Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [81]
He was so upset he was unable to imagine a punishment that would fit the heinous crime. His mind felt hazy, he realized he was so angry he couldn’t think straight, and this made him more bitter still, for Don Federico was a man whose conduct was ruled by reason, and who despised that uncouth breed that acted, like animals, out of instinct and sheer gut feeling rather than out of conviction. But this time, as he took out his key, fumblingly inserted it in the keyhole, his fingers trembling with rage, and finally managed to get the door unlocked and push it open, he realized that he was not going to be able to act calmly and deliberately, but rather as his wrath dictated, following the inspiration of the moment. As he closed the door behind him, he took a deep breath, trying to get hold of himself. He was ashamed to think that those ingrates would doubtless see how profoundly they had humiliated him.
On the downstairs floor of his house were a little entry hall, a small living room, the dining room, and the kitchen; the bedrooms were on the upstairs floor. Don Federico spied his wife from the doorway of the living room. She was standing next to the buffet, ecstatically munching some disgusting sticky sweet—a caramel, a chocolate, Don Federico thought, Turkish delight, toffee—holding the part she hadn’t yet eaten in her fingers. On seeing him, she smiled at him with an intimidated look in her eyes, pointing to what she was eating with self-deprecating resignation.
Don Federico walked unhurriedly toward her, unfolding the magazine and holding it out between his two hands so that his wife could contemplate the cover in all its baseness. He thrust it under her nose without saying a word and enjoyed watching her turn deathly pale, her eyes nearly pop out of their sockets, her mouth gape open, and a little thread of saliva full of biscuit crumbs begin running out of it. The man from Tingo María raised his right hand and slapped the trembling woman as hard as he could across the face. She gave a moan, staggered, and fell on her knees, continuing to contemplate the cover photo with an expression of rapturous devotion, mystical illumination. Towering over her, rigid and stern-faced, Don Federico gazed down at her accusingly.
Then he curtly called upstairs to summon the two guilty parties: “Laura! Teresa!”
A noise made him turn his head. There they were, at the foot of the stairs. He hadn’t heard them come down. Teresa, the older one, was wearing a smock, as though she’d been cleaning the house, and Laura had on her school uniform. In bewilderment, the girls looked at their mother on her knees on the floor, at their father walking slowly, hieratically toward them, a high priest approaching the sacrificial stone where the knife and the vestal await, and, finally, at the magazine that Don Federico, having reached them, thrust accusingly before their eyes. His daughters’ reaction was not what he had expected. Instead of turning pale, falling on their knees, and stammering explanations, the precocious creatures blushed and exchanged a swift glance that could only be one of complicity, and Don Federico said to himself, in the depths of his despair and rage, that he had not yet drained the bitter cup of that morning to the dregs: Laura and Teresa knew that they had been photographed, that the photograph was going to be published, and were even delighted—what else could that gleam