The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts Read Online Free PDF Page B

torches to exact vengeance in the name of honour.
    Thirdly, Dona Constanza’s bizarre plan had placed him in a truly invidious position, as had rapidly become apparent in the bar of the brothel when he had divulged it to the company. They had all babbled excitedly at once, but it was Hectoro who had expressed the problem most concisely.
    ‘The fact is,’ he said, looking around from face to face, ‘that the Mula supplies all of us and our fields, and such a canal would reduce our crops to dust in the dry season and ourselves to skeletons. It is only in any case a puddle of piss in the dry season, and that’s without any of it being drawn off by Dona Constanza.’
    ‘The fact also is,’ replied Sergio, ‘that Dona Constanza owns the land where the Mula runs, she employs nearly all of us, she has the legal right to do what she wants, and it will be we who have to dig the canal for her stupid swimming pool.’
    ‘Dona Constanza has the best land hereabouts,’ said Misael, ‘and yet on it she keeps only horses which do no work. I know where she can put her legal rights and that is a place where Don Hugh seldom goes for fear of his health.’
    Misael grinned, his white teeth gleaming in the lamplight. He crossed his eyes and made a lewd corkscrewing motion upwards with his index finger, so that even Hectoro laughed.
    ‘Surely,’ said Josef, screwing up his eyes against the ghostly blue cigar smoke that was curling and twisting about the room before accelerating upwards out of the door, ‘a canal would not hold the water, nor even a trench, for the earth is so dry it would suck away the water faster than Hectoro drinks aguardiente.’
    ‘Then we should tell Dona Constanza to make a pipeline with a windmill pump of the kind that Profesor Luis knows how to make, and that would do it,’ replied Hectoro. ‘And I will not have my honour insulted, Josef, or I will feed your cojones to the pigs.’
    ‘My wife has already bitten them off,’ exclaimed Josef. ‘But to return to the matter which is more important than your honour, or even my testicles, I think you are right, Hectoro. I think Sergio should suggest a pipe; though it is still a waste of water, it is less stupid than a canal.’
    Dolores and Consuelo had been listening to this male discourse and whispering to each other from their position behind the bar, and at last Dolores let out a long throaty chuckle, and said in her rum-and-cigars voice, ‘Ah, you men, the trouble with you is that you approach every problem directly.’
    ‘And the trouble with women is that they should hold their tongues when men talk of serious matters, but they never do,’ rejoined Hectoro.
    ‘Nor should they,’ said Consuelo. ‘You men should listen to Dolores, who has more sense than all of you, especially as she has learned to read and therefore knows about the world.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Dolores, ‘but this is just common sense. The Mula, you ought to know, runs through the land of Don Emmanuel after it has been past the pueblo, and he needs the water as we do. Go to see him, and he will stop Dona Constanza for his sake and for ours. It is obvious.’
    There was a long silence, during which Hectoro finished his drink before announcing, ‘Companeros, it is a great grief to me when women are in the right.’
    ‘Dolores,’ said Misael, his eyes twinkling with mischief, ‘that is an idea so intelligent that in future I will let you fuck me for nothing.’
    ‘That is very kind,’ retorted Dolores, ‘but for you it is still five pesos!’
    ‘Then warn me when you have been with him,’ said Josef, ‘for I should not like any of mine to get mixed with his!’
    Don Emmanuel was an anomaly. His father had been an eminent progressive educationalist in England, who had decided that his son should attend his own establishment, and consequently Emmanuel had grown up half-naked and unusually blunt. He had also known, through his father, the immensely cerebral and unhappy