Loving more than one.

• Author: Mastretta, Angeles
• Position: Fiction - Adapted form 'Lovesick'

Antonio Zavalza always knew. That knowledge was from the beginning the thread of the fabric of his relationship with Emilia Sauri. He was a rare man among men, a man to be cherished above all others because he was capable, unlike any other, of understanding the magnificence of a woman who--uncontrollably and uninterruptedly--had the power to love two men at the same time.

The long Revolution was ended. Diego Sauri celebrated it with the caution of a man who no longer waits for the world to change before trying to live in peace. Josefa convinced him that was the way, not with words but the way birds sing after the storm.

"Let's go see your ocean," she said one night.

Two days later they set off. From then on, Josefa's vision of paradise was colored with the blue of the Caribbean.

"We should stay here until we die," she said, moved by her incorrigible romanticism.

"I would, miss the air of the volcanoes," Diego replied.

They had three grandchildren, and lived to see them grow up under their daughter's indefatigable wing.

Persistent as rain, Milagros took them to the pyramids, to the sea, to cemeteries, to the kingdom of the stars and the unforeseen. Sundays they had dinner overlooking the silvery water of a dam, in the stone cabin Rivadeneira had built for playing chess and keeping a sailboat.

No one ever knew how many times Daniel returned. The house Milagros left at his disposal on the Plazuela de las Pajaritas was the undisclosed inn where he and Emilia found periods of truce in their unending war. They met there sometimes for an evening, sometimes at mid-morning; there their torment, their frustrations, their accords, their memories became clear.

Once, pawns of chance, they met in San Fernando cemetery. Another time, pregnant and smiling, bright as a bird, Emilia looked him up.

"You're like one of those Russian dolls," he said. "If someone opened you up, would they find another Emilia inside, and another, and another?"

How many Emilias went through life as if wanting to devour...