Fraudulent Fertilisation

Juani­ta ar­rived at Doc­tor Álvez’s of­fice with­out tak­ing di­rec­tions from any­one. It was fa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry for her, her re­la­tion­ship with him was an old and very spe­cial one. Nat­ur­al ac­com­plices, their al­liance had weath­ered the pass­ing of time.

Juani­ta is not a beau­ti­ful woman, but she has her charms. She is nat­u­ral­ly dom­i­nant and does not like hav­ing her opin­ions con­tra­dict­ed. She scorns weak­ness and, used to over­shad­ow­ing men, she han­dles them at will with her en­er­getic char­ac­ter. When she meets an equal, she col­lides head-on, drift­ing to­wards an in­evitable break-up. Álvez is the only ex­cep­tion, they un­der­stand each other. Juani­ta can­not sub­ju­gate him, which ir­ri­tates her but at the same time at­tracts her ir­re­sistibly. In her way she loves him deeply, al­though she would never tell him. He doesn’t need her to; his in­tu­ition told him a long time ago, he can per­ceive it in her every ges­ture, in her words. They see each other ir­reg­u­lar­ly but fre­quent­ly, re­spect­ing each other’s pri­va­cy. This del­i­cate equi­lib­ri­um does not con­form to the clas­si­cal. So­cial­ly aber­rant, it con­sists of sex, a pinch of sado­masochism and lots of af­fec­tion. They have a strange, mul­ti-faceted re­la­tion­ship. They have been lovers for more than a decade, and ex­cept for a few pe­ri­ods where they drift­ed apart, there haven’t been any big changes. Juani­ta is a typ­i­cal de­scen­dant of Arabs, she has an olive-coloured com­plex­ion and straight hair as black as her vi­va­cious eyes. She is five foot six tall, her body is har­mo­nious with­out call­ing at­ten­tion to it­self. She has good hips, small breasts and, above all, a beau­ti­ful pair of legs. But the most cap­ti­vat­ing thing about Juana is her se­duc­tive­ness, her fem­i­nine ag­gres­sion. She knows so well how to chan­nel it like an arrow against her male prey. Thanks to her great in­tel­li­gence, she usu­al­ly gets the bet­ter of the men who get close to her; she is ex­pe­ri­enced and knows human pas­sions. She is nei­ther prej­u­diced nor sen­si­tive, on the con­trary, she’s as hard as rock. Men are mere ob­jects for her to use. She knows how to at­tract them, to pre­tend to be pas­sion­ate when nec­es­sary or naive when it is in her in­ter­est. These char­ac­ter­is­tics could lead an an­a­lyst to de­fine her as cruel, self­ish or ma­lig­nant, al­though these de­f­i­n­i­tions might be too se­vere to cover such a com­pli­cat­ed per­son­al­i­ty as hers. Since she was a lit­tle girl, she has been sur­round­ed by a sor­did, suf­fo­cat­ing at­mos­phere. She was a slave to the pa­ter­nal au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism which also op­pressed her moth­er. She must have forged her char­ac­ter by re­act­ing against that dom­i­nant force. She de­cid­ed to han­dle it with in­tel­li­gence, Machi­avel­lian, as­sum­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour to achieve it, with­out wor­ry­ing about the means. In that way she man­aged to make her life bear­able, giv­ing up a fair pro­por­tion of her dig­ni­ty, until she left home at eigh­teen. From the house of her birth, in Buenos Aires, she moved to Mar del Plata, a kind of Ar­gen­tinean par­adise. Thus her life con­tin­ued, mak­ing progress in work. Her abil­i­ties as­sured her good jobs. An agile typ­ist, she speaks flu­ent Eng­lish and pro­grams com­put­ers, she has a way with peo­ple, knows how to keep se­crets, col­lab­o­rates with her em­ploy­ers in small, im­por­tant de­tails. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly, she has gone to bed with one of them, be­cause she liked doing it and be­sides, it was in her own in­ter­ests to do it. She al­ways ob­tains some sat­is­fac­tion from her re­la­tion­ships, even when her af­fec­tions are dor­mant, per­haps buried in some nook or cran­ny of her dis­tant child­hood. She is thir­ty-two years old, her bi­o­log­i­cal clock is cry­ing out for a child. Just late­ly this thought as­saults her and pre­vents her sleep­ing. She wants to have a baby, but she wants its fa­ther to be strong, lucid, proud and dig­ni­fied. She re­pu­di­ates the fee­ble, weak-spir­it­ed men she comes into con­tact with on a day-to-day basis. She’s look­ing for some­one re­spectable. She knows that it won’t be easy to be a moth­er, look­ing after a child would limit her at work and in her love-life; it could cause her in­sta­bil­i­ty. She has al­ways got by bril­liant­ly on her own, it’s easy to ma­nip­u­late men that way. It’s dif­fer­ent with a kid to look after, dif­fi­cult to get a good job or to keep it later on. These two as­pects are dif­fi­cult to ren­der com­pat­i­ble. It’s vital for her to main­tain her stan­dard of liv­ing, which is good with­out being sump­tu­ous. What’s more, hav­ing a child would mean she would have to hire some­body to help bring it up, oth­er­wise she wouldn’t be able to go on work­ing. Juani­ta doesn’t have any good friends, male or fe­male, with the ex­cep­tion of Sil­via, her con­fi­dante since they were teenagers. Only she knows the twists and turns of her mind and the bit­ter ex­pe­ri­ences that she lived through when she was a child; she loves her in a spe­cial way, more than her own moth­er. She feels sorry for her be­cause of her faint­heart­ed­ness, her ig­no­rance and the sub­mis­sive­ness which she al­ways dis­plays. She thinks that if things had been dif­fer­ent, she wouldn’t have been so un­hap­py. With­in the frame­work of this sit­u­a­tion, the re­la­tion­ship with Álvez is one of the few bright de­tails which can be high­light­ed. Hav­ing fun, pre­tend­ing, they have main­tained a sub­ter­ranean re­la­tion­ship, hid­den from the eyes of the world. More than once they have shared a table with the tem­po­rary part­ner of one or the other, pre­tend­ing to be linked by a friend­ship lack­ing in sex. But it’s not like that at all, they both enjoy going to bed to­geth­er, they pre­tend be­cause they like laugh­ing at their fel­lows. Each one is in their own way blessed with a hint of wom­an­is­er or man-eater which makes them con artists. He has al­ways helped her, pro­vid­ing her with con­tacts, get­ting her jobs, giv­ing her money and ter­mi­nat­ing three un­want­ed preg­nan­cies, one of which was his own. Juani­ta Ar­ti­gas tells him her in­ti­ma­cies, she sat­is­fies her most basic in­stincts with him, en­joy­ing her­self. He loves the pas­sion she brings when of­fer­ing her­self up, she is a woman with­out lim­its when mak­ing love. There’s a cer­tain evil bind be­tween them, a strange, al­most tan­gi­ble, re­la­tion­ship which al­lows them to com­mu­ni­cate with self-con­fi­dence, speak­ing every­thing, re­fus­ing noth­ing.

“Juani­ta... I asked you to come for se­ri­ous rea­sons, al­though af­ter­wards I’m going to do one or two lit­tle things to you,” said Álvez, kiss­ing her on the mouth. “I want to put for­ward a stu­pen­dous piece of busi­ness. It takes a lot of brav­ery to face up to it, it’s a big mat­ter, I want you to think about it care­ful­ly; only when you’re com­plete­ly sure should you give me your an­swer as to whether you ac­cept or not. What I’m about to tell you is a se­cret, no­body should know about it apart from us. Do you un­der­stand?”

“You’re bor­ing me, dar­ling. Speak more clear­ly! Can’t you see I’m dying of cu­rios­i­ty?”

“Relax,” said Álvez.

He was toy­ing with her anx­i­ety.

“Get on with it! Tell me once and for all what’s going on. You’re bul­ly­ing me be­cause you know I love you.”

“OK,” he said, “but you’re aware that the mat­ter is se­ri­ous, aren’t you?”

“Yes! Stop it Es­te­ban! You know you can count on me, I sup­pose you trust me. Or don’t you?”

“Are you sweet­en­ing the pill?” said Álvez.

“Come on dar­ling! There’s no need for all this schem­ing be­tween us, you know who I am, what I can give you, that I love you as you are, in­tel­li­gent, sen­su­al and bad to boot. In a way I’m yours, so don’t beat around the bush with me, tell me every­thing.”

Juana was get­ting turned on while she was talk­ing like that. She went up to the doc­tor and start­ed to ca­ress him. She un­but­toned his shirt kiss­ing him pas­sion­ate­ly, but Álvez pushed her away del­i­cate­ly...

“Wait, let me go, Juani,” he said, “don’t get angry, but I want to talk to you first. Now lis­ten care­ful­ly to what I’m going to say. Are you ready?”

“You left me trem­bling, you bad boy, but I’ll try to lis­ten.”

Smil­ing, he sat be­hind the lux­u­ri­ous desk in his of­fice, as if to give his rhetoric solem­ni­ty, show­ing off...

“OK, look Juani, until re­cent­ly I was in a good eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, I want­ed for noth­ing, but now I’m in trou­ble. Even so, I give my­self a com­fort­able life, I like women, as you know and un­der­stand. I’m di­vorced, my son doesn’t love me very much and per­haps he’s right. I’ve made nu­mer­ous er­rors in the past. To be hon­est, I should ac­knowl­edge that bar one or two ex­cep­tions, I don’t re­gret any­thing I’ve done, per­haps rather what I haven’t done. I’m dis­tanced from Jorge and I don’t know how to tack­le this prob­lem; I’m not the fa­ther he needs, I’ve tried get­ting close to him but he re­jects me, he finds it hard to have any­thing to do with me. I admit that it hurts me, but I have to un­der­stand that he’s going through ado­les­cence, be­fore long he’ll make an in­de­pen­dent life for him­self, which seems log­i­cal to me. In short, I’m more and more alone and I want to live well what’s left of my life, which isn’t that much...”

“Ex­cuse me,” said Juani­ta, “what’s up with your eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion?”

“I’d say it wasn’t the best, Juani, I owe a lot of money. If I go on like this I’ll have to sell the prac­tice to pay it off.”

“But how did it come to this, Es­te­ban? You earn a lot of money, I don’t un­der­stand.”

“Fun­da­men­tal­ly for two rea­sons, the first and main one is my old lik­ing for gam­bling. The sec­ond one is the trial that I lost two years ago to your old pal Rober­to Burán. You re­mem­ber him, don’t you?”

“Yes, I thought you’d got over that...”

“It’s not that easy Juani­ta, I lost loads of money. And un­for­tu­nate­ly for me, I car­ried on gam­bling... As you will un­der­stand, I still want to give my­self the good life, do beau­ti­ful things. That means trav­el­ling like a duke, hav­ing my own yacht, sail­ing around the Mediter­ranean, around the Caribbean... In short, liv­ing ad­ven­tures se­ri­ous­ly, get­ting away from the medi­oc­rity that we have here; I want more, much more, do you un­der­stand? Wash my hands of the fu­ture know­ing that I’ll live with­out eco­nom­ic prob­lems, with­out hav­ing to work.”

Juani­ta was sur­prised by this sud­den con­fes­sion of bore­dom and am­bi­tion. She nod­ded with­out say­ing a word. He went on speak­ing en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly...

“And well, I’m tired of risk­ing my neck every day in this pro­fes­sion, I’ve had enough of it. It’s too risky, as you know. I earn a lot of money, I don’t deny it, each abor­tion pays quite well, but I’ve had enough of bal­anc­ing on a tightrope, one mis­take means falling with­out a safe­ty net. Al­though I be­have cau­tious­ly and know how to work, the ner­vous ten­sion I feel is in­evitable, I’ve had enough, Juani­ta... That’s why I say, do you know what the way out is?”

She took a chance...

“Stop doing abor­tions?”

He burst out laugh­ing.

“No, Juani, don’t be silly, that’s how I earn a crust. No, what I need is to do some­thing that means a lot of money for me, al­lows me to for­get eco­nom­ic prob­lems. Some­thing that lets me live freely, with­out con­di­tions for the rest of my life.”

“Lis­ten to him!” she said. “Who wouldn’t like that?”

“But I’ve found the way,” an­swered Álvez, “I’ve thought about it long and hard, I’ll take legal ad­vice, but I need you. I can’t do it alone... I need a trust­wor­thy ally ready for any­thing, a woman who doesn’t lay down con­di­tions with me. Only you meet these con­di­tions. I know you won’t be­tray me, there’s too much be­tween us. What’s more you’ll ben­e­fit great­ly thanks to me. Of course, if you come in on the busi­ness you’ll have to make me a will, in case any­thing hap­pens to you...”

Juani­ta, clear­ly angry, raised her voice.

“I’ve had enough! Ei­ther you tell me what it is or I’m going. Stop play­ing with me! If you think I’m a mere slip of a lass, you’re mis­tak­en. Good­bye...!”