cherchez la femme

Mario Vargas Llosa (left) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (right).
Gabo's bruised left eye courtesy of the 2010 Literature Nobel Laureate

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded yesterday to Mario Vargas Llosa, a decision that besides being fair (although according to some a very late one) finally brings Llosa on-a-par with his fellow writer, old friend and great rival for the prestigious title of the greatest living Hispanic American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Readers around the world are now welcome to reconcile the two literary men as equally great in both public acceptance and critical acclaim.

What remains to be seen is whether this prize will settle a long-lasting feud between them and if Gabo and Mario, once inseparable, will finally talk to each other after refusing to do so for more than 34 years. Over the decades people have attributed this contend between the two once best friends (Marquez being the Godfather of Llosa's son Gabriel) to either professional jealousy or opposing political views. Llosa has been a fierce neoliberal since the early 90s when he even ran for the presidency in Peru, while Marquez has always openly exhibited his left-wing ideas and has been a close friend of Fidel Castro, for which Llosa often refers to him as "el cortesano" (the courtier). Nevertheless the roots of this rivalry are neither political nor authorial. They can be traced back to a winter evening of 1976 in Mexico City, date and place where the incident of the black eye occurred. The story involves two Nobel Prize winners, a right-hooked punch and at least one woman.

The legend has it that on the evening of the 13th of February 1976, while in a movie theater in Mexico City, Marquez spotted Vargas Llosa sitting a few rows behind him. Upon making a move to embrace his good -he thought- friend, he found himself lying on the carpet with a bleeding nose and a sore left eye. (Legend also has that his shiner received immediate treatment by Helena Poniatowska placing a steak on it). In the meanwhile, Vargas Llosa, author -among other works- of the most famous punch in the history of literature, was led outside the theater shouting in rage: "How dare you try to embrace me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!"

The background to this incident lies at the verge of being qualified as TV gossip material but since photographer Rodrigo Moya has made it public it has assumed some far-reaching consequences, among which the reluctance of Marquez to complete the second volume of his autobiography or Llosa's refusal to republish his doctorate thesis on Marquez's legendary "One hundred years of solitude". The story goes that while both men where living in Barcelona with their families, Vargas Llosa fell passionately in love with a Swedish air-hostess, for whom he left his wife Patricia and moved to Stockholm. Patricia sought advice in Marquez and his wife Mercedes, the two having always been very close friends of the couple. It was later said that they strongly advised her to ask for a divorce. Even later, it was insinuated that Gabo's consolation to Patricia may have been a bit overly friendly. Vargas Llosa was informed (or misinformed) of the facts (or not) of the matter when he later returned to his wife (they always do) as she was probably too reluctant to contain herself (or too willing to exaggerate).

The rest is history (or not yet). As the two masters casually met in Mexico the following year, Vargas Llosa felt obliged to demonstrate to "the courtier" how the right (hand) can deliver a decisive blow on the left (eye).

How a duel of this kind and proportions can be resolved, even among two of the world's most prominent Nobel laureates, remains unclear.

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PS. A couple of hours after this post I read Marquez's latest tweet, posted on the day of the Prize announcement. It simply read "cuentas iguales", roughly meaning "even". Purposefully ambiguous, as all aphorisms, it can be interpreted in many ways. You choose the one you like the most.