5

11:24

Gemma knew that Melquiades was doing something in his room all day and all night when she was either playing or drawing or doing her homework. She didn't know what he was into but while she was reading books of average size, mostly adventure stories about extraordinary kids living in other lands, he was reading books about the size of a stone tomb she used to see in the old cemetery. He was really serious about what he was doing and whenever she disturbed him, she was told off and had to stay in her room for hours without the possibility of going out and playing outside.

'I told you I'm busy,' he said annoyed.

'But I'm bored!' she moaned and lied on the bed 'I will die if I have to just stay inside and read what you make me read. Don't you realize that you're so boring? You're the most boring person I know...'

It wasn't the first time Melquiades was accused of being a bore. The same accusation was given to him years ago by Jacob and confirmed by Jacob's friends, his girlfriends, and girlfriend's friends. The chain of connections was long. Even his father used to think that Melquiades wasn't anything interesting.

'Seriously, girl, why do you want to spend time with me, then? After your classes, you can do whatever you want. I'm not going to make you entertained. You're sixteen. You're almost an adult.'

'But you don't treat me as an adult! All of my friends are allowed to do whatever they want! And you make me stay here and learn and cook, and I'm tired of it. I want a different life for myself. I don't want to be as boring as you! I don't want my life to look like your life! I'd die! No one ever comes here, you're on your own! You're the most lonely person on earth!'

Melquiades raised his eyebrows and smiled. She was getting on his nerves. She was getting older, she grew taller and even prettier, her breasts were full, her hips round, she grew hair on her armpits and vagina, yet she still washed only when he made her. And she still wore Jacob's clothes in various configurations. She never wore a dress. There wasn't any dress in the house, but she could dress somewhat less manly.

And she was so annoying! She screamed at him and threw textbooks days before she got her period, or she started crying at some point and he didn't know what was the reason for her despair. Or when she made a mistake in her schoolwork, she cried and self-criticized and she said she was worthless. And the same day she would cook something so tasteless and, taking into account her bad mood, Melquiades had to eat it and pretend that it tasted great, not to make things worse. Sometimes she went crazy and went running naked around the house and Melquiades didn't know what was worse: running after her in his old age and trying to make her put something on, or seeing her naked, and even though she still was a child, she already looked like a woman.

The most annoying part was when she looked at him over her book with a doubtless desire.

'You know, when I first saw you, I thought you were really ugly. Old and ugly. But now, I see that there's something... special,' she was looking for the right word 'A spark! Yes, definitely a spark! You read so much, and you're so tired and you're so good to me, and... ' and she would bring her chair closer to him, and she would touch his knee and look at him with those huge gray eyes and smile showing her beautiful white teeth. And at that time Melquiades really regretted giving her that book on human sexuality. The food and the heat made it worse. She was looking at him like an animal looking at a prey.

'Look, your friends, as I might observe, live in tiny rooms with thirty other people and, due to overcrowding, they have lice and various other diseases, and they die. From what I've seen your girlfriends are mostly pregnant and believe me, that is the last thing at the age of sixteen that you want to experience. And if you just left me alone when I'm most busy, I might find some time for you later. We could play cards, or chess, or read something aloud...'

'But I'm just bored!' she looked at him with his gray eyes again, and Melquiades knew what was approaching.

'Look. If I made love to you, it would make things far more complicated for us. Besides, from where I come from, it is for me illegal, since you're sixteen, and not eighteen, and as far as ignorant you might be, you definitely know what a word pedophile means. What's more, I'm your guardian and it will ruin your psyche if I exceed the amount of power I have over you. Gemma, you're beautiful, but you have to...

'So you admit! You consider me beautiful!' and within a second, she would take off her clothes 'Don't you want to touch me?'

'To be honest, I want to slap you!' he screamed at her 'I'm tired of it, Gemma, it's disrespectful of you to always think about me in this way, when you know it is out of the question. You're wild!'
And then she would cry like a baby. She would sit on the floor and, naked or clothed, she cried, with her lovely face so ugly and wet. And he would sit next to her and try to comfort her and she would kiss him all over his face and afterward, it would all be fine for a while. She would not seduce him for some time and he would have time to study politics, and the meals they shared in the evening would be perfectly all right. Until another sunny day, when she would just look at him in the same manner and he would wish someone would come and make her satisfied. Not that she wasn't beautiful, but it was difficult for him not to consider the fact that she still drew not very good pictures with the crayons from his childhood and would suck her thumb and pick her nose when she was solving her homework task. And that, considering his age and experience, would seem just ridiculous. He always thought about what would be afterward. He would be afraid to hurt her. Or she might not like it. He knew teens in K. were sexually active a lot earlier than the law thought it is proper, but with Gemma he had reservations.

Melquiades wondered what was the cause of K. pretty liberal behavior. The sexual drive was so intense that it wasn't a surprise that they were reproducing at such a pace. There was not even one case of infertility. It was a fact that once a woman started to be sexually active, she was pregnant at least once a year. And they were so hungry in their desire that even their overcrowded rooms weren't a problem. They would go to fields, forests, and bushes, and having no other entertainment, they would just make love for hours. And two-year-old kids would run around half-naked, plump and nourished with no protection whatsoever. He didn't want Gemma to end up like the girls she used to live with. But he knew that she was going to look for her pleasure somewhere else if he wasn't going to give it to her. She was getting mad, mainly because she had very limited contact with her peers.

'Gemma,' one evening he came into her room and saw her lying on her bed in a white shirt. She was looking at the ceiling with anger, desperation and annoyance 'Are you asleep?'he asked.

'No,' she answered 'I'm bored'

'That's no news. You're always bored.'

'If you just let me go outside for just a little bit longer, I would be entertained...'

'I don't want you to get pregnant.' he said, being honest ' I really need you. I really need you to be perfectly okay until the day you're eighteen and you can be sent to N.'

'Why do you need to send me to N.? You never want to tell me anything. You just hide things. You teach me how to read, but you won't tell me anything of importance!'

'One day you'll know everything. Don't worry. I'll tell you all you need to know. But now I want to talk about something different. Gemma, are you in love with me?'

And from the moment she got red in the face, he knew that it was the case. Then she would cry again. The annoying Gemma came back and he just gave a sigh.

'I don't know' she said ' I just think about you all the time. I want you to touch me. I want you to like me. And you don't want to look at me at all!'

Melquiades laughed. And Gemma cried even more.

'I just want someone to touch me.'

Melquiades nodded in acceptance. He sat next to her. And she would look at him with her eyes and cling to him and started licking his ears and kissing his cheeks. And he would put a hand around her waist and he would touch her thighs and he would put his hand on her breasts, and he would put his hands and fingers between her thighs, and hear her shorter and shorter breaths. He felt strangely entertained doing it, even though he didn't know if it was proper or not, even according to his beliefs. She was definitely less infuriated and she didn't ask for anything more than that. She would sometimes enter his bed without any further comments and just put his hand between her thighs and she would move and just breathe loudly with a faster and faster pace. And they would never talk about it during the day. She was satisfied and he was a little bit sad when at seventeen she stopped coming to him, and even though he knew it was bound to happen sooner or later, he was somewhat nostalgic about this period of her life. But she was over her first love, and being over it she didn't need his touch anymore.

Because Gemma accused him of being antisocial, she must have been surprised when one day a man paid him a visit, the next day there were two more and a week after that another twenty. These were the men Melquiades knew before he had gone abroad. Apparently, he had been writing letters to them and inviting them over. He was getting serious and these men were old just like him. They would sit in the dining room by the table and Gemma would have to cook for all of them, which made her angry and tired. Those men didn't cook for her in return. After her duty time was finished, she would sit on one little bench by the window and listen to them talk.

'Another issue,' Melquiades looked at his notes 'Has anyone thought about this sexual drive that makes people behave like animals most of their unoccupied time?'

Elderly men looked at themselves with surprise.

'Gentlemen, even I remember that things were different before I left. And, considering the sexual revolution and people's promiscuity, I believe K. is on a verge of madness. I think we have to find a way to stop that.'

'Stop that?' one man was evidently surprised 'What is there to stop? Women come to us on their own. And we don't take in only girls. We take care of the older ones too. Sometimes we let them even stay in our buildings. And you? And her?' he pointed at Gemma and she couldn't help but make her unattractive facial expression.

She knew that landlords had many women; and because landlords were only elderly men, (no young person could even dream of owning a building), numerous hopeless women with no place to stay were going to them for protection. They had twenty or more girls for themselves, and Gemma knew that it made ordinary men jealous. That's why rapes and kidnappings were so common. And besides, even Gemma stayed with Melquiades and she had no intention of running away. With him, she felt safe.

But Melquiades didn't seem to be fond of the way things were.

'And you think that it is perfectly fine to make use of younger girls, play with them, leave them pregnant with yet another child, with whom they're neither willing, nor able to take care of, and go on with another one, impressed by the fact that your parents left you a two-storey house which you treat like a brothel? Perhaps you should move to N.'

' I think you exaggerate, Melquiades,' said another man 'You haven't been here for a long time. That's true that we take advantage over the homeless, but we weren't the one who made building anything new illegal. That's true that we have significant superiority over young women, but I think you understand our position. They give themselves to us. They are impressed, they think that it will buy them other, maybe better future, but the fault lies somewhere in between. We wouldn't force them to do this.'

Melquiades looked at Gemma who smiled with her silly smile and he wished she would get mature quickly.

'What about contraception?' he said after a short while 'Can we do something about this crazy population growth? That would at least postpone the exiles.'

'What do you mean by contraception?' all men were truly interested.

'I don't know, anything. Rubbers for a start! Aren't there any engineers who would make condoms from rubber?'

'Most of them were taken to N. Jacob considered them useful.'

'All of them?'

'Some of them were... killed. There are still some less professional ones around. We might ask if that's is really important.'

'Friends,' Melquiades said after a short while 'I wish to... We wish to make a living here. We know that this country didn't look like this years ago. You know that we had better future than they will ever have. We should do what is in our strength to make our people more civilized, more organized. More social.'

'More social by giving them a condom?' one older man laughed 'And what made you think they would use it. Who would like to make love in a piece of rubber?'

'I suppose you could set the right example, David ' Melquiades laughed as well 'Tomorrow I would like to meet those engineers. For today's meeting that is about it. Thank you for coming. I know that leading things by the correspondence is quite lengthy, but having no phones and no post office makes things more complicated, especially that those boys who I send with letters cannot be reliable when they fulfill their paid duty with a month's delay. I think that we should meet here at least once a week and decide what can be done.'

All men nodded in agreement. Those who didn't nod didn't come, as Melquiades had sent many more letters, but only thirty-five men appeared. All of them knew that Jacob was his brother. All of them knew what happened but no one wanted to tell him anything of much importance.

The next day he was instructing engineers how to make strong rubber condoms and Gemma was laughing hard when he told her what they are for.

'Gemma if you had a choice, whether you wanted to be pregnant, or not, wouldn't you want to use a piece of rubber? Simple as that.'

'Would you use it with me?' she asked.

'You don't love me anymore, so I think I won't.' he smiled and Gemma shook her shoulders.

A week later she took a bag of condoms to her old place and advertised them to all the girls as if it had been her own invention.

'You can do it safely as long as you make them put it on.' she took a stick and presented to them how they should make use of narrow rubber balloons.

Girls were laughing hard, but all of them took condoms from the bag and, happy that maybe this year they won't be having to carry next unwanted kid, they put them in their pockets.

Gemma was a little bit unhappy that Melquiades hadn't shown her condoms before because they might have been together in another way, but he was right. She didn't need him anymore. She didn't need his touch and she learned how to appease her desire on her own.