20 (15 page)

“You're the one who will not be forgotten,” was the hissed reply.

Emiliano cowered on his bed. Just when he had convinced himself that marriage might not be so bad after all, something like this had to happen. The ferocity of these women, women he had known to be solicitous and gentle, soft-spoken and passionate, surprised and frightened him. He lay on his bed and stared dazedly at the spider web in the corner. The spider, a long-legged, hairy, black-bodied creature with a triangular green marking, had trapped a fly in its web and was in the process of methodically devouring it. Emiliano was horrified and yet intrigued by the silent spectacle. He
felt his skin itch and imagined he could hear the spider's jaws crunching up and down on the doomed fly, its wings crinkling like stiff paper.

Later Teresa Fortunato dragged in the spare mattress which Emiliano used to lie on outside in the shade. “Look what somebody did,” she said, and pointed to the knife slashings that crisscrossed the thin mattress and caused the stuffing to spill out.

“Who would do such a thing?” she asked him. “And why?”

Emiliano shrugged and sighed deeply. He rolled over and pushed his face into the pillow. Maybe being safely married to María was not such a bad idea after all.

————

María and Emiliano quickly settled into a comfortable routine. After the marriage they lived together in María's house, where Emiliano was treated by his new wife with much the same deference as he had received from his mother. When María was in a surly mood, troubled with morning sickness or some other temporary ailment, all Emiliano had to do was to walk down the dusty street to his mother's house. Teresa would fuss unsparingly over her son, inquire of his happiness, his state of health. She would fry tortillas and eggs for him, and sometimes even boil a scrawny chicken. Well fed and pampered, Emiliano would a few hours later return to his wife, who by then would remember what a valuable asset her husband was and would welcome him home with open arms.

Every Friday night Emiliano was free to go wherever he wished, to do as he pleased with no excuses or explanations. María had judiciously allotted him this night because on Friday nights Father Vallarte heard confessions in the small adobe church at the end of the street. María suspected, and not without some justification, that given the choice of consorting with a married man or receiving absolution of sins, at least some of the women would choose the latter. For although María wished to be fair to her husband and the women of Torrentino, she did not want Emiliano wearing himself thin. She reasoned that the women would not blame her if they failed to enjoy Emiliano's favors on a Friday night, but would recognize the responsibility in their own choice of absolution over sin. And to a certain degree her reasoning was valid. Father Vallarte, however, began to note late
each Friday night that two or three women would appear successively for confession each with the musky scent of the bedroom still smelling on them as fresh as the scent of a newly plucked rose.

At the same time, Emiliano was noticing a different trend. An increasingly larger number of women chose to cross the street whenever he approached rather than pass him face to face. Sometimes it would even be one of the women with whom he had recently lain. Their doors, he discovered, might still be open to him on Friday nights, their pillows fluffed and their sheets still perfumed, but some of these same women, in the light of day, gave him wide berth, or simply turned downcast eyes at his flirtatious wink.

Some he spotted more frequently in the company of Argentina Neruda, who, it was rumored, was now regularly conducting public displays of her rituals in her home. Emiliano heard reports that her campaign to expose him as an evil spirit was now more vigorous than ever.

One morning he walked outside to find Argentina Neruda dragging a dead chicken around his house, the chicken's head digging a shallow furrow in the dust to complete a wide circle. While doing this Argentina Neruda puffed frantically on a fat cigar, keeping a cloud of smoke around her head in order to cleanse the air of evil influences.

Emiliano laughed and called her a demented old bag of bones. Snatching the dead chicken from her he flung it back into her face. He then walked off down the street to visit his mother, leaving the old sorceress huffing and puffing on her cigar.

Despite these diversions, it was not long before Emiliano began to feel that his life was assuming an unpleasant odor of sameness. He had been married for less than three months, and yet already he found his daily routine boring. No longer was it exciting to lie in bed all day and dream of María's ripe young body, a body which recently had begun to hint of the bloated appearance of being overly ripe. Nor did the anticipation of sneaking out for a night of stolen pleasure fill him with nervous arousal anymore. His Friday night schedule was widely known, perhaps by everyone in the village except his mother. And to vary from this schedule was, at least as the women saw it, unconscionable; María was being more than generous with her husband, and the other women in town, no matter
how much they secretly wished to, would not dishonor the limits of her generosity.

Even sitting in the late morning hours on the shaded steps of Father Vallarte's church with a handful of old men soon became a tiresome routine for Emiliano. At first he regaled these old men with tales of the battle, of whizzing bullets and clashing sabers. But how many times could you tell the same story to the same assemblage of wrinkled faces and rheumy eyes and manage to retain even your own enthusiasm? He took to entertaining them with ribald descriptions of the attributes of each of the young women in town, remarking how this one's tongue was as long and as active as a lizard's, how that one had an almond-colored birthmark in a certain place which, when you kissed it, had the same effect as touching a lighted match to a string of firecrackers.

Though stories such as these would for a moment bring erect posture back to each of the old men, would perhaps even cause them to shudder once or twice with the expulsion of a melancholic tear, more often than not Father Vallarte joined the men there on the steps, in which case the talk turned to the weather, to unanswered, indifferent speculations of whether or not the distant revolution still lived. All too often the men spoke of nothing at all, but sat and watched a threadbare dog sitting in the dust and licking himself, watched a tarantula being harassed by a chicken, or watched an occasional breeze push an occasional cloud across the sky.

So Emiliano Fortunato was not altogether displeased when once again he heard the clopping of horse's hooves and looked up from his seat on the church steps to see Dr. Sevilla, astride his dusty gelding, come jouncing down the street. In fact the alacrity with which he hurried out to greet Sevilla convinced the old men that the doctor and the boy were friends of long standing.

After exchanging perfunctory greetings with Sevilla, Emiliano took the horse's reins and led the animal, with Sevilla still astride it and grinning like a little boy on a carnival ride, to Teresa Fortunato's house. There the doctor and the boy went into Emiliano's former bedroom for a brief examination, Sevilla explained to Teresa. After assuring himself and Emiliano that the wound was completely healed, Dr. Sevilla lowered the shades and then sat on the bed very close to the boy.

“So,” Sevilla said, unable to conceal his happiness, “by the way you greeted me I would guess that you're finally ready to leave this God-forsaken place and come home with me.”

Emiliano shook his head. “I'm a married man now,” he explained. “My wife is going to have a baby.”

Dr. Sevilla looked as though he had been kicked in the groin. His eyes brimmed with tears and he emitted a soft clicking noise from the back of his throat.

“My poor stupid boy,” he said when he recovered enough to speak. He laid his hand on Emiliano's thigh. “Don't say such a thing if it isn't true. If all you want is to drive me away again, please don't tell such an awful lie.”

“It's not a lie,” Emiliano said. “Though sometimes I wish it were. I married María Castaneda because such a thing is a man's responsibility. She's just beginning her fourth month.”

Sevilla slumped forward, his head falling into Emiliano's lap, and wept. “It's my fault,” the doctor moaned. “I shouldn't have stayed away so long. I thought it best to give you time to get thoroughly fed up with this place. But you're just a poor stupid boy and I gave you too much time, and now look what's become of you.”

Emiliano felt a curious twinge of sympathy for the doctor, and stroked Sevilla's hair.

————

“Before you go,” Emiliano said to Sevilla as they stood outside Teresa Fortunato's home, “would you mind taking a look at my wife? Just to make certain that the baby is healthy and that María is in no danger.”

They walked together, Emiliano leading the horse, to María's house. María was very happy to be examined by a bona fide doctor; she had been worried lately of Argentina Neruda's resentment of her, and to be tended by a midwife with such primitive beliefs and prejudices did not instill in María the soundest of confidences.

Dr. Sevilla, his superciliousness lost on María, laid his palm on her rounded belly, put his ear to her abdomen and listened for the fetal heartbeat, palpated her breasts, peered at the pupils of her eyes, inquired of her diet, and finally pronounced her as healthy as a cornfed sow.

Though she did not care for the analogy nor for what she mistook as
Sevilla's cold professional manner, María was grateful for the diagnosis. She offered him coffee, and he, smiling snidely at Emiliano, accepted. While María was preparing the coffee Sevilla went outside and removed a package from his saddlebags.

Seated again beside Emiliano in the tiny living room, María still busy with her back to them in the kitchen, Dr. Sevilla handed the package to Emiliano and whispered, “After the way you've behaved, I don't know why I'm even bothering to give this to you. You should be ashamed of what you've done to me.”

But Emiliano felt no shame. Upon seeing the two silk shirts inside the package, one bright yellow and the other a deep lavender, he felt a familiar twinge of arousal as he ran his forefinger over a smooth collar, as he crushed a silky sleeve against his cheek and felt the cool, hard pearl buttons upon his skin.

Emiliano looked up to see María standing in front of him. She stared at him quizzically, holding Sevilla's cup of coffee in her right hand.

“Well, give him his drink,” Emiliano scolded her. “Or do you expect him to come and lap it up out of your hand?”

María handed Sevilla the cup. He accepted it, she thought, with an almost lordly air, as though to convey to her what a great favor he was doing by drinking her coffee.

“Look at the gifts Dr. Sevilla brought,” Emiliano said, and held the shirts up by their collars. María grasped the tail of each shirt between a finger and thumb and silently admired their color and texture. Then it occurred to her that Emiliano already had one silk shirt, a pink one whose origins he had never explained.

Now Emiliano saw the way his wife glanced back and forth from himself to the doctor, and became suddenly aware of the implications of Sevilla's gift.

“One of them is for you,” Emiliano quickly explained. “They are Dr. Sevilla's wedding gift to us. Take your pick. One is for you and one is for me.”

“Both are the same size,” María said, thinking out loud. “Either one will be too large for me.”

“Wasn't it smart of Dr. Sevilla to bring one that will fit over your new
belly?” Emiliano's hands had begun to perspire, and there was a band of beaded moisture forming on his upper lip.

María looked at the doctor. “How did you know I was pregnant?”

Sevilla smiled and took a sip of coffee.

He has a smile like an egg-stealing fox, María thought.

Emiliano laughed nervously. “What new wife isn't pregnant within a month or two? And after the child is born you can cut the shirt down to fit you more snugly, or just keep it until you become pregnant again. It's a beautiful gift, isn't it? How many women in Torrentino own a silk shirt? Take whichever one you want, María. Personally, I think you would look best in the purple one, don't you, Dr. Sevilla?”

The doctor merely smiled at María, his piercing hawk eyes unblinking. Taking the yellow shirt from her husband's hand, María threw it over her shoulder, said “Thank you very much for the lovely gift,” then turned and went into the bedroom.

“Why didn't you help me?” Emiliano whispered to the doctor.

Now Sevilla turned his smile on the boy. “Did you ask for my help in getting her pregnant? Did you accept my help when I offered you a home? You're just a poor stupid boy, Emiliano, and from now on when you get yourself in a tight spot, I'm just going to sit back and watch you squirm the way you've been making me squirm.”

Saying this, the doctor set down his cup and stood to leave. Emiliano walked him to the door. He was trying frantically to think of some way to detain the doctor, to get him to stay for a day or two without leading him to any unwanted conclusions. Having someone besides women and tired old men to talk with for a while had been a treat for Emiliano, and he knew that, given time, he and the doctor might discover many interests in common. The truth was that, in the midst of a crowd, Emiliano had begun to feel quite lonely. It was like having nothing to drink meal after meal except sweet wine. Eventually you would begin to thirst for a sip of water.

But before Emiliano could think of anything to deter the doctor, Sevilla pulled open the door to stride outside. Blocking his progress, however, were five young women.

“We heard there was a doctor here,” the first one said. Her name was
Rosarita Calderón, a pretty, unmarried girl of sixteen with whom Emiliano had spent many pleasurable hours. Her bedroom was separated from her mother's (another room which Emiliano had occasionally visited) by only a thin wall of plasterboard, and when Emiliano was with Rosarita she would hold her pillow over her face so as not to awaken her mother with the uncontrollable squeals of ecstasy she made.