Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [126]
“By a ‘fallen woman’ she meant me?” Aunt Julia asked, more curious than angry.
“Yes, she meant you,” my cousin answered, blushing. “They think you’re the one who’s responsible for starting the whole thing.”
“That’s true, I’m a minor, I was peacefully studying for my law degree, and then…” I said, but nobody laughed at my joke.
“If they find out I’ve told you, they’ll kill me,” Nancy said. “Swear to me you won’t say a word.”
Her parents had solemnly given her notice that if she committed the slightest indiscretion they wouldn’t let her out of the house for a year, not even to attend Mass. They had given her such a stern lecture that she’d even hesitated whether she should tell us what had happened. The family had known everything since the very beginning and hadn’t said a word, thinking that it was simply an inconsequential flirtation on the part of a flighty woman who wanted to add an exotic prize, an adolescent, to the list of amorous game she had bagged. But since Aunt Julia had not scrupled to parade about the streets and public squares hand in hand with the lad, and more and more friends and relatives had learned of the romance—even the grandparents knew what was going on, thanks to a bit of gossip passed on to them by Aunt Celia—the whole thing had become a scandal and something that was bound to harm the youngster (that is to say, me), who doubtless had lost all interest in studying ever since the divorcée had turned his head, and hence the family had decided to intervene.
“And what are they going to do to save me?” I asked, still not too panic-stricken at this point.
“Write to your folks,” Nancy said. “Your two oldest uncles—Uncle Jorge and Uncle Lucho—already have.”
My parents were living in the U.S., and my father was a stern man I’d always been very afraid of. I’d been brought up far away from him, with my mother and her family, and when my parents were reconciled and I went to live with him, we had never gotten along well together. He was conservative and authoritarian, given to cold rages, and if it was true that they’d written to him, the news would set him off like a bombshell exploding.
Aunt Julia grabbed my hand under the table. “You’ve turned deathly pale, Varguitas. This time you’ve got a really good subject for a short story.”
“What you need to do is to keep your head screwed on straight and not go off the deep end,” Javier said, trying to help me recover from the shock. “Don’t panic, and let’s plan the best possible strategy for facing the avalanche.”
“They’re furious with you, too,” Nancy warned him. “They’re calling you something terrible too, a, a—”
“A pander?” Aunt Julia smiled. And then, turning to me, she said with a sad look in her eyes: “What matters most to me is that they’re going to separate us and I won’t ever be able to see you again.”
“That’s huachafo, and can’t be said like that,” I told her.
“How well they’ve hidden their real feelings,” Aunt Julia said. “Neither my sister, nor my brother-in-law, nor any of your relatives has even led me to suspect that they knew and that they hated me. The hypocrites: they’ve always been so affectionate with me.”
“For the time being, the two of you have to stop seeing each other,” Javier said. “Julia should go out with other men, and you should ask other girls out on dates. Let the family think you’ve had a fight.”
Discouraged, Aunt Julia and I agreed that that was the only solution. But when Nancy left—we swore to her that we’d never betray her—followed by Javier, and Aunt Julia walked back with me to Panamericana, as we went down the Calle Belén, wet with misty rain, hand in hand, with our heads drooping dispiritedly, we both knew, without any need to