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of my mother with a joke that didn’t sit well with her at all (“But, Mama, you should be happy, I’ve married a great friend of yours”), but then I struck more sensitive chords by swearing to her that I wouldn’t give up my studies, that I’d go on and get my law degree, that I might even change my mind about the Peruvian diplomatic service (“the ones that aren’t idiots are pederasts, Mama”) and become a foreign officer, the dream of her life. She gradually softened up, and though she still looked grief-stricken, she asked me about the university, my grades, my work at the radio station, and scolded me for being such an ungrateful son that I hardly ever wrote to her. She told me that my marriage had come as a terrible blow to my father: he, too, had great ambitions for me, and that was why he was bent on keeping “that woman” from ruining my life. He’d consulted lawyers, the marriage wasn’t valid, he’d have it annulled, and might bring charges against Aunt Julia for corrupting the morals of a minor. My father was so enraged that for the moment he didn’t want to see me, to prevent “something terrible” from happening, and was demanding that Aunt Julia leave the country immediately or suffer the consequences.

I replied that Aunt Julia and I had been married precisely in order not to be separated and that it was going to be very difficult to force my wife to leave the country two days after the wedding. But my mother didn’t want to discuss the subject. “You know your papa, you know what a terrible temper he has, you’ll have to do what he wants, because if you don’t…” and a terror-stricken look came into her eyes. I finally told her that I was going to be late for work, that we’d talk some more later, and before I left, I tried again to set her mind at ease about my future, assuring her that I’d go on and get my law degree.

As I headed back downtown in a jitney, I had a gloomy presentiment: what if I found somebody sitting at my desk when I got to the office? I’d been gone for three days, and in the last few weeks, because of all the frustrating running around I’d had to do trying to arrange for us to be married, I hadn’t once looked over the news bulletins before they went on the air, and Pascual and Big Pablito must have done all sorts of horrendous things in them. I thought soberly of what would happen if, on top of all the personal complications of the moment, I were to lose my job as well, and began to think up arguments that would arouse the sympathies of Genaro Jr. and Genaro Sr. But on entering the Panamericana building, with my heart in my shoes, to my tremendous surprise the dynamic impresario, whom I happened to meet in the elevator, greeted me as though we’d seen each other only ten minutes before. He had a serious look on his face.

“There’s no doubt about it: we’re in the midst of a catastrophe,” he said to me, shaking his head sadly; it was as though we’d been discussing the subject just a moment before. “What are we going to do now, can you tell me that? They have to put him away.”

He got off the elevator on the third floor, and to compound the confusion, I’d assumed a doleful expression and murmured, as though I knew exactly what he was talking about: “Good heavens, what a pity.” I felt happy that something so serious had happened that my absence had gone unnoticed. Up in the shack, Pascual and Big Pablito were listening to Nelly, Genaro Jr.’s secretary, with faces a mile long. They barely said hello to me and nobody cracked a single joke about my having gotten married. They looked at me in despair.

“They’ve taken Pedro Camacho off to the insane asylum,” Big Pablito stammered, his voice breaking. “What a sad thing, Don Mario!”

Then, between them, with Nelly doing most of the talking, since she had followed what was going on from the Genaros’ office, they told me all the details. Everything had started during those very days when I was all wrapped up in my prematrimonial troubles. The catastrophes, the fires, earthquakes, auto accidents, shipwrecks, train derailments were the beginning of the end, for they had