Their first two children had both been boys. But then came a rude blow. The thought had never even crossed his mind that Doña Zoila might give birth to girls. The first one had been a disappointment, something that might be attributed to mere chance. But when his wife’s fourth pregnancy also produced a creature without a visible penis or testicles, Don Federico, terrified at the prospect of continuing to engender incomplete beings, drastically eliminated the possibility that a momentary whim might lead to his begetting more offspring (by replacing the big double bed in their room by twin beds). He didn’t hate females; but, quite simply, since he was neither an erotomaniac nor a gourmand, what possible use did he have for persons whose greatest aptitudes were for fornicating and cooking? His one reason for reproducing had been to perpetuate his crusade. This hope had gone up in smoke with the arrival of Teresa and Laura, since Don Federico was not one of those modernists who stoutly maintain that a female, in addition to a clitoris, also has brains and can work side by side with males as their equal. Furthermore, he was deeply distressed by the possibility that his family name might be trampled in the mud. Didn’t statistics prove, ad nauseam, that ninety-five percent of women have been, are, or will be whores? In order to make certain that his daughters would end up among the five percent of virtuous females, Don Federico had organized their lives in rigorous detail: no low necklines at any time, dark stockings and long-sleeved smocks and sweaters both winter and summer, no nail polish, lipstick, rouge, eye makeup, no bangs, braids, ponytails, or any of the other bait that girls use to hook boys; no sports or diversions that might bring them into proximity with males, such as going to the beach or attending birthday parties. Infractions of these rules always met with corporal punishment.
But it was not only the intrusion of females among his descendants that had discouraged him. His sons—Ricardo and Federico Jr.—had not inherited their father’s virtues. They were weak-willed and lazy, given to useless activities (such as chewing gum and playing soccer), and they had not shown the slightest signs of enthusiasm when Don Federico explained what a glorious future lay in store for them. When, during vacations, he sent them out to work with the first-line combatants in order to train them, they proved to be slackers and took their places on the battlefield with obvious repugnance. And once he even overheard them muttering obscenities about his life’s work and confessing quite frankly that they were ashamed of their father. He had immediately shaved their heads like convicts, naturally, yet this did not in any way relieve the feeling of betrayal aroused in him by this conspiratorial conversation. Don Federico no longer entertained any illusions. He knew that, once he was dead or had grown feeble with age, Ricardo and Federico Jr. would stray from the path he had traced for them, would change professions (choosing some other with greater chrematistic attractions), and knew that his work—like a certain famous symphony—would remain unfinished.
It was at that precise moment that Don Federico Téllez Unzátegui, to his physical and psychical misfortune, spied the magazine that a news vendor was thrusting through the windows of the sedan, its lurid cover gleaming in the bright morning sun. His face contorted in a grimace of disgust on noting that the cover photo showed a beach with two female bathers clad only in that mere simulacrum of swimsuits that certain hetaerae dared to parade about in, when, with a sort of painful rending of his optic nerve and his mouth gaping open like a wolf’s howling at the moon, Don Federico recognized the two half-naked bathers with obscene smiles on their faces. He felt a sudden horror rivaling that which he had felt, in that early Amazon dawn on the banks of the Pendencia, on seeing, in a cradle black with rat dung, the scattered bones of his sister’s corpse. The traffic light had turned green; the cars behind him were honking. With fumbling fingers, he took out his wallet, paid for the licentious publication, shifted into first, and took off, and sensing that he was about to have a collision—the steering wheel was slipping out of his hands and the car was lurching violently—he braked and drew to a stop along the curb.
Sitting there trembling with indignation, he stared for several long minutes at the terrible evidence. There was no possible doubt: it was his daughters. Photographed, no doubt, without their being aware of it by a brazen paparazzo hidden among the other bathers, the girls were not looking at the camera; they appeared to be chatting together as they lay on the sands of a voluptuous beach that might be Agua Dulce or La Herradura. Little by little Don Federico recovered his breath; despite being absolutely crushed, he managed to think of the incredible series of happenstances: that a roving photographer should chance to snap a picture of Laura and Teresa, that an ignoble magazine should expose them to the view of this rotten world, that he should happen to see them… And so, by the workings of blind chance, there the awful truth was, spread out before his eyes in lurid color. So his daughters obeyed him, then, only when he was present; so, the minute he turned his back, with the collusion, doubtless, of their brothers and, alas—Don Federico felt a sudden stab of pain in his heart—of his own wife, they defied his orders and went to the beach, they took their clothes off and exhibited themselves. Tears streamed down his face. He took a closer look at their bathing suits: two minuscule bits of cloth whose function was not to hide anything but simply to catapult the imagination to the most perverted extremes. There they were, within full view of anyone and everyone: the legs, arms, bellies, shoulders, necks of Laura and Teresa. He felt indescribably ridiculous as the thought crossed his mind that he himself had never seen these extremities and members that were now displayed before the entire universe.
He dried his eyes and started the engine up again. He had calmed down on the surface, but a blazing fire was burning deep within him. As the sedan proceeded very slowly toward his little house on the Avenida Pedro de Osma, he told himself that since they went to the beach naked it was only natural to presume that in his absence they also went to parties, wore pants, hung around with men, sold their bodies—did they perhaps receive the men they lured into their beds under his very own roof? was it Doña Zoila who set the prices and collected the money? Ricardo and Federico Jr. probably were in charge of the unspeakable task of hustling up customers for their sisters. Gasping for breath, Don Federico Téllez Unzátegui saw the whole horrifying cast assembled before his very eyes: your daughters, the whores; your sons, the pimps; and your wife, the madam.
His daily contact with violence—after all, he had killed off thousands upon thousands of living beings—had made Don Federico a man who could not be provoked without grave risk. One day an agronomist with pretensions to being an expert in nutrition had dared to state in his presence that, in view of the lack of beef cattle in Peru, it was necessary to intensify the raising of guinea pigs as a source of food for the nation. Don Federico Téllez Unzátegui politely reminded the bold planner that guinea pigs were first cousins to rats. The expert, not giving an inch, cited statistics, spoke of their great nutritive value and the agreeable taste of their flesh. Don Federico then proceeded to slap him and, as the nutrition expert fell to the floor, rubbing his face, called him names he roundly deserved: a shameless wretch and a public-relations man for murderers. Now, as he got out of the car, locked it, and walked unhurriedly toward the door of his house, frowning and very pale, the man from Tingo María felt a volcanic lava boiling up within him, as on the day that he had taught the nutrition expert a lesson. He was carrying the infernal magazine, like a red-hot iron bar, in his right hand and felt an intense itching sensation in his eyes.
He was so upset he was unable to imagine a punishment that would fit the heinous crime. His mind felt hazy, he realized he was so angry he couldn’t think straight, and this made him more bitter still, for Don Federico was a man whose conduct was ruled by reason, and who despised that uncouth breed that acted, like animals, out of instinct and sheer gut feeling rather than out of conviction. But this time, as he took out his key, fumblingly inserted it in the keyhole, his fingers trembling with rage, and finally managed to get the door unlocked and push i
t open, he realized that he was not going to be able to act calmly and deliberately, but rather as his wrath dictated, following the inspiration of the moment. As he closed the door behind him, he took a deep breath, trying to get hold of himself. He was ashamed to think that those ingrates would doubtless see how profoundly they had humiliated him.
On the downstairs floor of his house were a little entry hall, a small living room, the dining room, and the kitchen; the bedrooms were on the upstairs floor. Don Federico spied his wife from the doorway of the living room. She was standing next to the buffet, ecstatically munching some disgusting sticky sweet—a caramel, a chocolate, Don Federico thought, Turkish delight, toffee—holding the part she hadn’t yet eaten in her fingers. On seeing him, she smiled at him with an intimidated look in her eyes, pointing to what she was eating with self-deprecating resignation.
Don Federico walked unhurriedly toward her, unfolding the magazine and holding it out between his two hands so that his wife could contemplate the cover in all its baseness. He thrust it under her nose without saying a word and enjoyed watching her turn deathly pale, her eyes nearly pop out of their sockets, her mouth gape open, and a little thread of saliva full of biscuit crumbs begin running out of it. The man from Tingo María raised his right hand and slapped the trembling woman as hard as he could across the face. She gave a moan, staggered, and fell on her knees, continuing to contemplate the cover photo with an expression of rapturous devotion, mystical illumination. Towering over her, rigid and stern-faced, Don Federico gazed down at her accusingly.
Then he curtly called upstairs to summon the two guilty parties: “Laura! Teresa!”
A noise made him turn his head. There they were, at the foot of the stairs. He hadn’t heard them come down. Teresa, the older one, was wearing a smock, as though she’d been cleaning the house, and Laura had on her school uniform. In bewilderment, the girls looked at their mother on her knees on the floor, at their father walking slowly, hieratically toward them, a high priest approaching the sacrificial stone where the knife and the vestal await, and, finally, at the magazine that Don Federico, having reached them, thrust accusingly before their eyes. His daughters’ reaction was not what he had expected. Instead of turning pale, falling on their knees, and stammering explanations, the precocious creatures blushed and exchanged a swift glance that could only be one of complicity, and Don Federico said to himself, in the depths of his despair and rage, that he had not yet drained the bitter cup of that morning to the dregs: Laura and Teresa knew that they had been photographed, that the photograph was going to be published, and were even delighted—what else could that gleam in their eyes mean?—that it had been. The revelation that he had incubated, in his very own home, which he had believed to be pristinely innocent, not only the municipal vice of nudism on the beach but also exhibitionism (and, why not?, nymphomania), made his muscles sag, gave him a chalky taste in his mouth, and caused him to ponder whether life was worth living. And also—all that took no more than a second—to ask himself whether the only proper punishment for such an abomination was not death. The idea of committing filicide tormented him less than the knowledge that thousands of human beings had feasted (merely with their eyes?) on the physical intimacies of his daughters.
Then he went into action. He let the magazine fall to the floor to give himself more freedom of movement, grabbed Laura by her uniform jacket with his left hand, pulled her an inch or so closer to him to have her within better range, raised his right hand high enough to ensure that the slap he was about to give her would be as powerful as possible, and let fly with the full force of his rancor. He thereupon experienced the second unbelievable surprise of that extraordinary day, one perhaps even more breathtaking than that of the pornographic cover photo. Ridiculously, frustratingly, instead of Laura’s soft cheek, his hand met empty air and his arm was painfully wrenched as the blow missed its target altogether. And that was not all: the worst was yet to come. For the girl was not content to have dodged the hard slap in the face—something that, in his immense bitterness, Don Federico suddenly remembered that no member of his family had ever done before. On the contrary, after stepping back, her little fourteen-year-old countenance contorted with hatred, she flung herself upon him—him, her own father—and began to pommel him with her fists, scratch him, push him, and kick him.
He had the sensation that his blood ceased flowing in his veins out of sheer stupefaction. It was as though the stars had suddenly escaped from their orbits and were racing toward each other, colliding, shattering each other to bits, hurtling hysterically through space. Unable to react, he reeled back, his eyes gaping, pursued by the girl, who, growing bolder, beside herself with rage, was not only lashing out at him with all her might now but also shouting: “You brute, you bastard, I hate you, kick off, die, go to hell, damn you!” He was thinking he’d gone mad when—everything was happening so fast that the moment he realized what was going on the entire situation abruptly changed—he saw Teresa run toward him, but instead of holding her sister back she was helping her. His elder daughter was now attacking him too, screaming the most abominable insults—“Tightwad, cretin, maniac, filthy beast, tyrant, madman, rat killer”—and between the two of them the adolescent furies little by little were backing him into a corner against the wall. He had begun to defend himself, overcoming at last his paralyzing stupefaction, and was trying to shield his face when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his back. He turned around: Doña Zoila had risen to her feet and was biting him.
Even at this point he was capable of feeling utter amazement on seeing that his wife had undergone an even greater transformation than his daughters. Was Doña Zoila, the woman who had never let a murmur of complaint cross her lips, never once raised her voice, never shown the slightest ill temper, the same person with blazing eyes and brutal hands who was pounding him with her fists, hitting him over the head, spitting on him, ripping his shirt, and screaming like a madwoman: “Let’s kill him, let’s avenge ourselves, let’s make him swallow his manias, let’s tear his eyes out”? The three of them were yelling at the top of their lungs and Don Federico thought that their screams had ruptured his eardrums. He was defending himself with all his strength, trying to return their blows, but found himself unable to do so because—putting into practice a technique they had treacherously perfected in secret?—two of them took turns holding his arms while the third went at him hammer and tongs. He felt burning sensations, swellings, shooting pains, he saw stars, and little stains that suddenly appeared on the hands of his assailants revealed to him that he was bleeding.
He had no illusions when he saw Ricardo and Federico Jr. appear at the foot of the stairway. Having been converted to wholehearted skepticism in a matter of seconds, he was certain that they were coming to join the others, to participate in the mayhem, to give him the coup de grâce. Terrified, with no dignity or honor left, he had only one thought: to make his way to the front door, to flee. But it was not easy. He managed to run two or three steps, but then one of them tripped him and sent him sprawling. Lying there on the floor, curled up in a ball to protect his manhood, he saw his heirs attack his humanity with ferocious kicks as his wife and daughters armed themselves with brooms, feather dusters, the fireplace poker, in order to go on working him over. Before telling himself that he had no idea what was going on except that the whole world had gone mad, he managed to hear his sons’ voices, too, calling him a maniac, a tightwad, a filthy beast, a rat killer, rhythmically punctuating each insult with another kick. As everything began to go black, a tiny gray intruder suddenly popped out of an invisible little hole in one corner of the dining room, a mouse with white canines that contemplated the man lying on the floor with a mocking gleam in its bright eyes…
Was Don Federico Téllez Unzátegui, the indefatigable executioner of the rodents of Peru, dead? Had parricide, epithalamicide, been committed? Or was he merely stunned—this husband and father who lay, amid a disorder without precedent, beneath the dining-room table as his
family, having swiftly packed their personal belongings, abandoned their home and fireside in exultation? How would this unfortunate affair in the Barranco district end?
Nine.
The failure of my story about Doroteo Martí left me discouraged for several days. But the morning I heard Pascual tell Big Pablito of his discovery at the airport, I felt my vocation come to life again and began to plan another story. Pascual had surprised a bunch of ragamuffins practicing a risky and exciting sport. As darkness was falling, they would lie down on the end of the runway at Limatambo airport, and Pascual swore that each time a plane took off the kid lying on the ground would be lifted up a few centimeters or so because of the pressure of the air thus displaced, and levitate, as in a magic show, for a few seconds, and then, once the lift effect had disappeared, would suddenly come down to earth again. At about that same time I had just seen a Mexican film, Los Olvidados, that I was all excited about (it was not until years later that I found out it was a Buñuel film, and who Buñuel was). I decided to write a story in the same spirit; a tale of men-children, young wolf cubs toughened by the harsh conditions of life in the suburbs. Javier was skeptical and assured me that Pascual’s anecdote couldn’t possibly be true, that the change in air pressure caused by a plane taking off wouldn’t be sufficient to lift even a newborn babe off the ground. We argued back and forth, and I finally told him that the characters in my story would levitate yet at the same time it would be a realistic story (“No, fantastic!” he shouted), and we finally agreed to go with Pascual to the vacant lots of Córpac some night to see with our own eyes what was true and what was false in his account of these dangerous games (that was the title I’d chosen for the story).