The Calligraphy of Dreams

12. MARIA MONTEZ’S TURBAN

“Halt, bullet!” declares the solemn but kindly-looking Sacred Heart of Jesus that peers out at visitors from its plaque on the front door of the apartment. It was nailed there six years earlier by the ex-Blue Division combatant Ramón Mir in a gesture of thanks for his having returned from the Eastern Front miraculously safe and sound. That day, using the butt of his pistol, and with a mixture of patriotic fervour and wounded manhood, muttering prayers of gratitude for having been spared a Bolshevik bullet, he hammered in the nails of an inadmissible, secret and vengeful rancour, and then polished the plaque with a cloth until it shone. Nowadays the life-saving image is somewhat dented and chipped at the edges, and the finger pointing to the flaming red heart shows signs of rust. The bright colours have faded, and the divine finger’s rusty tip contaminates not only the radiant organ but also the kind eyes that seem to be saying to Ringo now: Don’t worry, my boy, nobody in this house will call you to account for what happened, because nobody will ever know, least of all the person the letter was meant for, who would most likely die of heartbreak if she ever found out.

Straightening the sling round his arm, Ringo prepares to ring the bell. He could never have imagined that one day he would call at this door and put himself in the hands of Señora Mir, the last person in the world he wants to see. Despite the fact that there is no reason she should find out about his night-time encounter with Señor Alonso, and still less about the stupid errand he had given him, because he hasn’t mentioned that even to El Quique, and even though he thinks that what happened could easily be remedied (he could go the very next day to look for the lame ex-footballer, who would be bound to understand and forgive him, and possibly might even write another letter and entrust that to him) he cannot rid himself of a vague sense of unease, an enervating melancholy. This is why, when he comments to his mother that his shoulder and back are hurting more and more, and she recommends he has a good back rub with alcohol, he is immediately on his guard.

“I don’t need any back rub! I’ll soon be completely fine!”

In his opinion, the persistent pain is down to his habit of sleeping on his right side. His mother does not agree. She says the pain is due, among other things, to the fact that he stubbornly continues to wear his arm in a sling far longer than necessary, because he enjoys going out with it like that, doubtless because he wants to show off to some girl or other. Why is he still playing games? The wound has healed, the hand is no longer swollen, and the scruffy bandage which he himself has been changing in recent days is also unnecessary. He retorts that it’s precisely now that he most needs the support of the sling, because his shoulder aches terribly, and so does his back.

“On the contrary,” his mother scolds him. “It hurts terribly because you keep your arm up from the moment you get up to when you go back to bed. That’s not a normal posture, Son. I ran into Victoria yesterday as I was leaving the clinic, I told her about it and we agreed you’d go and see her.”

“Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes! And don’t play any more games. A good back rub and you’ll no longer feel like going around showing off in my pretty scarf. Victoria is delighted. In fact, she told me she wanted to talk to you.”

“To me? What for?”

“I’ve no idea.”

She can’t want anything from me, he thinks quickly, and yet again reassures himself: there’s no way she can know we came across that lame guy in the Barrio Chino … not unless that sex-mad El Quique started bragging in the bar.

“She wouldn’t say,” his mother goes on, “but she winked at me while she was powdering her nose, and I could guess …”

“Whatever it is, I don’t want to go!”

“My goodness, she isn’t going to eat you!” She smiles as she adds: “Do you know something? I could swear she was thinking of her daughter. I bet she wants to find her a boyfriend, so you should be flattered.”

“What are you talking about? Is that why you’re forcing me to go to her place? Look, my shoulder hardly hurts at all! See how well I can move my arm!”

“I don’t want to hear any more complaints.” Her voice hardens. “Victoria has generously offered her services, and you should be grateful. A good back rub isn’t going to hurt you; quite the opposite. Besides,” she adds in a weary tone, “I’ve heard she’s losing clients. They haven’t called on her at all at the residence for ages now, they say she isn’t as good as she used to be. The poor woman is going through a bad patch, and I don’t want her to think we’ve lost faith. So you’re going to see her … Come on, Son, be reasonable for once.”

Be reasonable. How is he supposed to be reasonable? Three days after his nocturnal adventure in the seedy part of the city and his eventful return in the rain and lightning, he still cannot get things straight. Apart from the enchantment provided by the beer, the quicksilver and other shadows in the ever-present mirror, and that ill-defined promise of the longed-for sexual adventure, all he retains of that night is a confused memory he cannot disentangle however hard he tries, and which left him feeling cheated and stupid. Your first night whoring, and you fall in love! How dumb can you get! Struggling with hazy thoughts of exoneration, blaming what happened on his being drunk for the first time in his life, which left him senseless and groggy by the end of the night, he finds it hard to admit that he really saw the drain swallowing the letter in the rainstorm, that he realised what was going on and did nothing to save the envelope from ending up in the sewer. Sometimes he prefers to believe it was taken from his pocket together with the banknote; the girl’s small hands fluttering like wings round his face, hands smelling of bleach enveloping him with movements that were both urgent and affectionate … But why would they steal a letter without an address from his pocket? Who could possibly be interested in that? Could they have thought it had money in it? Or perhaps what happened was that the quick, stealthy hand, whoever it belonged to (but not hers, please, not hers) felt the five peseta note and an envelope instead of a wallet, and decided that was better than nothing? In any case, he finds it hard to imagine who could have tried to pick his pocket, and where.

And yet whether the envelope and the money were stolen or lost, and despite the persistent sensation that all this happened in the recurrent ambit of shadowy mirrors and dreams, places only inhabited in novels and films, and although he tries over and over again to dismiss the matter as unimportant, he still feels disquiet. The mistake of doing nothing to stop the letter going down the drain (even though he is not entirely convinced he really lived the episode, and sometimes thinks he dreamt it), that simple, unfortunate mistake, which can only be put down to his calculated indifference, has taken root in his mind. However much he tries to convince himself it was not important, that if the blasted letter is lost for ever, then goodbye and good riddance, and to hell with the silly lovers from Montaña Pelada; however much he wants to forget it, he cannot. Of course, he could have stuffed the envelope under his vest or in his underpants, and made sure it was still there by the way it rubbed against his cock. Why on earth didn’t he check he still had it with him when he left the tavern? In his mind’s eye he can still see the black cat, an arrogant, arched reminder of that night, stealing into the bar for the girl to gently stroke it, and yet he has no idea if he was awake or saw it in his sleep. Often this feeling of guilt is nothing more than a sheet of paper crumpling next to his heart, as if he was still carrying the envelope in his inside pocket, and at these moments he asks himself what it would have cost him to have concealed it better, as he had always done with the jewels whenever he had to deliver them and travelled in packed metro and trams, or walked through the dark back streets of the Barrio Gótico to the tiny workshop of an engraver or stone-setter, or along the soft, empty corridors of the Ritz Hotel to knock on the door of a suite and surprise some high-class kept woman by giving her an emerald and aquamarine necklace. On all those occasions he had carried and protected with body and mind (always alert and responsible) objects that were much more valuable than a ridiculous love letter (or its exact opposite) — treasures of platinum and diamond whose loss would have carried serious consequences for him, although perhaps only bringing a fleeting sense of disappointment to the woman they were meant for at the delay in receiving the longed-for gift — but would never have caused, prolonged or aggravated Señora Mir’s pathetic vigil, as she waddled every other day into the Rosales bar to ask if the letter had arrived, whether or not it contained a conciliatory message or a definitive goodbye.

The previous day’s hangover, as he ran errands for his mother half-asleep — going to collect the staples and bread on the ration card, then to buy a lettuce, two green peppers, and a kilo of salad tomatoes (which made him remember Grandma Tecla’s last visit to Barcelona, her basket filled with tomatoes and aubergines from her vegetable garden, apricots and peaches from the vine, as well as eggs and a skinned rabbit, and led him to wonder why on earth he had refused to go back with her to her village while his mother was looked for a job for him, a job he already knows he is not going to like) — had momentarily excused him from having to analyse what had happened and evaluate the consequences. It was only during the following weeks, when his sense of unease persisted, that he began to ask himself questions and to invent excuses: why worry when it was more than likely that the blasted letter didn’t contain the good news Señora Mir was hoping for? Besides, what if it were not exactly what could be called a love letter? What if it was a cowardly goodbye, and not the apology she so desired, nor a wish for another meeting, a passionate re-encounter? He recalls what Señor Alonso had said, and the resigned expression on his face when he gave him the envelope: A strictly private matter. What if he wrote that he never wanted to see her again, that he no longer loved her, that for him the relationship was definitely over, there’s no future in it, sweetheart, it was good and nice while it lasted, don’t take this badly, but farewell, etc? Wasn’t that what really suited such a rancid, absurd affair between two old, discredited lovers, stale leftovers from a past of God knows what mismatches and failures, that the two of them doubtless had conspired to forget? Weren’t those words — there’s no future in it — precisely the most appropriate in this case? As with so many people Ringo knows, it was written on their faces: like his father’s friends in the rat-catchers’ brigade, like Señor Sucre and Capitán Blay, like the old card or dominoes players in the tavern on those interminable Sunday afternoons, like his own mother, and occasionally, when he stands there staring into space, at home or elsewhere, thinking no-one can see him, like the Rat-catcher himself, the man who is always so mocking and foul-mouthed.

Ringo even tried to convince himself that at some point during that eventful night (lived or dreamt, by now it was the same) when he stuck his hand into his pocket to make sure the letter was still there, his rain-soaked fingers had somehow felt the ill-omened message, the unwanted, dreaded news and the pain it was bound to cause Señora Mir. And when he thought of her wish to be quickly forgiven and reconciled with her man, a feeling she had so often expressed in public, and which she nourished day after day, a sentiment which seemed so deep-seated and persistent, so shameless, so oblivious to wagging tongues or even ridicule — if he thought of this, and that perhaps the message was the final rupture, the death of the hope she had kept alive until now, a cruel farewell rather than a renewed vow of love, then he almost managed to convince himself that she would have preferred the letter never to have reached her, and so she had been spared a fatal disenchantment.

He was sure this is what it must have been. Otherwise, if what was in the message was forgiveness and renewed affection, why did Señor Alonso have to hide behind a go-between, why didn’t he hand her the envelope himself? Why didn’t he want to show his face, why didn’t he want to go anywhere near the Rosales bar? So that he didn’t have to explain himself to anybody, not even Señora Paquita. Ringo could see clearly now why he left him on his own for so long in that dive in the Barrio Chino: so he could go and write his shameful farewell, no doubt in his own home (if not, where could he have got the paper and the envelope? It was impossible that he had them on him) and put an end to the affair without having to be seen in the neighbourhood, taking advantage of their casual (or perhaps not so casual) encounter … Because it must have been true that he still felt sorry for Señora Mir. Nothing that man said or did that night was by accident; nothing except perhaps when he bent down to tie Ringo’s shoelaces and wipe off any traces of vomit while he was at it: and it is this, precisely the memory of this, his deft hands discreetly rubbing his shoe, that most upsets Ringo and occasionally makes him feel really bad. Why would a mature, experienced man like him, an ex-footballer from a historic club whom they say knew years of glory, somebody who always won respect in the tavern for both his authority and his discretion, whether he was talking about women or games of chance or whatever, why would a man like that suddenly show himself as so needy, so anxious to please a boy he hardly knew? Was he so desperate for a go-between, was it so difficult and complicated for him to free himself from a miserable little love affair with his bargain-basement lover?

Three days before his mother forces him to go and visit Señora Mir, one evening when he is returning home after exchanging a book in the Calle Asturias store, as he is walking up from Plaza Rovira he sees El Quique, Roger and the Cazorla brothers standing on the corner of Calle Argentona, about thirty metres from the Rosales bar. Doubled up with laughter, El Quique signals him to come over quickly, because something hilarious is about to happen. Also with them is Tito, the hairdresser’s son. He is on his bike, chewing on a sweet, one foot on the edge of the pavement and the other on the raised pedal. There’s a gleam in his eyes as he stares at the bar, poised to sprint off towards it. He has one hand on the handlebar; in the other he is clutching a crumpled envelope.

“Wait, Tito,” says Roger. “Don’t attack until you see her come out.”

“Give it to her and race off as fast as you can,” says Rafa. “And you’ll have earned yourself another sweet.”

Ringo tries to snatch the letter, but Roger stops him, pretending to punch him in the stomach. Ringo takes the blows on his body, keeping his hand in his sling.

“Let me see that, Tito,” he says to the boy.

“There’s no time, she’s going to come out any second.”

“No time for what?”

“We’ve got a little present for her!” says El Quique triumphantly. “She’s in there snivelling to Señora Paquita, asking her about the letter for the hundredth time … It’s a hoot, nano! When she comes out, Tito’s going to give her our little present and we’ll split our sides laughing!”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” says Ringo, shoving Roger away to stop him punching. “Be careful with my arm, you animal!”

“I never touched you!”

“What’s wrong with you, nano?” El Quique looks at him wide-eyed, but the gap-toothed, fun-loving smile between the bushy sideburns that now adorn his round face is no longer that of a young boy obsessed with fantasies about tits and arses. He’s been working for three months as an apprentice lathe operator, and the others have also started going their own way: Roger is cleaning trams in the Plaza Lesseps depot, Chato Morales is an apprentice mechanic in a garage over in Vallcarca and is hardly ever seen in the neighbourhood any more, Rafa Cazorla works in a locksmith’s on Calle Torrijos, and his brother is a bell-boy in a hotel on Las Ramblas. Ringo suddenly feels like sending them all to hell, these stupid apprentices of nothing, El Quique above all.

“Come on, you idiots, what are you plotting?”

“Nothing!” protests Rafa. “We just want to see how she reacts.”

“What’s that Tito is holding?”

“It’s a joke, dammit,” El Quique says. “It’s just a bit of fun with Violeta’s mother. What’s wrong, have you got something against it?” He doubles up with laughter again: “Ha, ha ha! Besides, it was your idea!”

“Yes, don’t you remember?” says Roger. “One day when she was knocking it back in the Rosales bar you drew a big flying prick on a piece of paper and wanted to put it in her coat pocket …”

“I don’t remember. Give me that, Tito. I want to see it.”

He doesn’t have time. Tito, who hasn’t taken his eyes off the bar doorway for a second, pushes off from the edge of the pavement and hurtles as far as the next corner. Señora Mir has just left the bar and is crossing the street in her white coat and slippers, patting her hair and swaying her hips in her usual nonchalant manner. The tiny cyclist catches up with her in the middle of the road, loops round her a couple of times, pedalling frantically, and she comes to a halt and smiles at him, until she notices the envelope in his hand. The boy stretches out his arm and hands it to her, head down, still pedalling, then races off down the street towards Plaza Rovira. Señora Mir reaches the far pavement with the envelope in her hand, opens it and takes out the piece of paper. She stands there staring at it, wary and startled. Her face falls, and she glances up almost at once. She puts a hand out to the wall for support, and looks all round her with piteous eyes, without seeing anyone or understanding why somebody has played this trick on her. Ringo meanwhile has hidden behind El Quique and Roger, who are writhing with laughter on the street corner, together with Rafa. Still motionless on the pavement, Señora Mir reaches out to the wall again, glancing down at the paper and shaking her head. Almost immediately, Ringo finds himself trying to throttle El Quique by the shirt collar.

“What have you done?”

“’Hey, let go of me! What’s wrong with you? It’s only a drawing …”

“A winged prick, Ringo,” says Rafa Cazorla. “With hair and everything!”

“And balls like hard-boiled eggs!” Sito Cazorla guffaws.

“And what d’you think we wrote underneath? I’m coming flying, my love!”

“For Chrissake, Ringo, what’s got into you?” says El Quique. “We drew winged pricks like that until we were sick of them, don’t you remember?”

“This isn’t the same, you idiot. You really are an idiot.”

“Thanks a lot, friend,” El Quique says, laughing. “But look at the expression on her fat face, just look!”

Peeping round the corner, they see her crumpling the paper with her fist across her stomach, then with her face down on her chest, turn to look where the laughter is coming from. They dart back quickly, but she has seen them, although Ringo thinks he might have escaped because he was hidden behind the others. Slowly, pushing her feet into the pink slippers and shaking her head in a sad, resigned gesture, she starts walking up the pavement once more until she reaches the doorway to her building.

Tito reappears on his bike to claim his second sweet, and the three friends smile at Ringo, pleased with the effect of their dirty trick and awaiting his approval.

“You’re a lot of bastards,” he grunts, turning his back on them and walking off.

“You’re the bastard!” shouts El Quique. Then he mutters to himself, bewildered: “What’s got into him?”

*

Now, face to face with the dented plaque of the Sacred Heart, he settles his arm in the sling and finally makes up his mind to ring the bell. A few seconds’ wait, the sound of shuffling feet inside, and Violeta opens the door with the same suspicious sloth evident in her downcast, languid eyes, with faint purple lines beneath them. She has a towel wrapped round her head like a turban; it was once blue and is torn in several places; she has on a pair of backless sandals and a sleeveless grey cotton housecoat that is so threadbare it looks like a cobweb sticking to her body.

“What do you want?”

“Your mother’s expecting me.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

The girl blinks slowly at him, bends her head forward slightly, and touches some strands of hair on the back of her neck that have escaped the towel. Ringo is not at all surprised at her sly glance or furtive movements.

“What’s wrong, don’t you believe me? Your mother told me to come at seven.”

The line of her thigh is accentuated as she leans again the doorjamb. She looks at him in a bored but not hostile way. She takes her time and finally says, “It’s not seven yet,” her voice almost inaudible.

Narrowing her eyes, and in such an offhand tone he can barely follow her, she tells him that her mother is busy attending to Señora Elvira, the butcher’s mother. The poor woman is half-paralysed, she has to be given leg-stretching exercises, and these take time. It would be better if he came back in half or three-quarters of an hour, but if he wants to wait in the dining-room and keep the butcher company …

Chat with Señor Samsó? No way. He’s a complete numbskull. Ringo has never been in the dining-room that also functions as a waiting area, but he can picture the butcher sitting there, alone and bored, looking after his ancient mother’s crutches, and delighted to have someone to pass the time with. No way.

“I’ll wait out here.”

Violeta shrugs, but doesn’t close the door. She stares at him for a few moments, and then says in the same apathetic voice:

“We’ll find something. Come on in.”

Wearily, she opens the door wide, and when he is in the hall suddenly closes it behind him. She pulls the collar of her housecoat up and turns her back on him, her body moving as if it was a burden, a heavy weight or a tedious responsibility, as if its striking attractions had nothing to do with her. She walks down the corridor with reluctant steps; a radio somewhere in the apartment is playing music. Beneath the pale ivory of her bare heels, the sandals clack across the mosaic tiles. “And you, where can you be, who knows what adventure you’re living, how far you are from me,” say words of the song. It’s a big apartment full of old-fashioned furniture, with a sugary, stale smell to it; the dark corridor ends in an explosion of light flooding into the dining-room from the rear veranda with its faded coloured-glass panes. But instead of taking him there, Violeta leads him into a small room halfway down the corridor.

It looks like a laundry room, but is obviously something more than that. There is hardly enough space for the ironing board laden with a pile of washing, the narrow iron bed pushed against the wall and covered in a green eiderdown, two wicker chairs, and a table with a heating dish under it and empty glass jars on top. There’s a faint smell of roast almonds in the air. It’s not a radio that’s playing the music, but a small record player perched precariously on a folding chair. On the bed are different-coloured cushions, a naked china doll with no hair, two cinema magazines, a few old copies of Flechas y Pelayos, an open sewing basket, and a fan. Pinned on the wall, Errol Flynn, his arm in a sling just like Ringo, smiles encouragingly at him in a photograph from “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. Alongside it are two programmes from the Salón Cibeles advertising the orchestras of Mario Visconti and Gene Kim.

“You can wait here,” says Violeta, switching off the record player and picking up several sleeves and records from the bed.

“Is this your room?” There’s no response. “You’re lucky to have a room of your own. I sleep in the corridor, in a truckle bed like yours. There’s only one bedroom in our flat; we sublet, you know.” Silence. “What were you listening to?”

“I wasn’t.”

“That’s a lie. It’s a song I know you like a lot.”

“You can sit on the bed if you like. You’re going to have to wait a while.”

“Last year, at the saint’s day fiesta, you danced it with me.”

“Did I? I don’t remember.”

“A rotten lie.” As he flops on to the bed, he drops his good hand to his hip, as if he is drawing a gun from its holster. “Got you bang to rights, sister. ‘Perfidy’, the song is called.”

As ever, he has mixed feelings as he observes her. Since she has looked several times at the arm in a sling across his chest, even if her deep, dark eyes are still cold and distant, he is expecting her to ask about it — he’s hoping she will. But Violeta doesn’t say a word. She stands by the door, arms folded, every so often casting him a sideways glance, disdainful but conscious she is attracting furtive scrutiny of her legs and the triangle formed in the material between her thighs and stomach, a confluence of slight creases curving in towards her pelvis. Ringo’s eyes narrow beneath the imaginary shade of a cowboy hat. He is secretly annoyed at himself for not being able to avoid the images that this-girl-he-does-not-like-at-all conjures up, and so, in an automatic gesture of self-defence, he hastens to remind himself yet again of the strident mismatch of shapes — these rounded hips are completely out of kilter with such tiny tits and with the girl’s narrow, weak chest — but this disharmony (he cannot help but realise yet again, whether he wants to or not) this dissonance between childish and adult forms that will soon be voluptuous, is precisely what attracts him.

“What about that lame fellow?” says Ringo at last, as if casually. “Doesn’t he come round anymore: is his leg better then?”

“How should I know?”

“Is it true someone took a bite out of him in a football game, and that’s why it’s shorter, and with the foot turned in …?

“Why should that interest me?”

She stares fixedly down at her fingernails, as if to close the matter. But he needs to insist, to goad her; he has come here full of trepidation, fearful of having to face Señora Mir, and he has no wish to be intimidated by her daughter.

“A strange guy. But I became a friend of his at the bar. Well, almost a friend. And your mother thinks a lot of him, everyone knows that. Until recently they were more than friends, they were a couple, weren’t they … he was her boyfriend, wasn’t he? What do you say, Violeta?”

“I say shit.”

“They also say — and please don’t be angry — they also say it won’t take her long to find someone else, and that it would be the best thing for her …” He falls silent, waiting expectantly for her answer: he would like her to agree with him, and say that yes, her mother is looking for another man. “What do you think?”

“I think shit.” She quickly reaches up to the blue towel, making sure it is tied tightly round her head, and continues staring at him. She plays with the wet strands on the back of her neck, but doesn’t seem nervous. Finally she adds: “Is what my mother does or doesn’t do that important to you?”

“I couldn’t give a damn, as you well know. It’s just what I hear. That if she found a new boyfriend she’d quickly forget the lame guy, and that it would be better for her. Of course it would. Mind you, it’s not me saying this, it’s what I heard in the bar. What do you think?”

Violeta looks at him with an aggrieved expression.

“Why are you telling me all this gossip? Why are you talking about couples and boyfriends, and asking all these … I don’t know … smutty questions?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d take it like that.”

“Will you please shut up about it?” She closes her eyes as if they were stinging. When she opens them again she notices the loose bandage hanging out of the sling. “Who made such a messy bandage? It looks a sight. I bet it wasn’t your mother.”

“I put a safety pin in, but it came undone …”

“I heard what happened to your hand in the workshop. You must have been daydreaming. As usual.”

“Perhaps.”

Violeta folds her arms again, and leans back against the door. She raises her knee to press a naked foot against the frame, letting the housecoat fall slightly open.

“So what are you going to do now? You’ll have to learn another trade.”

“I’m not sure.” The triangle of tanned skin the open coat allows him to see above the knee suggests a pair of well-rounded thighs. “I’d like to work in a circus … I could be a magician, or a ventriloquist. I can do all kinds of voices. I’d wear evening dress and a bow tie and a top hat and do impressions of animals or people … it’s easy. But in fact, it’s most likely I’ll be a piano tuner.”

“Ha, a piano tuner. And while you’re waiting, what are you up to? Nothing, loafing around. It’s a shame, but that’s what you like doing. Loafing around.”

“It’s not true. I study music. I don’t have a piano yet, but I study on my own. And I also give my mother a hand, buying things, helping her in the kitchen …”

“Ah, so you’re a hard-working boy, are you? Where did you learn, in the courses run by the Falange’s Female Section, like me?” She smiles spitefully. “You’re a good-for-nothing, that’s what you are. A shame. Why do they call you Ringo? Isn’t your name Mingo?”

“No!”

Denying his real name has always been something more than a game or a joke. If she weren’t such a strange creature and almost two years older than him, he would have been happy to explain. My name is Domingo, doll, but as a child they took away the doh, the first note on the musical scale, and what was left was Mingo, which I hate. It’s a mutilated name, like my finger. They took away the musical note, but I changed just one more letter, and since then, if you want me you’ll have to come and look for me on the prairies of Arizona, far away from this shitty neighbourhood.

“It sounds almost the same, but it’s not,” he says, his gaze alternating between the shameless thigh and the lines beneath the girl’s insolent eyes, disparate elements reconciled by desire. Out of politeness, he focuses on her eyes, but not for long.

“It’s a shame,” insists Violeta.

“Why is that?”

“Because a girl I know likes you a lot.”

“Ah yes? Who might that be?”

Violeta says nothing, but meets his gaze until he is forced to lower his eyes. They fix instead on her knee and everything near it, openly and despite himself. He is sure he has more than enough energy to achieve any goal he may set himself in life, even that of becoming a celebrated pianist with only nine fingers, but at this very moment he finds himself unable to do something as simple as looking away from her raised thigh and the fold of her housecoat over her crotch.

“I’m no layabout,” he insists. “They’re trying to find me work. It could be in an important piano store …” He points to the photo of Errol Flynn. “Look, he’s got his arm like mine, and the scarf is very similar … ‘Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred!’ Do you remember? Have you seen the movie?”

Violeta has turned her right ear towards him so she can hear more clearly, and Ringo suddenly recalls that the year before, dancing with her in the street on the same night she was crowned Princess of the Fiesta, every time he thought of something to say, that small, perfumed ear would immediately be brought close to his lips. At first he thought she was pretending to be hard of hearing so that she could come closer, but when he realised she really did have difficulty, he was the one who took advantage: every so often he spoke in a low whisper so that her ear would be near him, and sometimes he even brushed the lobe with his lips. Soon afterwards, in a disconcertingly spontaneous and generous gesture, she pressed her stomach and thighs against him. And it was dancing to “Perfidy” in the darkest, highest part of the street, under a ceiling of coloured bunting rustling like leaves in the breeze, that he responded to her furtive pressure with that night’s first erection. She must remember this, even if now she pretends to be interested in something different:

“How is your wound? Does it hurt?”

“Yes, it does sometimes … Does it really interest you?”

He clenches his fist and rolls his eyes, trying to summon up a stab of pain in his phantom finger. Her mouth half-open as if she finds it hard to breathe, Violeta watches him, smiling coldly.

“Can I see it?”

“What for?” Ringo’s untamed eyes grow suspicious beneath the tilted brim of his hat. His left hand hovers over the butt of the revolver at his waist. “Why do you want to look at it, Frenchie?”

“Because I understand a bit about these things, stupid. I’m doing a course in nursing at the Santa Madrona School on Calle Escorial.” She keeps staring at him. “And what did you call me?”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just a name I like. Have you learnt how to do injections? And can you heal with your hands, like your mother?”

“No way. I want to be a real nurse. I’ve been doing a course with the nuns at the Remedio clinic for a month now. Hadn’t you heard? So, are you going to let me have a look then?”

Ringo is still sitting on the bed, with his bandaged hand in his lap. He smiles, unwraps the bandage and shows her the missing finger.

“Look. Do you like it?”

Violeta bends down, examines it closely, then shrugs.

“So-so. It’s quite an ugly wound.”

“That’s because it hasn’t healed yet. Come closer and take a good look.”

She obeys, to get a better view of the folded centre of the stump, the small, livid scar like a little star surrounded by tiny lumps. As she does so, she carelessly rests her hand on Ringo’s knee. He stares down at the nails painted the colour of tainted silver on a warm, calm hand that is suddenly adult.

“It still hurts, you know?” he says. “And I get strange sensations. Sometimes I start picking my nose with the finger that no longer exists, or scratching my ear …”

“Ha, what a fibber!”

“Bah, you don’t deserve to know.” While he is reluctantly doing up the bandage again, hoping in vain that Violeta will offer to do it for him, an imaginary muscular spasm in his arm twists his mouth in a fake grimace of pain. “It’s nothing. Problems with my shoulder, I must have put it out … Bad luck follows me everywhere. And to top it all, the other day my mother and yours met by chance outside the clinic, and they have nothing better to do than to talk about than my back pains. And what do they decide? That I need a back rub! That’s why I came here, just for that, don’t imagine there’s anything else behind it …”

“Huh.”

“Yes, some evil spell has brought me here.”

“What nonsense you talk, you’re such a show-off.”

“I didn’t even expect to find you here. I know they don’t close until eight in the stationer’s where you work.”

“I don’t work there some afternoons. I already told you, I’m doing a few courses. O.K., I’ll tell my mother you’re here.”

She goes out, leaving the door ajar, and before long he hears her mother’s gravelly voice from the glassed-in verandah, muffled as if it came from the depths of a cave:

“The boy can wait,” and then, almost without transition, she shouts furiously: “And will you take that towel off, Violeta, do me a damn favour and throw it in the bin! Can’t you see it’s completely useless? How often do I have to tell you? I don’t ever want to see it in this house again! I’ve had it up to here with your insolence! Take it off at once or I’ll give you a good slap …! And bring another cushion here for Señora Elvira!”

And immediately afterwards, in an unctuous tone:

“I’m so sorry, Señora Elvira. But I’ve got a thing about that towel. I dislike it so much that if it wasn’t for the fact that I don’t even want to touch it, I’d have torn it to shreds myself.”

“It’s a question of age, Vicky. I’ve taken a dislike to cannelloni, when I always used to love them.”

“It belonged to her father, he always used that towel,” says Señora Mir. Then her voice takes on a scolding tone again: “Violeta, how long is it since you’ve been to Badalona to see your grandmother? And what about your father? Have you been to see your father?”

“I haven’t had time, Mama. And I have a headache.”

“Nonsense! And that melon must be ready to throw away …”

“I’ll go tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow you’ll say the same thing.”

“But he doesn’t even recognise me, Mama! He spends the whole day doing crochet, and he doesn’t want melons or chocolate, all he asks for are balls of wool …”

“That doesn’t matter, I want you to go and see him once a week! What do you think, Señora Elvira? Is it asking too much of a daughter that she goes and visits her sick father once a week at least? He doesn’t recognise me either, the poor man …”

The sound of a door slamming silences the grating voice. Ringo leans back in the chair and looks round the small room. On the far wall there are three shelves of unpainted pine; holding more jars and tins, a few dark-coloured stones with smooth, polished surfaces, and bunches of dried herbs and stalks arranged by size and tied with blue and red ribbons that have been very carefully knotted. This effort goes beyond the strictly necessary, and seems more to do with having them look good for anyone considering them. Each of the bunches has a small piece of paper attached, labelled with green ink in a delicate hand. Tarragon, lavender, elderberry, mint, chamomile, belladonna, broom, eucalyptus, thyme, olive leaves, liquorice. On the wall is a framed photograph of Violeta at the saint’s day fiesta. She is posing very seriously with her father on the orchestra platform, only a few seconds before she burst into tears. She is about to turn sixteen, and still has pigtails and white ankle socks. She is not very attractive, and is wearing a white dress with a frilly skirt, with the Princess of the Fiesta sash across her chest, and is clutching a bunch of white roses. She is trying to smile, but can only manage a grimace. The music has been interrupted, she has just been crowned princess, and all round the platform there is an air of expectation among the couples standing with their arms round each other, waiting for the dance to continue, and among the neighbours looking on from their balconies. All of a sudden there is the sound of loud whistling, and Violeta’s face contorts with horror and sadness (although this is not in the photograph), and Ringo remembers that he and Roger, hidden somewhere among the crowd, also whistled as loud as they could, joining in the general disapproval, because the chosen princess was by no means the prettiest girl in the neighbourhood. Everybody thinks that other better-looking, more popular and friendly contestants deserved the title and crown much more than she did. They know she was chosen princess thanks to her father’s manoeuvring: not only is he the local councillor, but he is chair of the fiesta committee as well. He is a self-important braggart, always in a temper. Faced by the boos and whistles of the crowd, Violeta jumps down from the platform in tears. She buries her face in the bunch of roses, with a cloud of confetti still floating round her, and runs to seek the safety of the doorway to her home.

A door opening somewhere allows Ringo to hear the gruff voice once more:

“… and is he sleeping okay now, at least? Can’t you hear me? I’m asking you if your father is sleeping well at least … Can you hear me, Violeta?”

“He says that every day he wakes up tired with dirty fingernails.”

“Dirty fingernails?”

“He says he cleans them every night before he goes to bed, but that when he wakes up they’re dirty, and he can’t bear it …That’s what he says.”

“There you are then: go and clean his fingernails! Now go into the kitchen and put the eucalyptus on to boil. And get rid of that rag of a towel if you don’t want me to do something worse than your father did!”

“Ugh! And whose fault would it be if you did that, Mama, whose fault?”

“Get out of here, I said! Shameless hussy! And clean the shelves and tell me what we need!”

Shortly afterwards, her voice takes on a wheedling tone, with a self-pitying edge to it. Even so, Ringo can always sense an unhealthy vibration, a perverse strand to her deep, growling, almost masculine voice that seems so unsuited to a fat, empty-headed and flighty woman like Señora Mir.

“… it was a pistol he brought from over there, Señora Elvira, from those distant, godforsaken lands. The doctor said he’d removed the bullet from his head cleanly … Stuff and nonsense! I’ve always thought the damned bullet is still stuck in his noddle, and is spinning round and round so much it won’t let him sleep. Prussia is to blame! they say he shouts at night. The poor fellow no longer knows what he’s saying, because he was never in Prussia, he was in Russia. No, I could swear they never took that bullet out …”

“Don’t be so silly, woman. If they hadn’t taken it out, he’d be dead by now.”

“I’ve been wrong so often in my life, Señora Elvira! God forgive me, but sometimes I think it would have been better if Ramón had died right there, outside the church … The man in the sanatorium isn’t my husband. And he wasn’t for the last few days he lived in this house.”

As if he has heard her and wants to say something, Señor Mir suddenly emerges from the shadows of the corridor, finger raised as if demanding attention because he has something important to say. He advances trembling towards the two women in his underpants, limping the way Señor Alonso does, with a bloody bandage round his head, the big service pistol in his hand and his field glasses hanging across his chest … This is how Ringo imagines him, killing time as he sits on the bed, listening closely. He stares at a big jar full of eucalyptus leaves, and knows they are from a tree in Parque Güell; he can still see Señora Mir collecting them from the lower branches, her chubby bare arms raised, surrounded by leaves like curved daggers; then he hears voices from the verandah once more:

“… the thing is, my veins are a disaster, Vicky. I don’t know what to do, I daren’t even look at my legs. Nothing is any use: elastic stockings, nylons, crutches or no crutches …”

“What you have, Señora Elvira, are varicose and thread veins; nothing serious. I’ll give you a cream. If you’d seen Señor Alonso’s leg the first time he came, and especially his foot …”

“How strange that someone as lame as him doesn’t use a stick, don’t you think?”

“He doesn’t need one. It’s only a slight limp, and besides, it favours him. It looks very distinguished, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Seeing as he’s so tall and handsome, with such good taste in clothes and that proud head of white hair of his …”

“Goodness, you can be so naive, Vicky! And you talk such rubbish! All that sort of thing has brought you nothing but disappointment. How have you let so many men ruin your life?”

“Ay, Señora Elvira, what am I to do? Look, I’ve always been a passionate woman. No-one can live without a bit of affection, can they?”

“Ten more minutes and it’s your turn,” announces Violeta as she comes in, eyes lowered, her hair loose and the towel in her hands. She folds it carefully. She bends at the foot of the bed and, crouching there for a few moments in a slow, self-absorbed gesture, slides her hand with its shiny nails over the blue, frayed surface of the neatly folded towel and then tucks it under the mattress and sits on it. Taking a brush out of her housecoat pocket, she smiles an enigmatic smile and starts furiously brushing her tangled, damp hair.

“Didn’t she just tell you to throw that towel in the bin? Why don’t you obey your mother?” Ringo asks jokingly, although he adds something unexpected: “We all have something to hide, don’t we?”

“I don’t hide anything that isn’t mine.”

“Want to know something? One night I was coming home, and it was pouring with rain, with thunder and lightning, and I saw a dead bird being swept away down a drain …”

“So what?”

“So nothing. My stuff. Stuff and nonsense.”

“You talk just for the sake of it, don’t you? You’re not all there sometimes, are you, kid?”

“And what about you? Do you keep any other secrets under the mattress? Lipstick? A photo of Coletes …?”

Once again he bites his tongue, although she doesn’t appear to have heard him. He remembers that the year before Violeta was meant to be crazy about a boy from Calle Legalidad, who for some reason he never discovered was known as El Coletes. After smooching with her for almost two months, he had dropped her like a stone. According to El Quique, who had seen the two of them at it in a dark alleyway, the boy had done everything with her apart from sticking it in. Now Violeta doesn’t even blink when she hears his name, and so Ringo turns his attention to the shelves with the herbs and jars on them, and pretends he is suddenly interested:

“Wow, take a look at that lot! What are those stones for?”

“They’re hot stones. Mama will put some on your back, and you’ve no idea what it’s like. They burn you know, smart guy.”

“Yeah, I believe you. There are heaps of stones like them on Montaña Pelada … And I think there’s a lot of nonsense about all this. Señora Paquita thinks your mother doesn’t use oil to prepare the herbs anymore even if she says she does, because olive oil is very expensive, and so she makes her potions with heaven knows what.”

“Yes, of course. With billy-goat tails probably. Smart, aren’t you? Such a smart guy.”

She throws the brush onto the bed and stands up, takes a small notebook and a pencil stub out of her pocket, examines the glass jars on the stands, and writes something down. The pencil has got coloured ink in it, and whenever she sucks it before making a new note, it leaves her lips purple. Ringo watches her silently. She soon finishes and sits on the bed again, picks up the brush and goes on brushing her hair furiously, her purple lips half-open. She stands up when she hears her mother calling from the corridor as she accompanies Señora Elvira and her son to the front door. Violeta! That daughter of mine is never there when I need her. Her patient recommendations to the old woman mingle with the tapping of the crutches and her son’s observations on how useless her footwear is. There is the sound of the door closing, then of another opening and closing.

“The torture is awaiting you in the dispensary, kid,” says Violeta. “You can go in now.”

“Where?”

“To the verandah. Sit there and wait.”

“And your mother?”

“She’ll be there straightaway.” She opens the door and stands aside to let him through, her eyes lowered, her hip thrust forward. “You can go now.”

“Are you coming with me?”

Violeta shakes her head and returns slowly to the bed, her back straight above her enticing buttocks, fluffing her reddish locks with her hand. She explains in a bored voice that she has to work in the kitchen, where she has to mix the herbs, pound them in the mortar, then boil them over a low flame. She also prepares peppers for dyes, peels potatoes and sweet potatoes, grinds grains, and cleans lentils.

“I also make jam. Do you like blackberry jam?”

“No. But come with me, please.”

The girl smiles vaguely as she looks at him and says nothing. She has sat down again on the corner of the bed where she’s hidden the towel, and carries on energetically brushing her hair. As she does so, she reveals the fuzz under her arm. It looks like a black flower, or a small hedgehog hiding there. Yet again Ringo confirms that she is not pretty. She isn’t. Why then do even the most trivial of her gestures attract him? What is there beneath her docile eyelids, why are her silences and her gaze so disturbing?

Oblivious now to everything that doesn’t involve looking after her hair, Violeta lowers her eyes and starts to sing softly — “The sea, mirror of my heart …” — while he relives the moment when everyone was booing and whistling on the night of the saint’s day fiesta, and sees her running home, the cloud of confetti bursting round her head.

*

He had thought it would be a more or less private atmosphere, protected from any indiscreet glances, rather than this brightly lit end of the verandah, with its coloured glass panes (some of them broken), and with a view of the backs of other buildings, all of them with similar rusty verandahs with broken panes and moth-eaten blinds. From some of these galleries baking in the noonday sun comes the clucking of tame hens. There’s a trolley on wheels like the ones he has seen in the corridors at the Nuestra Señora del Remedio clinic, a white cupboard, and unpainted shelves holding towels, pillows, clay bowls and jars with creams and potions in them. There is also a rack with a white coat hanging from it, and a battered wicker chair in which he has now been sitting for several minutes, surrounded by the smell of hot leather and herbs treated with alcohol, listening to Señora Mir arguing with her daughter somewhere in the apartment. Then there is the sound of a door slamming once more.

“So here we have this polite, well-brought up young boy, so spoilt by his mother,” says Señora Mir seconds before she appears on the verandah, wrapped in her white coat, wearing the slippers with the pink pompoms, her hair drawn up in an untidy bun. Her eyelashes are thick with blue mascara, but her full, pale pine-cone lips have no lipstick on them. They look strangely youthful, and traces of rouge at the corners of her mouth lend her smile a weary look. “So let’s see, what’s wrong with you?”

“Hello, Señora Mir.”

“You’ve got your mother into a state, haven’t you? Well anyway, first let’s deal with that sling. We don’t want to see it any more. Get rid of it, okay?”

“I don’t know, I think it helps …”

“Not a bit of it, my dear. Put the scarf away in your pocket, and take off your jacket, shirt, and sandals. Let me see your hand.” She takes hold of it, removes the bandage roughly but efficiently, then examines the scar. “Don’t worry. We’ll put some corn oil on it and it’ll look a lot better. Fancy ruining such a pretty headscarf to make a sling! And what for? You think it helps the arm to stay still and rest, don’t you? Well, it doesn’t, because the arms drops anyway without you realising it, it hangs down and becomes lazy, and in the end the muscles contract. Sit here on the trolley. That’s right. Now lift your right arm on your own, little by little … No, not like that,” she laughs hoarsely, “not like my Ramón’s salute, my boy, we’ve already had enough of that in this house. Raise your arm straight above your head, as if you were lifting a weight, and tell me if it hurts here when you do so, here in your shoulder. Does it?”

“No.”

“Now do the same, but with your elbow in the air, and your hand facing downwards … That’s right. How does that feel?”

“That hurts.”

“Okay, so there we have another problem. Undo your belt and lie face down. Rest your chin on the pillow, with your arms down by your sides. That’s right.”

The pillow greets him with a stale reminder of heavy, faded smells. Face down on the trolley, his eyes discover a glass vase almost hidden behind the white coat hanging from the rack. Inside, a slender blue rose amid a bunch of lavender. Too slender, too perfect, and too blue not to be made of paper. The blue rose of forgetfulness in Señora Mir’s apartment! But it’s not the perfume of roses that his nostrils can now detect, rather the intense odour of camphorated alcohol. Gradually, the arcane air in the verandah starts to distil denser, more disturbing essences, closer to the secrets of adult sex than to aromatic herbs, oils and potions. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Señora Mir lubricating her small, podgy hands with the yellowish contents of a glass pot, and then, for a brief moment, he sees them approaching, hanging by her sides like the talons of a bird of prey. To ward off the ill omens Ringo closes his eyes and amuses himself with a rapid re-run of his personal collection of risible images of the plump Señora Mir having sex with the lame ex-footballer … Where could they have done it? Right here, on this trolley? On the floor in a great hurry and laughing all the time, with stifled caresses and groans, her on top and him underneath? Don’t miss it, my boy. She strips off and gives her man a sweet smile. She kneels down willingly and raises her arse. Rolls of fat on her thighs and bulbous pink buttocks. But where? In Violeta’s room or in the marriage bed itself, with the photograph of the local councillor, the ex-combatant, smiling at them from the bedside table? The bare, kissable mouth is now suspended only a few inches from his defenceless back. He can sense her breath on him.

“Loosen your belt, sweetheart,” Señora Mir orders, and he can feel her sticky fingers probing the tendons round the nape of his neck. “You’re tense, little one. Relax or I’ll be annoyed.” She taps him on the behind, and recites: “Just a little scratch, you’ll hardly notice it … I bet that’s what they said to you when you were small and they were giving you an injection, wasn’t it? Well, don’t be frightened, Vicky’s not going to hurt you either.”

“I’m not frightened.”

At any rate, it’s not the fear or nervousness that this hopeless, corny romantic imagines, forever caught up in the web of her own feelings; no, it’s something very confused that is worming into his consciousness, a bitter, intermittent but crushing melancholy. Beneath the constant pressure of her perfumed fingers, fingers that now are incisive and surprisingly strong, he himself wants, and yet doesn’t want, to feel guilty. It occurs to him that such an awkward situation, where all of a sudden he finds himself at the mercy of these hands and potions, is the result of his cowardice the other afternoon when he hid round the corner, and above all, is the punishment he deserves for his irresponsible, delirious fantasy the other night in the rain … He wasn’t able to shake off this nervousness as he flopped onto the trolley, the fear of the conversation he is bound to have to listen and reply to, similar to the way he feels when he is having his hair cut: there’s no way of escaping the traditional chat with the barber, which is always a boring waste of time, a torture. But here it could be a lot worse. Even though he thinks she knows, or ought to know, that a boy scarcely more than fifteen is not an appropriate audience for the secrets of a woman of over forty, he can’t help remembering how little she has ever cared about scandalising either adults or children in the neighbourhood, turning her ridiculous romances into a source of great hilarity. Humorous variations, usually quite rude if not downright smutty, of the same story. What Señora Mir calls “a bit of extra affection” could be the reason behind her current frayed temper while she desperately awaits the longed-for letter and possible reconciliation with the last man to take to his heels and leave her: so be ready with your lies, kid, or, if you prefer, be prepared to withhold the truth.

“Tell me if I’m hurting you.”

“No, no …”

He can feel her sticky hands pressing insistently on his back. They glide from his tailbone up along his spine, stopping and forcing down each vertebra, and then suddenly speeding up and pressing more heavily as she reaches the back of his neck. After working there for a while, her fingers return to the bottom of his spine, where she plunges them into the top of his buttocks.

“That feels good, doesn’t it? Now turn on your side. On your left side.”

Thick, plump wrists like a big cardboard doll’s; small, fleshy hands that couldn’t stretch an octave (he knows this just from feeling them spread open on his back); podgy fingers that possess unexpected strength and which for several minutes seem determined to dismantle or displace his right shoulder blade. Then she tells him to lie on his front again, and this time her oiled hands travel over all his back, out from his spine to his sides, and from the nape almost down to his buttocks, pressuring with her thumbs as if she is trying to split his flesh open. Like steel pincers, her fingers massage the knots and tendons round his neck. Occasionally he can feel her plump lips close to the back of his head, her warm, rapid breath.

“Does it hurt here?”

“No, no …”

“And here, this shoulder?”

“A bit …”

Some quick pinches, like a spider crawling over his skin, and a new smell in the air, this time of roast almonds. He remembers his mother commenting that Señora Mir sincerely believed in the emotional treatment of muscles, and so applied very personal criteria to her work. For example, she would smile all the time as she rubbed the most painful area. Why does she do that? Because the good woman is convinced that her smile, a polite smile, even though you don’t see it because you’re face down on the trolley, has beneficial effects which are transmitted to your body through her hands … To hell with that woman’s magic powers! said the Rat-catcher one day. At any rate, she hasn’t transmitted anything special to him so far, thinks Ringo. Her fingers press down increasingly hard, especially her thumbs, but their slow, calm progress creates an expectant silence, probably leading up to what has terrified him from the start: the heart-to-heart chat, revelations. His worst fears are about to come true.

“That boy who’s a friend of yours, what’s his name? The one who plays dominoes with the old men in the Rosales bar, he’s small, a big, round head, yes, you know who I mean, one of those who goes up to Parque Güell to spy on courting couples … I feel very sorry for those peeping toms, I really do. Well anyway, that boy said that by chance he had seen Señor Alonso not long ago, in a garden … Do you know anything about that, Ringo? No? You didn’t hear him say that? Last Sunday that poor wretch told everyone in the bar that he saw Señor Alonso with a hosepipe, watering a garden. Apparently they all laughed, as if it was a joke. Of course, standing there waving a hosepipe … Paqui, who heard him, asked him where and when he had seen him, and she says the boy was embarrassed and pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about: first he said he didn’t remember, then that it was a joke … To tell you the truth, that lad has always seemed a bit slow to me, not to mention dirty-minded. That’s why I prefer to talk to you. You’re such a polite, responsible boy. Can I ask you, just out of curiosity, if you’ve heard anything about that, if they’ve told you …? No? Do you think the lad invented it? You knew Señor Abel Alonso, didn’t you? You must have often seen him in the bar … Do you know he had a soft spot for you?” Her skilful hands continue working at a deliberate pace that her voice falls in with. Every now and then he can sense her thick lips almost brushing his back. “He had noticed you, you made a good impression, he liked you. Do you know what he told me one day? He told me: That boy will go far. Yes, that’s what he said. He had a good eye for some things, the rogue … my, did he have a good eye …”

Ringo would give anything not to have to go on listening to her. He flat-tens his right ear into the pillow for a while, and then the left one, alternating the eye with which he has a partial view of the woman bent over him, her round, shiny face with curls sticking to her forehead, the wrinkled skin in her cleavage, her breasts swinging to the rhythm of her hands. Her powerful thumbs are still digging into his defenceless spine when he feels several drops of sweat hitting his back; thick, warm drops that fall infrequently but regularly, and his stomach clenches every time.

“What was that, my love?” says Señora Mir with her guttural, fleshy laugh. “Did you let off a little fart? Well, that doesn’t matter, does it? You don’t have to be embarrassed or go red over that … I let one off in the bar the other day, although it was so soft it was almost inaudible. But let’s talk about higher things, shall we? Your mother told me you’re not going back to the jeweller’s. Too bad. What does your father say? I must say, Pep is always out and about with his cleansing brigade, your mother works herself to death day and night at the residence or the clinic, and you’re always on your own … A boy your age, spending so many hours in that tavern, and always alone, that can’t be good, sweetheart. However much you like reading and all that. You ought to be at home more, child, and your father should pay you more attention.”

“There’s no-one at home,” he grunts, face down in the pillow. “My father is never there.”

“From the way you talk about him, it seems to me you don’t have a proper respect for him … Yes, he’s a good-for-nothing and a heretic, we all know that. He must have led your mother a merry dance, poor woman, and then he’s always going around claiming to be such a Red and a blasphemer … Everybody thinks he’s a hopeless case, but do you know how I see him? I see him as a peeled chestnut. Have you seen what the shell of a chestnut looks like inside? Of course you have. It’s got a soft down all over it, just like a jewel box. You make jewels, so you know what I mean. Well, your father is like a chestnut shell, tough on the outside but soft as velvet inside … Yes, you heard me. And it’s thanks to him I get news of my poor brother, God save him, the fellow had to go into exile. Listen, I’m going to tell you something very few people know. Do you remember when my Ramón started to lose his memory after his operation, and how sometimes he got lost in the street and didn’t know his way home? Well, one night as he was leaving the Rosales bar, he fell flat on his face on the pavement and started bleeding. He was pretty drunk at the time. And do you know who saw him and went to help? That good-for-nothing father of yours! I don’t know how to get home, and I’ve got nowhere to go, they say my husband said, and that rogue Pep said to him: Of course you’ve got somewhere to go, councillor, you can go to hell! And then he helped him up and took him home. I bet you didn’t know that! So you see, some people can be friendly and generous even though they don’t look it, and come to think of it, I remember that Señor Alonso, that he too … well, haven’t you got anything to say?”

He grunts, pushing his face as far as he can into the pillow to muffle his voice:

“I’m … I’m moved, Señora Mir.”

“You see, child?” she nods with satisfaction, and adds: “Goodness gracious me! I reckon your mother is right, and that all you care about is studying music and going around showing off with that sling of yours … Don’t you ever go dancing? Let’s see, let me tell you something, sweetheart. But it’s a secret, eh, you have to swear to me you won’t say a word to Violeta. The thing is, she quite likes you … Yes, don’t be surprised that I know, we mothers are aware of these things. It’s not for me to say, but don’t you think she’s a sweet, affectionate girl with everybody? If you could only see how she respects her father. But she has no luck with boyfriends.” She breaks off, moistens her fingers again in the glass pot, and starts gently massaging his back once more. “Don’t you ever go dancing at the Verdi or the Cooperativa La Lealtad? Your friends do, they never miss a Sunday, and you should see how they swarm round my Violeta … But lately she prefers La Lealtad. We never see you there. Why is that, sweetheart?”

“I don’t like dancing …”

“Nonsense!” She taps his buttock again. “Don’t start again with your fibs, eh! You danced with Violeta at the street fiesta last year, and I could swear the two of you were quite … you know what I mean.”

“The thing is, I can’t dance very well,” he manages to mutter in a faint voice.

“Mind you, I’m not saying it as a reproach. We women don’t really care if a man can dance or not. What we really appreciate is a polite, affectionate partner. But sometimes you have that so near to you, you don’t even see it … Why do I say that? Because a sweet, romantic girl should immediately be able to spot the attentive, discreet young man who has been waiting for her all along. And my Violeta is that sort of girl. Listen, in La Lealtad she has to fight off the pests who bother her all the time, you know what I mean, she gets bored always saying no, I won’t dance with him, Mama, nor with him, he clings like a leech. The thing is, they’re so vulgar when they approach her, if you know what I mean … and the end result is that she spends the whole afternoon just sitting there, poor thing. As if they had all taken a dislike to her. But I know she’d be different with you … Go on, promise me you’ll come to the dance one of these Sundays. As a special favour, to see if we can encourage her a bit. Will you promise? Pull your trousers down a bit, or I’ll get oil on them … Can’t you hear me?”

“Yes, Señora Mir,” he says, burying his mouth still deeper into the pillow.

“But a proper promise, I mean. You have to really mean it!”

“Well, okay, I … I promise.”

Why did you do that, you dummy? Soon she’ll be asking you to take your trousers and pants off altogether, she’ll run her vengeful claws all the way down to your arsehole and stick her nails in you. Unable to prevent himself hearing her, the only thing he can do is to stubbornly persist in pressing his mouth and nose up against the pillow, where the stale smells mingle with his attacks of bad conscience. Meanwhile, she is now pummelling his back with the edge of her hands, alternating them quickly and with astonishing precision in a warm, relaxing drumming up and down from the nape of his neck almost to his buttocks. And there is a sudden fresh shower of sweat cascading from her moon-shaped face: big, hot drops that her hands quickly burst and wipe away on his skin.

“And when I think how wonderful it is to be in love when you’re young!” says Señora Mir, a quiver in her voice. “I sometimes see you in the bar, always on your own, and frankly I’m really impressed by your enthusiasm for books … it’s truly wonderful. Sitting there all afternoon, without lifting your eyes, page after page, it’s really something! It’s wonderful to see such enthusiasm in someone so young, isn’t it? I bought a novel by Vargas Vila called … Aura or the Violets, I don’t know if you know it, it’s very strong stuff, very dramatic, I bought it for Violeta because of the title, but I haven’t let her read it yet, she’s too young.” Another sigh: no knowing, he thinks, if it’s provoked by the continued efforts of her hands, or by something else. “And before I forget, just out of curiosity … have you heard of anyone who by coincidence has run into him lately, over in El Carmelo or El Guinardó …? Señor Alonso, I mean. Perhaps, sweetheart, if you chanced, and I’m not saying you ought to do it, of course, or that it is absolutely necessary, but if you should happen to see him one day, and would like to come running to tell me … or if you heard of someone who had done so. A while ago I was told he lived over that way, where the anti-aircraft batteries used to be on El Carmelo, but he always denied it … Do you think it’s normal he never told me where he lives?”

More drops of sweat falling onto his back, one after the other, heavy and warm, swept away at once by her vigorous hands as they spread the ointment.

“I’m so glad you’re coming to La Lealtad! Your friends from the Rosales bar will be there too, causing trouble, but you needn’t pay them any attention … oh, and do you still go up to Montaña Pelada with them?” she asks, a melancholy note in her voice. “Have you been blackberrying in Can Xirot, or to Turó de la Rovira …? No, of course not, you’re all too old for that. Now you go on your own, to read, study, think of your own things. It’s better that way, quieter. It does you good being up there, doesn’t it? Just by Parque Güell, it’s such a wonderful view … Goodness gracious me, sweetheart, do you know what’s just occurred to me? We could go up there with Violeta for a picnic, just the three of us, would you like that? You’re growing up, child, you’re a man now, you’ve even got a bit of a moustache! Do you know something: if I was a man I’d grow a moustache. Ah, and before I forget there’s a favour I wanted to ask you … I know, you must be thinking what is this, this boring woman asking me for things all the time, but there’s no-one else I can ask … Would you be so kind as to bring me a bit of rosemary and fennel the next time you walk up Montaña Pelada? I go there sometimes, but the climb tires me out, and my collection of herbs here is running low … the tarragon has already flowered. And by the way, if when you’re up there or at Can Xirot, you should happen to see Señor Alonso out for a walk, the way he used to, could you please tell him I’ve got some important news for him …? His foot needs attention, you know.”

He agrees, burying himself still deeper wherever he can, incapable of reacting. He feels her strong hands gripping the tendons round his neck, and treating them as if she wanted to turn them inside out, twist them, rearrange them. It seems as though her fingers are armed with metal thimbles. Then she moves to the top of the trolley and bends over his back, sliding her hands time and again from shoulders to buttocks, so that her midriff gently bumps against Ringo’s head, which is projecting slightly over the end of the bed, and the generosity and warmth accumulated in the well-rounded shapes hidden beneath her coat welcome his befuddled brow.

“Tell me if I hurt you, sweetheart,” he hears her purr, as fresh drops of sweat regularly splash onto his skin on the nape of his neck, his shoulder blades, the groove of his spine. “It’s an old injury from playing football, a very nasty fracture. He’s got poor circulation and is in pain day and night, you know. He needs attention, lots of attention.” Her thick, choking voice echoes in the back of her throat in a way he finds obscene. “Oh, how he enjoyed me massaging that foot of his, the rogue! If you only knew, my boy! Poor Señora Paytubi has got big, misshapen feet, with dreadful corns, she’s always asking me to give her strong massages. The poor woman’s a pain, always moaning, but I put up with her just for that, because of the big, ugly footballer’s feet she has … because … they’re like … they remind me of …”

All at once his skin is moist, as though her hands had become hot all of a sudden, and he shudders as he realises what is going on. They’re not drops of sweat dripping onto his back, of course they’re not. She’s been whimpering for some time now, and you weren’t even aware of it, because her laments and little laughs sound so alike. His muscles and tendons contract beneath hands that have lost all their strength and life, although they keep moving with a crazy insistence, as her increasingly frequent and warm tears drop onto his skin, and he hears her first, restrained sobs. When did this melodrama start, when did the tears take over? Or was it never sweat, and were they tears right from the beginning, stealthily released and camouflaged by her constant chatter, and immediately mingling with the essence of turpentine or whatever other muck she was spreading across his back? He doesn’t want to open his eyes, and keeps his mouth pressed to the pillow until he feels her burning hands skittering down from his shoulders to his dorsal muscles, trembling like wounded little animals, abandoning his back altogether and seizing his bare, stiff left foot that is cold and bloodless, massaging it, her thumbs digging into the sole, the instep, and then the toes, one by one. Taken so completely by surprise that he surrenders his foot to her without the slightest resistance, his face and his thoughts sunk into the battered pillow, with her stifled sobs reaching him as if from another world, Ringo wonders what on earth to do now, and whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to call Violeta. The hands treat his foot with a vengeful mixture of brutality and possessiveness, rough and tender, squeezing and twisting it so insistently and energetically that in the end the pain becomes unbearable. For a while he refuses to admit that Señora Mir can be obsessed by a foot in such a possessive, unhealthy manner. He prefers to think she is working in her own way, and that he has to put up with it, that possibly there is a real connection between the nerves of the foot and those in his painful back, that his foot is like Señor Alonso’s injured one. Soon though, when he feels a new, sharp twist, this time as if the hands really mean him harm, he pulls his leg up and is about to protest, when a stifled cry and the sound of glass smashing on the floor makes him raise his head and open his eyes.

He sees her lying on the floor by the head of the trolley, curled up in a foetal position, weeping copiously, her fists screwed up round her eyes like those of an angry, disconsolate little girl trying to attract attention to her unhappiness, to the amorous mess, the scaly romantic infection that is her life. There’s a trace of blood on her knee, and he is still sitting up on the trolley staring at her, uncertain what to do, when the door bursts open and Violeta comes rushing in. Carefully avoiding the shards of glass, she bends over her mother and, without asking what has happened, without offering any words of comfort or telling her to stop crying, she rapidly helps her to her feet. She glances coldly at Ringo.

“Get dressed and go.”

Sitting on the trolley, he moves his leg, rotating his reddened, painful foot. Beneath it he sees that the sharpest fragment of glass still has a half torn-off label that reads: Essence of Eucalyptus.

“I didn’t do or say anything … she just fell.”

Violeta looks at him again. This time her eyes narrow as if they were burning, as if gusts of wind were making it hard for her to see, and were tensing her mouth and nostrils.

“Go away, please! Go!”

“I’ve no idea what happened to her … All of a sudden she was on the floor. Look what she did to my foot …”

It’s ruined, he is on the point of saying. Sobbing, her face buried in her hands, Señora Mir lets herself be led out by her daughter. Once they have left the verandah, Ringo sits staring at the shattered glass on the floor. While he is putting on his shirt and sandals he decides that before he leaves he’ll pick up every single piece, and not leave even the tiniest shard behind. But he soon cuts himself on his sound left hand, and opts instead to sweep them all together in a little pile, pushing them with the tip of his sandal. Leaving the verandah, he limps across the dining-room and heads down the corridor to the front door. Smeared with essence of eucalyptus ointment, his foot slides on the sole of his sandal. He has cramp all up his leg, his toes are aching, and it feels as though he has needles sticking out of his ankle: you deserve to have it broken, for being such an imbecile, you deserve to be stuck with a turned-in foot, like the ex-footballer … From one of the rooms comes the sound of discreet reproaches between mother and daughter, the occasional moan. Every time he moves his left foot he feels an excruciating pain, and he can hardly put any weight on it. I couldn’t give a damn about that woman’s problems, he tells himself, and all of a sudden something induces him to exaggerate the limp until he is dragging the foot along, producing a mocking, sinister sound that will bring back memories when it is heard by mother and daughter, wherever they have taken refuge. He has almost reached the hallway when a door leading onto the corridor opens and Violeta pokes her head out.

“Please don’t do that!”

“What?”

“Don’t drag your foot like that. Don’t do it.”

“Why not?” he says, without stopping. Over the girl’s shoulder through the half-open door he can make out an untidy bedroom, deep in a warm darkness that must be ideal for rolling around in. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you tell me to go?”

“But not limping like that, please.”

“Well, I’m going to! Who could it upset, who does it matter to?”

Although he knows he is being unfair and feels bad about it, before he reaches the front door he further accentuates his limp and gives Violeta a sideways glance full of spite and sadness, as if to say I know the crap that went on in here, don’t think I don’t, the things your mother and her lover got up to. And yet he cannot prevent the sudden appearance in his mind of the rain-soaked letter swirling round in the overflowing drain, caught between the rushing waters and his own lack of decision. For a split second, as the letter sinks yet again in the whirlpool that never stops spinning, he senses for the first time that a catastrophe is imminent, that something is silently being hatched that will cause irreparable damage.

“It’s not for me,” he hears Violeta whisper as he crosses the threshold. “Please don’t do it any more … I beg you … It’s not for me.”

*

It’s getting dark when he steps out into the street. The days are growing shorter, the light is more diffuse and deceptive, there is a cold edge to the air. Mist dims the yellowish light from the streetlamps. The squeal of a tram turning in the nearby square, a bicycle bell in the distance, the clatter of a metal shutter being lowered. He comes to a halt for a moment opposite the two rails at the street corner, obstinately persisting in their truncated curve to nowhere. Further down, a weak, bluish glow emanates from the glass entrance to the Rosales bar, barely enough to outline the stooped back of a man standing on the edge of the pavement, hands in his pockets, swaying a little as he stares down at his shoes with the bewildered air of someone who does not recognise them as his. Calle Martí is deserted. Shiny green weeds are growing in the cracks between the ruined tiles of the old pavement. As Ringo walks home, his disquiet returns, the almost physical sensation of having left something more than his tortured foot behind on Señora Mir’s trolley. Why are you still limping, dummy, when it doesn’t hurt anymore? The four-fingered hand touches the headscarf in his jacket pocket, feeling for its silky caress. For a few moments, the soft texture of the material imparts the gentle, warm feeling of a bunch of feathers to his tiny scar, until finally he resolves to undo the knot of this fine sling.