THE LOVER OF THE SCORPION

Communications by radio were suspended, due to censorship obligated by security reasons, now that a war had been unleashed outside my work area. It had been a long time since I passed through that place, which in fact had been unlucky for me, from the point of romance more than anything. The girlfriend of my cousin, who was my assistant professor, was the only person who missed me. At the new university, where she was studying literature and not science, I found her on the verge of moving to a lodging. My father, in the new country, was tired and almost ill, subdued. Didn't want to help me to continue studying, nor continue living with people of his age. The dean of the Faculty of Sciences, who was a physicist the same age as my father, neither wanted to keep mentoring my studies. I tuned in a radio station from the country where I had lived as a child, and where I became a professor of the Lancaster system, and of course, couldn't find anything. Neither music, nor commentaries, or announcers. The war that had been unleashed in those territories didn't let me know anything about those people. My cousin, the assistant, had arranged to transport his girlfriend to the University. Then, yes, of course, I moved in with her to an apartment in the University community because she felt alone in the lodging. She was with me, even though she wasn't my girlfriend, but my cousins, and didn't want me to be alone because she missed me. Of course, being with her wasn't the best, but since she wouldn't leave me I had to marry her since my cousin hadn't married her when we were in the other country.

Since I wasn't a math teacher, I wasn't entitled to medical prescriptions, in order to send a message to my assistant. Message that said: Even though I'm with your girlfriend, don't worry, there will be no children. A mathematics teacher, by only giving a few classes, could obtain the solution to transmit a chemical message, certainly not by talking on the radio, just like insects, who communicate chemically. A contraceptive test that I would do to this woman, who was with me for nostalgic reasons, could be that chemical message that mocked radio censorship. But to do this, since it's natural, I had to marry her. I would get the recipe if I married her. Something certainly paradoxical, but necessary, since I had to understand that the man on the other side was left without a woman. It was an intelligent move that a lot of academics whom I was with now were making.

What is certain is that I now appeared to be publicly married to my assistant's girlfriend, although the marriage gave me the right to use the chemical by which I could communicate. If I had been a math teacher, I wouldn't have to get involved in this production, which was an undesired marriage with my friend's girlfriend. But I could send a message to my friend through the clinic, now that I used the formula, even though we now appeared to be married. After I managed to send him a message in a country at war, I separated from his girlfriend and found a way for us to get divorced. It's true that now it would be difficult for me to get really married, but since I was committed to my old job with people whom I had been with, I had to endure this dilemma. I didn't know, however, if the message to my cousin had reached its destination. What is certain is that I couldn't marry again, and I spent many years alone.

An entomologist, or specialist in the lives of insects, became interested in me. The sting of the scorpion, in its early infancy, not only had laid the bases of his vocation with these forms of loss, the sting, terrible by itself, had obstructed the fallopian tubes with its hemorrhage. This woman, of course, looked for me when I got divorced from my cousin's girlfriend. By that time I wasn't a college student and my past as a teacher of the Lancaster system was a forgotten thing, But in spite of everything, she came looking for me at my parents' house. She came from the other side also, from that country that was still at war with this one, and she justified being with me the obstruction that she was enduring.

"When you were a teacher in my country, I was too poor to be your student", she told me. "A scorpion stung me now you see how I am."

"What's important is that you were the one who received the message." I told her. "You already know that I didn't have any children with my cousin's girlfriend, the one that the people in your country loved so much. To me never, never to a teacher of a country as poor as yours, but that is not accustomed to poverty. You, in the past, were not poor, and that is what has you in this one, which was always poor. However, your problem has a solution. There is a strain of stem cells from this couple, that of my assistant and his girlfriend. If you let me know if you want them, your obstruction will disappear. And perhaps you will no longer be the lover of the scorpion that stung you. "

II

A few years later, my cousin's girlfriend, the woman whom I was dramatically married to, returned to look for me at my parent's house. She arrived at my parent's house pregnant. I took care of her until she had the baby, who was the same as my assistant, but with a curious detail. It didn't resemble the mother, his girlfriend, but the entomologist.

"It doesn't resemble you." I told her. "It resembles my cousin, but not you. But to the woman of that country."

"I accept what you suggested." She told me. "I accept the strain of my boyfriend and I. Although as you can see, it didn't have it. He returned to that place right away, after that the clinic injected the cells."

"With her and the insects is something serious. The scorpion remembers her as if he was her boyfriend." I replied.

"What does that poor insect want to say?" she asked me.

"It isn't bad." I told her. "Interpret it as you like; the case is that you're here."

"He is their son." She told me. "But I'm never going to leave you."

I couldn't understand why my cousin's girlfriend would continue with me. Forgotten issue, in any case. But she reminded me that the Lancaster system had vaccinated me to give classes in that country.

"One wants to avoid the stings, but one cannot prevent poverty from rebounding. There are no longer scorpions in the schools, but that couldn't prevent you from being operated on and vaccinated. You were just like the entomologist, with the threat of a sting. That's why, if you notice, there's no one who knows if you have children or don't have children. I was with you all this time because you had forgotten that you were a teacher with the system. That's why I didn't leave you. "

"Of course." I told her. "England is a swarm. I had forgotten that I was a teacher in your system. "

Many years later I read a novel on entomology. The insects were beginning to gain importance in the country that received me and I recalled that an actor had spoken to me about the new novels that were being published. Only that the authors, like the English actors, were rapidly dying and leaving their unfinished works. I remembered the young woman who came to see me because she received the message that we sent. It wasn't the same as speaking with my old assistant, who had disappeared in the enemy country. Not knowing what to do with his girlfriend and his son, who was also the son of the entomologist, I dedicated myself to wandering the commercial centers with a calm that was always alert, in wait for better romantic luck, for sure, but without resentment or pain because of the past. Hoping that someone should come by perhaps, taking a ride from my home, my days were consumed without major mishaps. The insects were a thing of the past, but I recalled them with sympathy. Sometimes, at the traffic lights, when the ants would climb my shoes, I felt strangely happy and nostalgic.