Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [149]
“What I have here is my ticket back to La Paz,” she said, patting her purse. “I’m leaving at 10 a.m. on Sunday. And I’m happy. I’ve had it up to here with Peru and Peruvians.”
“I’m sorry to have to tell you, but for the moment it just isn’t possible for us to go live in another country,” I said, sitting down next to her and putting my arm around her. “But I promise you that someday we’ll go live in a garret in Paris.”
Up till then, despite the hostile things she’d said, she’d been calm, half joking, very sure of herself. But suddenly a bitter look came over her face and she said in a harsh tone of voice, without looking at me: “Don’t make things more difficult for me, Varguitas. It’s your parents’ fault that I’m going back to Bolivia, but I’m also going back because what’s happening between us is stupid. You know very well we can’t get married.”
“Yes, we can,” I said, kissing her on the cheek, on the neck, holding her tight, avidly touching her breasts, searching for her mouth with mine. “We need to find a kindhearted idiot of a judge, that’s all. Javier’s helping me. And Nancy’s already found us a little apartment in Miraflores. There’s no reason for us to be pessimistic.”
She let me kiss and caress her, but she remained distant, very sedate. I told her about my conversation with Nancy, with Javier, my inquiries at the city hall, the way I’d managed to get a copy of my birth certificate, and told her that I loved her with all my heart, that we were going to get married even though I had to kill a whole bunch of people. When I tried to force her teeth apart with my tongue, she resisted, but then she opened her mouth and I was able to enter it and taste her palate, her gums, her saliva. I felt Aunt Julia’s free arm creep around my neck, felt her huddle up close to me and begin to cry with sobs that shook her bosom. I consoled her in a voice that was an incoherent murmur, kissing her the while.
“You’re still just a little kid,” I heard her say softly, half laughing and half crying, as I told her, without pausing for breath, that I needed her, that I loved her, that I’d never let her go back to Bolivia, that I’d kill myself if she went away. Finally, she began to talk again, in a very soft voice, trying to make a joke: “Anyone who sleeps with little kids always wakes up soaking wet in the morning. Have you ever heard that old saw?”
“That’s huachafo and an impermissible proverb,” I answered, drying her eyes with my lips and my fingertips. “Do you have those papers here with you in Lima? Could your friend the ambassador certify them?”
She was calmer now. She’d stopped crying and was looking at me with tender affection. “How long would it last, Varguitas?” she asked me in a voice tinged with sadness. “How long before you’d get tired of me? A year, two years, three? Do you think it’s fair that in two or three years you’ll leave me and I’ll have to start all over again?”
“Can the ambassador certify them?” I persisted. “If he certifies that they’re valid in Bolivia, it’ll be easy to get them certified as valid in Peru. I’ll find some friend in the Ministry to help us.”
She sat there looking at me, feeling sorry about all the trouble I was going to and at the same time deeply moved. A smile slowly appeared on her face. “If you’ll swear to put up with me for five years, without losing your heart to anyone else, loving only me, okay,” she said. “For five years of happiness I’ll do this utterly mad thing.”
“Do you have the papers?” I asked her, smoothing her hair, kissing it. “Will the ambassador certify them?”
She did have the papers and we did manage to get the Bolivian embassy to certify them with any number of multicolored seals and signatures. The entire business took barely half an hour, since the ambassador diplomatically swallowed Julia’s story: she needed the papers certified that very morning, in order to comply with a formality that would allow