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I didn’t tell them that Genaro Sr. already knew and had asked me to have a talk with Pedro Camacho. We agreed that I should sound out Genaro Jr., and then, depending on his reaction, we would decide whether it was advisable for them to come see him themselves to speak up in the scriptwriter’s defense in the name of all his co-workers. I thanked them for their confidence and tried to bolster their morale a little: Genaro Jr. had a more modern outlook than Genaro Sr. and was more understanding, and surely he could be persuaded to give Pedro Camacho a vacation. We went on talking as I turned out the lights and locked the shack. We shook hands and said goodbye on the Calle Belén. I saw the scriptwriter’s three homely, generous-hearted co-workers disappear down the empty street in the misty rain.

I didn’t sleep a wink that night. As usual, I found my dinner all ready and being kept warm for me in the oven at my grandparents’, but I couldn’t get a single mouthful down (and in order not to worry my granny, I threw the breaded steak and rice out of sight in the garbage can). The little old couple were in bed but still awake, and when I went into their room to give them a good-night kiss, I eyed them as closely as a police detective, trying to discover the slightest fleeting expression on their faces that would betray the fact that they were upset by my scandalous romance. Nothing, not a sign: they were affectionate and solicitous; my grandfather asked me about one of the words in his crossword puzzle. But they told me the good news: my mama had written that she and my papa would be coming down to Lima for a vacation very soon, and would send word as to the exact date of their arrival. They couldn’t show me the letter because one of the aunts had taken it home with her. There was no question about it: this was the result of the traitorous letters the family had sent them about my romance. My father had doubtless said: “We’re going down to Peru and straighten things out.” And my mother: “How could Julia have possibly done a thing like that!” (She and Aunt Julia had been friends when my family lived in Bolivia and I hadn’t yet reached the age of reason.)

I slept in a tiny little room, jam-packed with books, valises, and trunks in which my grandparents kept their memorabilia, a great many photographs of their long-ago splendor, when they had a large cotton plantation in Camaná, when grandfather played at being a pioneer farmer-settler in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, when he was consul in Cochabamba or prefect in Piura. Lying on my back in bed in the darkness, I thought a long time about Aunt Julia; sooner or later, in one way or another, they’d manage to separate us. It made me very angry and the whole thing seemed terribly stupid and shabby, and then all of a sudden the image of Pedro Camacho came to my mind. I thought of all the telephone calls back and forth between aunts and uncles and cousins about Aunt Julia and me, and I also began hearing in my imagination all the calls from radio listeners all upset and confused by those characters who’d suddenly changed names and leapt from the three o’clock serial to the five o’clock one, and by those episodes that were becoming as hopelessly tangled as jungle vines, and I tried my best to guess what could be going on in the scriptwriter’s labyrinthine brain, but I didn’t think it was the least bit funny; on the contrary, I was touched to think of the actors at Radio Central conspiring with the sound engineers, the secretaries, the doormen, to intercept the calls in order to keep the artist from being fired. I was touched that Luciano Pando, Josefina Sánchez, and Puddler had thought that I, a real fifth wheel, could influence the Genaros. How little they must think of themselves, what miserable salaries they must earn, if I seemed to them to be an important person by comparison I And every so often I was overcome with an irresistible desire to see, touch, kiss Aunt Julia at that very moment. Then finally I