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This night Emiliano was barely into her bed, his new pink shirt hung carefully over the back of a chair, before María accused him of neglecting her.

  “It's been four days since you were here last,” she complained. “Do you expect me to be satisfied with that when you promised you would be back the very next night?”

  “I'm sorry, I couldn't make it,” he said, and allowed his hand to explore the firm fullness of her breasts, the slope of her stomach, and the warm gentle curve of her thighs.

  “As you know, María, I have many other things to attend to.”

  “Things?” she said. “Is that what we are to you? I get awfully tired of waiting here by myself five nights a week while you attend to your other things. I'm a young woman and I need more attention than you've been giving me. Didn't you mean it when you said that I was your favorite?”

  “Please, María,” he said, snuggling up to her, her jealousy more than a little bit pleasing. “Believe me, I do everything I can to get to you sooner. I'm working myself to the bone.”

  She giggled at this and allowed him to move his hand in playful circles over her belly. Then she pushed his hand away. “Do you have more fun with any of the others?” she asked.

  “Not half as much as with you,” he answered honestly. “They all seem to take it too seriously. Some of them even pray afterward. They get down on their knees when they think I've fallen asleep and ask God to forgive them for their sins.”

  “But one of them gives you silk shirts.”

  “I have only one silk shirt so far,” he told her. “But I've been promised a closetful.”

  “Who in this village can afford to give you a closetful of silk shirts? Is it Constancia Volutad? Or maybe that old hag, Alissa Márquez? I don't know how you can stand to be with her.”

  “She's barely thirty years old, María. Besides, when she prays it's not to ask forgiveness for her sins, but to ask for the opportunity to sin even more.”

  “Then she's the one? She gave you the silk shirt?”

  “No,” he teased. “But it's someone who likes me very much.”

  “How can I compete with someone who gives you silk shirts?” she asked angrily, and struck him so hard on the chest that he drew back, stunned, and blinking in the dimness stared down at her angry face. She had struck him as hard as she could with the ball of her fist, her clenched hand thudding against his sternum and causing him to lose his breath for a moment. He was torn between being flattered by her jealousy and wanting to slap her for having dared to strike him. But after a few moments he concluded to himself that her possessiveness was amusing, in fact satisfying; and above all else, it was understandable.

  “I pay more attention to you than to any of the others,” he told her. He stroked her hair and lowered his head to hers so that his lips brushed against her neck. “I have been with some of them only twice since I returned from the war, and then only because of my sense of civic duty. But I have been with you ten times so far.”

  “Only nine,” she told him. “Counting tonight.”

  “Everyone knows that I think you're the prettiest,” he said. He lowered his head to kiss her breasts. “Just the thought of you brings me running to you.”

  “So you've thought of me only nine times in over a month?”

  “That's not what I meant. Sometimes I have other commitments. But it's always you I'm thinking of, María. When we lie in bed together like this you remind me of a cat, so sleek and graceful, the way you purr and rub yourself against me. And then there's that glint in your eye that reminds me that, like all beautiful cats, you are essentially untamable and perhaps even a little bit dangerous. The truth is, María, I am fascinated by you. I always have been. And no matter who I am with, I always close my eyes and pretend it is you lying beneath me.”

  “If that's true, she said, sliding her hand between their bodies to grip him firmly between the legs, “it shouldn't be such a hardship for you to marry me.”

  Her grip on him was slightly too secure to be pleasurable. Before answering he squirmed and tried to wriggle free, but she tightened her grip even more, lifted her leg over his hip, and rolled against him.

  Afraid of what she might do to him in such a position, Emiliano chose his words carefully. “Marriage,” he said, “would be best with a woman like you, María. But these are not ordinary circumstances. God has reached out and plucked me from the hand of Death. Obviously He has guided me home to Torrentino because He wants me to perform my special duty, whatever it might be, surrounded by my family and friends.”

  “I don't give a damn what God wants,” María Castaneda said. Her face was so close to Emiliano's that he could feel her lips move. His own face felt as though he had accidentally put it into a spider's web, and María's moving lips and tongue were the spider's feathery crawl.

  But now her entire body seemed to enfold him as she held open her legs and pulled him tight against her. He felt the slick warmth between her legs and the immediate surge of his own desire. Guiding him into her she slid her hands around his back and gripped his buttocks.

  “This is what it's like to be mine,” she whispered, her hands crawling up his spine, fingernails raking his vertebrae. “No one else can make you feel like this.” Leaning heavily into him she rolled him onto his back, she rolling with him and coming up astride his pelvis, one palm pushing hard against his chest while the other reached behind her own buttocks and pulled on his testicles.

  Emiliano closed his eyes and allowed his body to ride on the swell of darkness. He cupped her breast in his hand and tried to visualize other women, other lovers, but it was only María's image he could summon forth, only María's breast to fill his palm, the nipple as hard as a pearl button.

  Moaning involuntarily beneath her, arching his pelvis toward the ceiling, he felt her hips grind down atop him and heard her voice asking again if he would marry her. He tried not to answer, to hold back all sounds. But just as he began to shudder and convulse, just as he felt his limbs explode, his arms and legs ricocheting off into space, the yes burst from him so much like a scream that María pressed her mouth to his to swallow the sound. Moments later he felt his exploded body gathering together again, hollow and weak, feeling almost tiny beneath the smiling girl and the sweetly purring darkness.

  ————

  “I wanted you to say you would marry me,” María told him later as they lay side by side, Emiliano's head resting sleepily on her arm, “before I told you about the gift I have for you.”

  Emiliano opened one eye and looked at her.

  “It's not a silk shirt,” she teased.

  “What is it?”

  “You try to guess. It's something that only a woman can give to a man.”

  “Just give it to me,” he said, closing his eye. “I'm too sleepy to guess.”

  “I can't give it to you yet,” she told him, and took his hand and laid it upon her lower abdomen, “because it's still in here.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Emiliano groaned, and turned his face into the pillow.

  “Actually, it's far too soon to be certain. But a woman always knows.”

  “But sweet Jesus, María, I'm only seventeen years old.”

  “Apparently that's old enough,” she answered sarcastically. “I haven't been sleeping with Father Vallarte or any of the other dried-up old men in town, and I haven't yet attempted to seduce any of the little boys, so by all indications seventeen is a sufficient age to become a father.”

  Emiliano, who in his half-sleep had been considering ways to break his agreement to marry María, now merely groaned again and opened his mouth to bite the pillow.

  “It hurts me that you're not as happy about this as I am,” María said, though to Emiliano she did not sound especially hurt. “Of course I will allow you a certain amount of freedom; I would expect the same myself if the situation were reversed. And with you being used to having so many women, and the women used to having you, it's the most sensible thing for me to do. I don't want people accusing
me of being unreasonable. One night a week to do as you please should be enough to keep everyone satisfied.”

  Emiliano wished that he were at home asleep in his mother's house.

  “But now finally I'll have a little prestige of my own in this stinking little town,” María said. “Constancia Volutad might be the only woman in town with a sewing machine, and Alissa Márquez might have the only talking parrot in a huge wrought-iron cage, but before long I'll be the only woman in Torrentino under sixty years old with a husband. And when the baby is born all of the women will gather around me and coo and murmur and be jealous of what I have. If you truly love me, Emiliano, you'd be happy for me. I'm giving you one night a week for which you won't have to make any excuses. It's more than any other woman in my position would do.”

  Emiliano, who was far too numbed by shock to think effectively, had already resigned himself to his fate. Half-heartedly he mumbled, “Two nights a week would be better.”

  María gave him her breast to suckle and answered, “It's time you started acting like a husband and a father.”

  ————

  Accustomed to waking before dawn, Emiliano did so once again to creep from María's bed to his own in his mother's house. Just before falling asleep he remembered vaguely his conversation with María and, thinking it a dream, smiled to himself. But when he awoke around noon to find his mother measuring him for his wedding suit, he shuddered involuntarily and groaned. He had the feeling of being measured for his own burial.

  Seeing his eyes flutter open, Teresa Fortunato flung herself upon her son and embraced him. “My Emiliano,” she cried. “My little soldier. I'm so happy for you! You don't know how I've worried about you since your return, how I've worried about your sleepless nights and the lost, troubled look on your face. You don't know how I've feared that the loss of your arm might turn you into a bitter, brooding man and prevent you from ever marrying and giving me grandchildren. But God has blessed us, hasn't He, my son? Maybe in her youth María Castaneda was a little wild, but who isn't wild in her youth? She'll make a good wife for you, and you will be an excellent husband. Now straighten your legs so that I can measure you for your trousers. I think your father's suit is going to fit you nicely without having to be cut down.”

  All that day Emiliano lay awake in the shaded dusk of his room, feeling sorry for himself and cursing this cruel twist of fate. Maybe he should run away and take up residence in another village. But where in the world would he find another village comprised almost entirely of amorous women? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad being a father and a husband. What duties did a father and husband in Torrentino have, especially a father with one arm who would be excused from working in the garden, and who certainly could not be expected to do such woman's work as feeding the chickens or gathering grain or hauling wood for cooking? Maybe family life wouldn't be so distasteful after all He would still have that one night a week María had promised him. And how happy the women would be to see him on that one night! How richly he would be received! It seemed that a few of the women had been growing bored with him lately, saying that he was impatient and selfish, an unsatisfying lover. But they would have to change their tune now or he would strike them off his schedule altogether. To tell the truth, he had of late been growing a little tired of the incessant bedhopping. It was almost a relief to he able to curtail his activities.

  Emiliano weighed in his mind the pros and cons of being married to María Castaneda. But throughout the day his thoughts were frequently interrupted by the sound of female voices raised in argument in the front room or outside the house. Young and middle-aged women, upon hearing of Emiliano's impending marriage, came to assault him with their vehement disapproval, came to demand a denial. But Teresa Fortunato, surprised by her son's popularity, turned them all away. The desperate women, however, did not give up so easily. Alone, or sometimes in groups of two or three, they huddled outside Emiliano's bedroom window and cursed him. One of the women even broke the glass in the windowpane and rattled the shade.

  “I still have one night a week,” he whispered, hoping to placate them. “I promise to visit you first. You won't be forgotten. You know you're my favorite.”

  “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 comp
lete 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.