Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [111]
Once he had received this confirmation—really quite unnecessary since the moment they had spoken two words it was obvious from their accent that they were Argentines—I saw the Bolivian turn deathly pale, as though something had exploded inside him; his eyes blazed, he assumed a threatening expression, and whipping the air with his index finger, he apostrophized them thus: “I suspected as much. Well, then: clear out of here immediately and go sing tangos!”
The order was not meant humorously; his tone of voice was deadly serious. For a second the barbecue chefs just stood there, at a loss for words. It was plain to see that the scriptwriter wasn’t joking: despite the fact that he was absolutely defenseless physically, the tiny little man was stubbornly holding his ground, his fierce eyes glaring at them scornfully.
“What was that you said?” the fat one finally blurted out, nonplussed and beside himself with rage. “Huh, huh? What was that again?”
“Go sing tangos and wash your ears!” Pedro Camacho said, enlarging on his order, in his impeccable accent. And then, after the briefest of pauses, with the audacity that was to be our downfall, he said slowly and distinctly, in a glacially calm voice: “If you don’t want a beating.”
This time I was even more surprised than the barbecue cooks. That this little man, scarcely taller than a dwarf and with the physique of a third-grade schoolchild, was threatening to thrash two Samsons weighing well over two hundred pounds apiece was not only mad but suicidal. But the fatter one was already going into action: he grabbed the Bolivian by the collar and, amid the laughter of the crowd that had gathered round, lifted him off his feet as though he were a feather, and shouted: “You’re going to give me a beating? Well, we’ll see about that, shorty…”
When I saw that the older brother was about to send Pedro Camacho flying with a straight right to the jaw, I was obliged to intervene. I grabbed the Samson’s arm, trying at the same time to free the scriptwriter, who was suspended in midair, purple-faced and jerking his legs like a spider, and I managed to say something like: “Listen, don’t be a bully, let him go,” when suddenly, without warning, the younger brother gave me a punch that sent me sprawling on the ground. As I struggled to my feet in a daze and prepared to put into practice the philosophy taught me by my grandfather, a gentleman of the old school, who held that no Arequipan worthy of the name ever refuses an invitation to fight (and above all an invitation as clear as a sock in the jaw), I saw that the older brother was soundly boxing the artist’s ears (he had mercifully chosen to cuff him rather than punch him, in view of his adversary’s Lilliputian stature). Then, after that, as I traded rights and lefts with the younger barbecue cook (in defense of art, I thought to myself), I didn’t see much else. The fight didn’t last very long, but when people from Radio Central finally rescued us from the hands of the two hulking brutes, I had bumps and bruises all over and Pedro Camacho’s face was so puffy and swollen that Genaro Sr. had to take him to the public emergency clinic. That afternoon, instead of thanking me for having risked my neck defending his exclusive star, Genaro Jr. bawled me out for a news item that Pascual, taking advantage of all the confusion, had managed to slip into two successive bulletins; the paragraph in question began (with a certain amount of exaggeration) as follows: “Thugs from the Río de la Plata today criminally attacked our news director, the celebrated journalist…”
When Javier turned up that afternoon in my shack at Radio Panamericana, he roared with laughter on hearing the story of the fight, and went with me to ask the scriptwriter how he felt. They’d put a pirate’s patch over his right eye, and he was wearing two adhesive bandages, one on his neck and another under his nose. How did he feel? He gave a disdainful wave of his hand, dismissing the entire incident as of no importance, and made no attempt to thank