Oblivious to his wife’s thoughts, the man was enjoying himself once again, reliving every second of a life that had gone up in smoke from one day to the next. It had transformed into the mortal labor of a worm wriggling in cheese, forever immersed in the same smell, the same taste, the same fate as the one next to it. But then one day the woman had come along to make everything new again, showing that the cheese could be cut open and the gorging serfs tossed out onto the ground. They’d die eating dirt if they had to, but first they’d breathe in, savor, and see everything that she, a woman without clothes walking in the sun, had brought from paradise. Then he took his hands from his eyes and sat blinking for a few moments. It was a long shot, he told himself. He’d regret it tomorrow. He was used to planning out every act he made in the life that had been allotted to him.
“Hey, what are you doing there, you fool? What on earth are you up to? And what am I doing sitting here like a cripple? Waiting for someone to come help undress me?” he shouted suddenly, standing up. “I was talking to you about doors, I think. Not flies or the dust in the air.”
He furiously tore off his pants, or rather emerged from them. His calves were as firm as the rest of his body, but also delicate, a sharp contrast to his grotesque barking.
“But why, Juan?” she asked again, maintaining her cheery mask. “The children might start crying, you know they often do, and we wouldn’t hear them. Don’t forget the baby is susceptible to hernias…”
But before she could finish her next maternal argument, that the baby was too fragile to be left alone, she came to a realization. Enough of these tricks, they would have no effect on her man—he was lost already. Every woman knows when she’s gone as far as she can. Like getting out of bed in the dark, the lights out, and running into a door or piece of furniture, the sensation occurs in many different ways and applies to many different things. This time it was his command that they close themselves off from the innocence sleeping next door. She sensed that instead of their usual measured contact, she was about to be ravaged in the name of his desire. But how much did that desire have to do with her?
“Clothes off and lights out! Do you hear me? Now!”
“Juan, my God! You’re scaring me!”
“I want you naked, but I don’t want to see you. Quickly, if you don’t want me to tear your clothes off myself and wake the children while I’m at it.”
Now it was all out in the open: she’d been replaced by another woman and humiliated besides, reminded that she was just a poor working woman, the mother of two children. But he didn’t want her to let on that she knew. He wanted her to lie still on the bed like a stone. A bed smelling of the apples with which she always perfumed the wardrobe. He’d force her to do who knows what, blushing invisibly in the dark. But she also knew there was no point resisting. The Naked Woman had gotten into the blood of this rough creature, and he’d have his way no matter what. The same thing was happening behind closed doors throughout the village, a return to something with as many names as moods. They thought that the simplicity of their lives had killed it off forever, but nine months from now the village would be overwhelmed with crying babies. The priest won’t have enough holy water for all the baptisms, she thought. We’ll have to expand into the old vegetable gardens. Finally, the land they’d controversially set aside for the future, which so many of them hadn’t seen the point of, would have a purpose. The red-hot night of the woman, she concluded, slowly undoing her robe, will eclipse the effort of thousands of restrained evenings during which the women, instinctive economists, went about rationing chastity and lust so as to ensure that the community grew in a measured, orderly way.
This scene occurred throughout the village with the jarring inevitability of a natural disaster. But as this strange night went on behind doors universally left unlocked, something else began to happen to the men that they were at a loss to explain—they had begun to ask for, to demand… things. Incredible, outrageous things that far surpassed canonical norms. Some tried going to sleep to see if their customary restraint would return by morning, but when they opened their eyes, they’d shake their wives awake and demand more. Eventually, the wives began to grant their wishes, and a new stage began. They felt like new men, as if they had shed their skins and were now different, braver creatures, bowing to no one. And now—now that they had forgotten the fears society had drummed into them—they truly began to feel lost. Nothing scared the men more than what lurked deep inside each of them. They felt as though they had been deprived of a cruel, strict goddess, and they wanted her back. It’s terrifying when you realize that faith depends solely on the blood pumping inside us, on the trust that each of us chooses to place in it, rather than in set conventions. The strong and vivacious adapt well enough to this new reality, but for those who are barely able to keep their blood flowing in the best of times, well, their inner struggle is terrible to behold. With nothing left to spare, they are as feeble as weeds growing on stony ground. As these poor souls grew more sexually aroused, their inadequacies only came into starker view. For one sad night, which some of them spent utterly alone, they had mentally discarded conventional ethics but didn’t have the blood to do anything about it. Blood is the only thing that reestablishes equilibrium, and only a few have it in sufficient quantity. But still, they thought, what a novelty, what an unexpected storm battering at shutters long since closed for good.
The priest was pale. He, too, was consumed by the vulgar sweats of the flesh, the sweat of a difficult night when sleep only makes things worse. An eerie light, like a child’s night-light, emanated from his face. He had meekly allowed himself to be pulled into this strange new territory, the scent of which was unfamiliar, but then again his sense of smell didn’t seem to be working very well anyway. He didn’t know whether to breathe it in or out, but eventually found himself forced to savor the aroma. He and the terrible night-flower perfume were alone, floating in a bizarre world, with no prospect of returning to the depressing little room next to the chapel. The small, gaunt man was still growing accustomed to the semilunar twilight of sleep. But the Naked Woman was too bright for the shadows to swallow her entirely—her body glowed like mother-of-pearl on the dark seabed.
“Madam…” he murmured, trying to break the spell. Then she stepped forward, brighter than ever. She is a torch of burning roses, he thought, but what roses! Roses that can whisper secrets, secrets that God doesn’t want you to know. She seemed to be saying in her brave, but gentle, feminine way, “It’s me, I am standing before your lean face and wide forehead. It’s too big for the little head you’ve been given. Give me that head, burning on its own like a flower in the desert. This is a night for two, give it to me.”
The man suddenly saw his own head floating in the oppressive air of the room. Then it multiplied like ripples in water. But what was left of his decapitated body couldn’t get ahold of any of them, as much as he chased madly around. Eventually, he picked up a butterfly net that he hadn’t seen or used since childhood, and started to thrash about with it wildly. But the infernal little heads bounced about until they were well up in the sky, and from there they looked down upon him with his own eyes, regressing back into the sweet gaze of a being’s first moments in life. Around, among, and against them danced thousands of transparent, overlapping colored circles.