Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [30]
“We explained to him that all the surveys have proved the public wants leading men between thirty and thirty-five, but he’s as stubborn as a mule,” Genaro Jr. said in a doleful voice, exhaling cigarette smoke through his mouth and his nose. “What if I’ve made a terrible mistake and the Bolivian is a colossal failure?”
I remembered that at one point in our conversation the evening before, in his cubbyhole at Radio Central, Camacho had held forth, dogmatically and eloquently, on the subject of the man in his fifties. The age at which his intellectual powers and his sensuality are at their peak, he had said, the age at which he has assimilated all his experiences. That age at which one is most desired by women and most feared by men. And he had insisted, in a highly suspect way, that old age was an “optative” phenomenon. I had deduced that the Bolivian scriptwriter was fifty himself and terrified at the prospect of old age: a tiny crack of human frailty in that spirit as solid as marble.
When we finished writing the ads, it was too late in the afternoon to drop by Miraflores, so I phoned Uncle Lucho to tell him that I’d come by that evening to give him a birthday hug. I had presumed that I’d find a whole bunch of relatives gathered together to celebrate the occasion, but no one was there except Aunt Olga and Aunt Julia. The relatives had trooped in and out of the house during the day. The two of them were drinking whiskey and they poured me a glass, too. Aunt Julia thanked me again for the roses—I saw them on the sideboard, so few of them as scarcely to make a decent bouquet—and she began to poke fun at me, as usual, pressing me to confess what sort of “program” I’d gotten involved with on the night I’d stood her up: a dusky-skinned little chick from the university, a crisis at Radio Central? She was wearing a blue dress and white shoes, and had a salon makeup job and hairdo; her laugh was hearty and spontaneous, her voice throaty, and the look in her eyes downright provocative. I discovered, somewhat belatedly, that she was an attractive woman. In a sudden burst of enthusiasm, Uncle Lucho said that a person celebrated his fiftieth birthday only once in his life and that he was inviting all of us to the Bolívar Grill. The thought crossed my mind that for the second day in a row I would be obliged to postpone writing my story about the perverted eunuch senator (what if I used that phrase as the title?). But I didn’t regret having to put it aside, and was more than happy to find myself included in the gala supper party. After looking me over, Aunt Olga decreed that my attire wasn’t exactly suitable for the Bolívar Grill and had Uncle Lucho lend me a clean shirt and a flashy tie that would somewhat compensate for my threadbare, badly wrinkled suit. The shirt was miles too big for me, and I was concerned about the way I looked with my neck waggling back and forth inside the collar (thereby causing Aunt Julia to begin calling me Popeye).
I’d never been to the Bolívar Grill and it seemed to me the most chic and elegant place in the world, and the supper we had the most exquisite meal I’d ever tasted. An orchestra played boleros, paso dobles, and blues, and the star of the show was a French girl, as white as snow, who caressed each syllable of her songs while seemingly masturbating the microphone with her hands, and Uncle Lucho, with a euphoria heightened by each drink he downed, cheered her on in a gibberish that he took to be French: “Vravooooo! Vravooooooo, mamuasel cherí!” I was the first one to venture out onto the dance floor, dragging Aunt Olga with me, to my own vast surprise, since I didn’t know how to dance (at the time, I was firmly convinced that a literary vocation was incompatible with dancing and sports), but happily the floor was