A Fish in the Water: A Memoir by Mario Vargas Llosa Page B

was one of nostalgia for that period, full of envy toward those schoolmates at La Salle—like Perro Martínez, or Perales, or Vieja Zanelli, or Flaco Ramos—who could stay after classes to play soccer on the school field, visit each other’s houses, and go to the serials at the neighborhood movie theaters even though it wasn’t Sunday. I had to go back home once the day’s classes were over and shut myself up in my room to do my homework. And when it occurred to one of the boys at school to invite me to have tea or go to his house on Sunday after Mass, to have lunch and go to the matinee, I had to invent all sorts of excuses, because how was I going to dare to ask my father for permission to do things like that?
    I went back to La Magdalena and pleaded with my mother to give me my dinner early so that I might be in bed before he got home and thereby manage not to see him until the next day. Often, when I was still not finished eating, I would hear the blue Ford braking outside the door, and go scurrying upstairs and dive into bed with all my clothes on, covering even my head with the sheet. I kept hoping that they were eating or listening on Radio Central to Teresita Arce’s program, “La Chola Purificatión Chauca” (“The Mestiza Purification Chauca”), which made him roar with laughter, so that I could get out of bed on tiptoe and put my pajamas on.
    To think that Uncle Juan, Aunt Laura, and my cousins Nancy and Gladys, and my Uncle Jorge and Aunt Gaby, and Uncle Pedro lived in Lima and that we couldn’t go see them because of my papa’s antipathy for the Llosa family embittered me as much as being subjected to his authority. My mama tried to make me understand, with reasons I didn’t even hear: “He’s the way he is, we have to please him if we want to lead a joyful life in peace and quiet.” Why did he forbid us to see my aunts and uncles, my cousins? When he wasn’t around, when I was alone with my mother, I regained my sense of security and again felt free to engage in the impertinent behavior that, before, my grandparents and Mamaé had indulgently tolerated. My scenes demanding that we run away together to a place where he could never find us must have made her life much more difficult. One day, in desperation, I even went so far as to threaten that, if we didn’t leave, I would tell my papa that in Piura the Spaniard whose name was Azcárate, the one who tried to buy me off by taking me to see a boxing championship bout, had visited her in the prefect’s house. She began to cry and I felt like a miserable wretch.
    Until one day we made our escape. I don’t remember which one of the fights—although using that word to describe those scenes in which he shouted, insulted, and lashed out while my mother wept or listened to him without a word is an exaggeration—made her decide to take the great step. Perhaps it was that episode that lingers in my memory as one of the worst of all. It was at night and we were coming home from somewhere, in the blue Ford. My mama was recounting something and suddenly mentioned a lady from Arequipa named Elsa. “Elsa?” he asked. “Elsa who?” I started to tremble. “Yes, that Elsa,” my mother stammered and tried to change the subject. “The number-one whore in person,” he hissed. He fell silent for some time and suddenly I heard my mother cry out. He had pinched her so hard on the leg that a large purple bruise formed immediately. She showed it to me later, saying that she couldn’t stand any more. “Let’s leave, Mama, let’s leave once and for all, let’s run away.”
    We waited until he’d left for the office, and taking with us only a few things that we could carry by hand, we went by taxi to Miraflores, to the Avenida 28 de Julio, where Uncle Jorge and Aunt Gaby lived, and also Uncle Pedro, still a bachelor, who was finishing his medical training that year. It was exciting to see my aunts and uncles again and to be in this neighborhood that was so