The Calligraphy of Dreams

14. RESCUED WORDS

Señor Carmona says he found her lying on the second-floor landing in her wet clothes, head resting on the step closest to her front door. This was at dawn, and there wasn’t much light, so I stumbled over her and nearly fell down the stairs, he explained in the tavern. It was horrible seeing her like stretched out like that, I thought she was dead. She had taken her shoes off, there were holes in the knees of her stockings, and her face was white as a sheet apart from a few smears of make-up. Señor Carmona works as a stevedore down at the docks, and leaves home very early each morning. He says he rang the bell until he woke Violeta, who was startled, then angry with her mother. Between the two of them they tried to rouse her and get her into the flat.

So, Ringo deduces, she didn’t ring the bell, she spent the night out on the landing. She must have been drunk and unable to find the doorbell, or perhaps she felt so ashamed of herself she didn’t want Violeta to see her in such a state; or perhaps she did ring, but her daughter was already asleep and didn’t hear. Why didn’t she stay awake to wait for her, knowing she didn’t have the key? Ringo doesn’t want to ask himself any more questions, he prefers to think about something else or to doze over his music scores and his book. The clandestine job he has at night in the coffee-roasting shed makes him drowsy every morning as he kills time in the Rosales bar.

A fortnight later he learns that Señora Mir’s night-time wandering is just the first of a litany of shocks for Violeta, the first in a series of madcap escapades outside the neighbourhood. At the same time, her mother’s lack of care for her appearance and for the flat, her desire to be left alone and her helplessness, as well as the neglect of her clients that set in some weeks earlier, now seems to have become an irreversible decline. One sunny Sunday morning in February, she left her home early in the morning, and did not come back for lunch. That afternoon, after searching for her in several local taverns, and even in the bar at the Salón Cibeles and La Lealtad, Violeta heard from Rufina the hairdresser that she had been seen in mid-morning wandering like a sleepwalker up the highway to El Carmelo. Night was falling by the time her daughter found her on the eastern slope of Montaña Pelada, sitting on the three steps of the unfinished stairway cut into the rock. Hugging her basket of dried lavender to her chest, she was gazing intently at black smoke curling upwards into the sky from the miserable roofs of the shacks of El Carmelo. She refused to stand up, but seemed lucid and calm, explaining that she’d climbed up there to pick elderflowers.

“She’s promised me she won’t escape again, Señora Paqui,” says Violeta as she drinks a milky coffee at the counter in the Rosales bar. “She’s in bed now. Grandma Aurora is coming to visit her this afternoon or tomorrow … I don’t think she’ll get up, but if you or Señor Agustín see her coming out of the building, please let me know at the hospital.” She glances over at Ringo, as if including him in her request.

To come across Violeta in the bar, and see her talking in a friendly way with Señora Paquita, is a novelty for him. She is wearing a white turtleneck jumper and a coat that is too short for her. Her hair is done up in a bun, her shoes and stockings are white, and she is carrying a new nurse’s uniform over her arm. Señora Paquita listens with a worried look on her face. She sees the poor girl’s life as an endless succession of calamities: her only family are her mother and father and her paternal grandmother — who has not wanted anything to do with her son Ramón for many years now — and she is bound to feel very lonely.

Ringo on the other hand does not know what to think. He is hypnotised yet again by the sight of Violeta. He stares and stares at her, but cannot recognise the girl who only a fortnight earlier had let him lift her skirt and caress her buttocks beneath a bougainvillea dripping with rain. Crouching behind his book, shielded yet again from a fickle, ungraspable reality, he thinks her profile is suddenly that of an adult, as if her new job and all the worries of the past few days had accelerated the transition from adolescence to womanhood. With a vague sense of loss, his eyes travel down to her legs in their white stockings. He surveys her placid, mature calves calmly pressed together, and wonders why the scent of her wet hair should linger more stubbornly in his memory than anything else, and why that scent is even sharper than desire, why now as she talks briefly to Señora Paquita in a low voice, struggling to overcome a hostility that is even more pointed than usual, listening to her words of advice with her head tilted towards her good ear, why all of a sudden this girl seems older than her eighteen years. She has scarcely paid him any attention: he looks like a shadow against the wall tiles, simply one of many in the gloomy tavern, so ever-present and familiar it is like a state of mind.

“If you’ll only be patient, Violeta, you’ll see that everything will work out,” says Señora Paquita. “And don’t forget, we’re here if you need us for anything.”

Drily, as if to make it clear that she’s not here out of pleasure, Violeta informs Señora Paquita that for three days now she has been working as a nurse in the Hospital del Mar, thanks to a recommendation from Mother Josefina, a nun who is a friend of her mother’s. She has a renewable six-month contract and is pleased because in her free moments between patients she will be able to attend her father, who is still interned in the hospital. Also, in spite of all the difficulties, she is continuing with her studies, in the hope of becoming a theatre nurse.

Only too aware of what is in store for the young girl, Señora Paquita repeats her offer of support.

“We’ll keep an eye out, you can leave without worrying. Do you want me to bring you anything from the market?”

“I don’t need anything today. But tonight I’ll leave you the ration cards, and if you’d be so kind …”

“Of course. The less your mother goes out, the better. Do you want me to call in on her later, to see if she needs …?”

“She doesn’t want to see anyone at the moment,” Violeta cuts her off. She finishes her coffee and rummages in her purse. “Well, I have to be going.”

“Poor Vicky, what’s happening to her is terrible. I’ve been trying to warn her. The number of times I’ve argued with her over that stupid business …”

“She’ll get over it.” And then, in the same peremptory tone as before: “But if she escapes again, now I’ll know where to find her. I’ll be late for work. Bye.”

Early every morning from then on, as she leaves home to catch the number 39 tram to the Hospital del Mar, Violeta drops in at the Rosales bar to tell Señora Paquita the latest news and to ask her to buy something or other. Ringo is always there, invariably on his own and bent over a book, the smell of roast coffee on his clothes, with his incurable sleepiness and his feelings of resentment, ready to embark on he still has no idea what. Some days Violeta says hello and little more to him; on others, she doesn’t even seem to see him. She drinks her milky coffee quickly, answers Señora Paquita’s questions almost in a whisper, and then leaves. If it’s Señor Agustín who is behind the bar, she is more discreet. Her coldness and self-control come increasingly to the fore as the days go by and her mother becomes increasingly self-destructive, sinking deeper and deeper into a heartbreak she has still not accepted or exhausted.

From that first night when Señora Mir fell asleep drunk on the staircase, Violeta seems to have understood very clearly what is going on: a whole series of shocks has turned her mother’s life upside down, and robbed her of her will, but now she knows their coordinates, and thanks to a secret network of associations can guess where her wandering is likely to take her, and where she is to be found: the side entrance to Parque Güell and the waste land opposite, the southern slope of Montaña Pelada, the streets around the Cottolengo and the winding road up to El Carmelo, especially in the last, highest stretch, when it goes from Calle Pasteur to Gran Vista and takes in her favourite Delicias bar, where she can spend hours joking with old Andalusians, knocking back brandy from the keg and hoping to meet someone who might perhaps know of someone who might know … Her paranoia and fantasies sometimes lead her to go up to strangers or to make friendly enquiries at sporting reunions and parish clubs in the hope of hearing something about the ex-footballer or ex-tram driver Abel Alonso, the generous mentor and enthusiastic trainer of youth groups in the shanty neighbourhoods, slightly lame but still well-turned out, who apparently lived or still lives in the area. Her extravagant way of dressing and increasingly outlandish make-up, allied to a cheerful amiability that often ends up in an alcoholic jumble of words, means that some people either feel sorry for her or make fun of her, but she doesn’t seem to care much. She always carries her basket full of herbs with her. If Violeta appears, she takes her by the arm and lets herself be led home without complaining.

On the morning of Saturday, 23 February, Señora Mir was being looked after by her mother-in-law, a small, sour-faced old woman who was seen in the tavern buying a flask of brandy. She showed no desire to inform Señora Paquita about her daughter-in-law’s state of mind, or who the brandy was for. She departed before midday, leaving word at the bar that she was going back home to Badalona. A short time later, Señora Mir was patiently trimming some geraniums on her balcony, in a housecoat and slippers, without make-up, her face wrapped in a thick scarf. But early that same afternoon, freshly dressed up and rouged, wearing her sunglasses with the white frames, her clinking bracelets and her palm basket for collecting herbs, she is seen leaving her building and struggling up the street. She comes face to face with Señora Grau, who later explains that when she saw her she felt so upset and sorry that she tried without success to convince her to go back home. Señora Mir did not even look at her, but continued on her way up the hill until she disappeared in Traversera de Dalt.

As night is falling, Violeta comes into the tavern to ask if they have seen her mother. She stands in the doorway, holding the glass door open, her indolent eyes searching for Señora Paquita, who isn’t there. Señor Agustín is kneeling by a barrel filling bottles of wine with a funnel, and at the back table four very talkative old men are playing cards. No, we haven’t seen your mother in here all day, says the tavern keeper. Almost at once, Ringo notices the girl looking in his direction, and shakes his head sadly. He’s sitting at his table, jacket round his shoulders, his head leaning against the wall, struggling to keep his eyes open. He soon closes them, but a while later he realises she is still there, holding the door and staring at him. Then he hears her slightly croaking voice:

“Are you asleep over there?”

“Me?” He straightens his head. “Of course not. I was thinking of you.”

“Yes, like I believe that.”

She can’t make up her mind to come in, still toying with the door.

“My mother’s escaped again.”

“Do you want me to help look for her?”

Violeta bites her lip, and thinks it over.

“It’s not six yet, but it’s night already. It gets dark quickly at this time of year.”

Ringo is slow to react:

“It does. Are you frightened of going on your own …? Where will you go, all alone?”

“I don’t know, round the neighbourhood.”

“Well, do you want me to go with you or not?”

Their glances collide.

“No, thanks.”

“O.K., fine. My mother is on night shift again and I have to go with her, and then I have some errands to run … so the truth is, I couldn’t really go.” He stands up slowly, hair falling over his eyes, and puts on his jacket and scarf. “She must have gone to see your grandma. She’ll be back, don’t worry. She always comes back.”

He hasn’t even finished when he hears the sound of the bar door slamming. Slamming on his lies. And yet it’s true he already had a plan that did not include Violeta. He lets a few minutes pass before going out into the street so that he won’t run into her, then enters the stationer’s on Calle Providencia where she once worked. He is served by the new assistant, Merche, a dark, chubby-cheeked girl in glasses who lives on Calle de Sors and the year before was Violeta’s inseparable friend. She’s become very odd, she says, she’s not friends with me anymore. No, she doesn’t have any pink envelopes. Doesn’t he like purple ones, or pale green, or light blue, with silk paper lining? No, thanks. He goes to another stationer’s shop, with the same result, until he finally discovers what he is looking for at the kiosk in Plaza Rovira.

Later that night, alone at home and sitting at the dining-room table in the same position and in the same chair as his father the last time he saw him, the paper appears before his eyes in all its pink nakedness, and nothing that occurs to him seems convincing. After an hour he gets up, wraps the scarf round his neck, and rushes off to Señor Huguet’s coffee-roasting shed beneath a clear, starry sky with a full moon. While he is turning the handle, the dirty rainwater swirls yet again round the open drain, and when he reaches out his hand half-heartedly at the last minute, he burns his fingers. He soothes his hand in a bucket, and Señor Huguet takes him to task: if he wants to pull a piece of wood out because the fire’s too hot, he should use the tongs or put on gloves.

Returning home in the early hours, he puts the bag of coffee on the sideboard and then, without taking off his scarf, he sits down again at the table and picks up the pen, his fingertips still smarting. In his mind’s eye he can picture everything he was thinking as he knelt in front of the fire, one hand turning the drum filled with coffee and sugar, the other plunged into the bucket of water. Painstakingly, he writes the name on the envelope, giving the capital V a joyous flourish to the right, just as he remembers having caught a glimpse of on that fateful night of drunken nausea on Las Ramblas.

He sleeps for three hours, head down on the table. At eight in the morning his mother returns from the Residence. She’s brought half a puff pastry cream cake the nuns have given her from the kitchen. He’s already prepared coffee, warmed the milk, and toasted the bread on the electric burner. While they are having breakfast together, his mother scolds him yet again for getting up so early.

“You should be asleep. You’re working now.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“I can make the coffee. Besides, I drink enough of it during the night.”

“But the coffee the nuns give you isn’t as good as this, is it, Mother?” She looks so pensive, sitting there with her hands round the bowl of coffee, that he stares at her for a while without saying anything. Eventually he asks: “What are we going to do, Mother?”

‘What do you mean?” She studies his face and understands. “Wait. There’s nothing else we can do.”

As ever, she has come home tired and wanting to go straight to bed, and yet she does all she can to prolong this impromptu early morning conversation. It’s the time of day when sleep is calling that she feels her son is at his closest and most distant. Another five or ten minutes to raise his spirits.

“This bad luck won’t last for ever,” she says. “Don’t worry, you’re not going to spend your life roasting coffee …”

“No, I don’t mind, really.”

“Señor Huguet is looking for something better for you. One of his brothers-in-law has a grocery store on Calle Aragón. It’s a very important place, they deliver to people’s homes, and he says that before long they’re going to need another assistant, or delivery boy … I know it’s not perfect, Son, but at least it will be less tiring than working at night.”

“It’s all the same to me.”

“Well, we can think it over, can’t we? Go on, talk to me. What’s the news in the neighbourhood …? Do you know the other day I met Violeta in the street? She looks pretty in her nurse’s uniform and cap, don’t you think?”

She says she thinks Violeta has high hopes of her job, in spite of the worries her mother gives her: according to her, she has lost control of her drinking and is deteriorating day by day. She feels sorry for her friend Victoria, and her behaviour confuses her. She finds it hard to believe that losing the love of any man can lead a woman to such a terrible lack of self-awareness and despair, especially a woman who had not previously shown any sign of weakness when faced with adversity. Of course everything she had been forced to put up with from that idiot of a husband of hers over the years must have something to do with it … She intends to go and see her one of these days, she adds as she gets up from the table and collects the dishes, I’ll take her some second-hand clothes and a packet of coffee as a gift. She suggests they both go.

“Why should I go, Mother?” he asks anxiously. “What could I say to her …? Leave that, it’s my turn today.”

He carries the bowls and the rest of the things into the kitchen. Shortly afterwards, while he is having a shower, he glances down at the plughole, where the soapy water round his feet slows its whirling for a second, and this time the spinning envelope seems to let itself be plucked out and rescued before it vanishes for the umpteenth time into the dark drain. Ringo dresses, recovering the smell of the night in his jersey and scarf. Before going out he approaches his mother’s bedroom door, listening hard. Two sneezes tell him she isn’t asleep yet. She must be praying to the Infant Jesus of Prague on the bedside table, asking him to protect the Rat-catcher, wherever he may be now. Has her Infant ever listened to her?

“I’m going, Mama. Do you need anything?”

“No.”

He falls silent for a while before his next question:

“When are we going to France, Mama?”

“What did you say?”

“I said, when are we leaving here …”

This time she is the one who takes time to respond:

“Leaving here? Why should we be leaving, Son?” Then another, longer silence. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Get some rest.”

*

He’s been thinking it over carefully, and for three days he hasn’t been back to the Rosales bar so as not to run into Violeta. When he does return to his daily routine, he does something he has never done before: he asks Señor Agustín for a pack of cards and starts playing Patience while waiting for Señora Paquita to come back from the market in Calle Camelias and take over from her brother at the bar. He thinks it would be better to do what he is planning in the early afternoon, when she spends more time in the kitchen than serving, but he doesn’t want to wait any longer. Señor Frías has just opened his barber shop next door, and has come into the bar for his early morning coffee. Señor Agustín, leafing through a newspaper on the counter, satisfies his customer’s curiosity without much enthusiasm: Yes, indeed, Señora Mir was interned in the Hospital San Pablo late yesterday afternoon. Some boys in El Guinardó found her curled up behind some bushes near the highway up to El Carmelo, and told the staff at the nearby Padre Alegre Cottolengo. They stole her bag, earrings, bracelets, and a basket with herbs in it. Or she lost them, who knows? So she slept there like a log all night until those boys found her? Señor Agustín doesn’t know much more, and still can’t quite believe what happened, he can’t imagine her sleeping out all night, in this cold … Ringo can see it, it’s not hard to imagine: lying on her side demurely, ready to accept whatever came her way, her pink knees pressed together, her cheek resting on her plump hands, the eyelids with their long, greasy lashes closed over her fantasy. Taken in as an emergency to the San Pablo, says Señor Agustín. A nun who knows her informed her daughter and her mother-in-law. A wound to her head and bruising on her legs, fortunately nothing serious, apparently they’re bringing her home tomorrow, and the Badalona grandmother is already here to lend a hand. When she came round she was as right as rain, and guess what she asked for, the cheeky devil? That’s right, a little brandy! She didn’t want to talk to anybody. When she did explain what had happened, she did so in a rambling, confused manner, but according to her daughter what she said made sense: that afternoon she had been visiting her husband in the asylum. She took him Virginia tobacco and a new pair of pyjamas, cleaned his nails, and then went to Badalona to see her mother-in-law in the market, at the flower stall she has there, and finally visited the Cottolengo, where she had promised to take some children’s clothes. And that when she left there it was already dark, and she can’t remember anything more. And guess what she said when she finished, bursting into tears? Señor Agustín concludes slyly: that she wasn’t at all bothered her bag or her bracelets had been stolen, that the only thing she regretted losing was a ring made from a chicken or pig bone, would you believe?

“Well I never,” the barber shakes his head thoughtfully.

“Yes. What a woman, eh?”

Ringo lifts his hand to his chest to feel the slight rustle of the envelope underneath his shirt and jersey. The barber says goodbye and Señor Agustín goes on reading El Mundo Deportivo, elbows on the bar. A short while before he gave a loud belch and apologised, saying he has had terrible toothache for a week now. He made a joke about his contented belly, and served himself a small glass of mint liqueur, savouring it and smiling at Ringo with his tiny rat’s eyes concealed behind his high, ruddy cheekbones.

When Señor Agustín sees his sister come in with the shopping, he leaves the newspaper open on the counter and carries the basket into the kitchen. Señora Paquita stays on her feet, passes by Ringo without looking at him, and as she is taking off her coat announces that she’s going upstairs to change her shoes.

“Put the fish in the fridge and get along to the dentist, I’ll sort out everything else,” she says, raising her voice so that her brother will hear her. “The cod is for Violeta and her grandmother.”

While she is upstairs, Señor Agustín appears in a raincoat and beret. I’m off, Paqui! he shouts from the street door, and makes the usual gesture to Ringo: keep an eye out for anyone coming in. As soon as he is on his own, Ringo gets up from the stool, lifts the hem of his jersey, and undoes his shirt. It takes only three quick strides to leave the envelope on the open newspaper. Shortly afterwards, it is the first thing Señora Paquita sees when she moves behind the counter, putting on her apron. She picks it up and turns it over and over, as if she does not know what it is. The envelope is sealed; on the front is written the letter V, on the back there is nothing.

“Who brought this?” she asks Ringo. “Why didn’t you call me …? Was Señor Alonso just here?”

“No, it was a boy, Señora Paqui,” Ringo says rapidly, not raising his eyes from his game of Patience. “He left a minute ago. He’s not from the neighbourhood, I’ve never seen him around here … He asked for you, and seemed in a great hurry. I told him you’d be down straightaway, but he didn’t want to wait. He told me the message was from Señor Alonso, and that you would know what to do with it …”

“Goodness.” She doesn’t know whether to be pleased or not. She sketches a smile that reveals her small, dark teeth, and there is a bright gleam in her black eyes. “Is that what he told you?”

“Yes, señora. He told me: I’ve brought this letter for the lady who runs the bar. And he showed me the envelope before leaving it there. For Señora Paquita from Señor Alonso, she’s expecting it, he said. Then he left.”

He is holding a jack of hearts that he can’t place in the game.

“So we’ll have to tell Violeta,” Señora Paquita says to herself, then stands there thinking, still staring at the envelope. “Though I don’t know … He’s got a nerve. But now she has to know about it. Yes, she can decide what to do …”

“Is it something important, Señora Paquita?” There’s no reply. “Do you want me to go and tell Violeta?”

“She’s not at home,” she says vaguely. “She’s dropping by later for her shopping.”

Violeta arrives a few minutes later, tired and in a hurry. She’s spent the night by her mother’s bedside in the hospital, and Grandma Aurora is waiting for her at home. She is carrying a large envelope with X-rays and test results. Her mother is not well at all, she has very high blood pressure and they have found first-stage diabetes. Taking the cod, she says she probably won’t need anything more from the market because her grandmother wants her to go and live with her in Badalona, at least until her mother gets out of hospital.

“I think that’s for the best,” says Señora Paquita. She hesitates a moment, then goes on: “Do you want to make your mother happy? Give her this. She didn’t want you to see it, but …” She takes the letter from beneath her apron. “But you must give it to her. It’s bound to cheer her up.”

“A pleasure?” Before taking the letter, she stares at it suspiciously in Señora Paquita’s hand. “Oh, that. About time too.” Looking disdainfully at the big letter V in blue ink: “And he didn’t even have the guts to write her name.”

Tearing the envelope open, she takes out the two sheets of pink paper, and slowly unfolds them, as if she were touching some infected material.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t read it, my girl …” Señora Paquita hesitates.

But Violeta has moved slightly away from her, and is already reading. With a sullen look on her face, and obviously put out. Her stern, distrustful eyes read the lines of writing quickly, while the impostor sits in his favourite refuge next to the window shuffling the pack for a new game of Patience. He watches her closely, in his mind reading the letter at the same time as her, accompanying her word by word, not forgetting a single one, so carefully chosen and so urgently endowed with meaning, but now all of a sudden so vacuous, so empty and fragile in Violeta’s interior voice:

Canfranc, 7th December 1948

Dear Vicky,

I hope this letter finds you well. Forgive me, because I ought to have written to you long ago. I’ll explain the reason for the delay, but first you need to know that I have never stopped thinking of you.

I’m writing to you from France, from a remote spot lost high in the Pyrenees. It’s a starry night, and I’m sitting on the ground with my knapsack beside me. Cold, ice, and silence. The snowy mountains are shining in the moonlight. Snowstorms on the highest peaks, and tracks in the snow along the path. I’m giving this letter to messengers I can trust, a chain of friendly hands, but I have no idea when it will reach you.

I’ve been told that you are looking for me, that you’ve been seen wandering on Montaña Pelada, or on the loneliest slopes of Parque Güell and up on Monte Carmelo; that you ask after me day and night, that you’ve been seen waiting for me where we used to meet, sitting for hours under the blossoming lime tree in the ruins of Can Xirot. You shouldn’t do that, Vicky. Out of the love I have for you, I beg you not to. Because I no longer go where I used to go, light of my life, because I’m not what you think I am, because nothing is exactly the same any more, pumpkinhead; because, although my love is still the same, I am not the man I was and am not where I once was. Think of me as an impostor, that we are all living an illusion, and that nobody knows when we will be free of it, but that our love is real.

An unexpected dirty trick of fate, which is always against me and all my plans, has obliged me to absent myself for a time from this city I hate, full of blue rats and broken promises, but I am sure you will forgive me. Urgent matters of the greatest importance, that I should not explain for your own safety, because what you don’t know you can’t tell, have brought me to France fleeing from justice and I don’t know when I’ll be able to return. But you have been and continue to be my lucky star, and I know I shall not get lost. I’d like to live in words, because in them I shall be faithful to you for ever, to the far side of death.

It is possible that this letter is not what you were hoping for, the one announcing our rapid, so greatly desired reunion. Possibly I should ask you to forget me, perhaps it would be best for us to say farewell, I don’t know, I have never lived a love as strong as this, and have never felt so confused … What would a woman as generous as you think if she knew that the man she loved so much, who always made so much of his ideals, is now no more than a charlatan, a good-for-nothing, a restless soul, a cheap smuggler who one day could end up in prison? Don’t you think that there’s no longer any place for our love in Barcelona? All I can say to you is this: Don’t wait for me, but let me wait for you everywhere, in everything. The land I’m going to is called Shangri-la, and they say it’s a land of fantasy. But what does that matter if we have dreamt it, what does it matter if it is a lie?

Listen: Don’t go out alone at night; don’t stray into neighbourhoods you don’t know. You won’t find me in any tavern or sports centre, don’t search for me in the choking city of children with no home or parents, the accursed city of blue rats.

I’m sorry to have to tell you all this, but closing my eyes and shrugging my shoulders again, as I have done until now, is something I feel I can no longer do. I’ve already hurt you enough that way. I’m overwhelmed by a strange sense of guilt for the pain I caused you without meaning to … I don’t know whether I’ll be able to explain it to you some day. No matter. Tomorrow I am leaving here for distant snow-capped mountains and valleys of shadow, and I have no notion, my love, of when I’ll be able to return, and so I cannot and should not ask you to wait for me. I want you to take care of yourself, don’t drink so much, don’t ruin your life, don’t give them any reason to gossip about you in the neighbourhood. Listen to your daughter, and you’ll see how everything works out. Up there, near the summit of Montaña Pelada, among the bushes of lavender and thyme where the wind blows, we will be happy again someday. I’ll pick herbs again for you. In spring the brightly coloured kites will dance in the blue sky once more, and you and I will see it all, we’ll climb hand-in-hand up hillsides filled with broom.

With this thought I leave you. Good luck, Vicky my love. I send you a million kisses, and may the angels watch over you as you sleep.

From someone who loves sand will never forget you,

Abel Alonso

She reads all this in one go, without a single incredulous or disapproving twist of the mouth, without showing any surprise or satisfaction, without blinking even once at any paragraph or word. Two sheets covered in a rushed, crude and pointed calligraphy, leaning dramatically over to the right as though caught in a gale or as if trying to escape beyond the edges of the paper. Two sheets of a pale, pure pink that he rescued from oblivion and that Violeta finishes reading, then folds once more and hastily replaces in the envelope. She doesn’t look at Ringo once, not even out of the corner of her eye. And then, with a faint, spiky and vengeful smile she takes the envelope in both hands, closes her eyes, and for a few interminable seconds seems determined to tear it to pieces.

“You mother didn’t want you to read it,” says Señora Paquita. “But of course, after all that’s happened …” Then, unable to contain her curiosity: “I hope it’s not bad news.”

Violeta shrugs.

“It’s arrived too late, Señora Paqui. Mama doesn’t need anything like this anymore.”

But her hands don’t move, and in the end she doesn’t tear the letter up. She undoes her coat roughly and stows the envelope in the deep pocket of her nurse’s uniform. She’s not sure whether she will let her mother read it, we’ll see, she says, getting ready to leave. She reckons that what her mother needs now is to forget, and besides, she adds in a scornful tone, in the end the famous letter is nothing but a pack of lies, disgusting memories and false promises. What else was there to expect from the penniless fraud who wrote it?

“Goodbye and thank you, Señora Paquita. In a few days we’re going to live with grandmother. Mama is going to need a lot of looking after from now on, and I can’t manage on my own. I’ll be very sorry when we have to go …”

“That’s fine, sweetheart. Be strong. Everything will work out.”

Señora Paquita herself opens the door for her. As Violeta is crossing the threshold, she glances fleetingly at Ringo.

*

Three days later, from early in the morning, a bucket and two old wooden crates overflowing with bunches of dried herbs tied up with ribbons, jars of leaves and roots, and pots containing creams and oils, stood out on the pavement awaiting the rubbish truck. Later on, two men came to load furniture and possessions into a van and Violeta went into the Rosales bar to bid farewell to Señora Paquita and her brother. Ringo wasn’t there to see or listen, but he learnt she was accompanied by a young porter from the Hospital del Mar who helped her with the move, and to whom Señora Paquita offered vermouth and olives. Less hostile and evasive than on previous occasions, Violeta reported that her mother had been transferred directly from the San Pablo hospital to her mother-in-law’s house in Badalona, that she was still in bed there, but well looked after, although she was still very ill, and that she had asked her to tell Señora Paqui how sorry she was to leave the neighbourhood, that she would miss the tavern and the nice chats she had with her, and that well, what could you do, she had thought her liver could stand it, but she had no luck there either, that’s life, isn’t it?

At eight o’clock that same day, wearing for the first time a striped overall and grey woollen gloves, Ringo starts work in Ultramarinos J. Casadeus and Brothers, a century-old establishment in Calle Aragón on the corner of Calle Bruch. Balanced on his shoulder is a big basket of foodstuffs and drinks for him to deliver to a select clientele living in the Ensanche, known for their generous tips.

It’ll only be for a while, his mother has told him, nothing bad lasts for ever. For a short while, yes, how often has he heard those well-intentioned words, at home, in the tavern, in so many places, but the truth is that in the end everything lasts until you’re ready for the knackers’ yard. More than anything else, more than the daily burden of desires and needs, even more than his fear or uncertainty over the future, he is oppressed by a vague sense of disquiet that he didn’t do what he should have, what was most appropriate and best, even though he is well aware that the best and most appropriate course of action would not have made the slightest bit of difference.

Since then the impostor has on more than one occasion imagined those flashing eyes reading the longed-for letter, the frantic movement of her eyelashes and the pursing of her fleshy lips as she paused over some sentence or other, or held her breath at this or that phrase or word that perhaps succeeded in offering her a taste of all that her passionate heart had so eagerly pursued, whether or not it was the best and most appropriate for her. Sometimes it has occurred to him it is better not to know if the letter eventually reached her, if it pleased or disappointed her, if it eased her heart and left it indifferent, if at the very least it brought her the comfort of forgetting.