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By Root 1064 0

little oranges and I’ve got a little banana,” and “I’m dripping with love for you.” But it was not these risqué figures of speech, so out of place in the mouth of a little girl, that made the magistrate’s cheeks flush and froze Dr. Zelaya’s fingers on his typewriter keys, but, rather, the gestures whereby Sarita began to illustrate the harassment of which she had been the object. The mechanic was always trying to touch her, here: and her two little hands rose to cup her tender little breasts and lovingly stroke them to warm them. And here too: and her little hands descended to her knees and fondled them, then crept up and up, wrinkling her skirt, along her little thighs (until very recently those of a pre-adolescent child). Blinking his eyes, coughing, exchanging a rapid glance with the secretary, Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar paternally explained to the girl that it was not necessary to be that explicit, that she could limit herself to generalities. And he’d also pinch her here, Sarita interrupted him, turning halfway round and thrusting toward him a buttock that suddenly seemed to grow bigger and bigger, to inflate like a balloon. The magistrate had the dizzying presentiment that his chambers might well turn into a striptease parlor at any moment.

Making an effort to overcome his nervousness, the magistrate urged the minor, in a calm voice, to skip the preliminaries and concentrate on the act of rape itself. He explained to her that although she should do her best to give an objective account of what had happened, it was not absolutely necessary to dwell on the details, and she could omit—Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar, feeling slightly embarrassed, cleared his throat—those that might offend her modesty. The magistrate wanted, for one thing, to end the interview as soon as possible, and for another, to keep it within the bounds of decency, and he thought that the girl, who would quite naturally be upset on recounting the erotic assault, would be brief and synoptic, circumspect and superficial.

But on hearing the judge’s suggestion, Sarita Huanca Salaverría, like a fighting cock smelling blood, grew bolder, cast all decency to the winds, and launched into a salacious soliloquy and a mimetico-seminal representation that took Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar’s breath away and plunged Dr. Zelaya into a state of frankly indecorous (and perhaps masturbatory?) corporeal agitation. The mechanic had knocked at the door like this, and when she’d opened it he’d looked at her like this, and then spoken these words to her, and after that knelt down like so, touching his heart this way, declared his passion for her in phrases such as these, swearing that he loved her thus and so. Stunned, hypnotized, the judge and the secretary watched the child-woman flutter like a bird, stand on tiptoe like a ballerina, crouch down and draw herself up to her full height, smile and become angry, speak in two different voices, imitate herself and Gumercindo Tello both, and finally fall on (his, her) knees and confess (his) love for (her). Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar stretched out one hand, stammered that that was enough, but the loquacious victim was already explaining that the mechanic had threatened her with a knife like this, had flung himself upon her like this, causing her to fall to the floor like this and then lying down on top of her like this and pulling up her skirt like this, and at that moment the judge—a pale, noble, majestic, wrathful Biblical prophet—leapt from his chair and roared: “Enough! Enough! That will do!” It was the first time in his life that he had ever raised his voice.

From the floor, where she had stretched out full-length on reaching the neuralgic point of her graphic deposition, Sarita Huanca Salaverría looked up in panic at the index finger that appeared to be about to send a lightning bolt through her.

“I don’t need to know any more,” the magistrate repeated in a gentler voice. “Get up, straighten your skirt, and go rejoin your parents.”

The victim obediently rose to her feet, her little face devoid now of even the slightest