Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [14]
Half asphyxiated, he left the reception room, and amid the popping of flashbulbs, the press of the crowd, greetings, he finally managed to reach the garden. There were fewer people per square centimeter there and he could at least breathe. He took a glass of champagne and soon found himself surrounded by a circle of doctor friends of his, the butt of their endless jokes about his wife’s trip abroad: Mercedes wouldn’t come back home, she’d stay over there with some Frenchy, you could already see tiny cuckold’s horns growing out of either side of his forehead. Everybody seems bent on making fun of me today, Dr. Quinteros thought to himself, remembering the gym, as he patiently put up with their teasing. Every so often he caught a glimpse of Richard above a sea of heads, standing at the other end of the reception room, amid laughing boys and girls: glum and scowling, he was downing glasses of champagne as though they were water. Maybe he feels sad that Elianita’s marrying Antúnez, Dr. Quinteros thought. Perhaps he, too, would have liked to see his sister make a more brilliant match. No, it was more likely that he was going through some sort of identity crisis. And Dr. Quinteros remembered how he himself had gone through a difficult transition period when he was Richard’s age, unable to decide whether he should study medicine or aeronautical engineering. (His father had finally tipped the scales with a weighty argument: as an aeronautical engineer in Peru, he could look forward to only one career, spending the rest of his life designing kites or model airplanes.) Perhaps Roberto, who was always all wrapped up in his business affairs, was in no position to advise Richard. And Dr. Quinteros, in one of those accesses of generosity that had earned him everyone’s esteem, decided that one of these days he would invite his nephew over and subtly explore the best way to help him, with precisely the delicate touch that the case required.
Roberto’s and Margarita’s house was on the Avenida Santa Cruz, just a few blocks from the Church of Santa María, and when the reception in the sacristy was over, the guests who had been invited to the wedding luncheon filed down the street, beneath the trees and the sun of San Isidro, to the red-brick mansion with its shingled roof, surrounded by lawn, flowers, and grillwork fence, and very prettily decorated for the wedding party. The moment Dr. Quinteros arrived at the front gate, he saw that the celebration was going to go beyond his own predictions, that he was about to attend a social event that the gossip columnists would describe as “a magnificent occasion.”
Tables and umbrellas had been set up all over the garden, and at the far end of it, next to the kennels, a huge awning shaded a table with a snow-white tablecloth running the length of the wall and loaded with trays of multicolored canapés. The bar was next to the pond full of bright-gilled Japanese fish, and there were enough glasses, bottles, cocktail shakers, and pitchers of punch set out to quench the thirst of an army. Waiters in short white jackets and maids in coifs and aprons were receiving the guests and plying them, from the moment they entered the gate, with pisco sours, carob piscos, vodka and tropical fruit, glasses of whiskey or gin or flutes of champagne, and little cheese sticks, tiny potatoes with hot peppers, sour cherries stuffed with bacon, breaded shrimp, vol-au-vent, and all the tidbits dreamed up by the collective culinary genius of Lima to stimulate the appetite. Inside the house, huge baskets and bouquets of roses, gladiolas, stocks, carnations, tuberoses, standing against the walls, set out along the stairways or on the windowsills and the tables and desks and commodes and cabinets,