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In the safe silence of the bedroom, between sheets rumpled by the recent amorous agitations, the man heard his wife tell him that her period was two days late, and the news seemed to him extraordinary and utterly amazing, a kind of second fiat lux in an age in which Latin has ceased to be used and practiced, a vernacular surgeet ambula which has no idea where it is going and which is frightening for that very reason. Only an hour before, at most, in a moment of touching openness rare in the masculine sex, marçal Gacho had admitted to being a child, when, quite unbeknownst to him, he had been a father in embryo for some weeks, which just goes to show that we should never be too sure about what we think we are because it could easily happen that, at that precise moment, we are, in fact, something completely different. Almost everything that Marta and marçal said to each other that night, before falling asleep out of sheer exhaustion, is described in a thousand and one stories of couples with children, but the concrete analysis of the concrete situation in which this married couple find themselves did not leave un-examined certain questions peculiar to them, for example, Marta's diminished ability to cope with the hard physical work of the pottery, but it failed to resolve, because this was dependent on the expected promotion, whether the baby would be born before or after their move to the Center. On the first point, Marta said she was sure that her mother, the late Justa Isasca, who had worked tirelessly up until the last day of her life, would never have succumbed to the pleasures of complete idleness just because she was pregnant, I myself would be a witness to that if only I could dredge up my memories of the nine months I lived inside her, A child in the womb can't possibly know what's going on outside, replied marçal, yawning, I suppose so, but you must at least admit that a baby would have an intimate knowledge of what's going on inside its mother's womb, it's all just a question of remembering, We don't even remember the trauma of birth, Well, that's probably when we lose the first of all our memories, Now you're just inventing things, give me a kiss. Before this delicate conversation and that kiss, marçal had expressed a vehement wish that the move to the Center should take place before the birth, You'll have the best medical treatment and the best nursing you could possibly imagine, there's nothing like it anywhere, either near or far, as regards both medicine and surgery, How do you know if you've never been to the hospital at the Center, you've probably never even been inside it, No, but I know someone who was admitted as a patient, a superior of mine who was at death's door when he went in and came out a new man, there are people outside who try to use their influence to get admitted as patients, but the rules are very strict, To hear you talk anyone would think that no one at the Center ever dies, Of course they do, but death is less obvious somehow, That's certainly an advantage, You'll see when we go there, See what, that death is less obvious, is that what you mean, No, I wasn't talking about death, Yes, you were, Look, I'm not interested in death, I was talking about you and our child, about the hospital you'll go to, Always assuming your promotion isn't too long in coming, If they don't promote me within nine months, they never will, Give me a kiss, Mr. Security Guard, and let's go to sleep, All right, here's your kiss, but there's still one other thing we need to talk about, What's that, From now on you'll do less work in the pottery and in two or three months' time you'll stop working altogether, Do you expect my father to do everything, especially if the Center puts in an order for the dolls, Get someone in to help, You know there's no point, no one wants to work in a pottery, In your condition, What about my condition, my mother carried on working when she was pregnant with me, How do you know, Because I can remember. They both laughed, then Marta said, Let's not tell my father about this just yet, he'll be thrilled, but it's best we don't say anything to him, Why, Oh, I don't know, he's got too much on his mind as it is, The pottery, The pottery's just one thing, The Center, The Center's another thing, whether or not we'll get the order, the stock he's got to remove from the warehouse, but there are other things too, a certain water jug with a loose handle, for example, but I'll tell you about that later. Marta was the first to go to sleep. marçal was feeling less shaken by then, he knew more or less which road he would have to take after the birth, and when, nearly half an hour later, sleep touched him with its smoky fingers, he let himself drift unresistingly off, his spirit at peace. His last conscious thought was to ask himself if Marta really had said something about the handle on a water jug, Ridiculous, I must have dreamed it, he thought. He was the one who slept the least, and he was the one to wake up first. The dawn light was sifting in through the gaps in the shutters. You're going to have a child, he said to himself, and he repeated, a child, a child, a child. Then, moved by a curiosity quite without desire, almost innocent, if innocence still exists in that place in the world we call bed, he lifted the covers and looked at Marta's body. She was turned toward him, with her knees slightly bent. The lower half of her nightshirt was caught up around her waist, her white belly was only just visible in the half-darkness and disappeared completely into the dark area of the pubis. marçal lowered the covers and realized that the moment for caresses had not gone away, it had remained in the room all night, and there it was, waiting. Doubtless touched by the draft of cold air caused by the movement of the bedcovers, Marta sighed and changed position. Like a bird gently testing out the site for its first nest, Manual's left hand lightly brushed her belly Marta opened her eyes and smiled, then said jokingly, Good morning, Father-to-be, but her expression changed abruptly, she had just realized that they were not alone in the room. The moment for caresses had slipped in between them, had got in between the sheets, it could not have said precisely what it wanted, but they did exactly as it wished.