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By Root 748 0

a lamp, and, if we glance in their direction, they’re trying out new symmetries that show a willingness to exchange bodies. There’s a moment at the end of the number when a fiery couple seems to have swapped facial and bodily features to such an extent that, being of a different size, they’ve suddenly acquired the same stature. This interchange is beneficial. They’re both more beautiful after the dance. But there are some who, in the formality of their engagement, suddenly grow cold, like bronze poured into a mould. They dance to each tune with a correctness that makes them all the same, be it a bolero or a paso doble, as if they were in fact doing the housework. Alberte Pementa and his girl belonged not to these, but to the first kind. Being ‘on speaking terms’ should be understood in the widest sense. Because speaking to each other implied carnal knowledge. They were either engaged or on the way to being so. Which was not just a verbal undertaking, but a bodily promise.

‘You going to bet your turn?’

‘Shut it,’ said Cotón. ‘It’s the right to dance.’

‘He wants a kick in the balls,’ said the parishioner.

After that, Pementa had only one thing left. Luck.

Time was running out. The starling in the cage was showing signs of suffocating amid so much smoke. Its death signalled the end of the game. And the bird seemed to know it. Motionless on its perch, it had a grave look, like an animal in a fable.

‘I’ve nothing left,’ said Pementa. ‘Not even a horse. I’ll have to walk.’

‘Yes, you have,’ said Cotón with the same voice, the same desire as in the first game.

‘What’s that?’

‘Luck.’

‘Go to bed, Cotón,’ said a local, hoping to do him a favour. ‘You’ve won everything. Don’t weigh using the devil’s scales.’

‘Calamity, why don’t you go and see if it’s raining.’

They played for luck. Cotón concentrated harder than ever. He’d had a magnificent night. Game after game, he’d beaten Pementa. And now he was going to deprive him of luck.

From the first card, it was obvious the wind had changed. Luck loved Pementa, or it didn’t love Cotón, one way or the other.

Which is why Alberte Pementa decided to leave. Ashamed at having betted love and kept luck. I don’t know what happened that day, what mist got inside his head. But even his friends stayed away from him. He must have been lucky because, just before embarking in Coruña, Santa Catarina, he found a thousand pesetas on the ground. There were lots of people, some whose job it was to do just that, catch anything that might fall out, so to speak, but Pementa found the money as soon as he arrived. Though his head was bowed, his soul in the doldrums. This may have helped him.

Adela, the local soothsayer, with a black bandage over her eyes, said, ‘Don’t let that man embark! No one should leave a city who finds notes on the ground.’ But Alberte Pementa thought differently. He thought the opposite. He thought he should leave at once.

‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said O.

And Pementa whispered in her ear, ‘It’s true, girl.’

Disguises

He wanted us to know. It was customary to pray, even the rosary’s unending litany. And though we nodded when they asked, yes, we said the rosary at home, the only prayer was that of Polka reading us geography from Élisée’s book, followed by me with an extract from The Invisible Man. He found this book very funny. He’d sometimes cry with laughter. Of the book with burnt edges, Olinda would say, ‘Poor thing never thought it’d be so popular, sad though it is.’ Polka also kept newspaper cuttings with mankind’s chief inventions. The paper was yellowed. So old I thought inventions were the most ancient thing there was. Needless to say, the most important one for Polka, after aspirin, was electricity. He wanted Pinche to become an electrician. Or a painter. Because of the clothes.

In the field of construction, painters are the most stylish. Because of their shirts. They’re the ones who wear the most elegant shirts. They’re the only workers who go and buy them from Camisería Inglesa. Like musicians, they have that courage. Bricklayers and plumbers are