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By Root 1000 0

she allowed him to shower her with expensive presents (on which her love-smitten suitor spent the last dregs of the family fortune?), but she did not permit Joaquín to speak to her of love. The moment he tried to tell her how much he loved her (timidity of a stripling who blushes and gets all choked up on paying compliments to a flower), Sarita Huanca Salaverría would rise to her feet in fury, insult him with a vulgarity worthy of Bajo el Puente, and demand to be taken home. It was then that Joaquín began to drink, going from one cheap bar to another, and mixing his drinks in order to obtain rapid and explosive effects. It was a common sight for his parents to see him coming home at the hour when night owls go to roost, stumbling through the rooms of the La Perla mansion, leaving behind him a trail of vomit. Just as he seemed about to dissolve in alcohol, a telephone call from Sarita would bring him back to life. He would get his hopes up once more and the infernal cycle would begin all over again. Consumed with bitterness, the man with the tic and his hypochondriac spouse died almost at the same time and were buried in a mausoleum in the Presbítero Maestro Cemetery. The tumbledown mansion in La Perla, what was left of the surrounding property, and all the other meager assets that still remained were handed over to creditors or confiscated by the state. Joaquín Hinostroza Bellmont was obliged to work for a living.

Considering the sort of person he was (his past deafeningly proclaimed that he would either die of consumption or end up begging on the streets), he did more than well for himself. What profession did he choose? Soccer referee! Goaded on by hunger and the desire to go on spoiling the disdainful Sarita, he began asking for a few soles from the urchins who asked him to referee their games, and on seeing that they managed to pay him by prorating the sum among themselves, two plus two are four and four and two are six, gradually raised his fees and began watching where his money went. As his skills on the soccer field became well known, he secured contracts for himself at junior competitions, and one day he boldly presented himself at the Association for Soccer Referees and Coaches and applied for membership. He passed the examinations with a brilliance that dizzied those who from that moment on he was able to refer to (conceitedly?) as his colleagues.

The appearance of Joaquín Hinostroza Bellmont—black uniform with white pinstripes, little green sun visor on his forehead, silver-plated whistle in his mouth—in the José Díaz National Stadium marked a red-letter day in the history of Peruvian soccer. A veteran sports reporter was to write: “With him, unbending justice and artistic inspiration entered our stadiums.” His rectitude, his impartiality, his quick and unerring eye for fouls and his adroitness at meting out exactly the right penalty, his authority (the players always lowered their eyes when they spoke to him, and addressed him as Don), and his physical fitness that enabled him to run for the entire ninety minutes of a match and never be more than ten meters from the ball, soon made him popular. As someone once put it in a speech, he was the only referee who was never disobeyed by the players or attacked by the spectators, and the only one who received an ovation from the grandstands after every match.

Were these talents and efforts due only to an exceptional professional conscience? This was a partial explanation, to be sure. But the most profound reason behind them was that Joaquín Hinostroza Bellmont wanted most of all (the secret of a young man who triumphs in Europe but whose days are nonetheless filled with bitterness, because what he really wanted was the applause of his little village in the Andes) to impress Virago with his magic skills as a referee. They were still seeing each other, nearly every day, and scabrous popular gossip had it that they were lovers. In reality, despite his amorous stubbornness, which had remained undiminished throughout the years, the referee had not managed to overcome