Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter

by Mario Vargas Llosa

  Returning to the subject we’d been discussing, I told her that I was more optimistic. In ardent tones, to convince myself as well as her, I assured her that, whatever the difference in age might be, love based on the purely physical lasted only a short time. Once the novelty had disappeared, as routine set in, sexual attraction gradually diminished and finally died (in the case of the man especially), and the couple could then survive only if there were other attractions between them: spiritual, intellectual, moral. And for this sort of love the question of age was of no importance.

  “It all sounds fine the way you tell it, and I only wish it were true,” Aunt Julia said, rubbing her nose, which as usual was ice-cold, against my cheek. “But it’s all false, from beginning to end. The physical something secondary? It’s what matters most for two people to be able to put up with each other, Varguitas.”

  Had she gone out with the endocrinologist again?

  “He’s phoned me several times,” she said to me, keeping me in suspense. Then, kissing me, she dispelled my doubts. “I told him I wouldn’t go out with him any more.”

  Beside myself with joy, I talked to her at length about my levitation story: I’d written ten pages, it was coming along nicely, and I was going to try to get it published in the literary supplement of El Comercio with a cryptic dedication: “To the feminine of Julio.”

  Ten.

  The tragedy of Lucho Abril Marroquín, a young pharmaceutical detail man with every sign of a bright future before him, began on a sunny summer morning on the outskirts of a historic locale: Pisco. He had just finished making the rounds that, ever since he had first accepted employment in this itinerant profession ten years before, had taken him around the cities and towns of Peru, visiting doctors’ offices and pharmacies to give out samples and literature from the Bayer Laboratories, and now he was on his way back to Lima. His visit to the various physicians and druggists of the town had taken him about three hours. And even though he had a former classmate who was now a captain in the Ninth Air Squadron at San Andrés, at whose home he ordinarily had lunch when he came to Pisco, this time he had decided to head straight back for the capital. He was a married man, with a little wife with white skin and a French name, and his young blood and passionate heart urged him to return as soon as possible to the arms of his spouse.

  It was just past noon. His brand-new Volkswagen, bought on credit at the same time he had entered into matrimony—three months before—was parked under the shade of a leafy eucalyptus in the main square. Lucho Abril Marroquín put his case with the samples and the brochures inside it, removed his suit coat and tie (which, in accordance with the strict Helvetian standards of the Laboratory, were always to be worn by its representatives when visiting clients, to give an impression of reliability and professionalism), decided again that he would not drop in on his aviator friend, and instead of a proper lunch would simply have a snack, knowing that a full meal would make him feel even sleepier during the three-hour drive across the desert.

  He crossed the square to the Piave ice-cream parlor, ordered a Coke and a dish of peach ice cream from the Italian, and as he downed this Spartan repast he did not think of the past of this southern port, the colorful disembarkation of the hesitant hero San Martín and his Liberation Army, but rather (egoism and sensuality of men with ardent temperaments) of his warm, cuddly little wife—almost a child, really—with her snow-white complexion, her blue eyes, her curly golden locks, and of how, in the romantic darkness of night, she brought him to extremes of Neronian fever by singing in his ear, with the moans of a languorous little cat, in the erotic language par excellence (a French all the more exciting in that it was incomprehensible to him), a song entitled “Les feuilles mortes.” Noting that these marital reminiscences were beginning to have their effect on him, he put such thoughts out of his mind, paid, and left.

  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 front bumper, and saw it rise in the air, trace a parabolic curve, and fall to the ground eight or ten yards farther on.

  He managed to brake then, so abruptly that the steering wheel hit him in the chest, and with his mind a blank and his ears ringing, he got out of the car immediately, and tripping over his own feet, thinking: “I’m an Argentine, I kill children,” he ran over to the little girl and picked her up in his arms. She looked to be about five or six years old, and was barefoot and poorly dressed, with crusts of dirt and filth on her face, hands, and knees. There were no visible signs of blood, but her eyes were closed and she didn’t seem to be breathing. Staggering like a drunk, Lucho Abril Marroquín looked all about and shouted to the sand dunes, to the wind, to the distant waves: “An ambulance, a doctor!” As though in a dream, he could hear a truck coming down the mountainside and perhaps he noted that its speed was
excessive for a vehicle approaching an intersection. But if in fact he noticed this, his attention was immediately diverted on seeing a Guardia Civil come running out of one of the buildings, headed his way. Panting, perspiring, a custodian of law and order out to do his job properly, he looked at the little girl and asked: “Is she knocked unconscious, or is she dead?”

  For all the rest of his life Lucho Abril Marroquín would ask himself what the right answer would have been at that moment. Was she just badly hurt, or had she been killed? He never did answer the panting Guardia Civil because the latter had no sooner asked that question than suddenly such a horrified expression came over his face that Lucho Abril Marroquín turned his head just in time to realize that the truck that was coming down the mountainside was hurtling straight toward them, its horn blaring madly. He closed his eyes; a tremendous roar tore the little girl from his arms and plunged him in a darkness full of tiny stars. He could still hear a terrible din, screams and cries, as he fell into an almost-mystical stupor.

  Much later he was to learn that he had been knocked down, not because there was such a thing as immanent justice, charged with fulfilling the equitable proverb: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” but because the brakes of the truck from the mines had failed. And he was also to learn that the Guardia Civil had died instantly from a broken neck and that the poor little girl—a true daughter of Sophocles—had not only been killed in this second accident (if in fact the first one had not been fatal), but her body crushed spectacularly flat (a joyous devils’ carnival) as the double rear wheel of the truck ran over her.

  But with the passage of the years Lucho Abril Marroquín was to tell himself that of all the instructive experiences of that morning, the most unforgettable had not been either the first or the second accident but what happened afterwards. Because, curiously enough, despite the violence of the impact (which was to keep him for many weeks in the Social Security Clinic as they mended his body, which had suffered countless broken bones, dislocations, cuts, and contusions), the medical detail man had not lost consciousness, or at most had been unconscious for only a few seconds. When he opened his eyes, he realized that the accident had happened only instants before, because he could see—though the sun was still shining directly in his eyes—ten, twelve, perhaps fifteen skirts and pairs of pants come running toward him from the flimsy roadside buildings. He couldn’t move, but he felt no pain, only relief and a calm reassurance. The thought came to him that he didn’t have to think any more; he thought of the ambulance, doctors, devoted nurses. They were there, they’d already arrived. He tried to smile at the faces bending down toward him. But then, feeling fingers tickling him, poking him, prying at him, he realized that the newcomers were not helping him: they were yanking his watch off, putting their hands in his pockets, snatching his wallet, jerking off the medal of El Señor de Limpias that he’d worn around his neck ever since his First Communion. And it was at that moment that Lucho Abril Marroquín, overcome with amazement at human nature, was plunged into darkest night.

  That night, practically speaking, lasted an entire year. In the beginning, the consequences of the catastrophe had seemed to be merely physical. When Lucho Abril Marroquín recovered consciousness, he was in Lima, in a small hospital room, bandaged from head to foot, and at his bedside (Guardian Angels bringing peace of mind to a soul in agitation), keeping anxious watch over him, were the blond compatriot of Juliette Greco and Dr. Schwalb of Bayer Laboratories. Amid his tipsiness brought on by the smell of chloroform, he was suddenly overcome with happiness, and tears streamed down his cheeks, as he felt his wife’s lips brush the gauze bandages covering his forehead.

  The knitting of bones, the return of muscles and tendons to their proper place, and the closing and healing of his wounds—in other words, the mending of the animal half of his person—took a number of weeks, which were relatively tolerable thanks to the superb skills of his doctors, the attentiveness of the nurses, the Magdalene-like devotion of his wife, and the solicitude of the Laboratories, whose behavior toward him was impeccable both from the point of view of sentiment and of cash on the line for his every need. And in the Social Security Clinic, in the middle of his convalescence, Lucho Abril Marroquín learned a gratifying piece of news: his little French wife had conceived and in seven months would give birth to his child.

  It was only after he was let out of the hospital and went back to his little house in San Miguel and his job that the secret, complicated wounds that his mind had suffered in the two accidents came to light. Of the many ills that now befell him, insomnia was the most benign. Unable to sleep, he spent his nights wandering all about the house in the dark, chain-smoking in a state of extreme agitation, and muttering disjointed phrases in which, to his wife’s vast surprise, the word “Herod” kept recurring. When his insomnia was overcome chemically through the use of sleeping pills, the result was even worse: Abril Marroquín’s sleep was haunted by nightmares in which he saw himself hacking his own as yet unborn daughter to pieces. His wild shrieks terrified his wife in the beginning and eventually caused her to have a miscarriage. the fetus was probably of the female sex. “My dreams have come true, I’ve killed my own daughter, the only thing left to do is go live in Buenos Aires,” the oneiric filicide lugubriously repeated night and day.

  But even this was not the worst of it. The nights when he didn’t sleep at all, or had terrible nightmares, were followed by awful days. Ever since the accident, Lucho Abril Marroquín had suffered from a visceral phobia toward any wheeled vehicle, to the point where he could not get in one, either as the driver or as a passenger, without feeling dizzy, having vomiting spells, sweating profusely, and bursting into screams. His every attempt to overcome this taboo proved completely fruitless, with the result that he was obliged to resign himself to living, in the middle of the twentieth century, as though he were back in the days of the Inca empire (a society in which the wheel was unknown). If the distances that he had to cover were merely a question of the five kilometers between his house and the Bayer Laboratories, this would not have been such a serious matter; for a tormented spirit, the two-hour walk morning and evening might have had a sedative effect. But for a medical detail man whose area of operations was the vast territory of Peru, this phobia toward all wheeled vehicles was tragic. Since there was not the slightest possibility of reviving the athletic era of Indian couriers, the professional future of Lucho Abril Marroquín was seriously threatened. The Laboratory agreed to give him a sedentary job in the Lima office, and even though they did not reduce his salary, from the moral and psychological point of view, the change (he was now in charge of inventorying samples) represented a demotion. And as a crowning misfortune, his little French wife, who, a worthy emulator of the Maid of Orleans, had courageously borne up under the strain of her husband’s nervous afflictions, eventually also succumbed to hysteria, especially after her miscarriage. The couple decided to separate until better days came along, and the young woman (pale cheeks mindful of dawn and Antarctic nights) went off to France to seek consolation in her parents’ château.

  Such was the situation of Lucho Abril Marroquín a year after the accident: abandoned by his young spouse, condemned (stricto sensu) to a pedestrian life, with no other friend save anguish. (The yellow Volkswagen became overgrown with ivy and covered with spiderwebs before being sold to pay for his blond wife’s passage to France.) His colleagues and acquaintances were whispering behind his back that he had no choice left him save going quietly off to the insane asylum or dramatically committing suicide, when the young man learned (manna that falls from heaven, rain on thirsty desert sands) of the existence of someone who was neither a priest nor a sorcerer yet nonetheless cured souls: Dr. Lucía Acémila.

  A superior woman, without complexes, who had reached what science agrees is the ideal age—her fifties—Dr. Acémila—broad forehead, aquiline nose, penetrating gaze, rectitude and goodness itself—was the living negation of her surname (literally, a pack mule; figuratively
, a stupid ass) (which she was proud of and paraded like a glorious victory banner before the eyes of mortals on her visiting cards or the plaques outside her office), a person in whom intelligence was a physical attribute, something that her patients (she preferred to call them her “friends”) could see, hear, smell. She had earned countless diplomas and academic honors in the world’s great centers of learning—Teutonic Berlin, phlegmatic London, sinful Paris—but the principal university in which she had acquired her extensive knowledge of human misery and its remedies had been (naturally) life. Like every individual who has risen above the average, she was talked about, criticized, and derided by her colleagues, those psychiatrists and psychologists who, unlike her, were incapable of working miracles. But to Dr. Acémila it did not matter in the least that they called her a witch, a satanist, a corruptress of the corrupted, a madwoman, and other vile names. As proof that she was the one who was right, she needed only to remember the gratitude of her “friends,” that legion of schizophrenics, parricides, paranoiacs, arsonists, manic-depressives, onanists, catatonics, hardened criminals, mystics, and stutterers who, once they had passed through her hands and undergone her treatment (she herself would have preferred calling it “sharing her advice”), had returned to everyday life as unusually loving fathers, obedient sons, virtuous wives, honest and hardworking jobholders, fluent conversationalists, and pathologically law-abiding citizens.

  It was Dr. Schwalb who advised Lucho Abril Marroquín to consult Dr. Acémila, and he himself who (Swiss promptitude that has given the world its most precise timepieces) arranged an appointment. More resigned than confident, the insomniac presented himself at the hour agreed upon at the mansion with pink walls, surrounded by a garden full of fragrant floripondios, in the San Felipe residential section in which Lucía Acémila’s office (temple, confessional, laboratory of the spirit) was located. A neatly groomed nurse took down certain details of his personal and medical history and showed him into the doctor’s office, a high-ceilinged room with shelves full of leather-bound volumes, a mahogany desk, thick carpets, and a couch upholstered in mint-green velvet.