Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa Read Free Book Online

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.”
    “I absolutely abhor them,” his nephew muttered, looking about as though he’d like to wipe every last guest off the face of the earth. “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here.”
    “Just think how your sister would have felt if you hadn’t come to her wedding.” Dr. Quinteros pondered all the silly things that alcohol makes a person say. Hadn’t he seen Richard whooping it up at many a party? Wasn’t he an excellent dancer? Hadn’t he often seen his nephew trooping in at the head of the gang of boys and girls coming up to Charito’s rooms to have a spur-of-the-moment dance? But he didn’t remind him of any of these things, and merely watched him drain his glass and ask a waiter for another whiskey.
    “Be that as it may, you’d better steel yourself,” he said to him. “Because when you get married, your mother and father are going to throw an even bigger party for you than this one.”
    Richard brought the new glass of whiskey to his lips and, half closing his eyes slowly, took a sip. Then, without raising his head, in a muffled voice that reached the doctor’s ears as a slow, nearly inaudible whisper, he muttered: “I’m never going to get married, Uncle Alberto, I swear to God—never.”
    Before he could answer him, a slender, fair-haired girl, a blue silhouette with a determined air, planted herself in front of them, grabbed Richard by the hand, and without giving him time to react, dragged him to his feet. “Aren’t you ashamed to be sitting here with the old men? Come and dance, you idiot.”
    Dr. Quinteros watched the two of them disappear through the door of the foyer and suddenly realized he’d lost all his appetite. He could hear those two little words, “old men”—uttered so unthinkingly and in such a sweet piping voice by the youngest daughter of his friend Aramburú, the architect—ringing in his ears like a persistent echo. After drinking his coffee, he got up and went to have a look at what was going on in the living room.
    The party was in full swing now and the dancing had gradually spread beyond its original matrix in front of the fireplace, where they had installed the orchestra, into the neighboring rooms, in which couples were also dancing and singing along with the cha-cha-chas and the merengues, the cumbias, and the waltzes, at the top of their lungs. Fostered by the music, the sun, and the drinking, the wave of joy had spread from the young people to the adults and from the adults to the oldsters, and to his surprise Dr. Quinteros saw that even Don Marcelino Huapaya, an octogenarian related to the family, was waggling and shaking his creaking old bones, following the rhythm of “Nube Gris,” with his sister-in-law Margarita in his arms. The atmosphere in these rooms full of smoke, noise, movement, light, and happiness suddenly made Dr. Quinteros slightly dizzy; he leaned on the banister and closed his eyes for a moment. And then, smiling and happy too, he stood there watching Elianita, still in her wedding gown but without her veil now, leading the dancing. She never once stopped for a second; at the end of each piece, twenty men surrounded her, asking for the next dance, and with flaming cheeks and shining eyes, she chose a different partner each time and returned to the maelstrom. His brother suddenly appeared at his side.