‘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 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 the most modest. But a Coruñan painter, at the end of the day, changes on site and struts down the street like Valentino.