Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (34 page)

“I’ve seen all the papers and I missed that one—where did you read about it?” I asked them. And to Pascual: “I warn you: you’re not to use up all the time on today’s bulletins talking about the fire.” And to the two of them: “You’re hopeless sadists, both of you.”

“It’s not a news item—it’s the eleven o’clock serial,” Big Pablito explained. “The one about Sergeant Lituma, the terror of the underworld of El Callao.”

“He got fried to death, too,” Pascual chimed in. “He could have gotten out alive, he was just leaving to make his rounds, but he went back in to rescue his captain. His good heart was the death of him.”

“It was the dog, Choclito, he went back in to rescue, not the captain,” Big Pablito corrected him.

“That wasn’t ever really clear,” Pascual said. “One of the jail doors fell on him. I wish you could have seen Don Pedro Camacho while he was burning to death. What a great actor!”

“And how about Puddler?” Big Pablito put in enthusiastically, eager to give credit where credit was due. “If anybody had told me you could create a roaring inferno with just two fingers, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I saw him do it with my own two eyes, Don Mario!”

Javier’s arrival interrupted the conversation. The two of us went off to have our usual cup of coffee together at the Bransa, and once we’d sat down I gave him a quick rundown of what I’d found out about the necessary papers and triumphantly showed him the copy of my birth certificate.

“I’ve been doing some thinking and I have to tell you that you’re making a stupid mistake getting married,” he said the minute I’d finished, a bit ill at ease at being so outspoken. “Not only because you’re still just a kid, but above all on account of the question of money. You’re going to have to work your ass off at all sorts of dumb jobs just to have enough to eat.”

“In other words, you’re telling me exactly what my father and mother are going to tell me,” I said mockingly. “Aren’t you going to mention that if I get married that’ll be the end of my studying law? That I’ll never become a great jurist?”

“That if you get married you won’t even have time to read. That if you get married you’ll never become a writer,” Javier answered.

“We’re going to have a fight if you go on this way,” I warned him.

“Okay then, I’ll hold my tongue.” He laughed. “I’ve done as my conscience dictated by predicting the future I see in store for you. And I must admit that if Nancy were willing, I’d get married myself, this very day. Where do we begin, then?”

“Since there’s no chance of getting my parents to give their consent or to emancipate me, and since it’s also possible that Julia doesn’t have all the necessary papers, the only solution is to find a kindhearted mayor.”

“What you really mean is one who can be bribed,” he corrected me. He examined me as though I were a beetle. “But who are you in any position to bribe, you penniless wretch?”

“A mayor with his head in the clouds who won’t notice details. One who’ll fall for most any kind of sob story.”

“Okay, let’s start looking for this extraordinary creature, a kindhearted idiot who’ll perform the ceremony even though it’s against every law in the books.” He laughed again. “Too bad Julita’s divorced. Otherwise, you could get married in church. That’d be easy—there are any number of priests who are kindhearted idiots.”

Javier always cheered me up, and we ended up joking about my honeymoon, about the fees he was going to charge me for his services (helping him abduct Nancy, of course), and regretting not being in Piura, where it was such a common thing for couples to elope that there would have been no problem finding the kindhearted idiot required. By the time we said goodbye to each other, he’d promised to start looking for a mayor that very afternoon and to pawn all his possessions that weren’t indispensable in order to help out with the wedding expenses.

Aunt Julia had said she’d come by the office at three, and when she hadn’t shown up by three-thirty, I began to worry. At four, my fingers were getting in each other’s way as I typed, and I was chain-smoking. At four-thirty, Big Pablito, seeing how pale I was, asked me if I wasn’t feeling well. At five, I had Pascual phone Uncle Lucho’s house and ask to speak to her. She hadn’t come back there. She still hadn’t come back half an hour later, or at six or at seven. After the last evening newscast, instead of getting off the jitney at my grandparents’ street, I went on as far as the Avenida Armendáriz and hung around my aunt’s and uncle’s house, without daring to knock at the door. I spied Aunt Olga through the windows, changing the water in a vase of flowers, and a few minutes later I saw Uncle Lucho turn out the lights in the dining room. I walked around the block several times, overcome by contrary emotions: anxiety, anger, sadness, a desire to slap Aunt Julia’s face, and a desire to kiss her. I was just completing one of these agitated turns around the block when I saw her get out of a big expensive car with diplomatic plates. I strode over to the car, my legs trembling with fury and jealousy, and determined to punch my rival in the nose, whoever he might be. He turned out to be a gentleman with white hair, and moreover, there was a lady sitting inside the car. Aunt Julia introduced me, explaining that I was a nephew of her brother-in-law’s, and I discovered that I was meeting the ambassador of Bolivia and his wife. I felt ridiculous, and at the same time as though I’d had a great load taken off my chest. When the car drove off, I grabbed Aunt Julia by the arm and almost dragged her bodily across the avenue and down toward the Malecón.

“Good heavens, what a temper,” I heard her say as we came within sight of the sea. “You looked as though you were about to strangle poor Dr. Gumucio.”

“You’re the one I’m going to strangle,” I said to her. “I’ve been waiting for you since three o’clock this afternoon and it’s now eleven at night. Did you forget that we had a date?”

“I didn’t forget. I stood you up on purpose,” she said firmly.

We’d reached the little park in front of the Jesuit seminary. It was deserted, and though it wasn’t raining, the grass, the laurel trees, the geraniums were glistening from the dampness. The mist was forming ghostly little umbrellas around the yellow cones of light from the lampposts.

“Well, let’s postpone this fight to another day,” I said to her, sitting her down on the edge of the jetty, with the deep-pitched, synchronous sound of the breaking waves mounting from below. “There’s very little time now and a great many problems. Do you have a copy of your birth certificate and your divorce decree here?”

“What I have here is my ticket back to La Paz,” she said, patting her purse. “I’m leaving at 10 a.m. on Sunday. And I’m happy. I’ve had it up to here with Peru and Peruvians.”

“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but for the moment it just isn’t possible for us to go live in another country,” I said, sitting down next to her and putting my arm around her. “But I promise you that someday we’ll go live in a garret in Paris.”

Up till then, despite the hostile things she’d said, she’d been calm, half joking, very sure of herself. But suddenly a bitter look came over her face and she said in a harsh tone of voice, without looking at me: “Don’t make things more difficult for me, Varguitas. It’s your parents’ fault that I’m going back to Bolivia, but I’m also going back because what’s happening between us is stupid. You know very well we can’t get married.”

“Yes, we can,” I said, kissing her on the cheek, on the neck, holding her tight, avidly touching her breasts, searching for her mouth with mine. “We need to find a kindhearted idiot of a judge, that’s all. Javier’s helping me. And Nancy’s already found us a little apartment in Miraflores. There’s no reason for us to be pessimistic.”

She let me kiss and caress her, but she remained distant, very sedate. I told her about my conversation with Nancy, with Javier, my inquiries at the city hall, the way I’d managed to get a copy of my birth certificate, and told her that I loved her with all my heart, that we were going to get married even though I had to kill a whole bunch of people. When I tried to force her teeth apart with my tongue, she resisted, but then she opened her mouth and I was able to enter it and taste her palate, her gums, her saliva. I felt Aunt Julia’s free arm creep around my neck, felt her huddle up close to me and begin to cry with sobs that shook her bosom. I consoled her in a voice that was an incoherent murmur, kissing her the while.

“You’re still just a little kid,” I heard her say softly, half laughing and half crying, as I told her, without pausing for breath, that I needed her, that I loved her, that I’d never let her go back to Bolivia, that I’d kill myself if she went away. Finally, she began to talk again, in a very soft voice, trying to make a joke: “Anyone who sleeps with little kids always wakes up soaking wet in the morning. Have you ever heard that old saw?”

“That’s
huachafo
and an impermissible proverb,” I answered, drying her eyes with my lips and my fingertips. “Do you have those papers here with you in Lima? Could your friend the ambassador certify them?”

She was calmer now. She’d stopped crying and was looking at me with tender affection. “How long would it last, Varguitas?” she asked me in a voice tinged with sadness. “How long before you’d get tired of me? A year, two years, three? Do you think it’s fair that in two or three years you’ll leave me and I’ll have to start all over again?”

“Can the ambassador certify them?” I persisted. “If he certifies that they’re valid in Bolivia, it’ll be easy to get them certified as valid in Peru. I’ll find some friend in the Ministry to help us.”

She sat there looking at me, feeling sorry about all the trouble I was going to and at the same time deeply moved. A smile slowly appeared on her face. “If you’ll swear to put up with me for five years, without losing your heart to anyone else, loving only me, okay,” she said. “For five years of happiness I’ll do this utterly mad thing.”

“Do you have the papers?” I asked her, smoothing her hair, kissing it. “Will the ambassador certify them?”

She did have the papers and we did manage to get the Bolivian embassy to certify them with any number of multicolored seals and signatures. The entire business took barely half an hour, since the ambassador diplomatically swallowed Julia’s story: she needed the papers certified that very morning, in order to comply with a formality that would allow her to take out of Bolivia the property she’d received as part of the divorce settlement. Nor was it difficult to get the Peruvian Minister of Foreign Relations to certify the Bolivian documents in turn. I got a helping hand from a professor at the university, an adviser of the Chancellery, for whom I had to invent another involved radio serial: a woman dying of cancer, who had to marry the man she’d been living with for years, just as soon as possible, so as to die at peace with God.

There in the Palacio de Torre Tagle, in a room with old colonial wood paneling centuries old and impeccably dressed young men, as I waited for the bureaucrat, apprised of the emergency situation by a telephone call from my professor, to put more seals on Aunt Julia’s birth certificate and collect the necessary signatures that went with them, I heard about yet another catastrophe. An Italian boat, anchored at a dock in El Callao, loaded with departing passengers and visitors bidding them bon voyage, had all of a sudden, contrary to all known laws of physics and reason, begun turning round and round in circles, then listed to port and sank rapidly in the Pacific, with everyone on board lost—either fatally injured, drowned, or, incredibly, devoured by sharks. I learned this from the conversation of two ladies sitting next to me, also waiting while some formality was being taken care of. They were not joking; to them this shipwreck was a tragedy.

“It happened on one of Pedro Camacho’s radio serials, am I correct?” I butted in.

“Yes, on the one at four o’clock,” the older of the two ladies replied, a bony, energetic woman with a heavy Slavic accent. “The one about Alberto de Quinteros, the cardiologist.”

“The doctor who was a gynecologist last month,” a young girl sitting at a desk typing chimed in, smiling and putting her finger to her temple to indicate that somebody had obviously lost his mind.

“Didn’t you hear yesterday’s broadcast?” the lady in glasses who was with the foreign woman said in her unmistakable Lima accent. “Dr. Quinteros was on his way to Chile for a vacation, with his wife and Charo, his little girl. And all three of them drowned!” she said, in a voice filled with grief.

“They all drowned,” the foreign woman put in. “The doctor’s nephew Richard, and Elianita and her husband, Red Antúnez, that stupid idiot, and even the little baby born of the incestuous relation, Rubencito. They’d come down to the boat to see them off.”

“But what’s really funny is that Lieutenant Jaime Concha, who’s from another serial, also drowned, especially since he’d already died in the El Callao fire three days before,” the girl at the desk, who’d stopped typing, butted in again, dying with laughter. “Those serials have all turned into a tremendous joke, don’t you think?”

One of the impeccably dressed young men, who had all the earmarks of an intellectual (specialty: Our Country’s Borders), smiled at her indulgently and said to the rest of us in a tone of voice that Pedro Camacho would have had every right to describe as argentine: “Didn’t I tell you that that device of carrying characters over from one story to another was invented by Balzac?” But he then drew a conclusion that gave him away: “If he discovers that Camacho’s plagiarizing him, he’ll get him sent to jail.”

“What’s so funny isn’t that he carries them over from one serial to another but that he brings them back to life,” the girl argued in her own defense. “Lieutenant Concha burned to death as he was reading a Donald Duck, so how is it possible for him to drown to death now?”

“Maybe he’s just unlucky,” the impeccably dressed young man who was bringing me my papers suggested.

I left with my papers now anointed and blessed, leaving the two ladies, the secretary, and the young diplomats engaged in an animated discussion of the Bolivian scribe. Aunt Julia was waiting for me in a café and laughed when I recounted the whole episode to her; it had been some time since she’d listened to her compatriot’s broadcasts.