Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [9]
The Remigius Gymnasium was only a few blocks away, in the Calle Miguel Dasso, and Dr. Quinteros liked to go there on foot. He would walk along slowly, return his neighbors’ greetings, peek into their gardens, which at this hour were freshly watered and the hedges neatly trimmed, and usually he dropped in at the Castro Soto Bookstore for a few minutes to pick up a couple of best sellers. Although it was early still, the inevitable gang of youngsters with open-necked shirts and unkempt hair were already outside the Davory, sitting on their motorcycles or on the bumpers of their sports cars, eating ice-cream bars, joking with each other, and planning that night’s party. They greeted him respectfully, but he’d gone only a few steps past them when one dared give him one of those bits of advice that were his cross to bear at the gymnasium too, hoary jokes about his age and his profession, that he put up with day after day, patiently and good-naturedly: “Don’t wear yourself out, Doctor, think of your grandchildren.” He scarcely heard it because he was imagining how pretty Elianita would look in her wedding dress designed for her at Christian Dior’s in Paris.
There weren’t many people at the gym that morning. Just Coco, the instructor, and two weight-lifting addicts, Blacky Humilla and Polly Sarmiento, three mountains of muscles the equivalent of those of ten ordinary men. They must have arrived only a short time before, as they were still warming up.
“Well, here comes the stork,” Coco said, shaking hands.
“Still up and around, after all these centuries?” Blacky Humilla called out.
Polly Sarmiento limited himself to clacking his tongue and raising two fingers, his usual greeting that he’d imported from Texas. Dr. Quinteros liked the air of breezy familiarity that his gym companions adopted toward him, as though seeing each other naked and sweating together had created an egalitarian fraternity among them, in which differences in age and social position had disappeared. He answered them by saying that if they had need of his services he was at their disposal, that at the first signs of dizziness or morning sickness they should come immediately to his office, where the rubber glove for probing their privates was ready and waiting.
“Go change clothes and come do a few warm-ups,” Coco said to him, going back to jumping in place.
“If you feel a heart attack coming on, you may kick off, but so what?” Polly said encouragingly, picking up Coco’s rhythm.
“The surfer’s in there,” he heard Blacky Humilla say as he entered the dressing room.
And indeed his nephew Richard was there, in a blue sweat suit, putting on his gym shoes. He was doing so slowly and reluctantly, as though his hands had suddenly gone as limp as a rag doll’s, and he had a bitter, vacant look on his face. He sat there staring past his uncle with a completely blank expression in his blue eyes and such total indifference to his presence that Dr. Quinteros wondered whether he’d turned invisible all of a sudden.
“It’s only lovers who get lost in thought like that,” he said to his nephew, walking over and ruffling his hair. “Come back down to earth, my boy.”
“Sorry, Uncle,” Richard replied,