Fraudulent Fertilisation

With tears in his eyes and sud­den­ly de­pressed, he said to his friends, “Do you re­alise that if I don’t do some­thing, with­in a few months a child of mine will come into the world? A child that’s the fruit of trick­ery and fraud? Have you thought what it’ll mean for me? An in­no­cent being which is going to be born to a woman who dis­gusts me, human filth. My blood will be mixed with that shit and I can’t do any­thing about it... If I could ter­mi­nate the preg­nan­cy...”

“Not like­ly,” said Fed­eri­co, “I don’t see how.”

Adol­fo added, “There’s a sim­i­lar con­cept in rape cases. The law al­lows the raped woman to have an abor­tion. At least in the­o­ry, be­cause a judge must give his au­tho­ri­sa­tion. By the time it’s ob­tained, it’s usu­al­ly too late. You know our jus­tice sys­tem is fan­tas­ti­cal­ly fast,” he added iron­i­cal­ly. “I once had a case: a bus dri­ver had got a soft-in-the-head fif­teen year-old preg­nant. The fa­ther was in a real state, he im­me­di­ate­ly re­port­ed it. I was going round in cir­cles for months, the guy wouldn’t admit that he was the rapist. Fi­nal­ly I had to tell the judge not to both­er rul­ing, the kid had been born. At least I think it was nor­mal, it looks like it didn’t turn out hand­i­capped like the moth­er. So, couldn’t we say that you were in­di­rect­ly the vic­tim of a dif­fer­ent kind of rape in this case? They stole your sperm to im­preg­nate a fe­male you didn’t fuck, with the aim of caus­ing you eco­nom­ic dam­age. There was no will on your part. Moral­ly at least, I think you have the right to de­mand that they do an abor­tion. What do you all think?”

“I think you’re fan­ta­siz­ing,” replied Fed­eri­co, of­fer­ing no right to ap­peal, “the case of rape is ex­press­ly en­vis­aged. It’s an ex­cep­tion that re­quires an ex­press rul­ing. When there is none, it’s im­pos­si­ble to carry out an abor­tion. Be­sides, how will you prove that Rober­to was duped? To be hon­est, I think it’s im­pos­si­ble.”

“OK, OK,” ac­cept­ed Adol­fo, “but you can’t tell me it was worth con­sid­er­ing, can you?”

“That’s right,” said Rober­to, “I don’t want to rule out the analy­sis of any­thing, even if it seems ab­surd.”

“Do you know how long the bitch has been preg­nant?” asked Fer­nan­do.

“Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, ap­prox­i­mate­ly seven months,” an­swered Burán.

“Shit! A lot!” ex­claimed Adol­fo.

“I think it’s pos­si­ble, be­cause it co­in­cides with the first time I had re­la­tions with Ali­cia. If Juana Ar­ti­gas was im­preg­nat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, the preg­nan­cy should be more or less that ad­vanced.”

Fer­nan­do rest­ed his hand on Rober­to’s shoul­der and asked him, “What are you going to do with Ali­cia? Do you think she’s some sort of ac­com­plice? How did you leave things with her?”

“Bad, how do you think I could have left things?” said Rober­to. “Di­a­bol­i­cal, I’d say. I told you I left her side as soon as I found out what she’d done. I left her alone in the hotel at Alu­miné. To be hon­est, I have to say I can’t imag­ine her act­ing fraud­u­lent­ly. I be­lieve her ver­sion. Al­though I feel so un­hap­py about what’s hap­pen­ing, it’s as if some­thing has died in­side me. I feel noth­ing for her; she has sud­den­ly be­come a stranger. I don’t yet know if it’s be­cause of some un­con­scious de­fence mech­a­nism, but the fact of the mat­ter is that I don’t want to see her. She ought to have imag­ined that there was some dirty busi­ness be­hind all this... She could have, but nev­er­the­less she didn’t hes­i­tate to trick me. She never told me the truth, only when she was cor­nered. I find her con­duct dif­fi­cult to stom­ach, the re­la­tion­ship is ir­re­deemably dam­aged. Even if I for­gave her, it would be too late. In spite of every­thing I don’t bear her a grudge. On the con­trary, I still have great af­fec­tion for her. But that beau­ti­ful bond be­tween us is fa­tal­ly wound­ed, you see? As for what I’m going to do with her, noth­ing, I’m sim­ply not going to pay any more at­ten­tion to her. It’ll be dif­fi­cult to get over; I was very happy by her side, but it was im­prob­a­ble that it would last any­way, there was a big age dif­fer­ence. Be­sides, I’ve been forced to stop lov­ing be­fore, by pure will power. It’s painful, but not im­pos­si­ble. I re­peat, I’ve man­aged it be­fore...”

“Think it through,” said Fer­nan­do, “some­times we have to know what the cir­cum­stances were, per­haps she had no choice.”

“Don’t get angry, Rob­bie,” com­ment­ed Adol­fo, smil­ing and pat­ting him gen­tly on the back, “after all, you should be grate­ful to Ali­cia for ser­vices ren­dered.”

“Why? I don’t un­der­stand,” said Rober­to, sur­prised.

“Of course,” in­sist­ed Adol­fo, “thanks to her, your sperm will be float­ed on the stock ex­change. Won’t that be fun? A world first! Aren’t you ex­cit­ed that you’re going to be fa­mous? I’m al­most cer­tain that you’ll be in the Guin­ness Book of Records. Do you know what they’ll call you? I’ll tell you: the man who had the most ex­pen­sive fuck of all time! Good one, eh?”

“You’re going to have more chil­dren than Gen­er­al Urquiza,” added Fed­eri­co, laugh­ing as well.

“You’re going to go broke,” added Adol­fo, “you’ll have to fuck more cheap­ly, Rober­to. Do you want a sim­ple so­lu­tion? I rec­om­mend mas­tur­ba­tion, it’s health­i­er as well. What can I say?”

His three friends let out a joint roar of laugh­ter and em­braced each other as huge tears rolled down their cheeks. All the ten­sion that had been ac­cu­mu­lat­ed dur­ing the day was re­leased at that mo­ment. At first, Rober­to acted as a mere spec­ta­tor, then he spon­ta­neous­ly joined in the cho­rus of guf­faws.

“I’m such good fun!” he said nois­i­ly, “a play­boy!”

Rober­to was used to laugh­ing at him­self, but he knew there were dark clouds on the hori­zon of his life. The storm was ap­proach­ing.