The Calligraphy of Dreams

13. THE SMELL OF ROAST COFFEE

One Sunday mid-morning, at a time when he should already be in the kitchen warming milk and toasting bread for his mother’s breakfast, he is still flat out with the sheet pulled up to his nose, unsure where he is, when he hears his father’s imperious voice calling to him as if in a dream. He jumps out of bed, rapidly pulling on trousers and shirt.

Sitting at the dining-room table with a bottle of the Martell brandy he usually brings from Canfranc, pencil in hand, the Rat-catcher is busily noting something in the top corner of the back of three unstamped, crumpled letters. On one of them he writes an A, on the second a P, and on the third a V. With the other hand he scratches his pensive brow with green-tinged fingernails, all the while clutching a balloon brandy glass as if it is a natural appendage, adroitly manipulating it without it getting in the way at all.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

Ringo replies with a grunt, struggling to get his jersey on. His father puts the letters and pencil to one side, swirls the brandy round in the glass, takes a sip, and picks his old work case off the floor and examines its well-worn clasps. Then he rubs his chin, again with the hand holding the glass. He arrived from another whirlwind trip only the day before, and this morning, fresh out of the shower but still unshaven, in his grey roll-neck goalkeeper’s jersey and with his leather jacket round his shoulders, he is ready for the off again. With his bulky body leaning forward, and his backside perched on the edge of the chair, it looks as if he could set out at any moment. Things never change, thinks Ringo: however much he says how good it is to be home, the Rat-catcher always seems about to leave again.

“I need you to run an errand for me.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

“I need to get mother’s breakfast …”

“I’ll do that. We’ll let her sleep in a while this morning.”

“The electric ring isn’t working. And she likes her coffee very strong and hot. She also likes toast with honey …”

“I know what she likes.”

“Yes, but you never remember.”

His father stares at him for an instant.

“Alright, Son, get it off your chest. Any more complaints? Hurry up, I don’t have much time.” He takes another sip of brandy and turns his attention back to the clasps on his case. “Well, let’s leave it for now. I want you to go to the Mirasol bar as fast as you can. Do you know where that is?”

“I think so.”

“It’s in Plaza Gala Placidia, opposite Atracciones Caspolino. You went there once with me and Uncle Luis.” He stares at him again, then adds more gently: “Now listen carefully, Son. You’re to take this case to the bar, and do exactly as I tell you. There’s nothing inside that might interest you, so don’t bother opening it. When you reach the Mirasol, you’ll see Uncle Luis sitting out on the terrace, but you’re not to say hello to him. Act as if you didn’t know him. He’ll not show any sign he knows you either, or say a word to you. Go straight into the bar and order a soft drink at the counter. Make sure you don’t let go of the case at any time. While you’re drinking your drink, Uncle Luis will come in to go to the toilet, but you’re to pretend you haven’t seen him. When he’s back sitting out on the terrace, ask the waiter where the toilet is, pay for your drink, and go for a pee. You’ll see another case the same as this under the washbasin; take it and leave this one in its place. When you come out of the toilet, don’t pause at the bar, but go straight into the street and come running home. Give your mother the case, and help her with whatever she asks you to do. Got all that?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, take this, and be very careful. Wash your face and comb your hair before you go.”

Contrary to his expectation, the case is not heavy. He is on the verge of asking what’s in it, but intuits that he should not. His father looks at him as if he has read his mind. He has another errand for him, and further instructions:

“Let’s see how you get on. Then I want you to deliver these letters.”

He fans himself with them, still holding the brandy glass in the same hand. He looks at his son uncertainly.

“I don’t like having to ask you this, and your mother will be annoyed when she finds out. But the way things are, it’s better she stays at home.”

He hands Ringo the letters. None of them has a name or address on it.

“Where do I have to take them?”

“Your mother will tell you when the time comes. For now, just remember: what you don’t know, you can’t tell if you’re asked.”

“What would that be?”

“Whatever.”

That errand is for later, he explains; first comes the Mirasol bar, where he has to behave completely naturally at all times, without attracting any attention.

“Will you be able to do that, Son? Can I count on you?”

“Of course.”

“By the time you’re back, I’ll be gone.” He stands up at last, and goes through the contents of the pockets of his trousers, jacket and raincoat, emptying them all out onto the table: cigarettes, tin lighter, handkerchief, keys, purse and loose change. Then he quickly puts it all back in the pockets. “I suppose your mother will tell you some things, if she thinks it’s advisable…You’ll get instructions about delivering these letters and anything else that’s necessary. I probably won’t be back for a long while, so you’ll have to look after our Alberta. I know you will, and that you’ll behave … Later on we can talk about your future, about a job that will suit you, and so on. Alright?”

Ringo nods, head on his chest. He still thinks his father is not really concerned about whatever the future may hold for him, whatever his aspirations might be, and that only his mother cares. At the same time, he suspects that this might be a real goodbye, and is worried it might mean an embarrassing hug, and even, God forbid, a kiss. He cannot recall his father ever giving him one, or that he ever wanted or expected to receive one on any occasion. He has never missed any disgusting kiss, and has no wish to get one now: he has grown used to the tap on the cheek, the slap on his back, or just a wink. But the Rat-catcher surprises him with a sort of affectionate shuffle, suddenly flinging an arm round his shoulders, without looking at him, so quickly he only has time to notice once more the faint lingering smell of roast coffee on his jersey.

“I know I can rely on you, pumpkinhead. Take this for the drink and the tram.” He gives him three pesetas. “Will you remember to do everything the way I told you?”

“Of course.”

“Off you go then. Get off at the Rambla del Prat, and the Mirasol’s a stone’s throw away.”

Everything goes according to plan, apart from taking the tram. Ringo decides to go there and back on foot, running part of the way, spending money only on the soft drink. It’s a sunny autumn day, almost hot. Everything seems normal and unchanging: the trams screech as they cross Plaza Lesseps, there’s not much traffic, two beggars are dozing on the steps of the church; in Calle Salmerón and the Rambla del Prat people go about their own business either eagerly or reluctantly, grey shoulders and lowered heads sharing the same weight of silence.

Uncle Luis is reading a newspaper on the terrace of the Mirasol bar, accompanied by an older man who has a dog tied to the leg of his chair. Ringo puts so much effort into pretending he hasn’t seen him that he collides with a chair, and as he falls he bangs into the edge of a table, but he never lets go of the case. Even before he reaches the bar counter his lip is swelling up, and he curses his bad luck. When he has done as instructed, asking for a soft drink and paying for it, he sees Uncle Luis come into the bar and head for the back; and soon afterwards sees him coming out. He asks the waiter where the toilet is. He finishes his drink, goes into the toilet and, still clutching the case, pees so quickly and nervously he wets the front of his trousers. Cursing yet again, he pulls the chain, leaves the case and picks up the other one, which is identical and weighs more or less the same, although there’s a slight metallic rattle from inside — perhaps this is the case with the torch and some other tools, he thinks, maybe even a tin of poison — pulls the chain again because the sound of the flushing water calms him, comes out and walks straight out into the street, concealing the wet patch on his flies with his free hand. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Uncle Luis move away from the counter and stride hurriedly into the toilet again.

DO NOT KICK THE CARS, he reads on the sign on the dodgem car rink as he passes by Atracciones Caspolino. Do not piss your pants, dammit.

The case he takes home doesn’t contain the torch or any other rat-catching equipment. All that’s inside are a ball of green wool with two crochet hooks stuck in it, a tin of peas, and a thick bundle of magazines and newspapers rolled up to bulk it out. His mother throws all the papers into the bin, and keeps the wool and the peas.

“Luis always adds a little something, poor fellow,” he hears her say sadly. And a short while later: “Where have you put the letters? Give them to me, I’ll take care of them.”

“He said you shouldn’t.”

“Give me them this minute! Your father must have gone crazy. Fancy sending you to the Mirasol. And the letters too.”

“Why do they have a letter written on them?”

“For no reason that matters to you. They’re news from friends to their families … Work things and favours that your father coordinates, a chain of friendly hands stretching back to Gràcia.”

At dusk the next day he learns that the police have arrested Uncle Luis, and that others in the rat-catching brigade could meet the same fate, including his father. He hears the news when he gets back from a long, solitary ramble round Montaña Pelada with a copy of Amok under his arm, a walk as uncertain in its direction as it is disturbing to find his mother at home when she should be in the clinic. She doesn’t seem particularly anxious or nervous when she breaks the news of the arrest to him; she is checking the contents of her handbag and hurriedly putting on her coat, and merely adds that she has spent the afternoon trying to find Uncle Luis’ brother-in-law, a taxi driver who has friends in the police headquarters, without any success, and that she is leaving his supper in the kitchen, tuna pasties with lentils or boiled rice, it’s for him to choose, all he has to do is heat the meal on the stove.

In bed that night he abandons Amok because he can’t help thinking about the Rat-catcher. Even then he can’t get to sleep; he keeps tossing and turning, and at one particular moment, his head drooping for the umpteenth time on the pillow, he suddenly feels as if he were peering over the edge of the abyss, plunging headlong into his own vertigo. Waking in different surroundings, he becomes aware that it’s the end of a phase of his life. Let’s face facts, Ringo, fumigate those doubts and accept the truth: your father is a smuggler, or something worse. In the first mists of sleep, he recalls a hot August day some two or three years earlier, when he was still employed as an apprentice. Before returning to work after lunch, he had gone to the newspaper kiosk in Plaza Rovira to look at the new supply of comics, when behind him he heard those two hoarse, mocking voices that so often bewildered him, the verbal ribaldry of the outrageous pair of gossipy clowns, those kings of tall tales who roam the neighbourhood at all hours. On this occasion they are chatting next to the kiosk, under the shade of a leafy plane tree.

“No two ways about it, Blay!” exclaims Señor Sucre. “If you’re a smuggler or a black-marketeer and they catch you, you’ll be tried as a black-marketeer and a smuggler, in other words, as a criminal, a wrong-doer, not for anything else.”

“But he is something else,” says old man Blay.

“Ha. But that something else is usually up to the people at the border. And he isn’t someone at the border. He’s a travelling salesman, shall we say. In other words, in inverted commas.”

“Here it’s a question of fumigating well without being seen. And Pep knows how to fumigate.”

“It doesn’t matter if he’s fumigating or plotting. Call it what you will. If they catch him, he’ll be a criminal.”

“I know what I’m talking about. Fumigate is the word, Sucre my friend. We have to fumigate as much as we can. That’s what.”

They fall silent for a while. Then Señor Sucre’s throaty rattle starts up once more:

“What do you think, Blay? I’m thinking of showing work again at the October Salon this year. It’s been so long since I’ve shown anything that many of my friends must think I don’t paint anymore, that I’m doing something else.”

“Aha, is that so? It’s just as I was telling you. That’s right.”

They are sitting shoulder to shoulder on the stone bench. Capitán Blay has his glass of coffee laced with aniseed from the Comulada bar, and Señor Sucre is fanning himself with an oriental metal fan. Standing at the side of the kiosk where the comics are displayed, Ringo can see them out of the corner of his eye. They say more than they know, and on top of that they make a joke of it, he thinks, and yet he can’t stop listening to them while he pretends to be interested in the weekly delivery of new adventures, the brightly coloured display of comics, cheap novels, and annuals pegged to the sides of the kiosk.

“It’s true, Pep is a man of many facets,” says Señor Sucre. “And invisibility is one of them. Sometimes it seems to me he is no longer with us, as if he were already dead … Blay, have you heard of the asphodel, the plant that makes the dead visible?”

“No; ‘Neither God, nor master’. That’s my motto.”

“It’s a plant that grows straight out of a rock.”

“Strewth! How can a plant grow out of a rock?”

When he hears this, Ringo recalls the flat rock up on Montaña Pelada.

“Pep is a rare kind of asphodel,” says Señor Sucre. “He’s what’s needed in the Rosales bar or any other tavern. I think I know him well, though he never ceases to surprise me. One night, in the Comulada bar, he bought a drink for that dolt Ramón Mir, and was laughing and joking with him … By the way, they say our dear councillor is getting worse every day. Apparently he lost his left ball fighting with the Blue Division.”

“He did? Well, ‘we lost more in Cuba’.”

“A lot more, friend, there’s no comparison! Oh, those imperial glories are a thing of the past, Blay, and the misfortunes of the present will soon pass too, and who knows what a dismal future awaits us! I think I’ll have a coffee and aniseed as well. Aha, look over there. Isn’t that Pep’s son standing by the kiosk, about to take a comic?”

“Yes, you’re right. Do you think he’s going to pinch a comic? He’s a bit old for them, isn’t he?”

“Hmmm. I know forty-year old men who read comics. But look, he’s been standing there a long time, pretending to read.”

Ringo feels the man’s little eyes crawling like insects over the back of his neck. The screech of a tram braking at a stop, the cooing of pigeons as they hop across the square, Rip Kirby punching a hoodlum, a rabbit and a pistol appearing out of Merlin the Magician’s hat on the cover of his annual.

“So then,” he hears Señor Sucre’s jerky voice once more, “you reckon there’s something important behind all those trips to the border?”

“Important? I wouldn’t know,” says Capitán Blay. “Nothing’s been important to me for a long while now.”

“No? Really? How old are you, Blay?”

“Too old. A lot older than you, dammit!”

“You’ve nothing to complain about. You’ll bury the lot of us, I’m sure. Do you know something, Blay? Have you ever stopped to think that at the start of the century the average life expectancy for men was only thirty-five?”

At this time of day, the August sun is fierce on Ringo’s bare neck. He doesn’t flinch, and continues listening intently.

“Be that as it may,” says Señor Sucre, “with Spain the way it is, thirty-five is more than enough, don’t you reckon? Well, I’m going to get my drink. But I want it with rum in it, it’s healthier … I was thinking I haven’t seen much of that Pep in the Comulada recently. A shame, isn’t it?”

“I’ve already told you, he spends the whole time fumigating. Have some aniseed in your coffee, dammit, you’ll thank me for it … I’m not sure whether you know it or not, but at the border post at Canfranc you can get a French rat poison that’s more powerful than any they sell here, and cheaper. They allow it through the customs on the quiet. Everyone knows we don’t have good rat poison here in Spain. Of course, a lot more things get through as well. I know of someone called Massana who used to manage to avoid the Gestapo and the Civil Guard and brought in nylon stockings and kilos of saccharine, and at the same time used the journey to smuggle in Jews, spies and airmen … But nowadays things have changed. Now they smuggle in that infallible rat poison.”

“Goodness! To call what Pep brings in rat poison! You’re quite something, my dear Blay!”

“Yes, you can laugh. But ask Gaspar Huguet, the coffee roaster. He’ll tell you that all that’s missing is the signal.”

“What signal?”

“One day you’ll get a postcard from the Valley of the Fallen and the stamp with Franco’s head on it will be upside down. That’ll be the signal.”

“The signal for what, Blay?”

“Ah, nobody knows as yet. But it will be the signal, you can be sure of that.”

The clink of the spoon against the glass as he stirs the coffee, the rhythmic rustle of the fan through the hot air, and then Señor Sucre calling to him:

“Hey you, boy!”

He stuffs his hands in his trouser pockets, sinks his head between his shoulders, and turns round towards them. He narrows his eyes, suspicious and bristling with premonitions like a cat.

“Yes, you,” says Señor Sucre. “Come here a moment … Could you do me a favour? Go to the Comulada bar and ask for a coffee laced with rum for me. Tell them I’ll come by later to pay.”

Ringo does as he’s asked, dragging his feet, hoping to hear more. The drink passes to Señor Sucre’s thin hands, with their pastel-coloured patches of orange, blue and mauve. Ringo stares at them, intrigued, and tries to formulate a question about where exactly his father is now — and then finds himself awake, face down on the pillow.

Please don’t think about it anymore, son, don’t insist, don’t keep going over it in your mind, his mother advises him the next day. He’s not always involved in what you imagine, really he isn’t, either on his own or with others, still less with a knapsack on his back and wearing a balaclava, where on earth did you get that idea, and even less carrying weapons, My God, he’d never do that, there’s never been anything like that. That’s not how you should see him, not now or before, when there were still Germans up there … and we don’t know anything about the brigade, or about Manuel.

“It’s better if we lie low for a while, that’s all,” she adds. “We have to wait. Then we’ll see. Let that be enough for you for now. Because the fact is, everything is still the same. Your father’s away because of his work, and here at home we don’t know when he’ll be back. That’s what you’re to say if they ask you.”

She doesn’t know how long this is going to last either. If they’re lucky, only a few months. As for what was in the case he took to the Mirasol bar, he’s not to worry about it. The only thing he needs to know is that his father and some friends have been helping a lot of people, inside Spain and outside, and running risks.

“Nothing we should feel ashamed of, Son,” she says. “On the contrary. Even though you might find it hard to believe, almost everything your father has done has been to help other people. You mustn’t forget that. And please, don’t ask me anything more.”

“Yes, I know. He’s forbidden you to tell me anything.”

“You’re wrong. You’ll know what you ought to know when the time comes. But before he left, he asked me to explain a few things to you …”

“There’s no need,” he cuts in. “I know all about it. Contraband, that’s what it is, isn’t it? Him and Uncle Luis, and Manuel as well, and probably others in the brigade. On the border or close to it, I looked on the map. They smuggle in coffee for Señor Huguet, and roast it together in secret. And that’s why they’re going to arrest him as a smuggler, isn’t it?”

“I wish that was all there was to it, Son, I really do.”

She seems very tired. She is doing day shifts now, looking after an old woman in a traditional villa on Plaza Lesseps, and she goes to bed early. But today she will not go to sleep until she has reassured her son. I really wish that was all he did, she repeats, although your father wouldn’t like to hear me say so. He only does it to earn a few pesetas because he’s travelling anyway. Virginia tobacco, sheer nylon stockings, French cognac, expensive perfumes … not exactly worth running the risk of going to prison for.

“What is worth it,” she adds, “and what many people really thank him for, is the other thing he does, his work as a postman.”

“A postman?”

“A delivery man, if you prefer. He takes and brings news from comrades to their families. Parcels, letters, money … He’s a messenger, let’s say.”

But she doesn’t tell him everything, not by a long chalk, because the time isn’t ripe yet. She doesn’t mention Ramiro López, Señora Mir’s much loved and missed brother, who is an old friend of his father and Uncle Luis. She doesn’t tell him that Ramiro had been a member of an escape network on the French border, an employee at Canfranc station and close collaborator with the Customs chief there, when he was linked to a Resistance group working with Allied agents operating in Spain. She makes no mention at all of the relation between the Rat-catcher and people at the border; she doesn’t tell him that what he gets up to now is nothing like what he was doing six years earlier, well before they closed the railway tunnel, when the world was at war. Nor does she recall the incursions that in those days really were dangerous, when the train linked Canfranc with Zaragoza, Madrid and Lisbon, and his father and Uncle Luis collected clandestine correspondence at the border and handed it over in Zaragoza for it to be sent to the British embassy in Madrid, or brought it to the consulate in Barcelona. Nor does she tell him they passed themselves off as busy travelling salesmen with false documents, carrying perfumes and nylons but also photographs and letters hidden among the underwear, or mention the messages and visas the British consulate in Barcelona gave them to pass on to Ramiro López’s group and the Customs chief, counterfeit visas allowing Allied combatants and civilians to go through Spain to Portugal or Gibraltar, and does not reveal that many of them were Jews fleeing the German occupation of France. She does not mention any of this because it’s all in the past, and she does not now want to see the fear of those days in her son’s face; he’ll learn about it someday, if his father decides to tell him. All she says is that this is how he and Uncle Luis began, taking and bringing messages and money for the relatives of friends who could not return, and that they did this using contacts at the border who were linked to Señora Mir’s brother, and that they are still doing this, doing people favours, even though the tunnel at Canfranc is closed now, and the war finished more than three years ago. And that yes, it’s true, they had dealt in contraband goods, in fact that was their only reason for starting, and she of course had never approved of that, it was something that had been and still was the source of many stifled arguments and bones of contention. And anyway, Son, don’t go thinking they bring anything that valuable home, just a few things to help us get by, nothing that means we’ll no longer be poor …

*

A week later, two policemen turn up with a search warrant, which they enforce in a halfhearted, routine way. Ringo is not at home that day. His mother tells him about it that night without seeming the least bit worried. All this was predictable, Son, I’ve been expecting it for a long while. The next day she is summoned to police headquarters on Vía Layetana and interrogated, although to her this also seems equally routine, and even considerate. They didn’t behave like men from the Social Brigade, she says later. In answer to questions about the whereabouts and illegal activities of her husband and other members of the Municipal Cleansing and Pest Control Service, she gives the same response: the team went to do some work in Gerona, in a textile factory on the banks of the river Oñar, and since then she has had no news of her husband and has no idea when he will be back. It’s better not to lie to us, señora, I’m telling you for your own good. Look, sir, that’s how my husband usually behaves, he’s pretty inconsiderate, a wastrel, but I can’t believe he’s ever hurt anyone, I really can’t. I don’t know anything about any trips to Zaragoza or Canfranc, and nor does my son, still less any links he may have with black-marketeers or exiles.

“And you are to say the same if they ask you, Son. You don’t know anything,” she warns him while she is darning socks sitting on her bed next to the bedside table with the lamp giving off a faint red light next to the image of the Infant Jesus of Prague. As usual, the dignity and good sense of what she says help ward off fear and despair from the house’s precarious orderliness, this fragile imitation of hearth and home, protecting it from the harshness of a night like this one when, too tired to go out, she asks her son to drop by Señora Mir’s and take a bag of used clothes for her.

“Victoria collects clothing each winter and takes it to the church or the Social Assistance, where she has nurse friends who distribute it. It’s for needy people. The nuns at the Residence have given me several things that are in good condition. Wear your scarf and take care, Son. It’s after dark, and the weather’s cold.”

It’s a canvas bag with white and blue fringes, and handles like hoop earrings. It’s stuffed full and is quite heavy; he’s never seen it in the house before. He sets off and halfway there, near Calle Sors and the corner with Calle Martí, close to the open drain, a battered, empty tin can is just waiting for him to kick it. He has always liked kicking tins, but this time he walks on by in the shadows, with a vague feeling of clandestinity and danger. So much so that a little further on he comes to a halt under a streetlight and stealthily opens the bag to examine its contents. Two pairs of trousers and an old jersey, a scarf, blouses and a pleated skirt, clothes that have been mended and are in need of an iron, but are at least clean. And underneath everything else, three ironed shirts neatly folded and buttoned up, three vests and three pairs of underpants, also folded, four pairs of socks and a pair of striped pyjamas. As he feels in the bottom of the bag, he comes across a bottle of Floïd liniment, a small box of razor blades, a carton of Chesterfields and a crunchy packet of roast coffee, one of the ones the Rat-catcher always brings home from Señor Huguet’s.

He’s been praying it will be Violeta who opens the door. Instead it’s her mother, in housecoat and slippers, with rollers in her hair, and her round, unmade-up face floating in the darkness of the hallway like a pale, phantasmal moon. At first she is taken aback to see the boy, but soon puts on a smile. She does not switch on the light. She has been peeling a mandarin, and is wearing a huge cheap golden bracelet.

“Where are you going out in the cold at this time of night, child?”

“I’ve brought you this from my mother.”

“Oh, okay, that’s fine, darling.” She quickly takes charge of the bag and stands there for a few seconds waiting for him to say something more, staring at him with that plastic-doll smile of hers. “And how is our dear Berta?”

“She wanted to come herself, but she’s not feeling very well.” He leans forward to inspect the hall and the darkened corridor. “Isn’t Violeta in?”

“She’s just this minute gone to bed. She was bored, the poor thing.” She keeps her hand on the door, without opening it any further. “We were here together on our own, listening to the radio … Was there something you wanted to say to her, sweetheart?”

Her plump hand chucks him under the chin. The fragrance of mandarin on her fingers. Why does she have the voice like a wounded cat today, much gentler than usual? From the back of the apartment, next to the verandah, comes the sound of exultant voices on the radio.

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll tell her you asked after her. She’ll be pleased.” As she puts the bag on the floor, the bottle of Floïd liniment clinks. Her smiling, alert face does not alter. “I won’t ask you in, because she must be asleep already. But if you want to leave her a message … As you know, I go with her every Sunday to the dance at La Lealtad. You promised you’d come some day, sweetheart, didn’t you? Or have you forgotten already?”

“No, I remember. Well, I have to be going.”

Yet he doesn’t move, though he is not quite sure why. He stares at her, as if expecting her to say something more. He suddenly brings up his right leg and, covering the front of his trousers as if he is embarrassingly caught short, he lowers his gaze and says pleadingly:

“Oh, Señora Mir, Oh, please!” He groans, improvising a grotesque fantasy act, hiding behind a mask of pain: “I’m so sorry, but would you let me in to go to the toilet a moment? I can’t hold it in any longer …!”

“Of course, sweetheart, of course! Follow me.”

The bathroom is at the end of a recess to the right of the corridor, before Violeta’s bedroom. Señora Mir switches the light on in the corridor, and shuts the front door. The bathroom is clean and tidy with a few homely touches obviously meant for guests. The toilet lid is lined with goatskin. A small towelling rug in front of the bidet. A spotless mirror edged with transfers of brightly coloured flowers. The showerhead in place over the shiny clean bathtub. A white wardrobe full of folded towels, and two bathrobes behind the door — one white, the other pink — bath caps, a cardboard box full of curlers, and a mass of female toiletries lined up on a glass shelf. And in a glass, a small razor … which could well be hers, to shave her legs with. But there is something more suspicious: when Ringo lifts the toilet lid (because all at once he really does need to pee, and remembers that the same thing happened to him during the play-acting in the Mirasol bar) he sees a cigarette butt floating in the stagnant water, coming apart and ringed with a slight yellowish stain. He can’t imagine Violeta locked in here, smoking cigarettes in secret, but who knows if her mother … He pulls the chain and wonders whether he ought to wash his hands. He does so, and hears Señora Mir’s voice from the other side of the door: Take a clean towel! When he emerges, he bumps straight into her: she has a concerned smile on her face, and is holding the bag. She has not moved.

“Everything alright?”

“Yes, Señora Mir … Well, I’ll be going.”

He did not notice it when he had rushed into the apartment, pretending he was desperate, but now, as he reaches the hall again and is about to leave, his nostrils catch the faint smell of roast coffee coming from the clothes hanging on the rack very close to the front door: several overcoats he cannot make out properly in the darkness. He comes to a halt, his nostrils dilated, then feels her hand on his arm.

“Wait, my boy.” She keeps him on the threshold, looking him up and down with her smiling, perspicacious eyes. “You look a bit wild to me.” She winds the scarf round his neck, pushes a lock of hair off his forehead. “I wanted to ask you something, if you don’t mind … Your mother tells me you still like to go up to Parque Güell and Montaña Pelada. That’s nice … Well, the fact is I wanted to ask you if by any chance you had seen Señor Alonso up there? You remember him, don’t you? The thing is, I have to give him a message. I forgot to tell him something important …”

“No, Señora Mir, I haven’t seen him. Besides, I’ve hardly been up there recently …”

“Hmm. It’s just in case you run into him some day. You might do, who knows … And now, get along home. And don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll tell Violeta you asked after her.”

“Yes, thanks. Bye.”

“Be very careful on the stairs, there’s not much light. And remember, you promised!”

He starts down, but turns back to look up at her. Señora Mir is still standing with a smile on her face by the half-open door, but then slowly closes it completely. The unexpected smell of coffee and the suggestion of a mystery stay with him in the darkness as he feels his way down to the last step on the ground floor, and he has time to imagine Señora Mir going back to the dining-room carrying the bag. He can see her emptying it out on the table, and separating the ironed shirts from the second-hand, mended clothing, putting the carton of Chesterfields and the jar of Floïd liniment and the razor blades to one side, opening the small bag of roast coffee to sniff it, and finally smiling at the man playing Patience at a corner of the table, doubtless in a vest and wrapped in a blanket. He also sees her with the coffee grinder on her lap, smiling as she turns the handle, happy to be able to help her unfortunate friend Berta, and to offer her clandestine guest another cup of authentic, perfumed real coffee … Yes, in the home of a Falangist, why not? He can see him at the table shuffling the cards over and over again, lost in thought, the smoke from his cigarette curling round his exhausted head, unshaven, his hair uncombed, sullen, blasphemous, and more clandestine than ever. Now we really are the arsehole of the world, Father! Brandy from the keg in a glass, Chesterfield butts in an overflowing ashtray. I’ll only be here a couple of days, Vicky my love. At times friendly, at others full of resentment. The good woman snores all night long and only has this cheap keg brandy. He helps her in the kitchen. Sometimes he falls asleep, head in hands, on the table where the ex-councillor used to eat. Listening to the radio. Glancing at Violeta’s shapely backside when she walks down the corridor, pulling her housecoat more tightly round her. Hiding in the bedroom when a patient comes either for a back rub, a herbal recipe or some relief for their bunions. A profile portrait of José Antonio Primo de Rivera in a silver frame. Just for a couple of days, my hospitable friend … Yes, all things considered, what better place than this? Who would think of looking for him in the house of a local councillor, an ex-combatant, a home blessed by the Sacred Heart?

“What are you talking about?” His mother laughs heartily, but with her back to him. “That’s a good one! What weird ideas you get, Son!”

She’s not in bed yet, although she is in her nightdress. She is in the bedroom, sorting out the wardrobe.

“I saw what was in the bag, Mother …”

“You did? It’s all for a charity.”

“… and the whole flat smelled of roast coffee, the sort Father brings home.”

“So what? It’s not the first time I’ve given Victoria a bit of coffee. What’s so strange about that?” She closes the wardrobe and turns towards him, slightly annoyed. “Listen, you and I cannot know where your father is. I’ve already told you, all we know is that he went on a trip and isn’t back yet.”

“I know that, there’s no need to tell me …”

“It would be best if you didn’t even know he is away on a trip.” She smiles at him with a lively, teasing glint in her eyes, as she gathers her hair on the back of her neck. “I don’t know if you understand me, Son … You’ll see, the first days are the worst. You have to leave home as quickly as possible. Anywhere will do … just as long as you can count on the friendship and loyalty of the person you are staying with. But not at Victoria’s! It’s only for a few days, until a safer place can be found … and poor Victoria, if the word got round! That’s all she needs, with the reputation she has! Do you understand me, Son?”

And yet later on she admits that perhaps it’s true, his father might have stayed for a while at Señora Mir’s. Two days and a night, no more. After that he left and found refuge somewhere unknown, and from that moment on, she refuses to answer his questions and won’t tell him anything else. And yet, in the course of the following month, a gloomy, unpleasant November, as he observes his mother’s behaviour and interprets her stubborn silences and lapses into sadness, Ringo comes to the conclusion that she and the Rat-catcher have arranged secret meetings in Señora Mir’s apartment after he has left it, on at least a couple of occasions, both of them falling on Sunday night.

It all began the day his mother, while stuffing things into a bag behind his back — he managed to see a carton of Virginia tobacco and some envelopes — complained of a bad headache and neck pains, and announced she would go and visit her friend Victoria that evening. I need one of those miracle potions she prepares, she told him. She repeats the visit a fortnight later, also late on Sunday evening, and on both occasions, to judge by her state of mind when she returns home — even more disheartened and anxious than when she left — Ringo deduces that she has seen him. When he gives her to understand that he knows, he immediately senses her scrutinising him affectionately, although she denies any such meetings and, eyes moist, expressly forbids him from mentioning his father at home or anywhere else, for everyone’s good, for the good of a lot of people. She even tells him it would be best for him not to think of his father anymore, or to think of him as if he were dead or had gone away, never to return. Ringo interprets this as wanting to free him from feeling he has to justify or protect the Rat-catcher, or to pry into his secret activities or his current whereabouts.

And yet, as if contradicting her own fears and precautions, she is quick to tell him about other urgent tasks. First and foremost, they have to safeguard his father’s job as coffee roaster several nights a week with Señor Huguet, a good friend who has protected their family. Foreseeing what might happen, some time earlier his father had agreed with Señor Huguet that if he had to be away for longer than usual, he would allow his son to take over until he returned.

“I don’t like the idea of you going there, Son, but we need the money. It’s fifty pesetas a week, which come in very handy. It’s a special rate that Señor Huguet pays. You’ll be a good assistant, I’m sure Señor Huguet won’t have any reason to complain.”

“Of course. Don’t worry.”

He knows what awaits him, even though he has no idea for how long. His father has already mentioned this extra job, thanks to the generosity and trust Señor Huguet has in him. A widower with two unmarried daughters, Señor Huguet had worked for R.E.N.F.E. at Sants station until he lost his job after he was denounced for his anarcho-syndicalist past. One of his brothers-in-law, who has an important grocery store on Calle Aragón, set him up in the coffee-roasting business. Assembling the roasting equipment and looking after it doesn’t take much, the Rat-catcher had told him, just a bit of skill. A few years ago, Señor Huguet used to do everything himself, but he’s getting on now and needs help. Four times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, you have to get up at two in the morning and make sure you wrap up warm, even though Señor Huguet’s house is nearby, a three-minute walk to Oliveras Passage, a hidden alleyway near the Europa football ground. Señor Huguet will open the garden gate swathed in an old bathrobe and wearing a thick scarf. Holding a torch and stumbling as he goes, he’ll lead you over to the shed, where he’ll already have lit the lamp, which gives off a wheezing hiss the whole time. You have to get the wood for the fire and assemble the iron struts that hold the drum where the mixture of coffee beans and sugar goes. Huguet prepares the mixture, carefully weighing each part on scales, while I start the fire. Don’t expect Señor Huguet to say much, he’s a man of few words. Then, making sure the flames stay the same so that the heat is constant, all you have to do is keep turning the handle that spins the metal sphere where the sugared beans are slowly roasting. They turn and turn inside the drum with a sound like pebbles on a beach, and, would you believe it, that’s the only sound you hear in all the three hours you’re in that shack, Ringo tells El Quique. But it’s not an exhausting job. You can do it sitting on a stool or on the floor, while Señor Huguet gets out the sieve where we pour the still smoking roasted beans. We leave them there to cool off for a while, then all that’s left is to scoop them up in a little shovel and fill the glossy paper packets — a quarter of a kilo in each one — and that’s that. When I leave, Señor Huguet always gives me one for my mother.

His scarf covering nose and ears, Ringo walks home along deserted streets, stealthy and resentful in the feeble glow from the streetlamps, under the bare branches of the lime trees along the Paseo del Monte, fingers perfumed with the smell of roast coffee furiously pounding the keyboard in the clear early morning air.

*

In mid-December, without warning, the cold becomes so intense that in the evening the interior of the Rosales bar is little more than a patch of pale yellow light. The window where Ringo sits to read occasionally frames hurried, stooped figures passing by in the street, blurred silhouettes that mingle with the persistent phantoms of his imagination. Because in the past few days, in addition to the arrival of the cold and his night-time job roasting coffee beans, several things have happened that have acquired a special resonance in the bar. The first is that, thanks to his improved health and good behaviour in the San Andrés asylum, ex-councillor Ramón Mir has been given a fortnight’s leave to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays at home with his wife and daughter. For some time now it’s been said he doesn’t recognise either of them, that he’s completely nuts, beyond all recovery, but this does not seem to be the case; not entirely, at least. One rainy afternoon he is seen getting out of a taxi leaning on Violeta’s arm. He is pale, much thinner, with lifeless eyes, but he still has the same air of a bellicose bird of prey, and his hair is combed impeccably, with more brilliantine and dark stickiness than ever. Señora Paqui says he felt dizzy in the taxi, and that was why he looked ill, but that his head is a whole lot better, that the treatment is working wonders, and this is why he has been allowed to spend these precious holidays with his family. That and because of his good behaviour.

“It’s not true,” says Agustín, who is so fat it’s never clear whether he is standing or sitting behind the counter. “No dangerous madman is let loose for good behaviour.”

“He’s been let out with the permission of the military authorities,” comments Señor Carmona from the card-players’ table. “Or of the Falangists. His own people, at any rate.”

“That’s not true either,” says the tavern-keeper, setting up three thick glasses for their coffee and aniseed. “Who can guess the real reason?”

“His own private mental nurse will have done it,” says Señor Rius, dealing the cards slowly and carefully. “As a councillor and cook with the Blue Division, I bet he has his own nurse, and he’s the only one who can give his consent …”

“No, wrong again! The permission and consent came from his wife! That’s obvious!” insists Señor Agustín, serving the card-players their drinks. “And why? Because she thinks her husband is so loopy he no longer has any idea of what’s going on. If not, why would she bring him home, when she’s still hoping her lover boy will put in another appearance again … Have you ever seen a family as crazy as that one, and all because the husband went off to Russia to fight?”

“That’s enough, Agustín, please!” his sister protests. “Poor Vicky. It was her daughter who got him out of there. And you can say what you like, but they have cured him. He doesn’t look the same.”

“I never thought he was completely mad, Paqui,” says Señor Car-mona. “But it’s true, he looks a different person.”

“A different person, my eye!” Señor Agustín explodes. “He’s the same old troublemaker as ever. It’s true he doesn’t go round boasting, or shouting and arguing with people, but he comes in here twice a day demanding his glass of Tío Pepe and pretending he’s somewhere else when it comes to paying. He always used to leave without so much as a thank you, and he wants to do the same now, because of his pretty face and his blue shirt, the scoundrel. He may be another person, but whenever he can he tries to take advantage … Yesterday he came in with the idea he could carry on charging his quota for Social Assistance, and wanted a donation for his youth camps in return for not reporting me for selling Virginia tobacco. The same dirty tricks as when he was a councillor. And I’ve heard he’s been doing the same in other taverns in the neighbourhood.”

Señor Agustín insists that when Mir is speaking directly to you he shows glimpses of the abusive, bossy fellow who was such a pain in the arse, the vestiges of the arrogant attitude many people happily thought was a thing of the past following that pistol shot on the steps of San José de la Montaña, but it seems they were wrong.

“There are still those who look down at the ground when he passes, friends, if you hadn’t noticed. Because crazy or in his right mind, he’s just the same as ever.”

Seeing him walk along the street, slowly and in a pensive mood, or standing at the counter in the Rosales bar, staring at his glass of sherry without showing the slightest interest in the other customers or any desire to talk to anybody, not even to scold the youths rowdily playing table football, he does indeed seem like a new man. His gaze is more troubled, he is much thinner, and he wears loose clothes that aren’t his, a corduroy jacket that looks as if it belongs to somebody else, sometimes with a black beret pulled down over his ears; but what is really new about him is his self-absorbed manner, his slow, unspontaneous gestures, as if he was deciphering what he should do or say in the air. However, as it doesn’t take long to discover, this apparent formality does not prevent him enjoying the fortnight of freedom he has been given, or to surprise everyone with several forays outside his home. He attends services at Las Ánimas, and midnight Mass with his daughter, even the solemn ceremony of the Nativity of the Poor, standing erect at the foot of the altar surrounded by the Congregation of Pious Ladies, and also turns up for the nativity play put on by the church theatre group. But in spite of these regular pious appearances, commented on and celebrated by the faithful, other reports and rumours, even if they are scurrilous bar-room gossip, claim that while the ex-councillor has always been a hypocrite and a Holy Joe he is also a rogue and a womaniser, or to put it more precisely, a shameless whoremonger. A few days before Twelfth Night, there are ribald comments in the Rosales bar to the effect that he was seen in the Quimet on the Rambla del Prat in the company of a tart, with a guitar in his hands, catching the peanuts she was launching towards his mouth. Roger and the eldest of the Cazorla brothers confirm this: they were there and split their sides laughing at his behaviour. The gossip also is that he was seen in Panam’s, a low dive on Las Ramblas, and El Quique — well, El Quique swears he can’t be that off his head, because he has two or three condoms in his pocket, and he’s seen them.

After the Christmas festivities are over, one rainy afternoon Violeta and her father set off down the street under an umbrella to Plaza Rovira, where they wait for a taxi to pass by. That day the ex-councillor really does look like a different person: sad and downcast beneath the umbrella his daughter is holding, with the beret over his eyes and staring obsessively at his hands, he lets her adjust his scarf and do up a button on his raincoat. Shortly afterwards they take a taxi and disappear in the rain towards San Andrés. Three days later, suffering from acute liver pains, Señor Mir is rushed to the Hospital del Mar.

More or less around the same date, exactly three days after he has turned sixteen, one 11 January as night is drawing in, Ringo is reading at his table in the Rosales bar when Roger comes in saying that a woman has been killed in the Delicias cinema. But not in the stalls, the toilets or the foyer: in the projection room. A strange story, the intrigue increasing the more they learn about it. The victim is a prostitute, and was found strangled with a tie on a pile of reels in their cans next to the projector. They say the murderer is the projectionist, and that the police found him in the back row of seats even before the film had finished. Nothing further is known for the moment. The cinema was cleared and sealed off by order of the authorities. El Quique and a kid from his street, who had sneaked into the first afternoon performance, say there was a break in the film that lasted longer than usual. They were showing “La calle sin sol” and “Gilda”, which was interrupted during the scene in the casino when she starts to undo the zip on her dress and says I can never get the hang of zips, but if somebody would like to help me … at which an admirer in the audience shouted that he would be delighted. That was when the film went off, El Quique explained, and added he was already expecting it to, because of course they would cut a film like that, with a gorgeous woman about to be shown stark naked …

Over the next few days more details emerge; the streetwalker was a beautiful Chinese woman, an ex-acrobat and variety artiste, who had once been something more than a friend to ex-councillor Mir, and she wasn’t strangled with a tie but a black stocking.

“With a length of film,” Señor Agustín asserts. “The cashier saw her when she was being carried out. They say it was the murderer himself who called the police, but that after that he had nothing to say, he was in a daze.”

“It seems the victim was wearing her coat, but with nothing underneath,” suggests El Quique.

For a while this is the only subject of conversation in the bar, as everyone speculates about who the victim was, and on the murderer’s motive; whether he killed her out of jealousy, if she lived at the top of Calle Verdi and had a son, that she wasn’t a Chinese tart but was from Aragón, and also that she had often been seen entering or leaving the police station on Calle Travesera. Finally the topic is exhausted, and the lively conversation among the customers turns elsewhere. The same occurs with the gossip about Ramón Mir’s recovered mental health, which is put down to his recent enthusiastic addiction to whoring and living it up. Soon enough, everything slides back into the slime of winter that the days seem to slither along, into the uniform grey that the neighbourhood and the city bear like a stigma, so that it seems yet again that the things that really matter in life must be different, and must take place far from here, far from us. For example, lads: Larry Darrell renounces the beautiful Isabel and heads for the Himalayas in search of the fount of wisdom on a razor’s edge; the young Nick Adams stares at the trout’s fins moving as they struggle against the current of the river with two hearts, Jay Gatsby rows eagerly in his small rowing boat out to a gangster’s luxury yacht, towards a dream that will be his downfall, and Ringo installs himself yet again at his table by the tavern window and watches night close in on the street which, the same as every Sunday at this time, appears suddenly inhospitable and abandoned.

Shortly afterwards, Señora Mir and Violeta leave their building and walk arm-in-arm down the centre of the street, fresh from the hair salon and dressed to the nines. They walk quickly and nervously, whispering and leaning against one another. Yet again, the mother is accompanying her daughter to the dance at the Verdi, or possibly the Cooperativa La Lealtad. According to the gang, it is the mother who chooses the venue, and that always depends on the expectations roused the previous Sunday by the attention and behaviour some young man has shown to Violeta; how often he had asked her to dance, if he had offered her a drink or not, if he spoke politely and chatted to her or only wanted to get close and rub himself against her. Her mother’s got eyes in the back of her head, El Quique used to say, before you can try anything she’s spotted you.

As on every Sunday, when the two of them are passing the Rosales bar, Señora Mir relinquishes Violeta’s arm and comes in to say hello to Señora Paquita. Sometimes, after the usual question, she stays talking to her for a few minutes while she has a small glass of brandy. Violeta waits for her in the street, pacing up and down and looking thoughtful, with her hair in surprising tight curls round her pale face, wearing a short grey cloth coat with velvet collar and cuffs, red woollen gloves and lilac medium-heeled shoes. Yet again her mother has said she’ll be right out, that she will only be a minute, but Violeta knows this isn’t the case. She knows that if her mother tosses down the first drink, she’ll ask for another one and sip it slowly, losing all sense of time.

“Pour me another one, Paqui,” says Señora Mir, leaning on the bar. “I’m ruining my liver, but don’t worry, princess, it can take it. And it warms the cockles of my heart. It’s a long walk to Calle Montseny, and it’s really cold out there.”

“Why don’t you go to the Salón Verdi? It’s much closer?”

“Because the Mario Visconti Orchestra is on at La Lealtad. Their singer is fantastic, very melodious … Well, my daughter likes him.”

She coughs as she says this, and looks away. Today she has no wish to see herself reflected in her carping eyes. She is dressed and made up so strikingly she seems to have more on her than can possibly be taken in at first glance. She is spilling out of a short grey woollen coat with a rabbit-fur collar, allowing glimpses of a cherry-red blouse that matches the fierce scarlet of her lips. She appears on edge, suffering from the cold, and vulnerable, her voice hoarse and weak. She has tried to bring everything together with an elaborate toilette that must have taken hours to apply, but has been unable to camouflage the deep lines round her eyes or the sour grimace at the corners of her mouth, or to rekindle the liveliness of her eyes, the cheerful, unexpected glint that has always been her most eloquent response to the world. Her face is no longer capable of that radical transformation that gave rise to all the ribaldry, and beneath the laboriously applied cosmetics there is no disguising the face of a woman worn down by the daily grind and by a broken marriage. The coat smells of wet sheep, and hanging from her shoulder is a big leather bag with a lacy fringe. The heavy bracelets tinkle as she anxiously tugs off her gloves and raises the glass to her lips with trembling fingers, cupping her other hand to conceal it as if she was shielding it from the wind or from prying eyes.

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror, Vicky?”

“More than I would have liked, sweetie. Don’t get at me.”

“You don’t look well,” says her friend. “You ought to stay in bed. Why don’t you let Violeta go on her own?”

“Huh, on her own! How many years is it since you’ve been dancing, my love? There are so many louts around! It sends a shiver down my spine just looking at them.” She rolls her eyes, lined with mascara and a sense of the injustice of life, and adds: “Young people today are so cruel, Paqui.”

She raises her shoulder and rubs it against her ear in a stroking gesture that conjures up luxurious furs caressing her neck, then sighs and searches desperately in her bag until she pulls out a packet of Chesterfield. She stands with the cigarette pinched between her fingers, but doesn’t light it. Instead, she skilfully rolls it to and fro, lost in her thoughts.

“Your daughter is freezing out there in the street,” says Señora Paqui. “Why don’t you tell her to come in?”

“She prefers it out there.”

“I can’t understand why you don’t let her in.”

“I would let her, but she doesn’t want to.”

“Go on, tell her I’ll give her a coffee.”

“Me? You do it. Go out and tell her, see what she says.”

“Why? What’s her problem?”

“I think it’s because of those boys at the table football. She says they make fun of her, that they’re filthy pigs. She can’t even bear to see them, and she’s right. Kids today are a worthless bunch.”

“But they aren’t here. They left a while ago.”

“It doesn’t matter. You know how stubborn she is.”

“I reckon she doesn’t like seeing you in here, Vicky.” She fills her glass of soda water to the brim. “Here. This is the only thing you should be drinking.”

“Oh no, you can pour that away.” She giggles nervously: “I’ve cut soda out of my diet, sweetie. It gives me heartburn.”

“I don’t think that’s funny.”

“Oh, Paqui, how boring you can be! Yours truly here has got her responsibilities, hasn’t she? My husband in hospital, unsure whether or not they’ll have to operate, and me running up and down all the blessed day. And if you knew how little I want to go dancing in this cold. But I have to bring a little happiness into her life, don’t I? What else can I do? She’s so strange, poor thing. How are we going to find her a boyfriend if she never goes out?” she observes her daughter in the street through the steamed-up glass of the door. “Look at her. She’s pretty when she makes an effort, don’t you think, Paqui?”

This scene is repeated every Sunday, with very few variations, with or without permed hair, with or without fake-luxurious furs on her shoulders, but always with Violeta waiting out in the street for her, the habitual prelude to dancing. Also during the week, at any time of day. Whenever Señora Mir is coming or going past the bar, she stops and enters, and asks the eternal question, the real and only reason for appearing, the question she doesn’t appear to want to give up on, however often she is disappointed. It frequently precedes a greeting or any other kind of polite formula, even her urgent desire for a drink:

“Any news, Paqui?”

For the first time, Señora Paquita allows a hint of hostility to appear in her reply, despite her friendly tone:

“News, what news, darling?”

“Goodness gracious! My letter: what other news could there be?”

“There you go again! No, I haven’t had any letter.”

“What’s the matter, princess? Are you annoyed at me?”

“I’m. …weary, Vicky.”

“I only asked a question. Won’t I even going to be able to ask you now?”

“I warned you, I told you not to get your hopes up …”

“Oh my, that’s a good one! What you told me is that I had to wait, don’t you remember? That’s what you told me … Or do you know something more you’re not telling me?”

“Of course not, Vicky. But if I were you I’d forget that letter for good … I mean, I wouldn’t keep on waiting for it. Not now.”

“Ah, but I’m not you, sweetie!”

She says this with a defiant smile, the unlit cigarette rolling between her red, shiny fingernails, but her friend knows that behind the smile lies deep distress, a persistent anguish that she finds hard to explain after such a long, useless wait, when disillusionment and resignation would be more natural. Nothing has changed in her obstinate attitude over the past six months, apart from her appearance, which is rapidly deteriorating. Despite all the make-up and the wide variety of hairdos. Stiffly erect on her stiletto heels, she controls a slight shiver at the back of her neck. She has one hand on the edge of the bar, and the other on her waist, like a bird about to take flight, and looks over her shoulder at the regulars playing cards under a gently rippling cloud of blue mist floating above their bent heads as they concentrate on the vagaries of the pack. Glancing in their direction, she catches the occasional mocking grin that possibly makes her think they are gossiping about her again, but there is no ill-feeling or bitterness or resentment in her gaze, nothing more than a mixture of disappointment and smiling bewilderment. The wide-open blue eyes are those of a woman who has suffered a kind of hallucination, somehow agreeable, but basically inexplicable.

A little beyond the domino players, sitting at another table with a book open in front of him, Berta’s boy deliberately turns away from her to stare fixedly out into the street, and for a moment Señora Mir’s gaze falters. Oh my lad, my lad, where’s your manners, he might read in her face if he dared glance at her, aren’t you ever going to keep your promise? Is that why you’re refusing to look at me?

“What a lovely song, Paqui!” she suddenly exclaims, listening hard. “I like it because … because … I’ve no idea why!”

“What song?”

“Are you deaf? The one on the radio.”

She smiles at nothing for a moment, her heart and memory connected to a musical thread only she perceives. The radio is silent at the far end of the bar, with a napkin and a toothpick holder on it.

“What nonsense you talk, Vicky. The radio’s switched off.”

“You’re the one who’s switched off!”

The gaudy cockatoo can hear the song because she carries the tune the whole time in her swinging hips: this no doubt is what the domino players near the bar would think if they still paid her any attention, if they were still trying to outdo one another with the crude jokes and vulgar gossip they indulged in so frequently at her expense the previous summer. Today the scatterbrain’s hair is a mass of blonde curls like a young girl’s. Take a good luck at her, look at her shiny poppy red lips, at the rouge on her flabby cheeks, at the mascara daubed on her eyelashes. Like a wedding cake.

“All I want is that someday my daughter will be able to look after herself,” she says after another sip of brandy. “That’s all I want, Paqui. That to be happy she doesn’t have to wait for some heartless rascal to decide he wants to sleep with her, if you follow me. Nowadays girls don’t know what they want, they have no values.” She wets her lips with the brandy again, then goes on: “I know what I’m talking about, because I’ve been through it too … Do you remember Ricardo, Paqui? That handsome Ricardo Taltavull, the one who used to click his tongue so disgustingly. How could I fall for a man who rummages in his ears with a matchstick and makes strange noises with his mouth, as if he always had phlegm in his throat? Too disgusting for words, don’t you think? I must have been blind not to see it! And even so, I was crazy about him for almost a year. There’s no explaining that sort of thing, but it does happen.”

“Only to you, Vicky,” sighs Señora Paquita. “These things only happen to you.”

“Oh my girl, who hasn’t been in love with someone completely unsuitable at some time or other?” Another pause, another sip. “And on top of all that, there’s a lot less work, I don’t know why. It must be because nobody has any aches and pains anymore. It’s been ages since I’ve worked at the clinic, they never call me … Of course, nowadays they reckon penicillin cures everything. Do you know what I reckon, Paqui? That this damned penicillin is taking all my patients.”

“Rubbish. It’s just snake oil. You’ll see, things will pick up this winter and you’ll get more people …”

“Men don’t get hernias anymore, Paqui. As many women with backache as you like. But not a single man with a hernia. I had a good number of them before … As for the letter, perhaps your brother knows something …”

Señora Paqui tries changing the subject:

“Listen, I think I could do with a back rub myself, Vicky.”

“Have you asked Agustín?”

“My problem is I don’t stop all day long, so I don’t have time for anything.”

“Do you mind being quiet while I’m talking, Paqui, please?”

She closes her eyes for a moment, then casts a doleful glance at the handsome knock-kneed football player on the calendar, the one who she thinks should have kneeled down for the photograph. Despite this, she can’t help but admire the impressive musculature above his sturdy knees, as well as the proud lift of his bandaged head, the wild defiance of the future. She finishes her drink, pays, and says goodbye to her friend, who insists she should go home. On the threshold, with the door open, she turns and her eyes once more seek out Berta’s son crouching by the window with his sleepy face: what happened to your promise, my boy?

Beneath his heavy lids he can sense her silent reproach. I’m sorry, not this Sunday either, señora. Since he’s started working at night he feels tired all day long, and the smell of roast coffee on his jacket and scarf acts like a sleeping draught to make him sleepier still. His eyes are closing now over the pages of his book, and so he rubs the misted-up window to pick out the figure of Violeta in the street again. Now she is standing on the edge of the pavement on the far side of the road, motionless, with her feet close together. Her gloved hands are pressing a cheap yellow Perspex purse against her stomach, and she is staring down at the ground to avoid meeting the eyes of any passers-by. When she sees her mother coming out of the bar she crosses to meet her, and meekly hangs on her arm. The two of them walk down the street in the middle of the road, huddled together to warm each other, like two young friends off to a dance in search of excitement. The mother teeters on her high heels as she whispers something in her daughter’s ear; Violeta listens, head down and silent, with that sensual incongruity that Ringo discerns yet again, even though she is some distance away and has her back to him: really pretty legs and an ugly face, wary gait but a pert behind.

Only half an hour later is he able to concentrate on young Michael Furey standing in a remote Galway garden, freezing in the rain as he peers up at his beloved’s window. The fateful atmosphere of the scene keeps him awake for a good while, until once again tiredness and an uneasy conscience numb his brain and he decides to close the book. He gets up and leaves the bar, standing on the pavement outside. It’s gone five, and night is falling. But why are you doing this? he wonders, who is forcing you to keep a stupid promise you made to a half-crazy woman who is desperate to find her ugly daughter a boyfriend? He goes back into the bar, asks Señora Paquita if she will please keep the book for him, then goes out once more, wrapping the scarf round his neck and glancing up at the balcony to Señora Mir’s already darkened flat on the opposite side of the road. He comes to a halt for a moment and thinks: it’s the least I can do, and yet he can’t bring himself to take the first step. On the balcony, the ragged Easter palm attached to the rusty ironwork for almost two years now, dried out and battered from being in all weathers for so long, has come loose and threatens to fall to pieces in the street below. Ringo thinks he sees a light being lit behind the balcony windows, and a shadow flitting across the dining-room. And something that is not so much a feeling, more of a slight twinge of conscience, finally sets him in motion as he tells himself for the umpteenth time, it’s the least you can do, kid, turn up there simply to warn them.

*

He has never been in the Cooperativa La Lealtad before, but when he has climbed the stairs and finds himself confronted with the dance floor everything looks very familiar because he has heard so often from El Quique and Roger what the place is like and how easy it is to pick up a girl, especially on hot summer nights when the balcony onto Calle Montseny is open and couples go out for a bit of fresh air and a quick grapple. The orchestra is playing a rumba; the singer is wearing a sky-blue jacket with sparkly silver lapels and is shaking maracas. The dance floor is packed with couples, and all round Ringo little groups of youngsters are talking and shouting, standing or sitting on folding chairs. Flashy ties, quiffs, jackets with padded shoulders, girls in cardigans, nylons and ankle socks. He can’t see El Quique or the others: they must have gone to the Verdi. It takes him a while to locate Violeta. She is not one of those girls who stand by the side of the floor waiting to be asked to dance, shyly or staring openly at the boys, hips jutting. She seems to know that she stands little chance against them, and to judge from where he finally discovers her, she has given up all hope. She is on a chair by the far wall, near one of the exits to the balcony that runs the length of the building, but is shut now. She is saying no to a thin boy with big ears who is standing cheekily in front of her, arms akimbo. Hands resting on the gloves and purse in her lap, she shakes her head time and again, without even looking up at him. The confused lighting in the dance hall does her no favours. Without her coat, she is wearing a fairly short pleated orange skirt and a mauve satin blouse with a black belt and a tight collar. Before she is left alone again, she sees Ringo pushing his way towards her, his jacket unbuttoned and hands in pockets, his hair spilling down his forehead and the scarf crossed over his chest like a pair of cartridge belts.

“Hello there, Violeta.”

“Hello.”

“Where’s your mother?”

“What …?” she tilts her head to hear him better.

“Your mother. Didn’t she come with you?”

“Is it that important to you?”

“I came to tell her something … I saw something very strange.”

“You did?”

“Yes. I need to tell your mother at once … Seriously, where is she?”

The orchestra is playing so loudly his words are drowned out. He surveys his surroundings, without success. He remembers the gang’s jokes in the Rosales bar: the mother clings to the bar, and the daughter lets herself be pawed on the balcony or in the toilets: It’s as easy as pie, kid. Violeta crosses her legs very slowly, and studiously straightens one of the pleats on her skirt. She gives him a hard look.

“Take your scarf off, will you? It makes me feel hot just looking at it. What do you have to say to my mother?”

“That there’s someone in your house. There’s a light on in the dining-room, you can see it from the street. I swear! I noticed it as I was leaving the bar. There’s somebody inside — it must be a burglar … Where is your mother?”

She stares at him, silent and thoughtful, apparently not the slightest bit alarmed.

“A light in the dining-room?”

“I swear!”

“When did you see it?”

“Just now, about a quarter of an hour ago. The time it took me to walk here.”

“Is that so?” Once again she looks thoughtful but unperturbed, with a faint smile playing across her face. She straightens another pleat on her skirt. “That’s why you came, because you think there’s a burglar in our flat?”

“Well, let’s see, I knew you two were here, didn’t I? I saw you leave home, you and your mother … What do you expect me to think, if I see a light and there’s nobody in?”

“Mama must have forgotten to switch it off.”

Ringo takes off his scarf, fetches a chair, and sits down beside her.

“Are you sure? Someone could have got in by the balcony, grabbing the rail … the Easter palm has come loose, it’s about to fall off.”

“It is?”

“He might have come back, and if he doesn’t have a key …”

“Who might have come back?”

“That man with the limp, your mother’s friend.”

“Don’t talk to me about him! I wish he were dead!”

“Well, there’s a light on in the dining-room, Violeta, I swear. We have to warn your mother. Where is she?”

“Where do you think? At the bar.” She looks at him maliciously. “I get it. You want Mama to see you, don’t you? So that she’ll know you’ve come … even if it’s only with the excuse that you’ve seen a burglar.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Because she made you promise you’d come. Do you think I didn’t know? I know all the tricks my mother gets up to.”

“What are you saying? I came because I wanted to. Nobody makes me do anything. This afternoon I intended to go to the Verdi cinema, so you see … They’re showing “The Nine-fingered Beast”, have you seen it? It’s about a pianist who has his finger cut off, and he becomes a murderer to avenge himself, but he’s still the greatest pianist in the world … He’s Peter Lorre. I was about to buy the ticket when I said to myself, this isn’t right, nano, you ought to go and warn Violeta and her mother there’s somebody in their flat.”

“You don’t say. Alright, so now you’ve warned us. But tell me this: why did you promise my mother you’d come and dance with me, when as far as I know you don’t even like dancing?”

There is no way he is going to tell her the reason. He’s not even sure of it himself. Violeta smiles mockingly and adds:

“Don’t worry, you idiot. You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t want to.”

“Of course I do. I came because of what I told you,” he insists, scrutinising her unconvinced profile, while the orchestra launches into a mambo that produces an explosion of joy and feminine squeals on the dance floor. “Aren’t you worried that a stranger has sneaked into your flat?”

Violeta turns slowly and looks him in the eye.

“Do you really not know?”

“Know what?”

“Have you really not been told?” she asks witheringly, staring at him intently, as though trying to hypnotise him. “Really and truly, you know nothing? I can’t believe it …”

“I’m telling you again, I saw a light on in your flat! Cross my heart and hope to die!”

“Alright, so there was a light. Now tell me something … What’s your father up to? What news do you have of him?”

“My father’s in France,” he says rapidly. “What’s that got to do …?”

“Well actually, it’s got a lot to do with it. If I told you he might have switched that light on, would you believe me? He has a key to the flat. Mama gave it him, and recently he’s met your mother there more than once, always after dark. Don’t tell me you didn’t know. You’re so smart.” She uncrosses her legs, then crosses them again brusquely and conclusively, and for a moment the suggestiveness of her gesture is more powerful than his poorly concealed surprise at what he has just heard. He immediately reacts as if he has been caught out, and shifts his gaze to the hands on her lap. Her long, delicate fingers, with their deliberate, enveloping movements, are fiddling with her purse. “Why did they meet in my house and in secret? I’ve no idea. Ask your mother.”

“My father’s in France, I tell you. Most likely with your uncle. And I know why …”

“I don’t want you to explain anything,” Violeta interrupts him, “I don’t want to know anything more. Thank God it was only a few days, and I hardly even noticed. He was shut up in his room the whole time and only came out at night, so don’t ask me anything, because I know nothing.”

Her eyelids flutter disagreeably: they are heavy, with thick, reddish lashes. Ringo meanwhile, still taken aback by what he has just heard, is thinking about the light on the balcony. So from time to time the Rat-catcher is to be seen around here … At any rate what matters now is that the light he saw — although he is starting to wonder whether he really did see it — is the justification for him being here, and not his blasted uneasy conscience. What on earth does anything else matter to me? Then, on the strength of a sudden impulse, he reveals an intimate wish of his, a fantasy he has been elaborating.

“One day I’m going to France. One day my father will send for my mother and me, and we’ll leave this arsehole of the world for good.”

Violeta stares at him in disbelief.

“You will? That’s good. And when is this going to happen?”

“I don’t know, it depends on a lot of things.” He lowers his voice, and adds mysteriously: “We’ll have to wait and see, and above all not go round saying anything about it, alright? Be very careful. Well anyway, since I’m here …”

Since he has come, he means to say, since he has kept his promise and she is alone and so obviously available, with her hard little breasts beneath her blouse and her apple-like knees, seated so upright on her chair and nodding her head to the music …

“Do you want to dance?”

“Ugh! I’m tired. Besides, you don’t like dancing.”

“That depends.”

He’s taken off his scarf, and doesn’t know what to do with it. After the mambo, the crooner conducts the first bars of a slow tune and tilts his head at the microphone, singing in a low, syrupy voice.

“The singer is crap,” says Ringo.

“He’s very handsome.”

“He’s got the face of a goat.”

“Well I like him.”

“And the pianist plays with a pole stuck up his arse, he thinks he’s José Iturbí or someone … and just look at the drummer. This orchestra is useless.”

“It’s the best. Last month they were playing at the Salón Cibeles.”

They fall silent for a while, watching the couples slowly gyrating round the edge of the dance floor. A boy with a huge conk and a tightly combed zeppelin head plants himself in front of Violeta, hands in pockets, and asks her to dance. He’s even uglier than the one before, thinks Ringo. She says no, and the boy turns round and walks off dejectedly. Violeta takes Ringo’s scarf from him and puts it on the back of the chair.

“Your scarf smells really nice,” she says. “Roast coffee, isn’t it?”

Ringo shrugs. The scarf is a perfumed reminder of his secret nights. Less than twelve hours ago it was hanging from a hook in a corner of Señor Huguet’s shed while he turned the handle by the fire. But he doesn’t want to talk about the fire or those nights with Violeta.

“Come on, let’s go,” says Violeta, standing up. “Mama ought to see you’ve come. She’s in the bar. Come on, what are you waiting for?”

“No, dammit, that’s not why I came!”

“It isn’t?”

“No. But you … can I tell you something? You shouldn’t leave your mother on her own, least of all in the bar. You shouldn’t do that.”

Applause for the orchestra. Violeta stares at him, then drops into her seat and sighs.

“I know,” she says, suddenly overwhelmed. “But there’s no way … We had another argument as soon as we got here, just for a change. She stays in the bar, and nobody can get her out of there. She burnt herself on the hand with her cigarette, but she insists it was a boy next to her, that of course it wasn’t her … that she almost fell because the boy was laughing at her and me. I bet her head was spinning. Something always happens to her. She’s so accident-prone. But the fact is she’s not well, not well at all … And you know why? She’s still waiting for news from that footballer! How stupid can you get?”

“What footballer?”

“The lame one, who else? That old man who says he broke his leg years ago, Señor Alonso,” she says harshly. “Always talking about that leg of his. And then there was that letter that Señora Paquita told Mama about, another of his lies. I bet he never thought of even writing her a postcard.”

“A letter?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know about it. The story’s going round of the entire neighbourhood!”

The orchestra strikes up a bolero. Ringo looks pensively down at his hands.

“Well, yes, I did hear something … What do you think Señor Alonso would say to her in that letter?”

“Heaven knows. Lies to make it up with her, to see her again … God forbid. Mama is getting worse all the time. I don’t know what to do. It’s like … like an illness. The other day she had an argument with Señora Grau; she called her an old busybody and insulted her. Mama said she was sticking her nose in where it was none of her business, and she got dressed and stormed out without paying. I’m sure she won’t be back. And it wasn’t the first time something like that has happened … Really, something needs to be done. Someone ought to tell her that he’s married, for example … because I’m sure he is, and with children. Eight of them at least. And that he’s been in jail … Did you know he’s been in jail?”

“No.”

“Well, he has. He was out on the street when he met Mama. He had just come out of Modelo prison or a concentration camp …”

“How do you know?”

“He gave Mama a very nice ring he himself had made out of a sheep bone or whatever. All prisoners make them. Before he went to France, Uncle Ramiro used to make bone rings with a file when he was in prison. I reminded Mama of that, but she didn’t want to listen. She never listens to me. But somebody ought to convince her that he’s a jailbird …”

“But why was he in jail?”

“What does that matter? For being a thief, a con man, or a black-marketeer. Who knows? Most likely for being a Red.”

“That’s not the same.”

“Well, it is more or less.” Violeta shrugs. “The fact is that he’s a liar, a scrounger, a good-for-nothing. To think she could get involved with someone like that! Exactly what Papa hated! A jailbird, a criminal, a damned Red …”

“But he’s not a bad person, Violeta. He isn’t.”

“What do you know?”

“If you tell your mother that, it’ll really hurt her.”

“So what? Let her suffer. Because who is he anyway, where did he spring from, why did he have to come into the flat …? I bet he’s from a shanty town. I could swear he lives in a shack on Montjuich, up near Can Tunis or worse still, in Campo de la Bota. A lady who gives catechism classes in Las Ánimas and goes a lot to Somorrostro doing charity work saw him one day with a gang of kids playing football on the beach, down by the shanties of Pequin. I didn’t tell Mama that, she’s capable of going to try to find him in that rubbish dump … Have you ever been there? There’s nothing but rats and shit! But of course, the fraud would never admit it … how does the saying go: ‘Easier to catch a liar than a lame man’. Well, it’s not true.”

“So what are you thinking of doing?”

“I’d like to convince her that he’s never coming back, and that he’s not going to write or anything. That he’s gone to Brazil to work, for example, a long way away, and has no intention of returning … You could tell her. Tell her how you saw him one day saying farewell to everybody in the bar.”

“But that’s a lie. Why don’t you tell her?”

“She wouldn’t believe me. Ever since the day they had an argument and she threw him out, mama doesn’t believe a word I say.”

“Why’s that?”

Violeta falls silent, and stares cold-eyed at the couples crowding the dance floor, their heads turning submissively to the slow rhythm of the melodious bolero.

“Aaagh!” she spits in disgust. “Because that’s how she is!”

Here, as she waits on her chair to be asked to dance, in this harsh light and rocked by the suggestive music, the imbalance between her pretty legs and ugly face is more shocking and disconcerting than ever. And yet the more striking the contrast, the greater the attraction. Perhaps this is why he tries again:

“Well, shall we dance?”

Violeta makes a vague gesture with her head that could just as well be a yes as a no, then thinks for a few moments before saying:

“No.”

She busies herself once more with her purse and straightening the pleats of her skirt. Her fingers move rapidly and delicately. All at once she stands up.

“Alright then,” she concedes. “That’s why you came, isn’t it?”

Just by putting his arm round her waist, fingers brushing against the ridge of her back under the blouse, his hand can sense the lively spring in her buttocks as she steps out. Even his amputated finger can feel a slight tautening that lifts the heart. She holds up her moist, hot right hand and as they take the first steps he folds it in his and brings it down to his chest, encouraging a more or less casual touching. Her other hand is resting on his shoulder close to the back of his head, but she is still clutching her small gloves and purse, so there is no chance of any effusive response. Even so, as she stretches her neck and turns her face away from him, he can feel the docility of her body as she lets him pull her to him. Violeta’s left thigh slips between his legs, imprisoned as if by accident and always slightly behind his movements, and he summons a warm rush to his groin: he needs to believe that this is why he is here, for this bumping and grinding, that this is the only reason for coming, what else, Quique, Roger, Rafa, lads, what else could bring me here, what other emotion could lead me to want to please an old bat who’s searching for a boyfriend for her daughter? Why could he have come if not to press his tool up against those thighs, even if only to confirm yet again that it means nothing to Violeta, that she doesn’t respond to any prompting, that she seems unaware of your hard-on, and with complete indifference starts to hum the song along with the orchestra, apparently oblivious to the ritual of stealthy movements between her thighs, her body as unresponsive as it was during the saint’s day fiesta the year before.

After a while, annoyed at the lack of response, he brings his mouth to her deaf ear:

“Listen, Violeta, there’s something I want you to explain. Last summer, when your mother made that scene in the middle of the street, you were at home, weren’t you? I heard your mother say so to Señora Paquita … Why didn’t you come down to help her?”

“Why do you ask? Is it that important?”

“I couldn’t give a damn. But your mother was lying out there in the street and you didn’t even come out on to your balcony.”

“I didn’t know anything about it. I was in bed with a bump on my head.”

“A bump?”

“I’d had a fall in the bathroom. Just as well I had the towel wrapped round my head, because otherwise …”

“Well, somebody wanted to go and fetch you, but your mother said you weren’t at home, that you’d gone to the beach with a girlfriend. Why did she lie?”

“I don’t know … I guess she didn’t want me to see her in a state like that.”

The crooner sings with his fish lips pressed up against the microphone; the loudspeaker converts his nasal drawl into crashing scrap metal. Cabaretera, mi dulce arrabalera. Every so often as Ringo takes a forward step he misses the beat in his haste to press himself against her and treads on her foot. Think of my poor feet occasionally, she murmurs jokingly. But the clumsy Ringo cannot think of her feet, because in his mind’s eye he is seeing her in the bathroom, towel wrapped round her head like a turban, staring at herself naked in the mirror before she slips; because he is seeing her on the floor and considering the rising groin that he is now pressing gently with his thigh without getting any reaction, without any sign of acceptance from her. It’s like rubbing yourself lovingly against a sack of potatoes.

“So you were the little innocent,” he mutters. “And that day, when your mother and the lame footballer had their fight, you were there … What happened? Why did they argue?”

She says nothing, but lets her forehead droop on to his shoulder. Over a stupid little thing, she says after some time; it had to happen, and I was glad it did. She presses herself against him, flinging her arm round his neck, her mouth tight against the lapel of his jacket, and stammers something he doesn’t understand, but which sounds like a swear word, followed by a garbled string of reproaches: it was a misunderstanding, some nonsense of her mother’s, a misapprehension she still hasn’t got over, but which I’m glad of. She describes all this in a flat monotone, as if she were reading it with great difficulty on his lapel, pausing and hesitating the whole time: if she had gone to the beach that Sunday with her friend Merche as planned, if Señora Terol had not had cellulite and her mother gone to visit her, if that man had not stayed at home to wait for her, if I had only taken a shower half an hour later … A brief account of facts linked by a fateful outcome. A strange voice with a murmur of rain. Ringo closes his eyes in order to see her more clearly: beyond the emotionless words there is a pretty bathroom, and she is looking at herself naked in the mirror as she wraps the towel round her head. Barefoot and still damp, she leans forward, then straightens up with the towel in place. Her small breasts and ample thighs push forward, but as she turns to reach for the bathrobe she slips and falls backwards, hitting the back of her head on the edge of the bath. It could have been worse, she says, the turban softened the blow, but even so I saw stars and could hardly speak. At that moment, the ex-footballer was in the dining-room laying the table, he liked to help, he always set the places when he stayed for a free meal, and he must have heard her cry out. He rushed in, lifted her in his arms, covered her with the bathrobe, took her to her room and laid her out on her camp bed — but she only learnt all this sometime later.

“I’m not saying he touched me, eh? But who knows …”

“Oh yes? Why do you say that?”

“Touched me in a certain way, I mean. You know … If he did, I wasn’t aware of it, I didn’t realise.”

“Huh! A girl always realises something like that.”

How long has passed? she asked herself when she came to. And she cannot say for certain if he touched her, but all of a sudden she finds herself stretched out on the bed, half-covered and still groggy, completely defenceless, with the towel wrapped round her head like a turban. How long had she been like that? And he’s bending over her trying to revive her by tapping her on the cheek and calling to her, Violeta, my child, his voice and hands leave a scalding sensation, and what could she do, she was unable to react, she had no idea what was going on, and neither of them heard the front door or the footsteps along the corridor, until they saw her standing in the doorway in her white coat and holding the vanity case with her creams and potions …

Ringo would like to see her face while she is talking, because her voice sounds so strange and muffled with her mouth pressed against his chest that it conveys no emotion. Almost at once, she loosens the arm round his neck and raises her head, as if she had been unburdening herself of a secret and had needed to bury herself in him to do so, hiding her face and adopting another voice.

“He tried to explain,” she goes on. “But without making much effort. Mama didn’t listen anyway, she said some terrible things to him. Terrible. That he was to get out of the house and never come back. She slapped him and threw everything on the table at him — plates and glasses and a bottle, everything he had laid out for the three of us. She was sobbing all the while, and suddenly rushed out into the corridor and downstairs … And he gathered his things and left as well. I thought he had gone after her to bring her back and explain, but not a bit of it: he vanished completely and never came back.”

“And what did you do?”

“Nothing. I shut myself in the bathroom again, and kept quiet.”

“You kept quiet? Why?”

“Because deep down I was pleased he was gone. Because he would have left her anyway. That’s why.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he didn’t love her anymore. She didn’t realise it, but I did. He managed to say to her: I promise to forgive you, and I’ll write to you, or something of the sort, but he took advantage of what had happened to leave her for good.” She falls silent for a while, then adds: “I’ve told you all this so you’ll see I’m not making it up. It was all so terrible for Mama.”

And she refuses to understand, adds Violeta reluctantly, her voice thick with a spiteful delight. That woman cannot or will not understand; she’s always been like that, she trusts other people too much, and when they deceive her she never learns, she’s so damned stupid and naive, she’ll always be looking for someone to look after her and protect her, someone who’s kind and attentive. She’s always needed that, and that’s precisely why she’s ended up losing all her self-esteem. For some time now, Papa has been nothing more than a distant memory for her, and an unpleasant one at that, and so that man is all she thinks about. The days after that rogue left her, she said some unbearable things.

“Do you know what she said one day? She said that the worst thing of all, what had hurt her most, was not that I was half-naked in bed with him almost on top of me, but to see me with his towel on my head — because that was the towel he used! See how unhinged she was? That towel was mine, it always had been!”

The next tune is a slow one, but Ringo isn’t listening or following the rhythm, simply turning very slowly, pushing his pelvis forward, getting aroused every so often. That girl already does it, Roger told him one day as they watched Violeta leaving the bar carrying a bottle of wine and the soda siphon. How can you tell if a girl’s already done it? he had asked, and quick as a flash El Quique had replied on Roger’s behalf: It’s easy, kid, you can tell by the dark lines under her eyes and by the way she walks so stiffly, as if she’s swallowed a broom.

“Mind my feet,” whispers Violeta. She can feel his hand slowly sliding down her back until, as if without meaning to, the four fingers are touching the rounded top of her buttock. “And keep your hand up, please. Don’t think it’s because you’ve got a finger missing that I don’t like it. It’s not that …”

“Alright. Shall we go out to the balcony?”

“In this cold? No, thanks. Let me see it.” She takes his hand and raises it level with her chest. She carries on dancing while she examines the stump: “Can you button up your shirt with it? Can you hold a spoon properly, comb your hair?”

“This hand can do anything. It can even do this, look.”

The four fingers slip out of Violeta’s grasp and crawl like a tarantula up the buttons on her blouse, then creep to one side and delicately cup her left breast. She glances at him expectantly, a sudden warm gleam in her eyes, and moves back gently. Taking hold of the mutilated hand once more, she tugs on it and turns round, trying to force a way through the dancing couples lost in the music. Ringo lets her drag him off, but the dance floor is packed, so he decides to push ahead of her and take the initiative. He struggles to force a way through, and soon feels Violeta clinging to his shoulders, like a drowning woman. Although they still haven’t emerged from the crush, he can see himself out on the balcony with her, in spite of the cold, alone in the darkest corner, kissing …

“Let’s go and see Mama for a moment,” says Violeta when they finally manage to get clear of the dancing throng.

She isn’t in the bar anymore. The manager, a middle-aged, slow but amiable fellow says she left over half an hour earlier, shortly after she had an argument at the bar with a lad who was wearing a pair of football boots instead of shoes, the lout. Why did they argue? He doesn’t know how it started, he wasn’t there, but apparently she made some remark about the boots that the lad didn’t like. I’m sure she only wanted to be friendly, to have a bit of a joke, but that kid is an oaf, I know him, he’s always looking for a fight. He said he had won a football and the pair of boots in some church tombola, and that he’d made a bet with a friend that he would come to dance with them on. He was making fun of her, but she didn’t realise, all she seemed interested in was which church he had won the boots at. She seemed obsessed. She insisted so much and begged and begged so much that in the end to add to the fun the boy gave her confused directions to the church down by La Barceloneta. It was unbelievable, but she seemed to believe him.

“And after that, she left. She told me she’d see you at home, and that she wasn’t worried about you because she saw you were in good company …”

“Did she leave owing anything, Señor Pedro?” asks Violeta.

“Nothing.”

“She must have been bored,” says Ringo. “That’s why she left.”

“She’s never done that before. I’ll give her what for.”

“Bah. You’ll see, she’ll be at home waiting when you get back …”

“She can’t get in. The key’s in my bag.” She feels for his hand with hers, squeezes it. “Will you come with me?”

It is only just after seven o’clock when they leave, but it’s already completely dark and has started to drizzle. They walk shoulder to shoulder down the narrow, poorly lit streets of Gràcia. Ringo suggests her mother is bound to be waiting for her in the tavern, chatting to Señora Paquita; or perhaps she took it into her head to visit one of her friends or clients. In any case, she can’t be far and will soon be home, where else would she go? But Violeta is silent for a long while. Then she says, as if thinking out loud: She doesn’t have much work now, but she doesn’t need much anyway, we’re getting a good pension because of what’s happened to Papa, and besides, I’ll have a job soon, next month. Suddenly carefree, she starts to zigzag in front of him, almost dancing, sheltering under the balconies to avoid the drizzle, stopping every so often and allowing him to cuddle her. In a dark doorway on Calle de la Perla she offers no resistance when he kisses her: it’s as if she is asleep. Five minutes later, her back against the wall of the Salesian school in Plaza del Norte, under the soaking wet branches of a bougainvillea, she lets him lift her skirt. He prematurely undoes his flies, but at no moment receives anything more in response to his desperate fumbling than passive consent. His hands persist with her breasts for a while, until he feels once more that he is humping a sack of potatoes, and when he feels her gloved hand pressing on his shoulder to dissuade him, he gives up. She is not even breathing heavily. She’s never done that before, he hears her whisper, but she might be referring to her mother again.

As they approach the Rosales bar, Ringo walks ahead of her and goes in. All the Sunday evening regulars are there, and the atmosphere is warm and inviting. Señora Mir has not been back. Over by the table football, Señor Agustín seems very busy fixing one of the players onto its rod. No, they haven’t seen Vicky since she left for the dance, says Señora Paquita. Is something wrong? No, nothing, Señora Paquita. He recovers the book he left with her and says thank you. He slips to the door and turns round, about to add something more, when he sees her smiling mischievously at him, trying to contain a laugh:

“Try to be more careful, love, or your little birdie will fly away.”

Oh, shit! He turns and rapidly does up his flies before going out into the street. He could have sworn he had done so as quickly and discreetly as possible the moment Violeta, back against the wall, suddenly turned her cold eyes on him, closed her legs and pushed him away with a gentle but firm hand. Ringo is having such bad luck with his flies that he is starting to believe there’s a gypsy curse on them. Why does this kind of thing always have to happen to me?

“She’s not there,” he tells Violeta, who has been waiting for him on the pavement. “And they haven’t seen her. But don’t worry, she’ll be back before long, you’ll see. I’m sure of it.”

He tries to take her hand, but she pretends not to notice. As he walks up the street to her house with her, he stealthily uses his phantom finger to make sure that every single one of the buttons on his flies are properly done up, because he is suddenly wary that they are undone again, and even senses that the cold night air has crept inside. There is no interior light visible from Señora Mir’s apartment anymore. When they have almost reached the doorway to her building, the rain starts coming down more heavily. Violeta runs on ahead of him, opens the street door and ducks inside the courtyard. Taken aback, he stands out on the pavement, peering into the shadows at the foot of the stairs. She gives him a sad, fleeting smile as she searches for the key, then dashes up as fast as she can.

Even if the smile had meant something else, he would not have followed her. And now he knows for certain why he is standing there, in the middle of the street in the pouring rain until he sees a light go on behind the balcony, and ducks into the doorway, determined to wait. She’s left the street door open for her mother, he thinks, not for me. The street is deserted, and the lights are like yellow-stained cotton balls hanging in the darkness. For almost an hour the only traffic is a taxi that makes the sound of torn silk as it splashes along the road, a single headlight picking out both the lashing rain and, all of a sudden, a distant corner of his memory as cold and inhospitable as this doorway itself. Frustrated, and with his feet squelching in his shoes, he is unwilling to accept any other mysterious sign that claims to give his life direction, and yet only a few minutes later, when he decides to transfer his vigil to the Rosales bar and runs there, covering his head with his scarf, he is forced to admit the obstinate persistence of these signs, because the smell of the rain on his face as he runs seems to be a promise of the future, just like when he was a child.

He sits at his table and rubs the misted-up window with his hand. At the next table, Señor Agustín is eating a wild asparagus tortilla, playing draughts with one of the customers. While he is drying the rain off his scarf, Señora Paquita comes out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of Russian salad. She stops beside him: So who’s this dreamy Romeo who stands out in the rain staring like a dummy at a girl? Yours truly here, Señora Paquita. You’ve got wet ears and you’re tired out, you ought to go home and change your clothes. He listens to her, half asleep. I’m fine, Señora Paquita. I saw you standing out there like a booby. Were you expecting Violeta to come out on to the balcony, or did you want to catch pneumonia? That’s it, I wanted to catch pneumonia, Señora Paqui. Your mother must be waiting for you to have supper. My mother is working night shifts until the end of the month, there’s nobody at home waiting for me. She turns her back on him and goes to leave the Russian salad on her brother’s table. Then she returns, hands on hips, you’ll have a glass of hot milk, won’t you? I don’t want milk, thank you. Then a cup of cocoa. I’d prefer a double brandy, Señora Paquita, so that I can get drunk more quickly. Hey, don’t you try to be funny with me! What a disaster you are, just look at the state of you, look at your scarf, and your shoes. He replies, in a weak, dull voice, I’m fine, Señora Paqui, but she is already behind the bar, where she opens a cocoa drink, pours out a glass, heats it in the steam from the coffee machine, adds a tot of brandy, and comes back over.

“I’ve cheered it up a little.” She leaves the glass on the table. “Drink it down and get straight off home,” she orders, before returning to the kitchen.

He drinks it sleepily and thinks things over. Who kind of idiot dances with a sack of potatoes simply because her mother asks him to do her a favour? Your servant here, the dummy’s dummy. Every so often he rubs the steamed-up window with his hand, keeping an eye on Señora Mir’s doorway. The rain has eased off to a drizzle. At last, around half past nine, he sees her toiling up the middle of the street, carefully stepping between fleeting glints of light and reflections as sharp as broken glass on the wet asphalt. She is hunched over, staggering on her high heels, her wet skirt stuck to her sturdy thighs, covering her head with the jacket, its fur collar flattened by the rain and beaded with droplets of light as she passes beneath the streetlamp, as if it were sheltering fireflies. When she reaches her doorway she halts and seems to hesitate. She looks from side to side and stands motionless for some time, head down. She looks like a huge, ugly paper bird, deflated and streaming with water. Her chin on her chest, she takes one step forward and two back, shakes her jacket and then stands still again. When at last she decides to go in, Ringo closes his book, gets up from the table, and goes over to the bar kitchen to announce, loudly and firmly:

“I’m going, Señora Paqui. Thanks, and goodnight.”

“Bye, you ninny.”