Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [164]
The man from La Perla was the only one, amid all the victims of that Greek afternoon, to die a natural death—if it is possible to describe as natural the phenomenon, unheard of in these prosaic times, of a man dying of heart failure on seeing his beloved lying dead at his feet. He fell to the ground alongside Sarita, and the two of them, with their last breath, managed to embrace and thus enter, clasped in each other’s arms, the dark night of hapless lovers (such as a certain Romeo and Juliet?)…
And then the peace officer with the immaculate service record, sadly contemplating the fact that, despite his experience and sagacity, not only had the peace been disturbed but the Plaza de Acho and environs had been turned into a cemetery of unburied corpses, used his last remaining bullet to (old sea dog who goes down with his ship to the bottom of the ocean) blow his brains out and bring his biography to a (manly but not brilliant) end. The moment they saw their chief take his life, the morale of the Guardias fell apart; forgetting discipline, esprit de corps, love for the institution, they thought only of shedding their uniforms, hiding in the civilian clothes they tore off the corpses, and escaping. A number of them succeeded in doing so. But not Jaime Concha, whom the survivors first castrated, then hanged with his own leather chest belt from the crosspiece of the bull-pen door. And there the decent chap who read Uncle Donalds, the diligent centurion remained, dangling back and forth beneath the sky of Lima, which (as if wishing to be in keeping with what had happened?) had become filled with roiling clouds and begun to rain down its usual winter drizzle…
Would this story end thus, in Dantesque slaughter? Or, like the Phoenix (the Hen?), would it be reborn from its ashes in the form of new episodes and recalcitrant characters? What would the outcome of this taurine tragedy be?
Seventeen.
We left Lima at nine o’clock in the morning, taking a jitney at the university campus. Aunt Julia had left my aunt’s and uncle’s house on the pretext of doing some last-minute shopping before her trip, and I my grandparents’ house as though I were going to work as usual at the radio station. She was carrying a paper sack with a nightgown and a change of underwear; I had put my toothbrush, a comb, and a razor (which, to tell the truth, I didn’t often need as yet) in my pockets.
Pascual and Javier were waiting for us at the university campus and had already bought the jitney tickets. Luckily, no other passengers turned up. Pascual and Javier very discreetly sat down in the front seat with the driver, leaving the back seat for Aunt Julia and me. It was a typical winter morning, with an overcast sky and a continual drizzle that escorted us a good part of the way across the desert. During very nearly the entire trip, Aunt Julia and I kissed passionately and held hands without exchanging a word, as we listened to the murmur of conversation between Pascual and Javier, mingled with the sound of the engine, and from time to time a comment from the driver. We arrived in Chincha at eleven-thirty; there was splendid sun now and it was delightfully warm. The clear sky, the luminous air, the noisy hustle and bustle on the streets filled with people all seemed favorable omens. Aunt Julia smiled happily.
As Pascual and Javier headed for the city hall to see if everything was ready, Aunt Julia and I went to get a room at the Hotel Sudamericano. It was an old single-story wood-and-adobe brick building, with a covered patio that served as a dining room, and a dozen tiny rooms along either side of a narrow hall with a tiled floor, like a bordello. The ’man at the desk asked us for identification papers; my journalist’s card was enough to satisfy him, and when I added “and wife” next to my name in the guest register he merely gave Aunt Julia a mocking look. The little room that we were given had a cracked tile floor with bare earth showing through, a sagging double bed with