Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [146]
We separated at the Plaza San Martín and agreed we’d meet at noon up in my cubbyhole in the Panamericana shack. Talking with him had done me good and I arrived at the office in a good mood, feeling very optimistic. I read the newspapers, selected the news items to be put on the air, and for the second day in a row, Pascual and Big Pablito found the first bulletins all finished when they came in. Unfortunately, both of them were in the office when Aunt Julia called, and ruined the conversation. I didn’t dare tell her in front of them that I’d talked with Nancy and Javier.
“I have to see you this very day, even if it’s only for a few minutes,” I begged her. “Everything’s coming along nicely.”
“I’m really down in the dumps all of a sudden,” Aunt Julia said. “I’ve always been able to keep my spirits up no matter what, but right now I feel lower than a snake’s belly.”
She had a good excuse to come downtown without arousing suspicion: making reservations for her flight back to La Paz at the Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano office. She’d come by the station around three that afternoon. Neither she nor I mentioned the subject of marriage, but it upset me to hear her talk about planes. The minute I hung up, I went down to the Lima city hall to find out what documents were necessary for a civil marriage. I had a friend who worked there and he was the one who tracked down all the information for me, thinking it was for a relative of mine who wanted to marry a foreigner who was a divorcée. The requirements turned out to involve all sorts of very worrisome stumbling blocks. Aunt Julia had to present her birth certificate and a copy of her divorce decree validated by the Ministry of Foreign Relations of both Bolivia and Peru. I, too, had to present my birth certificate. But since I was a minor, I also needed a duly notarized authorization from my parents to marry, or else be “emancipated” (declared to have attained my legal majority) by them, before the judge of the juvenile court. Both things were out of the question.
I left the city hall making calculations; just getting Aunt Julia’s papers validated, provided, of course, that she had them here with her in Lima, could take weeks. If she didn’t have them with her, and had to ask for them to be sent from Bolivia by the proper authorities, the municipal registrar and the clerk of the divorce court respectively, it might take months. And then there was my birth certificate. I’d been born in Arequipa, and writing to a relative there to get me a copy would also take time (besides being risky). I envisioned one difficulty after another, like a series of challenges presenting themselves, but instead of dissuading me, they merely made me all the more determined (even as a youngster, I’d always been very stubborn). Halfway back to the radio station, as I was walking by the offices of La Prensa, I had a sudden inspiration and headed, almost at a run, for the university campus. Dripping with sweat by the time I got there, I made my way to the administrative office of the Faculty of Law, where the secretary, Señora Riofrío, who was in charge of giving out course grades, greeted me with her usual maternal smile and kindly listened to the complicated story I told her, involving urgent legal formalities, a unique opportunity to get a job that would help me pay for my studies.
“It’s against the rules,” she complained, benignly rising from her rickety old desk and walking over to the files, with me right beside her. “You students are all alike—you know I’m good-hearted and you take advantage of me. Doing all of you favors like this is going to cost me my job someday, and nobody’s going to lift a finger for me.”
As she searched around among the students’ records, raising little clouds of dust that made us both sneeze, I told her that if such a thing ever happened, everybody in the law school would go out on strike. She finally found my folder, with a copy of my birth certificate in it,