Rex by Jose Manuel Prieto Page A

Petya, horrors!—were there many more of those diamonds lodged along the edges of the staircase, hidden between the sofa cushions and under the living room rug?
4
    I must amplify the previous commentary. I had just returned to my room to flop down, not bothering to pull back the bedspread, lying diagonally across the bed, still trembling, when I heard music that someone had put on, and lowered the Book to listen.
    The stereo’s silvery columns filling the air with a melody that made me think of the Writer, of a breeze and the shimmering surface of water that is exactly what the Book is about: the days you discover from your window without there being the slightest gap between the vision of the sea lapping at the coast, the cypresses in the distance, and your mother, her soul, the way she had of gazing gratefully up at me, the way she squeezed my hand when we’d returned to the house, happy to have gone out. As if I, as if my chest were armored with metal plaques that bullets would rebound from. Or as if the Book, placed between my heart and the gun barrel, could miraculously stop the bullet that was tearing through its pages with a single line, this line: one is a count or one is not a count, it’s not of the slightest importance , as Mme. de Villeparisis notes, and with good reason.
    For she didn’t stop talking, all the way there and as we went from store to store, nervously talking about the mafia, the many Russian mafiosi who’d taken refuge there, the whole coast crawling with them. And I stared at her in amazement, thinking: But you people are the mafia,
maja
! What are you talking about? You yourselves are mafia! And as we went past, I signaled her with a pointed glance at a GuardiaCivil’s lacquered bicorn. Look there, I meant to tell her. Why is it that you wouldn’t go outside unless I was with you?
    Bent over the pages of the Book without reading, or reading blankly, pages going past without the Book’s allowing anything inside—a rare thing in the Writer who always grabs you, his pages like Velcro, your eyes like felt. Trying to decipher, suddenly lowering my eyes to focus on the explanation, first found in the Book, for their great fear. But then she appeared in my room, your mother: knocking,
tock tock
, on my doorframe.
    â€œI have a gift for you,” she said. “Though it’s not a gift, it’s your salary.”
    She came closer.
    â€œDon’t you love dancing? You should dance for joy. It’s more than we owe you, but I wanted to reward you for your goodness to the boy. That’s why we went to see the diamonds. I wanted to find out how much it’s worth.”
    She left the center of the room and walked toward me without taking her hand out of her pocket. Certain of the effect it would (and, indeed, did) have to drop into my hand, rolling bumpily down from hers, a stone, a diamond in the rough, an uncut gem. The size of a pea or bigger still. The size of a rather large pea.
    I didn’t manage to say a thing, or rather I said, stupidly, pointlessly, “Ah, yes!” and thought: How does she know I love to dance? So much?
    And then immediately: My salary! Finally! But in the form of a small diamond (one karat, three karats, not small). A capsule or sphere of crystal in which I saw myself diving off a dock into water, younger and thinner than I was then (than I am now), wearing Hawaiian shorts … The yellow silk of her kimono, the birds and vegetation embroidered on it. The perfectly unrumpled boughs exquisitely situated onthe sleeve which lengthened, following her arm. Without managing to raise my eyes and tell her (which is what I should have told her): But Nelly! It’s a fortune! It’s a lot of money! Which is what I thought and was about to say, but then, already incapable of thinking straight, I imagined kissing her hand while my eyes remained on the stone, seeking there the words and explanation for such generosity and