Ten years passed before the Moscosos were visited by an heir. When they were married, Luciana was nineteen years old and Gaspar twenty-four. Like all couples who yield to the basic instinct of the preservation of the species, they wanted their first child without delay. But he did not come immediately; he did not come in that first year of marriage, nor in the fol lowing one, nor in the six which followed those two. Although they tried not to lose hope, at the end of the fifth year, they reaUzed that the days were becoming rather long and empty. They looked yearningly at other people's children; and they acquired the habit of drinking together, and a little more than is prudent, considering all the time they had left to live without the presence of children. In the afternoon, as soon as Gaspar re turned home from work, they took out glasses and bottles, sat in the Uving room, watched television and began to drink dispassionately while pro longed silences stretched between sips. The visits to his in-laws on Satur day afternoons and to her in-laws on Sunday mornings always languished soon after they began; everyone was thinking about the same thing: that it was now time for the arrival of the only one who at this height of bore dom could revive by his very presence feelings dulled by habit and who could generate new topics of conversation. After ten years of marriage, on the 15th of October, when Luciana should have been suffering the first of the four days of her menstrual per iod, there were no signs of its appearance. Somewhat surprised because it was the first time that this had happened, she thought that some internal disorder was temporarily altering the calendar, and she decided to wait 157