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By Root 692 0

no. All that comes out of her mouth is my name. She eats a beakful, the amount a bird gives to its chick. That’s enough. She shrank. Withered. I could lift her in my arms like a baby. ‘There we go! When you’re better, we’ll count matches. We’ll fill box after box with matches.’ I found her lying on the carpet, bent double, just another geometrical drawing. ‘Leave me here,’ said Olinda on the carpet. ‘I’m popping out for a while.’ This was the last thing she said with any of the old, coherent meaning. After that, only my name. O. She’d say O and I’d use the O to give her something. She keeps going on a beakful. The line of her body. Wee-wee. Jewels. Seed. My name. A circle on her lips, a sigh. So it’s true she, what she was at least, left that day on the carpet.

The Price

‘What if you lose an eye in one of those fights?’ asked the engineer Roque Gantes from the deck.

‘If I lose an eye,’ replied Korea ironically, ‘then they’ll have to pay for it.’

‘Why do you fight over neighbourhoods, between Mau Mau and Red Devils?’

‘Why? You don’t ask why.’

‘You’re an idiot. An idiot, gentlemen, an idiot!’ shouted the crane operator.

‘If I lose an eye,’ continued Korea, ‘they’ll have to cough up for it. You bet they will.’

‘Ten thousand pesetas,’ said Gabriel suddenly.

‘You sure about that, judge?’

Korea thought about Medusa with her red tights.

‘And if a relative does the damage, your father, for instance, how much?’

‘Nothing.’

Everyone was talking about a boy who’d been kidnapped in the city. Pepito Mendoza. A crazy woman who’d wanted a child of her own had taken him.

‘Hey, judge, how much they pay for a slave?’ Korea asked Gabriel.

‘For cotton, in Virginia and those parts, three hundred and sixty dollars per head.’

Pinche became thoughtful. In Ovos Square and Santa Catarina, you could change dollars, pounds, pesos, bolivars. In secret. Under the eggs.

‘How much is three hundred and sixty dollars?’ asked Pinche absent-mindedly.

‘You wouldn’t fetch that much,’ said Korea, ‘if that’s what you mean. Besides, you’re boss-eyed. That lowers the price. You couldn’t even fight.’

Pinche did not reply. He had two eyes. Trouble is one of them was lazy and they were using a patch to correct it. If the guy in white shoes caught him for making a fire with planks of teakwood to warm twenty-five workmen’s pots, he really might take out his good eye. But he wasn’t going to catch him. Despite having a lazy eye, he could see much better than Korea. Which is why he was the first to sound the alert and start running:

‘Mau Mau!’

Élisée’s Book

‘We were going to the festivities on the 2nd of August. First by special train to Betanzos, from Coruña Station, then by boat up the River Mandeo to Caneiros Field. We’d spent ages preparing for it. This festive journey, this trip on boats with laurel awnings, swaying in time to the accordions, propelled by bagpipe airs, was like going to a place you’d dreamt of. So many turns and there it was, Libertaria. A day like that was worth a year. With a bit of luck, you’d set off empty-handed and come back in an embrace.’

Polka stood up and went in search of Man and the Earth, Volume I, by Élisée Reclus. With this book in his hand, Polka adopted the look of someone serious. The look of Élisée Reclus. Not that he couldn’t be serious without this book. But in this case, he’d say, his seriousness was well documented. It took a lot of effort to convince him to go to the eye doctor, as he called the ophthalmologist. He hated admitting physical failure. They then spent hours talking. The doctor told him he had presbyopia, which is why little words vanished on the page. Polka then listed the seven deadly sins. The ministers, he said, in the government of Carnival. The doctor was still a child, but he remembered the costumes on Cantóns. It had been a special Carnival, the best, following the elections in February 1936. Processions came with bands of musicians from every single neighbourhood. The child’s eyesight may have magnified the memory. Perhaps. It was the last great Carnival. After that came