Novela de Mi Id

“In Fear and Trembling”

Chapter Seven

The hairy one proved to be a gentler lover than she had imagined. The first night had not been one of pain like her mother had warned and as succeeding nights wore on, she began to realize that her husband was quite gentle for a man who looked like a beast.

Nevertheless, there came a night when she awoke to find him staring out their bedroom window, his face focused on the distant moon.

“Come to bed, my heaven,” she said.

“I can't.”

“What is it?” She pushed away the blankets and walked over to him.

He was murmuring something. “I was conceived in darkness and raised in darkness. Now I conceive yet another in darkness and so on forever and amen.”

“What is it?” she said again.

He turned to look at her, and suddenly, despite her long white robe, she felt quite exposed. His attention seemed focused on the small triangular slit that had been made in her robe below the waist. It was a conception dress, to put it quite bluntly, and yet the way her husband looked at her now made it quite clear that conception was not quite on his mind.

“You are quite beautiful,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“Too beautiful.”

“I don't understand.”

“They will separate us in the end. The beauty and the beast only live happily ever after in fairy tales.”

He stared at the night sky again. “Someday I will burn and so will all my children. But you -- you will be spared.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“I have decided to go to the New World, away from the eyes of the Mother Church.”

He grasped her hand. “I want you to come with me.”

“Why?”

“Because you are my wife.”

“No,” she said. “I mean, why are you fleeing the kingdom?”

He looked away from her. “You would not understand.”

“Yes, I would. Just tell me.”

He turned toward her again.

“I am cursed.”

“Why do you say that? Because you're hairy?”

He shook his head and then fell silent.

Then he pointed.

On a path in the garden below their bedroom window, the bones of a small animal shone in the moonlight.

“I did that,” Don Felipe said. He looked at her again. “And God help me, someday I may do it again.”