Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Like a little black cloud heavy with rain, a hypothesis drifted through Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar’s mind: what if all this were merely a plot hatched by this couple to marry off their daughter? But the medical report stated categorically: the girl had been raped. Not without difficulty, he dismissed the two witnesses, and had the victim brought in.

  Sarita Huanca Salaverría’s entrance seemed to light up the austere chambers of the examining magistrate. A man who had seen everything, before whose eyes every conceivable bizarre human type and weird psychological case had passed in review, as perpetrators of crime and as victims of crime, Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar nonetheless told himself that confronting him was a genuinely unusual specimen. Was Sarita Huanca Salaverría a little girl? No doubt, judging from her chronological age, her little body with the full rounded curves of femininity timidly beginning to make their appearance, her hair done up in braids, and the schoolgirl’s blouse and skirt that she was wearing. On the other hand, however, her markedly feline way of moving, her way of standing, legs apart, one hip thrust out, shoulders thrown back, her two little hands resting provocatively on her waist, and above all the look in her velvety, worldly eyes and her way of biting her lower lip with little mouse teeth, made Sarita Huanca Salaverría appear to possess vast experience, a wisdom as old as time itself.

  Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar’s interrogations of minors were always extraordinarily tactful. He knew how to gain their confidence, use circumlocutions so as not to hurt their feelings, and by being gentle and patient it was easy for him to lead them around to talking about the most scandalous subjects. But this time his experience was of little use to him. The moment he asked the minor, euphemistically, whether it was true that Gumercindo Tello had bothered her for some time by making indecent remarks, Sarita Huanca began to talk in a steady stream. Yes, ever since he’d come to La Victoria to live; everywhere; at all hours of the day. He would be waiting at the bus stop and walk home with her, saying things like “I’d love to suck your honey,” “You’ve got two 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 trace of histrionics or indecency, a child once again, visibly distressed. Humbly bowing, she backed away to the door and left. The judge then turned to his secretary, and in an even, not at all sarcastic tone of voice suggested that he stop typing: had he perchance failed to notice that the sheet of paper had slid to the floor and that he was typing on the empty platen? His face crimson, Dr. Zelaya stammered that what had just happened had gotten him all flustered.

  Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar smiled at him. “We have been privileged to witness a most unusual spectacle,” the magistrate philosophized. “That youngster has the devil in the flesh, and what’s worse, she probably doesn’t even know it.”

  “Is that what Yankees call a Lolita?” the secretary asked in an attempt to further his knowledge.

  “I’m certain of it—a typical Lolita,” was the judge’s verdict. And in an effort to put the best possible face on things, an impenitent sea wolf who draws optimistic lessons even from typhoons, he added: “We can at least feel pleased to have discovered that the colossus of the North doesn’t enjoy a monopoly in this field. That little home-grown product could steal any gringa Lolita’s man away from her.”

  “I take it she drove that mechanic out of his mind and he deflowered her,” the secretary mused. “But after seeing and hearing her you’d swear that she was the one who raped him.”

  “Stop right there. I forbid you to assume any such thing,” the judge said sternly, and the secretary paled. “Let’s have none of these suspect oracular pronouncements. Have them bring in Gumercindo Tello.”

  Ten minutes later, on seeing the man enter his chambers escorted by two guards, Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar realized immediately that he did not fit the neat pigeonhole that the secretary had too hastily assigned him. This was not a classic Lombrosian criminal type, but in a certain sense a far more dangerous type. a believer. With a mnemonic shiver that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, the judge, on seeing Gumercindo Tello’s face, remembered the implacable gaze of the man with the bicycle and the copies of The Watchtower who had given him so many nightmares, that serenely stubborn gaze of a man who knows, who has no doubts, who has solved all his problems. Rather short in stature,
he was a young man, doubtless not yet thirty, whose frail physique, nothing but skin and bones, proclaimed to the four winds his scorn for bodily nourishment and the material world, with hair cropped so short his skull was nearly bare, and a swarthy complexion. He was dressed in a gray suit the color of ashes, the costume neither of a dandy nor of a beggar but something in between, which was dry now but very wrinkled from the baptismal rites, a white shirt, and ankle boots with cleats. Just one glance sufficed for the judge—a man with a flair for anthropology—to discern immediately his distinctive personality traits: circumspection, moderation, fixed ideas, imperturbability, a spiritual vocation. Obviously well-mannered, the moment he entered the room he bade the judge and the secretary good morning in a polite, friendly tone of voice.

  Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar ordered the guards to remove the man’s handcuffs and leave his chambers. This was a habit he had adopted from the very beginning of his career as a magistrate: he had always interrogated even the most depraved criminals without officers of the law being present, without coercion, paternally, and in the course of these tête-à-têtes, even the most hard-bitten of them usually opened their hearts to him, like penitents to a confessor. He had never had cause to regret this risky practice. Gumercindo Tello rubbed his wrists and thanked the judge for this proof of his trust. The latter pointed to a chair and the mechanic sat down on the very edge of it, his spine rigid, like a man who feels uncomfortable at the very idea of comfort. The magistrate composed in his mind the motto that no doubt governed the Witness’s life: get up out of bed though still sleepy, get up from the table though still hungry, and (if he ever went) leave the movie before the end. He tried to imagine him lured, set on fire by the thirteen-year-old femme fatale of La Victoria, but immediately abandoned this mental exercise as being detrimental to the rights of the defendant. Gumercindo Tello had begun talking.

  “It’s true that we don’t swear to obey governments, parties, armies, and other visible institutions, all of which are stepdaughters of Satan,” he said quietly, “that we don’t pledge allegiance to any bit of colored cloth, that we refuse to wear uniforms, because we are not taken in by fripperies or disguises, and that we don’t accept skin grafts or blood transfusions, because science cannot undo what God hath wrought. But none of this means that we do not fulfill our obligations. Your Honor, I place myself at your entire disposal and would pay you all due respect even if I had good reason not to.”

  He spoke slowly and deliberately, as though to make the secretary’s task easier as the latter provided a musical accompaniment for his peroration on his typewriter. The judge thanked him for his kind words, informed him that he respected every person’s ideas and beliefs, particularly those having to do with religion, and permitted himself to remind him that he was not under arrest for those he professed but because he had been charged with having assaulted and raped a minor.

  An otherworldly smile crossed the face of the young man from Moquegua. “A witness is one who testifies, who offers testimony, who attests,” he said, revealing his familiarity with semantics and looking the magistrate straight in the eye. “One who, knowing that God exists, makes His existence known, one who, knowing the truth, makes the truth known. I am a Witness and you two may become Witnesses as well with a little effort of will.”

  “Thank you, perhaps some other time,” the judge interrupted him, picking up the thick dossier and setting it before him as though it were a dish of food. “Time is pressing and this is what is important. Let’s get straight to the point. And first off, a word of advice: I strongly urge you, in your own best interests, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  The accused, moved by some secret memory, heaved a deep sigh. “The truth, the truth,” he murmured sadly. “Which truth, Your Honor? Isn’t what you’re after, rather, the product of those calumnies, those fabrications, those Vatican tricks that, by taking advantage of the naïveté of the masses, they try to foist off on us as the truth? With all due modesty, I believe I know the truth, but, with no offense meant, may I ask you: do you know it?”

  “It’s my intention to discover it,” the judge replied shrewdly, tapping the folder.

  “The truth about the fiction of the cross, the farce of Peter and the rock, the miters, the papal immortality-of-the-soul hoax?” Gumercindo Tello asked sarcastically.

  “The truth about the crime you committed by abusing the minor Sarita Huanca Salaverría,” the magistrate counterattacked. “The truth about your assaulting an innocent thirteen-year-old girl. The truth about the beating you gave her, the threats that terrified her, the rape that humiliated her and perhaps left her pregnant.” The magistrate’s voice had risen, accusing, Olympian.

  Gumercindo Tello looked at him gravely, as rigid as the chair he was perched on, showing no sign of either shame or repentance. But finally he nodded like a docile cow. “I am prepared for any test to which Jehovah wishes to put me,” he assured him.

  “It’s not a question of God but of you,” the magistrate said, bringing him back down to earth. “Of your appetites, your lust, your libido.”

  “It’s always a question of God, Your Honor,” Gumercindo Tello stubbornly insisted. “Never of you, or me, or anyone else. Of Him, and Him only.”

  “Be responsible,” the judge exhorted him. “Keep to the facts. Admit your guilt and Justice may take your confession into account. Act like the religious man you’re trying to make me believe you are.”

  “I repent of all my sins, which are infinite,” Gumercindo Tello said gloomily. “I know very well that I am a sinner, Your Honor.”

  “Well then, the concrete facts,” Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar pressed him. “Describe to me, with neither morbid delectation nor jeremiads, how you raped her.”

  But the Witness had burst into sobs, covering his face with his hands. The magistrate remained unmoved. He was accustomed to the sudden cyclothymic shifts of mood of accused criminals he was interrogating and knew how to take advantage of them to ascertain the facts. Seeing Gumercindo Tello sitting there with his head bowed, shaking from head to foot, his hands wet with tears, Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar said to himself, with the solemn pride of the professional noting the effectiveness of his technique, that the accused had reached that climactic emotional state in which, no longer capable of dissimulating, he would eagerly, spontaneously, abundantly confess to the truth.

  “Facts, facts,” he insisted. “Facts, positions, words spoken, acts performed. Come on, be brave and tell all!”

  “The trouble is, I don’t know how to lie, Your Honor,” Gumercindo Tello stammered between hiccups. “I’m prepared to suffer the consequences, whatever they may be—insults, prison, dishonor. But I can’t lie! I never learned how, I’m incapable of it!”

  “There, there, that very fact does you honor,” the judge exclaimed with an encouraging gesture. “Prove it to me. Come on, tell me, how did you rape her?”

  “That’s the whole problem,” the Witness said in a desperate tone of voice, swallowing hard. “I didn’t rape her!”

  “I’m going to tell you something, Señor Tello,” the magistrate said, pronouncing each word slowly and distinctly, in the deceptively bland voice of a sly, contemptuous serpent. “You’re a false Jehovah’s Witness! An impostor!”

  “I didn’t touch her, I never talked to her alone, I didn’t even see her yesterday,” Gumercindo Tello bleated like a lamb.

  “A cynic, a fake, a spiritual prevaricator,” the judge declared in a stern, cold voice. “If Justice and Morality don’t matter to you, at least respect that God whose name is so often on your lips. Think of how He is watching you at this very moment, how revolted He must be to hear you lie.”

  “I have never offended that child—neither by my thought nor by my gaze,” Gumercindo Tello repeated in heartrending accents.

  “You threatened her, beat her, raped her,” the magistrate thundered. “With your filthy lust, Señor Tello.”

  “With-my-fil-thy-lust?�
� the Witness repeated, like a man hit over the head with a hammer.

  “That’s right, with your filthy lust,” the magistrate reiterated, and then, after a deliberately dramatic pause: “With your sinful penis!”

  “With-my-sin-ful-pe-nis?” the accused stammered in a faltering voice, staring at him in utter astonishment. “My-sin-ful-pe-nis-did-you-say?”

  Looking frantically about him in wild-eyed amazement, his gaze darted from the secretary to the judge, from the floor to the ceiling, from the chair to the desk, lingering on the papers, dossiers, blotters lying on top of it. Then suddenly his eyes lit up, caught by the artistic pre-Hispanic glint of the Tiahuanaco letter opener, and before the judge or the secretary could stop him, Gumercindo Tello made a lunge for it and grabbed it by the handle. He did not make a single threatening gesture with it: quite to the contrary, he clasped it to his breast like a mother cradling her child and stood looking at the two petrified men with a reassuring, kindly, sad expression in his eyes.

  “You offend me by thinking I might harm you,” he said in the tone of voice of a penitent.

  “You won’t be able to escape, you fool,” the judge warned him, collecting himself. “The Palace of Justice is full of guards; they’ll kill you.”

  “Me, try to escape?” the mechanic asked sarcastically. “How little you know me, Your Honor.”

  “Can’t you see that you’re giving yourself away?” the magistrate persisted. “Give me back the letter opener.”

  “I borrowed it from you to prove my innocence,” Gumercindo Tello calmly explained.

  The judge and the secretary looked at each other. The accused had risen to his feet. There was a Nazarene expression on his face, and the knife in his right hand gave off a terrible premonitory gleam. His left hand slid down unhurriedly toward his trousers fly concealing the zipper, as he said in a pained voice: “I am pure, Your Honor, I have never known a woman. What other men use to sin with, I only use to pee with…”