As he runs back down the hill, he pieces it all together. He bursts in on Julito’s tale and demands they all listen to him.
“Are you blind or what?” He stands opposite his rival, arms akimbo. “Didn’t you see Violeta’s mother go past? She’s in the Mianet cave right now with a man … Guess how they manage to meet in secret without anyone finding out?” He pauses and sits down, making room for himself between the Cazorla brothers and crossing his legs. “It’s simple. He flies a red and yellow kite, and once it’s climbed high in the sky he ties the line to a stone, then goes into the cave to wait.”
“To wait for what?” asks Julito, his nose out of joint.
“Guess.”
“What do I have to guess?”
“When Señora Mir sees the red-and-yellow kite in the sky, she knows he’s waiting for her, and comes as quickly as she can. The kite is the signal, kids! Of course, she also picks herbs for her back rubs and so on, but that’s only an excuse. She’s really coming to meet her secret lover.”
“Crikey!” Quique exclaims. “And what are they doing now in the cave?”
“What d’you think? They’re at it, kid. I saw them with my own eyes.”
“Seriously?”
“Bah, everyone knows she’s a slut, and besides, she’s off her trolley,” Julito Bayo says scornfully, knowing he’s been bested.
“And who’s the guy?” Roger asks. “Do we know him?”
“It could be that stonemason who carved those steps,” suggests Ringo.
“Hang on,” Julito cuts in. “Didn’t you say he was buried up there? Don’t listen to him, you lot, he’s making it all up … Anyway, what’s so new about that? Don’t you remember the day we went up to look at the anti-aircraft batteries on Turó de la Rovira and saw her smooching with a fellow behind the wall …?”
“Yes, but let Ringo speak,” Roger butts in.
“Yes, yes … What happened in the cave?” Chato wants to know.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s right for me to tell you what I saw …”
“Did you see her bush and her tits? Was she naked?”
“A lot more than that. A lot more. But I don’t know whether you’ll believe me …”
“I won’t,” Julito says hastily. “Not a word.”
“Well, I will,” Quique responds. “We believe you, Ringo. Tell us!”
The others share Quique’s curiosity, and are suddenly all ears. However, although they strain to imagine some of the details the storyteller only hints at, because it’s about a grown-up, plump woman like Señora Mir, whose backside and provocative swaying gait only make them laugh, the scene he describes does not really arouse them, and Ringo’s account soon tails off. Even so, the credit Julito had denied him has now been re-established.
Shortly afterwards, Roger suggests they go and visit the ruins of Can Xirot a little higher up, next to Parque Güell.
“Last one there’s a sissy!”
Inside the abandoned old farmhouse, surrounded by the silence of tumbledown walls and rotten wooden beams, overgrown with brambles and dusty weeds, the gang gathers beside a tall bank of earth covered in an inhospitable tangle, and conjures up dangers, confused emotions and secret pacts with the future. They take their cruel revenge on lizards and grasshoppers, and scheme as to how before long they are going to bring a girlfriend up here who will let them touch her. A little higher up, next to the collapsed stable walls, a lime tree in full blossom leaning out over the city glows as bright as a lamp as it is caught by the rays of the setting sun. The boys have sometimes seen Señora Mir sitting under this tree, sorting out the sprigs of herbs in her basket, and no doubt waiting for someone. Now that it is July, the branches of the tree resound with the constant, powerful buzzing of thousands of bees and other insects drawn to the blossoms, and they do not go near it. A wild bay tree is growing in what was once the farmhouse kitchen: Ringo cuts off a small branch for his mother, and hangs it from his belt.
At sunset they descend again to the Carmelo road. As they linger a while longer playing football with what’s left of their rag ball on the esplanade outside the north entrance to Parque Güell, they catch sight of the plump nurse high on the hill. She is sitting on the three steps leading nowhere, the flowering thyme poking out of the palm basket alongside her. Peering into a hand mirror, she is busy applying lipstick. Then she fluffs up her hair, removes something sticking to it, covers her head with the green scarf, shakes her skirt, and starts on the way down, taking care over where she is putting her feet.
Shortly afterwards, as she passes by them on the way to Plaza Sanllely, Roger’s looping kick at the unravelling ball crashes into her ample backside. Good shot, kid, shouts Quique, and they all burst out laughing. But Señora Mir doesn’t even deign to look in their direction; she merely pauses for a moment and responds with a contemptuous sway of the hips. Ringo takes aim and kicks the ball again at the generous posterior. This time she does come to a halt, removes her sunglasses, looks at the boys with unsteady, wavering eyes that have been moist with tears since she began her descent. Shaking her head gently, and with a sad smile, she scolds them for their bad manners, while Ringo pretends to be far away, staring at the clouds.
4. A PINK ENVELOPE
For several days the story does the rounds of the neighbourhood. Can that woman have been so despairing, so unbearable her heartache, that she lost all sense of reality on those useless lengths of track? The absurdity seemed all too evident. To pretend that she wanted to commit suicide so publicly does not mean she really intended to kick the bucket, say the wagging tongues in the Rosales bar. At least, not in such a grotesque manner. Considering that in affairs of the heart Señora Mir completely lacked any sense of the ridiculous, it was agreed that what happened was simply another of her melodramatic performances aimed at reining in her fancy man by making him jealous and bringing him back into the fold. She had made a public display of anger at being scorned, a theatrical, very conspicuous gesture, but there was nothing to be alarmed about. She must have felt deeply offended and hurt, and everything appeared to indicate that she herself was certain that the fellow would not return, but even so, however desperate she might have been, and however great her disenchantment and bewilderment following their argument, it was hard to believe she really thought even for a moment that she was going to be run down by a tram in this street where none had gone by for years. They also said she must have been so confused when she left her flat that she had lost all sense of direction and gone up the street rather than down it to the nearby Plaza Rovira, where there were trams numbers 30, 38 and 39. Whatever the truth, her misguided ruse could have had only one objective: to convey to her lover, wherever he might be — according to some of her women neighbours, still in the flat where they had just quarrelled, which explained why the crafty woman kept looking up at the balcony, even though afterwards it was generally agreed she had already thrown him out — a dramatic warning of what she was genuinely thinking of doing some day. In other words, there was no way she wanted to be run over by a tram: she simply had an overpowering need to let him know what she was capable of.