For long minutes, Santa had delighted in the charming confession of her star-struck young lover, and at this point she threw herself on top of him like a she-wolf, and, embracing, they rolled together in the wobbly, creaking bed.

“You didn't do anything bad, dummy! You did real good, in fact. Take your clothes back off and forget about your little seamstress and your girlfriend, nobody but me. Just think about me, you little darling, because I'll give you all you can handle, and free, hear? So that you dream about Santa from now on!”

Like a starving ogre, Santa dined on the youth, who seemed to sprout sharp canines and a wolfish appetite of his own, devouring her in return. How he bit and chewed her succulent flesh, with all the natural gluttony of his sixteen years, without the depraved refinements of the more experienced lovers whom Santa was used to.

“Oh, Santa! Santa!” he sighed, exhausted, during the moments of truce. “You're so beautiful!”

Santa had no need of recourse to her professional arsenal of erotic techniques, the ones she used to stimulate her more phlegmatic customers. All she had to do was look at the boy, move a little bit, just breathe, and he attacked again with ever greater ardor, partly following the reflexive impulses of his almost-virgin organism, partly in a calculated attempt to saturate himself, as much as possible, with a much-sought-after woman far beyond his ordinary means. Probably, he thought, he would not enjoy such a woman again for many years, until he earned lots and lots of money.

Santa actually surrendered before he did, a new experience for her, and a sweet one. Pulling a roll of bank notes out of her stocking, she shook her finger at him: This is on me now! A servant brought food and beer from a cheap eating house down the block, the most delicious banquet they had ever tasted.

Both of them felt saddened by the entering light when they finally opened the shutters, having forgotten that everything in this life must come to an end, even life itself. For a while, they had remembered nothing, nor had they made any promises, which was best of all. Without memories, there was no return of the sorrows that always cling, like dust, to even the most pleasant recollections that we keep stored away in the chests and drawers of our reminiscences. Without promises, no deceptions were required, and they did not feel the foreboding of inevitable future disappointments. Their festive sexual conjunction had been unencumbered by baggage from the past or apprehensions about the future. They simply kissed and loved, and they lived many years in a few fleeting minutes. And when sheer fatigue finally separated them, both beamed placidly with satisfaction, pleased to have held nothing back.

Their conjunction was also a twilight, and doubly so. For the student, with his sixteen years, it was the twilight of dawn; and for Santa, the twilight of dusk, a delicate harbinger of night, not yet alarming, but rather, comforting, promising rest and a relief of pain and sorrows. It was beautiful, as twilight always is, for both of them. The lad repaid the woman's splendid gift with his youth and his kisses. Neither owed the other anything, so they parted without demands of any kind, as carefree as frolicking shepherds and shepherdesses, the Daphnes and Chloes of Greek literature. They did not even arrange another meeting. What would be the point? … Love does not set a schedule. Birds and flowers do not chain themselves to anything. They simply meet, with a flutter of wings; some feathers flutter to earth, and songs fill the air. Or stems bend with pollen on the corollas of their luminous blossoms, a few leaves fall, and perfume fills the air. And that is all. Nature rejoices, the earth lies amazed, and the world simply loves.