Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [144]
“They did so for your sake,” Nancy explained. “It seems that your father is beside himself with rage and wrote a really scary letter.”
Uncle Jorge and Uncle Lucho, who loved me dearly, were very worried now as to what punishment he might decide to inflict on me. It was their thought that if Aunt Julia had already left when he arrived in Lima, he would be placated and deal less harshly with me.
“As a matter of fact, all that is of no importance now,” I assured her smugly. “Because I’ve asked Aunt Julia to marry me.”
Her reaction was spectacular and caricatural, like a double take in a film. She choked on her Coca-Cola, was overcome by a frankly overdone coughing fit, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Stop clowning, you idiot,” I said angrily. “I need your help.”
“It wasn’t your news that made me do that—I just swallowed the wrong way,” my cousin stammered, drying her eyes and trying to clear her throat. And a few seconds later, lowering her voice, she added: “But you’re still just a kid. Do you have the money to get married? And what about your father? He’ll kill you!”
But the very next moment, piqued by her terrible curiosity, she bombarded me with questions about things I hadn’t had time to think about: Had Julita said yes? Were we going to elope? Who were our witnesses going to be? We wouldn’t be able to be married in church because she was divorced, right? Where were we going to live?
“But, Marito,” she said again after she finished firing off all these questions one after the other, completely taken aback once again, “don’t you realize that you’re only eighteen years old?”
She burst out laughing then, and I did too. I told her that she might very well have reason on her side, but that what I needed now was her help in carrying out my plan. We’d grown up together and seen each other through lots of things, we loved each other dearly, and I knew she’d be on my side no matter what happened.
“Of course I’m going to help you if you ask me to, even if what you’re trying to do is utter madness, even if they kill me as well as you,” she finally said. “And, by the way, have you thought of what the whole family’s going to say if you really get married?”
We had a great time for a while imagining just what various aunts and uncles and cousins would say and do when confronted with the news. Aunt Hortensia would burst into tears, Aunt Jesús would rush off to church, Uncle Javier would utter his classic all-purpose exclamation (“What shamelessness!”), and our youngest cousin, Jaimito, who was three years old and lisped, would ask: “What doeth getting married mean, Mama?” The game ended when we burst into hysterical laughter, bringing the waiters running to see what was so funny. When we calmed down, Nancy agreed to be our spy, to report to us all the family’s maneuvers and intrigues. I had no idea how many days it would take me to get everything ready and I needed to know what the relatives were up to in the meantime. She also agreed to act as Aunt Julia’s messenger, and to take her out of the house with her every so often so that I could see her.
“Okay, okay, I’ll be your fairy godmother. But if someday I need one, I hope the two of you will do as much for me.”
As I was walking her home, my cousin suddenly smote her forehead with the palm of her hand. “What luck—I just remembered something! I can get you exactly what you need. An apartment in a villa on the Calle Porta. A one-room studio, with a little kitchen and a bath, really tiny but just darling. And only five hundred a month.”
It had been vacated just a few days before and a friend of hers had it up for rent; Nancy could speak to her. I was amazed at my cousin’s practicality; while I wandered about in the romantic stratosphere of the problems before me, she was capable of turning her mind to the down-to-earth problem of where the two of us would live. Moreover, five hundred soles a month for an apartment was within my reach. All I needed now was to earn a little more money “for the extras” (as my grandfather put it). Without thinking about it twice,