Resigned, the barber sat back on his munitions box and put his head in his hands – probably so he could go on humming to himself. He knew there was no one to listen to his song. His only muse was one he conjured out of whispers and sighs, and he knew he would never be worthy of her. The sliver of mirror reflected the disparity between his lowly body and his grand desires: he was short, scrawny, and so stooped he was almost a hunch back, as ugly and as poor as Job himself; he had no house, no family and no prospect of making his pitiful life any better. And so he contented himself with living in a dream, an unattainable dream, a dream he could not admit to in public without seeming a fool, a dream that in private he gnawed on like a juicy bone.
It broke my heart.
‘Come here, lad,’ shouted Peg-Leg, unscrewing the top of the jar of sweets. He handed me a sweet, gestured for me to sit next to him. He stared at me for a long moment.
‘Let me look at your face, son,’ he said, lifting my chin with his finger. ‘Well, now . . . The good Lord was particularly inspired when he made you, wasn’t he. A face takes talent. How come you have blue eyes? Is your mother French?’
‘No.’
‘Your grandmother, then?’
‘No.’
He tousled my hair with his calloused hand, then slowly stroked my cheek.
‘You have the face of an angel, lad.’
‘Leave the kid alone,’ hissed Bliss the broker, appearing suddenly around the corner.
Peg-Leg jerked his hand away quickly.
‘I didn’t do nothing,’ he whined.
‘Don’t give me that,’ said Bliss. ‘I’m warning you, the boy’s father is a brute – he’ll rip your other leg off as soon as look at you, and I won’t have a legless cripple on my street. They bring bad luck.’
‘Honestly, I don’t know what you’re talking about, Monsieur Bliss.’
‘You know and everyone else round here knows what I’m talking about. If you’re so keen on war, why don’t you fuck off to Spain instead of hanging around here drooling over little boys? They’re always fighting some war in Spain, they need cannon fodder.’
‘How can he?’ the barber interrupted. ‘He’s got a wooden leg that doesn’t bend at the knee.’
‘Shut up, you cockroach,’ Peg-Leg roared, trying to save face, ‘or I’ll make you swallow your rusty razor blades one by one.’
‘You’d have to catch me first.’
Bliss waved for me to clear off.
As I scrambled away, my father appeared from a narrow alleyway and I ran to meet him. He was home earlier than usual and I could tell from the parcel under his arm that he was in a good mood. He asked where I’d got the sweet I was eating, then marched over to Peg-Leg and tried to pay for it. At first the grocer refused to take the money – it was only a sweet, he said – but my father would have none of it and insisted he take it.
Then we went home.
My father unwrapped the brown paper package and gave each of us a present: there was a scarf for my mother, a dress for my little sister and a pair of brand-new rubber boots for me.
‘You’re mad,’ my mother said.
‘Why?’
‘It’s a lot of money, and you need the money, don’t you?’
‘This is just the start,’ my father said, getting carried away. ‘Soon, we’ll have a new house, I promise. I’m working hard and I’m doing well. Things are looking up, so why not make the most of it? I have a meeting with a well-established merchant on Thursday, a serious businessman. He’s going to take me on as his partner.’
‘Please, Issa, don’t say another word. You’ve never had much luck. Don’t talk about your plans if you want them to come true.’
‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to tell you the details, just that this man said that to make me a partner in his business, I would have to invest a certain sum of money. And . . . I’ve got the money!’
‘Please, don’t say any more,’ my mother begged, spitting on the ground to ward off the evil eye. ‘Say nothing, and let things take their course. The evil eye has no pity for blowhards.’
My father did not say any more, but his eyes shone with a joy I had never seen in him before. That night, he was determined to celebrate his reconciliation with Lady Luck. He had been to the butcher’s, wrung the neck of a capon, plucked and cleaned it and brought it home – hidden at the bottom of a straw basket out of respect for our neighbours, who rarely had much to eat.
My father was suddenly happier than a gang of boys let loose at a carnival. He was counting off the days until he would be a partner in his own business. Five days, four, three . . .
He worked as hard as he ever had, but now he invariably came home earlier so he could have the pleasure of seeing me run to meet him. He needed me to be awake when he got home to reassure me that his luck had changed, that there were clear skies ahead, that he, my father, was strong as an oak, capable of moving mountains with his bare hands . . .
Then came the long-awaited Thursday.
There are some days the seasons shun, days that fate and demons spurn, days when our guardian angels desert us, when a man is left to his fate and is forever lost. That Thursday was such a day. My father realised it as soon as he woke; I could see it in his face. To the end of my days I will remember that day – an ugly, miserable, brutal day of torrential rain and thunderclaps that rang out like a curse. The sky brooded, the coppery clouds lowered.
‘Surely you’re not going out in weather like this?’ my mother said.
My father was standing on the threshold of our room, staring at the dark, bruised sky as at some evil omen. He considered postponing his meeting, but fortune does not favour those who hesitate. He knew this and dismissed his feeling of foreboding as the Devil attempting to disconcert him. At the last minute, he turned and asked me to go with him. Maybe he thought that if he brought me along, fate might relent, might spare him any low blows.
I slipped on my hooded gandurah, my rubber boots, and hurried after him.
We were soaked to the skin by the time we arrived at the meeting place. My feet squelched in the rain-filled boots, the sodden hood of my gandurah weighed on my shoulders like a yoke. The street was deserted, except for an overturned cart; there was no one to be seen . . . or almost no one. Because El Moro was lying in wait, like a bird of prey perched over the fate of man. When he saw us arrive, he stepped from his hiding place, his eyes like the barrels of a gun, dark sockets in which death seemed to smoulder. My father was taken aback. Before he could react, El Moro lashed out with his head, his foot, his fist. My father fought back as best he could, determined not to give in, but El Moro was quick; he ducked and weaved and in the end this thug got the better of my father, who, though brave, was a quiet, unassuming farmer unaccustomed to fighting. El Moro tripped him, and as he fell, he pinned him to the ground and began pounding him, clearly intent on killing him. I was petrified. It was like a nightmare. I tried to scream, to rush to my father’s aid, but not a nerve or a muscle in my body would respond. Blood and rainwater coursed into the gutter, yet still El Moro did not give up: he knew exactly what he was looking for. When at last my father stopped fighting back, the animal crouched over his prey and pushed up my father’s gandurah. His face lit up like a lightning flash in the darkness when he saw the purse strapped beneath my father’s armpit. He slashed the straps with a knife, smiled as he felt the weight of the purse, then disappeared without so much as a glance at me.
His face a bloody mess, his gandurah hiked up exposing his belly, my father lay where he had fallen. I could do nothing to help him. I was in some other world. I don’t remember how we got home.
‘I was sold out,’ my father cursed. ‘That thug was lying in wait for me. He knew I was carrying that money. He knew it . . . This was no stroke of bad luck, that bastard was waiting for me.’
Then he said nothing.
For days and days he did not say another word.
I have watched huge cacti split in a rainstorm, seen cliffs crumble; watching my father in the weeks and months after the attack was no different. He was slowly coming apart, unravelling thread by thread. He crouched in a corner, refusing to eat or drink, his head buried in his lap, his hands clasped behind his neck, silently brooding on his hatred, his fury.