me, not to abandon me; not to leave me alone behind bars, but to come and visit on the odd weekend and bring me a couple of slices of tortilla and a few packs of cigarettes. Of course I will, don’t you worry, Esteban, I’ll come with my plastic bucket and the tortilla wrapped in tin foil, I’ll stand in line with the gypsy women, the criminals from Eastern Europe, the mothers of junkies from nice families who keep their faces half-covered with scarves and tell you: my husband and I are only here because of our son, poor thing. He got into bad company, and, well, you know what boys are like when they get into drugs. We’re not like these other people in the line, and I could see at once that you’re from a different class as well. And I can see it’s your first time (and I have to laugh at the thought of Justino as the innocent virgin, ha ), I’ll tell you what you have to do, no, no need to thank me. And in a low voice: just take a look at them—it’s frightening. Gypsies, Romanians, Colombians, Italian mafia, Russians. Riffraff the lot of them. I could see at once that you weren’t like them. Anyway, let me explain: you have to put any clothes in one of those big black trash bags; and any food or soap or shampoo has to go in a plastic bucket. The gypsies on the corner sell them . . . Yes, that’s what the bastards in this bar are waiting for. There’s a simple reason why they’re in no hurry to get the prisoner to tell all—they’ve already passed sentence on him. But I’m a wise old dog, and over the years, I’ve learned how to deal with interrogations because, as the saying goes, it’s as easy to say a No that could save you as a Yes that could condemn you: I glance at the other card players and all three are impassively studying their hands. You’re late today, Esteban, says Francisco. We played a game of tute to pass the time until you came. And Justino: Come on, let’s finish this hand and have a game of dominoes. They all know. Word of Pedrós’s bankruptcy came out more than two weeks ago, although news of his disappearance only reached this table today, and it’s nearly two months since I put that sign up on the workshop door. The police sealed it all off ten days ago. But it’s the details they like here, they want to squeeze every bit of juice out of the orange. I can feel them squeezing me gently with their fingers to see if they can get the first drops. They know they have time to squeeze hard, to milk me properly or stick me in the juicer. No hurry, they’re not being pushy. Like Francisco said, it’s what we call “seizure of goods” (and that’s just the prologue, the easiest part to admit). Every little dart they stick into Pedrós this afternoon will hurt me too. I’m the real target. I need to give myself an epidural: I close my eyes. That’s it. The needle hurts when it goes in, but afterward you feel nice and calm. Let them say what they like. Let the birth begin. If the baby’s got a beard, we’ll call him St. Anthony and, if not, then La Purisima Concepción. Francisco smiles when he says the word “seizure.” He’s above all this: anything that doesn’t affect him directly he just brushes off, and the truth is, he doesn’t give a shit about what might affect us. As Justino says—mind you, Justino is jealous because he’s no longer the center of attention as he was for so many years—Francisco only comes to the bar in order to take notes, to pick up a bit of local color to give his books some street cred—jargon, stock phrases, gestures, atmosphere. He studies our meals and our drinks, which once were also his; our customs, our traditions: like an anthropologist, he asks us when exactly our mothers used to add the paprika to a dish of all-i-pebre , should you or should you not sauté the paella rice first? Was there a special name for those esparto shopping baskets or for the wicker baskets they used to collect the grapes in—even I don’t remember that. My
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