conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
  A sarcastic look came over his face. "It's been cut off for a week now, because we haven't been able to pay the bill," he said with brutal frankness. "Because, as you can very well see, this rag is going under and all of us imbeciles who work here are going under with it."
  And he immediately went on to tell me, with masochistic pleasure, that Extra had been born in the Odría era, under very favorable auspices: the regime placed ads in it and slipped it money under the table to attack certain individuals and defend others. Moreover, it was one of the few publications that were allowed to appear, and it had sold like hotcakes. But once Odría had been ousted, cutthroat competitors had appeared on the scene and Extra had gone broke. And it was at that point that he had taken it over, when it was already on its last legs. And he had gotten it back on its feet, by changing its policy, by turning it into a scandal sheet. Everything had gone smoothly for a while, despite the debts hanging round its neck like a millstone. But in the last year, with the price of paper going up and up, the mounting expenses at the printer's, the campaign waged against it by its enemies, and the loss of advertising revenue, things had gone sour. Moreover, they had lost several court suits brought by riffraff accusing them of libel. And now the panic-stricken owners had offered all the stock to the editors so that the creditors wouldn't get everything when the rag went into bankruptcy. Which was about to happen any day now, since in the last few weeks the situation had become tragic: there was no money for the payroll, employees were making off with typewriters, selling the desks, stealing everything that was of any value, getting what they could before everything caved in.
  I was about to tell him that indeed I could, when the conversation was interrupted by a skeletonlike little figure, so thin that he entered the room through the narrow opening without any need to push the screen aside. He had a rather ridiculous German-style haircut and was dressed like a tramp, in worn blue overalls and an old patched shirt under a grayish sweater that was much too tight for him. The most unusual thing about his attire was his footgear: faded red tennis shoes, so old that one of them had a length of string tied around the end of it as though the sole were loose or about to fall off. The minute he laid eyes on him, Dr. Rebagliati began to read him the riot act.
  I was so dumfounded that I must have looked as though I were in a daze. The perfect diction, the warm timbre of the voice, the words "pertinent" and "decedent" could only have come from him. But how, with that physique and getup, could this scarecrow that Dr. Rebagliati was eating alive possibly be the Bolivian scriptwriter?
  Little by little, not without an effort, I related, I compared what I remembered of Pedro Camacho with what was before me. The bulging eyes were the same, though they had lost their fanaticism, their obsessive gleam. The light in them now was dim, opaque, fleeting, panicked. And his facial expressions and gestures, his manner of gesticulating as he spoke, that unnatural movement of his arm and hand that made him look like a circus barker, were the same as before, as was his incomparable, measured voice, as spellbinding as ever.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
  A sarcastic look came over his face. "It's been cut off for a week now, because we haven't been able to pay the bill," he said with brutal frankness. "Because, as you can very well see, this rag is going under and all of us imbeciles who work here are going under with it."
  And he immediately went on to tell me, with masochistic pleasure, that Extra had been born in the Odría era, under very favorable auspices: the regime placed ads in it and slipped it money under the table to attack certain individuals and defend others. Moreover, it was one of the few publications that were allowed to appear, and it had sold like hotcakes. But once Odría had been ousted, cutthroat competitors had appeared on the scene and Extra had gone broke. And it was at that point that he had taken it over, when it was already on its last legs. And he had gotten it back on its feet, by changing its policy, by turning it into a scandal sheet. Everything had gone smoothly for a while, despite the debts hanging round its neck like a millstone. But in the last year, with the price of paper going up and up, the mounting expenses at the printer's, the campaign waged against it by its enemies, and the loss of advertising revenue, things had gone sour. Moreover, they had lost several court suits brought by riffraff accusing them of libel. And now the panic-stricken owners had offered all the stock to the editors so that the creditors wouldn't get everything when the rag went into bankruptcy. Which was about to happen any day now, since in the last few weeks the situation had become tragic: there was no money for the payroll, employees were making off with typewriters, selling the desks, stealing everything that was of any value, getting what they could before everything caved in.
  I was about to tell him that indeed I could, when the conversation was interrupted by a skeletonlike little figure, so thin that he entered the room through the narrow opening without any need to push the screen aside. He had a rather ridiculous German-style haircut and was dressed like a tramp, in worn blue overalls and an old patched shirt under a grayish sweater that was much too tight for him. The most unusual thing about his attire was his footgear: faded red tennis shoes, so old that one of them had a length of string tied around the end of it as though the sole were loose or about to fall off. The minute he laid eyes on him, Dr. Rebagliati began to read him the riot act.
  I was so dumfounded that I must have looked as though I were in a daze. The perfect diction, the warm timbre of the voice, the words "pertinent" and "decedent" could only have come from him. But how, with that physique and getup, could this scarecrow that Dr. Rebagliati was eating alive possibly be the Bolivian scriptwriter?
  Little by little, not without an effort, I related, I compared what I remembered of Pedro Camacho with what was before me. The bulging eyes were the same, though they had lost their fanaticism, their obsessive gleam. The light in them now was dim, opaque, fleeting, panicked.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I was so dumfounded that I must have looked as though I were in a daze. The perfect diction, the warm timbre of the voice, the words "pertinent" and "decedent" could only have come from him. But how, with that physique and getup, could this scarecrow that Dr. Rebagliati was eating alive possibly be the Bolivian scriptwriter?
  Little by little, not without an effort, I related, I compared what I remembered of Pedro Camacho with what was before me. The bulging eyes were the same, though they had lost their fanaticism, their obsessive gleam. The light in them now was dim, opaque, fleeting, panicked. And his facial expressions and gestures, his manner of gesticulating as he spoke, that unnatural movement of his arm and hand that made him look like a circus barker, were the same as before, as was his incomparable, measured voice, as spellbinding as ever.
  In this respect, too, he was the same as before: his total lack of a sense of humor. He spoke without the slightest spark of wit, or even of emotion, in an automatic, depersonalized way, though the things he was saying would have been unthinkable coming from him in the old days.
  At this point Pascual came back in, announcing from the screen: "Everything's all set, the edition's gone to press," and apologizing for having made us wait.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He nodded (I saw his nearly bare skull) and gave me a very brief, courteous smile that exposed his teeth to the air for a second or so. "Highly recommended for the stomach, an excellent digestive, and moreover it burns up fat," he said. And then rapidly, as though making a concession in order to be free of us: "Yes, it's possible, I don't deny the fact. We might indeed have met before." And he added: "It's been my pleasure."
  Big Pablito had also walked over to him. He put an arm around his shoulder, in a paternal, mocking gesture. As he rocked him back and forth, half affectionately and half derisively, he turned to me and said: "The thing is, Pedrito doesn't want to remember when he was somebody, now that he's a fifth wheel around this place." Pascual laughed, Big Pablito laughed, I pretended to laugh, and even Pedro Camacho gave a little forced smile. "He even tries to make out that he doesn't remember either Pascual or me." He patted him on his nearly bare pate, as though he were a little dog. "We're going to have lunch together to celebrate those days when you were king. You're in luck, Pedrito, you'll have a good hot meal today. I want you to come along as my guest!"
  Pedro Camacho's footfalls had not yet died away—he must have been heading for the street door—when Pascual, Big Pablito, and Dr. Rebagliati burst into peals of laughter, winking at each other, exchanging sly looks, and pointing to the opening he had just left by.
  The lunch went on and on for hours, a succession of Peruvian dishes, multicolored and burning hot, washed down with cold beer, and there was a little of everything at it, risqué stories, anecdotes from bygone days, all sorts of gossip about one person or another, a pinch of politics, and I was obliged to try to satisfy, once again, the editor's tireless curiosity regarding the women of Europe. There was even the threat of a fistfight at one point when Dr. Remagliati, drunk now, began to go too far with Big Pablito's wife, a brunette of around forty who was still very attractive. But by straining my ingenuity, I contrived to keep the three of them from saying another word about Pedro Camacho all during that endless afternoon.
  By the time I arrived at Aunt Olga's and Uncle Lucho's (who had gone from being my wife's sister and brother-in-law to being my parents-in-law), night was falling. My head ached and I felt depressed. Cousin Patricia received me with a distinctly unfriendly look on her face. She told me that with all my alibis about gathering documentation for my novels I might well have been able to pull all kinds of fast ones on Aunt Julia and make her play dumb, not daring to say a word to me so people wouldn't think she was committing a crime of lèse-culture. But as far as she, Patricia, was concerned, she couldn't care less whether she committed crimes of lèse-culture, and therefore the next time I left the house at eight in the morning on the pretext that I was going to the Biblioteca Nacional to read the speeches of General Manuel Apolinario Odría and came back at eight in the evening with bloodshot eyes and reeking of beer, and no doubt with lipstick stains on my handkerchief, she'd scratch my eyes out or break a plate over my head. My cousin Patricia is a girl with lots of spirit, quite capable of doing precisely what she's promised.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He nodded (I saw his nearly bare skull) and gave me a very brief, courteous smile that exposed his teeth to the air for a second or so. "Highly recommended for the stomach, an excellent digestive, and moreover it burns up fat," he said. And then rapidly, as though making a concession in order to be free of us: "Yes, it's possible, I don't deny the fact. We might indeed have met before." And he added: "It's been my pleasure."
  Big Pablito had also walked over to him. He put an arm around his shoulder, in a paternal, mocking gesture. As he rocked him back and forth, half affectionately and half derisively, he turned to me and said: "The thing is, Pedrito doesn't want to remember when he was somebody, now that he's a fifth wheel around this place." Pascual laughed, Big Pablito laughed, I pretended to laugh, and even Pedro Camacho gave a little forced smile. "He even tries to make out that he doesn't remember either Pascual or me." He patted him on his nearly bare pate, as though he were a little dog. "We're going to have lunch together to celebrate those days when you were king. You're in luck, Pedrito, you'll have a good hot meal today. I want you to come along as my guest!"
  Pedro Camacho's footfalls had not yet died away—he must have been heading for the street door—when Pascual, Big Pablito, and Dr. Rebagliati burst into peals of laughter, winking at each other, exchanging sly looks, and pointing to the opening he had just left by.
  The lunch went on and on for hours, a succession of Peruvian dishes, multicolored and burning hot, washed down with cold beer, and there was a little of everything at it, risqué stories, anecdotes from bygone days, all sorts of gossip about one person or another, a pinch of politics, and I was obliged to try to satisfy, once again, the editor's tireless curiosity regarding the women of Europe. There was even the threat of a fistfight at one point when Dr. Remagliati, drunk now, began to go too far with Big Pablito's wife, a brunette of around forty who was still very attractive. But by straining my ingenuity, I contrived to keep the three of them from saying another word about Pedro Camacho all during that endless afternoon.
  By the time I arrived at Aunt Olga's and Uncle Lucho's (who had gone from being my wife's sister and brother-in-law to being my parents-in-law), night was falling. My head ached and I felt depressed. Cousin Patricia received me with a distinctly unfriendly look on her face. She told me that with all my alibis about gathering documentation for my novels I might well have been able to pull all kinds of fast ones on Aunt Julia and make her play dumb, not daring to say a word to me so people wouldn't think she was committing a crime of lèse-culture. But as far as she, Patricia, was concerned, she couldn't care less whether she committed crimes of lèse-culture, and therefore the next time I left the house at eight in the morning on the pretext that I was going to the Biblioteca Nacional to read the speeches of General Manuel Apolinario Odría and came back at eight in the evening with bloodshot eyes and reeking of beer, and no doubt with lipstick stains on my handkerchief, she'd scratch my eyes out or break a plate over my head.