Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [173]
“Everything’s all set, Varguitas,” he said, proud as a peacock. “The mayor of Grocio Prado is making the entry in the register and filling out your marriage certificate this very minute. Stop sinning and get a move on, you two. We’ll wait for you in the taxi.”
He closed the door and I heard him laugh as he walked down the hall. Aunt Julia had sat up in bed, rubbing her eyes, and in the semi-darkness I managed to catch just a glimpse of the surprised, slightly incredulous look on her face.
“The very first book I write, I’m going to dedicate to that taxi driver,” I said as we were getting dressed.
“Don’t chant a victory hymn just yet.” Aunt Julia smiled. “I’m not going to believe it even when I see the marriage certificate.”
We rushed out of the hotel, and as we passed the dining room, where a whole bunch of men were already drinking beer, somebody made such a clever flattering remark about Aunt Julia that many of them laughed. Pascual and Javier were waiting in the taxi, but it wasn’t the same one that had taken us around that morning, nor was it the same driver.
“The other one tried to get cute and take advantage of the situation by charging double,” Pascual explained to us. “So we told him he could go to hell and hired this gentleman here, a really honest, upright man.”
I was suddenly panic-stricken, thinking that the change of drivers was going to mean another wild-goose chase. But Javier reassured us. It wasn’t the other driver who’d gone with the two of them to Grocio Prado that afternoon, but this one. They told us, as though they were a couple of kids who’d pulled a fast one on us, how they’d decided to “let us get some rest” and spare Aunt Julia the painful experience of yet another refusal and gone to Grocio Prado by themselves to see what they could do. They’d had a long conversation with the mayor.
“A cultivated, enlightened mestizo, one of those superior men that are a unique product of the province of Chincha,” Pascual said. “You’re going to have to give thanks to Melchorita by coming to her procession.”
The mayor of Grocio Prado had calmly listened to Javier’s explanations, carefully scrutinized all the papers word for word, thought the matter over for some time, and then laid down his conditions: a thousand soles, but only if a 6 on my birth certificate were changed to a 3, thus making it appear that I’d come into the world three years earlier.
“The intelligence of the proletariat,” Javier said. “We’re a decadent class, believe me. It never crossed our minds that that was the solution, and this man of the people, with his brilliant common sense, saw it in a flash. It’s a fait accompli: you’re of age.”
Right there in the town hall, the mayor and Javier between them had changed the 6 to a 3, by hand, and the man had said: “What difference does it make if the ink isn’t the same? What matters is what the paper says.”
We arrived in Grocio Prado about eight in the evening. It was a clear night, with stars in the sky, and pleasantly warm. Little flames flickered in all the shacks and shanties in the village. We saw another dwelling all lighted up, with a great many candles gleaming through the cane-stalk walls, and Pascual, crossing himself, told us it was the hermitage where the Blessed Melchorita had lived.
In the town hall, the mayor was just finishing recording the marriage in a big register with a black cover. The dirt floor of the one-room building had been wetted down only a