Wanting to give that encounter short shrift, I told her Faith Oxen was in bed with a headache and that I’d pass on the news of her visit so she could call her the following day. “She’ll not get hold of me tomorrow,” she replied emphatically, “tomorrow I’m leaving this shithole of a country and going to Nicaragua.” Juana was torn between feelings of bliss and angst over the decision she’d taken, moved, she told me later, by her commitment to the revolutionary struggle. The Sandinistas were engaged in a bitter offensive against the Somoza dictatorship, and the West, with Yankee imperialism leading the way, was contemplating the country with the fear and suspicion one would expect from those who see that their own future is threatened. Blondie was convinced that the eventual triumph of the cause of freedom she was championing first had to pass through the hoop of her own self-sacrifice. That’s how it turned out. With no encouragement from me, she launched into a harangue about how the harvests of tomorrow must be irrigated by the blood of peasants and workers if they were ever going to bear fruit. She spoke of the necessity of armed combat, of the ultimate dialectic of weapons, and the annihilation of the oppressor. The words flew from her mouth in a parabola as if they were grenades launched from a mortar-pad, but when they exploded in my ears, the only effect they had was to induce skepticism, so rather than interjecting, I simply decided to imagine her naked in the middle of the jungle, festooned with cartridge belts that crisscrossed her breasts in a big X, truly enhancing her beauty, a carnivorous beauty more akin to a wild animal’s than a human being’s, and perhaps rather ragged in the tropical humidity. The splendorous fantasy I concocted was immediately betrayed by the tent pole of my cock, which was less spurred on by the details of her close presence than by the pleasurable circumstances I was imagining and that had elevated her so. She noticed what happened and was probably astounded by the prolix nature of the item, and I immediately grasped the unmistakable scent of desire in the way she looked at me. The king of Spain was pursuing the gelatinous spiel of his speech on the radio in the kitchen. The echo of his voice wafted to us on the aroma from the stew simmering in the pot. In that gesture of abandonment that comes when the thing is unstoppable, Blondie suddenly unzipped her jersey and exposed the blouse underneath. Then, silently, without pausing, she undid every button, one by one, till she’d completely laid bare a flesh-colored bra that gave firm support to the baubles of her tepid breasts. “Come here,” she ordered, not a tremor in her voice, “isn’t this what you were after? Take from me what you will,” and she bared the sweet expanse of her body, a honeycomb slurping with jelly where my member swarmed and eventually lodged. Aloof, like a red virgin set on self-sacrifice for God knows what outrageous theology, Blondie impassively yielded to my caresses. I went at it awkwardly. My tongue licked the hidden folds of her anatomy, I drank the juice from her flesh entire, and my mouth counted out the tiny moments when it was crystallizing her pleasure. She attended to my desires at every turn, was flexible, malleable, altogether consecrated to the dimension of her sacrifice, and struck dumb by the longing with which her will drove her on. “Gregori, dwarfy!” the old girl shouted from the stinking crypt of her bedroom. “What are you up to that’s stopped you switching off that radio once and for all? That drivel is smashing my head in; I can’t stand it!” I pushed Blondie a fraction of an inch away, sought confirmation in her eyes that if I left her, she’d stay riveted there, awaiting my next onslaught, that she wouldn’t beat it, ashamed by her own abasement. As I scrutinized the Yes I will, no I won’t in her pupils, those words of warning suddenly rushed to me from all those years ago, when handsome Bustamante had spat in my face: “Goyo, don’t be under any illusions, women will only give themselves to someone deformed like you out of charity, or for money.” However, times had changed, and out of the blue, a new way to accede to female flesh had emerged: the path of self-sacrificing solidarity. Concluding that my prey wouldn’t escape me, elevated by my victory, the scepter of my cock hoisted in all its majesty, I unslurped myself completely from Blondie and ran to the kitchen to switch off the radio for Faith Oxen. “The monarchy I incarnate being committed to the fundamental aim of returning sovereignty to the Spanish people, and having achieved this objective set out when my task as king of Spain was inaugurated, I pledge to ensure it continues and to deepen solidarity with all Spaniards. .” The king went on talking as the water simmered, and I don’t why, but I instinctively felt like putting the radio, rather than the hake, in the pot, but the truth is the monarch’s voice, soluble in the stock, instantly dissolved with a fish’s oily, lippy slipperiness.
Some women don’t try to hide it for one moment when they’re freeing up the seams of their knickers from between their buttocks. They do so on purpose, cheekily, to arouse the dirty passions of the men looking on in amazement. Animal language takes on all forms. The striking — snap! — of elastic on thigh is a beautiful sound, which, apart from stimulating the imagination, courses through the veins with a licentiousness that is ever so fluid. Simply mental turmoil, you might say, and you wouldn’t be deceiving yourself if you did. Some women feel no charity toward themselves and surrender their bodies to a tortuous calvary of restraint before immediately falling victim to the darkest putrefaction. Blind creepy-crawlies finish them off with gusto beneath the sod and without a single wail or hallelujah. Some women rise above the potential nature granted them and avoid the innocent exercise of fertility; conversely, others ignore their fate, and perhaps for that very reason end up confronting it with no holds barred. Faith Oxen was drifting off intermittently in the gaunt darkness of her room. Her erratic pulse, pounding blood, and staccato heartbeats were betrayed by the voice that croaked from the cavern of her larynx, summoning me to her side. “Give me your hand, Gregori, I’m on my way,” she said, while cloying, childish whimpers stuttered from her nostrils, “I don’t want to die, grip me tight, my breath’s going.” And it was true. The old girl was sinking, the blue tints of decay suffusing her cheeks, as if the circumstance of her death were one more testimony to its irrevocable summons. Her nightdress, which for one last time hid her withered flesh, bared an inextricable, labyrinthine trail of wrinkles on her neck, where old age was sliding her to the final exit. She found breathing difficult — short, stertorous, and ridiculous retches coughed up, inspiring terror. “Don’t leave me, Gregori, don’t leave me,” she intoned, knowing full well that her time was up. I didn’t feel pity or show any emotion. Nor did I feel at all distressed when I looked her in the face, a casual glance spliced with contempt, confirming to her that, in effect, she was dying, that she was so much dust in this world, and that she’d be dust in the next, too, given that the materialistic nature of her creed had ruled on the nonexistence of any possibility of life beyond this earth. “You’re dying, old girl,” I drawled, deliberately rubbing my words in her face, “very soon you’ll lose consciousness and never recover it again. Keep faith with what you’ve always upheld, and ready yourself now on the banks of the void. It is unnerving, isn’t it? Tell me, now you still can, what it feels like, share your last moments with me, tell me if it’s true that you’re aware of nothing on the last straight, no dark tunnels, and no distant lights switching on, tell me that you only feel terror on the edge of the pit.” Anguish blocked her glottis; words fragmented in her mouth like pebbles hurtling down a bottomless ravine. With every second, it was harder to understand her, not because of death’s weary tones but the anguish with which she was trying and failing to hang on to life. “So, was it worth it, wasting your life defending such claptrap?” I continued, joyfully sticking the knife in. “Or would you prefer to throw your past to the dogs for an instant’s belief in a supreme being who could now bring relief from the terror tearing you apart? Where’s that paradise you preached? Take a good look at me, old girl — do you reckon I look like a pariah on this earth? Do you want me to drop my pants to prove it? You’re carrion now, and what was yours is mine, your furniture, your paintings, the jewels that the guys who fucked you paid out. You knew this was coming. Hang on in there awhile, you still have to thank me for putting up with you so long.”