Chapter 16: Return to the Village

“THERE’S NO RAIN FESTIVAL this time, Michael, sorry,” Sofía said with a smile. “But there are other things to do.”

I turned to Mme Bertha, seated with a cup of tea at the kitchen table. Her expression was as bland as could be. After a moment, she nodded.

“So what’s up this weekend, Sofía?”

“Javier is getting an award for best librarian or something like that. We’ll help him celebrate.”

I had a thought about the Rain Festival. Sofía and Javier and I had certainly celebrated then.

“You’re on, Sofía.” I turned to Mme Bertha. “Thank you, Mme Bertha. It will be my pleasure.”

“I talked to Sra. Martínez. She has your room available again this weekend, don Miguel.”

Sofía waggled her eyebrows in what was a totally unsubtle manner. We’d been mildly flirting ever since the festival, not that anything terribly serious had happened. There were some kisses, some more intense than others, and Mme Bertha had been heard to clear her throat more than once, even if she didn’t say anything.

I’d also been a guest at Sofía’s mother’s house, evenings when I’d insisted on bringing part of the meal. Roast chicken is always well received in almost any culture in the world. It’s inexpensive and, when done anything like the way Mme Bertha does it, is an instant hit. Which is why I’d privately agreed with Mme Bertha to prepare the chickens I’d taken with me.

It wasn’t all pawing and flirting. Sofía and I had spent more than one evening talking about her university courses and what her studies would do for her and where she would go with them. She was committed to veterinary medicine and, despite the attractions of the capital, planned to return to the village to practice. She wanted to specialize in large animal care, meaning horses and cows, not guinea pigs and kittens.

When I arrived at Sra. Martínez’ house late on Friday, my room was ready as promised. As I put my bag down and looked around I felt a stillness, perhaps an anticipation. The corner palm looked healthy, even if the room was shaded because of its location. The French doors stood open, inviting me to step outside into the tiny courtyard ringed by its own collection of plants and its ivy-covered walls.

Those walls could tell their own stories. I remembered the night Sofía and Javier and I spent in the patio after the Rain Festival lived up to its name, and all without actual human sacrifice. But the sexual energy expended that night by us and probably half the village must have disturbed the gods in their rest and the rain was their answer, the way one uses a hose or a bucket of water on copulating dogs. It didn’t stop or even slow us, but for those who remained outside it certainly sent more people home cleaner than they’d been when they started out.

Orgies of past days. Fodder for any sort of masturbatory fantasy that appealed, and I had a very good imagination. I didn’t know for sure about Sofía and Javier, but their talk of their childhood and early adolescence suggests they were equally inventive.

“Michael, welcome.”

I turned to see Sofía standing in the doorway, her summer frock fresh and her hair shiny, as though she’d only just stepped out of her shower. Perhaps she had. I stepped over to embrace her and kiss her on each cheek.

“Hello, Sofía.”

She presented herself in an unmistakable invitation. I found her lips soft but questing, her warmth transmitting itself clearly. I held her bare shoulders gently. With a wriggle she moved closer to me without breaking our kiss and we stood together, our bodies sending messages in that ancient code the gods had given us at the beginning.

“Hey!”

We broke apart at Javier’s laughter. He moved from behind Sofía and ignored my outstretched hand to embrace me and kiss me on both cheeks. I held him steady for a moment looking the question he must have known I had. The sparkle in his eyes, I swear it was a sparkle if not a straight-out gleam, was his answer.

“Welcome, Michael.”

“Thank you, Javier.” I turned to Sofía, standing beside us, a big grin on her face. “Thank you, Sofía.”

“OK,” Sofía said. “We’re off to doña Clara’s place for dinner. She’s putting on a special dish in your honor, Michael.”

“What’s doña Clara?”

Javier laughed.

“She’s the smallest and hardest-to-find restaurant you’ve never been to, Michael. It’s not that she’s a secret, but she doesn’t advertise and everyone who lives here knows where she is. Not everyone can afford her, however.”

“Enough, Javier,” Sofía broke in. “Let’s get out of here.”

It turned out to be a short walk to doña Clara’s establishment. There wasn’t much to announce it, a small sign that said “Meals” beside the front door, that was it. Sofía knocked on the highest panel she could reach. If this had been a 1930s nightclub I’d have expected a small spy hole to open and a suspicious eye check us out. Instead, the door opened and a small man who appeared to be about ninety years old held it for us. His smile got wider when he recognized Sofía.

“Srta. Sofía! So long!”

Sofía stepped close to embrace him, carefully, since he seemed so fragile and I don’t think he was over five feet tall.

“Daniel!”

The gnome and Javier shook hands. Javier turned to me.

“Daniel, this is Michael. Michael, Daniel is the guardian of the gate, as you can see.”

I extended my hand but Daniel stepped past it and embraced me. Embraced my middle, I should say.

“We’ve known Daniel all our lives,” Sofía said as she looked at Daniel with such respect and affection I could not help but be moved. Daniel smiled and gave a little bow. He gestured for us to pass.

“Doña Clara is expecting you, Srta. Sofía.”

When I saw her for a second I thought the famous doña Clara must be Mme Bertha’s twin. They certainly were about the same age and had the same strong features that commanded attention while not being any the less feminine. I was certain they had both been belles in their day. More than belles, in fact. I’d guess their fathers kept baseball bats handy.

The aroma of something delicious permeated the tiny room with its eight tables, I counted them. The closeness was relieved by French doors that opened onto an equally tiny courtyard where one table in the center was set for three people. Tonight was perfect weather, warm enough to be comfortable yet we were past the heat of the day, a clear sky and no rain nor the threat of rain, and whatever doña Clara was cooking was enough to make my mouth water on the spot. The way the other customers, and every table was filled, were paying careful attention to their dishes was the best recommendation I could think of.

After her greetings, as effusive as those from Daniel at the entrance, doña Clara led us to the table in the patio. “For you,” she said, and she kissed each of us in turn as we seated ourselves.

Sofía leaned toward me and whispered, “She likes you, Michael.”

“How do you know?”

“She never kisses strangers. Uh uh.”

Javier shook his head from the other side of the table.

“Never.”

“Do you know what she’s prepared, Sofía?”

“No, but there’s no worry. It will be delicious. It’s a stew, I think doña Clara’s own private family recipe, and she’s done her famous empanadas as well. What else she has in mind I don’t know, but it will be superb.”

If the aroma was any indication, Sofía was right on target. It did sound as though her comment that doña Clara had prepared a special dish in my honor might have been the tiniest of exaggerations, however.

“Her wine is excellent, Michael,” said Javier as he refilled our glasses. “Strong, too.”

That was enough to crack us all up. It wasn’t the worst red I’d ever had, but “strong” was perhaps one of the few positive things you could say about it. As it turned out the wine had to be strong to stand up to doña Clara’s stew.

The stew was every bit as delicious as Sofía and Javier had said it would be. Meat so tender it melted, literally, no bull, on your tongue, unspoiled or undistracted by potatoes or carrots or any of the other usual suspects one might find in a stew. The contrasting sharp chorizo sausage doña Clara had added plus a bit of onion resulted in a strong, complex dish that begged to be eaten. “Session feel,” I think the marketers call it. That’s a fancy way of saying you have one bite and you can’t stop.

In addition to the famous empanadas there was an au gratin dish on the side, curiously delicate in contrast to the stew, plus a salad with a vinagrette than demanded one’s attention. It made me want to stand up and howl, and for a second I wondered if doña Clara perhaps had laced it with the magic potion we’d all partaken of at the Rain Festival.

At coffee, Sofía sat back in her chair and rubbed her tummy, a beatific smile on her face. I felt the same way. To judge by Javier’s grin he was in the same place.

Sofía’s skin had acquired the lightest of sheens from the natural heat generated by eating, and as I’d watched her take every bite the obvious metaphor had occurred to me. I was erect throughout most of the meal and would not have been surprised to find Javier was as well.

Food is foreplay, that’s a known fact. In Sofía’s case I knew her appetites were strong, in food as well as other sensual play. I couldn’t stop myself from leaning close and sniffing her neck. I tasted a bit of skin, too, and found it salty and energizing. That’s beating around the bush. It was flat-out arousing. I saw Javier shift in his seat as he watched us.

“Are you going to make Javier suffer this evening, Sofía,” I whispered.

She grinned.

“No more than you, Michael.”

She kissed me, and blew a kiss to Javier.

“I am going to torture you.”

My turn to kiss her.

“Are you prepared for the consequences?”

This time I spoke loud enough for Javier to hear me. His smile got bigger.

“It’s two against one, you know.”

Sofía was smug.

“We’ll see about that, boys.”

Given that she’d left us both limp and exhausted after our Rain Festival frolic, I did not doubt her word. I also knew we’d succeeded, Javier and I, in reducing her to jelly at the same time.

We left doña Clara’s establishment in a flurry of hugs and kisses and profuse expressions of thanks for a delicious and filling meal, one that spoke to us as a meandering but pleasant tour of the senses, visual, olfactory and, of course, taste.

“Where to?” I asked.

“Your place, of course,” answered Sofía. “I asked Sra. Martínez to put a few bottles of Champagne in your little refrigerator.”

I started to wonder what other arrangements this young and innocent-appearing she-devil might have made in my name. Sofía saw my look.

“Oh, stop it, Michael. You know I won’t hurt you.”

Sofía had finished her first year of university at the head of her class in veterinary studies. The transition from alert and articulate but shy teenager, the one I’d met two years ago shortly after I arrived, to a self-confident, still cheerful, and unashamedly sensual young woman was remarkable.

An unashamedly sensual virgin. In the technical sense, at any rate. Moreover, one who apparently had decided the time had come for her to change that status, and if I was reading these screaming signals correctly, she’d selected Javier and me to do the honors. Which of us would be first I didn’t know, but I did know without a doubt we’d find an eager and accomplished and enthusiastic partner for whatever we had in mind. Memories of the Rain Festival were still fresh in my mind.

Sofía headed straight for my refrigerator when we entered my room and let out a cheer. She turned with a bottle of Champagne in her hand and stepped over to the sideboard to scoop up three flutes.

“Shall we?” She gestured toward the patio with its padded bench and chairs that echoed the arrangement inside. Unlike the Rain Festival, the sky remained clear and the air, while cooling slightly, was still blood-warm.

Our conversation was mixed, almost but not quite aimless, as we drank and chatted, our hands on each other in a friendly fashion. It was as if the gods, the ones behind the Rain Festival, the ones who were appeased by the spectacles so many years ago of blood and sperm and frenzied coupling and ecstatic wrangling and interweaving of fevered bodies covered in sweat and cum and blood, they who were older than any of the western gods, were guiding us that night.

It may be nonsense, I know, but when I think back on it I truly believe those gods were present in some fashion our common ordinary everyday senses could not quite ascertain or distinguish even as we felt their effects. I don’t really remember how we ended up with our clothes cast aside. It was not a frenzy, it was a journey, a moving from one stage to another as our hungers sharpened.

Every sense, even without the drug, was heightened, and it was if there was an invisible transformer, an invisible accelerator, that made me able to discern the healthy sweat, the shampoo in the case of Sofía, as easily as I could Javier’s aftershave. The tips of my fingers were as sensitive as the most delicate of electrical instruments as they recorded smooth skin, the ridges of a nipple, the roughness of balls, the round mushroom head of a penis or the wrinkly bundle of nerves that made first Javier, then me, jump when stroked just the right way.

There were no cries, nothing to disturb my landlady, but I heard my own breathing, my own gasps and swallowing as well as those of Sofía and Javier as we drove each other on. Despite our attentions to each other, and Javier and I did not stint in that department, by unspoken agreement we concentrated on driving Sofía to the edge. We did not rush. It was more of a voyage down a smooth-running stream, but one that gathered speed and strength and power as it neared a set of falls.

Sofía was an eager participant; not only that but she did her best to bring us along with her and she was successful. We wanted her to go first, her to tip over that first set of falls, even if they did not result in an abrupt drop, but more of an accelerating ride downward as she felt the first in a rolling series of orgasms that she marked with little yips and squeaks and finally a sigh when she reached the bottom and floated easily in the quiet pool below.

Javier and I followed her down, with a little mutual assistance but mostly on our own. Sofía’s own ministrations, when she wasn’t caught up completely in what we were doing to her, had brought both of us to the edge, and it was with only the lightest of touches between us that we happily went over and down and joined Sofía in the pool below.

I was the first to rise. I extended my hand to Javier, then to Sofía. I ran washcloths under the hot water at the sink and brought them back for all of us. When we were refreshed I returned to the room and extracted a cold bottle of Champagne from the fridge and refilled our glasses. I raised my glass.

“To you, Sofía.”

“To you, Michael, and to you, Javier,” she replied.

“Sofía, Michael,” and Javier drained his glass.

I felt the push once more of those old gods, but this time a tranquility, a stillness that had been absent in our earlier attentions. It was as if the gods knew we needed this pause to re-focus and re-group and, especially for Javier and me, to re-charge. They were patient. They’d waited hundreds if not thousands of years. A little longer was something less than a blink of an eye for them. For us, it was anticipation. Our encounter had satisfied us, had assuaged the initial urgency, but it was as if the spring were being wound up again. In this case one might say the spring was being stroked, as I felt Sofía’s hand on me. When I looked, I saw her strokes were having the same effect on Javier.

Once again the gods spoke to us in a language we needed no words to understand. The river, the smoothly flowing one in front of us, beckoned. This time we entered it the three of us together without even leaving the padded bench. I had no desire to go back inside, even to the softness and welcome of the big bed. This was something that required the open air, the night sky, the stars, the moon if there had been one, to witness our actions. It was a primal feeling, one that I had experienced only once before, but it was unmistakable and undeniable.