Rosita, now the grieving widow of a plan, exalted their story and filled the memory of their friendship with sudden, gentle floods of tears, with melancholy and respect. She continued to work all day in the café. At night, when it closed, and the figures of Morterito and Rodrigo Vázquez were left alone to stick their tongues out at each other, what awaited Rosita now were not only the shadows of the trees on moonlit nights, but also another friendlier, less noticeable shadow, one that smelt of cigarettes and coffee, had the sparkle of a diamond ring and walked with the small, delicate steps of a gentleman: the shadow of Don Andrés Llorente, ill-fated lover and the broken handle through which Rosita Pascual had once, God willing, hoped to slip her quiet, plump, anodyne arm.
THE ALBUM
THEY HURRIED into the café and sat down. Their eyes were bright with impatience as they placed the package on the table. She had barely taken her place there when she began to open the package, gazing lovingly first at the red ribbon used to tie up the package and then, with a kind of protective, expectant pride, at his face.
“What can I get you?” asked the waiter.
“I’ll have a white coffee. What about you?”
“The same.”
On the table, in its navy-blue covers, like someone’s Sunday-best suit of clothes, was the album of picture cards. This was a great day. They had talked about it as one might talk about the birth of a child. The album represented the young man’s childhood tenacity, which had collected one picture card after another until all the landscapeless windows of that difficult book were filled. His schoolmates — he recalled — had left empty spaces of indifference and idleness in their albums. His, resplendent on the table, revealed the devotion, in its day, of a careful man, who had remained faithful all his life to his most innocent joys, to the object of his most insignificant enthusiasm. For his girlfriend, that blue album symbolized perseverance and constancy. There, on the table, was the white coffee of their humble love, but there, too, inside the book, were all the marvels of the universe, from which they began slowly, lovingly, to pull off the petals, as if their happiness, a Yes or a No, depended upon the answer.
“No,” she said gleefully, “not ‘The Butterflies’ today. And we’ve done ‘The Great Inventions’.”
Each page drew them closer together, day after day. On the day of ‘The Butterflies’, she had fluttered her eyelashes at a young man sitting opposite, and he — the boyfriend — had felt jealous. But she hadn’t, in fact, even looked at that other man; she had simply wanted to flutter her own fine eyelashes like a butterfly. On the day of ‘Domestic Birds’, they imagined the home they would have along with an orange canary sitting bright and almost transparent in the sunny window: “White would be better,” he suggested. “No, it has to be orange,” she said firmly, screwing up her eyes as if wincing at the bird’s bittersweet plumage. The ‘Exotic Birds’ page placed a daring little hat of gaudy feathers gently on her head, on an afternoon in which the world would be full of laughter, champagne and confetti. On the day of ‘Flowers for Giving’, he gave her a bouquet of twelve tulips so that she would not forget a shared moment. When they reached ‘Prehistoric Animals’, she felt afraid and they moved still closer. He was keen to spend a few more days studying those ‘Prehistoric Animals’, but she refused and hurried on to the glittering pages of ‘Precious Stones’, which, for atavistic reasons, filled him with unease and suspicion. He saw in her eyes a certain courtly brazenness, certain boundless ambitions, which made him feel uncomfortable all afternoon and placed between them a clammy, amphibian coldness. When they came to ‘Algae’, they entwined fingers, hands, arms, looks and words. They had a splendid time with ‘The Evolution of the Motorcar’, bouncing up and down on their seats and juddering to a halt. She identified so closely with the ‘Wild Animals’ that her eyes filled up with predatory instinct and he felt like a tragic lion-tamer who might perish at any moment. With ‘Fauna of the Sea’, the sweet, idle, gentle fishes of love swam back and forth from her eyes to his and continued to do so, meekly, humbly, the whole afternoon. When they came to ‘Fruit’, she blushed and placed one hand over the apples to stop in their tracks any progressive Adam-like thoughts.
They finished the album and were left tanned and exhilarated as after a long journey. It was as if they had returned with the same shared memories from a respectful honeymoon. She waited every day — especially the last one — for him to say: “Here, take it, this album is for you.” But he didn’t. Filling that album with picture cards had been his childhood joy; it had made him a prize exhibit whenever they had visitors. And so he took his album and kept it. If he had given it to her, she would have returned his gift in words full of understanding and colour, in experience of the world, in botanical beauties and ocean deeps. But the afternoons grew colder and both of them grew bored; they choked on their now broken words. And one day, she — who had fallen in love with the album — said goodbye. When the time comes, he will have to get the album out again, but without ever daring to give it away.
THE LEMON DROP
I’M STANDING AT THE DOOR of the house where Cobos’ wife lives. The wife of Ramiro Cobos, retired quartermaster-general in the air force. He’d be a hero if it wasn’t for that word “quartermaster”. It’s two o’clock. The sun is beating down, and the people — not many at this hour — are hurrying home for lunch. I feel tired. On other days, it’s been after three o’clock and yet I’ve never before felt this tightness around my waist, this weight in my legs — especially in my feet — and this complete and utter inertia, yes, that too. It’s really muggy, one of those hot, heavy days. I look at my suitcase; well, I call it a suitcase, but it’s not that big, more of a briefcase really, and, as always, I have a quick peek inside to make sure nothing’s missing. The briefcase weighs on me too; it’s hot, it’s had enough, it’s about ready to explode, as if it contained some deadly substance. But it doesn’t. Or perhaps it does; I’m not sure. It contains my life, which isn’t deadly exactly, but it is mortal. Lace edgings, doilies, buttons, ribbons, thread, handkerchiefs. Froth. That’s what I selclass="underline" froth. And I probably won’t ever sell anything else.
It’s hard work getting Señora Cobos to buy anything. After an hour of chat — amiable, exhausting chat — she can’t even bring herself to part with ten pesetas. It’s a sheer waste of time. It makes my brain and my tongue ooze honey, filling every part of me with mellifluous words that upset my stomach and possibly my mood too.
Yes, we’re both of us tired, the briefcase and me. The briefcase, poor thing, nudged me in the leg and, without even realizing, we set off homewards.
Did the morning turn out well or badly? I don’t really know. Not that it matters. What really seems to matter is that the morning turned out one way or another — for someone else, of course. It doesn’t belong to me anyway. It never has. The morning belongs to that important gentleman, Work, who has shares in every one of us. But that’s all right. And chatting — even to myself — has always come easily to me. The thing is that I now have, let’s see, seventy, no, eighty-two pesetas in my pocket. They’re not mine either. You have to subtract the boss’s percentage first. Quite a large percentage. The only mathematical operation I know how to perform is subtraction. Mathematics for me consists of subtracting a certain percentage. Mathematics — how many years ago is it now? — was my father’s obsession. “Learn calculus, arithmetic and accounting!” he used to say. My poor father! Despite the moustache, the big, bony hands and the rather coarse voice, he had the face of someone who was good with numbers!