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

tight-fitting across the bosom and he helped her unbutton and take it off.
    “Since you have to change clothes in any case, you’ll save time this way, my girl.”
    When he saw the cruelly tight girdle, he realized instantly what was wrong, but kept himself from making the slightest gesture or asking a single question that might betray the fact that he’d discovered his niece’s secret. Elianita’s face had grown redder and redder as she took off her dress, and she was so embarrassed now that she didn’t raise her eyes or say a word. Dr. Quinteros told her it wasn’t necessary to remove her underclothes, just the girdle, because it was making it hard for her to breathe. Smiling the while, and assuring her, his mind seemingly elsewhere, that it was the most natural thing in the world if on her wedding day, what with all the emotion of the occasion, plus all the hustling and bustling about and all the fatigue of getting ready for the big day, and above all if she were mad enough to go on dancing for hours on end without a minute’s rest, a bride happened to have a fainting spell, he palpated her breasts and her belly (which, on being freed from the powerful embrace of the girdle, had literally popped out) and deduced, with the certainty of a specialist through whose hands thousands of pregnant women had passed, that she was in her fourth month. He examined the pupils of her eyes, asked her a couple of stupid questions to put her off the track, and advised her to rest for a few minutes before going back downstairs—and above all not to go on dancing like that.
    “You see, you just got a little too tired, my girl. In any event, I’m going to give you a little something to counteract all the day’s excitement.”
    He stroked her hair, and to give her time to compose herself before her parents came back into the room, he asked her a few questions about her honeymoon trip. She answered him in a languid voice. Going on a trip like that was one of the best things that could happen to a person; with all the work he had, he could never take the time off to visit so many countries. And he hadn’t even been to London, his favorite city, for almost three years now. As he spoke, he watched Elianita surreptitiously put her girdle out of sight, slip on a bathrobe, lay a skirt, a blouse with an embroidered collar and cuffs, a pair of shoes out on a chair, lie down in the bed again, and cover herself with the down quilt. He wondered whether it wouldn’t have been better to have a frank talk with his niece and give her some advice as to what she should and shouldn’t do on her wedding trip. No, the poor thing would have had a bad time of it, she’d have felt very embarrassed. Moreover, she’d undoubtedly been seeing a doctor in secret all this time and would know exactly what she should and shouldn’t do. Nonetheless, wearing such a tight girdle was dangerous, she might have a real scare, or harm her baby if she continued to wear it. He was touched to think that Elianita, that little niece he could only think of as an innocent child, had conceived. He walked over to the door, opened it, reassured the family in a loud voice so that the bride would hear him: “She’s healthier than any of the rest of us, but she’s dead-tired. Send somebody out to buy her this tranquillizer and let her rest for a little while.”
    Venancia had rushed into the bedroom, and Dr. Quinteros saw over his shoulder that Elianita’s old nanny was cooing over her and comforting her. Her father and mother entered the room, too, and Red Antúnez was about to do so as well, but the doctor discreetly took him by the arm, led him down the hall with him to the bathroom, and closed the door.
    “In her condition it was imprudent of her to have danced the whole evening like that, Red,” he said in an even tone of voice, as he soaped his hands. “She might have had a miscarriage. Advise her not to wear a girdle—and especially not such a tight one. How long