In this dream of himself as a child, Fernando’s mother lifted one coffee-colored leg. She braced her foot on the edge of the vanity to paint her toes. Her dressing robe tented as she did this—a makeshift fort which no little boy could resist. He crawled under her chair, under her pitched-up skirt. She was naked

Fernando woke with a start. His heart hammered wildly. He was damp with sweat, feverishly hot. Horribly and painfully aroused. Furiously ashamed. His hand stung, sliced open by an icon fallen from the shelf above his cot. The walls groaned, creaking. Shaking perilously under the strain of remaining upright against the stormwinds that assailed them.