A few days of leisure coincided with the reading of the novel Dreams of a Summer Vacation, by the renowned lawyer and professor Ramón B. Martínez Portorreal, a text that turns out to be a pleasant surprise, one of those to which we are accustomed by Dominican literature, often corrupted by the groupism denounced by great masters such as Marcio Veloz Maggiolo and Manuel Mora Serrano.
Martínez Portorreal, whom we had to interview so many times on political, legal and social issues in our experience as a reporter, now surprises us with a fascinating novel that tells the life of José Nepomuceno Sánchez Segura, who despite being born into a family in the Villa Consuelo sector of the capital in June 1940, had the obsession of living in the southern town of Padre Las Casas, province of Azua, where he arrived on vacation during his puberty, after incessant complaints to his mother, a matriarch representative of urban society in the era of dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina.
The novel, like life, is ironic and surprising. It first introduces us to military life, delving into the character’s obvious inverted sexuality, and then launches him into the search for a colossal fortune that allows him to buy all the buildings in Padre Las Casas and win the hand of Aída Celeste, the most beautiful young woman in the town, whom he marries in a pompous wedding that forced the closure of the main streets, to the chorus of a love song in English, which everyone applauded, although no one understood it.
“I need your love,” the wedding song repeated as the bride and groom kissed. As happens with purchased romances, the story ends with “Jose only thinking about arriving at his lonely house with his beloved in his arms and throwing her on the bed, as God brought her into the world. Meanwhile, Aida Celeste only wanted to reach a cold shower and take a bath with cuaba soap.” Readers will enjoy a real novelistic surprise.
