Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [101]
Their economic misdeeds, for example, furnished enough material to occupy his mind for thirty kilometers. Wasn’t it distressing how they ruined the family budget? They ate up the paternal income in inverse proportion to their size, not only because of their persistent gluttony and their delicate stomachs which required special foods, but also because of the countless institutions they had given rise to, midwives, day nurseries, child-care centers, kindergartens, nannies, circuses, children’s matinees, toy stores, juvenile courts, reformatories, not to mention the specialists in the treatment of children who (arborescent parasites that asphyxiate the host plant) had sprouted in medicine, psychology, odontology, and other sciences, an army, in a word, that had to be dressed, fed, and pensioned off at the expense of the poor fathers.
Lucho Abril Marroquín found himself about to burst into tears one day just thinking about those young mothers who, zealously fulfilling their moral responsibilities and ever mindful of what people might say, bury themselves alive in order to care for their offspring, giving up parties, movies, vacation trips, and by so doing end up being abandoned by their spouses, who, on being obliged to go out so often by themselves, inevitably stray from the path of virtue. And how do these children repay all these sleepless nights, all this suffering? By growing up, by moving away from home and founding their own family, by forsaking their mothers in the lonely orphanhood of their old age.
And thus, by imperceptible degrees, he finally destroyed the myth of their innocence and goodness. Taking advantage of the wellknown pretext that they lacked the powers of reason, did they not tear the wings off butterflies, roast live baby chicks in the oven, flip tortoises onto their backs and leave them to die, pluck squirrels’ eyes out? Was a slingshot for killing little birds an adult weapon? And were they not totally without pity for children weaker than themselves? Moreover, how could one possibly apply the word “intelligent” to beings who, at an age when any little kitten can already hunt its own food, are still clumsily toddling about, bumping into walls, and getting black and blue all over?
Lucho Abril Marroquín was possessed of acute aesthetic sensibilities, and they provided him with food for thought for many a walk between home and office. He would have liked all women to stay lithe and supple until the menopause, and it pained him to inventory the ravages undergone by mothers as a result of child-birth: their wasp waists that would fit in one hand all went to fat, and likewise their breasts and buttocks and smooth bellies, expanses of flesh as hard as metal that lips did not dent, went soft, swelled, sagged, wrinkled, and certain women, as a consequence of all the pushing and contractions of difficult births, waddled like ducks afterwards. Remembering the statuesque body of the little Frenchwoman who bore his name, Lucho Abril Marroquín was happy and relieved to think that she had given birth not to a chubby creature that had utterly destroyed her beauty but to little more than a blob of human detritus. Another day, as he was sitting on the toilet—the prunes had made his bowels as punctual as an English train—he realized that it no longer made him tremble with fear to think of Herod. And one morning he found himself giving a little beggar boy a clout on the head.
He knew then that, without any conscious intent on his part, he had gone on (as stars naturally journey on from night to day) to the “Practical Exercises.” Dr. Acémila had subtitled these instructions “Direct Action,” and Lucho Abril Marroquín had the impression that he was hearing her scientist’s voice speaking as he reread them. Unlike the instructions for the theoretical exercises, these were quite precise. Once he had become clearly aware of the disasters they caused, it was now a matter of engaging in minor acts of reprisal, on