source of pride for our town, that was because it apparently wasn’t that even for Benito himself. Distrusting, suspicious, alert, he knew a lot about things other than cows: he knew that good things are covetable, and that even though he acquired his treasure through the most legal and definitive way (Nature made the donation when one of his cows gave birth, a cow who, in turn, was the daughter of another of Benito’s properties, who, in turn . . .), he had a feeling that maybe that block of legality and rights could crack: an error, a low blow, in the form of a new municipal ordinance or a jealous complaint inventing a trivial offense (witchcraft, even). The only thing Benito didn’t take into account was the colossal tenacity of men, of one man.
He kept coming to find me every Sunday, in the middle of the dance, asking me the question, and I kept giving him the same answer. He never talked to any other girl: he arrived, he saw me, he asked me the question, I answered him, and he went away without tilting his head an inch, trying not to notice everyone looking at him, the slightly mocking looks (just barely, and surreptitiously: there was something about Sabas that commanded respect) from everyone who waited all week for that inevitable moment at the dance on the pelota court. After three months, we performed the scene to perfection, without error, everyone in their role, he in his and I in mine, and the people discussing whether our performance was better than the one last Sunday.
But then there was a small change, a tiny new development that broke the monotony of those three months. Sabas hadn’t shown up at the dance yet that Sunday, and it was already dark out and the court lights were on. But then the lights suddenly went out and everything went dark. This happened frequently: the boys would cut the electricity and the girls would start screaming, and then you’d hear quick steps chasing others that were running away, and, every once in a while, you’d hear a slap in the face, and when the girls’ protests turned serious the lights would come back on and reveal a scene of laughing, breathless, flushed faces, and more than one red cheek. It was one of those times, after three months, when, in total intentional darkness, I felt someone gently take my hand and encircle my waist; I never could have imagined a more delicate contact between a man and a woman. I wasn’t frightened, despite the darkness, nor did I resist. The music had stopped too, since the electricity was out, but we started dancing, in the middle of that whirlwind of shouts, chases, and insults. An instant before he spoke (I’d just asked him who he was) I noticed that the hand holding mine wasn’t just gentle, but also firm, and the arm around my waist was feathers and iron at the same time, and I felt like I was enclosed in something, a prisoner: it was a strange sensation, but not new, I realized as I remembered what I’d felt the first time Sabas had asked me to dance . . .
And then he spoke, before I could free myself from his arms, as soon as he realized that I’d recognized him.
“Wait,” he said. “I wanted to tell you that my father left some nice tools in the attic and I’ve started building the bed and the wardrobe.”
By the time the lights came on, he had left me, and he went away slowly through the boisterous crowd.
That same night, at dinner, I asked my father:
“Benito’s cow . . .?”
“What?” he asked, rolling his cigar.
“Is it possible that . . . that the man from Algorta . . . that Sabas, will get . . .?”
“Benito said yesterday afternoon at La Venta that he was thinking seven cows might be too many for him . . .”
The only thing I asked for in my prayers was a little time to believe that nothing could possibly happen if I didn’t want it to. But that oppression didn’t abandon me, and I spent all my time thinking about it. I was already heading down a path that led to something I didn’t want in my life. Whether I liked him or not wasn’t important. Of course I liked him. (Sabas: young and virile, full of life, indefatigable, skilled, protective, able to rise from any difficult situation, determined, sufficiently attractive and desirable.) But that wasn’t love, the love I’d dreamed of ever since the idea occurred to me, without understanding it at first. I’d only intuited it, having to believe that it must exist in relationships between men and women so that they would be more than just a series of unions like the ones between the male and female animals around me that I knew; that wasn’t the love I longed for and that I wanted to be a part of more than anything. But that wasn’t the reason either, since I could accept Sabas without distorting my intimate and unspoken desires, hidden then even to me; it was that I wasn’t included in the situation. I was thrown into it violently, without remission, and the one who decided ought to have considered that, perhaps, I didn’t want it; but he didn’t, he simply wrapped me up in his irrational vertigo of invincible tenacity and turned me into a manageable, even tangible instrument, so that, at that moment, I didn’t know if my desire to accept him was mine or if it also belonged to him and to that blind strength of his.
I searched for a solution and thought I’d found one when I thought that, up until then, my refusals hadn’t been emphatic enough, and I tried to make them so. But he kept on, oblivious, going to the dance every Sunday (even though, after he told me about the furniture, he never asked me to dance again, not because he thought it was too ridiculous to keep doing it after three months of failure, but surely because he knew that the first phase was over, the first fortifications were destroyed, and it was time for another mode of attack). Desperate, I trusted in the ultimate “no,” that of the church (I could already see myself there, kneeling next to him, kidnapped), trusting that the situation would give me strength. But when I started thinking about the cow, I knew that he had also rejected that extreme consolation.
The cow. I asked myself: what could be stronger: my will to resist, or Benito’s repeated refusals to sell the cow? Because Sabas kept insisting, obstinately. He would show up at the milkman’s farm once a week, or twice, talking to him about who knows what, trying to convince him or interest him in some sort of exchange or sale or promise; that’s what we all thought; not a swindle: he wasn’t capable of doing such a thing. Benito didn’t even tell anyone at La Venta what Sabas talked to him about, nor how, nor what he promised or offered, as if he were ashamed of having to listen to him, of not being able to refuse him, of admitting he was defeated before he really was. And that’s how I came to trust that cow with my salvation, believing that if he didn’t get it, if the cow could convince me that he was vulnerable, that he could be defeated, there would be some hope for me.
Then, in May, the Catalan salesman came to town, with his two big suitcases covered in oilcloth, full of colorful fabrics, lace, buttons, and ribbons. He visited the town every year and stayed for a couple of months, not because he had enough customers there, but because he used it as a general headquarters, from which he would embark on one-, two-, or three-day trips to the other towns in the area, returning to his departure point to recover his strength in the station house, where he stayed, ate, and slept. Chubby, red-faced, always smiling, talkative, insincere, whose other life (the one he lived the remaining ten months of the year, in Barcelona) was a complete mystery to us, even though he talked about it excessively and frequently, and for that very reason we never believed a single word he said. Surely he was married with several children—even if we never saw a wedding ring (he must have carried it in his pocket, since when he said goodbye to his wife he would have to show it in its place, on his finger)—hoping in vain for an easy fling with a married woman or a single girl, making the stories he always told his friends back home true, for once.
I used him, to put it simply, because I wanted to make a decision too, rather than wait around for whatever was in store for me. Yes, I started going out with him, shocking the town and my family, since everyone knew that no girl would have done what I did, let herself be accompanied by that traveling stranger who was outside the circle of possible suitors for more than a dozen reasons: among them, the certainty that he was foreign and untrustworthy, the probability that he was married, or at least had promises scattered throughout Cataluña. I used him. I needed a sort of shock treatment, a flashy explosion, a storm
