Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [8]
“We’re fifth wheels,” I protested, pro forma. “You’ve stuck us up here in this filthy shack, you’ve already taken a desk away from me to give to the accountant, and now you’re carrying off my Remington. And you didn’t even tell me beforehand.”
“We thought this gentleman was a thief,” Pascual said, backing me up. “He burst in here heaping insults on us and acting as though he owned the place.”
“Colleagues shouldn’t quarrel,” Genaro Jr. replied, playing Solomon. He’d hoisted the Remington to his shoulder and I noticed that the little man came exactly up to his lapels. “Didn’t my father come up to introduce you to each other? If not, I’ll do the honors, and you can stop fighting.”
Immediately, with a rapid, automatic movement, the little man stretched out one of his little arms, took a couple of steps toward me, offered me a tiny child’s hand, and bowing politely once again, introduced himself to me in his exquisite tenor voice: “Pedro Camacho. A Bolivian and an artist: a friend.”
He repeated the gesture, the bow, and the phrase with Pascual, who was quite obviously experiencing a moment of utter confusion, unable to decide whether the little man was pulling our leg or always went through this routine. After ceremoniously shaking hands with us, Pedro Camacho turned to the entire staff of the News Department, and standing in the center of the shack in the shadow of Genaro Jr., who looked like a giant behind him and was watching him with a very serious expression on his face, raised his upper lip, screwed his face up, and bared yellowed teeth in the caricature or the specter of a smile. He waited a few seconds before favoring us with these musical words, accompanied by the gesture of a stage magician taking leave of his audience: “I don’t hold it against you—I’m quite accustomed to being misunderstood. Till we meet again, gentlemen!”
He disappeared through the door of the shack, hurriedly hopping and skipping along like an elf to catch up with the dynamic impresario heading for the elevator in great long strides with the Remington on his shoulder.
Two.
On one of those sunny spring mornings in Lima when the geraniums are an even brighter red, the roses more fragrant, and the bougainvillaeas curlier as they awaken, a famous physician of the city, Dr. Alberto de Quinteros—broad forehead, aquiline nose, penetrating gaze, the very soul of rectitude and goodness—opened his eyes in his vast mansion in San Isidro and stretched his limbs. Through the curtains he could see the sun shedding its golden light on the lawn of the carefully tended grounds enclosed by hedges of evergreen shrubs, the bright blue sky, the cheery flowers, and felt that sense of well-being that comes from eight hours of restorative sleep and a clear conscience.
It was Saturday and—providing there were not last-minute complications in the case of the woman with the triplets—he would not be obliged to go to the clinic and could devote the morning to working out at the gym and taking a sauna before Elianita’s wedding. His wife and daughter were in Europe, cultivating their minds and replenishing their wardrobes, and would not be back for a month. Any other man with his considerable fortune and his looks—his hair that had turned to silver at the temples and his distinguished bearing, along with his elegant manners, awakened a gleam of desire even in the eyes of incorruptible married women—might have taken advantage of his temporary bachelorhood to have himself a little fun. But Alberto de Quinteros was a man not unduly attracted to gambling, skirt chasing, or drinking, and among his friends—who were legion—it was commonly said that “his vices are science, his family, and the gymnasium.”
He ordered his breakfast sent up, and as it was being prepared he phoned the clinic. The doctor on duty informed him that the woman with