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Also in the group were others whose bedroom windows Emiliano had squeezed through at one time or another. In fact, looking over the faces, he saw with horror that there was not one among them he had not known in an intimate manner.

“If it's not too much to ask,” Rosarita continued, “we would be extremely grateful if the doctor would consent to take a look at us. Each of us has been troubled lately with a minor ailment, and it would put our minds to rest if we could each receive a brief examination.”

With a questioning arch of his eyebrows Sevilla turned to look at the boy. Emiliano had already begun to sweat profusely, and at the same time to shiver. He stumbled back into the house and, like a timid child, watched from around the doorjamb as Rosarita Calderón led the doctor away, the other women following quietly behind.

Throughout that day Emiliano observed from his doorway as Dr. Sevilla was led at intervals of a half hour or so from one house to the next. Darkness fell and Emiliano tended to the gelding tethered outside. María, as she prepared her husband's dinner, wore her new yellow silk shirt, the long tails flaring out over her skirt, the sleeves rolled up and pinned at the wrist.

Emiliano was too nervous to eat. He only picked at his food. “Aren't you feeling well?” María asked. He stared blankly as though he failed to recognize her. María cleared away the dishes and hummed to herself, making Emiliano wonder what it was that made her so cheerful.

Eventually Emiliano's nervousness got the better of him. He went outside and ran down the street to his mother's house. “I just want to be alone for a while,” he told Teresa, and headed for the sanctuary of his former bedroom. “Please don't disturb me or allow any other woman to disturb me tonight.”

Lying on his bed Emiliano anxiously massaged the stump of his amputated
arm. What did all those women want with Dr. Sevilla? He knew by the way his amputated arm throbbed that he was somehow involved. Maybe he even knew what “minor ailment” troubled the women, but he would not allow the thought to take concrete form in his mind.

It was nearly midnight when Dr. Sevilla finally stumbled in and fell on the bed beside Emiliano. Emiliano, wide awake, lay as still as a corpse.

Finally Sevilla heaved a heavy sigh and sat up. “You've been a busy little rooster, haven't you?” he asked.

Emiliano groaned.

“What a horrible day this has been,” Sevilla said. “Nearly every woman in town has tried to seduce me.” He patted Emiliano affectionately on the rump. “But don't worry, not one of them succeeded. My virtue remains intact.”

Emiliano felt a glimmer of hope. “That's all they wanted of you?” he asked, rolling over to face the doctor. “To get you into bed?”

“Not quite,” Sevilla answered. “It seems that seven women in this village, not counting your wife, of course, will within five to eight months have little Emilianos clinging to their bosoms.”

Emiliano felt a surge of nausea overtake him. He jumped up, ran to the window and pushed it open, hoping to steady himself with deep drafts of fresh air. But when he leaned out over the windowsill he saw a young girl, her slender body barely showing the first buds of womanhood, standing not far away, staring moon-eyed at his window while she hugged herself suggestively and rocked on her heels. He ducked inside again, pulled shut the window and yanked down the shade. Fearing that he might soon pass out from dizziness, he flung himself face down on his bed.

Dr. Sevilla regarded him with a mixture of amusement and disdain. “How could you have been so stupid?” he asked. “Didn't it ever occur to you where all of your whorish rutting might lead? Didn't you ever once stop to think that if it could happen to María it could happen to the other women as well?”

Emiliano was seized by a fit of shivering, and began to sob.

“There, there,” Sevilla said, and stroked Emiliano's back. “The damage is done, you might as well face up to it. But you needn't worry, I'm not going to abandon you now. I've decided to be godfather to your children. I'll
make certain they all come into this godforsaken world red-faced and healthy.”

Emiliano could not bring himself to roll over or even to mumble his thanks to the doctor. Sevilla seemed almost to revel in this latest misfortune. Emiliano lay with one eye pressed to the pillow, the other eye staring dully at the dusty spider web in the corner in which the dried and empty shell of a fly was irrevocably trapped.

“Imagine,” Dr. Sevilla said, softly chuckling as he ran his hand up and down the back of Emiliano's leg, “a poor, stupid one-armed boy such as yourself, valiantly assuming the task of repopulating a devastated village. It's too bad you don't have a newspaper in this town, Emiliano. What a wonderful story this would make.”

————

In the morning Emiliano viewed Torrentino through new eyes. He had returned to his own home the previous night to a fitful, agitated sleep, leaving Sevilla snoring comfortably in Teresa Fortunato's house. Shortly after sunup Sevilla came by for his horse and found Emiliano standing a few feet back in his open doorway, peering out with the temerity of a man afraid of the sun.

Sevilla laughed. “How do you like your little garden of Eden this morning?” he asked.

“Shhhh!” Emiliano said. María was still asleep and Emiliano dreaded facing her, dreaded her reaction when the awful news of his profligacy became known. “I thought you promised to stick by me now,” he said.

Sevilla looked happier than Emiliano had seen him in a long time. “You really need me now, don't you?” Sevilla said. He tightened up the cinches on his saddle, put his foot in the stirrup and climbed atop the gelding. “I didn't make arrangements for a prolonged visit,” he explained, “so first I have to return home for a while. But don't worry, little papa. I'll be back soon to see how your family is coming along.”

Leaning over the saddlehorn then, clasping the gelding's sleek neck, Sevilla whispered, “I'm only coming back as a favor to you, Emiliano. When this is all over with I expect the same consideration from you.”

Emiliano nodded dully. Standing in the shadow of his doorway he watched Sevilla ride away.

When María awoke she put on her new silk shirt and came padding out to the kitchen in her bare feet. There she found her husband slumped forward with his head on the table. She gathered a few sticks of wood from the kindling box and built a small fire in the stove. After setting on the morning coffee she turned to Emiliano and said, “You were late coming home last night.”

He lifted his head, lifting it slowly, as though it were either extremely fragile or extremely heavy. “I was with Dr. Sevilla,” he explained.

María nodded. “Just so you weren't somewhere you shouldn't have been.” There was a strange quality to her voice, a teasing lightness that puzzled Emiliano. “It isn't Friday night yet, you know.”

“There will be no more Friday nights,” Emiliano said.

“What are you talking about?” She scooped flour from an earthen crock into a deep bowl and added a half-ladle of water from a covered bucket beside the stove. Working the dough with her strong fingers she shaped it into a ball, pulled off a chunk, and flattened it expertly between her palms. She tossed the tortilla into a skillet in which there was hot lard. The smell of the tortilla frying made Emiliano nauseous.

“I said,” María repeated, “what are you talking about? What do you mean there will be no more Fridays?”

“Never mind,” Emiliano said. He stood up and went out the door.

Almost reflexively Emiliano headed for his mother's house. But three-quarters of the way there he realized that even that sanctuary would be closed to him now. How could he face such a loving and trusting woman, only to tell her that she would soon be grandmother not only to María's child but to seven squealing bastards as well?

Hurrying past his mother's house Emiliano wished that Sevilla had not ridden off so early. Now that Emiliano had his senses about him, he might be inclined to join the doctor, if only to escape for the time being the unpleasantness about to befall him. Within a matter of hours the entire town would know of his sexual extravagance. For the sake of his own skin, he thought it best that he get away somewhere for a while.

Standing at the end of the unpaved street, at that point where the narrow street tapered off to little more than a rutted goat path, with the village of Torrentino behind him and nothing but the side of the mountain ahead,
Emiliano came to a halt. Where could he run? Where would he be safe for a few hours from the wrath of his wife, his mother's humiliation, the villagers' scorn? Dear God, Emiliano prayed, if you truly saved me from the battle, if you see me standing down here now as confused as a dog that's been kicked in the head by its master, please forgive the lies I have told and the wasteful life I have been living. I will right all of these wrongs, dear God, if you will forgive me and save me one last time and show me some small sign that all of this senselessness is your divine will.

On Emiliano's right the door of the Mother of the Holy Infant church swung open. Father Vallarte shuffled out of the door and, looking even too feeble to push the straw broom he clung to, began to sweep the dust from the steps. Soon the other old men of the village would be gathering there to watch the day pass. Emiliano turned, raced across the street and bounded up the steps.

“Father,” Emiliano said, “I need urgently to talk with you. It is very important. A matter of life and death.”

Father Vallarte looked first at Emiliano, then at the straw broom in his own gnarled hands. For fifty years now he had been sweeping the steps of the Mother of the Holy Infant church at precisely this hour each morning. After sweeping the steps he would go inside and run a dampened cloth over the pews and the altar table. If he finished these chores in time he would then return outside to sit with the other old men for an hour or so. Then he would prepare for himself a light lunch, and then lie down for his siesta. After the siesta came a brief period of unscheduled time during which he read his Bible or played a few hands of solitaire.

But these young Indians, he thought, have no respect for the value of a daily schedule. Upset one aspect and you upset the entire schedule. He suggested that Emiliano return in the evening, and then resumed his sweeping of the steps.

Emiliano glanced up the street just in time to see Rosarita Calderón going into his wife's house. Groaning audibly, he pushed his way past Father Vallarte and fled inside the church.

Father Vallarte methodically swept all of the dust off the four church steps. He swept from left to right, from the top step to the bottom. Afterwards, inside the church, he set the broom in a corner, lifted the square of
woolen cloth from the nail in the wall on which it hung, dampened the cloth with water from the holy water fount, and began to wipe off the seats and backrests of the single row of pews. He worked from the rear to the front, from the left side of the pew to the right. On the fifth pew from the rear he was forced to pause momentarily while Emiliano, who had been lying curled like a frightened caterpillar on the seat, crawled out of the way.

Emiliano crept to the door and peered out. Already a few old men were lounging on the church steps. They were leaning forward and craning their necks to see up the street. Outside Emiliano's house, several women stood in a group. Emiliano recognized María's face among them. He ducked back inside the church and hid himself in the confessional.

When Father Vallarte finished wiping off the pews he wiped off the rickety scarred desk that served as his altar. Then he shook out and straightened the altar cloth. He rinsed out the soiled cleaning rag in a bucket of water, emptied the bucket in the street, and came back inside to hang the cloth to dry on its nail in the wall. Afterward he returned outside to sit for a while with the old men and to wonder with them about what was happening up the street at Emiliano Fortunato's house.

————

Emiliano had no idea how long he remained in the cramped confessional. It seemed as though he had been there for an entire day. In his mind he had watched the sun travel across the sky to sink far below the mountain. So when María came and led him away by the hand, out of the church and back up the street, he was more than a little surprised to view the sun nearly directly overhead, the old men not yet adjourned from their seats on the church steps.

What punishment, Emiliano wondered, did María have in store for him? When she came and took him by the hand she had said very little, only “What are you doing in here? Come on, I've been looking for you.” And now, leading him up the street, she actually smiled, as though whatever punishment she had in mind was going to bring her great satisfaction.

Emiliano prayed that María would remember that it was she who had proposed the Friday night schedule. For himself, he would have been content to act the role of the faithful husband, to do what every other faithful husband did and sneak away now and then for a little stolen love in the
moonlight. But no; María had coerced him into a strict routine, a well-supervised schedule of infidelity. When thought of in that way, there could be no doubt that all of this baby-making business was María's fault.

“It's all your fault,” he told her.

She pulled him along and said nothing. From behind the windows and doors that they passed, women peered out and smiled at him. Had they conspired on some devious retribution, some sinister plan of punishment that made each of them giggle with a perverse glee? He could have broken away and run, could have knocked María down and barricaded himself in his own house. But he felt weak and dizzy and was barely able to keep his feet beneath him. He shuffled along through the dust and felt like a schoolboy being led away to be spanked.

María pushed open the door to her house and then stood aside so that Emiliano could enter first. He slouched across the room, expecting to be berated and assaulted, maybe even to have María pounce on him from behind and box his ears. Instead he saw the kitchen table stacked high with gifts. A recently plucked chicken curled like a fetus in a clay bowl, and in another bowl were a half-dozen delicate quail eggs. Beside this was a jar of amaranth seeds, and hung over the back of a chair an ochre-colored handwoven vest called a xicholi. There were tiny cakes molded in the shape of animals, a clay pot filled with ripened coffee beans, a large yellow gourd heavy with intoxicating pulque, a pair of men's bedroom slippers, slightly worn, and two complete spools of blue thread.