Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (4 page)

“Three sets of side bends, you cripples!” Coco roared, with eighty kilos above his head and puffed out like a toad. “Sucking in your belly—not sticking it out!”

Dr. Quinteros thought that, with the gymnastics, Richard would forget his problems, but as he did his side bends, he saw his nephew working out with renewed fury, his face again set in an anxious, irritated expression. He remembered that in the Quinteros family there were a great many neurotics and thought that perhaps Roberto’s eldest son had inherited the tendency and was destined to carry on the tradition among the younger generation, and then he was distracted by the thought that it might have been more prudent after all to have dropped by the clinic before coming to the gym so as to have a look at the woman with the triplets and the one he’d operated on for the tumor. Then he stopped thinking altogether because the physical effort absorbed him totally, and as he raised and lowered his legs (“Leg rises, fifty times!”), flexed his trunk (“Trunk twist with bar, three sets, till your lungs burst!”), working his back, his torso, his forearms, his neck, obeying Coco’s orders (“Harder, great-granddaddy! Faster, corpse!”), he was simply a pair of lungs inhaling and exhaling, skin dripping with sweat, muscles straining, tiring, aching. When Coco yelled out: “Three sets of fifteen pullovers with dumbbells!” he’d reached his limit. Out of pride, he tried nonetheless to do at least one set with twelve kilos, but he couldn’t. He was exhausted. The weight slipped out of his hands on the third try and he had to put up with the jokes of the weight lifters (“Mummies to the grave and storks to the zoo!” “Call the funeral home!” “Requiescat in pace, amen!”) and watch with mute envy as Richard—still in a hurry, still furious—completed his routine with no difficulty. Discipline, perseverance, balanced diets, regular habits aren’t enough, Dr. Quinteros thought. Up to a certain limit they compensated for the differences; once past that limit, age created insuperable distances, unbreachable walls. Later, sitting naked in the sauna, blinded by the sweat dripping through his eyelashes, he mournfully repeated a phrase he’d read in a book: “Youth, whose memory brings despair!” As he was leaving, he saw that Richard had joined the weight lifters and was working out with them. Coco made a mocking gesture in Richard’s direction and said: “This handsome lad has decided to commit suicide, Doctor.”

Richard didn’t even smile. He was holding the weights over his head and the expression on his beet-red face, dripping with sweat, the veins standing out, betrayed an exasperation that he appeared to be on the point of taking out on them. The idea flashed through the doctor’s mind that his nephew was about to bash in the heads of all four of them with the weights he was holding in his hands. He said goodbye to the others and murmured to Richard: “I’ll see you at the church in a little while.”

Once he’d returned home and called the clinic, he was relieved to learn that the mother of the triplets wanted to play bridge with some friends in her room and that the woman who’d had the tumor removed had asked if she could eat some won ton in tamarind sauce today. He authorized the bridge game and the won ton, and with his mind completely at ease now, he changed into a dark blue suit, a white silk shirt, and a silver-gray tie that he fastened down with a pearl stickpin. As he was putting scent on his handkerchief, a letter from his wife arrived, with a P.S. from Charito. They had mailed it from Venice, city number 14 on the tour, and had written: “By the time you receive this letter, we’ll have done at least seven more cities, all gorgeous.” They were happy and Charito was very taken with Italian men: “…as handsome as movie stars, Papa, and you can’t imagine what big flirts they are, but don’t tell Tato, a thousand kisses, ciao.”

He walked over to the Church of Santa María, on the Óvalo Gutiérrez. It was still early and the guests were just beginning to arrive. He sat down in one of the front rows and whiled away the time looking at the altar, decorated with lilies and white roses, and the stained-glass windows that looked like bishop’s miters. Once again he realized that he didn’t like this church at all: its combination of stucco and bricks was unaesthetic and its ogee arches pretentious. Every so often, he greeted an acquaintance with a smile. Naturally, since everybody he’d ever known was arriving little by little: very distant relatives, friends he hadn’t seen for ages, and the crème de la crème of the city, of course, bankers, ambassadors, industrialists, politicians. Ah, that Roberto, that Margarita, such social butterflies, Dr. Quinteros thought, without acrimony, full of indulgence toward the weaknesses of his brother and sister-in-law. The wedding luncheon was bound to be a lavish affair.

He felt a rush of emotion on seeing the bride enter, just as the first bars of the Wedding March pealed out. She was really stunningly beautiful, in her filmy white dress, and her little face, in profile beneath the veil, had something extraordinarily graceful, ethereal, spiritual about it as she walked toward the altar, with lowered eyes, on Roberto’s arm; corpulent and august, her father was hiding his emotion by assuming the air of a grand seigneur. Red Antúnez seemed less homely than usual in his brand-new cutaway coat, his face radiant with happiness, and even his mother—an ungainly Englishwoman who despite having lived in Peru for a quarter of a century still got her Spanish prepositions mixed up—looked attractive in her long dark dress and her hairdo two stories high. It’s quite true, Dr. Quinteros thought: patience pays off. Because poor Red Antúnez had pursued Elianita ever since the two had been children, and had besieged her with thoughtful and attentive gestures that she had invariably greeted with Olympian disdain. But he had put up with all of Elianita’s cutting remarks and snubs and the dreadful jokes of the youngsters in the neighborhood poking fun at his resignation. A persistent young man, Dr. Quinteros reflected, whose determination had been rewarded, and now here he was, pale with emotion, slipping the wedding band on the ring finger of the prettiest girl in Lima. The ceremony had ended, and as Dr. Quinteros was making his way toward the church reception rooms, amid a buzzing throng, nodding his head right and left, he suddenly spied Richard, standing by himself next to a column, as though he were disgustedly keeping his distance from everyone.

As he waited in line to congratulate the bride and groom, Dr. Quinteros was obliged to laugh at a dozen jokes about the government told to him by the Febre brothers, a pair of twins who looked so much alike that it was said that even their own wives couldn’t tell them apart. The reception room was so jam-packed it seemed about to collapse; many of the guests were still outside in the gardens, waiting their turn to come inside. A swarm of waiters circled about, offering champagne. Laughter, jokes, toasts could be heard on every hand, and everyone agreed that the bride was absolutely beautiful. When Dr. Quinteros finally reached her, he saw that Elianita still looked serene and elegant despite the heat and the crush of people. “A thousand years of happiness, sweetheart,” he said to her, embracing her, and she said in his ear: “Charito called me this morning from Rome to congratulate me, and I talked with Aunt Mercedes, too. How darling of them to have phoned me!” Red Antúnez, dripping with sweat and as red as a shrimp, was beaming with happiness. “So from now on I’ll have to call you uncle, too, is that right, Don Alberto?” “Of course, nephew,” Dr. Quintero answered, clapping him on the back, “and you’ll have to address me in the familiar
tu
form as well.”

Half asphyxiated, he left the reception room, and amid the popping of flashbulbs, the press of the crowd, greetings, he finally managed to reach the garden. There were fewer people per square centimeter there and he could at least breathe. He took a glass of champagne and soon found himself surrounded by a circle of doctor friends of his, the butt of their endless jokes about his wife’s trip abroad: Mercedes wouldn’t come back home, she’d stay over there with some Frenchy, you could already see tiny cuckold’s horns growing out of either side of his forehead. Everybody seems bent on making fun of me today, Dr. Quinteros thought to himself, remembering the gym, as he patiently put up with their teasing. Every so often he caught a glimpse of Richard above a sea of heads, standing at the other end of the reception room, amid laughing boys and girls: glum and scowling, he was downing glasses of champagne as though they were water. Maybe he feels sad that Elianita’s marrying Antúnez, Dr. Quinteros thought. Perhaps he, too, would have liked to see his sister make a more brilliant match. No, it was more likely that he was going through some sort of identity crisis. And Dr. Quinteros remembered how he himself had gone through a difficult transition period when he was Richard’s age, unable to decide whether he should study medicine or aeronautical engineering. (His father had finally tipped the scales with a weighty argument: as an aeronautical engineer in Peru, he could look forward to only one career, spending the rest of his life designing kites or model airplanes.) Perhaps Roberto, who was always all wrapped up in his business affairs, was in no position to advise Richard. And Dr. Quinteros, in one of those accesses of generosity that had earned him everyone’s esteem, decided that one of these days he would invite his nephew over and subtly explore the best way to help him, with precisely the delicate touch that the case required.

Roberto’s and Margarita’s house was on the Avenida Santa Cruz, just a few blocks from the Church of Santa María, and when the reception in the sacristy was over, the guests who had been invited to the wedding luncheon filed down the street, beneath the trees and the sun of San Isidro, to the red-brick mansion with its shingled roof, surrounded by lawn, flowers, and grillwork fence, and very prettily decorated for the wedding party. The moment Dr. Quinteros arrived at the front gate, he saw that the celebration was going to go beyond his own predictions, that he was about to attend a social event that the gossip columnists would describe as “a magnificent occasion.”

Tables and umbrellas had been set up all over the garden, and at the far end of it, next to the kennels, a huge awning shaded a table with a snow-white tablecloth running the length of the wall and loaded with trays of multicolored canapés. The bar was next to the pond full of bright-gilled Japanese fish, and there were enough glasses, bottles, cocktail shakers, and pitchers of punch set out to quench the thirst of an army. Waiters in short white jackets and maids in coifs and aprons were receiving the guests and plying them, from the moment they entered the gate, with pisco sours, carob piscos, vodka and tropical fruit, glasses of whiskey or gin or flutes of champagne, and little cheese sticks, tiny potatoes with hot peppers, sour cherries stuffed with bacon, breaded shrimp, vol-au-vent, and all the tidbits dreamed up by the collective culinary genius of Lima to stimulate the appetite. Inside the house, huge baskets and bouquets of roses, gladiolas, stocks, carnations, tuberoses, standing against the walls, set out along the stairways or on the windowsills and the tables and desks and commodes and cabinets, refreshed the atmosphere. The parquet floor was newly waxed, the curtains pristine, the porcelains and silver gleaming, and Dr. Quinteros smiled at the thought that probably even the pre-Columbian figurines in their glass cases had been polished. There was also a buffet in the foyer, and in the dining room a vast assortment of desserts—marzipan, ice cream, ladyfingers, meringues, candied egg yolk, coconut sweets, walnuts in syrup—had been set out around the impressive wedding cake, a construction decorated with tulle and spun-sugar columns that set the ladies to cooing with admiration. But what aroused their curiosity most of all were the wedding presents, on display upstairs; such a long line had formed to have a look at them that Dr. Quinteros immediately decided not to queue up too, even though he would have liked to see if his bracelet looked impressive alongside all the other gifts.

After he’d wandered all over the house, more or less—shaking hands, giving and receiving friendly embraces—he went back out into the garden and sat down under an awning to sip his second glass of champagne of the day in relative peace and quiet. It was all going very well; Margarita and Roberto were really experts at the grand gesture. And even though he considered their idea of hiring a combo a touch lacking refinement—the carpets, the pedestal table, and the buffet with the ivory pieces had been removed so that there would be room to dance—he excused this inelegance as being a concession to the younger generation, since, as everybody knew, today’s young people thought that a party without any dancing wasn’t a party at all. They were starting to serve the turkey and the wine, and now Elianita, standing on the second step in the foyer, was tossing her bride’s bouquet as dozens of her schoolmates and neighborhood girlfriends waited with outstretched arms, hoping to catch it. In a corner of the garden Dr. Quinteros spied old Venancia, Elianita’s nanny since the day she’d been born, moved to tears, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.

His palate was unable to discern the vintage of the wine, but he knew immediately that it was an imported one, perhaps Spanish or Chilean, or for that matter—in view of all this day’s mad extravagances—possibly a French one. The turkey was so tender it melted in his mouth, the puree as smooth as butter, and there was a cabbage-and-raisin salad that, despite his dietary principles, he couldn’t resist the second time it came around. He was enjoying a second glass of wine, as well, and beginning to feel pleasantly drowsy, when he saw Richard making his way toward him, swaying back and forth with a glass of whiskey in his hand; his eyes were glassy and his voice quavered.

“Is there anything stupider than a wedding celebration, Uncle Alberto?” he murmured, with a scornful wave of his hand at everything around them and collapsing in the chair alongside him. His tie had come undone, there was a fresh stain on the lapel of his gray suit, and his eyes showed signs not only of all the liquor he had drunk but of a barely repressed, oceanic rage.

“Well, I grant you I’m not terribly fond of parties,” Dr. Quinteros replied good-naturedly. “But the fact that at your age you don’t like them very much either surprises me, Richard.”