20

by John Edgar Wideman

  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.

  Emiliano felt María's hand at the back of his neck, her fingers affectionately twirling his hair. He shivered. What did she have up her sleeve?

  “From now on we're going to live like a king and queen,” María said.

  Dizzy with confusion, Emiliano asked, “What is all this?”

  “Tokens of respect from the mothers of your children,” she said. “And later there are bound to be even more. Constancia Volutad has promised that I can use her sewing machine any time I wish. And look in here in the bedroom; see what I managed to coax from Alissa Márquez.”

  In the corner of the bedroom, beneath the window, sat a huge black wrought-iron birdcage. It was four feet wide by four feet long, shaped like a Chinese pagoda and with a center height of at least three and a half feet. Perched on a swinging bar near the top of the cage and returning Emiliano's unblinking gaze was a green and white parrot. The bird and its elaborate cage had been Alissa Marquez's wedding gift from her husband eleven years earlier, hauled from Orizaba and up the mountainside on the back of a burro. It had been Alissa's pride and joy ever since, openly coveted not only by María but by many of the other villagers as well, and Emiliano was amazed that his wife had been able to talk Alissa into parting with it.

  “Is Alissa…?” he managed to say, nearly choking on his words.

  “Not yet. But I had to promise that you will pay special attention to her from now on. She wants a baby so badly. I didn't have the heart to refuse her.”

  Emiliano wondered if this was some kind of a trick. “You're not angry with me?” he asked.

  “Why would I be angry? Because you've made me the richest woman in town? How could something like this not happen, with you visiting two or three women every Friday night? Didn't you realize it was inevitable? My only concern was that I should be the first to bear a child, which I shall be, but only by a few weeks judging from the looks of Rosarita Calderón's belly. And I admit that I was a little worried at first that one of the younger girls might steal you away from me, that you might fall in love with someone else. But that hasn't happened, has it? And just look what we have now! And who knows—in a month or so there might be more mothers-to-be to shower us with gifts. There are at least a half-dozen women who have come to me expressing their desire to have a child. With no husbands, what other hope for a comfortable old age do the women in this village have? I promised them that you will continue with the Friday night schedule. I think it best that we do this on an orderly, limited basis. If we are careful and plan effectively, we can assure ourselves of ten children a year for the next several years.”

  Emiliano felt his legs go rubbery. He groped for a kitchen chair, pulled it away from the table, and slumped into it.

  “And as those children grow older,” María continued, speaking more to herself than to her dazed husband, “they will all come to you for advice and guidance. I, of course, will be their godmother, and I too will exert a considerable influence over their lives. We're going to be the king and queen of Torrentino,” she said, and hugged Emiliano's head against her swollen breasts.

  “God spared you from death on the battlefield and brought you home to me for just this purpose. From Torrentino your seed will spill down over the mountain and into a hundred other villages. In years to come your name will be more famous than those of Moctezuma, Zapata, or even King Solomon!”

  The table upon which Emiliano's hands rested began to sway beneath him. His vision blurred and the room began to spin. Emiliano felt his head rolling back and forth on his neck. He was going to be a national hero, a one-armed Biblical legend? Emiliano Fortunato slumped forward and passed out.

  ————

  Teresa Fortunato, though initially shocked by the news that her hazel-eyed son had become “papacito grande,” soon discovered that, as mother of the village progenitor, she too enjoyed a sudden elevation of social status. Young women whose bellies had not yet even beg
un to bulge with life came to confer with her about the tailoring of baby clothes, about how a child should be raised so as to grow into a brave and unselfish adult like papacito grande himself. Women who yearned for motherhood begged Teresa's advice on how to prepare her son's favorite food, how best to attract his attention, if only for an hour at a time. Older women beyond the age of childbearing came to sit with her, hoping that by proximity they might also be referred to as grandmother and treated with respect. All listened reverentially to stories about how Emiliano even as an infant displayed signs of greatness. The fact that their recollections of Emiliano as a child were not consistent with Teresa's did not seem to disturb them.

  Emiliano himself, after recovering from his dizzy spell, quickly adapted to the role of papacito grande and found it to be not at all a disagreeable role. His wife accorded him a newfound courtesy, his mother an almost obsequious deference. Each day he was courted by young women who wanted nothing more than the honor of laundering his shirts or combing out his hair. From the old men who gathered daily on the steps of the Mother of the Holy Infant church he was awarded the uppermost step. The deteriorating old men huddled at his feet as though he were a Zen master who possessed the secret of eternal youth.

  Only two sour notes were sounded during this happiest of times for Emiliano. The first came, of course, from Argentina Neruda, who frightened the young women by announcing that their babies were actually reincarnated souls of their slaughtered husbands and fathers and brothers and boyfriends, returning to Torrentino to seek revenge against the liar and coward Emiliano Fortunato, a man with whom they had each consorted and who was probably an evil spirit himself.

  The second disparagement, though not as sour as the first, came at the hands of Father Vallarte. Troubled by the questionable propriety of Emiliano's patriarchal status, the old priest nightly searched his heart and petitioned the Lord for some evidence that this epidemic of pregnancies was God's will and not Satan's. Receiving no such evidence, Father Vallarte would every now and then studiously regard Emiliano as he sat on the church steps, and even on occasion inquire seriously of the boy, “But how can we be certain that this is a good thing?”

  Emiliano assumed that the old man had finally lost his senses, and subsequently told everyone, including Father Vallarte himself, exactly that.

  In this manner the remote village of Torrentino, perched on the side of a mountain, watched another three months pass. At the end of March Dr. Sevilla came riding into town on his dusty, tired gelding. After examining ten pregnant women, the doctor returned to the house of Emiliano and María Fortunato.

  “You should give some thought to moving permanently to Torrentino,” Emiliano told the doctor. “What's happening in this village could someday make you nearly as famous as me.”

  The doctor thought Emiliano's tone of voice more than a little condescending, and promptly told him so.

  “You were a great help to me once,” Emiliano said. “And I realize that no man attains greatness without the aid of several smaller, less important people. I simply want to do a little favor for you in return. Do you have something against seeing your name inscribed in the annals of history?”

  Sitting in Emiliano's living room, a room now lavishly decorated with all manner of gifts—fans and baskets woven of straw, hand-woven tapestries, colorful pictures torn from two-year-old magazines and mounted on boards—Dr. Sevilla found the change that had overcome his former patient hard to believe. Emiliano seemed nearly as bloated as his wife, as arrogant as a retired fighting cock. When María, now fat as a heifer ready for the slaughterhouse, excused herself and went off to bed, Sevilla told Emiliano, “I had planned to stay for a while, though not permanently. You seem to have forgotten the agreement we made. So now I think Til stay just long enough to watch this illusory world of yours come crashing down atop you.”

  “The world I have created is no illusion,” Emiliano said.

  “You poor stupid boy. You've been so gorged on stories of your own importance that you've actually come to believe them, haven't you? Don't you realize that these women don't value you, they value the output of your glands. Who in this village really loves you for yourself—or perhaps I should say in spite of yourself? Probably no one but me. You're just a poor stupid boy with one arm and the only ready supply of sperm in town.”

  Emiliano flushed with anger. The veins in his neck bulged and his eyes flew open. Leaping to his feet he flung open the door. “Cabrón!” Emiliano shouted, clenching his fist. “Choirboy! Get out of my house and don't ever come back!”

  Dr. Sevilla emitted a soft click from the back of his throat. Chuckling softly, he stood and went outside. Emiliano slammed the door shut behind him. Sevilla walked down the street and spent a comfortable night at the home of Teresa Fortunato in the childhood bed of her son, the illustrious stud.

  ————

  Teresa Fortunato became Dr. Sevilla's assistant. When young girls came for an examination, it was Teresa who met them at the door, who counseled the mother-to-be on how best to care for her unborn child, which foods and activities should be avoided and which could be indulged. She exacted payment from each patient, insisting that even the briefest of visits be paid for, if only with a warm brown egg or a handful of coffee beans. She considered it an honor to have the esteemed Dr. Sevilla as her houseguest, even if he rejected the women's advances, and when Emiliano reproached her for boarding Sevilla she defended herself philosophically.

  “If you had been slain on the battlefield with all of your brave neighbors,” she said, “what would I now have, Emiliano? Would I be looked up to and respected by all the other women, or would I be just another childless mother rotting with grief? Are you going to deny me my one opportunity to hold my head up high? Do you think it was mere chance that first led you to Dr. Sevilla? Do you think it was chance that directed the bullet into your arm and not into your heart? Don't you know, my son, that everything is for a purpose? Even here in Torrentino, in this tiny village made of straw and sun-baked mud, even here we are cradled in the palm of God's hand. If Dr. Sevilla has come to live in my house it is because God has directed him to do so. You have become a great man, Emiliano, but are you so great as to believe that God no longer exerts an influence upon your life?”

  Emiliano shook his head in disgust and walked away. If his mother wanted to house that clove-sucking Cabrón, then he would not try to stop her. But she must be as crazy as Vallarte to believe that God had deliberately sent Sevilla to them. That God had given them Emiliano to raise Torrentino from the dust there could be no doubt. But a clove-sucking, silk-shirt-wearing girl-faced Cabrón of a doctor like Sevilla? Ha! There was about as much chance of that being true as there was of Emiliano losing his kingdom.

  ————

  As the days passed, Argentina Neruda sat in her darkened hut and brooded. Even the handful of women who a few months earlier had joined in her ritual anathematizing of Emiliano had now abandoned her. Why could no one see that devil of a boy as she saw him?

  Seated at her kitchen table Argentina Neruda stared down at the contents of the bowl in front of her. Into the clay bowl she had spilled the viscera of a wild duck. By the undulations and alignment of the viscera she could read the will of Huitzilopochtli, the stern and exacting hummingbird god. Argentina had come upon the wild duck yesterday on her daily trip to gather wood for her stove and herbs for her incantations. The duck, its wing broken as it lay on the bank of a small pond, was nearly dead when she found it. She had carried the duck home, fed it a mash of ground maize and water, and this morning put a sharp knife to its belly and spilled its viscera into the enameled bowl.

  She studied the viscera for a long time, employing the same skills of intuition once employed by powerful Aztec priests. Finally she was satisfied that she saw in them confirmation of Emiliano's evil Afterward she prayed to Huitzilopochtli and thanked him for his message of truth. Then, without bothering to remove the duck's head or webbed feet, she boiled the plucked f
owl in a pot of steaming water. The intestines she deep-fried in lard until they puffed up crisp and brown. A side dish of delicate water-fly eggs completed her afternoon meal.

  ————

  When María Fortunato went into labor, Emiliano forgot for the moment that he had not spoken to Dr. Sevilla for several weeks and went running down the street shouting the doctor's name. It was ten in the morning and Sevilla was just finishing a breakfast of fried eggs topped with a spicy tomato and chili pepper relish, tortillas, and strong black coffee, which Teresa Fortunato had cheerfully prepared and served to him.

  Hearing his name being shouted so urgently, and in Emiliano's voice, Sevilla smiled to himself. He wiped his mouth on his handkerchief, rose out of his chair, and met the boy at the door.

  “María is having her baby!” Emiliano cried, breathless and redfaced, his hazel eyes wide with worry. Teresa Fortunato sighed happily and hurried out of the house.

  “Hurry, please!” Emiliano urged the doctor.

  Sevilla smiled calmly. “Why?” he asked.

  “Why? Sweet Jesus, I told you; María is having her baby!”

  “So?” Sevilla said.

  “What do you mean, so? Aren't you coming? She needs you!”

  “The midwife can attend to her.”

  “I don't want that old witch near María! Please, doctor, I know you're angry with me, but can't you forget about it for now? I'm sorry I said what I did. Won't you please come? María needs you!”

  “You're sorry?” Sevilla asked.

  “Yes, truly, a hundred times!”

  Lifting his chin into the air, Sevilla smiled, satisfied. He went into the bedroom for his ‘medical bag, then returned to follow Emiliano out of the house. Emiliano ran ahead of him up the street, shouting over his shoulder for the doctor to please hurry. Sevilla walked casually, humming to himself, enjoying the fullness of his belly and the warmth of the morning sun. From his shirt pocket he took a clove and popped it in his mouth.