He didn’t like talking much. He’d been a pilot, he told me one day, a fighter pilot. Then commercial flights.
They’d insisted we shouldn’t leave the dog alone. But I wasn’t going to run after the dog all day long, with Pinche in the role of major-domo.
So there he was, watching TV. Ensconced in the armchair. A roaring fire in every fireplace. Like a lord, talking English to Black Beauty. And I ran downstairs to fetch him because, after all, a man is a man.
‘Where is she?’
‘On the bed.’
‘Which bed?’
‘The lady’s. With six puppies.’
‘What?’
I’d managed the birth. I’d been very nervous to start with because she’d climbed on to the bed. Unthinkable where I come from. That a dog should give birth on the bed, on top of a pink satin bedspread. A water bed, what’s more. Brand name, Zodiac. I didn’t believe the lady when she said it was a water bed. She told me to have a go and wouldn’t let up until I did. She was right. Very strange to begin with. Then it was like lying on a river. How nice the way the water moved! You could close your eyes and just float. But now it was Popsy lying there, giving birth, her eyes on me. What did the bed, the pink satin, matter? I was fully aware everything would have been the same had I not been there, except for one thing. Her look. Which alighted on mine, light on light, shade on shade. Lots of looks meet in life. Your eyes take in what others see. At the end of the day, you might have been credulous, naked, saintly, raped, murdered, beloved, recognised, invisible, a kiss, a thorn, a harpy, an Amazon. One time I took Pinche to see the eye doctor, the doctor explained to me — or rather told me, the way he talked was like a tale — that inside each retina of the eye there are millions of tiny rods which gather the light. Each look we give each other must have its own rod. But the dog’s look as she gave birth was different. A gift that required every single rod. Because it didn’t meet mine, it landed on it. She left me her look. Such a beautiful thing, and she entrusted it to me.
I went down to fetch Pinche because she’d closed her eyes. It was her first delivery. She’d borne six pups and I was afraid she’d expire from the effort. I’ve seen that happen as a child. A dead cat whose kittens are still suckling. Apparently mothers have milk for a day after they die. Popsy was exhausted. But when we came back, she’d recovered some of her strength. There she was, on the pink satin bedspread, licking her puppies.
Pinche was annoyed.
‘Little blighters, trust them to pick the weekend! I’ll have to go for a sack.’
‘A sack? What do you want a sack for?’
‘What do you think? The sooner they go in the river, the better. She shouldn’t grow too fond of them. The sooner, the better.’
I gave him the look Popsy had given me.
‘No, Pinche, no more throwing dogs in the river.’
‘Well, I don’t mind. Or do you think I like drowning dogs? As far as I’m concerned, we can leave them where they are.’
He lit the fire in the bedroom. Got over his bad mood. Went to have a look at the litter and intoned, ‘Boy, boy, girl, boy, boy, girl. How very considerate! You know what we’re going to do? Pop down to the cellar and open one of those vastly expensive bottles of French wine.’
I was about to protest, but recalled something Polka used to say, ‘Matter is neither created nor destroyed, it is simply transformed.’
The Lucky Gambler
IT WAS THE first time Alberte Pementa had gambled but, when he sat down, he had the impression that game of cards with Raúl Cotón had been foretold years previously. There was a strange sense of expectation in the bar in Brandariz. Fiz, the waiter, arranged the tablecloth as if for an autopsy and brought the cards with all the care of someone laying down a weapon. Cotón was playing and that spelt only one thing: disaster.
‘These cards have got Morse on the back,’ joked Pementa.
‘I’ve no problem with them,’ said Cotón.
‘Then I haven’t either.’
‘Shut the door. Make yourselves comfortable. Gentlemen, we’re outside the law. And bring us a bird,’ Cotón told Fiz.
‘A bird? Please not.’
‘Don’t grumble. We need to know the time.’
‘There’s a clock on the wall.’
‘Bring us a bird. The bird is time.’
Fiz came back with a starling inside a cage. Placed it on the side of the table.
‘What’s its name?’ Pementa asked.
‘Figaro.’
‘The last one was called Figaro,’ Cotón remarked.
‘Yes. But the last one died. Smoked to death in a cage.’
Cotón stopped shuffling and stared at Pementa. Offered him a cigarette.
‘You’d better smoke. You know the condition?’
‘What condition?’
‘No one leaves till the bird is dead.’
Alberte Pementa was a lucky man. He’d always been lucky. The night he arrived at the bar in Brandariz, he opened the door, looked down at the ground and found a 500-peseta note. A blue note. Lots of money at that time. Some people had never seen a note that colour before. It was a Saturday night and the bar was full of men, almost all of them building labourers letting off steam after a week’s work in the city. The smoke of Celtas gave conversations a structured consistency, though there was also the odd flourish of someone smoking a Tip Top, Portuguese blond. Each to his own, nobody noticed him. Until he bent down and stood up with that note in his hand like an oriflamme. The first look of congratulation gave way to a general feeling of resentment. Why should Pementa have found it soon as he came through the door? Why?
‘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?