Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (24 page)

Thoroughly searching his mind that evening as he walked the five kilometers home, Lucho Abril Marroquín discovered that they could be held responsible for causing a great deal of havoc. Unlike any animal, it took them much too long before they could manage on their own without being watched every minute, and how much damage resulted from this shortcoming! They broke everything, from artistic bibelots to rock-crystal vases, they pulled down curtains that the mistress of the house had strained her eyes sewing, and without the slightest embarrassment placed their hands smeared with number two on the starched tablecloth or the lace mantilla purchased with love and privation. Not to mention the fact that they were in the habit of sticking their fingers in light sockets and causing short circuits, or stupidly electrocuting themselves, with all that that implied for the family: a little white coffin, a grave, a wake, a death announcement in
El Comercio
, mourning dress, bereavement.

He acquired the habit of devoting himself to these mental gymnastics as he walked to and from the Laboratories and San Miguel. In order not to repeat himself, he began by making a rapid summary of the charges leveled at
them
in the previous reflection and then proceeded to explore another one. One theme led quite naturally to another, and he never found himself short of arguments.

Their economic misdeeds, for example, furnished enough material to occupy his mind for thirty kilometers. Wasn’t it distressing how
they
ruined the family budget? They ate up the paternal income in inverse proportion to their size, not only because of their persistent gluttony and their delicate stomachs which required special foods, but also because of the countless institutions
they
had given rise to, midwives, day nurseries, child-care centers, kindergartens, nannies, circuses, children’s matinees, toy stores, juvenile courts, reformatories, not to mention the specialists in the treatment of children who (arborescent parasites that asphyxiate the host plant) had sprouted in medicine, psychology, odontology, and other sciences, an army, in a word, that had to be dressed, fed, and pensioned off at the expense of the poor
fathers
.

Lucho Abril Marroquín found himself about to burst into tears one day just thinking about those young mothers who, zealously fulfilling their moral responsibilities and ever mindful of what people might say, bury themselves alive in order to care for their offspring, giving up parties, movies, vacation trips, and by so doing end up being abandoned by their spouses, who, on being obliged to go out so often by themselves, inevitably stray from the path of virtue. And how do these children repay all these sleepless nights, all this suffering? By growing up, by moving away from home and founding their own family, by forsaking their mothers in the lonely orphanhood of their old age.

And thus, by imperceptible degrees, he finally destroyed the myth of
their
innocence and goodness. Taking advantage of the wellknown pretext that they lacked the powers of reason, did they not tear the wings off butterflies, roast live baby chicks in the oven, flip tortoises onto their backs and leave them to die, pluck squirrels’ eyes out? Was a slingshot for killing little birds an adult weapon? And were they not totally without pity for children weaker than themselves? Moreover, how could one possibly apply the word “intelligent” to beings who, at an age when any little kitten can already hunt its own food, are still clumsily toddling about, bumping into walls, and getting black and blue all over?

Lucho Abril Marroquín was possessed of acute aesthetic sensibilities, and they provided him with food for thought for many a walk between home and office. He would have liked all women to stay lithe and supple until the menopause, and it pained him to inventory the ravages undergone by mothers as a result of child-birth: their wasp waists that would fit in one hand all went to fat, and likewise their breasts and buttocks and smooth bellies, expanses of flesh as hard as metal that lips did not dent, went soft, swelled, sagged, wrinkled, and certain women, as a consequence of all the pushing and contractions of difficult births, waddled like ducks afterwards. Remembering the statuesque body of the little Frenchwoman who bore his name, Lucho Abril Marroquín was happy and relieved to think that she had given birth not to a chubby creature that had utterly destroyed her beauty but to little more than a blob of human detritus. Another day, as he was sitting on the toilet—the prunes had made his bowels as punctual as an English train—he realized that it no longer made him tremble with fear to think of Herod. And one morning he found himself giving a little beggar boy a clout on the head.

He knew then that, without any conscious intent on his part, he had gone on (as stars naturally journey on from night to day) to the “Practical Exercises.” Dr. Acémila had subtitled these instructions “Direct Action,” and Lucho Abril Marroquín had the impression that he was hearing her scientist’s voice speaking as he reread them. Unlike the instructions for the theoretical exercises, these were quite precise. Once he had become clearly aware of the disasters
they
caused, it was now a matter of engaging in minor acts of reprisal, on an individual level. It was necessary to do so in a discreet manner, in view of the tyrannical demagoguery underlying such sentiments as “Children are defenseless creatures,” “Never hit a child, not even with a rose,” and “Whippings cause complexes.”

These instructions admittedly proved difficult to follow in the beginning, and when he passed one of
them
on the street, neither the latter nor he himself knew whether that hand laid on the little one’s childish head was meant as a chastisement or as a clumsy pat. But with the self-assurance that comes with practice, he little by little overcame his timidity and ancestral inhibitions, growing bolder, bettering his score, taking the initiative, and after a few weeks, as the “Exercises” predicted, he noted that the cuffs on the head that he dealt out on street corners, the pinches that left bruises, the kicks that caused the recipients to howl in pain, were no longer a duty he took upon himself for moral and theoretical reasons, but a sort of pleasure. He enjoyed seeing little boys who went around selling lottery tickets burst into tears when they walked up to him to offer him a lucky number and to their surprise got their ears soundly boxed, and it excited him as much as watching a bullfight when the boy guide of a blind woman, who had approached him with his tin alms saucer tinkling in the morning air, fell to the ground rubbing the shin on which a good swift kick had just landed. The “Practical Exercises” were risky, but realizing that at heart he was fearless and foolhardy, this spurred him on rather than dissuading him. Not even on the day that he stamped on a soccer ball till it burst and was pursued with sticks and stones by a pack of pygmies did his determination falter.

Thus, during the weeks that the treatment lasted, he committed a great many of those acts that (mental laziness that turns people into idiots) are ordinarily referred to as evil deeds. He decapitated the dolls with which, in public parks, nursemaids entertained
them;
he snatched lollipops, toffee, caramels that little girls were about to put in their mouths and trampled them underfoot or threw them to dogs; he hung about circuses, children’s matinees, and puppet theaters, and pulled braids and ears, pinched little arms and legs and behinds till his fingers turned numb, and, naturally, made use of the age-old stratagem of sticking his tongue out at them and making faces, and talked to them at length, till his voice grew hoarse or gave out altogether, of the Bogeyman, the Big Bad Wolf, the Policeman, the Skeleton, the Witch, the Vampire, and other characters created by the imagination of adults to frighten
them
.

But (a snowball that on rolling down the mountainside turns into an avalanche) one day Lucho Abril Marroquín gave himself such a scare that he rushed to Dr. Acémila’s office, taking a taxi so as to get there sooner. The moment he entered her austere consultation room, in a cold sweat, his voice trembling, he exclaimed: “I very nearly pushed a little girl under the wheels of the San Miguel streetcar. At the very last instant I restrained myself because I saw a policeman.” And sobbing like one of
them
, he cried: “I was just on the point of becoming a criminal, Doctor!”

“You’ve already been a criminal, young man, have you forgotten?” the lady psychologist reminded him, stressing each syllable. And after looking him up and down, she announced, in a satisfied tone of voice: “You’re cured.”

Lucho Abril Marroquín suddenly remembered then (a blinding flash of light in the darkness, a shower of shooting stars falling into the sea) that he had arrived in—a taxi! He was about to fall on his knees but the lady savant stopped him. “No one licks my hands except my Great Dane. Enough of these effusions! You may go now, for new
friends
are awaiting me. You will be receiving my bill shortly.”

“It’s true: I’m cured!” the medical detail man kept joyously repeating to himself: during the last week he had slept seven hours a night, and instead of nightmares he had had pleasant dreams in which he was lying on exotic beaches, tanning himself beneath a glorious sun as round as a soccer ball, watching giant tortoises slowly lumbering along amid tall palms with tapering fronds and the roguish fornications of dolphins in the blue waves. This time (determination and foolhardiness of the man who has undergone baptism under fire) he took another taxi to the Laboratories and during the trip there he wept on perceiving that the only effect that
riding
through life was having on him was not the deathly fear, the cosmic anxiety of days gone by, but merely a slight dizzy feeling. He ran to kiss the Amazonian hands of Don Federico Téllez Unzátegui, calling him “my wise counselor, my savior, my new father,” a gesture and words that his superior accepted with the deference that every self-respecting master owes his slaves, while at the same time (Calvinist possessed of a heart impervious to sentiment) pointing out that, cured or not of his homicidal complexes, he was to show up for work on time at Rodent Exterminators, Incorporated or be fined.

It was thus that Lucho Abril Marroquín emerged from the tunnel that, following the accident amid the dust of Pisco, his life had been. From that time on, things began to straighten out. The sweet daughter of France, recovered from her trials and tribulations thanks to pampering by her family and invigorated by a Norman diet of runny Camemberts and slimy snails, returned to the land of the Incas with glowing cheeks and a heart full of love. The couple’s reunion turned out to be a prolonged honeymoon—intoxicating kisses, compulsive embraces, and other emotional dissipations that brought the amorous spouses to the very edge of anemia. The medical detail man (serpent with redoubled energies after shedding its skin) promptly regained the preeminent position he had formerly held in the Laboratories. At his own request, wishing to prove to himself that he was the same capable man as before, he was again entrusted by Dr. Schwalb with the responsibility of visiting the cities and towns of Peru, by air, land, river, and sea, to acquaint doctors and pharmacists with the virtues of Bayer products. Thanks to his wife’s thrifty habits, the couple were soon able to pay off all the debts they had contracted during the crisis and buy a new Volkswagen on credit—a yellow one, naturally.

To all appearances (but doesn’t popular wisdom recommend “not trusting in appearances?”), there was not a single cloud on the horizon threatening to darken the life that the Abril Marroquíns were leading. The Bayer representative rarely remembered the accident, and when he did, he felt proud rather than remorseful, a fact which (being a mesocrat who respected social conventions) he was careful to keep to himself. But within the privacy of his own home (a nest of turtledoves, a fire blazing on the hearth to the accompaniment of Vivaldi violins), something had survived (light that continues to shine in space when the star that emitted it has ceased to exist, fingernails and hair of the dead man that continue to grow) from Professor Acémila’s therapy. On the one hand, an inordinate penchant, at Lucho Abril Marroquín’s age, for playing with wooden figurines, Meccano sets, toy trains, tin soldiers. Little by little the apartment became cluttered with toys that annoyed the maids and bewildered the neighbors, and the first shadows cast upon the conjugal harmony of the couple made their appearance the day the little French wife began to complain that her husband spent all his Sundays and holidays sailing little paper boats in the bathtub or flying kites from the roof terrace. But even more serious than this exaggerated fondness for toys, and obviously incompatible with it, was the phobia toward children that had continued to linger in Lucho Abril Marroquín’s mind ever since the days of the “Practical Exercises.” It was not possible for him to meet one of
them
on the street, in a park, or in a public square, without inflicting what the vulgar would call cruelty on him, and in conversations with his wife he was in the habit of using such scornful expressions as “the weanies” or “the limbomanes” when he spoke of
them
. This hostility turned into acute anxiety the day the blonde became pregnant again. The couple (heels that fear transforms into propellers) flew to Dr. Acémila’s office to seek her moral and scientific advice.

She heard them out without being in the least alarmed. “You are suffering from infantilism, and at the same time you are a potential infanticidal recidivist” was her skillful, telegraphic diagnosis. “Two bits of foolishness that don’t deserve being taken seriously and that I cure as easily as I spit. Have no fear: you’ll recover before the fetus grows eyes.”

Would she cure him? Would she free Lucho Abril Marroquín of these specters? Would the treatment for infantophobia and herodism be as risky as that which had emancipated him from his wheel complex and his obsession with crime? How would this psychodrama of San Miguel end?