Armonía Somers - The Naked Woman

“Even the humble amateur painter, Lord, awed and cowed before this beauty that has escaped Your hands, falls from Your scaffolding, and returns to the mortal condition to which the rest of Your creatures are subject,” he said suddenly with the honesty of someone who has already embarked upon their descent into damnation. “But not even there,” he murmured, expending the last of his mental strength, “can one feel free of the model, the shifting figure in the night, not in her role as Madonna in her dome, but ready for the embrace that is the source of all man’s agony. The agony of a man desperately seeking an earthly partner to help assuage his fear…”

This harrowing confession, not dissimilar to those of many who had thrown themselves at his feet that morning, begging for judgment, left him disoriented for several minutes. He had shattered into little pieces, each of which seemed to contain some aspect of his character. However, because they lacked the false support of the whole, none of the minister of God, the artist, the slave to his mother, or the man hungry for love were able to find purchase independently of one another.

“And yet,” he said from his innermost being as he paced the room, his hands tucked into his sleeves, “we must make a categorical choice and leap into the abyss even if it means our disgrace.” Anything was better than the interregnum ruled by God, or his opposite number, in which he was thrashing around. Much as it pained him to admit, he was no different from his flock. Like them, he had dreamed and he had spoken of it afterward, a sin for which the will of God was only potentially a mitigating factor. The Almighty could hardly go about tightening His system to condemn dreams now, but perhaps in the darkness He had left the keys to the room to which we are all called sooner or later. Even the purity of the chosen few deserves a little leeway from time to time. But the worst possibility, the one that would bring down the greatest wrath from the never-sleeping eye, was that she had actually come to him on real feet, the kind that walk, feel pain, and enjoy being rubbed. He, too, had left his door ajar, not daring to lock the church as he did every night. And she could well have been there, howling her damning, gentle exceptionality up at the stained-glass windows like a white wolf.

“Enough, by God, enough!” he shouted suddenly, lowering a cloth over the peephole as though to bury himself in his own solitude, or self-annihilation. He fell to his knees. “ In manus tuas, Domine, in manus tuas… ”

“Look, look over there!” exclaimed the wife of the crime novel aficionado, standing up in the crowd having lunch outside.

Her eyes and mouth were open as wide as they could go, providing both a fair reflection of her anxiety and an ample view of her half-chewed food.

“What? What do you see? Speak!” shouted her husband, anxious to add a new discovery to that of the fingernail.

“Nothing, I’m sorry,” she said eventually, swallowing with difficulty. “I thought I saw someone in the distance, next to the rails. But then I remembered the haystack set alight by sparks from the train… Unless I’ve caught your fever,” she added ironically. “Those novels make you look for clues all over the place.”

The man stared at her hard, as if he were trying to wring out a message she wanted to keep to herself.

“Give me that apple, don’t cut it,” he said, returning to the age-old obsession.

“What about it? What could you possibly have seen in it? I picked it this morning from our tree. The others are over there in that bag,” she replied, sitting back down.

“Look at it,” he said mysteriously, aware of the audience forming around him. “Don’t these marks look like they might’ve been made by teeth? If so, it could prove that she spent the night hiding in one of our gardens. The search should recommence today, but in reverse, from under our beds and outward.”

“Or from our wisdom teeth to the children’s milk teeth,” someone said, testing the potential for humor in the affair, as he passed exhibit A to his neighbor with a nudge.

“I have a goat that’s in the habit of taking bites out of the forbidden fruit,” said another.

“It can easily be determined,” said the aficionado, ignoring the gibes. “Every person’s dental imprint is different. And just by sight, with no need for further examination, reproduction, or comparison. You can measure the space between each tooth and study the marks left by the palate, or the gum indentations if it happens to be a soft fruit.”

As in his initial demonstration of his expertise, when he had found the nail, he was just about to win back his prestige. Instead, however, as the apple continued on its rounds he tried to turn the joke back on those who had made fun of him.

“Although on this occasion I was immediately able to observe that the marks were not left by teeth at all but rather the indentation imprinted by barbed wire upon the growing fruit. Had they been made by teeth, the space between the incisors would have indicated an enormous mouth.”

They looked at him in astonishment. This incomprehensible language was something that must be respected even if they did not quite understand it.

“So, they weren’t teeth at all, thank goodness,” said the last woman to whom the apple arrived. “But I still don’t think it should be eaten, she might have poisoned it from afar with her breath.”

She : she had borne this name for several hours now, perhaps thanks to the veil of absolution that the priest had draped over her body in his role as public defender. Dressed like that, in just her essential femininity, she could be given a better name and her deeds didn’t seem so heinous. Of course, it was some leap from there to believing that she didn’t exist, as the sermon had argued. But the general uncertainty over her physical presence only confused the issue of pollution and biological warfare in the women’s fevered minds.

“I think that we should start boiling our water too; she must have had a drink somewhere before vanishing into thin air.”

“ Psst … they’re talking about the naked lady,” hissed a young freckled boy to his albino friend. “She’s driven them all crazy. But guess what: she doesn’t want to mess with anyone, just me.”

“What?”

They were forbidden from talking about it, the subject being reserved for grown-ups, but it was in their imagination, the true vessel and oral conveyance of myth, that the episode would take on really adventurous, hallucinatory proportions.

“Yes, lash freak, you heard: just me. Don’t you get mad too, or you’ll try and scratch out my eyes like you do when I show you how I can look at the sun without closing them.”

“I’m not mad. I know you’re lying about you and the woman. Liar.”

“Liar? If only you could’ve seen her… She came to my bed last night on tiptoe and touched my head with a green branch she had in her hand. She said that one day, when I had grown up, we’d get married in this church right here.”

“Naked?” his friend asked, looking at the building as though he were expecting the procession to emerge at any moment.

“Yes, naked, but in a dress made of water with a transparent flower in her hair.”

“Would the dress have a train?” the albino asked.

“Of course. A long train that leads all the way back to the river. Carried by two huge snails,” the freckled boy said, keeping his eyes fixed on the apple. Any moment now it was going to be tossed away as though it carried the plague.

“Lies, lies, and more lies!” barked the boy with the pink irises. “She’s going to marry my big brother, not you. She likes cars that start with a whisper, with soft, feathery seats. And hot and cold air. And music, and even an ash tray.”