Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter [antikvár]

One. In those long-ago days, I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharán, in Mir aflores. I was studying at the University of San Marcos, law, as I remember, resigned to earning myself a living later on by practicing a liberal profession, although deep down what I really wanted was to become a writer someday. I had a job with a pompous-sounding tide, a modest salary, duties as a plagiarist, and flexible working hours: News Director of Radio Panamericana. It consisted of cutting out interesting news items that appeared in the daily papers and rewriting them slightly so that they could be read on the air during the newscasts. My editorial staff was limited to Pascual, a youngster who slicked down his hair with quantities of brilliantine and loved catastrophes. There were one-minute news bulletins every hour on the hour, except for those at noon and at 9 p.m., which were fifteen minutes long, but we were able to prepare several of the one-minute hourly ones ahead of time, so that I was often out of the office for long stretches at a time, drinking coffee in one of the cafés on La Colmena, going to class now and again, or dropping in at the offices of Radio Central, always much livelier than the ones where I worked. The two radio stations belonged to the same owner and were next door to each other on the Calle Belén, just a few steps away from the Plaza San Martin. The two of them bore no resemblance what-