Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [192]
I couldn’t bring myself to go back to the radio station that night in the mood I was in, so I went to Uncle Lucho’s. It was Aunt Olga who came to the door; she greeted me with a grave face and a murderous look, but didn’t let a peep out and even offered me her cheek to kiss. She went into the living room with me, where Aunt Julia and Uncle Lucho were sitting. One look at them sufficed to tell me that things were going from bad to worse. I asked them what was up.
“Events have taken a terrible turn,” Aunt Julia said to me, interlocking her fingers with mine, and I could see how much this upset Aunt Olga. “My father-in-law is trying to have me thrown out of the country as an undesirable alien.”
Uncle Jorge, Uncle Juan, and Uncle Pedro had gone to talk to my father that afternoon, and had come back badly frightened by the state they’d found him in. A cold fury, a fixed stare, a way of speaking that made it unmistakable that nothing could possibly get him to change his mind. He was categorical: Aunt Julia had to leave Peru within forty-eight hours or suffer the consequences. It so happened that he was an intimate friend—a former schoolmate, perhaps—of the Minister of Labor in the dictator’s cabinet, a general named Villacorta, he’d already talked to him, and if Aunt Julia refused to leave the country voluntarily, she would be put aboard the plane by soldiers. As for me, if I didn’t obey him, I would pay dearly for it. And, as he’d done with Javier, he showed the revolver to my uncles. I completed the picture by showing them my father’s letter and telling them about the police interrogation. The letter had one virtue at least: it won my aunt and uncle over a hundred percent to our cause. Uncle Lucho poured us all whiskies and as we sat there drinking them Aunt Olga suddenly began to cry and ask how all this could possibly be, her sister treated like a common criminal, threatened by the police, when the two of them belonged to one of the best families in Bolivia.
“There’s no other solution except for me to leave, Varguitas,” Aunt Julia said. I saw her exchange glances with my aunt and uncle and realized that they’d already talked the matter over. “Don’t look at me that way, it’s not a plot against you, it’s not forever. Just till your father gets over his tantrum. To avoid more scandal.”
They had discussed the situation and among the three of them they’d come up with a plan. They’d decided that Bolivia was out of the question and that Aunt Julia ought to go to Chile, to Valparaíso, where her grandmother lived. She would stay there just long enough for people’s tempers to calm down, and would come back the moment I gave her the word. I objected furiously; Aunt Julia was my wife, I’d gotten married so that we could be together, the two of us would leave the country together. They reminded me that I was a minor: I couldn’t apply for a passport or leave Peru without my parents’ permission. I said I’d sneak over the border illegally. They asked me how much money I had to go abroad to live. (I was hard put even to buy cigarettes on some days: after paying the wedding expenses and the rent on the little apartment, there wasn’t a sol left of the advance from Radio Panamericana or of the money I’d gotten from selling my clothes and putting my things in hock.)
“We’re married now and they can’t take that away from us,” Aunt Julia said, running her fingers through my hair and kissing me as tears welled in her eyes. “It’s only for a few weeks, a few months at most. I don’t want you to get a bullet through you on account of me.”
During supper, Aunt Olga and Uncle Lucho presented their arguments to try to persuade me. I had to be reasonable, I’d done as I pleased and gotten married, and now I had to make a temporary concession to keep something irreparable from happening. I had to understand their position;