The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers

Author:Armonía Somers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781936932443
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2018-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

“Look, look over there!” exclaimed the wife of the crime novel aficionado, standing up in the crowd having lunch outside.

Her eyes and mouth were open as wide as they could go, providing both a fair reflection of her anxiety and an ample view of her half-chewed food.

“What? What do you see? Speak!” shouted her husband, anxious to add a new discovery to that of the fingernail.

“Nothing, I’m sorry,” she said eventually, swallowing with difficulty. “I thought I saw someone in the distance, next to the rails. But then I remembered the haystack set alight by sparks from the train . . . Unless I’ve caught your fever,” she added ironically. “Those novels make you look for clues all over the place.”

The man stared at her hard, as if he were trying to wring out a message she wanted to keep to herself.

“Give me that apple, don’t cut it,” he said, returning to the age-old obsession.

“What about it? What could you possibly have seen in it? I picked it this morning from our tree. The others are over there in that bag,” she replied, sitting back down.

“Look at it,” he said mysteriously, aware of the audience forming around him. “Don’t these marks look like they might’ve been made by teeth? If so, it could prove that she spent the night hiding in one of our gardens. The search should recommence today, but in reverse, from under our beds and outward.”

“Or from our wisdom teeth to the children’s milk teeth,” someone said, testing the potential for humor in the affair, as he passed exhibit A to his neighbor with a nudge.

“I have a goat that’s in the habit of taking bites out of the forbidden fruit,” said another.

“It can easily be determined,” said the aficionado, ignoring the gibes. “Every person’s dental imprint is different. And just by sight, with no need for further examination, reproduction, or comparison. You can measure the space between each tooth and study the marks left by the palate, or the gum indentations if it happens to be a soft fruit.”

As in his initial demonstration of his expertise, when he had found the nail, he was just about to win back his prestige. Instead, however, as the apple continued on its rounds he tried to turn the joke back on those who had made fun of him.

“Although on this occasion I was immediately able to observe that the marks were not left by teeth at all but rather the indentation imprinted by barbed wire upon the growing fruit. Had they been made by teeth, the space between the incisors would have indicated an enormous mouth.”

They looked at him in astonishment. This incomprehensible language was something that must be respected even if they did not quite understand it.

“So, they weren’t teeth at all, thank goodness,” said the last woman to whom the apple arrived. “But I still don’t think it should be eaten, she might have poisoned it from afar with her breath.”

She: she had borne this name for

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