Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Mario Vargas Llosa [94]
In a nearby service station he filled the tank with gas and the radiator with water and took off. Despite the fact that at this hour, when the sun was at its hottest, the streets of Pisco were empty, he drove slowly and carefully, thinking not so much of the safety of pedestrians as of his yellow Volkswagen, which, after his little blond French wife, was the apple of his eye. As he made his way through the streets of the town, he thought about his life. He was twenty-eight years old. After finishing high school, he’d decided to go to work, for he was too impatient to go all the way through the university before getting himself a job. He’d been hired by the Bayer Laboratories after taking an exam. In these ten years his salary had gone up steadily, he’d had several promotions, and his work wasn’t boring. He preferred a job that took him outside the office rather than vegetating behind a desk. Except that now it was out of the question for him to go on spending all his time traveling, leaving the delicate flower of France in Lima, a city that, as everyone knows, is full of sharks lying in wait for mermaids. Lucho Abril Marroquín had already spoken with his superiors. They had great regard for him, and had reassured him: he would remain on the road for only a few months more, and at the beginning of the following year they would give him a post in the provinces. And Dr. Schwalb, a laconic Swiss, had added: “A post that will be a promotion.” Lucho Abril Marroquín couldn’t help thinking that perhaps they would offer him the job of managing director of the branch office in Trujillo, Arequipa, or Chiclayo. And what more could he ask?
He was leaving the city now, heading off down the main highway to Lima. He had made the trip back and forth along this route so many times—on interurban buses, in jitneys, being driven or driving himself—that he knew it by heart. The ribbon of black asphalt disappeared in the distance, amid dunes and bare hills, without the least quicksilver gleam that would reveal the presence of other vehicles on the road up ahead. In front of him was an old rattletrap of a truck, and he was just about to pass it when he spied the bridge and the intersection where the Southern Highway branches off in a cloverleaf from the road he was on, which continues on up the sierra in the direction of the metallic mountains of Castrovirreina. He therefore decided (prudence of the man who loves his car and fears the law) to wait until after the turnoff. The truck was lumbering along at no more than thirty miles an hour and Lucho Abril Marroquín resignedly slowed down and trailed along after it, keeping a good ten yards’ distance. Up ahead he could see the bridge, the intersection, flimsy buildings—roadside stands selling cold drinks and cigarettes, the Southern Highway toll booth—and silhouettes whose faces he could not make out—the sun behind them was shining directly in his eyes—walking back and forth alongside the buildings.
The little girl loomed up all of a sudden, as though she had emerged from underneath the truck, just as he reached the end of the bridge. That tiny figure suddenly appearing directly in his path would remain engraved on his memory forever, her little face frozen in terror and her hands in the air, hitting the front of the Volkswagen like a stone. It all happened so fast that he had no time either to brake or to swerve aside till after the catastrophe (the beginning of the catastrophe). In utter horror, and with the weird sensation that none of this had anything to do with him, he felt the dull thud of the body against the