Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (15 page)

The accused admitted that during this period he had lived in the building at Number 12, Avenida Luna Pizarro, as a tenant. He also admitted that he was acquainted with the Huanca Salaverría family, to whom, he said, he had proposed enlightening discussions and excellent reading matter on several occasions, to no avail however since they, like the other tenants of the building, were badly intoxicated by Roman heresies. Confronted with the name of his alleged victim, little Sarita Huanca Salaverría, he said he remembered her and intimated that, given the tender age of the person in question, he had not lost hope of setting her on the right path some day. Apprised at that point of the details of the charge that had been brought against him, Gumercindo Tello manifested great surprise, emphatically denying the accusation and then a moment later (feigning a mental disturbance with an eye to establishing the grounds for his future defense?) bursting into joyous laughter and saying that this was God’s way of putting him to the test in order to measure his faith and his spirit of sacrifice. He added that now he understood why he had not been called up for military service, an occasion that he had been awaiting impatiently so as to preach by example, refusing to wear a uniform and swear allegiance to the flag, these being attributes of Satan. Captain G. C. Enrique Soto then asked him if that meant he was against Peru, to which the accused replied that that wasn’t what he was talking about at all, that he was referring only to matters having to do with religion. And he thereupon proceeded to explain to Captain Soto and the guards, in fervent tones, that Christ was not God but His Witness and that the papists were lying when they maintained that he had been crucified since what had really happened was that he’d been nailed to a tree and that the Bible proved it. In this regard he counseled them to read
The Watchtower
, a bimonthly that for the price of two
soles
shed light on this subject and other aspects of culture and provided wholesome entertainment. Captain Soto shut him up, pointing out to him that it was forbidden to advertise commercial products within the commissariat. And he adjured him to reveal where he had been and what he had been doing the evening before during the hours when Sarita Huanca Salaverría swore that she had been raped and assaulted by him. Gumercindo Tello stated that he had spent the entire evening, as was his habit every night, alone in his room, absorbed in meditation on the Trunk and the fact that, contrary to what certain people maintained, it was not true that all men would be brought back to life on the day of the Last Judgment, a fact that proved the mortality of the soul. On being reprimanded a second time, the accused apologized and said he wasn’t deliberately disobeying the captain’s orders, but that he couldn’t keep himself from trying at every moment to bring a little light to others, inasmuch as it made him despair to see the utter darkness amid which other people lived. And he stated that he did not remember having seen Sarita Huanca Salaverría at any time that evening or later that night, and asked that the record show that despite his having been slandered by the girl he bore her no ill will and was even grateful to her because he suspected that, through her, God had been testing the strength of his faith. Seeing that it was not going to be possible to obtain from Gumercindo Tello any more precise details concerning the charges brought against him, Captain G. C. Enrique Soto brought his interrogation of him to an end and transferred the accused to the detention cell in the Palace of Justice, in order that the examining magistrate might proceed with his investigation of the case in due and proper form.

Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar closed the folder containing the dossier of the accused and, amid the morning din of justice being done, reflected. Jehovah’s Witnesses? He knew their kind only too well. Not many years before, a man making his way about the world on a bicycle had knocked at the door of his house and offered him a copy of
The Watchtower
, which, in a moment of weakness, he had accepted. From that moment on, with astral punctuality, the Witness had laid siege to his house, at all hours of the day and night, insisting on enlightening him, inundating him with pamphlets, books, magazines of all sizes and descriptions having to do with any number of subjects, until, finding himself incapable of putting a stop to the Witness’s unwelcome visits by virtue of such civilized methods as persuasion, earnest entreaties, and stern lectures, the magistrate had finally called the police. So the rapist was one of these irrepressible proselytizers. This case was beginning to be an interesting one, Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar said to himself.

It was only midmorning and the magistrate, distractedly fingering the long, sharp letter opener with the Tiahuanaco handle on his desk, a token of the affection of his superiors, colleagues, and subordinates (who had presented him with it on the day of his twenty-fifth anniversary in the legal profession), called his secretary into his chambers and told him to show in the deponents in the case.

The two Guardias Civiles, Cusicanqui Apéstegui and Tito Parinacocha, entered first, and in respectful tones confirmed the circumstances under which they had arrested Gumercindo Tello, noting also for the record that the latter, despite having denied the charges brought against him, had been altogether cooperative, though a bit tiresome due to his religious mania. Dr. Zelaya, his glasses sliding up and down the bridge of his nose, took down their testimony word for word as they spoke.

The parents of the minor entered next, a couple whose advanced age surprised the magistrate: how could this pair of doddering oldsters have engendered a daughter only thirteen years before? Toothless and rheumy-eyed, the father, Don Isaías Huanca, immediately confirmed the statements concerning him as set down in the police report and then inquired, in an urgent tone of voice, whether Señor Tello was going to marry Sarita. He had barely put this question to the magistrate when Señora Salaverría de Huanca, a little woman with a wizened face, approached Dr. Don Barreda y Zaldívar, kissed his hand, and in a pleading voice implored him to be kind enough to force Señor Tello to take Sarita to the altar. The magistrate had great difficulty explaining to this elderly couple that the duties and powers conferred upon him by virtue of his high office did not include those of matchmaker. To all appearances, the girl’s parents were far more interested in marrying their daughter off than in seeing the man who had deflowered her brought to justice, scarcely mentioning the rape and then only when urged to do so, and wasting a great deal of time enumerating Sarita’s virtues, as though offering her for sale.

As he smiled to himself, the thought occurred to the magistrate that these humble peasants—it was obvious that they were from the Andes and had lived close to the soil—made him feel like an acrimonious father refusing to give his son his permission to marry. He did his best to make them think the matter through clearly: how could they possibly want to marry their daughter off to a man capable of raping a helpless girl? But they kept interrupting, insisting Sarita would be a model wife, even though she was scarcely more than a child she already knew how to cook and sew and all the rest, the two of them were far along in years and didn’t want to leave her a defenseless orphan when they died, Señor Tello seemed to be a responsible, hardworking man, he had admittedly gone too far with Sarita the other night, but on the other hand they had never seen him drunk, he was very respectful, he left for work very early every morning with his toolbox and his bundle of little magazines that he peddled from house to house. Wasn’t a young man who worked that hard to make a living a good match for Sarita? And with outstretched hands the two oldsters implored the magistrate: “Have pity on us and help us, Your Honor.”

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.