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By Root 986 0

in their eyes mean?—that it had been. The revelation that he had incubated, in his very own home, which he had believed to be pristinely innocent, not only the municipal vice of nudism on the beach but also exhibitionism (and, why not?, nymphomania), made his muscles sag, gave him a chalky taste in his mouth, and caused him to ponder whether life was worth living. And also—all that took no more than a second—to ask himself whether the only proper punishment for such an abomination was not death. The idea of committing filicide tormented him less than the knowledge that thousands of human beings had feasted (merely with their eyes?) on the physical intimacies of his daughters.

Then he went into action. He let the magazine fall to the floor to give himself more freedom of movement, grabbed Laura by her uniform jacket with his left hand, pulled her an inch or so closer to him to have her within better range, raised his right hand high enough to ensure that the slap he was about to give her would be as powerful as possible, and let fly with the full force of his rancor. He thereupon experienced the second unbelievable surprise of that extraordinary day, one perhaps even more breathtaking than that of the pornographic cover photo. Ridiculously, frustratingly, instead of Laura’s soft cheek, his hand met empty air and his arm was painfully wrenched as the blow missed its target altogether. And that was not all: the worst was yet to come. For the girl was not content to have dodged the hard slap in the face—something that, in his immense bitterness, Don Federico suddenly remembered that no member of his family had ever done before. On the contrary, after stepping back, her little fourteen-year-old countenance contorted with hatred, she flung herself upon him—him, her own father—and began to pommel him with her fists, scratch him, push him, and kick him.

He had the sensation that his blood ceased flowing in his veins out of sheer stupefaction. It was as though the stars had suddenly escaped from their orbits and were racing toward each other, colliding, shattering each other to bits, hurtling hysterically through space. Unable to react, he reeled back, his eyes gaping, pursued by the girl, who, growing bolder, beside herself with rage, was not only lashing out at him with all her might now but also shouting: “You brute, you bastard, I hate you, kick off, die, go to hell, damn you!” He was thinking he’d gone mad when—everything was happening so fast that the moment he realized what was going on the entire situation abruptly changed—he saw Teresa run toward him, but instead of holding her sister back she was helping her. His elder daughter was now attacking him too, screaming the most abominable insults—“Tightwad, cretin, maniac, filthy beast, tyrant, madman, rat killer”—and between the two of them the adolescent furies little by little were backing him into a corner against the wall. He had begun to defend himself, overcoming at last his paralyzing stupefaction, and was trying to shield his face when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his back. He turned around: Doña Zoila had risen to her feet and was biting him.

Even at this point he was capable of feeling utter amazement on seeing that his wife had undergone an even greater transformation than his daughters. Was Doña Zoila, the woman who had never let a murmur of complaint cross her lips, never once raised her voice, never shown the slightest ill temper, the same person with blazing eyes and brutal hands who was pounding him with her fists, hitting him over the head, spitting on him, ripping his shirt, and screaming like a madwoman: “Let’s kill him, let’s avenge ourselves, let’s make him swallow his manias, let’s tear his eyes out”? The three of them were yelling at the top of their lungs and Don Federico thought that their screams had ruptured his eardrums. He was defending himself with all his strength, trying to return their blows, but found himself unable to do so because—putting into practice a technique they had treacherously perfected in secret?—two of them took turns holding