Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [45]
I phoned Genaro Jr., who was beside himself with joy.
“There’s still an hour to go before Lucho’s broadcast, and the crowd outside has already stopped traffic along the Calle Belén. All Peru is tuned in to Radio Panamericana at this moment.”
I asked him whether, given the circumstances, we should skip the seven and eight o’clock bulletins, but resourceful as ever, he came up with the idea of having us dictate them over the phone to the announcers downstairs. We did so, and in the hour between the two, Pascual listened, enraptured, to Lucho Gatica’s voice on the radio and I reread the fourth version of my story about the eunuch-senator, which I’d finally ended up calling, in the manner of a Gothic horror tale, “The Ruined Face.” At nine on the dot we heard the end of the program, the voice of Martínez Morosini bidding Lucho Gatica goodbye and the applause from the audience that this time wasn’t canned but real.
Ten seconds later the telephone rang and I heard Genaro Jr.’s voice say in alarm: “Get down here, any way you can. Things are getting out of hand.”
We had a terrible time making a hole in the solid wall of women jammed together on the stairway, whom Jesusito, the corpulent doorman stationed at the entrance to the auditorium, was holding back. Pascual kept shouting: “Ambulance corps! Ambulance corps! We’re coming to get somebody who’s been hurt!” The women, young ones for the most part, looked at us indifferently or smiled, but didn’t move aside and we had to push them out of the way. Once inside, we were greeted by a disconcerting spectacle: the celebrated artist was demanding police protection. He was a short little man, livid and filled with hatred toward his female admirers. The dynamic impresario was trying to calm him down, telling him that calling in the police would make a very bad impression, that this horde of girls was a tribute to his talent. But the celebrity was not at all swayed by that line of argument. “I know their kind all too well,” he said, half terrified and half enraged. “They begin by asking for an autograph and end up scratching and biting.”
We laughed, but reality bore out his predictions. Genaro Jr. decided that we should wait half an hour, thinking that Lucho’s admirers would eventually get bored and go away. At ten-fifteen (I had a date with Aunt Julia to go to the movies), we’d gotten tired of waiting for them to get tired and made up our minds to leave. Genaro Jr., Pascual, Jesusito, Martínez Morosini and I linked arms and formed a circle round the celebrity, whose already pale face positively blanched the moment we opened the door. We managed to get down the first steps with no great damage done, by pushing and shoving with our elbows, knees, heads, and chests against the sea of females, who for the moment were content to applaud, sigh, and stretch out their hands to touch their idol—who, with a fixed smile on his marble-white face, kept muttering under his breath: “Careful, fellows, don’t let go of each others’ arms.” But we fell victim to an all-out attack. They grabbed us by our clothes and tugged, and screaming at the top of their lungs reached for their idol with their fingernails to tear off pieces of his shirt and suit. When, after ten minutes of nearly being smothered or crushed to death, we finally fought our way to the exit, I thought we were about to let go of each other and had a vision: the little bolero singer was snatched away from us and torn limb from limb by his admirers before our very eyes. This didn’t happen, but when we put him in Genaro Sr.’s car—he’d been waiting at the wheel for an hour and a half—Lucho Gatica and his iron guard had been transformed into survivors of a catastrophe. They had yanked my tie off and my shirt was in shreds; they had torn Jesusito’s uniform and stolen his cap; and Genaro Jr. had a big purple bruise on his forehead where he’d been clouted with a handbag. The star was unhurt, but the only items of his attire that had remained intact were his shoes and his undershorts. The next morning, as we were taking our