The Seamstress and the Wind

16

SILVIA BALERO, WHO unbeknownst to the gamblers carried a child in her belly (if they’d known, they would have bet him too), was left in the legal possession of Chiquito, although unaware of it herself, being profoundly asleep. At some point in the night the faucets in the bathroom of her hotel room opened automatically, and the tub began to fill with boiling red water, which spun and eddied and gave off steam that was also red, boiling, and sulphurous.

When Chiquito rose from the gambling table, at which he had been the only winner, and made a tour of the hotel (which had also become his property) with lurching steps — not because of the drinking, which never affected him, or the many hours of immobility, which his profession had already accustomed him to, but purely for the pleasure of lurching, for the brutish coquetry of it. It was all his; and to this he was also accustomed, because he always won. He was the luckiest gambler in the universe, and a legend had been woven around him, a legend and a great enigma — what did he keep working for? For years the gamblers of Pringles had had their sights fixed on him, each of them proposing, on his own, to beat him at a game of cards; they knew that only one would manage it, only once, and that event, if it came, would be a great triumph over luck. He didn’t know this, and it wouldn’t have worried him in the least if he had. On the contrary, he would have laughed his head off.

He crossed the dark lobby, looking around with cloudy eyes. It was all his, as it had been so many times, as always. And there was nothing that wasn’t his, because there were no travelers checked in. . Wait a minute: yes, there was someone, a beautiful stranger. . who was also his, because he’d won her from the masked man. He set off looking for her, without stumbling. He opened the doors of all the rooms, all of them empty, until finally he came upon Silvia Balero’s. She was deeply asleep in the midst of a reddish fog. He stood looking at her for a moment. . Then he went to the bathroom, and stood looking at the red water boiling in the tub. Finally he stripped and submerged himself. No one could have withstood that temperature, but it did nothing to him. His heart nearly stopped beating, his eyes closed halfway, and his mouth opened in a stupid grimace.

The next step was to violate the sleeping woman. He didn’t notice she was pregnant; he thought she was only big-bellied, like so many women in the south of Argentina. Consequently, inside, a few pale blue little fingers grasped his member like a handle, and when he withdrew, puzzled, he dragged out a hairy phosphorescent fetus, ugly and deformed like a demon, who woke Silvia Balero with its shrieking and obliged them both to flee, leaving it master of the scene.

That was how the Monster came into the world.