[PyMOL] Absymal performance when creating large numbers of bonds

Dear pymol users,

I'm working on a script, using the python API, that needs to add a very
large number of bonds to the loaded structure.

I thought simply using cmd.bond() in a for loop would do the trick, but
-even though it works- it is extremely slow. I figured something was fishy,
since pymol at startup is almost istantaneous and there, too, it has to
compute, draw and even guess equally large numbers of bonds.

I also tried to parallelise the command, but by now I *think* this can't be
done due to the Global Intepreter Lock.

I feel like there must be something I'm missing (maybe a way to prevent
pymol from updating the rendering between each cmd.bond call?) or at least
an API function that better exposes the bond generation procedure. Does
someone have suggestions on how to solve this problem?

Cheers,
Lorenzo