Jaime Bayly: "Happiness without effort"

It was a Saturday afternoon. We were in Lima. We went to this city to attend the wedding of Maria Luisa, an intimate friend of my wife. The climate seemed insurmountable: a radiant sun, a breezy breeze rising from the sea, the prolongation of a hot summer that absolutely did not want to retreat.

Because they were building a building next to our apartment and the noises were scary, we were forced to stay in a quiet hotel in San Isidro, a few blocks from my mother's house, where they treated us wonderfully, flooding us with granadillas. , papayas and fruit juices.

Even though I am a questionable believer or an inconstant agnostic who only prays when I feel close to the breath of death, I asked my wife to go to church to see the truth. 39, wife enter into the arms of his father. I had never attended a religious wedding in Lima or elsewhere, I had avoided them all, I declined all invitations, even those of my brothers, claiming to attend a religious temple, kneel, say the prayer of He urged me to do histrionic and treacherous exercises that he preferred to avoid out of respect for God. This time, however, he wanted to go to the temple, to see Maria enter the arm of his father, in the Pilar church, in San Isidro.

I got excited when I greeted Alonso, the boyfriend and his family, at the door of the church. I was moved to tears when I saw María Luisa come in with her father, whom I did not know. My wife loves Maria Luisa's father, she always remembers him with deep affection. She told me that when they were little girls, she had taken them to the German school very early, driving her car and singing the popular radio songs. I was always happy and in a good mood, my wife tells me. And he was beautiful, he adds. When I saw him, I confirmed that he was remarkably handsome and that he wore a glimmer of sympathy and kindness. Maria Luisa was beautiful, she looked like a movie actress. She and her cousins ​​are of a beauty from another world. The distant contemplation of her cousins ​​Daniela and Rosario, angels fallen from the sky, creatures of supernatural beauty, elegant as princesses in exile, greatly improved the religious service.

As I love my wife for ten years and it has not cost me the effort to be faithful because I still look like the most beautiful girl in the world, and the funniest also, I felt so pure, so pious, so devoid of purpose, that I was about to go to communion, but I held myself cautiously, fearing that someone, on behalf from the defense of faith, pushes me out of the waiting line or that the priest stops giving the host a vicious and concupiscent subject, like me

Halfway through the religious service, my brother appeared who, in pbading, took me in his arms. Shortly after, two friends of my wife arrived, with a suspicious smile, feeling fresh grbad, recreational, which made them smile, very mischievous and made me want to.

Leaving the church, we rushed to the party at a beach club thirty kilometers to the south. As it was predictable, the road was a slow procession almost at the speed of man, in which they mingled, with the promiscuity of noises and toxic gases, trucks with live chickens beating, pbadenger buses leading to sudden death, zigzag collectives, dirty cars and tiny taxis of uncertain eastern origin. In the distance, in the background, the sad sandy hills of the periphery stood, sad and sad, the gray landscape behind the walls of this city where it never rains.

An hour later, we were at the beach club. We were the first to arrive. My wife made the decision to drink only beer all night. As a lady, I refrained from drinking alcohol and asked for mineral water. Fortunately, my brother and his wife arrived soon, they badured us entertainment and entertainment, because they are very sparkling to talk and very spiritual. My brother asked me how I had gone with the urologist that he had recommended. Excellent, I said. He touched me without gloves, I added. This is a wise man, I sentenced him.

I told them we were very happy because the day before, as soon as we arrived in Lima, we went to the US Consulate with a wonderful daughter who took care of our daughter and extended her visa. My wife and I are so lazy and sleepy that we have a woman who takes our daughter to school and another who picks her up at three o'clock in the afternoon. I do not know what we would do without them, they are already part of the family, we love them so much that we often take them on a trip with us. So, for the moment, the trip to Lima had been a success in the whole chain: they had renewed the visa for the young woman who worked with us, the urologist had pricked my finger like a teacher, an artist from hell. and we had attended Maria Luisa's wedding, not only for the party, but also for the church, as it should be.

The arrival of Maria Luisa and Alonso, after a photo shoot, was really spectacular. They danced skillfully, in the center of all eyes, full of an old love, then the party shivered with a surprise well prepared and executed: the father of the bride summoned the track, moving like a man. rubber, the aunts of the bride with their partners, and all very beautiful, the legendary sisters Uranga, displayed a beautiful choreography, of high quality, as if they were in a television program, ready to win the jackpot. I am half witch and see things that others do not see, as well as my wife, who is also a witch and amateur psychic, I noticed at all times the presence of the mother of Maria Luisa, deceased in unexpected circumstances, recently more than a year. I thought I saw her there, happy, proud of her daughter Maria Luisa, proud of her son Andrés, the painter of incomparable talent, in a wheelchair. Dazzled by the skill of the dancers, I was even more impressed by the love of this family composed of many women, by the joyful way in which they expressed it, by the euphoric way in which they were celebrating life: happiness, said Borges, should require no effort.

While my wife was dancing with friends, I drank mineral water, ate grapes and serrano ham, and pretended to my dieting brother while I was a cat-eyed catfish. Do not ask me to dance, do not ask me to get drunk, do not ask me to do things that I did when I was young. I had to be lucid and smile to attend the people who sometimes came to greet me: a cousin of my daughters, very attentive; Aunts of the bride, very affectionate; my sister's friends, rightly complaining that my sister's Siberian dog had bitten or scratched them; old friends of my parents, one of them already in cane; parents of the groom; friends of my wife, grouped in a sect or fraternity obviously respecting the friendship and excessive libation of spirits, the great characters I met at five or six, jokers memorable with whom I took pictures and spent very fun and a cousin of the bride, Fernanda, yoga teacher, actress, whom I met child, girlfriend of my daughters, and whom I saw flowering in all the splendor of her intelligence, her sensibility, and her beauty, as a strong, independent, conquering woman who, after triumphing in New York, is now proposing a career as an actress in Madrid. My wife and I told her that we followed her with great admiration and we were very happy to see her soon in Madrid. Then I told my wife, when we were alone: ​​your friend María Luisa and her cousins ​​are so pretty that, by her side, I feel like a seal.

There were two circumstances of which I remained vaguely proud. One, when I went to the bathroom, something far removed from the party, to relieve me of the mineral water. Upon entering, I noticed that there were some boys who smoked tobacco and applied moderate doses of stimulants. They offered me a powder to sing and dance, without fear of ridicule. As if he was the gentleman I am not, who could never be, I refused, I thanked them with a big smile, but I abstained. I'm already an uncle, I told them. I do not want to die from a heart attack, I added. Then I heard the cavernous sound of a mortal relieve himself in the toilet and I went out, afraid to breathe fresh air. I, who was an addict between the ages of twenty and twenty-two, did not come back to administer Atahualpa's dandruff. The other, when I brought the cake to the drivers and caregivers who were not far from the party, outside the big tent, near my truck. When I briefly spoke with them and addressed the inevitable issues of local politics, scandalous corruption and the rapine of presidents, presidents and presidential candidates, I felt that my popularity remained intact in my home country and that men in suits and ties, accustomed to serve the powerful, they saw me with sympathy, they knew that I was looking after them and brought them a cake, a little blood, a drink, a tip. Because in Lima, nobody has better tips than me. I always carry short bills to tip everyone who moves by my side and looks at me with affection. I want you to remember me like this: Jaimito is a good man, he always leaves good advice. It is a way of governing my fortune in favor of the humble, without going through the odious servitudes of power. It is a way of being president, but in exile, an exile of life, it will not be interrupted, because happiness is a sacred thing and, once you have found it, you must know how to cherish it.

At the end of the party, after two o'clock in the morning, we were already few and the dance floor was clear. They put Pedro Navaja, and then I decided to dance. I danced with my wife, with his girlfriend, with his boyfriend and I was happy in an unusual and unusual way. I attribute the happiness of this last moment of the feast of Alonso and María Luisa to the fact that my wife and her friends were in love, that my brother and his wife were also a little in a state of being. drunk, that Fernanda danced alone as a goddess. the brother of the bride, Andrés, showed overwhelming sympathy in moving the wheelchair, the stress of perfection or release having disappeared over the hours, in favor of a more lax or relaxed attitude, than each one already abandoned himself to the comfort of being himself disastrously, and danced as he pleased, and ridiculed himself, if such a thing seemed convenient or inevitable. In those moments, dancing with Maria Luisa, or with my wife, or with both, I felt a powerful happiness, the effortless happiness that Borges talked about, that I had not known in my youth and now, after the 50s, get drunk as a reward for being good people, for having loved my wife and being faithful as her pet, for not having wanted to preside, for choosing to be a writer and for having signed an armistice with Lima, the city with which I had years, In my youth, a toxic guerrilla relationship, marked with grudges and reproaches, and in which, now, who would say it, I I'm ready to dance another song, wishing that the party never ends and that the love of the couple is not too.