Rendezvous turns Revelation

I picked up this novel after reading a review on NY Times sometime back. I wish to share this review with you with the idea that you will definitely read the classic with eyes for appreciation and love. The wise say “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is so true and fits both for the book and the character in the book.

Dreams end when sleep ends, but what happens to desire? Do they originate in our dreams or they mushroom while we are awake? Have you ever pondered if desires have on/off switch? Don’t you think that would make life easier? Is there really a gold pot at the end of the rainbow of desires? Does love happen at the end of lust? May be revelation was the pot of gold. Hang on, lets go and read another man’s desire. We all grow old, but our desires do not necessarily age with us.

Memoirs of Melancholy Whores is a desire of a ninety year old writer to be with a teenage virgin on the night of his 90th birthday. At the age of 90 he neither quit work nor did he quit women. Passion manifest as desire. When asked why he never settled in his life his candid reply shocked the questioner: “whores left no time to be married”. The dark and secretive side of him manifested at the arrival of dusk and ended at dawn.

The man at 90 is busy writing columns for the newspaper and even busier in the evenings visiting the house of a Madam through the orchard gate. Who knows if this visit of his was opening a can of desire or was he waiting for the halo to dawn at sunset years.

Was he out to just get physical or was it more? There is nothing erotic in this novel except for a few passages that is meant to describe the insatiable carnal beast in him. The description about his wait for the call from Rosa Cabarcas was very earthly and at the same time nail biting.

Though the time spent with the teenage girl was less than 6 hours, but it turned out to be the night of revelation. Naming the girl "Delgadina," after a princess in a ballad, he simply goes to sleep alongside her, and is thereby initiated into a new world of romantic love: "That night I discovered the improbable pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty." When she talks in her sleep one night, the Scholar notices that her "voice had a plebeian touch" not suited to the Delgadina of his fantasies, and realizes "the last shadow of a doubt disappeared from my soul: I preferred her asleep."

The old man with the libido of a teenage boy he turns into a protector who longs to own and take care of this treasure. Is this what happens when the mirage of lust vanishes and love embalms? He sits and admires the girl without putting his finger on her and endlessly waits for her in the park outside the city. The mother hen in him bestows her with a bicycle for her birthday and emerald ear rings from his mother as gift for sharing the night. He is tormented by separation and flip-flops like a fish out of pond. Delgadina becomes so much a part of him and his life and on the night of the rainstorm he say "I did not see myself alone in the house but always accompanied by Delgadina. I had felt her so close during the night that I detected the sound of her breath in the bedroom and the throbbing of her cheek on my pillow."

A brilliant fiction piece that describes the intangible quotient of love. By merely painting the feelings of the old man before and after the author has brought out the difference between love and lust. No one can distinguish between lust and love in a better way.

Though there has been a lot of noise about the subtle idea of child abuse and pedophilia in the character, but the literary potency of this fictional piece washes away the masculine and feminine potency. Love can visit or revisit at any age, the agony of wait is what it makes it worthy and interesting. It must be read and re-read to get the colors of love and flavor of literature. You can miss love in your life but don’t miss this.