy the news of which took some time to spread until Isabel Preysler announced that the writer was leaving the house, among other things because he felt “jealous”.
The speculations that followed the official note from the now ex-partner of Vargas Llosa were undoubtedly fueled by the materials that the author himself left written in the now famous story.
Numerous journalists or similar have also added anonymous testimonies (attributed, in one case or another) to circles or relatives, so that now Madrid, and not only this city, is infected by connoisseurs of each of the aspects of that relationship it was broken, just as it started, under the protection of Hola magazine.
It is unlikely that this series of interpretations, which have had on the existence of The winds the root of a credibility that has not been endorsed by the main male protagonist of the breakup, must be rigorously clarified at least until Vargas Llosa makes a statement, since Isabel Preysler has already released her version of the events from the cover of the weekly.
The fight with García Márquez
Many years ago, In 1976, Vargas Llosa starred in an event that separated him forever from one of the great friends of his life, Gabriel García Márquez.. The accident that produced this break has been the subject of much speculation, which has now circulated again. Fueled by both silences, that of Gabo and that of Mario, that blow that the latter dealt to the author One Hundred Years of Solitudeit was reported as seen by a thousand eyes.
Neither Vargas Llosa nor Gabriel García Márquez wanted to explain what had happened. Their respective wives, Patricia and Mercedes, also said nothing, but over the years there were few in the usually noisy world of literature, journalism and their fringes who lacked material to give their side.
Just now that episode whose root both authors kept secret has resurfaced, and once again it is associated with private interests or situations that have never been confirmed. It is impossible to clarify now, among other things, what happened at Isabel Preysler’s house and why she left, wanted to leave or was sent by Mario Vargas Llosa.
Preysler’s version is that of “jealousy”. Vargas Llosa’s was taken out of his own story, but he didn’t say anything. As in the Gabo/Mario break, this other break is also open to the most diverse versions.
While those mysteries with which the press (and not only) express their interest in the true story of the breakup, a custom that has lasted for many years and which also has the Peruvian writer as its protagonist, return to the Spanish national arena.
While this relationship lasted between those who have now broken, many citizens, from the pen and political or cultural critics, have speculated on the influence that the social, and even political, commitments of the author of A fish in the waterto the influence of his relationship with Isabel Preysler.
And surely this factor was relevant, no doubt in his private life, but from this to induce that even his political leanings, which please the right and the left scares, there is a distance that should be followed to go from freedom of a person to the interference of others in the confidentiality of one’s ideas and decisions.
Like it or not, his texts, on the other hand, are those of Mario Vargas Llosa, they have his style and correspond to a long literary history which, over the course of many years, and not only in these seven years of the aforementioned relationship, have been attacked by whoever believes that freedom is only a direction in which whoever thinks as one or the other would like is right or wrong.
A human interpretation
In the days in which this sentimental flow took place there was no lack of speculation, numerous press releases and, also, many references to the meaning of The winds. Perhaps the comment that most substantially reflects what could be a human interpretation of this situation that exists between Kafka and, among other things, some texts by Vargas Llosa himself, is what The thoughtful citizen and excellent writer, Sergio del Molino, has just posted on Facebook.
That article is about that story, The winds, in fact, and what they deduce from the private life of the author. In the story, Sergio del Molino points out, “there is much more tragedy than comedy, and more human truth than in all the jokes, the teasing and the hatred for the old and powerful men à la mode. It’s easy to laugh at a malicious writer, that’s what any Podemos bot with four memes at hand on their phone does.
“The difficult and beautiful thing – he continues – is to pity the lost man, who has everything and is everything and loses everything due to a youthful blurring, due to his own banality of evil, and realizes too late that he is a wretch, who he is deceived without being able to apologize as a young man would: he cannot plead inexperience”.
Del Molino continues, speaking of the story in which the protagonist regrets having left “Carmencita” his wife for another that he doesn’t even remember anymore, that this old man who can’t stand his farts and regrets that his cock (his penis, they say so in Peru) is no longer useful except for peeing”he fell into the trap like a raging teenager in the midst of a hormonal mess”.
Such a character “awakens sympathy and compassion in anyone who understands anything about life and knows how easy it is to stumble and fall into the pits that we ourselves enthusiastically dig”.
It is not easy today in journalism, of any kind, to find an interpretation of this kind, because, as Sergio del Molino himself told me commenting on his brief comment, it is now very common to notice the “very unpleasant moral arrogance” that leads many people to make fun of “a man’s very human weaknesses”.
Maybe Mario Vargas Llosa will ever tell what he lived and he will do it, once again, using the narrative that has now given journalism so much to talk about. Meanwhile, he is known to have traveled outside Madridaway from the scene of that story and its circumstances.
His son Álvaro uploaded some images of his father reading aloud the first edition of Madame Bovarythe work of Flaubert which influenced his literature so much.
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Source: Clarin
