marriage bed with the virgin blood of her maidenhead. This bloodstained sheet would be paraded around the streets so that all would know that she was a virgin. He realized that if he stole his niece's virginity, his brother would be forced to avenge this insult by killing the deflorator of his child.
And all the while, La Tarantula would walk around the house attired only in a thin, torn dress. And when she would kneel sometimes, her uncle would see the tiny notch of hair that covered her delicious cunny. And he would clench his fists and suck in his breath and bite his lips to keep himself from seizing hold of her and throwing her to the ground, there to puncture her with his prick that was demanding entrance to her loveliness.
Once, Chato Doble thought he would try to forget the young girl who had bewitched his senses. He went into the city across the river. There he picked up a lumia, a woman of the streets, and took her to a cafetin, a low-class cafe. He got himself thoroughly drunk on aguardiente. He got his senses inflamed watching a Spanish wench swing her hips and breasts in a baile flamenco dance. But when he tried to fuck the lumia he had taken in from the streets, he saw only a shrivelled-up body with thin bony legs and an enormous hole of a cunt, a golfa if ever there was one, instead of the well-rounded shape of his niece with her tiny quim nestling in its maiden hairs. With a roar, he pushed the dazed lumia away from him, sprang out of bed and ran stumbling down the street.
When he had himself ferried over the Guadalquivir he gave himself over to thoughts of his niece. And the more he thought of her the more he desired her. His drunken brain refused to voice the fears that had stopped him from raping her before. He became potvaliant and, encouraged by the drunken proddings of his heart, he stumbled out of the boat, down into the depths of the Triana into the Cava Vieja district where his brother lived with his niece.
The fates conspired with him. On that same night, his brother had found it necessary to remain the night with his own woman whom he was fucking at her home. He dared not bring her to his own home because he did not want to contaminate his lovely daughter. And so, that night, of all nights, he remained away from home leaving his daughter alone in their house, sleeping peacefully, dreaming perhaps of a black-haired young Spanish don who was stroking her buttocks and kissing her wildly on the lips.
Her uncle, meanwhile, had stopped outside in the street and was debating with himself whether he should go up or not. A faint glimmer of sense in back of his head had warned him to continue onward. But a stronger surge of passion coupled with the force of his drunkenness tugged at his heart and at his penis and painted beautiful pictures in his mind of what would happen. He saw himself stroking the lovely girl's limbs. He felt her cool body next to his inflamed one. He could almost feel her tongue insinuating itself into his mouth, searching every nook and cranny for some spot to titillate. Was there no wonder that he chose to do as he did?
A wine shop was next to the house in which his brother lived. In the moonlight, he saw the slender necks of wine bottles glinting like jewels. Wrapping his hat around his fist, he looked cautiously around first and then sank his fist into the window. A thin tinkling sound broke the night air. He remained quiet for a while listening for sounds. None came. Not even in back of the shop was there anyone stirring. With satisfaction, he swept up a number of bottles of choice wines and ducked into the hallway at the side of the wine store that led up to his brother's rooms. In the distance he had seen the glint of the patentleather cocked hats of a pair of the constabulary.
Craftily, he ascended the dark stairs, making no sound. The bottles in his arms clinked as he took each step. Their contents of wines gurgled merrily. A brand like grin came to Chato Doble's face. He would ply his brother with wine and get him drunk. And then, when he would fall off to sleep in a stupor, he, Chato Doble, would slip into the girl's room and there partake of that for which he had thirsted, for which his parched tongue now clove to his palate.
He pushed the door open slightly and listened. There was no sound. All he heard was the faint clicketyclack of the constables' heels on the cobblestones in the street below. Soon he heard the sounds grow fainter and fainter until they were no more. He was surprised not to hear his brother's deep stentorian snores. And when his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he looked around. He saw the same bare room he had left before. His pile of clothes lay in the corner. The charcoal brazier smoked lazily against the wall. A plate of beans and potatoes, his dinner, had grown stiff on the table and was covered with hardened fat. A gleam came into his eyes. His brother was not home. The gleam was changed instantly to a perplexed frown. Perhaps he had gone out with his niece? Perhaps she, too, was not home. His heart beating like mad, his breath labouring, Chato Doble edged over to the door that separated the two rooms. For a second he heard nothing but the beating of his own troubled heart. Then, faintly, he heard the calm, beautiful breathing of a young girl.
He stepped into her room.
The bottles of wine still rested in his arms.
In the bed, he saw her, for whom his manhood yearned. Not daring to breathe for fear of waking her, he stood staring down at her young body partially uncovered of the quilt which she had drawn over her.
Directly in a thin, tremulous shaft of moonlight that had slithered into the room from the window above her head, he saw her left breast tumbled out from the confines of her shift, standing out from the darkening gloom of the rest of her body like a ghostly breast of carved Carrara marble. And pointing up from this breast, surrounded by an aureole of pink-tinted flesh, he saw the tiny undeveloped nipple of the girl, standing up as though erect with passion.
Chato Doble could control himself no longer. Sinking to his knee, with a moan, he dropped his mouth to the firm breast and gently tongued the nipple, caressing it subtly with his lips, occasionally feeling its tender flesh stiffen almost imperceptibly under the manipulations of his ardent organ.
He heard his niece sigh and then suck in her breath as though she were experiencing an orgasm. Immediately he refrained from tonguing her nipple, anxiously watching her eyes for fear she should awaken before he had fully aroused her passion. But she sank once more into her deep slumber. But this time, instead of dreaming that her dark lover was only kissing and fondling her, she felt him gently insinuate what was between his legs in between her own legs. In her dream, she realized now what the thing was for that dangled between her father's legs. It was to go into her own thing between her legs. That's what it was for.
And as she felt her dream lover inserting his into her, she felt a quiver of pain go through her. But it was a different sort of pain because, although it hurt her, behind the pain there was a sort of pleasure that made her gasp with joy and shiver with fright at the same time.
Suddenly she opened her eyes.
Over her, she saw the dark, bearded face of her uncle, Chato Doble.
Unable to control himself any longer, he had lifted the quilt from off her legs, drawn away the thin shift that covered her nakedness and had inserted his finger into her little cunny, skirmishing meanwhile for the little button of pleasure. It was at that point that he saw his niece's eyes open. But he saw that there was no fear in them. He noted that she did not shriek. Instead, she stared calmly up at him, wondering why he had stuck his finger into her hole but knowing that it felt good, that it seemed to be that for which she had been waiting for all of her years.
For a moment, neither said a word. Chato Doble allowed his finger to remain in her cunny. Then he said in a low tone, his voice quivering with emotion, the words scarcely spoken, 'Are you afraid, my child?'
She shook her head from side to side.
And her eyes widened.
Chato Doble withdrew his finger. Then he took up a bottle of wine from the floor where he had dropped it. When he pulled the cork out the pop resounded against the walls eerily. The odour that emanated from the neck came up to his nostrils. He sniffed it. Muscatel. Sweet wine. Intoxicating wine. He leaned over the bed to his niece and offered her the bottle. Her eyes still wide, she took the bottle from him and put it to her lips and threw her head back. She felt the liquid splash into her mouth and course down her throat. She felt a suffusing warmth gliding into every vein of her body. She felt a gentle throb worm its way into her head, like a small headache. The wall of the room fluttered like a moth crazy with light. The ceiling pulsated like a rabbit's heart. A ringing came into her ears like the sound of church bells miles away. And, as though he were as many miles away, she saw her uncle's face, emerging from a mass of indeterminate features.
Closer and closer she saw the face come, taking on recognizable features all the while. Then she felt his lips touch hers. She felt his avid fingers caressing the stiffened nipples of her breasts. She felt an enormous stiffness brushing up against the spot between her legs. She wanted to let out a cry. But the wine in her withheld the cry. She wanted to seize hold of his busy fingers at her breasts. But the resultant reactions of his expert fingering made her forget to object. She wanted to contract the opening of her legs so that he could find no entrance for the big thing that he was rubbing against her cleavage. But her own desires made her throw herself open to him. And she
