Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (3 page)

I told him I was very sorry but that if he wanted to carry off the Remington he would first have to pass over Pascual’s dead body and then, if it came to that, over mine. The little man straightened his tie, a wee bit out of place after his herculean effort. To my astonishment, with an annoyed expression on his face and showing every sign of possessing no sense of humor whatsoever, he nodded gravely and replied: “When challenged, no gentleman ever refuses to fight a duel. The place and the hour, if you please, sirs.”

The providential appearance of Genaro Jr. in the shack frustrated what threatened to become formal arrangements for a duel. He came in just as the stubborn little man, turning purple, was attempting once again to lift the Remington.

“Wait a minute, Pedro, I’ll help you,” he said, grabbing the typewriter away from him as though it were a box of matches. Realizing then, on seeing the expression on my face and Pedro’s, that he owed us some sort of explanation, he said, with a cheery, conciliatory smile: “There’s no reason to look so down in the mouth—nobody’s died. My father will get you another typewriter in just a few days.”

“We’re fifth wheels,” I protested, pro forma. “You’ve stuck us up here in this filthy shack, you’ve already taken a desk away from me to give to the accountant, and now you’re carrying off my Remington. And you didn’t even tell me beforehand.”

“We thought this gentleman was a thief,” Pascual said, backing me up. “He burst in here heaping insults on us and acting as though he owned the place.”

“Colleagues shouldn’t quarrel,” Genaro Jr. replied, playing Solomon. He’d hoisted the Remington to his shoulder and I noticed that the little man came exactly up to his lapels. “Didn’t my father come up to introduce you to each other? If not, I’ll do the honors, and you can stop fighting.”

Immediately, with a rapid, automatic movement, the little man stretched out one of his little arms, took a couple of steps toward me, offered me a tiny child’s hand, and bowing politely once again, introduced himself to me in his exquisite tenor voice: “Pedro Camacho. A Bolivian and an artist: a friend.”

He repeated the gesture, the bow, and the phrase with Pascual, who was quite obviously experiencing a moment of utter confusion, unable to decide whether the little man was pulling our leg or always went through this routine. After ceremoniously shaking hands with us, Pedro Camacho turned to the entire staff of the News Department, and standing in the center of the shack in the shadow of Genaro Jr., who looked like a giant behind him and was watching him with a very serious expression on his face, raised his upper lip, screwed his face up, and bared yellowed teeth in the caricature or the specter of a smile. He waited a few seconds before favoring us with these musical words, accompanied by the gesture of a stage magician taking leave of his audience: “I don’t hold it against you—I’m quite accustomed to being misunderstood. Till we meet again, gentlemen!”

He disappeared through the door of the shack, hurriedly hopping and skipping along like an elf to catch up with the dynamic impresario heading for the elevator in great long strides with the Remington on his shoulder.

On one of those sunny
spring mornings in Lima when the geraniums are an even brighter red, the roses more fragrant, and the bougainvillaeas curlier as they awaken, a famous physician of the city, Dr. Alberto de Quinteros—broad forehead, aquiline nose, penetrating gaze, the very soul of rectitude and goodness—opened his eyes in his vast mansion in San Isidro and stretched his limbs. Through the curtains he could see the sun shedding its golden light on the lawn of the carefully tended grounds enclosed by hedges of evergreen shrubs, the bright blue sky, the cheery flowers, and felt that sense of well-being that comes from eight hours of restorative sleep and a clear conscience.

It was Saturday and—providing there were not last-minute complications in the case of the woman with the triplets—he would not be obliged to go to the clinic and could devote the morning to working out at the gym and taking a sauna before Elianita’s wedding. His wife and daughter were in Europe, cultivating their minds and replenishing their wardrobes, and would not be back for a month. Any other man with his considerable fortune and his looks—his hair that had turned to silver at the temples and his distinguished bearing, along with his elegant manners, awakened a gleam of desire even in the eyes of incorruptible married women—might have taken advantage of his temporary bachelorhood to have himself a little fun. But Alberto de Quinteros was a man not unduly attracted to gambling, skirt chasing, or drinking, and among his friends—who were legion—it was commonly said that “his vices are science, his family, and the gymnasium.”

He ordered his breakfast sent up, and as it was being prepared he phoned the clinic. The doctor on duty informed him that the woman with the triplets had spent a quiet night and that the hemorrhaging of the woman he had operated on to remove a tumor had stopped. He gave instructions, left word that if an emergency came up he could be reached at the Remigius Gymnasium, or, if it were lunchtime, at his brother Roberto’s, and said he’d drop by the clinic in any case in the late afternoon. By the time the butler brought him his papaya juice, his black coffee, and his toast with honey, Alberto de Quinteros had shaved and put on a pair of gray corduroy pants, heelless moccasins, and a green turtleneck sweater. As he ate his breakfast, he idly glanced through the usual reports of catastrophes and the gossip of the day as aired in the morning newspapers, then got out his gym bag and left the house. He stopped in the garden for a few seconds to pet Puck, the badly spoiled fox terrier, who bade him goodbye with affectionate yaps.

The Remigius Gymnasium was only a few blocks away, in the Calle Miguel Dasso, and Dr. Quinteros liked to go there on foot. He would walk along slowly, return his neighbors’ greetings, peek into their gardens, which at this hour were freshly watered and the hedges neatly trimmed, and usually he dropped in at the Castro Soto Bookstore for a few minutes to pick up a couple of best sellers. Although it was early still, the inevitable gang of youngsters with open-necked shirts and unkempt hair were already outside the Davory, sitting on their motorcycles or on the bumpers of their sports cars, eating ice-cream bars, joking with each other, and planning that night’s party. They greeted him respectfully, but he’d gone only a few steps past them when one dared give him one of those bits of advice that were his cross to bear at the gymnasium too, hoary jokes about his age and his profession, that he put up with day after day, patiently and good-naturedly: “Don’t wear yourself out, Doctor, think of your grandchildren.” He scarcely heard it because he was imagining how pretty Elianita would look in her wedding dress designed for her at Christian Dior’s in Paris.

There weren’t many people at the gym that morning. Just Coco, the instructor, and two weight-lifting addicts, Blacky Humilla and Polly Sarmiento, three mountains of muscles the equivalent of those of ten ordinary men. They must have arrived only a short time before, as they were still warming up.

“Well, here comes the stork,” Coco said, shaking hands.

“Still up and around, after all these centuries?” Blacky Humilla called out.

Polly Sarmiento limited himself to clacking his tongue and raising two fingers, his usual greeting that he’d imported from Texas. Dr. Quinteros liked the air of breezy familiarity that his gym companions adopted toward him, as though seeing each other naked and sweating together had created an egalitarian fraternity among them, in which differences in age and social position had disappeared. He answered them by saying that if they had need of his services he was at their disposal, that at the first signs of dizziness or morning sickness they should come immediately to his office, where the rubber glove for probing their privates was ready and waiting.

“Go change clothes and come do a few warm-ups,” Coco said to him, going back to jumping in place.

“If you feel a heart attack coming on, you may kick off, but so what?” Polly said encouragingly, picking up Coco’s rhythm.

“The surfer’s in there,” he heard Blacky Humilla say as he entered the dressing room.

And indeed his nephew Richard was there, in a blue sweat suit, putting on his gym shoes. He was doing so slowly and reluctantly, as though his hands had suddenly gone as limp as a rag doll’s, and he had a bitter, vacant look on his face. He sat there staring past his uncle with a completely blank expression in his blue eyes and such total indifference to his presence that Dr. Quinteros wondered whether he’d turned invisible all of a sudden.

“It’s only lovers who get lost in thought like that,” he said to his nephew, walking over and ruffling his hair. “Come back down to earth, my boy.”

“Sorry, Uncle,” Richard replied, coming to with a start and blushing furiously, as though he’d been doing something he shouldn’t and been caught in the act. “I was thinking.”

“Wicked thoughts, no doubt.” Dr. Quinteros laughed as he opened his gym bag, chose a locker, and began to get undressed. “Things must be in an uproar at your house. Is Elianita very nervous?”

Richard glared at him with what seemed like a sudden gleam of hatred in his eyes and the doctor wondered what in the world had gotten into this youngster. But his nephew, making a visible effort to appear to be his usual self, smiled faintly. “Yes, everything’s in an uproar. That’s why I came down here to the gym to burn off a little fat till it’s time.”

The doctor thought Richard was going to add “to mount the gallows.” His voice was heavy with melancholy, and his features, the clumsiness with which he was tying his shoelaces, the jerky movements of his body, betrayed how troubled, upset, and anxious he was. He was unable to keep his eyes still: he kept opening them, closing them, staring into space, looking away, staring at the same imaginary point again, looking away once more, as though searching for something impossible to find. He was a strikingly handsome boy, a young god whose body had been burnished by the elements—he went surfing even in the dead of winter and also excelled at basketball, tennis, swimming, and soccer—sports that had given him one of those physiques that Blacky Humilla claimed were “every queer’s mad dream”: not an ounce of fat, a smooth, muscular torso descending in a V to a wasp waist, and long, strong, supple legs that would have made the best boxer green with envy. Alberto de Quinteros had often heard his daughter Charo and her girlfriends compare Richard with Charlton Heston and conclude that Richard was even groovier-looking, that he beat Charlton all hollow. He was in his first year at the School of Architecture, and according to Roberto and Margarita, his parents, he’d always been a model child: studious, obedient, good to them and to his sister, honest, likable. Elianita and Richard were the doctor’s favorite niece and nephew, and so, as he put on his jockstrap, his sweat suit, his gym shoes—Richard was standing over by the showers waiting for him, tapping his foot on the tile floor—Dr. Alberto de Quinteros was sad to see him looking so troubled.

“Problems on your mind, my boy?” he asked in a deliberately offhand way and with a kindly smile. “Anything I can do to help?”

“No, not a problem in the world, whatever gave you that idea?” Richard hastened to reply, blushing furiously once again. “I feel great and can’t wait to warm up.”

“Did they deliver my wedding present to your sister?” the doctor suddenly remembered to ask. “They promised me at the Casa Murguía that it would arrive yesterday.”

“A super bracelet”—Richard had begun jumping up and down on the white tiles of the locker-room floor. “Sis was delighted with it.”

“It’s your aunt who usually takes care of things like that, but since she’s still running around Europe, I had to choose it myself.” A tender look came into Dr. Quinteros’s eyes. “Elianita in her wedding dress—what a lovely sight that’s going to be.”

Because the daughter of his brother Roberto was as perfect a specimen of young womanhood as Richard was of young manhood: one of those beauties who do honor to the species and who make figures of speech comparing teeth to pearls, eyes to stars, hair to flax, and complexions to peaches and cream sound far too pedestrian. Slender, with dark hair and very white skin, her every movement graceful, even her manner of breathing, she had a tiny face with classic lineaments, and features that appeared to have been designed by an Oriental miniaturist. A year younger than Richard, she had just finished secondary school; her one defect was timidity—so excessive that the organizers of the Miss Peru contest, to their despair, had been unable to persuade her to enter—and everyone, including Dr. Quinteros, was at a loss to explain why she was getting married so soon, and above all why she was marrying Red Antúnez. There was no denying that young Antúnez had certain things going for him—his good heart and his good nature, a degree in business administration from the University of Chicago, the fertilizer company he would one day inherit, several cups he’d won bicycle racing—but among the innumerable boys of Miraflores and San Isidro who’d courted Elianita and who would have committed murder or robbed a bank to marry her, Red was beyond a doubt the least attractive and (Dr. Quinteros was ashamed of allowing himself to harbor such an opinion regarding someone who within a few hours would become his nephew by marriage) the dullest and most dim-witted.

“You take longer to change clothes than my mom, Uncle Alberto,” Richard complained between leaps.

When they went into the exercise room, Coco, for whom pedagogy was not a way of earning a living but a vocation, was instructing Blacky Humilla, pointing to his stomach and preaching this axiom of philosophy to him: “When you eat, when you work, when you’re at the movies, when you’re humping your wife, when you’re having a drink, at every moment in your life, and, if possible, even in your coffin: suck in your gut!”

“Ten minutes of warm-ups to make your carcass happy, Methuselah,” the instructor ordered Dr. Quinteros.

As he jumped rope next to Richard and felt a pleasant warmth creep over his whole body, the thought came to him that, when all was said and done, it really wasn’t so terrible to be fifty years old if a person was in as good shape as he was. Among his friends who were his age, was there a single one with a belly as smooth as his, such supple muscles? Without searching any farther, his brother Roberto, what with his spare tire and his potbelly and his premature hunchback, looked ten years older than he did, despite the fact that he was three years younger. Poor Roberto, he must be sad at seeing Elianita, the apple of his eye, getting married. Because, of course, he’d be losing her in a way. The doctor’s daughter, Charo, would be getting married almost any day now—her fiancé, Tato Soldevilla, would soon be getting his degree in engineering—and then he, too, would feel sad and older. Dr. Quinteros went on jumping rope without getting tangled up in it or missing a step, with the agility that comes with practice, changing feet and crossing and uncrossing his hands like a consummate gymnast. He saw in the mirror, however, that his nephew was jumping too fast and recklessly tripping all over himself. His teeth were clenched, his forehead was gleaming with sweat, and he was keeping his eyes closed as though to concentrate better. Was he perhaps having woman trouble?

“That’s enough rope jumping, you two lazybones.” Even though he was lifting weights with Polly and Blacky, Coco had had his eye on them and was keeping track of the time. “Three sets of sit-ups. On your butts, you fossils.”

Abdominals were Dr. Quinteros’s strong point. He did them very fast, with his hands behind the nape of his neck, with the board raised to the second position, keeping his back raised off the floor and almost touching his knees with his forehead. Between each series of thirty he took a one-minute rest, lying stretched out flat, breathing deeply. When he’d finished the ninety, he sat down and noted, to his satisfaction, that he’d beaten Richard. After this workout, he was sweating from head to foot and could feel his heart pounding.

“I just can’t understand why Elianita’s marrying Red Antúnez,” he suddenly heard himself say. “What does she see in him?”

It was the wrong thing to say and he immediately regretted having done so, but Richard didn’t seem to be at all taken aback. Panting—he’d just finished his abdominals—he replied with a feeble joke: “They say love is blind, Uncle Alberto.”

“He’s a fine boy and I’m sure he’ll make her very happy,” Dr. Quinteros went on, feeling a bit disconcerted and trying to make up for having been so outspoken. “What I meant was that among your sister’s admirers were the best matches in Lima. And what did she do but send them all packing and end up saying yes to Red Antúnez, who’s a good kid, but such an, well, er, let’s face it…”

“Such an ass, is that what you’re trying to say?” Richard broke in helpfully.

“Well, I wouldn’t have put it that crudely,” Dr. Quinteros said, inhaling and exhaling and flinging his arms in and out. But, to tell the truth, he does seem a bit dim-witted. He’d be perfect for anyone else, but he just can’t hold a candle to a girl as outstanding as Elianita. His own outspokenness made him feel uncomfortable. “Listen, you mustn’t take what I said the wrong way.”

“Don’t worry, Uncle Alberto.” Richard smiled. “Red’s a good egg and if the kid’s picked him she knows what she’s doing.”