The Calligraphy of Dreams

3. APACHES GALLOPING ACROSS THE BEACHES OF ARIZONA

“You arrive at a gallop and start shooting, still on horseback. You have a revolver in each hand and are clasping the reins between your teeth. You’re a rider from the prairies who’s come from afar to avenge his sister’s honour. Got it? The war is over, but the sun didn’t start to shine again, the spring didn’t bring laughter, or anything of the kind. So you’re galloping across the Arizona desert in search of revenge, you gallop, gallop, gallop … Got it?”

The storyteller points to the smaller of the two Cazorla brothers. He goes on:

“And you are Bill’s co-pilot in his airplane. You look down, and what do you see? A furious, terrible tornado sweeping across the desert, devastating everything in its path, and then suddenly, in the midst of this incredible whirlwind, a piano. The Red Indians from the reservation have stolen it from some Dodge City saloon, or from a pioneer caravan on its way out West, or from an orchestra playing at our neighbourhood fiesta, maybe the Gene Kim Orchestra, who knows … Anyway, the piano is shiny, brand new: it’s a Steinway and Sons, so nice you just want to take it home, but how could you manage that? There’s an arrow bristling in the keyboard. The Apaches’ smoke signals are rising into the sky, bullets and arrows whistle past, and then, all of a sudden, a rain of fire falls on the Valley of Death, on the prairies and the rivers and the creeks and the sea, on everything on the far side of the Black Hills of Dakota.”

“The plane piloted by Bill Barnes, Air Adventurer, swoops over the desert,” adds Ringo after a strategic pause, “and you catch an occasional glimpse of the piano in the midst of the sandstorm, like a shiny black beetle, or better still, like a flashing black star fallen to earth and lashed by the storm …” This improvised and clumsily lyrical addition is not at all to the liking of his audience. One of them asks where Arizona lies on the map, but this question does not seem to interest anyone either. They are sitting in a circle like Red Indian braves on the southern side of the Montaña Pelada, eyes peeled and ears pricked: Chato Morales, Roger, the Cazorla brothers, Quique Pegamil, Julito, and Ringo himself. Apart from Julito Bayo, they’re all much poorer than him: they use bits of rope instead of belts, wear moth-eaten jerseys, short, patched trousers and rubber-tyre sandals. Several of them have shaven heads, a famished colouring, filthy knees and, in winter, raw chilblains on their fingers and ears. Their feet are always freezing, like an icy fever or a crushing Malay boot. Julito is the only one who goes to school, and although they are legally underage, they work whenever they can as errand boys, altar servers, or in grocers’ stores and inns. Today they have splashed each other with water from the Atzavara fountain on Calle Camelias, begged a glass of milk that was their only snack at the nearby social aid office; later, in the Camino de la Legua, they played football against the wall of the San Estanislao Kostka Centre, and finally, climbing up their street and the Carmelo main road from Plaza Sanllehy, covered in dust and kicking a bursting rag ball, they have fetched up on the southern slope of the bald hill, close to the north entrance to the Parque Güell.

“Got it?” He points to Quique. “You gallop and gallop.”

“And what am I doing all this time?” asks Julito impatiently. “I ask Winnetou for help, is that all? Are you going to leave me out again?”

He has been waiting for ages to take the lead in some spectacular action, but the narrator seems to have forgotten him. The distribution of roles is not always to the satisfaction of Ringo’s audience. Julito Bayo has greased wavy hair, is wearing checked socks, and a scapular under his vest; on Sundays and feast days he wears knickerbockers. His mother has a dry cleaner’s on Calle Rabassa, his father does removals in a van with the slogan BAYO AND SON MAKE MOVING FUN in blue lettering on the sides. He is a pupil at the Palacio de la Cultura, a posh school on Traversera de Dalt, which has a garden and a tall, scraggy eucalyptus that rises like a stop sign above the school wall: five branches that look like a gigantic hand spread to prevent any of the bleary-eyed boys from Carmelo or Guinardó from getting in.

“Your revolver has run out of bullets, so you have to wait for help to arrive,” the narrator explains. He turns to Quique Pegamil: “Where were we? … Oh, yes. We come out of the sandstorm. The Apaches are riding bareback across the beach. Got it? We have to save Violeta. Wungo Lowgha has her bound hand and foot to a stake in the centre of their camp. They paint her face and chest with war paint, then they light a bonfire to burn her alive.”

“Have they scalped her?”

“No, they have to kill her before they do that.”

“What about her dress?” asks Pegamil. “Have they torn her dress off?”

“No, not yet.”

“But they’ve ripped it quite a bit, haven’t they?” Quique insists, with his crooked, gap-toothed smile. “A little, for Chrissake. That means you can see her tits, doesn’t it?”

“And what do I do?” asks Sito, the younger of the Cazorla brothers. “Do I have to guard the piano the whole time? What use is a piano to us if we haven’t got any bullets?”

A tiny, delicate grasshopper, translucent green in colour, has settled on his ring-wormed knee. The narrator shuts his eyes so that he does not have to see it immediately squashed by an equally ring-wormed hand. He carries on speaking from the shadows, pointing to Quique to confirm it’s his turn to take the lead:

“You’re galloping at the foot of the cliff, without taking your eyes off the beach, you’re galloping non-stop. Clip-clop clip-clop.” He repeats his imitation of the horse’s hooves for a while to gain time so he can think how to continue: “You arrive close to the girl, you’re reaching the bonfire … Got it?”

“Yes, but tell me something,” insists Quique Pegamil, “is their prisoner naked?”

“Barefoot. And her ankle is bandaged.”

“Yes, okay, a bandage, but is the girl naked, or not yet?”

“I told you she wasn’t.”

“No? Why haven’t the Red Indian women torn off her dress?”

“Not this time.”

“But listen, they always do it!” Quique protests. “In revenge for Winnetou’s dead sister.”

“Nooo!”

“But now they have ripped her dress, haven’t they? At least the skirt.”

Chato interrupts to explain that the Indian women from the Apache reservation don’t do things like that to white women, they’re not such savages — that’s what the Comanche squaws do. The storyteller doesn’t seem particularly interested, and does not clarify the question; instead, he informs them that Violeta, still tied to the stake, could have a poisoned arrow sticking in her breast. You don’t know this yet, he adds, because you and Roger are in the plane with Bill Barnes. It’s flying high in the sky, so you can’t see the arrow. From up there all you can spot is the black smoke drifting over the Apache camp. Saying goodbye to Bill, you dive into the sea and swim to the shore of Arizona, where you take the best horses and start to gallop. Then as you’re riding, Ringo appears with his saddle slung over his shoulder and twirling his rifle. At this point Rafa Cazorla interrupts him to enquire about something he’s been puzzling over:

“If her ankle’s bandaged, that means the girl’s on her bad week.”

“Nonsense, you dummy,” says Julito. “A girl wearing a bandage round her ankle has nothing to do with her bad week. Donkey.”

“Okay,” Quique cuts in, dragging his backside enthusiastically across the ground to get closer to Ringo. “So the first thing I do when I reach her is pull out the arrow and suck out the poison. And of course, in order to suck it …”

“Come off it! He’s not asking much, is he?” explodes Chato.

“Oh, I see,” Roger protests, “the same old story with the poisoned arrow and Quique dangling from her tit.”

“So what? I’m the one who does it because I’m the first to get there!”

“Listen, who do you think about when you’re tossing off, Ringo?” asks Chato.

“What I want to know,” says sharp-tongued Julito Bayo, “is this. What’s a piano doing in the middle of the desert?”

Ringo was expecting this question and responds at once.

“It’s like a mirage. Have you never seen a mirage?”

“Oh please, of course I have. It’s just that now you’ve got it into your head to learn music, you bring a piano into all your stories. And there’s something else. Why does the prisoner have to be Violeta, when she’s so ugly?”

“You don’t get it, do you? The Red Indians have no idea that she’s ugly.”

“You always put her in your stories because you always imagine her when you’re tossing off, don’t deny it. But she’s really ugly and clumsy. And deaf too.”

“No she’s not,” says Roger. “If you take a good look, the girl has got something.”

“She’s a bit slovenly,” Chato adds.

“What does that mean?”

“Mucky. Her armpits stink.”

“She is a bit deaf,” Roger says. “But I’ve seen her dancing close. And my oh my, kid: she lets them do it!”

“Why don’t the Apaches capture Virginia instead of Violeta?” says Julito. “For Chrissake, have you seen her in that yellow sweater of hers?”

“Why not Jane Parker, Tarzan’s girl?” Chato suggests.

“I’d choose Diana Palmer, the Phantom’s girlfriend,” says the younger of the Cazorlas.

“For me it’d be June Duprez,” says Rafa. “Or Esmeralda the Zingara.”

“I’m happy to stick with Violeta,” says Quique Pegamil, gap-toothed and with his woody woodpecker tuft of hair. “She’s the one we started with, isn’t she? Besides, the person telling the story is the one who decides.”

Quique has always had a soft spot for Señora Mir’s daughter. One Sunday last summer he happened to meet her on the crowded platform of a number 39, and manoeuvred his way round until he was right behind her. With the two of them squashed like sardines and unable to move, as he told it later, he stuck his cock between her buttocks, and she had let him do so for a good while. Later on the beach she hadn’t even looked at him, and from that day on had called him Pegamil or the Glue-stick.

Alright, so Violeta is still tied to the post with the arrow sticking out from her chest, the narrator concedes, but not exactly in the middle of her breast, not in the nipple, because if that happened the poisoned blood could get mixed up with her milk and she would die on the spot. It’s pierced her a bit higher up, almost on her shoulder. We’re lying flat on the stagecoach roof, surrounded by Apaches on horseback. I’m Ringo Kid and I’m firing my rifle at Wungo-Lowgha … He pauses to sum up: We don’t know whether they tore Violeta’s dress when they seized her, nor what they’re going to do to her, we’ll soon see, he says, and refuses to add any more about this vital detail that some of them find so fascinating. All we know for sure is that Geronimo’s Apaches have kidnapped her and nobody could stop them, not Winnetou, or Wild Bill Hickok, or Destry, or Ringo Kid, or you, he says to Chato, nor you two either, he warns the long-suffering Cazorla brothers, and not you either, Julito, he adds, glancing sternly at the pupil from the Palacio de la Cultura. Then he adds in a voice full of mystery:

“Something extraordinary is about to happen. End of Part One.”

“Crap!” Julito exclaims, not at all happy. “You know what I think? I think I’ll punch Winnetou and get out of there.”

“No you don’t! Winnetou is our friend and ally.”

“I could reach the girl and save her!” Pegamil offers.

“No. Your horse has broken a leg.”

“But I can jump off quickly and untie her from the stake. She runs down the beach, tears off her clothes, and plunges into the sea to wash off the war paint, but then a huge wave comes and I save her …”

“No, Quique, no,” Ringo restrains him. “Nothing like that happens. You have to wait.”

He recapitulates once more: thanks to Bill and his plane they have followed the Indians’ tracks and then, once they’ve swum ashore on the Arizona coast, they all ride white horses bareback across the wide beach of the Indian reservation, until all of a sudden Quique gets left behind. Yellow clouds roll down from Gold Mountain, says Ringo, staring at the clumps of yellow broom high above them. This is May, and the bushes ring the hill with gold. In the distance below the haze, beyond Padre Alegre’s Cottolengo, Barcelona stretches out to the sea like a muddy, dirty puddle, while above their heads in the pale whitish sky a heavy red kite with yellow ribbons floats and flaps in the wind with crystalline delight, swooping every so often towards the ground because the line is being held by inexpert hands on the summit of Montaña Pelada.

“Got it?” the storyteller asks again. “As it jumps from the cliff down to the beach, your horse breaks a leg. And as you know, that means you have to kill it. Sooo theeen—”

“That’s not fair, Ringo.” Quique protests. “Why does it have to be my horse? Why not yours, or Chato’s?”

“Good Lord! That’s not right, it isn’t!” snorts Julito Bayo, shaking his impeccable quiff. “Lots of things here don’t make any sense, nen.”

This is the second time he has objected to how one of the tall stories is developing: up to now, he has hardly taken part, he has not been given any heroic role, and he doesn’t like it. The fact is that the stories Berta’s boy tells aren’t much appreciated by his audience. They’re not usually how most of them like adventures to be: full of dangers and furious struggles with destiny or chance, tremendous catastrophes, whirlwinds and tornados, gigantic waves and shipwrecks on the high seas, treacherous shifting sands or refined Chinese tortures, all of which they have to continuously confront, putting their lives at risk to save the girl at the very last minute. But in Ringo’s labyrinthine inventions, they are hardly ever threatened by grandiose feats or challenges, facing dangers on the edge of vertiginous ravines or cliffs, or finding themselves caught up in devastating earthquakes like the one in San Francisco, terrible fires like the one in Chicago, or furious hurricanes like the one that hit Suez, scenes they have so often enjoyed in the cinema. There is some of this in Ringo’s stories, but he’s always adding strange extras like a piano in the middle of a desert storm, a talking bird, blue rats scurrying between his father’s legs, Señor Sucre and Capitán Blay drinking their coffees with a slug of brandy on the deck of The Bounty or in the Las Ánimas parish garden, or even Ringo himself fleeing down the corridors of the luxury Ritz Hotel pursued by diamond thieves as he is about to hand invaluable jewels to a rich and beautiful guest. Secret, insidious and long-lasting links regularly spoil his stories, with incidents that are too closely based on reality and are always inappropriate and extravagant, unrelated to the logic of the adventure, leaving them strewn with loose ends and characters who have dissolved into phantoms. The more real and recognisable they are, the more ghostly they become.

“So then,” Ringo continues, staring straight at the sceptical Julito, “you jump off your father’s van, which is carrying a load of Winchester rifles, and find Winnetou. And Winnetou says: ‘Old Shatterhand and his silver mount are waiting for us to join them in the big battle on Gold Mountain. For the Apaches, it’s a sacred mountain …’”

“We already know it’s sacred,” complains Julito.

“… and Old Shatterhand, which in the Indian tongue means strong fist …”

“We know that too,” says Julito, increasingly irate. “Go on. What do I do then?”

“You rush off firing your Winchester, with your dagger in your belt.”

“Between my teeth, nen. I always carry my dagger between my teeth.”

“Alright, between your teeth. But you don’t ride along the beach to join us.”

“I don’t? Why not?”

“Because you ride day and night to Fort Apache to ask for help. Sooo theeen …” he goes on, shutting his eyes again and hesitating because he can’t see how to continue, “sooo then, a great horricane wind arises …”

“The word is hurricane.”

“It lifts the piano lid, and the piano starts playing all on its own. There is no-one at the keyboard, but you can hear ‘The Warsaw Concerto’, and there’s a big black spider crawling across the top. So then Winnetou grabs his tomahawk, because the evil Wungo-Lowgha’s final hour has arrived. Winnetou! The devil take him!” Ringo exclaims. “Only the great Apache chief is able to follow Pegamil along the beach without him realising it.”

Quique Pegamil listens warily. Clutching his knees, he draws even closer, shuffling the seat of his trousers across the grey earth. Am I going to be the traitor, he asks himself in alarm, and suggests a change:

“Listen, Ringo, how about if I ride very close to the sea where the wet sand is firmer. Then my horse wouldn’t break a leg …”

“Okay, fine, that’s a good idea.”

“For the love of God, the broken leg is neither here nor there!” protests Julito. He turns to the narrator with a mocking smile: “As far as I can tell, it’s something else that doesn’t fit.”

“What’s that?”

“One of your howlers.”

“Howler? What howler?” says Ringo, on his guard and dropping his hand to his hip.

“The Apaches can’t be camped by the sea.”

“Ah. No? And why not, clever clogs?”

“Because Arizona doesn’t have a sea or a coast. I’ve seen it on the map.”

Ringo’s eyes flash at him, and he stays silent for a few seconds. All of a sudden, Ringo feels robbed, usurped. Yet again Julito Bayo, who has always fancied himself as a leader, is trying to discredit him in the eyes of the other boys. What can he do? Hidden in a barrel of apples, Jim Hawkins sticks his head out and smiles at him: Don’t let that idiot ruin your story! Ringo takes a penknife out of his pocket and draws five mysterious parallel lines in the no-man’s land in the centre of their circle.

“So what?” he says eventually. “I can have a beach wherever I want one.”

“You can’t, nen”

“Yes I can.”

“No, you can’t.” Julito stares at him. “How many legs does a horse have?”

“A horse? Why?”

“Answer me.”

“Four.”

“Exactly. It’s got four legs. And you can’t make it have five. Do you see that?”

“Alright, and so?”

“What do you mean, and so? My God, you’ve made a howler, nen! If there’s no sea, then there’s no beach, so the Apache reservation can’t be where you say it is, capisce? And you can’t have the girl tied to a stake in the sand, because there’s no sand, capisce? So there can’t be a cliff either, we can’t swim through the waves, or gallop on the shore, or anything like that, for Chrissake!” Julito pauses, with a sneering, triumphant smile. “Have you never seen a map, or do you think we’re all as dumb as you, who doesn’t even know where America is?”

Ringo feels as though reality has burst into his world like a shockwave after an explosion (even if it is a very distant, inaudible one) and has torn something from his hands. Putting the penknife away, he stares at the lines in the dust. No-one in the group apart from him knows that a stave has five lines. He says nothing, and closes his eyes. But he’s not thinking of some urgent readjustment to the landscape of his adventure — there’s no time for that; he’s thinking about this stuck-up know-all from the Palacio de la Cultura opposite him, this kid with the fancy hairstyle and posh way of speaking. He can just see him staring open-mouthed at the coloured map on his classroom wall. He knows the toffee-nosed kid is about to define the real world to impress the others, and quietly resigns himself to the fact.

“Arizona borders to the south with Mexico, to the north with Utah, the east with New Mexico, and to the West with California,” Julito Bayo proudly recites, then adds the finishing touch: “And the capital is Phoenix. It’s true there is a desert and lots of tornados and sandstorms, but look, we’ll have to go on with your story, because the way you’re telling it makes no sense, nen, you keep putting your foot in it.” Then to the others, his chin lifted in triumph: “Come on, don’t be silly. Ringo has no idea what he’s talking about.”

The others shrug their shoulders. They couldn’t care less whether Arizona has a coast or not, in the end the Wild West is a cinema world they have made their own, and where they can do whatever they like. Who cares, they gesture, what does it matter if the coast is on the map or not? They suspect Julito is getting revenge because he’s been sent to the fort in search of help, and also probably because at the end, after they’ve fought the Apaches and rescued Violeta, he’s the one who will be discovered to be the traitor. There is always one — but the only thing that really interests them is finding out who is chosen to rescue the prisoner tied to the stake.

“You’ll have to take the girl somewhere else, it’s no good where she is, there’s no beach,” Julito insists.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Well then, this crappy story is over. We’ll have to start another one.”

Quique encourages Ringo to carry on, but he is already standing up and dusting his trousers. The circle closes again, leaving him outside.

“Fine, you all stay there then.”

Hands in his pockets and a look of cool disdain on his face, the storyteller quits the group and takes one of the little paths up the hill, though he does not go far. He’ll be back, but first he needs to feel excluded and spurned for a while, he wants to be misunderstood and to see himself as exiled, all alone, savouring an untouchable independence that is a mixture of rage and melancholy as he looks down on his friends without being seen. He is scornful of the show-off heir to “Bayo and Son Make Moving Fun”, who deserves to be taught a lesson and who he would gladly give one to right there and then, but towards the others, these candid, illiterate sons of migrant workers who aren’t afraid of defying the real geography of the world either in his tall stories or in life itself, he feels a secret affinity.

Situated between the leafy Parque Güell and the miserable foothills of Monte Carmelo, this hill they call the Bald Mountain is a gloomy promontory with little vegetation and no trees, dotted here and there with small caves occasionally inhabited by tramps. Its inhospitable, bare slopes make it seem as if it has been swept to one side and punished, as if it was nothing more than a submissive wasteland on the edge of the picturesque and famous outlines of its near neighbour, the Parque Güell. In the month of May its slopes are covered with lavender and broom, and June brings a few clumps of thyme and rosemary, but the rest of the year it’s a dusty expanse shunned even by lizards. The gang doesn’t do it anymore, but as recently as the previous year they searched for seashells and molluscs embedded in the rocks, because Julito Bayo had sworn that his History teacher told him the mountain was littered with fossils, tortoise shells and mammoth remains. Some of the caves really are prehistoric, Julito told them, showing off his knowledge. A soft, warm breeze carries the acrid smell of burning rubber up to Ringo. Most likely it is coming from the cloud of smoke hanging over the cluster of shacks that he can see not far away, below the last bend in the road up to Carmelo. He thinks of youngsters with shaven heads and fierce looks burning lorry tyres and rotten mattresses. He gives a magic blink and the smoke spreads, black as soot, to envelop the circle he has been cast out of.

As he continues to climb, the ground becomes increasingly ashen and bare. There’s no-one in sight. Halfway up the hill, where the incline becomes steeper, on the smooth back of a chalky boulder that is half buried and almost indistinguishable from the ground, are three hand-carved steps. Man-made.

“Hello there, mystery.”

A lavender bush is sprouting next to the topmost step. Perfectly symmetrical, a little more than two handspans wide and worn away by the rains and the gang’s feet, the three steps appear without warning out of nothing and climb the hill towards nothing, for nothing. Every time he comes across them, he stops, sensing he is on the threshold of a labyrinth that could lead to a tomb. Something ceased to exist not far from here, something whose secret lies buried beneath the quiet symmetry of these lonely steps, as stark as headstones. The Cazorla brothers’ father, who is a labourer and years earlier worked in the quarries at the foot of the Carmelo used to say half jokingly that a long time ago he had heard of a young peasant recently arrived from a village in Andalusia to work in the same quarry (disused nowadays) who had suddenly taken it into his head to chisel out the first steps of a staircase meant to lead to the little house he intended one day to build for himself and his family, but that he had been forced to stop to go to war. A couple of Christmases when he was on leave he came back from the front to continue the work in uniform, but just as he had finished the third step, the enemy arrived at the gates of the city, and the young stonemason was shot right there, hammer still in hand.

The whole gang spent an entire afternoon searching for gun cartridges and bloodstains on the three steps and surrounding rocks, but either the stains had been washed away or they were unable to spot them. Another day, as he was pulling up a thyme bush, the elder Cazorla brother dug up the sole of a shoe or a perished boot, and a pair of buttons. They dug around for a long while, but couldn’t find anything more. Some time later the younger Cazorla announced he had found a broken hammer beneath some rocks. Of course, he could be buried somewhere here, Ringo suggested, but Julito protested: Who’s going to believe a story like that, nen? While an excited Quique shouted: Where could the body be, Ringo? Here, underneath my feet? Yes, under your feet, right here!

Now he leaves them behind and goes to sit a little higher up. He clasps his knees and stares down at the boys’ shaven heads and Julito Bayo’s smart, wavy mop. They are listening to him in silence. No doubt Julito has begun his tall tale with some stupidly menacing music from a horror film like “Hold That Ghost”, he thinks. And doubtless it’s a stormy night with thunder and lightning, and a sinister dacoit brandishing a dagger is stealing into Virginia Franch’s bedroom in her villa on Calle de las Camelias, while Quique hides behind a curtain in wait for him. Julito himself climbs the front of the house in pursuit of the Perfidious Oriental, and the Cazorla brothers are also close at hand. Then of course the telephone rings and Virginia wakes up in her bed just as the shadow of the evil Chinaman with the dagger looms behind her. She sits up and screams … and I’ll bet an arm and a leg that Quique asks if the girl is wearing a transparent nightie.

He looks down at the city stretching out to the sea under a slight haze. He grits his teeth: up here he is at war with the world, not just evil dacoits or Apache warriors. For a moment, peering at the blurred line of the horizon rising above the buildings, it appears as though he is viewing an underwater city, more remote and improbable than a beach in Arizona. In the bright blue sky above his head, the red kite with yellow ribbons is losing height and keeps swooping round, its tail fluttering wildly as it threatens to plummet to the ground. Held by an invisible hand that seems unable to control it, the long flying line tautens or slackens following the vagaries of the wind. A young girl’s hands, he decides, and at that very moment he looks down and sees Señora Mir toiling up the path in her tight printed skirt, her black sleeveless blouse with the plunging neckline, and her palm-leaf basket. She is wearing flat shoes, a green headscarf and dark glasses with white frames. She’s making slow progress, and stops every now and then to catch her breath, hands on hips. Two small white butterflies are chasing each other round her thick pink ankles. She passes by Ringo without looking and carries on up the hill.

“Hello there, Señora Mir.”

She either does not hear or does not want to acknowledge his greeting. Near the summit, she disappears, after stopping to cut a branch of broom. When Ringo follows her a short while later, she is nowhere to be seen. She could be on the other side of the hill, where there is oregano and clumps of thyme that has just come into bloom, but she would have had to walk very quickly to reach it, so it’s more likely she is in some cave with the man waiting for her. There is no-one else in sight. From this slope he can see Vallcarca and the suicide bridge; then all at once, to his surprise he also notices that the cord of the kite he saw from down below is not being held by anyone: instead, it is tied to a large boulder at one edge of the small sun-filled bowl at the top of the hill. There is no-one around. Above his head in the sky he can hear the crackling of the paper kite, as if the strong wind had set it on fire. Taking out his penknife, he cuts the line. Freed, the kite turns a somersault and plunges headfirst to earth.

As he runs back down the hill, he pieces it all together. He bursts in on Julito’s tale and demands they all listen to him.

“Are you blind or what?” He stands opposite his rival, arms akimbo. “Didn’t you see Violeta’s mother go past? She’s in the Mianet cave right now with a man … Guess how they manage to meet in secret without anyone finding out?” He pauses and sits down, making room for himself between the Cazorla brothers and crossing his legs. “It’s simple. He flies a red and yellow kite, and once it’s climbed high in the sky he ties the line to a stone, then goes into the cave to wait.”

“To wait for what?” asks Julito, his nose out of joint.

“Guess.”

“What do I have to guess?”

“When Señora Mir sees the red-and-yellow kite in the sky, she knows he’s waiting for her, and comes as quickly as she can. The kite is the signal, kids! Of course, she also picks herbs for her back rubs and so on, but that’s only an excuse. She’s really coming to meet her secret lover.”

“Crikey!” Quique exclaims. “And what are they doing now in the cave?”

“What d’you think? They’re at it, kid. I saw them with my own eyes.”

“Seriously?”

“Bah, everyone knows she’s a slut, and besides, she’s off her trolley,” Julito Bayo says scornfully, knowing he’s been bested.

“And who’s the guy?” Roger asks. “Do we know him?”

“It could be that stonemason who carved those steps,” suggests Ringo.

“Hang on,” Julito cuts in. “Didn’t you say he was buried up there? Don’t listen to him, you lot, he’s making it all up … Anyway, what’s so new about that? Don’t you remember the day we went up to look at the anti-aircraft batteries on Turó de la Rovira and saw her smooching with a fellow behind the wall …?”

“Yes, but let Ringo speak,” Roger butts in.

“Yes, yes … What happened in the cave?” Chato wants to know.

“Well, I don’t know if it’s right for me to tell you what I saw …”

“Did you see her bush and her tits? Was she naked?”

“A lot more than that. A lot more. But I don’t know whether you’ll believe me …”

“I won’t,” Julito says hastily. “Not a word.”

“Well, I will,” Quique responds. “We believe you, Ringo. Tell us!”

The others share Quique’s curiosity, and are suddenly all ears. However, although they strain to imagine some of the details the storyteller only hints at, because it’s about a grown-up, plump woman like Señora Mir, whose backside and provocative swaying gait only make them laugh, the scene he describes does not really arouse them, and Ringo’s account soon tails off. Even so, the credit Julito had denied him has now been re-established.

Shortly afterwards, Roger suggests they go and visit the ruins of Can Xirot a little higher up, next to Parque Güell.

“Last one there’s a sissy!”

Inside the abandoned old farmhouse, surrounded by the silence of tumbledown walls and rotten wooden beams, overgrown with brambles and dusty weeds, the gang gathers beside a tall bank of earth covered in an inhospitable tangle, and conjures up dangers, confused emotions and secret pacts with the future. They take their cruel revenge on lizards and grasshoppers, and scheme as to how before long they are going to bring a girlfriend up here who will let them touch her. A little higher up, next to the collapsed stable walls, a lime tree in full blossom leaning out over the city glows as bright as a lamp as it is caught by the rays of the setting sun. The boys have sometimes seen Señora Mir sitting under this tree, sorting out the sprigs of herbs in her basket, and no doubt waiting for someone. Now that it is July, the branches of the tree resound with the constant, powerful buzzing of thousands of bees and other insects drawn to the blossoms, and they do not go near it. A wild bay tree is growing in what was once the farmhouse kitchen: Ringo cuts off a small branch for his mother, and hangs it from his belt.

At sunset they descend again to the Carmelo road. As they linger a while longer playing football with what’s left of their rag ball on the esplanade outside the north entrance to Parque Güell, they catch sight of the plump nurse high on the hill. She is sitting on the three steps leading nowhere, the flowering thyme poking out of the palm basket alongside her. Peering into a hand mirror, she is busy applying lipstick. Then she fluffs up her hair, removes something sticking to it, covers her head with the green scarf, shakes her skirt, and starts on the way down, taking care over where she is putting her feet.

Shortly afterwards, as she passes by them on the way to Plaza Sanllely, Roger’s looping kick at the unravelling ball crashes into her ample backside. Good shot, kid, shouts Quique, and they all burst out laughing. But Señora Mir doesn’t even deign to look in their direction; she merely pauses for a moment and responds with a contemptuous sway of the hips. Ringo takes aim and kicks the ball again at the generous posterior. This time she does come to a halt, removes her sunglasses, looks at the boys with unsteady, wavering eyes that have been moist with tears since she began her descent. Shaking her head gently, and with a sad smile, she scolds them for their bad manners, while Ringo pretends to be far away, staring at the clouds.