Books Burn Badly - Manuel Rivas [234]
‘Things look at us,’ Pementa attempted a justification. ‘We don’t look at them.’
Pementa’s remark was considered witty, but not without pride. At this late hour, on the back of several rounds, people were highly sensitive to signs. What was so special about Pementa that notes should look at him?
‘It’s just that the man is lucky,’ said Fiz. ‘That’s all.’
Everyone understood that Pementa had been very lucky. But such luck should be shared around. It couldn’t discriminate in this way, pull a fast one on people who’d always lived there. People who were from the place. Where’d Pementa come from? Another village, on horseback. All he’d done was arrive and fill up.
‘Somebody might be missing that note, I dare say.’
The person who made this observation was Raúl Cotón, who egged the others on with his look.
Everybody checked their pockets, their wallets, but no one claimed back the note. They might have been resentful, but they were honest.
‘Well, I say that note’s as much yours as it’s mine,’ insisted Cotón. Pementa understood. His horse was outside, tied to the hitching-rail, and he’d only stopped for a drink to shake off the night dew. It would give him great pleasure to share his luck with those present, in a toast to the parish’s deceased. There was a murmur of approval. Here was a gentleman, a tavern prince. But Cotón broke the accord. What was under discussion was not the note, an accidental factor, but the possession of Luck with a capital letter, which Cotón, in a hoarse, forceful, brandy-laden voice, raised to the rank of virgin or goddess, Our Lady of Luck, whose favour had to be decided here, this night and no other.
Pementa didn’t mind playing for luck. He wasn’t superstitious.
‘You ever been unlucky?’ asked Cotón, who seemed to speak not through his mouth, but through the weal across his cheekbone.
‘I camp out under my own star. Where I do not run, I don’t grow tired.’
‘Well, I cut the air with a sickle. I’m fed up of treading shit and am going to unwalk the wheel. Let’s see those cards! I’m going to get your three, Pementa! Understand?’ growled Cotón in the direction of the Brandariz public.
They played and all Pementa did was lose.
First off, what he had to hand, the money. Then his horse at the door. His belt. His riding boots. Followed by his property. His mother’s inheritance. Her jewellery, the toad necklace and filigree earrings, the bedhead made of chestnut wood and carved with roses. Finally the chest. ‘You going to bet the chest?’ ‘I’ve still got something. St Anthony of Padua.’ ‘How can you bet poor little old Anthony? The saint everyone loves, the matchmaker, the one who looks after the herd.’
‘He wants a bullet in his head,’ remarked a parishioner. ‘Betting St Anthony!’
‘Anyone else can shut up or provide tobacco,’ said Cotón.
The lucky gambler lost St Anthony as well. He was ashamed. Not just because of what the living would say, but because of what the dead might think. Enough. He’d lost everything.
‘Your turn in the dance.’
‘What?’
‘You’ve still got your turn in the dance.’
‘It’s not a cow, I can’t bet that.’
‘I want your turn.’
Pementa knew very well what this meant. For months now, he’d been dancing with the same girl in the fixed corner, where you didn’t have to give way in the dance. It was a kind of preserve. In the rest of the room, you had to give way. However content the couple might be, in the rest of the room, a local boy’s request to step in for the slow dance had to be granted without further ado. A round that is not over until the couple formalises their relationship. Makes it clear they’re serious. The fixed corner was the preserve of seriousness. The obligation to make way is an arbitrary rule, often irritating, but it leads to surprises, constant traffic, so that there’s much more hullabaloo, whereas in the territory of those ‘on speaking terms’ there is safety in silence. The most ardent lovers bend and bow, hope to reach the light without getting burnt, like moths around