by until my mother came to fetch me or to take over from her, and then she'd sing songs without realizing she was doing so, to distract herself without intending to, she'd sing without even noticing what she was doing, in the same lacklustre, indifferent tone, in the same accent as Miriam by her half-open balcony doors. That unconscious singing intended for no one was the same song that maids used to sing when they were scrubbing floors or pegging out washing or hoovering or languidly dusting on days when I was ill and stayed away from school and saw the world from my pillow, listening to them in their morning mood, so different from their evening one; the same mindless singing my own mother went in for when she sat in front of the mirror brushing or pinning up her hair or when she stuck a large decorative comb in her hair and put on long earrings to go to Mass on Sundays, that almost muttered feminine song sung between clenched teeth (with pegs or hairpins clenched between those clenched teeth) which isn't sung in order to be heard, still less interpreted or translated, but which someone, the child nestling amongst his pillows or leaning at a door other than his own bedroom door, hears and learns and never forgets, even if only because that song, unintended, intended for no one, is, despite everything, transmitted and not silenced or diluted once it's sung, when followed by the silence of adult, or perhaps I should say masculine life. In the Madrid of my childhood, that involuntary, fluctuating song must have been sung in every house, every morning for years, like a meaningless message knitting together the whole city, binding it together and making it harmonious, a persistent veil of contagious sound covering everything, filling courtyards and doorways, wafting in at windows and down corridors, into kitchens and bathrooms, up stairways and rooftops, wearing aprons, pinafores, overalls and nightdresses and expensive gowns. All the women used to sing it in those days, days that are not so very long ago, maids sang it first thing in the morning as they yawned and stretched, ladies of the house and mothers sang it a little later on, as they were getting ready to go out shopping or perform some unnecessary errand, all of them united and made equal by that continuous, communal song occasionally accompanied by the whistling of young boys not yet at school and who, therefore, still participated in the world of women in which they moved: the delivery boys with their bikes and their heavy boxes, sick children in beds scattered with comics and coloured prints and storybooks, working children and idle children, whistling and envying one another. That song was sung all the time every day, by joyful voices and sorrowful voices, voices that were strident and downcast, dark-haired and melodious, tuneless and blonde, in every state of mind and in every circumstance, regardless of what was going on in the houses, unjudged by anyone: it was sung by a maid while she watched an ice-cream cake melting in my grandparents' house, when they were not yet my grandparents because I hadn't even been born, nor was there even a possibility of my being born; whistled by a boy on that same day in that same house as he walked down the corridor to the bathroom where, only shortly before, a woman full of fear and drenched in tears and water had also perhaps hummed some tune. And in the afternoons, that song would be sung by the more cracked and tenuous voices of grandmothers and widows and spinsters sitting in their rocking chairs or armchairs or on sofas keeping an eye on their grandchildren, keeping them occupied, or casting sideways glances at the portraits of people who'd already departed this life or whom they'd been unable to hold on to, sighing and fanning themselves, their whole lives spent fanning themselves even in autumn, even in winter, sighing and singing and watching past time passing. And at night, the song, more intermittent, more disparate,
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