It is no exaggeration to say that the childhood of Teo, the only son of a high-ranking military officer in Franco’s inner circle, came to an end at the age of nine, on the very day that the plush monkey his aunt Virtudes had given him broke. He did what he always did: he wound it up carefully, exactly seven turns , just as he had been doing for the past five years. He held the cymbals with his fingers and placed it, with his usual care and anticipation, in a spot where it wouldn’t risk tumbling down the stairs, hit the wall, or face any other risk that might damage it. It’s worth noting that after he turned seven, it wasn’t very common to see him play with his little monkey anymore. He only wound it up when he came home from school and before going to sleep. “In case it breaks,” he would think obsessively every time he wound it up. That day—the very day his mother had suffered a miscarriage (which the General blamed on the diet pills she’d been taking regularly since turning thirty) and wasn’t home to comfort him in the face of some unexpected misfortune—he must have made a mistake while winding it, or the mechanism was already on the verge of breaking down, because, once released, the cymbals didn’t even move, even though he had the feeling they were about to. Teo didn’t react at first. It took him a few moments to grasp the full extent of the disaster: For the past five years, his life had unfolded with the most absolute and blissful regularity. He always found his pajamas under his pillow; he was served the same brand of cookies for breakfast ; the cat was still alive and playful, showing not the slightest sign of old age or clumsiness; even the lightbulb in the hallway flickered just as it had been doing all that time, without anyone—fortunately—daring to change it. That’s why, after a few agonizing moments, when he realized that something irreparable had happened to the little monkey, he felt as if a chill were running through his body—that is to say, he felt fear; fear of death, even though he had barely turned ten years old! When he recovered from the initial shock, he didn’t know what to do. His first reaction was to call for his mother, but she wasn’t there; his second was to call for the maid, but he didn’t think Conchita was in a position to grasp the full extent of the tragedy the way a mother might; then he thought of the cook, but he definitely didn’t see anyone among the servants who could share in such a distressing situation (he had been taught to look down on them—the easiest way to keep things in their proper place and respect one another according to one’s rank and social standing). So he found himself alone in the face of that immense tragedy, to which no one had taught him how to react. Crying would have been absurd with no one there to witness it. Sulking would be tantamount to blaming the little monkey itself for his misfortune, but he loved it, even broken. Turning a blind eye would have been a betrayal of his precarious childhood. As his childlike conscience shattered with a crash, the only thing he could think to do was gently push it with his hand. “It must be temporary!” he tried to console himself. Then, seeing that it didn’t react, he tapped it lightly. “The string must be stuck,” he told himself, when barely anything remained of his former childish naivety. He had his first fit of adult rage and for a moment was on the verge of bringing his childhood to a close by smashing the little monkey against the wall, but, despite being aware of his metamorphosis, he decided to leave a part of his fleeting childhood in some safe place within his new consciousness—just in case he needed it again someday! “It’s broken, and that’s that! ” he concluded, putting an end to his anguish. In this simple way, his brief childhood came to an end, for the first time he had to face an irreparable misfortune all alone and without any consolation. Nevertheless, disobeying his mother’s advice on how to treat the servants, he dared to ask the cook this delicate theological question: “Do broken toys go to heaven?” Doña Pura was a model of almost exaggerated piety—not for nothing was she the one who prayed the most rosaries in her little chapel during her assigned fortnight—but that question exceeded her limited theological knowledge. “Oh, child, don’t talk nonsense! Just as he had thought at the very moment of the misfortune, the servants weren’t up to the task, and his mother was right: “ Don’t give the servants any leeway, son, because if you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.” And he went to his room, convinced he’d received the punishment he deserved for not following his father’s wise advice. It took another three years before the tragedy of the little monkey was completely erased from his mind. It was the day that Conchita, the maid who did everything, while dusting his room, hit the toy so hard with the duster that it flew out the window and, after falling six stories, crashed into the roof of the match seller’s booth. Conchita, alarmed, ran out into the street in search of the little monkey, since she knew her young master was very fond of it. It wasn’t easy to convince the match seller to give the toy back. “What little monkey? Or what eight quarters? “Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about—I saw with my own eyes how you picked it up from the roof of the booth.” “So what?” “What falls from the sky belongs to no one!” “Come on, give it back to me, or else the young master will have a fit.” The match seller had a nephew Teo’s age, but when he saw that the string was stuck, he immediately realized it wouldn’t have been a good gift—especially now that the two brothers were deep in debt from a mortgage on an apartment in the new working-class neighborhood of Mor atalaz. So he gave it back. “Here you go, and try to be more careful about where you throw your little toys!” Fortunately, the toy was intact, but when Conchita went to put it back in the kitchen, where Doña Pura, the cook, reigned supreme. It was the only place where strangers were allowed access, entering directly from the service staircase. The grocery store clerk passed through there grocer’s assistant, but also Teo’s private tutor, Don Ernesto. On top of the enormous, newly purchased refrigerator, Doña Pura placed the little shrine to the Immaculate Conception—her monthly offering—and in her spare moments she would half-heartedly recite the occasional rosary, interspersed with exclamations and lamentations such as “Oh, Lord!” or “Blessed be the Most Holy !” or, on occasion—though more rarely—“May God’s will be done!”—expressions that had nothing to do with her daily routine, nor with the shrine nor the Immaculate Conception. Whatever the reason, Doña Pura had this old, pious custom and clung to it because, despite having lived in the city for more than twenty years, she still longed for a village that—as an aside—had been swallowed up, right down to its bell tower, by a reservoir inaugurated in 1952, perhaps one of the first built by the dictator to cool his tyranny. They say that every year around the time it was inaugurated, and at the exact hour, the tower bell rings (even though it no longer exists)—that is, unless there’s a flood, of course. In the middle of the afternoon, Don Ernesto would always show up, sit at one end of the immense table, and remain lost in thought, going over the topics he was to teach that day to his privileged student. Since it was already past six, Doña Pura had prepared something for him to eat. “So much Latin, and you have no one to change your socks. My goodness, what a waste of intelligence! The boy from the store would also usually come by with the order for the next day, which he would ceremoniously place at the other end of the large table, gazing at each item as if wondering about its purpose. Doña Pura would try to tally up the count: “I’ll take three; I’ll take three. Oh, how silly of me, I can’t remember how many I’m taking anymore! Is he still here? Let’s see, seven plus nananana… thirty-seven, and I’m taking three!” But the shop boy distracted her with nonsensical and out-of-place comments: “What good is it for the goldfinch to sing if it lives imprisoned in its cage? Wouldn’t it be better if it brayed and railed against its slavery?” Doña Pura paid him no attention. She had exclaimed “Oh, Lord!” two or three times and completely forgot that she was supposed to be counting. Now she was more interested in the professor, especially since she was determined to marry him off, for nothing mortified her more than her own single status. The shop boy also wanted to get the professor’s attention and came up with another of his pithy sayings: “Why are we like this? Because Cain killed Abel, and ever since then, men have been murdering one another simply out of the habit inherited from Cain.” Doña Pura was focused on the professor and paid no attention to the boy in the store. But she was distracted by the thought of something so disproportionate and colossal as considering all men to be mere, mythical murderers simply by force of habit. Yet she did not reply, because it had not even been twenty years since the boy’s outlandish opinions had been more than justified. According to reliable data, there were a million or more deaths, and most were due to the very same causes for which Cain killed his brother Abel. They say that the general who instigated that massacre had no sense of brotherhood, and scarcely any sense of family. It seems he respected his wife because of her status as a prominent member of the Catholic Church, and as for his daughter, those who knew him well say he paid her not the slightest attention. In the village flooded in 1952, it was said that the general wanted a son—a son who would be a general, naturally—someone to whom he could entrust a delicate mission, such as taking Madrid, because he did not trust his generals; he practically detested them. He feared they would ruin his glory, the very same glory that Cain by killing Abel. He couldn’t care less about the Moors in his mercenary army, since he practically didn’t consider them human beings. Not only because some behaved brutally— which fully justified his assumptions, but because one could not be human without religion—the Catholic faith, of course. It seems that the only woman he admired, though without going to extremes, was Isabella the Catholic, to whom he dedicated his slaughter. “The ham I’m serving you today is the good stuff; if Don Francisco finds out, he’ll give me a real hard time. This one’s from Extrem , from pigs raised on acorns on the estates of his military cronies. Today he must be out shooting those poor partridges”—she cut one, two, three slices; she looked at the professor and cut a fourth— “There, don’t think I’m stingy!”—she wiped her hands on her large apron, set the sharp knife down on the thick, greasy carving board, and arranged the slices on a delicate porcelain plate. She looked at the professor again and silently leveled an imaginary reproach at him—one that was hard to imagine, because she snapped her , shook her head, and, as if she’d been convinced of Judas’s innocence, placed the plate on the exact spot at the large table where he usually had lunch. “Go on, eat, eat, Don Ernesto, for a man of your talent certainly deserves a few good slices of acorn-fed ham! “You, who are educated and have studied,” said the errand boy suddenly, addressing the professor, “know how an anarchist thinks”—he lowered his voice, but not until the last two syllables; anyone from the secret police would have arrested him just for hearing him say “-ist.” He continued with a conspiratorial air in a familiar setting.—An anarchist is someone who creates, because freedom, plain and simple, consists of creating—that’s enough. For example, if I had chickens, I’d put the egg on top of the hen and let God’s will be done. Why? Because I’m creative! What does the hen gain by incubating the egg? Another hen! And what does the other hen gain by incubating another egg?: another hen! And the next one, and the next, and the next?: more hens! And what I’m saying is: how can we human beings aspire to the same thing that hens aspire to? The professor took the knife that Doña Pura was holding out to him. They exchanged a sly glance accompanied by a benevolent smile. The boy waited for for an answer. His expression was clearly that of someone with a future. Suddenly, the maid walked in. Upon seeing the professor sitting at the table trying to eat the ham in the most unnatural and awkward way, she was clearly flustered. She pretended she had something important to do, opened and closed several drawers, and finally realized she couldn’t keep doing those pointless things. Demotivated and defeated, she slumped into the first chair she came across she’d tripped over—her frantic attempt to hide her embarrassment had prevented her from seeing it. Conchita was a small-town girl with no aspirations. Someone had put her on a train with a cardboard suitcase full of underwear, souvenirs, and a scapular of a local virgin. She remembered the day she boarded that brown mail train. “Conchita, my child, do whatever the lady tells you. Don’t bring shame on your family.” He had shouted at her from the platform. The only thing she remembered was the strange, unfamiliar face of the village idiot, because it was the first time he seemed to have any expression or sadness. Could he be in love with her? But how could she know? The idiot could only say, “Mummmm, mummmmm, mummmm.” He said “Mummmm” to everything, but with a noticeably different tone each time. He talked a lot, all day long, and people understood him. He even gave complicated rec for the villagers. But that day he said nothing. That day, at the station, his brow was furrowed, his eyes were wide open, his mouth was drooling more heavily, and something like a thick, dirty tear clouded his frank, clear gaze. Conchita felt a bit of revulsion, but she took pity on him. And now she had fallen in love with Teo’s private tutor; and whenever she ran into him, he reminded her of the fool’s expression at the station—a man who must surely feel the same way about her, though of course in the strictest confidence, for the fool could never have suspected that one day he’d see her dressed in her Sunday best, carrying a cardboard suitcase, her tanned, healthy, small-town face peeking through the window of that brown train car, blackened by soot, moments before it set off on its weary journey to Madrid. Conchita looked at him and smiled only out of pity, for it was clear she could never have felt anything special for him. When she was with the professor, Conchita was grateful to her mother for having put her on that rickety train that stifling evening, because it didn’t seem strange or surprising to her that this gentle, cultured, and understanding man would take notice of her—especially now that she looked so good, with her hair neatly styled, her complexion clearer and better cared for, her manners more refined and, as it seemed to her, even more feminine. The truth was that she liked the professor—not because he was handsome, but because he was grand, immense, cultured, and protective. Not like a father, but like a god. She poured herself a glass of water from the cooler and sat down in the very same chair that had put an end to her unfounded anxieties. Now she looked at the boy in the store and tried to pay attention to the conversation, because the professor also seemed interested. Sometimes, she lived through him. This was one of those times. “Don’t speak unless you’re asked,” her mother told her before boarding the brown train. “Don’t be nosy, and lower your gaze when they speak to you—both the gentleman and the lady. Don’t think; just obey.” Conchita already knew that the village fool had drowned in a pool in the river, right beneath the bridge. Everyone in town knew there was a pool in that whirlpool, and the fool must have known it too. The letter, with its poor handwriting and a few grease stains (her father had surely kept it in the knapsack where he used to carry bacon for lunch while herding the sheep before taking it to the post office box at the station) read: “Poor Miguelito threw himself into the river from the bridge, right where the eddy is. It seems strange to us that he drowned, knowing how to swim better than fish.” Why did the image of Miguelito, gaping, behind the station attendant’s wagon, come to mind now? “If I were the son of a general, like Teo, just to give an example…” “There there goes the military topic again! —Let me continue, Doña Pura; that’s not the point. I’m saying that if I were a general’s son, I wouldn’t dream, and with time and all the nonsense of education, I’d almost certainly become another general (an egg can only hatch into another hen, and so on), whereas, as an anarchist, I can dream that I’m no longer just an errand boy and that I can become whatever I want to be. Do Do you get the idea, professor? If Conchita often thought about that wretch, it was because that afternoon at the station he was restlessly fiddling with the old iron pillar of the station canopy. She saw him shifting from side to side without daring to let go of it, as if he were tied up and couldn’t free himself from an imaginary rope. But at the same time, the poor fellow, in his mentally disabled naivety, perhaps believed he could hide behind that repainted, rusty piece of iron. It wasn’t that Conchita was paying him any attention, because her mother kept giving her advice on a thousand things, like “Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze—germs come out and the lady might catch them” or “You haven’t forgotten the veil and the prayer book we gave you for your First Communion?” But every now and then she couldn’t help but exchange the occasional glance with him. Doña Pura poured a glass of wine, set it on the table with a calculated thud so as not to spill it, which clearly showed her intention to put an end to that absurd conversation, patted the professor on the back, and, turning to the errand boy, almost shouted: “Come on, come on, cut the nonsense and leave the professor alone—the boy will be here any minute and hasn’t had a bite to eat yet!” The professor shook his head slightly, thought for a few moments, ate the piece of ham that was waiting, carved on his fork, and when he was able to speak, he said, weighed down by a confusing idea he couldn’t quite grasp: “ “That’s a utopia!” The boy didn’t reply because he was practically speechless, not knowing for certain what a “utopia” actually was. So he resigned himself to it, but resolved to discover as soon as possible the meaning of a word that was new but neither strange nor unknown. It didn’t distress him because he was sure it was nothing more than a convention of bourgeois education, since that word, like all the others, must have been invented by some well-educated bourgeois. But as he carried the basket under his arm, he realized that to learn to fly, one needed not only the sky but also to know how to move one’s wings. And so that conversation came to an abrupt end. “ “What is a ‘utopia’?” Conchita finally asked the professor after the would-be anarchist had left. “Utopia is a word of Greek origin that means ‘nowhere’”—Conchita thought she must be living in a utopia. But she couldn’t continue to form an idea of it because Miguelito’s death suddenly came back to her mind. “Poor boy, he was swollen like a wine skin,” , his mother had written in her letter. “At the funeral, the priest said he would surely go to heaven—that is, if Saint Peter didn’t uncover anything suspicious about the cause of his death. It’s only natural that a fool wouldn’t know what he’s doing: he might just as easily take a liking to singing as to throwing himself into the river’s deep pool.” It wasn’t that Miguelito’s death weighed on her, because after all, they’d barely exchanged glances at the station, but for some reason, ever since the day she received the news—and for no reason at all—that brief image kept coming back to cloud her conscience. “The gossips put it plainly: it was a stroke of luck that little Miguel left this world so young, because he would have been a burden on the poor family, which already had six kids and didn’t even know whether the youngest, still breastfeeding, was a fool or not.”—. The word “utopia” is used to describe a perfect world, free of injustice and social inequality. The first person to use it in literature was an Englishman named Thomas More.” Don Ernesto said to her, thinking she was paying attention to his explanations. But Conchita had already managed to push the matter of Miguelito’s death out of her mind, because in reality there was no reason to dwell on it any further: he must have fallen into the pond while doing one of his silly stunts. Now she was thinking about the fact that it was Wednesday, and she couldn’t wait to show off the dress she’d bought from a street vendor at the entrance to the market on Hermosilla Street. It was the first two duros she’d saved by sacrificing other little treats, such as roasted sunflower seeds, ice cream by the scoop, hair ribbons, and the movie theater on Alcalá Street, where they were showing a Carmen Sevilla film that she’d heard wonderful things about, Besides, she kept sending ten duros a month and knew that with them her mother could buy countless necessary things—that is, if she didn’t spend them on Masses and memorial services to try to get Uncle Julián out of Purgatory, where he was surely bound, given that he was an atheist and a Republican; that is, if he hadn’t gone straight to hell and all her efforts had been in vain, and his ten duros a month. His mother—his sister—continued to trust that at the very last moment, before the Nationalists shot him by the cemetery wall, he would repent of all his sins and be purifying himself in Purgatory, but they say that instead he shouted, “Long live the Republic!” But how long must an atheist and a Republican spend in Purgatory? The village priest wouldn’t tell him, perhaps so that she would continue to commission Masses and light candles for Saint Stephen, the town’s patron saint responsible for most of the prayers and miracles—which some say he performed not without cost and demands. “Who was that Moorish gentleman?” “He wasn’t Moorish; his name was Moro. He wrote his fable *Utopia* in the year 1516.” —Conchita made a gesture with her mouth that showed her astonishment at how long ago that was, almost impossible to imagine—. Henry VIII accused him of corruption for refusing to attend his wedding to Anne Boleyn and to accept his divorce from the Spanish Catherine of Aragon, and for that reason he had him beheaded. “That Mr. Moro did the right thing. Marriage is sacred. You marry a man forever, whether things go well or badly. In my village, they killed a woman because she was fooling around with one of the grocer’s sons. Her husband caught her in the hayloft… for… forni… well, doing what she shouldn’t have been doing!, and without a second thought, he drove a pitchfork into her chest. “That’s barbaric!” remarked Doña Pura. Conchita was startled. She wasn’t sure whether it was a case of justice or cruelty. She was waiting for the professor’s opinion to form her own. But his answer was certainly not what she expected: “People are born free and must die free. No one is anyone else’s property; not even marriage is a contract of ownership. The only thing that should bind us is love, and love, too, is a utopia. Human beings are born and die in the most absolute solitude and lovelessness. All of life is simply an experience of shared solitude and lovelessness.” Conchita was confused but, above all, upset. Until that very moment, she had believed she was in love with the professor, but suddenly, he had lost all his charm. He was not great but petty and mean-spirited; he was not a god but a true demon; he was not human and normal but inhuman and abnormal. He did not believe in love; he did not believe in marriage; he did not believe in companionship, loyalty, sacrifice, resignation, or the desire to please the one she loved; even enslaving herself, if necessary, seemed sweet and loving to her. She longed to be the slave of the man she loved, and that didn’t seem wrong to her—quite the opposite; her voluntary submission would be the proof of her love. Suddenly, the professor blocked her path, shut himself away in a colossal castle of selfishness, closed off his heart, locked his charms in a trunk and secured it with seven keys, and covered his face with an ugly mask of indifference and disinterest. In other words, he went from being a potential husband to being nothing to her, because she could not conceive of how a friendship could exist with a man she did not understand, but whom, just moments before, she had at least believed she loved. “Come on, enough of this chatter—I have plenty to do!” From that moment on, Conchita was no longer in love with the professor, but she felt nothing special—only a bit of disillusionment and disappointment. She threw herself into her household chores with greater enthusiasm and got over that heartbreak with relative ease. CHAPTER II The general was upset about some matter related to life in the barracks; it was probably something bureaucratic—some official paperwork to collect per diem allowances—because there were expenses involved in taking his mother to La Granja de San Ildefonso, and it wasn’t clear whether, for bureaucratic purposes, she was considered part of the Army or not; that is, whether she was part of the staff necessary for the proper functioning of the institution. The good woman, on the other hand, didn’t know she was being taken to La Granja de San Ildefonso; she didn’t even know the name of the place. She’d had a strange episode back in ’38, apparently caused by the sound of a shell; the truth was that the poor woman was convinced that every summer they took her to San Sebastián, but since the end of the war they’d never gone beyond this small mountain town. “Today the wind is blowing from the northeast, just like every May 1st,” she remarked to the other residents of the nursing home, who were in better mental state than she was—“And I should know, since I’ve been coming to this beach at La Concha for over twenty years!” “Ma’am, in La Granja, the closest thing to a beach must be the royal palace’s bathing tub, but as for a real beach—you’ll have to tell me about that. What an imagination you have!” The general had argued with someone from the Quartermaster’s Office—perhaps a low-ranking subordinate, a bureaucrat of no importance whatsoever—and that was precisely what mortified him: having to negotiate such painful family matters as his mother’s situation with some nobody from the Quartermaster’s Office. The general wasn’t one of Franco’s regulars; he wasn’t even well-connected with his ministers, but he knew a few undersecretaries, and he would undoubtedly take his matter to the highest level possible. “I have the right to claim travel expenses to San Sebastián, because if my mother believes she’s in San Sebastián, the claim is fully justified. It would be another matter if this wretch were to claim she’s in, say, Paris; and God knows I wouldn’t go to French territory even for this poor saint of a woman, but let’s say it as an example. Paris is going too far, but San Sebastián! For God’s sake, it’s just a few measly pesetas!”—what mortified the general was that anyone would doubt his word of honor—“What receipts? Nonsense! An officer’s word of honor is worth more than a notary’s signature! There was a reason for all this mess. It was the maquis’s fault. After the war, traveling through the north was dangerous for a military officer of his rank, so after several close calls and an ambush that didn’t result in fatalities, the general decided not to go beyond La Granja—where the maquis didn’t dare to venture—though his intention, of course, would have been to reach San Sebastián. So, first to avoid giving the impression that he feared the communists, and then out of habit, he had continued to submit travel receipts for trips to San Sebastián, just as he had before the war, until one fine day the quartermaster caught him eating a leg of lamb at one of his restaurants and uncovered the deception—because according to the books, he was supposed to be eating a lobster from Armintza, or cod pil-pil at a restaurant in La Concha. “Now then, what was that poor wretch doing at the most expensive restaurant in La Granja? “Who knows!” replied his patient wife, already tired of that whole San Sebastián business. Because Doña Isabel had her own worries. She was waiting for her husband to tell her once and for all whether or not there would be military maneuvers in Extremadura, because she was already tired of having to frequent that little hotel in A ranjuez, put on excessive makeup, and wear that annoying wig—especially since she detested the color blonde. It was all because of her scandalous relationship with the anarchist; given his libertarian way of thinking, that mismatched relationship didn’t surprise her. Luckily, the chauffeur was someone she trusted completely: “Off to the dentist again, Doña Isabel?” the good man would ask as soon as he saw her leave the house wearing that ridiculous wig, due to . She wanted to enjoy nature’s pleasures in her own bed—which was why they’d bought the largest and sturdiest one they could find—and she hoped to be certain that Franco would keep her husband in the beautiful pastures of Extremadura, at least long enough needed to feel twenty years younger, but in her own home. The general was to blame; he no longer saw her as anything more than the mother of his son and a devout parishioner of the Poor Clares on Ferraz Street. It was all well and good to serve God every Sunday and on other holy days, but by natural imperative, one also had to please the devil, at least once a month. The cause of her negligent behavior went back a long way. One day it was a wrinkle, barely a shadow on her skin beneath her eyelid. Then it became more evident, until it turned into a deep furrow: the dreaded crow’s feet. Shortly thereafter came the sagging of the flesh on her arms; a few months later she had to switch bras, because her breasts were sagging alarmingly. To top it all off, she developed facial hair above her upper lip and lost two teeth from her dentures; and precisely because the missing teeth were only visible when she laughed, it could be said that from then on she stopped laughing and limited herself to smiling. But it wasn’t her fault—it was that heartless young man’s, with no manners or principles. A brute who didn’t even respect a married woman! Perhaps it was an oversight that she’d left the bathroom door open—after all, she was in her own home—when that madman walked down the hallway after leaving the grocery order in the kitchen. The cook didn’t even notice, because the poor woman hardly ever left the kitchen anymore. Naturally, she was naked— how else was she supposed to take a bath? He stopped to take a peek, and she didn’t even bother to close the door. Those were still the good old days; the mirrors were kind to her, and when she felt the caress of those big, strong hands pressing against her buttocks, she didn’t say a word, but she bit her lips in desperation as well as pleasure, for it was clear that this wasn’t right, but it wasn’t right to stop him either. Emboldened, the brute paid no heed to the poor woman’s anguish; she remained motionless and silent, as if paralyzed. So he moved from her buttocks to her waist—which was still acceptable—then slipped his arms around her back and placed his huge hands on her breasts, which he squeezed as if he were going to wring out a lemon. She didn’t even complain. But the worst came when the heartless man slowly made his way down to her groin. Then she made a gesture as if to stop the inconsiderate young man from going any further, but it remained just a gesture and a good intention. So that day, without exchanging a word, Doña Isabel took on a lover. They worked out the details later. They agreed that he would bring her the packages when the maid wasn’t home, Teo was at school, the general was at his barracks, and the cook was busy with her stews. She would leave the bathroom door open, and in barely five minutes, she’d let the young man do as he pleased. But the young man was becoming increasingly demanding and asked for things that no married woman—especially one married to a military man—could give him. So the good woman had to lower her standards and do more than just lie still and let him have his way, but in such a short time, she couldn’t provide the meddlesome young man with adequate satisfaction. That’s why they agreed on the little hotel in Aranjuez. That tense romance had already been going on for nearly a year, but it should be noted that the young man charged for his services, in line with the rising cost of living and mounting inflation. “I’m not a pimp, ma’am—it’s for the cause!” “But what cause? What on earth are you talking about?” “The cause of free love, of course—the anarchists’ cause! Do you really think I’d sacrifice myself like this without a good cause?” “For God’s sake, I’m not that much of a creep!” “That’s not the point, ma’am. Because, if we’re being honest, , you’ve got style and your body’s still got it; it’s because of your social class; because I’d have to lower myself to have sex with a bourgeois woman. If you weren’t bourgeois, I’d do it for free, but I have my principles, you understand? “You’re full of it, but whatever saves you, saves you. Come on, cut the crap and get to the point, lest the general return earlier than expected today.” These weren’t very edifying conversations. In reality, just as on the first day, their relationship consisted of gestures and few words. But deep down, due to those contradictions of the human condition, they both came to feel mutual affection, and it’s possible they fully enjoyed that illicit relationship. She was accommodating and discreet, and he, armed with sound moral and social principles, treated her with due respect and consideration. But, as I said, unfortunately, he belonged to the upper middle class, and that made it difficult for him to pay a “revolutionary tax.” Therefore, it would have been a perfect idyll—emotionally, sensually, and harmoniously—if, for example, they had both been from the same neighborhood. The fact that she was twice the young man’s age was no impediment, because everyone knows that both men and women reach their peak of attractiveness and sensuality at forty; thus, there is no young person who does not feel a fascination for a woman or man in their forties who possesses good judgment, experience, and is well-preserved. The general’s anger—he was determined to continue collecting his per diem for trips to San Sebastián as he had before the war, when there the maquis existed, posed a serious disruption to the good lady’s plans to enjoy the young man in her own home, because as a means of pressure, her husband refused to go on maneuvers, and without a general to command them, the replacement troops and a third of the Legion that had arrived from Africa for that occasion remained in their barracks. But the truth was that things in the factories and universities were in turmoil, and the General Staff took advantage of this situation to threaten the Minister of the Interior with using the Legion once again to put an end to the riots, if the police were unable to do so on their own. “We’ve had twenty-five years of peace that we don’t deserve!” remarked the general as he waited for dinner to be served. “What more do these long-haired young punks want? They’ve got money in their pockets for all their whims, they ride motorcycles and drive cars to college, the girls are easy and wear miniskirts, and we parents turn a blind eye when they come home drunk and try to sleep with their girlfriends in their own dorm rooms. If that isn’t freedom, then let God come and see for Himself! But no, they want more; they want to call the shots at universities, at home, and in the government. They don’t want religion, nor do they fear God. Listen, this isn’t Sweden! What does it take to root out communist ideas from this country once and for all? Another civil war? Doña Isabel, thinking to herself, was of the opinion that certain freedoms weren’t all that harmful, but she didn’t know how to express herself in the face of the general uproar. “It’s all because of tourism, Francisco! These are fads that come and go; today they’re into that, and tomorrow God knows what they’ll come up with. Young people always want to do whatever they please because they have their own ideas and are full of themselves, and I think that’s natural... “But screw those ideas! Don’t we already have a law letting them form groups however they please? No, Isabel; this isn’t about the kids—it’s about communist agitators. The very same ones who forced us to defend our honor and our country with weapons, and who haven’t suffered enough defeat or seen enough bloodshed… I’m telling you, they’re forcing us to relive that whole ordeal! —For God’s sake, Francisco, stop with that old tune—that’s all in the past, and now times have changed! Doña Isabel truly wished she’d been born in ’22. She would have given a finger on her hand to be young at that very moment. She had a soft spot for the Beatles as if she were a fifteen-year-old girl. She bought all their records under the pretext of giving them to Teo as gifts. She’d look at herself in the mirror over and over again, pulling her skirts up above her knees, toward mid-thigh, or even a little higher, and she didn’t look so bad in a miniskirt. She liked Concha Velasco’s movies; she never missed a single episode of “Gala del Sábado” hosted by the charming Matilde Almendros; she went with Teo to see “ What a Night That Was,” and came out so thrilled that she let him grow his hair out, despite the general’s furious opposition.—Well, I think the miniskirt is fine… Oh, if only I were twenty years younger, I’d be a “ye-ye girl” too, just like Conchita Velasco! But the general wasn’t listening to her anymore because he’d dozed off. Conchita couldn’t serve dinner because Doña Pura was glued to the adventures of Matilde, Perico, and Periquín on the kitchen radio, and there was nothing to be done. At that hour, she’d sit there as big as she was, legs spread apart, hands on her knees, and the lazy cat curled up on her lap, following the adventures of this radio family as if they were right there in her kitchen. In the end , as always, Periquín ended up crying because of one of his endless pranks. That’s how time passed—time that, back then, in a country without political awareness, seemed endless. CHAPTER III Conchita had finally found the right boyfriend, having once and for all overcome the trauma of her first impossible love with Teo’s teacher. He, in turn, had married the woman least suited to his high principles: a second-rate cabaret dancer of dubious morality, in the twilight of her career as a showgirl. What captivated the teacher was her resemblance to one of the characters in Pasolini’s films. As he was passionate about the French “Nouvelle Vague” and Italian “Neo-Realism ,” he was enthralled by the films of Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini, and his beloved seemed to have stepped right out of the lead role in *The Nights of Cabiria*. The unfortunate man took the film’s plot literally and set out to save the good woman from the ignominy of her profession. But far from being exploited by one group or another, as in the case of the protagonist played by Masina, she was exploiting half a dozen naive and idealistic men, who had devoted themselves body and soul to the social rehabilitation of women of the street. In total, she received the not inconsiderable sum of 500 pesetas each month, which, given the times and rampant inflation, was a good income. In exchange, she only had to attend once a month one of the novenas dedicated to the 100 Virgins of Madrid, but she usually went to the one for the Virgin of Almudena, for which she would bring a knitted scarf she was making for the professor—a scarf that had also been a vow to the Virgin, and which the nuns praised unreservedly, so they allowed her to do so without any qualms. As for Conchita’s boyfriend, when they met, it could be said that he was a nobody—as well as shy and somewhat lanky. He was certainly from a small town, and his circumstances were more or less similar to hers; she, on the other hand—whether because of her interactions with the lady or the little she’d had learned from the teacher, was already an intimidating woman, especially without her uniform. The young man arrived in Madrid wearing shorts, and even spent several years without wearing long pants. During this time, he learned the trade of mechanical fitter at the Catholic vocational school of the Virgen de la Paloma, on the outskirts of Peña Grande, which could be reached by one of the few streetcars still operating in Madrid during the years ’60s. The trade involved persistently filing rectangular pieces of mild steel and knowing how to measure tenths of a millimeter with a caliper, but above all, praying the rosary on Saturday afternoons. He mastered the filing, but he did not distinguish himself at all for his Marian devotion. Although he wasn’t an atheist, he wasn’t a believer enough to miss out on a good makeout session with his girlfriend just because of mixing his studies with his devotion. For this reason, he was expelled after three years, having been unable to justify his repeated absences from the Saturday afternoon rosary. As best he could, he continued filing at other schools, and finally, when the Barreiros engine factory in Villaverde opened, he managed to present a diploma as a machinist and was given a job. The work consisted of turning threaded rods, and nothing else. In 1969, he won a work award for being the fitter who produced the most threaded rods that year. The news pleased Conchita, who realized that if she could get him to shave three times a week and comb his hair back, he’d be the perfect husband. —“They’re building some really cute little apartments in Moratalaz. They have a little terrace for the laundry and the fridge, a kitchen—too bad there’s no room for a little table!—a bathroom with a half-sized tub, a living-dining room, and two tiny but adequate bedrooms. Anyway, when the baby’s born, it won’t take up any space at all! —“ When the baby is born, who? —Don’t get upset, Manolo—I was just joking. How are we going to have a child if we don’t do those things? —Because you don’t want to! —That’s all we need—a brat! I’ve told you a thousand times that you do those things after you’re married, and for that you need to have an apartment first. Hey, Manolo, why don’t we take a little stroll through Moratalaz this Thursday? After all, it won’t cost us anything more than the bus fare... —If we have to! Luckily, Conchita could count on a letter of recommendation from the general to the Ministry of Housing, so with twenty-five thousand pesetas and a tip for the undersecretary in charge, they could think about having legal sex, but since they didn’t that impressive sum yet, they had to keep making do for a few more months with their usual Thursday-afternoon make-out sessions, at a neighborhood movie theater or in the Retiro Gardens. But as her desire grew ever more urgent, Conchita dared to ask her mistress for a loan. “Look, ma’am, if we don’t get an apartment soon, something terrible might happen to us!” Doña Isabel, who fully understood the situation, had two options: give the poor girl some lessons in sexuality or lend her the money. Given how embarrassing the topic was, she preferred to discuss this delicate matter with her husband and lend her the money, but without mentioning the sexuality part. “Francisco, I think Conchita is at the age for marriage, and we can’t keep her in this house much longer. She needs twenty-five thousand pesetas for the down payment on the apartment in Moratalaz, and she wants to know if we can lend it to her. “Does she think we’re the Bank of Spain?” “The girl has served us well and behaved decently; I think she deserves it. Besides, the down payment isn’t the only thing—she’ll still have to stay in the house for quite some time longer, until she can get all the household goods she needs to get married. The twenty-five thousand pesetas weren’t necessary, since the general’s signature was enough to get both the mortgage and the application approved. So instead of the neighborhood movie theater or the Retiro Park, the couple could now let off steam on a folding bed with a foam mattress—the only piece of furniture in the new apartment. “No, Manolo, no way; until we have a proper bed, we’re not doing those things! Therefore, things remained largely unchanged, and Conchita had to continue working as a maid for a few more years—long enough for his salary, which had increased after the occasional illegal strike, to cover the cost of repairing the cracks in the apartment and furnishing it as required by the standards of decency. As for regarding her enthusiasm for riding the streetcar, naturally it waned with age, but the Madrid City Council also decided that those old clunkers stood in the way of progress and the flow of the wave of new motor vehicles that were invading the streets—including the sidewalks. The quiet, clean streetcar was phased out to make way for real “aigas”—an expression used to describe a car incapable of navigating neighborhoods like Tetuán or Lavapiés—or the noisy “ “motocarros,” which specialized in deliveries to the outlying neighborhoods, loaded with laminate furniture and pieces made of glued wood chips or particleboard from the downtown department stores. But there were also other, less ambitious vehicles, cobbled together with nails, planks, aluminum, and smoky, noisy engines, such as the “Biscuters.” Yet without a doubt, the star vehicle that displaced the streetcars was the “600.” Too small for a family of that era: a married couple for whom divorce was out of the question, four to five children, with ages so widely spread that even though one was already in college, another was still in his mother’s arms—even though she was already in her fifties—plus the inevitable mother-in-law; and too expensive for a bachelor of that era as well, without a steady job or even a temporary one, and which had only one flaw: it was hard to tell which one belonged to whom when they were all parked in the same spot after leaving the movie theater on Gran Vía, or the soccer game on the Castellana, or by the Manzanares River. To solve this problem, the people of Madrid came up with decals. But later on, other modified versions appeared, featuring the inevitable double black or red stripe across the hood and a contraption to keep the hood open at all times. The other flaw was that it couldn’t make it over the Guadarrama Mountains without adding water to the radiator, and the seats didn’t recline, so it was quickly ruled out as a place for initiating sexual relationships. It wasn’t until the arrival of the “Simca 1000,” with its reclining seats, that the car would become suitable for this important social function. Teo turned 20 in a pivotal year, when the country’s freedom was at stake, and that same year he enrolled in the School of Philosophy and Letters at the Complutense University of Madrid. The general tried until the very last moment to get him into the military academy in Zaragoza, but his mother and maternal grandmother took his side. “If the boy has a calling to be a philosopher, we must let him develop his natural talents,” said his grandmother. “He doesn’t have the temperament for a military career.” “These days, the humanities are more in demand than the military,” said Doña Isabel Buenaventura. “We’ve had enough war; now we need good doctors, lawyers, economists, and people of letters. Besides, there are already plenty of soldiers in the barracks.” Without wars, you don’t rise to the rank of general just like that. How is he going to support a family on a captain’s salary? Those careers today prepare them for real life, just as it is. These are different times, Francisco! “Those careers today, as you say,” replied the general, “will spoil the boy—if not, time will.” There’s no job more secure than being in the military. And there have always been wars, and there always will be! But Teo had chosen the humanities program simply because it was the shortest and because, as he’d been told, that was the faculty where the hottest and most liberated girls in the university were to be found—and at his age, that was his top priority. Twice he came close to having sex with a woman: the first time with a prostitute and the second with the maid on the fourth floor, the one who worked at the distinguished notary’s house, and who didn’t stand out precisely for her simplicity or modesty. In the first case, it was during the celebration of passing his COU exams, and the experience ended before it even began; in the second, it could be said that it didn’t even go beyond a few touches in the building’s coal cellar, and it also ended in disaster. The incident with the prostitute was sheer madness, typical of inexperienced young men who, for some reason, feel inexplicably drawn to women of the night who could be their mothers. What happened was that the group of reckless young men decided to get thoroughly drunk, and after visiting a dozen seedy little bars, they ended up—already half-drunk—on Ballesta Street Ballesta. At that hour, with the evening sky still lightening, there were only half a dozen sensible, older sex workers left. At first glance, they seemed the most suitable to introduce inexperienced students and daddy’s boys to the passionate labyrinth of sex, since easy maids—like the one on the fourth floor—were becoming scarce. “Sweetheart, for five duros I’ll take you to Paradise!” the prostitute said kindly but without much enthusiasm. Given how early it was in the evening, the good woman was just getting warmed up and repeated the same line to everyone who passed by, even the city street sweeper, who, with disgust but trying to be funny, replied, “ “I’d rather sleep with my broom!” But the good woman didn’t bat an eye. Given her profession and the natural rudeness of her clients, she took it as a compliment. The friends were so drunk that they didn’t notice at first how old the poor woman was, and the price seemed fair to them for such an impressive promise. “A quickie for five duros?” they asked, leaning on on one another to keep from falling. “A blowjob and you’ll be in heaven, kid!” “Let’s not mess with her—we’re not sissies!” “You guys know nothing about life! A quickie, man!” “Oh, well—that’s something else! And that’s got a French name?” Damn, Madrid’s whores have sure gotten modern! They followed the good lady to her den, where she’d already set her sights on making a day’s profit off the boys’ thirty duros. But she miscalculated, because at the last moment Teo came to his senses and felt a pang of conscience. Without warning his drowsy companions, upon arriving at the boarding house set up as a brothel he stopped at the door. Still, he hesitated for a moment. The erotic conversation with the prostitute had aroused him. He tried to picture as clearly as possible the experience she’d promised him, but immediately thought of his mother, his grandmother, and above all, the general. What would they say if they ever found out he’d let an old prostitute masturbate him? He was horrified, and his arousal ceased . He wasn’t like his reckless classmates in their senior year of high school; he had moral, religious, and even health-related scruples. The city street sweeper was watching him, and when he saw that he was turning his back on Paradise, he offered him some comfort: “Good for you, kid; these whores just bring disease! Jerk off in bed tonight—it’s healthier!” As for his experience with the maid on the fourth floor, it was even more dismal. The girl knew Teo well because she’d run into him several times in the elevator. The girl, from some remote part of Extremadura, had a strong personality and knew exactly what she wanted; that’s why, despite being a maid, she always took the gentlemen’s elevator. There she had noticed Teo’s fluster when he found himself alone with her; though she wasn’t pretty, she knew how to make the most of her ample breasts and wide hips. With one excuse or another, whenever they were alone in the elevator, she managed to tease him. “What a hot day, isn’t it? And here I am in this uniform. I’d look so good in a bikini right now! Do you like girls in bikinis? I have one that—for how little fabric it has—I paid twenty duros extra for.” Teo smiled at the girl’s flirtatious remarks and tried to picture her in her skimpy bikini, but he couldn’t see past her generous cleavage. He lacked the imagination needed to picture the rest. Other times the topic was her skirt: “It would be nice if we maids could wear miniskirts”—and she’d lift the hem of her uniform skirt, revealing her white, plump thigh, to illustrate Teo just how short she’d like to wear it.—But we’d have to put a stop to the young masters. If they’re already trying to grope you with these skirts, imagine what it would be like if we wore miniskirts! Oh, how silly of me—you have a maid too. But Conchi already has a boyfriend. She’s cute, but me… I’m a total eyesore! “No, woman, don’t exaggerate!” “Do you like me? Do you like me even just a little?” “Well… you’re not bad!” You’ve got nice… —but he got stuck. —What? What do I have that’s nice…? Don’t be shy, man, you can speak your mind with me—these are just natural things. I’m not easily shocked; I’m not like those prudish small-town girls. I’m modern—I mean, I’m what they call “liberated” these days. Do I have nice boobs? Is that what you meant? —Teo nodded and swallowed hard, because he was about to choke.—But don’t think they’re fake. Look; touch them, touch them! She took his hand and pressed it against one of her breasts. It was a weekday. People were going about their business. The match seller hadn’t opened his booth yet. No one was calling the elevator. The girl decided that today was the day. When the elevator reached the ground floor, she didn’t wait for the doors to open and pressed the button for the basement. Teo was startled and wanted to protest, but the girl had already set her mind on teasing him, because she’d long been determined to land a big fish as a husband, whatever the cost, and that’s why she always took the gentlemen’s elevator. Since she wasn’t much to speak of and couldn’t boast of any education, she believed she’d only succeed by exploiting the one obvious charm she possessed. Teo had been the most closely watched target, and their encounter in the elevator was no accident. “Do you like to play?” Teo nodded again with a brusque movement of his head. “Well, in the coal cellar I’ll let you see them! The coal cellar incident was a disaster, because that was precisely the day they had to restock the heating coal. The girl led him to a corner, next to the skylight overlooking the street—exactly where they brought in the coal. She unbuttoned her uniform and kept her promise. Teo realized he had to do something. Despite the excitement of the moment, he heard a commotion in the street—like a truck maneuvering—but they didn’t pay it any mind. The girl took his hands again and placed them on her ample breasts, because he was frozen stiff. Just then, the hatch opened and coal began to pour in. Only her quick reflexes saved them from being crushed to death. That’s how this delicate affair ended. It took them some time to brush off the black dust, but they each had to go home to shower and change their clothes. Luckily for Teo, the girl was fired for using the men’s elevator and getting it dirty with black coal dust, and Teo was left with the feeling that she had seduced him, and that if the coal hadn’t fallen, the affair could have had serious consequences. “What I have to do is get over my embarrassment and buy condoms once and for all, or one of these days I’m going to get myself into serious trouble! ” And that was his resolution for that complicated day. That was precisely why he wanted to go to college—specifically to the School of Philosophy and Letters—because after mustering up the courage, he’d decided to buy the condoms, and now he had only one obsession: to use them! CHAPTER IV Teo realized he’d forgotten his notes just as he was about to catch the bus. He rushed back home and didn’t even take the elevator, because it must have been occupied on some floor. He arrived home out of breath. He unlocked the door with his own key and hurried just as quickly to his room, at the far end of the long hallway, in search of those precious notes. Out of habit, she slipped on her slippers so as not to leave marks on the parquet floor, which had been polished and buffed to exhaustion by poor Conchita—though for such special occasions, Conchita could count on the invaluable help of the cook. Given her clumsiness and ailments, the cook’s help consisted of dragging her feet over two red felt cloths , just as she did without the cloths, but with a specific purpose. Given her sturdiness and her good will, no one was able to polish it better than she could. Conchita was at the market, and Doña Pura was listening to a morning radio soap opera while peeling potatoes, onions, and garlic for the day’s stew; therefore, not only did she fail to notice Teo’s return, but she certainly wouldn’t have noticed even if the house had collapsed and the kitchen had remained standing. Of course, the general was away on maneuvers; otherwise, the anarchist shopkeeper wouldn’t have dared to enter the lady’s room after handing the day’s groceries to the cook. He didn’t even bother to close the door behind him because he knew Doña Pura’s habits. Teo dashed down the hallway and paid no attention to what was happening in his mother’s room. He reached his room, grabbed his notes, and made as if to return to the bus stop as quickly as possible, but he stopped abruptly with his hand on the doorknob, and suddenly thought: “Yes, there’s no doubt about it—the boy from the grocery store is in my mother’s room, and he was kissing her!” He stood there dazed, with his hand on the doorknob, not daring to move it, and said to himself again: “Yes, it’s the guy from the store, and he’s kissing my mother—my very own mother!” Then he let go of the doorknob, crept very quietly over to his desk, sat down carefully on the swivel chair so as not to make a sound and alert them to his presence; he picked up the broken little monkey, and as if speaking to it, said to himself again in astonishment: “ There’s no doubt about it—my own mother is involved with the boy from the store! Do you understand, little monkey?” Despite its age and natural wear and tear, the monkey’s expression was still smiling. Teo scolded it: “This is no laughing matter!!” he exclaimed to himself. He set the monkey down and rested his elbows on the desk, cupping his head at the temples. “ If my father finds out, he’ll shoot the guy twice, and as for her, I don’t know if he’d even let her live! Why has she taken a lover? Why the guy from the store?” For quite a while, he remained plunged into total confusion, his hands clasped against his temples, staring blankly at the smiling little monkey with the string that had been broken for several years now. There was no answer. But given his good relationship with his mother, he desperately tried to find a reasonable explanation for it, and since he was old enough to understand, once the initial shock had passed, he picked up the little monkey again—his confidant—and laid out his thoughts: “My mother is still young; my father thinks only about his scheming with the City Council, money, and the fascists’ politics, but I’m sure he hasn’t slept with her since I was born. I say she must have her reasons!” —“Teo, sweetheart, you were here!”—his own mother rescued him from the anguish of that complicated dilemma by suddenly bringing him back to reality. He loved his mother, with or without a lover. He also loved his maternal grandmother, whom he at least didn’t have to worry about having another lover. Therefore, he hadn’t seen anything, hadn’t noticed anything; he’d simply forgotten his notes and had come back to get them. He’d grab them, shuffle back down the gleaming hallway in his slippers so as not to ruin the waxed floor; he’d go down the service staircase, which is faster; he’d avoid the doorman so as not to waste time on formal greetings—“You’re in such a hurry, young Mr. Teo! You’re late for college today! Good thing the weather’s nice. I know that very well because none of my bones ache. You’ll get there when you’re my age, just you wait!”—and other remarks of that sort. He’d cross the street on a red light if necessary, and, with a little luck, the bus would arrive at that very moment and he wouldn’t have to wait—and, consequently, think any more about that matter—and it would all have seemed like a dream. Nor did he see the boy from the store, who had disappeared when they both realized Teo was back. He put the little monkey back in its place, next to the window, behind the lamp, and replied as naturally as he could: “Yeah, but I’m leaving now.” His mother didn’t say anything, but she watched him closely. Depending on her expression, he’d know whether or not she’d caught them, but Teo displayed remarkable composure, and his mother didn’t suspect a thing, so she calmed down, blurting out the first silly thing that came to mind: “One of these days you’re going to lose your mind!” “Yeah, any day now I’ll lose my mind. Well, I’m off—I’m running late for class!” And that was the end of this traumatic episode. The following days were very difficult for Teo o. His old, beat-up little car became his confidant, because given the sensitivity of the matter, he couldn’t find anyone else to open up to. The truth was that his mother seemed like a different person to him. For his sense of modesty, it was embarrassing to accept the fact that she was—and that he hadn’t realized it sooner!—still an attractive woman. He thought that a son could say his father was in good shape; that he attracted young girls; that he’s held up well. “When it comes to a father, the subject of mistresses—no matter how young and shameless they may be—is something that can come up in a conversation with the gang,” he thought, trying to make sense of his moral confusion. “A promiscuous father is even kind of funny. But when it comes to a mother, the issue affects public morality and is intolerable.” Therefore, he couldn’t bring it up during snack break or during lunch at the university. “A mother with a lover is a slut,” he continued to think, with no answer in sight. “A father with a mistress is a horny old pervert—well, a great guy who still manages to seduce them. A mother has to choose between moral ruin and the repression of her senses; there’s no other option.” But instead of putting the matter out of his mind and focusing on the professor’s pointless explanations of the history of philosophy, the question of whether or not he had an immoral mother had no concrete answer, and it was beginning to obsess him. Moreover, the issue had other ramifications, which made it even more complicated. He had only seen the boy from the store kiss her, but it was obvious that in private—far from witnesses and giving themselves to one another without moral qualms—their relationship would have to go much further. Naturally, his mother would have experience, unlike him, who still didn’t know the exact shape of a woman’s sexual organ. She, who had given birth to him, would know perfectly well what a man’s sexual organ looked like, and neither seeing nor feeling it would disturb her anymore. So his mother could easily go to the pharmacy and ask for as many boxes of condoms as she wanted without blushing, since the clerks would find it perfectly natural. Of course, at the pharmacy wouldn’t ask her if she wanted them for her husband or her lover—those kinds of questions just aren’t asked. She wouldn’t even be embarrassed to choose the right size. But he would. “Teo, you’ve been acting kind of spaced out these past few days!” a classmate remarked a few days after the incident—a girl who, for some reason, had a certain soft spot for him. “ I can just imagine what you’re thinking! Teo panicked. No one was supposed to know about his mother, and you don’t just guess at things like that. “What am I thinking?” “Well, what else could it be? What we’re all thinking about—Saturday’s protest! Don’t think I’m calm about it. Those cops piss you off with their provocations, and you lose your head. Something terrible could happen!” Teo had no intention of going to the protest. That’s all he needed! If his father found out he was protesting with the leftist students, he didn’t even want to imagine what he’d do to him. He might even pull him out of college and force him to pursue a military career, just as he’d always wanted. But, on the other hand, his father must be solely responsible for his mother’s infidelity. Who else? He thought it might not be such a bad idea to go to the demonstration just to spite him. “But no—you’re practically a fascist!” the girl said suddenly. “I’ve never seen you running across campus in front of the ‘grays.’ You must be with the SEU.” “ “I’m not from anywhere!” Teo protested, relieved. “But yes, I’m worried about the protest, just like everyone else!” It was the best lie to cover up his concerns. Besides, that girl—Betsy, as her classmates called her, probably a diminutive of Bathsheba—had also caught his eye from the very first day. She was dark-haired, with a boyish haircut, haughty, with fiery green eyes and a strong personality—everything he lacked! She must have been from Andalusia, judging by her cinnamon-colored skin and her lisp, which she nevertheless tried desperately to correct. She was a bit flat-chested, perhaps because of her age, which was why Teo never went beyond treating her as a classmate—perhaps with a little more affection than usual, but never as a real woman. The problem was that Teo had an obsession: he needed to have his first sexual encounter with a woman whose breasts were at least as developed as those of the maid in the next room, because he imagined that making love to a flat-chested girl wouldn’t give him the impression of actually sleeping with a woman. Betsy was cheerful, rebellious, always getting into some kind of trouble, but she was flat-chested. She was also the first to talk back to the professor when he got too bossy and to rally her classmates when a commotion broke out. Teo didn’t know it, but she was a member of the Spanish Communist Party—the “reconstructed” one, not Carrillo’s. Why not Carrillo’s, which, besides, had the most clandestine members at the university? Simply because it no longer seemed communist enough to her, but at most “Eurocommunist”—that is, a bourgeois, watered-down form of communism, nothing revolutionary. Ever since the expulsion—with no possibility of appeal—of Jorge Semprún and Fernando Claudín, two widely recognized anti-capitalists and anti-fascists, many young people tore up their membership cards and joined the PCE-r. Betsy was one of the first. “If they throw rubber bullets at us, they sting but they don’t kill, and the tear gas is a pain but you can handle it. But if they fire real bullets, then things could get really messy. E IE I hope they don’t have orders to shoot!” the girl said to the frightened Teo. “Hey, ‘Teo’ must be a nickname, like my ‘Betsy,’ right? You know, Teo is also a good nom de guerre. With a nickname like that, you could even be the delegate for some committee. Perhaps it was because Teo’s concern made him seem interesting, but that day Betsy paid closer attention to him than usual. He struck her as discreet, reserved, sparing with his words, mysterious, and intriguing—and those were the essential qualities for an underground activist in the PCE-r. Moreover, just like with Teo, those were precisely the qualities she lacked. She was too outgoing; too passionate and impulsive. She knew she’d be caught in the first serious raid ordered by the Interior Ministry, but she couldn’t help it—it was simply a matter of character. She thought it was worth taking a chance on Teo and discreetly testing the waters to see if he could be one of their own. —Or yeah, if you come to the protest on Saturday, that means you’re one of us, right? I mean, you agree that this country needs a real democracy and not this shitty “organic democracy” we have now.” Teo thought twice about the best answer because he wasn’t quite sure what a real democracy was, not even an “organic” one. He knew what everyone his age knew: that Spain was “One, Great, and Free” thanks to the “Movement”; that the Caudillo had saved it from the clutches of international communism; that there was now greater openness, because girls were allowed to swim in bikinis, boys could have long hair, and even the Beatles—who were one of the most radical and modern bands—had performed in Madrid. What more did young people like Betsy want? “Well, I think democracy is fine…” “And how right you are!” the girl interrupted him. “Democracy is a right of the sovereign people, not a gift from a dictator.” “Of course; no gifts…” Teo dared to reply. “You know what? I like you!” the girl interrupted again. “I have an idea—why don’t we grab a beer together in Moncloa and chat more calmly about these things?” It was the first time a normal girl had shown interest in him. The case of the notary’s maid had been an exception; it was obvious she had an ulterior motive. But now Teo believed that Betsy was interested in him, just like that, as a person, and perhaps as a man. Suddenly he reconsidered the fact that she was flat-chested, or at least not particularly well-endowed; all at once his prejudice about breast size vanished, and he admitted that a woman was a woman with or without large breasts; that is to say, he thought —which was a real revelation—that to be a woman, it wasn’t mandatory to look like a wet nurse. The same went for her hips. Betsy wasn’t anything exceptional from the waist down either; they could probably swap pants, and they’d fit her just fine. She was rather skinny, and her waist had just enough room for her spine and the necessary organs. Her hips were just right for her to be considered a woman physically suited for motherhood and nothing more. Therefore, Teo, faced with such a revolutionary change, he liked the idea. As if by reflex—more typical of an animal—he couldn’t help but wonder whether condoms had an expiration date. But he immediately told himself that such a concern was simply absurd. “Approved!” said Teo, trying to be funny. CHAPTER V On the bus, Betsy wanted to test her companion’s revolutionary consciousness, so she hummed a song by Lluis Llac, the lyrics of which she knew in Catalan. They were standing at the back of the crowded vehicle—a rickety old red Pegaso. They held on as best they could to a metal bar, and with every bump, sudden stop, or , the old bus would creak and groan, as if it were about to fall apart. Betsy sang the first verse so softly that it seemed as though she were singing to herself—to her own revolutionary conscience, which constantly needs the inspiration of a banned song: L'avi Siset em parlava de bon matí al portal, mentre el sol esperàvem i els carros vèiem passar. Teo smiled, but felt uncomfortable. He didn’t understand the lyrics. To tell the truth, back in those days Catalan seemed to him like a primitive language, probably on the verge of extinction, but there were still some who, just to defy the government in Madrid, insisted on using it. He knew that the people of Barcelona spoke Castilian better than those from Valladolid, and their businesses were doing quite well. He thought that those who still spoke it must be older people, farmers, or mountain dwellers—people reluctant to lose their traditions, which could just as easily be the language as escudella or white butifarra. That’s why he knew it was a “protest” song, as they were called at the university. He felt a bit uneasy in case someone from the secret police was riding the bus. He knew full well that the university was teeming with informants for the political-social police. He knew this from his father’s comments: “Thank goodness there are still young people who respect the Movement and keep us informed about those good-for-nothing communists and anarchists.” They were Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey or the sons of fanatical Falangists, also members of the . People who reported promptly on everything that happened at the university; they jotted down first and last names—of students and professors, even of janitors and staff. But Betsy, who couldn’t leave anything she set out to do unfinished, not only kept humming, but raised her voice: Siset, can’t you see the stake to which we’re all bound? If we can’t free ourselves from it, we’ll never be able to walk! Someone nearby heard the song and began humming along as well. Soon other students were swept up by that little tune—which had already taken on a revolutionary air—and joined the chorus. Those who didn’t know the lyrics simply hummed the melody as best they could. Teo grew restless. After all, it hadn’t been a good idea to let himself be taken in by a smooth-talking, stubborn, and irresponsible young woman. But his unease grew alarmingly when the entire bus—like a clamor of spontaneous little revolutionaries—caught the fever and a veritable uproar broke out, and all together, even the driver, sang the final verses of the song—the lyrics of which, it seemed, everyone knew in Catalan—just one minute before arriving at Moncloa: If I pull it hard this way and you pull it hard that way, it’s sure to fall, fall, fall and we’ll be able to free ourselves. The bus stopped at the designated stop, and a profound silence. The young people got off smiling, their books and notes tucked under their arms; their hearts brimming with hope and a longing for freedom, and their left fists still clenched. At the stop stood two “grays,” in their old-fashioned, long wool coats, their ridiculous flat caps bearing the imperial eagle clutching the yoke and arrows, their dark, neatly trimmed mustaches; with their deeply ingrained anti-communist obsession and their nineteenth-century martial airs. But those young people already regarded them as statues of gratino, just as the political prisoners built the Valley of the Fallen, and all the equestrian statues and monuments intended to perpetuate in the memory of the humiliated and persecuted all their misdeeds; so that history might have faithful and accurate witnesses that there once was a gang of common criminals with stripes and medals, Catholic in ritual but perfectly atheist in deed. Nothing more ; I had no other intention. But the young people who had sung Lluis Llac’s song from the University City all the way to Moncloa knew this. They had changed their minds; they had uncovered the manipulation in their old history, politics, and religion textbooks, and that’s why they all sang in unison—including the driver—Lluis Llac’s song.“If I pull this way and you pull that way… If we all unite, this shitty regime will soon fall.”Betsy altered the last verses of the song to her liking as she walked hurriedly, continuing to singing to herself without knowing if Teo could hear her; and he followed her up Princesa Street without really knowing where he was going. But she always knew where she was going; she’d decided it beforehand. She never set out without a clear destination in mind; she woke up every morning with a clear idea in her head, and she carried it out at all costs. She’d walk into the dining room intending to ask for a specific dish, which she always got. She’d show up for an exam knowing she’d pass it, and she always did. If she set out to indoctrinate Teo, she knew in advance that she’d succeed. She had a plan—improvised, but a plan nonetheless: they’d go to a bar where leftists gathered; activists from clandestine organizations who didn’t need to mention their party acronyms—their very clandestine nature united them. There, it would be enough to let him calmly drink his beer. There was no need for sermons or to reel off the doctrinal catechism; it was enough for him to observe the people while drinking his beer. Then he’d understand what he was trying to instill in him. Those people, whom he didn’t know at all, would become his friends in just a few minutes. Just like that, his friends! He could ask them for cigarettes, borrow money, get the addresses from their address books, or have them lend him their car or motorcycle; he might even be invited to one of their parties just by drinking his beer in their usual hangout—that was enough. Then he’d understand what he was trying to tell him. He’d say to them, “Let me introduce you to Teo, a classmate of mine.” And they’d reply, “Cheers, buddy!” and from that moment on, he’d know he had new friends for whatever he needed. That was his plan— and it couldn’t fail!“Here’s Teo, a classmate of mine,” said Betsy, just as she’d planned.“Cheers, buddy!” the guys replied, also just as planned.The bar was lively at that time of the afternoon, mostly filled with college students. Teo sat down as if he’d been told to. Before he could react, someone ordered a beer . He would have preferred lemon tea, but obviously it was already too late. He’d picked up that habit from his mother; at that time of the afternoon, she always drank lemon tea. But maybe now that he had such a tacky lover, he’d gotten used to beer too—and drinking it straight from the bottle. They brought him the bottle, and Teo expected them to bring him a glass as well. Betsy hinted that there wouldn’t be a glass, and he reacted. He took the bottle, and before he could bring it to his mouth, the others knocked it so hard that foam began to spill out.“Cheers!”they all said in unison, and Teo quickly took a small sip, just to keep the foam from spilling onto the table. The other guys didn’t care, and some of of the foam onto the marble tabletop. Someone placed a paper napkin over the spilled liquid, which became completely soaked, then set his bottle down on the soaked napkin. Teo didn’t understand the point of it. He could have called the waiter to clean the table, but the guys weren’t paying the slightest attention to what was happening. Someone commented on a movie, and they got caught up in a discussion about the “Nouvelle Vague”:“Yesterday I went to see Truffaut’s *Jules et Jim*. I don’t know, but I didn’t think it was as good as *The 400 Blows*.”“I don’t think Jeanne Moreau is the right actress for this kind of movie.”“Besides, the premise isn’t realistic.”“A petty-bourgeois ‘ménage à trois.’”“*The 400 Blows* has more political and social substance.”“But I don’t know if Antoine Doinel has enough reason to hate his mother just because she has a lover.”“A mother can have a lover—or as many as she wants—and a son has no right to judge her.”—That’s bourgeois morality at its worst.—Why does Truffaut show us Antoine’s reaction? Why, as someone on the left and with a liberal outlook, isn’t he more understanding toward his mother?—If it had been incest or something unnatural, but a lover—it’s the most natural thing in the world for a young woman, a single mother, to desire a man!—Even if she’s married, if her own husband doesn’t satisfy her.—I think Truffaut wanted to punish his own mother through the film’s fictional narrative.—Yes; it’s an autobiographical film. That might be it. But it’s a contradiction !...—Bourgeois!—It’s the eternal struggle between the authoritarian state—Antoine’s teacher—and society—democratic, creative, and natural—represented by Antoine and his friend René.—The final scene makes the film’s message clear.—Still, I find it a bit confusing; looking at the sea is a form of escapism from reality; the sea has no boundaries; it’s not a revolutionary symbol.—“It’s the antithesis of revolution: calm; death; disillusionment!…—“Yes, that’s what I think,” Betsy finally said; “the sea isn’t a good metaphor. And you, Teo, what do you think? Do you think this final metaphor in the movie is appropriate?”But Teo was still trying to resolve his own personal dilemmas. His mother also had a lover. A shameless young man, a delivery boy at a grocery store. He wasn’t a movie-style lover, nor was his mother a depraved woman who hated him. No; he was a loved and wanted son—perhaps too loved; too wanted; too protected. He would have liked to have more freedom and imagination; to play with other toys, and not just a mechanical monkey, which ultimately betrayed him and put an end to his insignificant childhood the very day its wind-up string broke. Therefore, he couldn’t form an opinion on the question. Nor did he feel a particular for the sea; he preferred the countryside, like the one where they used to spend their summers at his maternal aunt and uncle’s house. He loved the sunny slopes dotted with orange, lemon, almond, hazelnut, and cherry trees, as well as the vineyards with their twisted vines and their large, green, translucent leaves, and the big clusters of grapes, still tart in August.“I prefer the countryside; the sea is too…”—“Ambiguous!” she interjected, as always. “Is that what you mean?”—“Yes, that’s what I meant.”—“Right, buddy, ambiguous—that’s the right word. How would you have finished it?”—“Me? Well… I don’t know… Maybe with images of the countryside; a valley of orange and lemon trees…”—“In France?”—“Well… maybe vineyards…“Right!” Betsy interrupted again. “Teo has a more socially conscious and committed idea for the ending.” The countryside represents work; social commitment; purposeful activity. The sea is pure escapism… Disillusionment. Is that the meaning behind your idea?Teo didn’t know what they were talking about. He looked at Betsy and felt as if he were looking at a monkey in a zoo. He didn’t know what language she was speaking, nor did he understand why his opinion was so important—perhaps because this was the first time anyone had asked for it. He was bewildered but, in a way, flattered. These kids were genuinely interested in his answer, and he couldn’t let them down by saying, “I don’t know anything about these things” or “Just leave me alone—I’m just here to keep Betsy company” . No; he had to say something that would give the impression that he was following the topic; that he was interested; that he considered it important. He was no longer a high school senior, but a college student, and a college student was supposed to know about these things and have a specific opinion.“Yes, of course!” he said at last.From that moment on, he had to give his opinion—with brief affirmations or denials—three or four more times in the course of the discussion; and Betsy interrupted him just as many times, but it didn’t bother him—on the contrary, it was a great help.When the topic ran its course, a strange silence fell. The guys stared restlessly at the ceiling for no apparent reason, downed the last sip from the beer bottle, knowing there was no beer left; they tapped their fingers on the damp marble tabletop and, in addition to the ceiling, glanced alternately at other patrons in the bar, and very briefly but intensely, at Teo himself. They wondered if the newcomer was already trustworthy enough to move on to the next topic— the one that really interested them. The movie had served as a prelude—to warm things up. Now it was time for serious, sensitive confidences, and they weren’t sure about Teo. Betsy had been distracted and, for the first time, didn’t anticipate the others’ thoughts, but she reacted when she heard someone say that an ETA commando unit had been taken down in a town near San Sebastián. She looked at her companions and quickly understood the reason for that uneasy silence.“Well, guys, I’m off—I’ve got a ton of stuff to go over! Are you coming, Teo?” she asked, trying not to sound bossy. But Teo had already risen from his chair with the same feeling of having received an order as when he’d arrived. Relieved, Betsy’s comrades showered her with greetings and handshakes; one of them even placed his hand on her shoulder and offered his friendship without reservation:“Well, comrade, we’re here for whatever you need!”—and he patted her shoulder again, perhaps to make him feel that his offer was sincere. Teo thanked them for their generous friendship, but since he wasn’t an expert on art-house cinema, he didn’t know if this new friendship would be of any use to him. Besides, the beer hadn’t agreed with him. He would have preferred tea with lemon, but the damage was already done. Betsy was already at the door, waiting for the guys to finish saying goodbye to Teo. Once out on the street, she asked him:“What did you think of my friends?”“Interesting…”“Of course! They’re great people; good friends,” she interrupted. And that was how Teo, amid Betsy’s interruptions, came into contact with the underground.CHAPTER VIWhen Teo got home, his aunt Virtudes was visiting. Over the years, she had lost the charm she once had as a wealthy woman with a simple yet effective sensuality. She had gained quite a bit of weight and had puffy, sagging cheeks, and to top it all off, she had a budding double chin, which became more evident when she tilted her head to lament one of her many worries. Given her current physical condition, she was forced to pay off her gambling debts in cash, but thanks to the help of the nuns at a convent just a stone’s throw from her home, she was getting back on her feet. The nuns knew of her fondness for gambling and sensibly suggested that she alternate her poker nights with a novena or the recitation of the rosary; in this way, little by little, she would forget about gambling, strengthen her willpower, and drawing closer to God, with whom she was, one might say, at odds. The other idea—brilliant, no doubt—was to suggest she play a little game of poker with them after praying the rosary, for as the saying goes, “one blackberry stain is washed away by another.”“But no more than five pesetas per bet, Doña Virtudes; don’t go thinking we’re doing this for profit. No, my dear, we’re doing it as therapy. That way, your desire to gamble will gradually fade, and you’ll only lose a few pesetas. Or you might win—we don’t cheat!”Admittedly, it was small change, but a hundred pesetas a week—for austere, frugal little nuns—could go a long way. Especially for religious ornaments, holy pictures, prayer books, scapulars, candlesticks, candles, and all those things so necessary for their devotion.“What faith you all have! Oh, if only God had given me your strength!—Everything comes with practice and good will, Doña Virtudes; the important thing is to make a firm resolution to amend your ways. By the way, at least you have the most fitting name to please God if you repent!—No, I’m already repentant, Sister; what I lack is willpower. As for the name, I’ll just say this: the second one is Inmaculada; Virtudes Inmaculada! What were my poor parents thinking?—Oh, ma’am, the ways of the Lord are inscrutable! Who’s to say we aren’t in the presence of a future saint?—Oh, for heaven’s sake; don’t talk nonsense!—Well, let’s play. How many cards do you want? And put that peseta on the table—this is the third time you’ve forgotten!Thanks to this pious therapy, she was able to save the estate in Extremadura, and luckily, the general also had a legal stake in it. But he had outstanding debts at half a dozen banks in Madrid, and unfortunately Teo’s mother was the guarantor. That was the reason for her visit.“No, Virtudes, absolutely not—I’m not pawning the jewelry!”“But it’s only a matter of three or four months, woman; as soon as I sell the harvest, we’ll get it back and that’ll be the end of it.” “Who’s going to find out?”“I’ll find out, and that’s more than enough! And you say: if Francisco finds out what we’re discussing in this conversation, he’ll ruin me, and he’ll have you shot. No way—the jewels aren’t leaving the bank vault, where they’re safely stored!“Exactly, woman—we don’t even have to touch them where they are; you just sign a little piece of paper right at the bank, and that’s it; three months later, we tear it up!”Doña Isabel had to give in because she’d made the mistake of confiding her own weakness to her sister. They were sisters; they shared the same virtues and the same flaws—why shouldn’t they trust one another? But now she understood the reasonable limits of sisterly love.“I’m desperate, Isabel—if I don’t pay, I’ll go to jail!”“Don’t exaggerate, Virtudes—you’ve always been a bit melodramatic!”“Not this time, Isabel; I owe money to influential and unscrupulous people. I’ll have to come clean, and I don’t know what I’ll do if they torture me. I won’t be able to hide anything; you understand, Isabel—I’ll tell them everything!”“Woman, they don’t torture anyone over things like that. If it were a political matter, that’d be another story!But Aunt Virtudes’s allusion was all too clear to her sister, which is why she emphasized, “I’ll tell everything.” Either she gave in, or her husband would find out about her adultery—and in great detail, at that—since back when the sisters were closer, they confided even the smallest details of their sexual relationships to one another.—And you say the wheat harvest is good…“The best in a century! That’s what the newspapers say.”Doña Pura, who despite her clumsiness and apparent naivety was well aware of her mistress’s weaknesses, had left the door ajar and was discreetly eavesdropping on the conversation. From her gestures, one could deduce her opinion regarding that year’s harvest. It had rained only on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, when it wasn’t needed, but in April it had rained so little that even the springs of Lanjarón would have dried up. She didn’t understand agriculture, but she knew that in Extremadura, for there to be a good harvest of anything, the Guadalupe would overflow—that’s how much rain would be needed. That’s why she knew that Doña Virtudes was blatantly lying to her own sister, but she couldn’t intervene, since that would be tantamount to giving herself away, and she preferred to keep playing dumb. Deep down, this was a more interesting soap opera than the ones on the radio, and if the whole thing didn’t end in tragedy, she preferred to follow it from the sidelines and keep playing dumb.When Teo arrived, the two sisters changed the subject.“My dear, your Teo is so handsome!”“My dear, he’s really grown into a man…”“He must have girls lining up.”“I don’t know; my Teo is a bit shy.”“And what do you say, Teito? Don’t you already have a little girlfriend out there, huh, you rascal?”“Woman, what are you asking! Those are the boy’s private affairs.”After kissing his mother and aunt, Teo hadn’t even had time to take off his coat and was forced to answer awkward questions. To throw them off the trail and dispel any suspicion about the reasons for his visit, Aunt Virtudes lashed out at the poor, unsuspecting boy. Still, it was a good day for him to be asked that question: for the first time, a girl had invited him for a beer at a “progressive” bar on Argüelles, and he was eager to share the novelty of his experience.“You do what you can, Auntie…!” he said, convinced he wasn’t lying, despite the ambiguity of his answer.“Don’t tell me, Teo, that you already have a real girlfriend?” she asked, winking mischievously.The question went straight to the point Teo wanted to make, so the answer was inevitable:“Well, not exactly a ‘girlfriend,’ no; but a friend, just like that, maybe…”“But Teo, son,” Doña Isabel interrupted, startled but at the same time thrilled that her son was finally coming of age, “you already have a girlfriend and you haven’t told your poor mother? I suppose she’s from a good family and well-mannered!”“Hold on; slow down! I said a friend—just to grab a beer; nothing more…“Be careful, Teo. Girls these days are very shameless,” his aunt warned him, trying to come across as sensible and proper.Doña Pura had to stifle a sudden fit of laughter when she heard the word “shameless.” His mother, however, was more conciliatory and bold.—“Girls these days are modern, Virtudes, without all the nonsense and repression we had back then. They know what they want and don’t wait to be asked… These days, girls take the initiative.”Teo couldn’t understand how his mother could be so aware of his personal relationships, because it seemed like she was talking about his brand-new relationship with Betsy; no doubt she had been the one to take the initiative. She was, therefore, “a girl of today” , as his mother so aptly described her. Therefore, there was no reason to be ashamed or feel manipulated. Times had changed; Spanish women had liberated themselves and were taking the initiative. That was a real relief. Surely, later on, she herself would ask him to make love to her, because he probably wouldn’t dare. His mother was undoubtedly a modern woman as well; that was why she had teased the guy at the store; she would have asked him to be her lover, just like that. It was undoubtedly a sign of the times, and he had to understand and accept it. He could become Betsy’s lover if she asked him to—just as Raúl, the guy from the store, would have become her mother’s lover, because she would ask him to. Of course, he wasn’t married and she was. But he knew his father well enough to hold him in very low regard as a lover, and if his mother was a normal, modern person—just as he was—it was only natural that she would desire the boy from the store. The fault surely lay with his father, who didn’t understand what women were like these days.“Besides, they’re on the pill!” added his mother, who took the opportunity to find out just how much college had turned Teo into an experienced young man.“Mom, it’s still illegal!”“Wake up, son—you’re a big boy now and you’re in college; these days in this country, you can get the pill with just a prescription from a doctor friend; to regulate your period!”His mother was well-informed and spoke from experience; otherwise, Teo would probably already have had a little brother or sister—who knows?—which would have been a true family tragedy. So he thanked the inventor of the pill on behalf of his family and even in the name of social peace. At the same time, Teo suspected that his mother was speaking from personal experience, which upset him, and he had to make a real effort not to blush and reveal that he was aware of her extramarital affairs.His mother, for her part, lived constantly under the agonizing uncertainty that her son might have caught her the day he unexpectedly returned home looking for his notes, but she didn’t have the courage to be honest, ask him, and put her doubts to rest once and for all. Both lived with the same anguish and uncertainty: Teo because he knew the secret, and his mother because she didn’t know if he knew it and was keeping it to himself. Neither of them knew if it wouldn’t have been better if they’d set the record straight that very day, so that now they’d both know where they stood. So, the best thing was to get that awkward conversation over with as soon as possible.“Well, I’m going to my room—I have a lot of studying to do.”He kissed his aunt, who took the opportunity to tell him again just how handsome and dashing she thought he was, and crossed the long hallway after slipping on his slippers so as not to scratch the shiny parquet floor. Doña Pura saw him pass by—since the kitchen door was still ajar—and gave a slight nod, sighed, and muttered to herself, “ Poor child!” And realizing that the real-life soap opera had come to an end, she returned to her chores. That night she planned to cook a fish dish, but without making things too complicated: battered whiting with a vegetable side dish and homemade flan. The truth was that every day she felt less and less motivated to make elaborate stews, and it was all the young lady’s fault; with every year she turned she’d eliminate another dish from the menu! If this kept up, she’d soon be surplus to requirements in the house. “And where am I supposed to go at my age?” the poor, distressed woman asked herself as she cleaned the four whiting for dinner. “To a nursing home—I know they’ll put me in a nursing home! I’m sure they’ve already filed the application but aren’t telling me.” The thought that she’d end up in a nursing home was becoming more and more frequent, and because she kept repeating it to herself over and over, the truth was that she was already coming to terms with the idea. “Well, at least I won’t have to cook… If you can listen to the radio, maybe it’s not as bad as they say!” In his room, Teo flopped down on the bed, as if exhausted by something inexplicable. He crossed his arms behind his neck and forgot about his mother’s infidelity and his aunt’s good advice, and gave himself over to the thought that excited him most: Betsy. He thought of her once more as a woman; he wondered again whether, after all, it was a good idea to start a romantic relationship with a practically flat-chested girl, and tried to imagine the shape of her breasts. Maybe he was exaggerating; perhaps the clothes she wore didn’t flatter her. Those loose-fitting turtleneck sweaters left no room to notice those important details. She might have breasts, but they were small; but breasts nonetheless. As for her hips, the same could be said—how could he get a real sense of a girl’s hips when she was wearing a sweater two sizes too big for her, one that reached all the way down to her thigh? Perhaps if she dressed in more fashionable clothes—that is, a fitted blouse and a miniskirt—her feminine attributes would be more apparent. Was that why that girls loved miniskirts and tight T-shirts? But Betsy wasn’t that kind of girl. “What a shame!” he exclaimed aloud, and sat up, determined to find out as soon as possible—by any means necessary—what the girl who had seduced him was really like. CHAPTER VII The following Saturday, Teo’s house was in total chaos. Conchita, under pressure from her husband—who had joined the Comisiones Obreras union and didn’t take kindly to his wife working in the home of a “bunker general”—had demanded to work only only the regular workweek—and this was her first weekend off from work. Doña Pura was no longer in a position to take on any duties other than those strictly related to cooking, because she, too, was now aware of her new rights. On the other hand, her clumsiness was already so evident that she wondered if it might not be better for her to find a good nursing home for herself. The mere idea of having to set the table distressed her so much that she didn’t even have a clear head to know what she was supposed to cook that day. She didn’t go over the grocery bill as she usually did, and she barely paid attention to the items the delivery boy brought. Raúl, the secret lover, who seemed to have no ambition to advance or change jobs, didn’t feel like talking either. It had been several years since Teo had had a private tutor, and the only thing that still stimulated him was exchanging views with someone knowledgeable about politics and history. What could Doña Pura possibly care about anarchist matters? He had learned the meaning of the expression “utopia” but never had the chance to explain it to anyone. His party faction had dissolved, and whether out of laziness or for whatever reason, he had no desire to join another; he was an anarchist in his own way and didn’t need a party. His relationship with Doña Isabel had become routine, treated more like a side income, the one needed to pay the installment on the “Seat 600” and the expensive modifications he’d had installed, because, according to him, owning a “600” without modifications was like driving an oxcart: it had no excitement or charm, especially not for a young anarchist like him. “How am I supposed to run this house without a maid seven days a week?” Doña Isabel while filing her nails. “I don’t have the time to set the table or do the other household chores! And besides, I didn’t marry you to be your maid—or anyone’s, for that matter.” So you’ll have to figure out how to manage on your own, Francisco, but either you find a new maid soon—one who doesn’t demand so many privileges—or we’re moving into a hotel. “What hotel? No way! Nobody here is going to a hotel! And that’s an order!” “Excuse me, Francisco, but this isn’t a barracks!” “We’d be better off if it were! The whole country, which is in such a mess, would be better off if things were done like in the barracks!” “That same old tune again! But son, don’t you realize that Opus Dei is already in charge here?” —What a bunch of scoundrels! A bunch of technocrats and bastards who are ruining everything we’ve fought for! —Especially the young women; you can’t even find one anymore, even if we gave them an apartment and a car with a chauffeur at the door to take them to the market! Don Francisco was furious, which was starting to become quite common for him. However, despite the chaos and uncertainty reigning in the house, he stuck to his routine and read *Arriba*, shaking the pages with every curse, so that it was clear he had no chance of reading anything specific—at most, the headlines. But he had read *Arriba* every Saturday morning since José Antonio Primo de Rivera founded it in 1935, except for the Republican interruption, and he wasn’t about to stop doing so—precisely because of a Marxist maid—just when it was most important to support the Movement’s press. He was of the opinion that, since the Opus had come to power, nothing but tabloid and Marxist press—or at least left-wing liberal press—was being published; because, according to the general, all liberals were left-wing. Teo had to make his own breakfast, because Doña Pura hadn’t been able to get out of bed—struck by lumbago, according to her, but in reality she had no other ailment than the nearly eighty years weighing on her already stooped back. As if it were the first time, he settled for a glass of milk from the fridge and some of the usual cookies, simply because he didn’t know how to light the gas stove. He walked into the dining room with the glass in his hand to let his parents know not to wait for him for lunch. “Well, one less; I was planning on going to a restaurant anyway…” his mother said, relieved. “This house will fall apart in a week if everyone does whatever they want!” “ the general suddenly exclaimed, carelessly folding the newspaper—a sign of unusual agitation—and in an authoritative tone that surprised both mother and son, he ordered, ”Today we’re all eating at home, as God intended; and that’s an order!" But Teo had promised Betsy he’d meet her in Moncloa around noon, because she had something important to show him, and he was excited by the idea. Of course, he didn’t know that what she wanted to show him was how to run away from the police during a pro-amnesty demonstration. Betsy hadn’t wanted to be more explicit so as not to alarm him, and, besides, he himself had said he’d go to that Saturday’s demonstration, even though it had been a reaction born of pure obligation. But now that they were friends and had had a beer together, he wasn’t willing to let her down, despite his father’s authoritative tone. Luckily—and this was the reason he felt affection for his mother—Doña Virtudes defied the general and overruled his imperative order, all while continuing to file her nails. “Well, since you’re not cooking, Francisco, it seems to me that La Pura isn’t even in a state to make us some sandwiches!” “But who’s in charge of this house?” the general exclaimed angrily. “Well, I’m leaving; I don’t want to be late for class,” said Teo, his hand already on the doorknob; “you two can figure out among yourselves who’s in charge here…” . “Honey, don’t come home too late—things aren’t exactly calm in Madrid right now,” his mother told him, filing the nails on her other hand. The general couldn’t do anything about it, because he knew his wife’s bad temper. If he upset her, he’d spend the rest of the month at his mother’s house, because his mother-in-law, in his opinion, was even more liberal than her daughter; in all likelihood, she was also a member of Opus Dei. But he had to say something to salvage a bit of his honor: “One day you’ll remember when this old fogey from a bygone era tried to save this family! But by then it’ll be too late!” Doña Isabel couldn’t help but let out a hint of a cynical smile and muttered under her breath, “If only you knew!” “Goodbye, Mom!” “Goodbye, son!” “Goodbye, Dad!” But the general merely made a gesture, only to immediately pick up the *Arriba*, which, in the heat of the moment, had scattered across the floor; now he didn’t know how to put it back together with all the pages in order, so for quite a while he read the obituaries page without really knowing what he was reading: “Doña Inés Valbuena de Hinojosa. She passed away peacefully in Madrid at the age of 86…. Her children, grandchildren, and family ask her friends and acquaintances to keep her in their prayers. The funeral service will take place at...” When he realized his mistake, he shook the newspaper listlessly and desperately searched for the front page, which took him some time to find. On that lovely Saturday morning, Teo was a happy young man because he had a date with a relatively cute girl. Going on a date was something that had a comforting and invigorating effect on him; it showed him that despite having always lived with the feeling of being out of place in this world—that is, of having been born without a concrete plan— with something noteworthy to occupy his boring existence, college had provided him with a certain sense of purpose, thanks to his friendship with Betsy. That was why he had rejected a military career—because there were no girls in the barracks. Naturally, he couldn’t use that argument with his father, nor could he make him see that he saw no future in a career that didn’t admit women. For that reason, he had chosen a liberal arts education, better suited to the , and on that very morning—which could well be described as glorious, since it marked the fulfillment, in a certain sense, of something destined to happen—he told himself that, for the first time, life had some meaning for him. Since he was happy and pleased with himself, he greeted the doorman in such an affectionate and cordial manner that it made the poor woman uncomfortable. She was so accustomed to the humiliating treatment from her neighbors that this sudden change struck her as an insult or a mockery; as if Teo were making fun of her. “Don’t laugh at a fool like me, Mr. Teo, and treat me as you always have—just as everyone else does and just as you’ve always done.” “But woman, I just wanted to say good morning to you!” “And for that, do you have to smile like that?” “Like what?” —Well, as if to say, “Look, there’s that silly doorman—I’m going to say good morning to her.” If you were serious, you’d go about your business without laughing like that. Well, Godspeed to you—I’ve got work to do! Teo felt a little taken aback, but he didn’t care. Since he’d left home with the intention of meeting a girl and confessing his feelings to her, no bewildering doorman could ruin his day. Things didn’t go well on the Metro either. The woman selling tickets refused to break a 500-peseta bill for him. He hadn’t taken the precaution of getting change, and now he didn’t feel like going back home and going through the ordeal all over again—dealing with a rude doorman used to being treated with contempt and a family in total chaos. “No, sir, we’re not required to break such large bills! If I accept it, I’ll run out of change. Would you like it if I couldn’t sell you a ticket because I didn’t have change for, say, five duros? I’m sure you’d be angry with me—and rightly so!” He didn’t want to get into an argument with the saleswoman because, in reality, she’d made a perfectly reasonable point, and because a fair-sized line had already formed, waiting for the dispute to be resolved, and they were starting to get impatient. He tried to break the bill at several places, including the match seller’s kiosk—which had expanded its business and now also sold newspapers and candy for the kids—but it was no use. Then he had an idea: to buy another box of condoms at the pharmacy, where they’d have no choice but to break the bill for him. But he immediately thought it was overkill to take such precautions and stock up on such a large supply of condoms; on the other hand, this way he wouldn’t have to go through that embarrassment for several weeks, depending on how things went with Betsy. The truth was that on that cheerful morning, everything he did was with her in mind. They exchanged the bill for him, but it took quite a bit of effort to make the clerk—a relatively young woman, young enough to let her imagination run wild with thoughts she shouldn’t have—understand what he wanted. He arrived at Moncloa well ahead of time, but the atmosphere leading up to the demonstration was already heating up. There were people who looked like they were part of an underground movement, already displaying banners from a wide variety of political, labor, and student groups, along with revolutionary slogans and protest slogans. But most of them—carried by ordinary-looking people—were still rolled up, as if to hide a forbidden message, to be unfurled when more people gathered and it would be harder for the police to snatch them away in the midst of the commotion. Teo didn’t know where to go to kill time until Betsy arrived. Going into a bar and having just one beer was an idea that no longer no longer fit into his new world; now he had a girlfriend, and it would be absurd to go into a bar without her. A girlfriend was precisely the person who accompanied you to a bar to have a beer or whatever together; to laugh together at any silly thing, because no matter how absurd it seemed, it would be funny if he were with her. Without a doubt, his life had changed—as they say—overnight, and as he strolled among the crowd, already excited by the significance of the encounter, he weaved political banners, casually greeting other young people who just as casually greeted him with a “Cheers, comrade!”—just as Betsy’s friends had greeted him at the bar on Argüelles—she thought about how wonderful it was to have a friend. “You always know where you’re going,” she thought, without stopping to greet anyone who greeted her —; when you have a friend, you know why you’re in this world: because someone is waiting for you somewhere; someone who wants to see you; who’s happy to see you. It’s not like before anymore, when you walk down the street, among two million people, and no one in particular wants to talk to you; no one is happy or sad to see you; no one recognizes you from afar, in the middle of a crowd of people. Friendship is what gives life meaning! ” And just as he finished this noble and profound thought, there she was—Betsy—whom he recognized immediately, even though she was immersed in a crowd of young people, warming up to tell Franco’s government: “Enough is enough; we want amnesty, democracy, and freedom!” Teo felt a pleasant sensation throughout his body. It was hard to explain. It was as if joy had a sweet taste and he were savoring it. There she was—that is, right there, amid the commotion of the street, crammed with banners—some still rolled up and others already unfurled—surrounded by other girls and boys who were probably just as excited as he was, but who meant nothing in particular to him—there stood “his” Betsy. The first reaction, somewhat astonishing, was that not even 48 hours had passed since they’d had that beer at the bar on Argüelles, and yet her image already seemed as familiar to him as if he’d known her all his life: that was undoubtedly the effect of friendship. The other sensation, no less revolutionary for being so new, was that she no longer seemed to him like a flat-chested girl with no hips, but rather, because of the affection he undoubtedly felt for her—just like that, out of the blue—made her seem beautiful; truly beautiful. Her boyish haircut was captivating and provocative; her sweater, two sizes too big for her, far from hiding her charms, actually enhanced them, so much so that he would have been annoyed if she’d come wearing a miniskirt. Her cinnamon-colored skin was simply an invitation to ascend to heaven just by looking at her—and to paradise if he could also caress her—and her gaze suggested such passion that nothing in this world could be more alive than what welled up from those black eyes, even though on that sunny morning the square itself seemed like an exhibition of vitality. And all of this on a clear, bright Saturday in Madrid, barely an hour before a demonstration was set to begin—one aimed precisely at asserting the right to live, but to live freely, joyfully, peacefully; to live to enjoy friendship, camaraderie, and loyalty. That is what Teo thought in the moment between seeing Betsy and their extraordinary encounter. CHAPTER VIII For some reason, as soon as Teo and Betsy saw each other, instead of rushing to greet one another, they both stood there for a few moments as if they didn’t recognize each other. But what was really happening was that they were both wondering how they felt about each other on that exciting Saturday morning, an hour before the big demonstration. It was as if they were in the middle of an enchanted forest, set up for the prince of the moment to appear before the obligatory sleeping princess, and they wondered what was happening to them—that they were looking at someone for whom they already inexplicably felt something more than friendship. Under those special circumstances, any young person would have felt something more than friendship upon encountering someone in the midst of a rally that was set to confront the brutality of the mercenary army from the bunker —who were determined to strike without asking questions or even bothering to find out what their ideology was: whether liberal, socialist, anarchist, or communist—simply for demanding something reasonable. Any young person, regardless of ideology, by the very fact of being there on that sunny and exciting morning before the demonstration, felt loved, cherished, respected, and even admired by the others. But if they also happened to run into a friend—old or new—those special circumstances reinforced their mutual trust so strongly that it made up for months of relationships that were now unnecessary. From that very moment on, they had many more important things in common—things that would be enough to make them think seriously about the future. That was precisely what was happening to Teo and Betsy, who, from that morning on, felt that their friendship had already passed one of the most difficult tests of loyalty. For Teo, Betsy was no longer the girl who, two days earlier, had invited him for a beer at a progressive bar on Argüelles; she was the girl for whose friendship he would risk being beaten and arrested by a brutal and ignorant police force; and for Betsy, that calm, apolitical guy, was no longer just another college classmate she’d set out to indoctrinate; no, he was a friend who was joining her at a dangerous demonstration, and only because she’d asked him to—that is, out of friendship. For a moment, as they looked at each other with curiosity and surprise at these new and astonishing discoveries, Betsy thought it was no longer necessary to indoctrinate him. It was as if those discoveries transcended clumsy, vague doctrines that were easily manipulated. What they felt for one another was a committed friendship—that is, a responsible friendship, something more than mere friendship—and for that reason, ideologies and doctrines were no longer necessary. “Teo; I recognized you right away! “I recognized you too, Betsy!” “I’m glad you came…” “I’m glad I came, too…” “What a great atmosphere, right?” “Yes,” Teo simply replied, without taking his eyes off Betsy’s for a single moment. She didn’t avert her gaze from his insistent stare; she understood the reason as if he were telling her something written on a banner. It was the surprise of that strange encounter and everything she suddenly felt for him—a feeling she knew was mutual and generous, still inexplicable but true. “This protest is going to be historic!” Indeed; that was the insight Betsy needed to fully grasp the significance of her new feelings at that very moment. What was happening was that they were being swept along by history, and when history sets in motion—as was happening in those very moments when the massive demonstration set off toward Plaza de España—it sweeps everything along with it, as if it were the violent eye of a hurricane. In its spectacular sweep, everything—people, objects, sounds, images, and even smells—was swept up in it, and from that very moment on, nothing in that place could survive without being connected to that very historical moment. So from that moment on, neither of them could escape that taste—sweet or bitter—of the part of that history that, whether by their own will or sheer curiosity, they themselves had brought about. Betsy tried to explain the idea to Teo, but the crowd, with its distinctive sound, had already set in motion. Whether in groups, by neighborhood, through organizations, or just on their own, they were already chanting slogans of all kinds, yet with one clear, central idea: Freedom and a general amnesty! Teo and Betsy joined in the chanting, now fully committed to their role as people who make history. They glanced at each other from time to time and smiled happily, confident that history—which was precisely their own and was unfolding at that very moment—always prevails over the vulgar stubbornness of those who believe that things happen simply because someone wants them to, invoking outdated and baseless reasons. Reasons nullified by the collective will of a people now free of fear—free from the specter of the past, now clad in shrouds; specter of the past afflicted with the ailments of the elderly with a guilty conscience, who expected nothing more than the sterile bed of a state hospital to relinquish—by the force of irrevocable old age—their despotic power, gained through cunning and contempt for the lives of others, but not for their own; without courage or heroism, and thanks to the infinite brutality of a fratricidal war that only the despot who started it could have prevented. Not only were slogans chanted, but also songs by people deemed undesirable by the regime yet admired by the people on the move, such as the exiled Paco Ibáñez or the Levantine Raimón. Songs that invited one to gallop: “Let’s gallop, let’s gallop, until we bury them in the sea. With all our hearts, they ring out, they ring out, they resound the lands of Spain in the horseshoes; gallop, white-maned horse, rider of the people the land is yours.” And hundreds, thousands—no, hundreds of thousands—packed the streets set aside to make history in a festive and joyful Madrid, as it had always been, even when the shells were falling and people bravely shouted, “They shall not pass.” They shall not pass over the desire of an entire people to speak of the future without shame; without fear of the necessary and inevitable changes ; in freedom, without rancor or anger. The very same people who, nearly forty years later—after those horsemen of the apocalypse had finally passed through Madrid’s joyful streets, saddens them with monstrous acts of vengeance—and which the people of Madrid were trying to overcome on that day tailor-made for oblivion. Other lyrics, sung in ancient and familiar languages but not tolerated because they were too local in a Spain with imperial pretensions, spoke of the wind and the light: “To the wind, face to the wind, heart to the wind, hands to the wind, eyes to the wind, to the wind of the world. And everyone, everyone filled with night searching for light, searching for peace, searching for God, to the wind of the world. ” Teo and Betsy sang along, too. Teo just awkwardly hummed along to songs that were new to him, but which he now understood were important, because hundreds of Madrileños like him—more or less politically active and socially conscious—were humming them as well. Betsy, however, took the lead. She didn’t just sing them—she shouted them out, to make it clear that she had known them by heart for —ever since her father, a poor construction worker who had emigrated from Andalusia during the years of famine, had told her: “Daughter, you will go to college, so that no one will humiliate you or look down on you for being the daughter of a worker.” And that is why every verse—shouted rather than sung—was dedicated to her father, who, due to his age—or rather, his premature old age caused by the long hours spent outdoors on poorly sheltered scaffolding, had been unable to attend that historic demonstration. “Shout, my daughter, shout as loud as you can so the whole world knows you’re the educated daughter of a construction worker,” he had advised her, and she followed his instructions to the letter. But the song that drew the most singing along was less politically charged. One could even say it was barely political at all, to the point that the regime didn’t know whether to ban it or tolerate it. It was sung by a group of young men, Jarcha, which, according to the dictionary of the illustrious Royal Spanish Academy of Language, meant: “A traditional song, often in the romance style, with which the Arab or Jewish Andalusian poets concluded their moaxajas”—in other words, they weren’t even Christian poets. Naturally, they were cultured, serious, and passionate about folk music; their only ambition was to be part of a story that would become a legend—albeit one that was maliciously manipulated. The chorus, the most popular part, went like this: “Freedom, freedom without anger, freedom, keep your fear and your anger to yourself because there is freedom, without anger, freedom, and if there isn’t, there surely will be.” And precisely for that reason—because there wasn’t any yet—it became so popular and familiar among those people, because they knew there would be freedom, but the anger didn’t disappear with the arrival of freedom! The head of the massive demonstration had already reached Princesa Street, at the corner of Alberto Aguilera, and there were still people in Moncloa Square unable to move; there were even protesters lying peacefully in the gardens near near the Arch of Victory. Which, incidentally, was a victory depending on how you looked at it, because for the thousands of people moving along Princesa Street, it symbolized a defeat. There were even those who, in a rush, hastily scrawled “Arch of Shame”—fortunately without the police, who were stationed inside their vehicles along the avenue of the same name and along Reyes Católicos Street, noticing. It wasn’t until the next day, after a state of emergency had already been declared , did the regime’s police get a breather on the streets and get a sense of the damage to Civil War memorials, street signs bearing the names of seditious military figures, overly traditionalist saints, or despotic aristocrats from the Habsburg era—better known to Madrileños as the Austrias—or from the Bourbon era, starting with Philip V, or the Savoys, as well as other details that suggested they were representatives of or aligned with the regime. “This time the ‘grays’ aren’t intervening!” remarked one of Betsy’s party colleagues. “There are at least half a million people here.” Let’s see if they dare to charge today! But his assessment was incorrect. More than a hundred vans were already parked in the Plaza de España, carrying over a thousand officers, tense and nervous; motivated by a single argument: “It’s either them or us: If there’s democracy, we’ll be out of work!” The argument was elementary and didn’t appear in any ideological manual; it was pure common sense, and was limited to a more or less veiled comment among colleagues. Those were not the kind of good times to be left without a job—not even one that was so discredited and even despised. The economic crisis eliminated many contentious jobs, created under collective bargaining agreements secretly negotiated between illegal unions and pragmatic employers—or, as they put it, simply “liberal” ones. Overtime was eliminated, but only the paid kind, not the others—the usual hours that weren’t protected by any contract, hours based on custom and tradition, especially in domestic service—or rather, “domesticated” service. In reality, the only secure jobs were government positions with some kind of ID card bearing the imperial eagle clutching the yoke and arrows. It might as well have been a vertical union, like a country club membership card: it was valid if it bore the aforementioned coat of arms, and the only ones abolished were those that, despite not displaying it, featured a hammer and sickle instead of the coat of arms. For some reason, business owners sympathetic to the regime had an instinct for detecting them simply by exchanging a greeting with the affected employee. That person was immediately fired for being an agitator and a troublemaker, for which no proof was necessary. “You know what? Now that I’ve met you, I think maybe the people in my party aren’t right,” —Betsy suddenly remarked to Teo, taking his arm without further ado, so that only he could hear her—. Many of the people here don’t have a clue about politics; they don’t know who Trotsky, Bakunin, or Blanc were, or even George Orwell or Saint-Simon. All they know about the French Revolution is “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity,” but they have no idea about the causes or the thinkers behind them. They know very little about Rousseau, Diderot, or Voltaire; they don’t even know what happened afterward—during the Paris Commune or the Russian Revolution—or about any other revolution of the nineteenth century. She looked at the bewildered Teo, who was nervous from feeling the suggestive pressure of Betsy’s arm, as if she were asking him to pay her more attention. “We Spaniards don’t know anything about politics,” she continued, confident of Teo’s interest. “I think most of the people who’ve come to this demonstration aren’t here because they want to demand anything that’s still unresolved in our history—which most of them are unaware of. All these people are demonstrating because their hearts, not their heads, tell them to; because they know perfectly well what kind of future is best for their children and future generations. We Spaniards have poor judgment and an even worse memory, but a big heart. It’s a shame, because a little more common sense wouldn’t hurt us at all! That’s why we couldn’t prevent the war, which was absurd. After all, the rebels were just a dozen incompetent soldiers against an entire people up in arms, and because of this Spanish heart and lack of common sense, not only were we unable to prevent it, but once it was declared, we lost it! He looked at Teo as if expecting a response, but Teo was also a good Spaniard—one who acted on his gut, though not to demand the return of the Republic, but to stand by Betsy’s side, because that was precisely what his heart was telling him to do, and because he, too, knew that this was no longer his world and he was obliged to do his part to build the new one—the one where his mother, despite having a lover, would have some chance to defend herself and justify her actions, good or bad, which he had not yet formed an opinion on. “You’re right,” he replied, not just to be polite, but out of genuine conviction, even though he felt differently. “I think that…” “But what do you want—a compromise or a breakup?” Betsy interrupted him. “Whatever’s most acceptable to the Spanish people! And don’t interrupt me!” Teo warned, who had planned a long explanation.—I don’t know much about politics either. At home, we only talk about the Movement… “So you’re… Sorry, Teo; go on, go on…!” “Yes, I must be what you’re thinking. “My father… my father is a general who fought alongside Franco!” Betsy put her hand to her mouth to stifle a gasp of astonishment. She was about to interrupt him, but Teo asked her again not to, and Betsy held back. “But my mother is more liberal—maybe too much!” she said the word “too much” with a certain amount of surprise, since this was the first time she’d dared to judge him.—My mother and I have always gotten along well, and I get along well with my grandmother, too. I don’t know if they’re left-wing or right-wing, but they’re good people—with their quirks and flaws, of course. Because I love them so much, I know my father is wrong; that he’s a brute, a fanatic. Well, I don’t hate him, but I know he’s wrong—because he hasn’t been able to make my mother happy and he makes my grandmother’s life miserable. Anyone isn’t capable of making his wife happy can’t have sound political views—that’s why I know my father is wrong, even though I don’t understand politics! The clamor of the crowd prevented her from continuing. It wasn’t necessary. Betsy was stunned by the forcefulness of his arguments, which she found sound, and yet she had never given them any thought. It was an absolute novelty that completely shook her young and tender revolutionary conscience! Never at any political meeting of her party—despite being a radical—had anyone suggested the idea that to be on the left, one had to know how to make a woman happy, or vice versa, of course. It was a totally new point of view, but she liked it! She clasped Teo’s arm more firmly, and for the first time in her still-short life, she felt secure and even happy, despite the commotion and uncertainty of the demonstration. CHAPTER IX Despite the unease, slowly and without losing its peaceful and festive atmosphere, the crowd began to gather in Plaza de España. Everyone knew that a well-known actor would read a proclamation in favor of amnesty and democracy; and that this would be the most tense moment, because no one knew how the hundreds of police officers cordoning off the square would react. The worst part was the groups of uncontrolled provocateurs . Of course, not all of them were leftists, but rather people with the malicious intent of giving the regime a pretext to prevent the reading of the proclamation—and, in the process, to demonstrate the extent of violence they were willing to employ to maintain order on the streets of Madrid. The regime knew full well that if Madrid erupted into chaos, the same would happen throughout Spain the very next day. Keeping Madrid’s streets under strict control was a top . They had to prevent any kind of crowd gathering. They had even stopped organizing rallies in support of the regime in the nearby Plaza de Oriente, because the situation on the side of democracy was too ripe to manage to gather more than a few thousand nostalgic supporters willing to continue raising their arms with palms facing upward in the Praetorian style, while singing “Cara al sol”—the anthem imposed by the Falangists, who, despite winning the war, failed to carry out their national, trade-union, and Catholic revolution, but had infiltrated the official unions, the state bureaucracy, and above all the Ministry of Education—or, more accurately, the Ministry of “Alienation.” That is why the university was in turmoil; because the Falangists in the bunker did not want reforms, neither in the curricula nor in the monolithic of decision-making, where the professor—who was all-powerful—had to give clear signs of adherence to the principles of the Movement, which, incidentally, was becoming increasingly paralyzed. But Franco did whatever he pleased with the principles of his Movement, and his wife added a feminine touch of Manichean and petty-bourgeois Catholic traditionalism, adorned with her ostentatious necklaces, resembling rosaries, with but without a cross at the end of the mysteries. “So… your father is a general in the bunker,” Betsy asked him, though she already knew the answer, just to set the record straight before placing her full trust in him. “Yes, and one of the most fanatical anti-communists! What about yours?” “Mine?” Betsy now found that question amusing. Had it been anyone else, she would have delivered a detailed defense of the sociopolitical characteristics of a construction worker in a country where class-based unions were banned and workers were ruthlessly exploited, but given the circumstances, parents were now a mere afterthought; what mattered was them and what came next— whatever happened after that massive demonstration.—You can imagine—the exact opposite of yours! Of course, a worker—and in construction, no less! But now I realize, not without some sadness, of course, that it’s as much a thing of the past as yours. I love him, but not because he’s a leftist, but because he’s sacrificed for me—so I could go to college… —Yes, it’s the opposite. Mine hasn’t sacrificed anything for me; in fact, I think he’d sacrifice me himself if he knew I was here today… —Well, mine would have a heart attack if he knew I was arm-in-arm with the son of a fascist general… —But I think my mother would understand… —Mine has no ideas of her own; she’s a poor, ignorant, and nearly illiterate woman, docile and submissive; I don’t think she’s made my father very happy either… Yes, they’re both from another era now. But, nevertheless… —Betsy didn’t know how to continue, but she knew she had to raise some objection to the previous comment. Suddenly, an idea struck her.—What I’m wondering is, what is our era? Who are we? Where did this generation of Spaniards come from? Did we spring up out of nowhere? Are we a leap in evolution? The illegitimate children of the Second Republic? With parents like ours, why are we here, at this demonstration? If we didn’t grow up with these ideas, where did they come from? I wonder how the Spaniards of the next generation will remember us… She looked at Teo, hoping for an answer, or simply for him to say something to change the subject, but Teo shrugged because he didn’t have the answer to so many complicated questions. On the other hand, he didn’t ask himself questions like that, but he knew perfectly well why he was at that demonstration without having the slightest clue about politics. It was for her; for their friendship. But Betsy knew with absolute clarity that hers was a generation called upon to bring order to history—not to do extraordinary things, but to undo those that had been done against the will of the people and of history itself. And that was her uncomfortable mission; uncomfortable because it didn’t represent any revolution, but rather a return to normalcy; in other words, one could say that this was almost an anti-revolution. She knew this just by watching a Pasolini film or listening to a Pink Floyd song; or by seeing herself sitting in one of the university lecture halls. She knew that all of that was just as important as the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, or Sartre. “Spain has to enter the modern age once and for all!” she finally said to herself, after searching for a short but forceful phrase to illustrate her opinion. “Spain has to enter the modern age!” she repeated to give even greater resonance to an idea so profound and rooted in history. It has been trying to do so since the first liberal Constitution; no, even before that, since the Comuneros, and for one reason or another—whether because of foreign monarchs, the traditionalism of the landowners or the reactionary Catholic Church, and now because of certain capitalists, we haven’t succeeded yet. Yes, that is the role of our generation: to open the country’s doors to modernity once and for all! Teo listened to her with the utmost attention. For the first time, he understood the meaning of what she was trying to explain to him, because he was sure she was talking about him—about his relationship with his unfaithful mother; of his unbearable desire to make love without feeling guilty about anything; of freeing himself from the specter of an adolescence that had been too long and too naive. Betsy continued her reflections, delighted to realize that Teo was giving her his full attention. It wasn’t to indoctrinate him, because for the first time they weren’t speaking according to the principles of a doctrine, but from her own conscience and understanding: these were his ideas, and no one had instilled them in him. “If we Spaniards allow Franco to die peacefully in his bed,” she continued, not wanting to leave her thought unfinished, “we’ll lose our last chance to enter the modern age. Franco is a criminal, as are all dictators, especially those who have sparked a civil war…” “But those on the other side were also partly to blame!” Teo dared to interrupt, not because he had a clear historical understanding of those circumstances, but to strike a balance regarding the blame Betsy was referring to. “No; not at all, Teo. Whenever the people rise up, they do so in the progressive sense of history. The oligarchs—aristocrats, landowners, military officers, politicians, capitalists, religious leaders, or whatever they may be—do not rise up but rather stage a coup, and they always do so against history and against the people, for their own class interests; in defense of their privileges. The people have never risen up to defend privileges but to put an end to them. A popular uprising is always justified: it is the revolution! —But… —No “buts”! —Yes, let me speak! What happened in Prague, or in Budapest? If I’m not mistaken, it was the Russians who carried out the repression, and they call themselves progressives and revolutionaries! —It’s true, a popular uprising can be hijacked by heartless politicians who no longer identify with the principles of their revolution—as was the case with Napoleon or Stalin—but in the long run, the will of the people prevails and succeeds in realizing the hopes born of their revolution. And what do they expect from it? Why do they sacrifice themselves? For nothing in particular. To put it simply: bread and peace to enjoy ! In time, we’ll see a democratic Soviet Union, or even democracy in China and Cuba, and all of Europe will be united and democratic, and the Soviet Union as it is now will come to an end. But when a regime has been established by a dictator, it remains in place as long as the dictator isn’t deposed and condemned by the people he has subjugated. If all Spaniards don’t condemn Franco’s uprising, its specter will linger among us for generations. Until we do so, Spain will live under a dictatorship, and even though we have democracy, there will always be two Spains! Someone who had overheard the conversation between Teo and Betsy chimed in, offering their opinion as well: “No compromise will work here, miss—only a break; the Third Republic is the solution. What happened in France? It was all for naught that Napoleon , with all his power, tried to restore the monarchy and the empire—the people finally got their way and brought back the Republic, the very one for which they had risen up and carried out the revolution! That’s exactly why we Madrileños have taken to the streets today—to bring back the Republic! This, too, is a revolution, miss! The little man, with a sparse, well-groomed mustache and glasses with a clearly old-fashioned frame—the sort worn by someone who takes good care of his personal belongings and never loses or breaks them—looked like the spitting image of a provincial professor, but one from the Second Republic. Someone who had defied time and waited patiently for that moment to arrive—the time of just demands, both personal and historical— and he couldn’t possibly think otherwise if he had arrived from a long journey through time. Betsy hesitated for a moment, glancing at Teo to see if he had any thoughts on the matter, but it was clear he didn’t know how to respond. “No, sir, it’s not the same, and forgive me for contradicting you. This country isn’t France, nor is Franco Napoleon; we can’t even compare him to Hitler or Mussolini, who, unfortunately, were elected by the people at the polls, whereas Franco elected himself—just because he felt like it, on a whim,” Betsy retorted, sensing that this was a newly formed opinion. “Napoleon had extenuating circumstances; that’s why they still revere him in France as a national hero. But Franco is a criminal with no extenuating circumstances. He knew that a military coup would set the country in flames, but he didn’t have the slightest twinge of conscience when he realized that his coup was bleeding Spain dry. Not only did he believe there were two Spains—the Catholic, traditionalist one, his own, and the satanic, communist one, Moscow’s—but he was willing to completely exterminate the one that didn’t share his views. The only thing Franco has achieved—and it’s likely he’ll go down in history precisely for that—is keeping the wound open for nearly forty more years after the Civil War, which is why there are still two Spains at odds with each other, making it impossible for us to enter the modern era. We must be realistic; now we have to take charge of the situation. Half of Spain cannot go back to fighting against the other half—we must all condemn Franco’s dictatorship, or we’ll remain stuck in prehistory! Both those on the right and those on the left; in other words, we must agree on a democracy that serves everyone equally, and perhaps it’s Juan Carlos who can make that happen— if he’s a true democrat, of course! —“Well then, young lady, we’re in for another forty years of this!” —“And you, Teo, what do you think?” —“Same as you…” —“There’s no alternative: either a pact or chaos all over again. But Franco must be condemned, or we’ll be stuck in the same old rut!” At that moment, the crowd stopped chanting its political slogans; the the conversations and shouts of support for their causes or for the great revolutionary principles of history, and the statement was read. The text had been agreed upon by all the political forces that had organized the rally, and it came as no surprise to anyone; in fact, most considered it not radical or demanding enough, but they applauded it nonetheless, while the actor who read it stepped down from the podium, knowing he was already part of the history of that turbulent country. That had undoubtedly been one of the most committed performances of his entire career, so he had every reason to feel proud, even though he hadn’t read any manifesto in support of any revolution. Betsy was also applauding, but with the same sense of having heard a proclamation grudgingly tolerated by the regime. But it had to be that way, because she, too, shared the opinion of those who wanted a compromise rather than a rupture. Suddenly, someone near them shouted, “The grays! The grays are coming!” and in an instant, utter chaos broke out in the square, because no one really knew why they were charging or from which side of the crowded square they were coming. A group of protesters was running to escape a police charge coming from Plaza de Oriente, where they had apparently been provoked following the reading of the watered-down protest proclamation. Neither Teo nor Betsy could see anything other than the mass of people moving toward Prin Cesa. These were people running to save themselves from punishment for an offense they weren’t even aware they’d committed. That’s why, had they not been afraid of the blind violence of these agents of historical disorder, they would have remained calm, waiting for the police to arrive, to explain to them politely and courteously why they were there—why they believed it was important to demonstrate in favor of a general amnesty. Because it was unacceptable that there were political prisoners held for no other reason than disagreeing with the regime and expressing that disagreement publicly; for belonging to illegal political parties, when what was truly illegal was the regime itself. Teo was literally swept up by the frightened crowd, but Betsy was momentarily left behind because she had climbed onto one of the benches in the square, trying to see what was happening; trying to see with her own eyes what her sense of justice told her was impossible—yet it was happening! From Bailén Street—a paradoxical name given the circumstances—a group of about fifty police officers, armed with batons and wearing helmets, were running toward the first group of protesters, attempting to charge a group that was confronting them at the intersection with Ferraz Street. In an instant, before Betsy could react—mesmerized by the irrational violence of the spectacle she was about to witness—protesters and police became entangled in a violent brawl. It was as if the police officers had suddenly discovered that those justly indignant young people were a gang of common criminals they had long been searching for and therefore hated—just like that—out of a sense of professional duty and respect for peace and order; out of self-serving loyalty to the Caudillo, who commanded them, motivated them, and paid their respective salaries; out of fear of losing their jobs or for some other far-fetched reason, or simply for no reason at all, just because; because they had to. Some of the young people shouted at them: “You bunch of donkeys, we’re here for the sake of your children! Don’t you realize that things have changed in this country?” Others, while the police were still at a safe distance, dared to attempt some desperate dialogue, naively believing that these people had come to suppress a demonstration equipped with the understanding to listen to reason and arguments. “Are you really going to beat the children of workers, just like yourselves?” But the police not only refused to listen to reason; those very reasons only made them more eager to suppress them, because they couldn’t bear to charge and beat them if there was even a shadow of doubt in their conscience that they were acting against historical reason. That’s why they shouted, “ ‘Shut up and disperse!’” But the young people wouldn’t shut up, because they hadn’t come to that massive demonstration to be silent but to shout—as loudly as they possibly could—all those sound arguments until they were exhausted after receiving the first brutal, irrational, and unjustified blow from a baton. Then they chose to change their arguments and tactics: instead of sound arguments, they hurled insults and threw stones at them. So even though these streets had been paved, they managed to pull up cobblestones from somewhere, along with dry branches and whatever other throwable objects they could find in the square, which they hurled at the police. Some officers were hit, which heightened tensions, as if the kids had no right to defend themselves with violence when they were being treated with violence; confused by the feeling that they were the victims, when the police had the strength and the ability to ensure that the protesters were always the ones left as victims. That is why new reinforcements arrived to join the first charge, to ensure that the right people were the victims. The crowd moved clumsily and in disarray toward Princesa Street, and soon the police made contact with them, beating them without mercy—whether young or old; women or children, who were also there due to their parents’ recklessness or overconfidence. The police broke through the cordon formed by those attacking them and lunged at the unsuspecting crowd still in the square, unable to move in any direction—because they didn’t even know which way to go— and they surrounded groups of protesters, beating them brutally. Betsy found herself trapped in one of those groups with no possible escape. She clung to the first person closest to her, as if seeking protection from the police blows, or perhaps the comfort of a truly human being amid such animal ferocity, huddling behind him. The man was the same one who had raised an objection about the advisability of restoring the Republic. “Now you’ll understand, miss, what I was telling you a little while ago! I hope they don’t break my glasses—these are the only ones I have!” he said, unable to suppress a look of panic himself. Betsy took her first blow, but she barely felt any pain, because she was so agitated that her mind couldn’t process the pain. But she lashed out in a frenzy, humiliated by the blind brutality of the man who had struck her, and shouted, “ You fucking bastard, why don’t you hit your own father?” The cop flushed with rage and unleashed another blow on her, because now he needed neither suggestion nor professionalism—the girl had given him a solid personal reason to truly hate her, even though they’d barely exchanged two unpleasant words. It was always a comfort when the victim showed some sign of guilt, allowing him to strike with greater vigor and determination, and the victims , after the first purely routine blow, always provided it. Such was the psychology of his complex work. While Betsy was being beaten without mercy, lying on the ground and trying to protect her head and her dignity, Teo was desperately trying to avoid being swept away by the crowd, making a real effort to return to the spot where he’d lost track of Betsy. When he saw her on the ground, along with other classmates, and watched in horror as they beat her, his heart pounded so hard it felt as if it were about to burst out of his chest. The last time he’d felt anything like this was in his now-distant childhood, when his favorite toy stopped working. It wasn’t quite the same—back then he’d felt panic; now it was outrage—but both feelings were equally intense. Aside from that instance, he had never before felt anything like this because he had never before had a friend to worry about—and, if the need arose, as was unfortunately happening at that very moment, to defend her from any danger. Naturally, he didn’t think about the possible consequences. Being the son of a general made him feel immune, untouchable; no one could lay a hand on him without risking ruin, no matter who the aggressor was, because a general from the bunker had the power to order punishment for anyone, regardless of their social class, profession, or rank. Teo had even caused a high school teacher to be fired for insulting him by calling him mentally retarded because he was unable to solve a polynomial equation. So, convinced of his authority, he lunged at the police officer who was beating Betsy, shoving him so violently that he sent him tumbling to the ground. He grabbed her by the arm and helped her to her feet, rescuing her from the group that was being beaten, and, outwitting the other police officers—who were busy beating their own victims—he managed to get her to safety. Once free, they ran as fast as they could toward Princesa, and when they thought they were at a safe distance, they stopped to catch their breath. “What did those bastards do to you?” Teo asked her, brushing the remaining dirt off her sweater and trying to calm her down. “ “He beat me up, but I didn’t even feel it because I was so furious! Thanks, Teo; you saved my life! I feel bad for that little guy with the mustache; the poor guy was more worried about his glasses getting broken than his head. Animals! CHAPTER X The pro-amnesty demonstration ended in a pitched battle. What was meant to be a display of common sense ended up being a spectacle of shameful irrationality, because those who were supposed to uphold public order were the ones who provoked the altercations. A thousand police officers, lacking any valid justification but driven by an incomprehensible desire for revenge against those who were trying to put thoughts of revenge behind them, were able to spoil the good spirits of half a million Madrileños, who now, instead of chanting songs symbolizing peace and reconciliation, were hurling insults to at least justify having been attacked. Half an hour after the first clashes, armored vehicles and water cannons appeared—the kind commonly seen on the university campus, but where, at least, there were only young people who could easily withstand a cold shower at that time of year. But now these were ordinary people—workers and retirees without rights, many still survivors of the Civil War, with their children and wives, just as unaccustomed to the protests as they were; and the children, who thought their parents were taking them to a party, lost their innocence that day when they saw their parents being beaten for no reason they could understand. Such was the end of that great demonstration of solidarity with political prisoners, held on a sunny Saturday morning in Madrid, where Teo lost his already unnecessary naivety and, along with the others, stood up for the cause of his generation, earning in the process the affection of Betsy, who—though she found it hard to believe—had to accept that the son of a fascist had become her hero and savior. That alone was reason enough to reflect on that new situation! After the march, safe and sound, far from the indiscriminate police violence, the two realized that, following that experience, they had already made a reasonable contribution to the country’s history, and now it was up to them to forge their own. Betsy was still shaken; the anger at having been unjustifiably beaten had not yet subsided. From time to time, the image of the police officer brutally striking her would flash back, and she would choke with indignation. She took a deep breath and let out a long sigh, as if trying to expel through her mouth the anger that was squeezing her chest and causing spasms in her stomach. At times she felt relaxed, now beside her unexpected savior, but moments later the unease would return because of the indelible image of the violence. She also remembered the little man with the old-fashioned glasses; his concern about keeping them from breaking, and now she also remembered seeing him hurriedly take them off before his fateful encounter with the police and how he hastily stowed them in their case, searching for a safer place to protect them. But she also remembered that he didn’t have time, and now the image came to her of the glasses and their case rolling across the floor, and the little man covering his head with his arms, already resigned to the loss of his old-fashioned eyes. Then Teo arrived, knocked the cop down, and managed to rescue her, but the little man remained lying on the ground, along with two other people he didn’t recognize. He still saw a cop shatter the glasses with a stomp—accidental or on purpose, who knows— given the mindset of those people. “That poor man; those animals have smashed his only pair of glasses to pieces!” Between spasms and long sighs, she gradually regained her composure and returned to normal. Then Betsy began to truly realize what had happened. She saw Teo once again pounce like a wild beast on the police officer and knock him down, even though the officer towered over him by at least two palms, not to mention his bulk. But Teo had knocked him down as if he were a puppet, with a single shove. Despite his unassuming appearance, it turned out that Teo was endowed with a special strength—one that now seemed almost supernatural to her —capable of standing up to an army of angry men in gray, enraged by supposed political causes they felt compelled to defend, and knocking them all down with a single shove. Suddenly, having fully recovered, she realized everything perfectly: she had invited a college classmate to an amnesty rally because she believed that would be the best way to share her ideas with him and, in the process, find out who he truly was and how he thought—and now it turned out that the student had become the teacher, and had given her a masterful lesson in camaraderie and committed friendship. And all of that without using a single political argument, without mentioning Trotsky or Marx; without wondering whether the Chinese or Albanian revolutionary path was more appropriate than the Soviet one; without bringing up Sartre, or even mentioning May ’68 at all. No; Teo had shown her how he thought in a simple yet daring way: he had rescued her from the clutches of evil as if she were a princess under a spell, and now the moment had come for the liberating kiss. Still spellbound, yet immensely confident and happy, she wrapped her arms around the unsuspecting Teo and kissed him gently on the lips. “This is for your bravery!” The surprised Te o could barely process what had just happened, but he immediately realized that this was the first time a woman—other than his mother, aunt, or grandmother—had kissed him for doing something commendable. On the other hand, as he felt the softness of Betsy’s lips, he told himself that it was absolutely necessary and urgent for her to kiss him again, but asking her to do so out of the blue, without any other justifiable reason, seemed too forward. But Betsy read his mind—or rather, simply his desire—and, wrapping her arms around him once more, kissed him again; this time, however, she did so because, after the first kiss, she wanted to do it without any need for thanks, simply for pleasure. “And this one, just because!” Teo, despite his lack of experience—and perhaps influenced by a scene from one of the art-house films he watched fairly often—dared to wrap his arms around her waist, hold her tightly, and, taking the initiative, kissed her as best he could, considering it was a cinematic imitation, and to top it all off, this was the first time he’d ever kissed a woman. When the surprised Betsy was finally able to say something, she simply asked, almost breathlessly: “And why this one, Teo?” “How should I know, Betsy! There must be a reason, right?” But Betsy didn’t want to hear an answer—she already knew the answer all too well: Teo desired her. His kisses made it perfectly clear to her that he was just a poor, inexperienced, love-struck boy. Under different circumstances, she would have rejected him and put an end to that romance, but after what had happened, that would be unacceptable. Teo had earned enough merit to deserve a bigger reward, and besides, she didn’t find him physically unattractive either. Of course, she hadn’t had time to consider the possibility that she had falling in love with him, even though in just a few hours they’d shared intense experiences typical of two people who were mutually attracted. But for that to happen, other things would have to occur; more time was needed; they’d have to go on several dates, and each time she waited for him, she’d realize just how much her affection for him was growing. But it had only been two days since their relationship had gone beyond that of college classmates. So she was determined to make love to him—not because she was in love, but because of a curious mix of her own desire, gratitude, and a certain maternal instinct, inevitable in any woman when she’s with an inexperienced, first-time guy. That’s why she decided the best thing they could do was go to the café on Argüelles, have a few beers—or better yet, some wine, a much more appropriate drink as a prelude to a night of passionate love—to get in the mood and ask her party colleagues for the keys to the safe house they used for their meetings, and of course make sure they’d be alone. On the street, despite the police charges, shouting, and chaos , there was a clear atmosphere of triumph; as if the protesters, despite bearing the brunt of the pitched battle, were fully convinced that their arguments had prevailed, and that someone in the government would inevitably take them into consideration. The police, however, were people defeated from the outset, who had no arguments left other than blows, yet they used them as if they were convincing and as if they were the victors. At the café, the young people were excited and outraged, recounting their adventures to one another—the blows they’d received and those they’d dodged; the counterattacks and their relative successes, with one or two police officers knocked out among a hundred demonstrators—but considering the almost total absence of blunt objects due to the government’s prudent decision to pave Madrid’s streets following the events of May ’68 in Paris, it could be said that it was a good ratio. At least that’s how it seemed to them. Betsy’s comrades quickly got the idea. Just by looking at Teo’s expression, it was clear to them that he was someone about to make love for the first time, and Betsy seemed to them to be the right person for the difficult art of sexual initiation. No doubt some of them would also have been her students, in this case out of camaraderie and a sense of duty, since it was unacceptable for a progressive activist risk living in hiding without having slept with a woman. It wasn’t an obligation, of course, but it was common sense and perfectly logical: they were there to spread an ideology whose first lesson was to shed all inhibitions, taboos, myths, and repression; sex was the first step, and for that, a woman from the same party who shared the same libertarian ideas was necessary—that is, Betsy. But this time it was different: Teo wasn’t a party member; he was the son of a general in the bunker. Nevertheless, she wanted to sleep with him—not only because he’d saved her from a severe beating and possible arrest, but also because, after Teo had dared to kiss her, she was convinced she liked him enough to make love to him. They took the subway because the situation had become so tense that hardly any vehicles were on the road, and there was no way to find an available taxi. During the ride, Teo simply put his arm around Betsy’s shoulders—just as he thought one should do when a couple already shares enough affection and trust—and she wrapped her arms around his waist, from behind the sweater he was wearing over his shoulders. Anyone would have thought they were a long-established couple; who had loved each other for a long time and didn’t need any other displays of affection. Teo watched the people around them, gauging their reactions to see if his behavior seemed appropriate and correct to them, or too cold, conventional, and distant. He just wanted to give the impression of normality. Teo knew for certain that he and Betsy were going to make love, even though she hadn’t explicitly told him so, merely through gestures and glances, and for that reason, despite his apparent calm, he didn’t fully realize he’d boarded the subway until they reached Prosperidad Station, distracted by his thoughts on the most appropriate way to behave during the ride. When Betsy simply said, “We’re here,” he thought the stop must be some kind of facility belonging to the subway system itself, which is why he was surprised to find himself back on the street. “It’s “It’s nearby,” she told him, knowing he was nervous and distracted and that it was wise to let him believe the wait wouldn’t be much longer. Teo simply checked with his free hand to make sure the little box of condoms was in his pocket, even though he didn’t know if it would be right to use them. The streets they walked through seemed endless and deserted to him. The entire neighborhood must have been deserted, despite being one of the busiest areas of Madrid, but he couldn’t be aware of all those people because he had no other thought in his head than the image of a bed he was desperately trying to conjure up in his underdeveloped imagination, due to a simple and scarcely stimulating childhood. Since he was determined to keep his arm draped over Betsy’s shoulders—since he didn’t know where else to put it if it weren’t there—they had some difficulty walking, especially when going up or down the step of a sidewalk that was higher than usual. Betsy did nothing to free herself from that annoying “scarf-like” arm, so as not to hurt his feelings, but she stopped holding him by the waist, since someone had to maintain their balance so they wouldn’t both fall on every new step. The apartment was in an ordinary building, chosen specifically so that it wouldn’t stand out from the others in any way and wouldn’t have any distinctive features that might lead the police to them. The floor level was also the most typical, to ensure they went unnoticed: the third floor. The second floor would have been easy to locate, and the fourth as well if they took the elevator, but the third was too high to climb on foot and too low to reach by elevator; therefore, it could be said to be almost invisible. The apartment had quite a few rooms, but all of them—except for the kitchen and the bathroom—served a single purpose: to function as bedrooms. There were fold-out beds in the hallway, in the dining room, and even in a small room where there was no room for anything but cleaning supplies—yet there was enough space for another bed because there were no cleaning supplies there. The apartment, therefore, was neglected, with loaves of stale bread on the kitchen table. The trash, containing leftover roast chicken, hadn’t been taken out for at least a week. As a precaution, there was no sign whatsoever that could identify its inhabitants—no paintings to give any indication of their tastes, nor photos of family or friends that might identify the residents. In addition to the beds, there were plenty of chairs, especially in the living room, which no longer served as a dining room but rather as a gathering place. Only four were similar, purchased at the same time as the large central table; the rest had been acquired as needed from various sources and in irregular shapes, mostly folding chairs—undoubtedly the easiest to transport. Betsy didn’t want to make things complicated or give the impression that she was doing it for mere pleasure, so she let him take the lead, so he’d feel more confident, but giving him a helping hand with the most awkward details, like unbuttoning his pants or discreetly showing him the right position for making love. When Betsy told him she was on the pill, he already had the little box of condoms in his hand, proud of his sense of responsibility. Somewhat flustered, he simply smiled and exclaim, “Of course—what an idiot! ,” and, making room on the large table covered with party pamphlets so it wouldn’t fall to the floor, he set down the embarrassing little box, and immediately afterward they made love. Teo was amazed at how easy it had turned out to be—something that for so long had seemed one of the most difficult mysteries of human nature to unravel. No sooner had they recovered from the ecstasy of orgasm, relaxed and satisfied at having passed the test acceptably—albeit somewhat hastily—they heard a crash, as if someone were kicking the door down, and seconds later they were held at gunpoint by three plainclothes police officers; three carbon copies of one another, wearing the same plain gray clothes, wielding the same service weapon with the same intimidating gestures; the same expression of disgust, premeditated and rehearsed a thousand times, during each new arrest following the classic kick to the door. “The fun’s over!” said one, who seemed to be the inspector in charge, though any of the three could have said it. “You’re under arrest! Get moving to the DGS and don’t pull any nonsense—this isn’t a night for partying!” Teo tried to protest, claiming to be the son of a general, but the inspector—accustomed to demanding silence from detainees as a means of coercion—struck him in the face with the back of the hand holding the gun, while ordering him, “Shut up and obey, you fucking anarchist!” His cheek burned with pain, and when he brought his hand to it, he felt the familiar warmth of his own blood. They allowed him to go to the bathroom to wash the wound and apply something to stop the bleeding, but reminded him once again that being under arrest meant he had to remain silent—or they’d make the other cheek bleed too. Teo obeyed , but he told himself that as soon as his father found out how he’d been treated, that would be the last time that beast ever hit an innocent person. Betsy said nothing because she knew from experience what happened during an arrest, but she felt the blow that the inexperienced and unsuspecting Teo had received as if it were her own. CHAPTER XI Doña Isabel had already peeked out from the main balcony several times to see if she could spot Teo on the street, just in case he was hanging out with one of his girlfriends on a night like that. Franco had declared a state of emergency, and vehicles loaded with police patrolled the city, blaring their sirens to intimidate potential rioters. Water cannon trucks and a few armed armored vehicles had taken control of the city’s most troubled areas following the large demonstration. Many students had gathered on the university campus, where they were pursued and dispersed with high-pressure water jets and the occasional rubber bullet. The university president—a man of strong moral principles and more liberal than was tolerated—lodged an official complaint with the Minister of the Interior regarding the police’s illegal occupation of the campus, but the state of emergency permitted it. “The police occupation of the university is an attack on culture and on intelligence,” he wrote to the minister. “It is as if Millán Astray were once again shouting, ‘Down with intelligence! Long live death!’ in the face of our illustrious Miguel de Unamuno.”—and other remarks to that effect, arguing against indiscriminate police brutality, even against the regime’s own young recruits. The Minister of the Interior, who was reluctantly staying in his office that day, furrowed his brow, leaned back in his stately black leather armchair, nervously scratched an indeterminate spot on his shiny bald head, and muttered under his breath: “This one will have to be purged—for being a communist!” He then wrote in his notebook, “Purge the rector of Complutense University,” and called the DGS to find out how the clashes had occurred. “It was the usual Marxist agitators, Your Honor,” replied the head of the police operation. “Until we lock them all up, there will be no peace or order on the streets of Madrid.” ” “Well, lock them all up once and for all!” replied the minister, visibly agitated, so that his comment would be interpreted as an order. “At your service, Your Honor! We’ve already locked up a few, and we’re searching safe houses. Let’s see if we can give you some good news by the end of the day!” The minister didn’t press the matter. He hung up the phone, closed his planner, and muttered in frustration: “No, in the end we’ll have to give in on something to calm things down. We’re not going to lock up half of Madrid!” It was eleven o’clock, and there was still no sign of Teo. The general, alarmed, called the DGS headquarters at Puerta del Sol to see if he’d been arrested, because in those days not even the children of high-ranking military officers were spared. “No, General, we haven’t registered anyone by that name, but… . who knows, maybe… well, he could be in custody without having been booked yet… There are over a hundred detainees, and you can imagine the bureaucratic chaos we’re dealing with… “But surely you have a list of their names!” “Of course, General, there must be one somewhere; I’ll check with my colleagues right now and get back to you.” “ And what do you know about the wounded? Let’s see if he’s at a first-aid station—and I’ll have to give them a good scolding for being undisciplined! —Yes, sir; I mean, no, sir! I mean… well, I don’t know… but I’ll ask a colleague right now and get back to you… You see, I’m not actually in charge of this operation… To tell you the truth, it’s been handled a bit carelessly, without discipline… Everyone’s giving orders here! Well, I’ll get back to you right away, General… I’ll call you in five minutes, but rest assured, General, that if any misfortune had befallen… well, your boy—you know what I mean—we’d certainly know about it! So Teo wasn’t dead, but there was always the possibility that he was wounded or simply bruised, which was indeed the case. The general had long been concerned about Teo, whom he’d ordered to be discreetly watched ever since he entered college—which was why the police had tracked down the safe house in Prosperidad, to find out who he was associating with. But the general was also firmly resolved, if necessary, to disown his own son if it were proven that he belonged to any of the underground political parties—but there would be no mercy if he were also a communist. It was, of course, an inevitable and irrevocable decision. “I’m telling you right now, Isabel, that if it turns out the boy is a member of the Communist Party, I’ll disinherit him today and let the Reds in Moscow feed him!” Doña Pura couldn’t sleep either. Thank goodness that on her little transistor radio—protected by an exquisite crocheted cover she’d made herself—she could follow, with big tears streaming down her cheeks, Alberto Oliveras’s latest humanitarian feat on Radio Madrid. That particular night, the drama was at its peak: no less than two innocent children were asking listeners for help to buy the pacemaker that would save their poor mother’s life. “It must be an expensive device,” thought the sensible woman. “I’m sure they have to import it from abroad .” To Doña Pura, expensive things were always foreign. But garlic, for example, could be Spanish, because it was cheap. Her little transistor radio was foreign because it was expensive, but the kitchen broom was Spanish, because it was cheap. As for her tiny radio, it simply didn’t make sense to her that something so small and without a plug could be listened to in bed, quietly and without bothering anyone—not just Oliveras, but also radio soap operas, news, dedicated music, and other things she hadn’t yet managed to discover due to her lack of skill at turning the tuning dial. “Only foreigners know how to do this,” she insisted in awe, unable to hold back more big tears of emotion when Oliveras, at last!, was able to share the happy news with the two children that their mom would be getting a pacemaker. “One of these days I’ll be on the radio asking for one for myself, because this heart of mine is on its last legs!” Then she thought about what might have happened to Teo, and it all started over again: her heart was racing. The phone rang around 11:30 p.m., and both Doña Pura and the others in the house knew what it meant: it was undoubtedly news about young Master Teo. If Conchita had been home, she would have been strictly required to answer the phone, whether during the day or late at night; she was supposed to say, “This is the Castroviejo de Zúñiga residence, how may I help you?” So it had to be Doña Pura who answered the phone, and the poor woman was already in the hallway, dragging a slipper that, in her haste, wouldn’t stay properly on her swollen foot. “Leave it, Pura, I’ll answer it; this is something to do with the boy,” said the general, stepping in front of the cook. The man was furious. He knew his son was already half a communist, not because of but because he loved communist things, like arthouse films in their original language. He was of the opinion that a patriot never watches a film in its original language—and with subtitles, no less.—Yes, go ahead; Francisco Castroviejo speaking… The DGS?… Why was he arrested? ... I can hardly believe it, but I knew my boy wasn’t keeping good company!... Yes, I’ll be right there; half an hour… and don’t you lay a finger on him or I’ll punch you! Doña Isabel was also alarmed. Deep down, she felt guilty. She thought it must have been the shopkeeper—her increasingly unwelcome lover—who had filled his head with all those absurd ideas about free love and other anarchist nonsense. He’d surely told him how liberal his own mother was, and Teo had misinterpreted . She wanted to break it off; to tell the anarchist to get lost, but she was afraid he’d go and tell her husband the whole story. She wasn’t so worried about herself as she was about him. No doubt her husband would kill him—or perhaps, given the times we’re living in, it wouldn’t come to that—but either way, he’d put him behind bars for a long time, and the good woman, despite everything, was grateful to him. “I’ll go with you, Francisco ; the child needs his mother right now.” No; it wasn’t that she had suddenly rediscovered her maternal instinct—it was that she was terrified of what Teo, under those delicate circumstances, might tell her husband. “You stay here—this is a man’s job!” “Men? But what men?” she thought, annoyed. She had known no other men besides the boy at the grocery store—the anarchist who was likely responsible for indoctrinating her poor child. Her husband, as big and imposing as he was—especially in his dress uniform with all his medals and decorations—had always seemed to her like a little boy playing soldier. From her perspective as a woman, a man should be good for more than just giving and following orders, conquering cities, and ordering the execution of enemies; he should prevent his own wife from having an anarchist lover. That was her idea of a man! The general put on his field uniform, because given the circumstances, it was best that he could be quickly identified. It wasn’t a night to be out in civilian clothes, and even with the uniform, it remained to be seen whether the “grays” would screw up. That’s why he called the Interior Ministry to request an escort; two motorcyclists would suffice, and he’d turn on the siren—the one he hadn’t used since the days when he was chasing the maqui. He checked to make sure the service pistol was loaded; he holstered it and looked at himself in the mirror. It was absurd to worry about appearances on a night like this, he thought, but a general must not only be one but also look the part. Yes; he looked like a general— he had the right physique, the right height, his haircut was impeccable, and his mustache was just right for such a high rank. Too bad that, given the hour, he couldn’t also show off his impressive gold-rimmed sunglasses—the ones he’d gotten for free at the American base store in Torrejón! “But why does this kid have to hang out with those kinds of friends? What more could this wretch ask for ?” he mused as he shifted his pose in front of the mirror. “It’s all Isabel’s fault. I told him: to be a good patriot, he has to pursue a military career. Philosophy and Letters! But what the hell is this ‘Philosophy and Letters’ nonsense! Literature, maybe, but philosophy! All philosophers are communists! There’s the whole story: Ortega y Gasset, or that bearded bastard Marx and the other one, that Jengel guy—or whatever his name is—all Reds! Not to mention half-sissies. Philosophy and Literature…! “Let’s see how I’m going to set this self-important philosopher straight now!” He pulled his cap down over his eyes; he felt the service weapon in its holster once more, and called the cook to tell her to have something ready for when Teo arrived, and she replied that she’d already thought of that. They knocked on the door, and Doña Pura—though it wasn’t her custom—opened it, and the bodyguards appeared. They stood at attention in front of the poor woman, whose legs were already trembling from the shock. Fortunately, the general appeared, because otherwise she would have collapsed. —“ “Let’s head to the Puerta del Sol, and don’t stop at the traffic lights!” Madrid is a great city with wide avenues and lively, traditional neighborhoods, but on that particular night it seemed like a ghost town. Once out on the street, the general stopped to light a cigarette, looked around, smacked his lips, and remarked to the driver: “Just like during the Civil War!” “These Reds never give us a break!” The driver nodded twice: the first time out of obligation, the second because of the unique situation and the emphasis with which the general had uttered those two simple yet forceful phrases with historical overtones; the driver didn’t dare reply, given the complexity of the subject. The driver had been a member of the Requetés, and he’d been with the general during the capture of Sigüenza, and he found it amusing that he’d saved his life by remembering a password—one as misleading for those times as this one: “Franco, Mola.” In other words, “Franco mola!” as his son used to say at Fuerza Nueva rallies, because he was a Falangist but a modern one. What was extraordinary was that, with only one eye, he was a general’s driver, but he managed just fine. The only thing he found strange was the rearview mirror; he lacked perspective and misjudged distances. But with practice and determination, he learned to park on the first try by instinct, as he used to say. He lost his eye in Alcolea del Pinar, but not in combat—rather, because of a prank by a noncommissioned officer, a certain Eugenio Martínez from Teruel. He told him: “ I want to see that rifle as clean as a whistle, and the barrel well-oiled.” He peered down the barrel to check if it was clean and well-oiled, and that idiot, right at that very moment, slapped him on the back and said, “Jacinto, you’ll live to a ripe old age because you’re disciplined.” The bullet blew out his eye, but he survived the rest of the war. He took comfort in the idea that it was better to lose one eye than both eyes and the rest of his body. After all, things didn’t turn out so badly for him. When the war ended, he showed up at the general’s house. “I’m Jacinto, General! Don’t you remember me? The one who lost an eye at Alcolea del Pinar, after the battle of Sigüenza.” “Jacinto… Jacinto…? Ah, yes, of course! Jacinto, from Tafalla, right? “What a good memory you have, General—you still remember me, even with all the things and worries you must have on your mind!” “Well, Jacinto, what can I do for you?” “Well, General, I was wondering if you might be so kind as to find me some work… With this eye all messed up and with so much hunger and a shortage of everything—well, you can imagine. But I assure you that if my eyes were working properly, I wouldn’t have come to bother you.” “You’re not bothering me at all, for heaven’s sake! Let’s see—what’s your line of work?” “During the war, I drove an armored truck. I even got to drive an Italian tankette! Not to brag, but I’ve always been good with mechanics.” “It’s a deal! Stop by the Motor Pool tomorrow, and we’ll see if you’re any good behind the wheel—we’re short on drivers for all the military personnel we have here in Madrid.” And that’s how he became the general’s driver, with whom, however, he never developed as close a relationship as he did with Doña Isabel, who made him her confidant. They headed down Goya Street to Colón Square. There they had to let an ambulance pass—the only vehicle they encountered along the way. They took the Castellana toward Cibeles Square, and drove up Calle de Alcalá. As they approached Puerta del Sol, the police vehicle traffic became more noticeable. “They shall not pass!” thought the general, recalling the images that place evoked for him as he cleaned tobacco residue from his cigarette holder. “So we wouldn’t pass, huh? Well, here we are!” ” The motorcyclists forced the police cars to make way for the official vehicle so it could park right in front of the entrance to the General Directorate of Security. Jacinto, his gaze perpetually distant yet alert and helpful, hurried to open the door for the general. Upon seeing the officer’s rank, the sentries at the gate snapped to attention with such force that they nearly cracked their heads open on their submachine guns. An orderly hurried to alert the guard and notify the chief inspector of the general’s arrival, and before he even crossed the threshold of the building, the chief inspector himself came out to greet him. “At your service, General! What a , huh? “Get to the point, Inspector. Where’s my boy?” “In my office… Oh, and don’t worry about the wound… it’s nothing serious…” “What wound? Didn’t I tell you not to lay a hand on him?” “No one here has laid a hand on him, General. Your boy must have bumped into something during the arrest… ¡ You know the kind of commotion that breaks out in these situations! —Well, if that’s the case, he even deserves it! —You’re being reasonable… Before you go into my office to speak with your son, I want to bring you up to speed on the situation. The matter involving your son… is quite serious. He’s linked to a dangerous anarchist group… We’ve got them on file as terrorists… —My son with terrorists? That’s a very serious accusation, Inspector, I hope you have some basis for it, because if not!… But the general knew his son might be a terrorist. He’d come prepared to disinherit him for being a communist, but now he wasn’t quite sure what the punishment should be for being part of a terrorist group. If it were proven that he was one of them, even the death penalty would be fully justified. In any case, not even the fact that he was the general’s son could spare him from some exemplary punishment. “It would set a bad precedent!” the general thought, as if by reflex. —We didn’t arrest your son at the demonstration , General, but in an apartment in Prosperidad, with a woman we had on file as a suspected terrorist. “A real slut who must have lured your boy with her dirty tricks!” The general listened, speechless. He was quickly coming to terms with the idea that he’d never had a son, so as not to have any pangs of conscience if he were forced to support his conviction—even the death penalty, if necessary. It was a good thing the inspector had warned him, because he was no longer sure if he felt any affection for him. During those ten minutes of conversation, Teo was no longer a Castroviejo de Zúñiga, but at most a Buenaventura, because he didn’t deserve to bear his noble surname. It was nothing more than a suspicion that had been lingering in his mind for years: that the Buenaventuras weren’t entirely above board, because they must be descendants of Jewish converts. They came from Gandía, and everyone along the coast is of mixed heritage but always with Jewish blood: merchants, peddlers, charlatans, pirates, seafarers, and so on. There was no race like the Castilian one; there was no nobility outside the austere Castilian lands—but of the old kind. The Buenaventuras were too rich to be Castilians, or even Maragatos, Leonese, or people from La Mancha. They were from the Mediterranean, which is to say from everywhere and nowhere. Something like the Catalans. “What are the Catalans?” the general asked himself. “Mountain folk and peasants! Distrustful and fearful. Those on the coast aren’t Catalans, but Jews—like the Buenaventuras! That’s why they’re rich, unlike the Castilians, who are poor but honest.” If his son was a terrorist, it wasn’t his fault but that of the Buenaventuras and the School of Philosophy and Letters. If it turned out he was a heartless bastard, he himself would personally meet with the university president and ask him bluntly: “What kind of crap do they teach the kids here?: Marxist filth?” But it wouldn’t end there; he would immediately send a letter to the Ministry of the Interior demanding that they carry out some purges—starting with the university president, and then whoever else was necessary! CHAPTER XII Overwhelmed by his violent breakup with Betsy, Teo sat in silence in the chief inspector’s office, unable to grasp exactly what was happening. He hadn’t committed any crime, nor was he an anarchist; he’d simply been caught making love to a girl in an apartment in the densely populated Prosperidad neighborhood, and —precisely because of the tragic circumstances of their separation—he believed he was already in love with, and that couldn’t possibly be a crime. But even if, due to some obscure legal trick—of which he was, of course, unaware—such an act were not permitted, that was still no reason to have been treated with such violence. He tried to remember the face of the inspector who had struck him so that, as soon as his father arrived, they could track him down and punish him appropriately. But when the general finally appeared in the office, followed by the chief inspector and the very same police officer who had arrested and beaten him—without showing any remorse or nervousness—he realized that the three of them were conspiring against him, and for the first time he realized that he had committed some crime serious enough to deserve that treatment, even with his own father’s approval. For this reason, he didn’t have the courage to report the violent police officer and hoped that they would explain his situation to him. The general, for his part, could not accept that this frightened and confused young man was now his own son, so he had to make a great effort to recognize him and address him as such, rather than as what was listed in the arrest warrant: “Member of a dangerous anarchist group.” Given his rank, the chief inspector offered him his own office chair so that the general would feel comfortable during the interrogation, and ordered the police officer who had struck him to leave the office, because not only were his services no longer needed, but once the general had recognized him as his own son—even though he was beginning to disown him—he was no longer necessary. The chief inspector sat down in the other available chair, and when the three were comfortably seated in their respective places according to their rank, the interrogation began. The general made a slight gesture of and broke the tense silence with a familiar remark: “You’re going to drive your mother to her grave with this upset!” But Teo didn’t respond, because he hadn’t done anything to upset her. In fact, that very same day he had told her about his relationship with Betsy, and his mother had approved of it; she had also warned him that Betsy was most likely on the pill—which turned out to be true. In light of Teo’s silence, the general felt morally justified in treating his own son like a criminal, because he showed no sign of remorse when, specifically to gauge his reaction, he mentioned his own mother. “Since when have you been an anarchist?” he asked suddenly, exchanging a professional glance with the inspector to make it clear that he would interrogate him without regard for the fact that he was his own son. The police officer gave an affirmative nod, as if to signal that the interrogation was off to a good start. “I’m not an anarchist, and I’m your son!” Both the general and the chief inspector were somewhat taken aback by the unexpected response, especially the reference to their family relationship, which dampened the general’s good spirits and would make the interrogation more severe in tone. But the general did not want to give the impression of weakness in front of the chief inspector, nor did he want to suggest that such a circumstance could change anything, and he replied with such severity that Teo immediately realized he wasn’t speaking to his father, but to a general from the bunker, interested above all in knowing his ideological affiliation. “As for being my son, we’ll see about that; I don’t have an anarchist son!” The chief inspector, after a few moments of bewilderment, felt pleased; the general was as professional as a pine tree’s bark. Given the circumstances, the family connection was no mitigating factor. If the boy was an anarchist, he was so despite being the son of a general, and they had to find out. “I believe, General, that your son is trying to cover for someone,” the inspector interjected, knowing full well that the anarchist, in reality, must be Betsy, the only one on file as such. The general reacted and redirected the questioning to let the inspector know he’d taken the new lead on board. “Who is the girl who was with you in the apartment? Who are her accomplices? “Where is she? Where have they taken her? What have they done to her?” Teo asked in turn, eager to get some concrete answers and organizing his questions according to what he deemed their importance. “Come on! What the hell is this? We’re the ones asking the questions here!” the inspector interrupted, out of his ingrained habit of allowing only concrete answers from detainees — “Pardon my interruption, General, but the accused are not authorized to ask questions—only to answer ours!” “You’ve heard the inspector…” confirmed the general, who was beginning to realize his lack of experience in conducting an interrogation. “I don’t know anything, and even if I did, I wouldn’t turn them in!” “So, are you a communist?” —The general asked him that question because it was the only answer that truly interested him; everything else was incidental and a matter for the political police. He just wanted to know whether, given the seriousness of the accusation, he had a son or not. Teo bit his lip in rage and looked at his father in bewilderment, who, judging by the apparent calm with which he awaited the answer, already took it for granted that his son would disown him. Then he exchanged a fleeting glance with the inspector, who seemed to be asking him for a full and swift confession, as if he had other urgent matters to attend to. For the third time in his entire simple existence—the first having been when the little monkey went haywire and the second when he watched Betsy being beaten—Teo felt the anguish typical of an event of extreme gravity. Admitting that he was a communist without even knowing what that might entail was undoubtedly an act of courage, in solidarity with Betsy, and his first act of personal defiance against his thoughtless father. He was already becoming fully aware that being a communist in Spain constituted a serious crime, and for the sake of contradicting his father, he wouldn’t have minded facing the punishment. However, it seemed absurd to him to pay for a guilt he didn’t understand. He also thought of his mother and his grandmother, and out of the love he felt for them, he found a compromise—one that didn’t betray any of the people he truly loved. “They’ve already treated me as if I were one! What What does it matter what I say now?” The inspector realized that the boy had lost his fear of the full force of the law, perhaps because, despite understanding the gravity of the charges, he felt protected by his father’s rank; that’s why he thought the general wasn’t handling the interrogation well, and that other, more forceful and crude techniques would be necessary to extract a complete and detailed confession from him. But it was obvious that they could not be used given his relationship to the general. He therefore considered the case a lost cause and the rest of the interrogation a waste of time. “As I was saying, General, your son is trying to protect the girl and her cronies and won’t talk.” You’d better take him home and try to convince him the nice way. Your wife must be very worried.” The general felt offended, both by the inspector’s insinuation—that he was capable of winning a war but useless at maintaining peace as the inspector understood it—and by Teo’s stubbornness, which, given his composure and cool-headedness, had completely thrown him off balance. For a moment he appealed to his sense of patriotic duty, and even though Teo was still his own son, he would have allowed them to question him without him present, but he knew all too well the violent methods and tactics of the political-social police, and, despite being willing to disinherit him—just as he had assured his wife before learning of his arrest and his bad associations—he could not consent to it when it came to his own flesh and blood. It was as if they were going to torture him himself. He slammed his fist down on the table to make it clear that he was giving in but not defeated, and exclaimed as he stood up: “All right, Inspector, we won’t waste any more of your time; I’ll take care of him at home. I guarantee you he’ll lose any desire to hang out with communists in less than a week!” Teo didn’t want to leave that place without knowing what had become of Betsy, whom he was sure they had treated with far less consideration than him, but he realized it would be pointless to ask about her again. Just thinking about what they might have done to him had he not had his father’s alibi sent a shiver of terror down his spine, but what distressed him even more was the certainty that Betsy had been brutally beaten and might even be dead by now, without even her own parents knowing it. But he took comfort in the thought that, after all, a political prisoner was like a hostage of the opposition—the more living hostages they had, the stronger they felt, and the more weakened the opposition became. Besides, if he insisted on asking about her fate and whereabouts, perhaps instead of setting things right, she would only make them worse, because she knew her father would do everything in his power to ensure she never saw her again. Clinging to the faint hope that her mother could influence the general to find out her whereabouts—and, if she were detained, secure her release—she allowed herself to be led meekly by the same inspector who had arrested and beaten her out onto the street, where the driver took take charge of him—a man she knew it was useless to report. As they parted, the police officer seemed nervous, perhaps fearing he might face some kind of punishment for having treated the general’s son in the usual manner; but upon seeing the father standing at the door, engrossed in conversation with the inspector—without casting a single glance his way, whether of complicity or veiled accusation—he calmed down, and even had the cynicism to apologize: “Sorry, kid; I didn’t mean to hurt you. These things are inevitable during arrests!” “You understand?” he said, as if suddenly realizing he’d struck an old friend by mistake. Teo didn’t reply because he knew he had no case. Upon seeing the wound on his cheek and the bruising from the blow, the driver was alarmed by Teo’s condition, because he knew that his mother—with whom he shared a deep bond of friendship and understanding—would be deeply upset. “Is the young master hurt?” “It’s nothing, Jacinto; don’t go alarming my mother. It’s just a scratch.” Meanwhile, the general was finalizing the details of his personal revenge against the anarchists, and since he needed to vent to someone and there was only one person available, he unleashed all his anger and frustration on poor Betsy. “Lock that anarchist bitch up behind bars for a while—and keep her incommunicado! You know what I mean—make sure my son can’t find her.” “Don’t worry, General, it will be done as you order. In any case, she’s in for a world of trouble.” The apartment was a nest of Reds. We have so much incriminating evidence that if they don’t get twenty years, they’ll be close to it. He shook the chief inspector’s hand; when the inspector pulled away, he raised his hand to his forehead, standing at attention with as much martial bearing and vigor as he could muster. He exchanged a broad smile of complicity with him—and also of servile deference befitting the great difference in rank , and the general, convinced that his honor was safe under Betsy’s relentless punishment, joined his disowned son in the back seat of the car. Jacinto set off for home, but without the police escort, since the return trip posed no difficulties and was not urgent. Madrid was calm, but far from being pacified. For some time, father and son remained silent, because neither had anything to say to the other, and the silence itself made their mutual hostility clear. Teo was eager to get home to confide in his mother and do whatever was in his power to find Betsy and free her, and the general was racking his brain to find the best way to rehabilitate his son and bring him back to the traditional family life to which he belonged. It seemed to him that a first step was to threaten him from the least political angle, so as not to provoke his principles, if he had any: — “What am I going to do with you? I promised your mother I’d disinherit you if you were a communist, and now I have to keep my word of honor!” he said, convinced that Teo couldn’t bear the idea of having to earn a living on his own, and that this would be a first and decisive argument to make him come to his senses and renounce his supposed and misguided Marxist past. “For now, I’m cutting off your weekly allowance and let’s see how you manage! But Teo didn’t react the way the general had expected, because he knew he could count on financial help from his mother and even his grandmother. So he didn’t flinch at the threat and didn’t even reply; rather, from his tense but serene expression, the general realized that his task wasn’t going to be easy. “Don’t you realize the gravity of the situation? How can I possibly accept a communist in my own home?” the general exclaimed, almost pleadingly, as he realized his son was displaying an unexpected—and even unknown—strength of character. “I’m not a communist; I don’t have any political views; I don’t understand politics!” Teo protested once more. “ “So I can’t go out with whoever I want without being accused of being a communist?” “But that girl is an anarchist—a terrorist!” “Impossible! Betsy can’t be a terrorist…” exclaimed Teo, convinced that this was the case. “You’ve arrested her just for having her own ideas… …which aren’t like yours! “There are ideas that cannot be tolerated!” “Why?” “Because they can’t be! Because they go against the Caudillo and the Movement, against decency, against religion, against honor, against history, and against the fatherland! That’s why they cannot be allowed!” “But the fatherland isn’t your property; the fatherland belongs to all Spaniards, no matter how they think!” —Teo replied with such energy and personal conviction that from that moment on the general realized his son was undoubtedly a communist, because he spoke and reasoned like a communist. For a moment he was on the verge of ordering the driver to turn the car around and hand him over to the inspector to do with him as he pleased, since he himself certainly lacked the skills and knowledge necessary to make him change his his mind. But he weighed their family ties once more, along with the feeling that he himself would be the one punished. From that critical moment on, both fell into the silence of enemies, while each pondered how to attack the other. Several fleeting and radical ideas crossed the general’s mind, such as locking his son in his room for two or three months, or in the brig at his own barracks, or forcibly enlisting him in the Legion. The idea of the Legion struck him as the most severe and redemptive punishment, but in all likelihood he would desert, and the matter would end in a public scandal. Confused and lacking an acceptable punitive strategy, they arrived home, where the mother and grandmother were waiting; the grandmother, alarmed by her daughter’s situation, had gone to the general’s house in anticipation of news about her grandson. As expected, the mother was on the verge of fainting when she saw the state her son was in. The grandmother took charge of him, because she was the only one who didn’t lose her head and was able to act calmly and methodically. The general got tangled up in a pointless argument with his wife, trying to explain to her the seriousness of the crime Teo had committed, but the good woman, indignant, exclaimed: “What communists? Give me a break, Francisco! The thing is, to you everyone is a communist! How can our son be a communist when he’s still just a child?” CHAPTER XIII The general did not carry out his threats to lock Teo up in the barracks’ cell or forcibly enlist him in the Legion, because he did not want it to become public knowledge that he had fathered a communist son—or worse yet, an anarchist. He would have handled it better if he’d known the boy was gay—something he’d actually suspected for quite a few years. At least now he couldn’t question his sexual orientation, which, in a way, filled him with patriarchal and macho pride. At the suggestion of his wife—who at first didn’t even want to discuss the matter of Betsy, because she was terrified by the idea that her son’s girlfriend might be poor and, on top of that, a terrorist—they decided he should continue leading a normal life; that he return to college so he’d be distracted and have something to think about, and they told themselves that the solution lay in Teo spending more time with people of his own social class and ideology. To that end, they had no doubt that a vacation on the Costa del Sol—specifically in Marbella, which at the time was becoming fashionable among Madrid’s upper class—would be good therapy for his ideological deviation. They felt it had been a mistake to keep spending their summers in the countryside, with no other distraction than gazing at the landscape, helping with farm work—whether in the almond groves or olive groves, depending on the season—or riding bikes with his cousins, who, given their status as farmers (albeit landowners), would surely be left-wing, as were all the people from the Levante region, starting with the anarchist singer-songwriter Raimón. “In Marbella, they’re all right-wing!” Doña Isabel remarked to the general, who associated the right with wealth and not to any particular ideology, trusting that her husband would not object to the idea, because she was dying to spend the summer in Marbella, and this was a good opportunity to overcome his reservations. “But they’re foreigners, Isabel! A bunch of degenerate Europeans who’ve gotten rich through the underhanded schemes of Jewish capitalists!” “But the boy needs a change of scenery; he needs to stop hanging out with poor, violent people.” “What’s wrong with La Granja de San Ildefonso?” “For heaven’s sake, Francisco, it’s a sanatorium for old people! We’ll leave your mother at the clinic like we do every year—let the poor woman keep thinking we’re taking her to San Sebastián—and we’ll head to the coast, just like all the well-to-do families in Madrid do.” You’ll see few ministers at La Granja, but in Marbella, the entire government! —Franco doesn’t go to Marbella! —What do you expect the poor man to do there? Marbella is for young, modern people, and he already has one foot in the next world! —Don’t talk nonsense, Isabel; the Caudillo is practically immortal! He’ll only die when we no longer need him! —But we don’t need him anymore, Francisco; try to get it through your head that times have changed! The general was seething with indignation, which he could barely contain, because he was incapable of even vaguely imagining what Spain would be like without Franco. For him, one thing depended on the other, just as geraniums depend on their pot; Spain was inconceivable without Franco. If he died—which would be inevitable—it was essential and necessary that someone would replace him as if he were his reincarnation. But it was true that a murky shadow of doubt constantly crossed his clouded mind: Juan Carlos. Would he be faithful to the Movement’s sacred and patriotic principles? Had it served any purpose that Franco had kept a close watch on him throughout his long period of Francoist indoctrination? Would separating him from his parents and from all influences opposed to the regime from the moment he set foot on Spanish soil have had any effect on the prince? Was he, after all, a good Spaniard or simply just another foreign prince? The only thing that calmed him was the thought that if he had been chosen by the Caudillo himself as his successor, the Caudillo must have known why… But the general wasn’t so sure! Only his grandmother took Teo’s side from the very beginning, but given her strained relationship with the general, there was little she could do for him. “My greatest sin in this world was not sending your mother to a convent when she told me she wanted to marry a military man,” ,” his grandmother told him, “but, of course, when you were born I changed my mind, and I was glad because you were such a calm and cheerful baby, and from the moment I saw you I knew you wouldn’t be a soldier. You just have a feeling about these things. Despite his mother’s refusal to influence the general to help him locate Betsy’s whereabouts, in the days and weeks following the big demonstration, he never for a moment ceased in his efforts to find her, but he realized, almost with horror, that he didn’t even know her real first name, much less her last name. At the college registrar’s office, her personal file had vanished as if by magic; not even the bureaucrats in charge could explain it. Neither in class nor in the cafeteria did his classmates know any more about her than he did. “I only know she lived in San Blas, but don’t ask me to tell you where,” said the only person who had become close to her during that first semester. What tormented him most was knowing that she had been arrested precisely because of him—because her father had ordered that she be watched. Not only her, but that arrest allowed them to break up the entire group that used to meet there—including the friends he’d met at the bar on Argüelles—so he couldn’t count on them to help him find her either. His desperation somehow restored the psychological function of his old childhood toy, to whom he confided his worries and frustrations every night. “How could I be such an idiot as to let her to remain imprisoned while I—the one truly to blame—am free and so at ease?” He confided in the toy, with which he had always maintained an emotional bond capable of comforting him in his most depressing moments. The little mechanical animal, which over time and with changing fashions had taken on an utterly grotesque and outdated appearance, seemed to understand him and encourage him, as if telling him to trust in the future, because time—just as it would happen with the toy itself, mends all things that seem broken. Only Teo was able to clearly understand that message; everyone else found it absurd that a young man—who had even been arrested by the regime’s political police—would still keep an outdated, faded mechanical monkey as a pet. But Teo sensed there must be a reason, and that time would prove it. Almost every day, after university to the bar on Argüelles, but there was no sign of Betsy’s comrades there, and, aside from them, he didn’t know anyone else. He didn’t even know which political party she belonged to, because he was willing to join whichever one would help him find out where she was. Devastated and increasingly convinced that it was entirely his fault that Betsy might be detained, suffering torture or abuse—not even the little monkey could soothe his guilty conscience anymore—and one day he mustered his courage and went to the General Security Directorate, determined to speak with the chief inspector himself who had interrogated him . “The chief inspector doesn’t receive visitors without an appointment,” replied the police officer at the door, without bothering to ask why he wanted the meeting. But Teo was determined not to leave the building without a concrete answer, so he resorted to a tactic he knew from experience worked well on people of lower social standing: “You don’t know who I am, but I’m warning you—you could be in big trouble if you don’t do what I ask. “Even if you were a general’s son, things are done here according to the rules!” “Well, I am a general’s son!” “And why didn’t you start with that, kid?” The officer had no doubt about Teo’s lineage, because only the true son of a general would have dared to mention his father’s rank in such a place. He nervously dialed a phone number, and after describing Teo, he received the order to let him in. “Well, young man, you’ve gotten your way; a colleague will escort you to his office. And don’t go spreading the word about this incident—I’m just following orders!” The chief inspector welcomed Teo with paternal affection, convinced that the general had kept his promise—that Teo had been cleared of all charges, and that he had come to thank him, but when Teo mentioned Betsy and his desire to know her whereabouts, he realized that the military lacked the capacity to perform such miracles. “Does your father know you’re here?” Teo shook his head, and the inspector rose uneasily from his chair, smoothing out his shirt to conceal his bulging bureaucrat’s belly , and after briefly considering what the most appropriate response might be, he opted for the official line, for a moment he had been on the verge of fraternizing with the boy and warning him of the danger he faced if he insisted on finding Betsy. “The girl is in custody and the case file is classified; I can’t help you… until the investigation is complete.” Teo, outraged, replied to the inspector with the question that had been haunting him since the day of her arrest: “But what crime is she accused of?” “A crime of opinion, classified as a serious offense under the current criminal code! And you’d better forget about that girl, or you’ll get yourself into trouble you don’t understand, and your father won’t always be able to protect you. You, kid, have no idea how dangerous these people are! Or have you forgotten what they did to Carrero Blanco? “But that girl!... “No ‘buts,’ kid. Things in this country are in turmoil, and we can’t show favoritism. If this had happened ten years ago, I would have helped you because of who you are, but these days you just don’t know who your friends or enemies are. If you’re a communist, that’s your business; we’re not going to arrest you for that as long as we have nothing against you. Right now, we’re just following orders, no matter where they come from, as long as they’re from the top. If tomorrow the politicians flip the script, I won’t be the one to object, because family comes before politics. You can tell your father what I’ve told you—let him see that I’m a professional. And now, if you don’t have anything else to ask besides about the girl, let’s wrap up the interview—I’ve got a million things to take care of—but here’s my advice, kid: forget about this whole thing and let time pass—everything will work itself out, and maybe sooner than you think… Teo didn’t know how to interpret the advice. It seemed to give him hope but at the same time painted an uncertain and confusing picture that was hard to foresee. He realized that the inspector had been far too lenient with him given the circumstances, and he resigned himself to the failure of his desperate attempt. As he stood at the office door, with a number leading him toward the exit, the inspector clarified: “But of course she’s alive and well; I’d even say very much alive!” Teo didn’t understand the meaning of the second remark, but the news cheered him up. At least now he knew he could continue his search, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t be in vain. For several Sundays, he wandered through the bleak streets of the working-class neighborhood of San Blas, hoping to find some clue that would lead him to her. But after exhausting walks through half-paved streets and undeveloped wastelands, the only thing he could gather that people must live there, judging by the clothes hanging in the shade of the inner courtyards, or on the clotheslines attached to the tiny cast-iron balconies or windows, protected by cheap shutters—but they were nowhere to be seen. Only occasionally did he come across a group of elderly people sitting on scraps of construction materials left behind after building projects in sunny spots , whom he would ask without even knowing if they were listening: “‘Besy’? That must be a foreign name, and here we’re all Andalusians or Extremadurans,” replied a stiff, toothless little man. “I know a woman named Berta from Dos Hermanas; maybe she’s the one you’re looking for.” “No, Betsy, Betsy; an Andalusian girl, petite and dark-haired, wearing a huge sweater that goes down to her thighs. She’s a student at the Complutense.” The little man looked at Teo in surprise, but since he was facing the sun, he had to squint one eye and cover the other with a farmer’s hand—muscular and disproportionately large. “There aren’t any people with that kind of education around here!” the little man retorted, putting on an air of expertise. “She’s a leftist!” said Teo, no longer thinking about the meaning of his own question and convinced that the man had no idea what he was talking about. When they heard that new clarification, the other elderly men accompanying him simply took their cigarettes out of their mouths and spat the remains of the tobacco on the ground. “Ah, so he must be one of those who gather at the church for the demonstrations!” “Yes, that must be it! Which church?” “Well, which one do you think, sir? The only one there is ! The very one right there in front of you”—and he pointed with his walking stick to a newly built brick building, with hardly any external religious ornamentation, whose only distinguishing feature was a large, slightly tilted iron cross set atop a simple brick tower, where a modest bell tower was presumably located. Teo received this information as if it were a revelation, since it concerned a church—and he bid farewell to the elderly men with so many bows and expressions of gratitude that they felt it was their duty to stand up to say goodbye to such a well-mannered young man, which they did with great difficulty due to their rheumatism and lack of practice. The church was closed, but he wasn’t about to give up now that he had his first lead to find Betsy. He walked around the building and knocked on the first door he he came across, and moments later it was opened by a young man dressed in a dark corduroy suit and an unbuttoned plaid shirt. “Do you know where I can find the pastor?” “I’m the pastor,” he said, ushering him inside what must have been his modest residence. “Well, how can I help you?” “I’m looking for a girl!” "Teo said without pausing to consider the necessity of any explanatory preamble. The priest smiled but wasn’t surprised by the question. “Well, I don’t think this is the best place! But if you come on Saturday afternoon, we have a dance at the parish hall—maybe you’ll find her there…” “That’s not it, Father—I suppose I should call you Father!” Teo clarified, by his attire. The priest merely nodded. Teo continued as if, from that moment on, he were confiding in the priest during confession.—She’s a friend. All I know is that she lives here in San Blas, and that they call her Betsy. “Betsy… Betsy… Ah, yes, Betsy; a slender, dark-haired girl. Yes, she used to come to the meetings… at the parish house. But who told you that I might know her? Teo was overwhelmed with joy and didn’t have the patience to answer the priest’s question. “Where is she, Father; do you know where she lives? “I gather from your interest that you’re good friends or perhaps college classmates…” “Maybe more than that. Can you tell me where I can find her?” The priest understood without being told that this wasn’t a matter of political camaraderie but of romantic passion. Teo didn’t look like a working-class kid, but neither did he look like a potential enemy of his cause, so he didn’t need further clarification. “I can’t help you, young man; I don’t know where she is either. All I know is that since the last pro-amnesty demonstration, neither she nor her comrades have been coming around here. It’s likely they’ve all been arrested ”—the priest clarified a few more aspects of his relationship with her—“I don’t ask about the political affiliations of the workers or students who gather in my church. I don’t know any more about her than you do, but if she’s been arrested, she must be in the women’s prison in Carabanchel, though they could also have transferred her to any other prison, depending on the charges against her… By any chance, is she your girlfriend? “Yes, Father!” Teo replied without the slightest hesitation. “Well, she would be if I’d had time to ask her!” CHAPTER XIV Summer was approaching, and Doña Isabel was obsessed with her figure. Despite her strict diet—which was a source of torment for Doña Pura, who no longer knew what to cook and had even made some phone calls herself to find a good nursing home and put an end to that ordeal once and for all—her hips were expanding in a disorderly and hardly harmonious way. The dreaded cellulite had appeared, and there wasn’t a single swimsuit in all of Madrid that could hide her love handles. “I’m not going to Marbella looking like this!” she would say to the patient Conchita on the weekdays when she was still working in the house, while pinching her love handles in frustration. “But ma’am, it doesn’t matter anymore. People in those places don’t even care about that sort of thing. I’ve seen tourists in bikinis on TV who look like total monstrosities— and they’re so nonchalant, as if they were the queens of their town’s festivals! “On those beaches full of foreign tourists, it doesn’t matter, but in Marbella, Conchita, it’s a whole different story. There, everyone pays attention to appearances—how you dress, where you hang out, who you mingle with—and you have to look cute! How am I supposed to get rid of all this fat in such a short time? —And she looked at herself in the mirror in exasperation, as if begging it not to reflect her as she was, but as she wished to be— “Oh, Conchita, the years are unforgiving! I was so cute when I was twenty… and now… you see, I’m a total cow!” It was all for naught that, out of respect for the social difference between the two women—despite sharing the same anxiety over being out of their social class due to obesity—Conchita tried to console her by assuring her that she was exaggerating and that she looked just the same as always, perhaps a bit more feminine, an idea that, for the young woman, was associated with the excess weight a woman supposedly needed to attract a man with “normal” tastes. But Doña Isabel no longer cared about being attractive—only presentable—according to the aesthetic standards set by Marbella’s social elite, which could be summed up as skeletal and parchment-like. In other words, it was essential to have sun-burned, almost leathery skin and to show one’s ribs and prominent shoulder blades to be considered fashionable—which was not the case with Doña Isabel. Her obsession with her appearance had been the reason why peace no longer reigned in that house, not even for a second. From morning to night, she could be heard complaining about something related to her looks. Sometimes time it was her hair—lacking luster and faded—other times the milky pallor of her skin, and still other times her summer dresses, which she’d give to Conchita just by trying them on in front of the mirror. “ Here, I’m giving you this one too—it makes me look even more like a cow than I already do.” The maid didn’t know what to do with so many barely worn, designer clothes. Half the town was wearing her mistress’s elegant clothes, and rumors were circulating that Conchita had struck it rich from the tourist lottery and was squandering the money on clothes that weren’t even her size—which showed just how much sudden windfall. As for the cook, the poor woman felt as if she were endangering her mistress’s life—even though she cooked practically nothing but chicken broth and salads. What mortified her most was seeing her mistress eat raw carrots, since she wouldn’t even let her grate them and dress them so they’d have a little more flavor. But it was all in vain. For the same reason, her relationship with Teo had lost the warmth and trust of days gone by. Now his mother seemed like a TV diet commercial to him, because every time they had a moment of intimacy, Doña Isabel seemed deaf to her son’s confidences, unable to shake from her mind her obsession with her figure, which could ruin her long-awaited vacation in Marbella. “Don’t tell me, son, that there aren’t any other girls in the world besides her?” his mother replied the one time she set aside her own worries to listen to her son’s. “The daughter of a construction worker! She probably doesn’t even know how to use fish cutlery!” “Mom, don’t be classist; she’s a college student! “And you had to set your sights on a college student who’s the daughter of a construction worker! Aren’t there any daughters of lawyers, or doctors, or architects? But tell me, what college did we send you to? Isn’t it the Complutense? Since when do girls from that social class go to the Complutense?” —She’s a human being just like you and me, and because of me she must be in prison and being tortured. You have to talk to Dad and convince him to get her released. —No, Teo, I’ve never gotten involved in his political affairs! Ask me for whatever you want, honey, but don’t ask me to get involved in politics. No, for heaven’s sake, especially knowing that he’s a an anarchist! Besides, I’m not in the right frame of mind to deal with those things right now—I’ve got enough to worry about with my own problems! Doña Isabel brought the subject to a close because she suddenly remembered that someone had told her that foods high in gluten cause constipation and can lead to obesity, so she called the cook to forbid her from using flour to bread the fish from that day on. — “But then, what do I use to bread it, ma’am?” “Whatever you want, Pura, but forget about flour; don’t let flour ever set foot in this house again!” “So,” Teo asked his mother—realizing for the first time that she was becoming hysterical—“you’re not going to help me…” —“No, dear, I’m not going to bother your father now, when I’ve convinced him to take us to Marbella this year. The best thing is for you to find another girlfriend—a normal girl, not an anarchist, and from your own social class—and that way you won’t have so many problems.” Teo didn’t know how to react. He suddenly realized that his relationship with his mother had never gone beyond a mere family formality, and that she was always absent, incapable of even remotely grasping the typical responsibilities of a mother. Now he realized to what extent his relationship with her had been based on the mere coincidence of having been born from her womb, and to distance herself from him, she’d handed him a mechanical doll to take care of his early upbringing. Suddenly he felt an unbearable desire for revenge against his own mother. He wanted to make her pay for all those years of neglect and indifference, and the only thing that came to mind was to mention her lover. “Raúl’s an anarchist, too, and you don’t turn your nose up at him!” The poor woman was petrified. She went from astonishment to pallor. She looked at Teo as if he were an unwelcome spy trying to meddle in her private life—and she wouldn’t allow that or her own son. In fact, her life had been private for as long as she could remember; that is to say, she’d always done as she pleased, without being accountable to anyone, and this wasn’t going to be the first time she’d changed her attitude, even though it was her own son. “So, you know! You saw us that day, and you’ve been keeping it a secret all this time! Now there’s really nothing I can do for you, Teo, because you’ve shown you can’t trust your own mother! Besides, that’s already in the past… it was a momentary lapse… which even I can’t explain… You haven’t told your father about it, have you, Teo? —No, of course not; and I would have preferred not to know about it either. That’s between you and your conscience! “Honey, you’re too young to understand those things!” “What things?” “What things do you mean? Those things, of course! And please, Teo, don’t keep grilling me—I have a terrible headache. We’ll talk about all this another time if it worries you so much.” “As far as I’m concerned, the matter is settled and forgotten, but what about Betsy?” The mother realized she was caught in an undeniable and subtle form of blackmail, for Teo had shown her that he knew how to play his cards right. She understood this because she was accustomed to half-spoken words and veiled threats, thanks to her own sister’s cunning and family diplomacy. From her, she had learned that family is nothing more than a game of influence and not a matter of affection or love, where the only thing that mattered was to maintain a respectable facade that would allow the family to present itself in public as united, regardless of the reason. It was essential that her husband not find out about her infidelity—not because of the blow to his honor, but because of the family upheaval it would cause. That’s why she considered interceding with her husband on behalf of that girl, whom she knew from the start could never be part of her own family , but who would at least spare her the suffering of being detained. “I’ll do what I can, Teo, but you know your father very well: when he takes a dislike to someone, it’s as if they were dead.” With feigned gestures of a headache, she signaled to him that she accepted the blackmail but did not wish to continue that tense conversation—among other things, because she had never bothered to find out to what extent Teo was a man and gave in to carnal desires, or whether he might still be a virgin. But after learning that he’d been caught in bed with a woman, she felt a certain shame in having to acknowledge that her son no longer saw her as an idealized mother, free from the stigma of sexuality, but rather as a weak and passionate woman—seeing her exactly as she was, with all her physical attributes, which he must surely know by now. It was the end of her son’s innocence—which every mother feels as if the baby she once was were being torn from her consciousness and memory the baby he once was, and practically becoming a stranger, with sexual appetite as his greatest concern and reason for his existence as an adult now devoid of innocence. Teo, for his part, realized that without meaning to, he was blackmailing his mother, trying to achieve his goal without any regard for her feelings. His visceral rejection of Betsy due to her low social class had exasperated him—not because he had ever consciously considered this fact, but because he never saw any obvious sign in Betsy that marked her as the daughter of a construction worker; quite the opposite, in a way he considered her superior to him —more educated and intelligent. That is why, even without truly intending to, but aware that he was facing a momentous crossroads, he weighed both women on the scales of his turbulent emotions and, without a moment’s hesitation, chose Betsy. For that reason, Teo also lost his mother that day. But that was not Teo’s only family loss, nor, unfortunately, would it be his last, in the tragic days leading up to summer. One Saturday afternoon, when only the cook was in the house—not to tend to her duties but because the poor woman was already unable to go beyond her kitchen, and even then she was considering setting up a bed in some corner to avoid having to walk down the long hallway in her wax-polishing slippers, the phone rang at lunchtime—precisely when people don’t usually make calls. The general and his wife, as they had every Saturday since they’d been without a maid, had gone to a neighborhood restaurant, where—due to the lack of domestic help—they already had a table reserved and the special low-calorie menu that the unsuspecting cook had had to learn on the fly. Teo immediately had a gut feeling that this call would bring bad news, but he expected it to be something related to his parents, college, or even—for no particular reason—Betsy. At first, despite the unease caused by the sound of the phone ringing in the desolate house, Teo waited for someone to pick it up, as was customary, but he heard Doña Pura’s weary voice from her room: “ Answer it yourself, young master; I’m busy.” He immediately understood what his task would be. With the sensation of an impending tragedy still making the hairs on his arms stand on end, he prepared to pick up the phone, but not without first taking the precaution of taking a deep breath and trying to calm his still-unjustified apprehension. “Hello?” “Teo, dear, your grandmother has died!” It was Aunt Virtudes who, in that laconic and chilling manner, informed him of the death of the person he loved most in this world. It was such a heavy blow that for a week he didn’t think about Betsy again, as a way of showing his respect for the departed elderly woman, who had served as a mother to him from his birth until the end of his traumatic childhood, when the mechanism of the plush toy. Even after that, his grandmother had been the only one who fully understood his despair, suggesting he take the monkey to a clockmaker to have it repaired, but Teo decided to try his luck with adolescence. The old woman died of a heart attack, caused by the imperceptible disease of kindness, and left this world in time to avoid witnessing further misfortunes in the family —but only after the Caudillo had died and he had watched his funeral on television, for he knew the general’s cunning and, right up until the very last moment, suspected that it was yet another ruse to remain in power from the shadows, pulling the strings from some secret bunker built at the Cruz de los Caídos. Quite some time after the funeral, and given that the country’s political events showed no signs whatsoever of the Caudillo’s indirect influence, she no longer had any doubts: he was truly dead. Given her public aversion to the dictator, it must have been, after all, a good reason to pass peacefully into the next world—even though her beliefs did not allow her to conceive of such a possibility. CHAPTER XV After his grandmother’s sudden and unexpected death and the emotional rift with his own parents, Teo became even more solitary and reserved than usual. He continued to confide only in his childhood toy, not only feeling that it understood him, but also that it still had great surprises and days of happiness in store for him—similar to the happiness he had enjoyed when the mechanism still worked . He knew that life had allowed him only a first taste of what the real thing would be like, once he was free from some curse related to his family environment. With his grandmother dead, despite the pain of her loss, something told him he was on the right path to his liberation. That kind-hearted woman had been the only family tie for which he would have sacrificed his own happiness, and she was no longer there. Nevertheless, in gratitude , he resolved to keep her fond memory fresh and everlasting. His tortuous path to happiness— which could only be found alongside Betsy, was now blocked by unwanted family ties, as if it were a path bogged down by rules and traditions he no longer accepted, where he was sinking and drowning. Leaving home was an unrealistic and, unfortunately, unfeasible solution, because in his entire life he had learned nothing more practical than winding up the little monkey when it still worked . What he was learning in college didn’t strike him as knowledge grounded in reality or as something that could earn him a living, and it was already too late to switch majors and choose, for example, law or medicine. Therefore, he remained tied to his family solely through his weekly allowance, which he continued to receive despite threats to take it away. This dependence and inability to earn a living made him feel inferior than any shoeshine boy, street sweeper, or garbage collector, and he admired the courage of any laborer who got up at six in the morning to go to a job whose pay, after eight grueling hours of mind-numbing, repetitive work, didn’t exceed that of his allowance. He knew that his future happiness depended on his capacity for sacrifice, but for the moment he saw no way to make it happen. Perhaps if he could win Betsy back, he would have enough courage to try to find some paid social work—an indispensable condition for earning her affection, since Betsy would undoubtedly seek in her lover an updated version of her father; that is, a skilled worker, unionized and dignified by fair and equitable collective bargaining agreements. At home, life was carrying out its meticulous work with order but without mercy, for while it threatened to put an end to Doña Pura’s life, it allowed Conchita to carry a new one to term—a child who would likely become a diligent worker in the industrial belt if fate did not stand in his way or surprise him with one of its eccentricities, in which the son of a fitter might even be awarded an honorary doctorate from some prestigious foreign university. For the moment, it was only a supposition, but the father of the future child demanded his wife’s total dedication to motherhood, so in two or three months Conchita would be forced to bring her long period of veiled servitude to the Castroviejo family to an end—a prospect that further frayed her mistress’s nerves. On the other hand, the grandmother’s death derailed all of Doña Isabel’s plans to spend the summer in Marbella, but far from regretting it, she was glad, because given her persistent tendency toward uncontrolled obesity, not only did the black color of mourning flatter her, but La Granja remained the most suitable place for her—and her husband’s favorite—so the arguments over where to spend the summer would come to an end. With a little luck, it might even cool down enough to give her a good excuse not to go to the pool. Little by little, she came to terms with the idea that she belonged to a different generation and could never wear a miniskirt or go swimming in a bikini. She even rediscovered her love for the songs of Pérez Prado, Antonio Machín, and even those of Carlos Gardel and Concha Piquer—whose records she had had stored away in the basement—in place of those by the Beatles, Los Brincos, Los Sírex, Julio Iglesias, and even the Rolling Stones. Her psychological aging precipitated her menopause, and she began to loathe her lover, who, on the other hand—and taking advantage of owning a souped-up “600”—was having quite a bit of success with the waitresses at chic cafés, the stylists at high-end salons, the sales clerks at department stores, and the unskilled factory workers in Madrid’s industrial belt whom he encountered. It was an agreement amicable and nonviolent parting of ways, full of common sense and mutual understanding. “It’s better if we don’t see each other anymore, Raúl; I’m already too old to keep up with this lifestyle,” she told him on the last night they tried in vain to uphold the custom of several years of illicit romantic passion, which had already become a routine devoid of meaning and motivation. Another factor was Teo’s confession that he was aware of her extramarital affairs, which awakened in her, for the first time, a certain sense of guilt— more for having been discovered than for the moral act itself. But rejecting her lover did nothing to improve her strained relationship with Teo, who did not hesitate to remind her of the terms of his blackmail. Finally, with considerable social distaste, Doña Isabel dared to intercede on Betsy’s behalf with the general. “The more we forbid it, the more she’ll want it! In that, she takes after me. My poor mother, may she rest in peace, wanted to send me to a convent when she found out about our engagement. If she hadn’t threatened to lock me away, I’d still be single,” Doña Isabel said to her husband, without pausing to consider the biting undertone of her remarks. But the general wasn’t bothered, because he no longer expected anything from his wife other than formality; of course, he didn’t expect her to feel any affection for him either—an expectation he hadn’t even had when they were newlyweds , since their marriage was a settling of accounts between proper conduct and the moral precepts of the Catholic Church—given that he had made the mistake of engaging in strange and inconclusive sexual relations with her before they were betrothed. But it was a matter of principle, where the sin lay in the intention and not in the consummation of the act itself. The wedding was arranged after the priest who heard his confession assured him that he had committed committed a grave sin of thought—which was equal to or more serious than that of action—for which only marriage offered redemption. The general promised to make inquiries to find out Betsy’s whereabouts, more out of gratitude to fate for the timely death of his mother-in-law—which spared him the indignity of spending the summer with disreputable foreigners—than because he actually remembered the incident. “You’re asking me an impossible task, Isabel, but I’ll see what I can do! If she weren’t an anarchist and were merely a communist, I might still be able to work something out, but anarchists are the plague of our century and they’d all have to be exterminated without leaving a single seed behind! That fateful morning, the general intended to alter his usual route to head toward the Puerta del Sol and mediate, though not with much enthusiasm for the success of his efforts, on behalf of his wayward son’s girlfriend. He told the driver as soon as he ran into him in the building’s garage. Jacinto pointed out that it was rush hour and the traffic would be hellish, so without a motorcycle escort it would take them quite a while to get there, and that perhaps it would be better to take advantage of the midday snack break to attempt the feat of driving by car to the General Directorate of Security. The general thought it a reasonable idea and decided not to change his usual routine. Fate was working tirelessly and with absolute precision to bring to fruition one of its masterpieces of horror. Teo took the elevator with his father and accompanied him to the building’s entrance, and the general offered to drive him to the university, but Teo still could not find any reason for reconciliation as long as his father did not intervene to secure Betsy’s release, and his resentment transcended the passage of time and his tendency to forget. “Thanks, there’s no need to go to all that trouble; I’ll take the bus like I do every day.” At that early hour of the morning, Teo did not know that his refusal had been foretold by the indecipherable force of his strange fate , even though he was on the verge of accepting the offer, tired of making sacrifices without a reason that had yet been justified. But he turned it down. The general, due to domestic upheavals caused by the cook’s advanced age and the maid’s work-related grumbling, didn’t eat breakfast at home but at one of the trendy cafés he passed on his way. He usually had a heavy portion of churros for breakfast, dipped sparingly into a large bowl of coffee with milk, and he knew more or less the exact time the churro vendor made his morning batch, so he could eat them fresh and crispy. So the trip was carried out with such precision and timing that they even had the traffic lights synchronized when they were green, except for one that was out of sync due to a diagonal street that didn’t follow the standard traffic pattern for which the traffic lights were designed. They arrived at the café right on time, and Jacinto double-parked the car as usual, because he remained in the vehicle while his boss went through the routine of that ordinary breakfast—one that was, however, very popular among Madrileños. At exactly twenty minutes past the hour, the general appeared through the café’s revolving door, wiping away traces of from his mouth. Jacinto walked all the way around the car to open the door for the general, who took a seat in the back, and waited for him to make the same trip again, but in the opposite direction. Finally, Jacinto took his seat behind the wheel, but before starting the car, he asked the general if he wanted him to go get the day’s newspapers; however, the general, already feeling his usual heaviness in his stomach and the oily aftertaste of the churros on his palate, had no desire whatsoever to catch up on national news so early in the morning. “Forget it, Jacinto—I’m sure it’s just the same old news!” But the general didn’t know that he himself would be the subject of the big news on that bloody day. Suddenly, two young men on a motorcycle approached the vehicle, and Jacinto—since his vision was from the side of his missing eye, couldn’t see the swift maneuver. The general did see it but didn’t react in time, because it was the last thing he expected. Suddenly, one of them pulled a submachine gun from his jacket and mercilessly strafed the back seat of the car, sweeping the window from side to side until the magazine was empty. Moments later, the motorcyclist’s rear tire screeched on the asphalt, and they vanished as if they had never been there. The general lay with his face bloodied by several bullet wounds to his forehead, neck, and chest, slumped against the door he had tried to open in a belated reflex. His eyes were open, but his vacant gaze was lost somewhere on the car’s ceiling, having died instantly. Jacinto was unharmed, but he was unable to react, frozen by a spasm that paralyzed him, his hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel, his mouth open and gasping, and his eyes bulging, trying not to look anywhere so as not to admit that the general had been mowed down by machine-gun fire and was, in all likelihood, already dead. Teo arrived at the university without having heard about the attack, where the news was already spreading throughout all the departments. When he entered his classroom, a deathly silence fell, and Teo once again felt the same chill run down his spine as when he’d received the call notifying him of his grandmother’s death. He knew, therefore, that someone in his family had died, but he had no clear idea who it might be this time. The professor hadn’t arrived yet, because he was meeting with the university president to decide what to do and whether to cancel classes for his course that day as a sign of mourning. Teo, with the foreboding of death still on his skin, followed by the sympathetic and knowing glances of all his classmates, took his usual seat. For a moment, no one dared to fill him in on his dramatic situation because they were surprised that he didn’t already know. News so personal and momentous should have been conveyed to him by the professor, but the professor hadn’t arrived yet, and the silence was already unbearable, since everyone felt that on that morning it would be impossible to talk about anything other than the murder of one of their classmates’ fathers. Therefore, the classmate sitting next to him spontaneously took on the role of messenger of death, and, clearing his throat nervously to make sure that his voice would respond, he asked—surprised himself that he had to ask the son of the murdered man such a question: “Haven’t you heard about your father yet?” Everyone held their breath so that the answer could be heard clearly in every corner of the classroom. “No. What’s wrong with my father?” Teo simply replied, no longer expecting a specific answer, because he knew immediately that the deceased he had foreseen was his own father. His classmate no longer had the courage to answer him, hoping someone else would take over, but no one dared to utter the words—words that Teo would undoubtedly remember for the rest of his life—because they didn’t want to be part of his nightmares: “Your father was killed in an attack.” But Teo read the answer in the devastated expressions of the entire class, which seemed as if they were already offering him their condolences. At that moment, the professor entered, and upon seeing Teo in his usual seat, he was startled; he approached him with the sorrowful expression of a relative of the deceased and begged him to come with him because the dean wanted to speak with him. In this way, his classmates were spared the responsibility of being part of Teo’s personal anguish by breaking the tragic news to him; instead, it was the dean—more experienced and even professional—who told him and shouldered that painful responsibility. The general’s body lay in state for condolences in the very church where he used to attend Mass and receive Communion every Sunday. The coffin was draped with a national flag bearing the Movement’s symbols, surrounded by four gigantic silver candelabras, and covered with countless funeral wreaths, representing the Army corps to which he belonged, veterans’ associations he had protected, the police force with which he had ties, political parties aligned with his ideology, and even a friendly shopkeeper from whom he regularly purchased his military supplies. Teo, his mother, and Aunt Virtudes stood solemnly and mournfully among the numerous friends and the donors of the respective wreaths, dressed in strict mourning, and hid their listless gazes behind oversized sunglasses, despite the dim light in the church. None of them had shed a single tear for the late general, but each had different reasons. After his grandmother’s death, Teo had the feeling that a storm had been unleashed in his destiny, and that his beloved grandmother’s death would likely be followed by others, because it was part of his personal liberation. His father’s violent death, which corroborated his theory of the storm, gave him a confused sense of dismay mixed with an inevitable feeling of liberation, because his father was the main obstacle to his happiness. It was impossible to shed a single tear under those circumstances; father and son had long since turned their backs on each other. Ever since Betsy disappeared at the General Security Directorate, he had been certain that his father was a hindrance to the future—not just his own, but the country’s as well; yet after his murder, he realized that the assassins were a hindrance too, so now he no longer had a clear idea of where the future actually lay—except, of course, by the side of the missing Betsy. Doña Isabel not only failed to shed a single tear for her murdered husband, but she also suffered a nervous breakdown that deprived her of any more or less logical and human reaction that might have been expected given the dramatic circumstances. From the moment her sister Virtudes came to her house to personally break the news of the loss, she took complete charge of her, for in those first moments she had completely lost her sense of reality, and Doña Isabel had to help her get dressed, wash up, accompany her to the bathroom, try to get her to eat something, and prevent her from bumping into the corners of the house, because she had not the slightest notion of their existence. As she gradually regained consciousness, she merely exclaimed, “My poor mother warned me about this!” And in moments of relative lucidity, she would scream in a panic, “! Now they’ll kill me too!” But she was incapable of mourning her death. For her part, the person who had the least reason to mourn and was the least affected by the bloody attack was undoubtedly Aunt Virtudes. First of all, she could now freely dispose of the estate in Extremadura and gamble it away at poker if she felt like it, because the sisters’ therapy hadn’t yielded the desired results; on the contrary, they had to beg her to find another remedy for her addiction because she had already caused them to lose more than five hundred pesetas, and Doña Virtudes, accustomed to violent creditors, would not forgive the debt. Second, it was no longer necessary to pawn her sister’s jewelry, since in all likelihood the poor woman would not fully regain consciousness and would not even remember this delicate matter. Furthermore, the harvest would be less than half of what had been expected due to the persistent drought, in addition to the poor quality of the seed sown on the advice of the late general. Therefore, Virtudes benefited considerably from the attack, but, despite everything, like the other members of the family, she knew how to feign grief and observe strict mourning; she concealed her treacherous gaze behind the appropriate sunglasses, and after each new expression of condolence, she pretended to be terribly affected. Finally, among the numerous people aligned with the deceased’s rank and ideology who came to offer their condolences, a group of neatly dressed, mourning young people stood out; they wore lapel pins from a far-right organization. After standing at attention before the corpse and performing the typical fascist salute, once they had finished offering their condolences to the family, they specifically approached Teo and made a chilling confession: “We will avenge him!” Indeed, some time after the attack, unknown assailants machine-gunned all the lawyers in a law firm, simply because they had defended labor cases for workers who had been fired or discriminated against by their employers on ideological grounds. It would take Teo many years to shake off the guilt of believing that he had been the instigator of that new political massacre. CHAPTER XVI In the days following the attack, given Doña Isabel’s temporary incapacity, Aunt Virtudes took charge of the situation at Teo’s house. He could have taken care of things himself as the only man in the house, but given his acknowledged psychological immaturity and his aunt’s overwhelming temperament, he did not dare to contradict her countless orders. The first was to suggest that his sister urgently needed the care of a psychiatric hospital; otherwise, she ran the risk of throwing herself into the street from any balcony or window during one of her panic-stricken outbursts—fearing she, too, would be murdered—during which she would run in any direction fleeing from supposed terrorists, banging into walls, tripping over furniture, or locking herself in closets. Teo didn’t dare contradict her, because his mother’s sudden and severe mental illness exceeded his ability to care for her—a responsibility that would have fallen to any son who wasn’t an ungrateful one. For all practical purposes, he was still a minor, and rather than caring for a mother, he himself still needed a mother’s care. “We’ll take her to La Granja, to the very same nursing home where your paternal grandmother is staying. Who knows—now that she shares the same madness, maybe she’ll finally get along with her!” “My mother isn’t crazy,” Teo protested, “she’s just shaken up.” “That’s just a figure of speech, dear!” She made her sign countless documents, of which Teo was unaware, and the result was that Teo had to urgently find new accommodations, and the lavish apartment in the Salamanca neighborhood would be rented out to members of the diplomatic corps—who were willing to pay double the normal rent—and the usufruct would be temporarily administered by her until her sister regained her mental faculties, as required by the law. The idea of renting out the apartment made sense, not only because the potential terrorists who had assassinated the general would likely be keeping an eye on it and wouldn’t dare target diplomats, but also because—as if an epidemic had been declared—in just a few weeks it had become desolate, inhabited only by Teo himself and the old cat, now in its second generation, which, oblivious to all the commotion that disrupted its peaceful sleep, spent its days dozing, curled up in a ball on Teo’s bed, or on the former cook’s bed, depending on the time of day and the position of the sun. Conchita didn’t even bother to come in to ask for her final pay and quietly left on the very day of the attack. Something characteristic of her social class told her that, under those delicate circumstances, she no longer had any place in that family, and it wasn’t even worth calling to offer her condolences to the lady—and she was right. As for Doña Pura, fortunately for her, she had a sense of foresight and anticipated events. When Doña Virtudes showed up in her room with the intention of kicking her out onto the street without so much as an explanation, she—despite her limited mobility—had already packed her small suitcase, the very one she’d kept for thirty-two years, convinced that this wasn’t her home and that sooner or later she’d have to use it , and she checked herself into a clean and peaceful nursing home run by the Little Sisters of Charity. According to the mother superior, it was her pious devotion to Mary and her habit of keeping a little chapel in her kitchen, that convinced her she was a good Christian who could not abandon her faith. But no doubt it also played a decisive role when she was astonished to see the substantial balance in her bank account—after thirty years of sacrifice and saving, wearing practically the same slippers, which she also used for polishing floors. But the official explanation was, of course, her Marian devotion and her advanced age. The first few days of solitude and silence—interrupted only by Aunt Virtudes’s insistent calls, asking if he had already found a more suitable little apartment for himself, because the embassy was pressuring them to rent out the apartment and they wouldn’t always be so lucky—Teo had time to truly come to terms with his situation. Socially, he was incompetent; within his family, practically an orphan; and emotionally, an invalid. Under those circumstances, even his insistence on finding where Betsy was now seemed unfounded. But on the other hand, he felt obligated to remain true to his old feelings until he met her again and found out if there was any reason he’d wasted all that time dwelling on her memory. At least one new development in the country served to distract his attention and test just how much—or how little—he had learned from Betsy: the first constituent elections in forty interminable years of Franco’s dictatorship. The streets of Madrid were filled with political enthusiasm. The cause was the desire to freely elect those capable of drafting and approving a good Constitution, one that would breathe life back into a country ravaged by the worst disease in history: a military dictatorship that no longer had a military base. In early summer, Teo voted for the first time in free elections, and his joy was marred only by Betsy’s absence, for she was undoubtedly one of the thousands of Spanish women and men whose sacrifice had made that extraordinary political event possible. Five interminable months later, the provisional government of the transition to full democracy enacted a general amnesty. Teo knew that the time had come, and that in that political climate of freedom and national understanding, Betsy would appear any day now; and if she were released, she would in all likelihood go to the parish church of San Blas. That is why he decided to visit the priest —the working-class priest—who had known her. “Well, yes, young man, I have good news for you: your friend Betsy is free!” , but… “Please, Father, hurry—tell me where I can find her!” interrupted an excited Teo, ignoring the priest’s reservations. “Wait, son, and calm down a bit, because the circumstances are different from what you imagine… I don’t know if she’ll want to see you…” “But why, Father? Ah, I get it now—she must be upset because she was arrested because of me… But I didn’t know anything; I swear it, Father! “Calm down, son, that’s not why… It’s because… Well, I have an idea: I’ll talk to her to see if we can arrange a meeting. Call me in two or three days… and I’ll see what I can do for the two of you.” Teo was confused and fixated because he could no longer find any arguments to defend his innocence and began to dwell on some other imaginary fault. He didn’t press the matter further and had to accept the priest’s advice because it seemed to him that, whatever the reason preventing him from reuniting with Betsy, forgiveness for the fault he couldn’t even imagine would no longer be a matter of this world; so he left his future in the hands of that kind and understanding progressive priest. Back at his desolate home, and as was his habit in moments of great emotional intensity, he turned to his broken childhood toy as a confidant, and set out to make an effort of memory and imagination to list the possible reasons why Betsy did not wish to see him again. One good reason might simply be the passage of time. Her tastes might have changed; she might have different ideas now; she might be attracted to a different kind of man. Another reason could stem from resentment and bitterness. All that time imprisoned without just cause, convinced of her innocence, would have made her reasonably resentful toward everyone, including him—especially given the treatment she’d received after her arrest due to her privileged family connections, even though this very circumstance had led to the tragedy of her father’s murder, a fact she was likely unaware of. It could also be that he hadn’t tried hard enough to secure her freedom, even though, according to him, that was the cause of her estrangement and even disaffection toward her poor mother—now confined to an asylum because of all these circumstances, a fact she, too, would be unaware of. There was, therefore, no justification whatsoever for her to hold a grudge against him. But suddenly, the only possible explanation came to mind: Betsy might have a boyfriend or might even have married someone more suitable than him—someone with the same political ideology, a socially useful profession, the means to support a family, and a strong, manly character, forged, like hers, in the harshness of the underground; in short, anyone who had what he lacked, and whom he doubted he could ever acquire at this stage of his wasted existence. “! “But that’s no reason not to want to see me!” she confided to the little monkey, regaining the hope she’d momentarily lost to a bout of common sense. She let the agreed-upon three days pass, trying to erase from her mind any notion of time, as if it weren’t passing at all. To that end, she devoted herself to studying complex philosophical arguments with the aim of truly understanding them—and not merely memorizing them, as was his usual practice. One of them involved grasping the true meaning of Ortega y Gasset’s axiom, “I am myself and the circumstances.” And given the personal crossroads at which he found himself, he understood it completely, without needing anyone to explain it to him. Without a doubt, he would be what he wanted to be if circumstances allowed it. On the agreed-upon day, Teo called the parish, aware that his happiness depended on a simple answer—and fortunately, it was the one he’d hoped for. — “Yes, son, I’ve convinced Betsy to agree to see you! Come to the parish tomorrow at 12 noon”—the priest didn’t go into further detail, but it was enough for Teo to wake the sleepy cat, who had a natural tendency to pick up on the mood of those around him, and given Teo’s excitement, it chose to move to another room and resume its endless nap elsewhere. CHAPTER XVII The day Teo had longed for—no, dreamed of—had finally arrived. When he woke up, he told himself that this day would be more important to him than any birthday, religious or national holiday, or even the day when—if he were able to pull it off—he would land his first job. So, without even getting out of bed, he jotted down in his planner, “Today I’ll finally see Betsy!” The old cat, who was curled up in a quiet corner of the bed, not only seemed to pay no attention to Teo’s agitation but, with his cynical old-cat gaze, seemed to foreshadow a storm. Indeed, as soon as Teo looked out the window, he felt an inexplicable chill that didn’t seem to come from any part of his body; it was a sensation of emptiness, as if the day were missing something essential for life to be possible. Although uncommon in Madrid, that day in early November had dawned shrouded in a thick fog, to the point that the stately buildings on the street corners were not fully visible, but appeared blurred and milky. That was not the day he had marked in his calendar. With that foreboding of doom weighing heavily on his chest, he dressed slowly, as if giving the day time to reveal itself as benign and more in line with his reasonable expectations of happiness. To pass the time, he set about doing what he hated most—the very thing capable of driving him to the point of losing all thought and even his conscience: cleaning and tidying the room , putting the dirty laundry in the washing machine, scrubbing the four glasses and mugs abandoned in the sink, sweeping the endless hallway—which now, without Conchita’s care and Doña Pura’s wax-coated slippers, accumulated dust in every corner without anyone knowing where it came from. Of course, he had carefully closed all the doors, windows, and balconies of the endless rooms—including the enormous dining room with sliding doors that he no longer used—so he wouldn’t have to bother cleaning them, but despite his precautions, they collected just as much dust as the hallway, and now he had a clearer idea of the exhausting work of domestic service in a house of such colossal dimensions. He thought that if he could convince Betsy of his innocence and they were to reconcile to the point where she would accept him as a husband—or even as a steady partner, since he couldn’t imagine Betsy in a wedding dress or going through the bureaucratic formalities of a marriage, even a civil one—they would move into an apartment that was easy to clean, with just the right number of rooms for the two of them and whatever might come along, which in no case would be more than the two of them; a boy and a girl, if possible. He calculated the travel time to San Blas and added fifteen extra minutes for any eventuality, which could only be a subway breakdown, because, to be on the safe side, he ruled out the idea of taking a taxi or a bus. Madrid was no longer a safe city for traveling to a date of such importance by land transportation, because over the last ten years, Madrileños seemed to have forgotten the usefulness of their legs as a means of getting from one place to another over reasonably short distances, such as shopping at the neighborhood supermarket, going to church on Sunday morning, or heading out for hot chocolate and churros at the trendy café, just two or three blocks away. Out of neglect and carelessness, he still had clothes from the happy days when they used to run ahead of the raging gray ones, and he thought it would be a fitting touch for the occasion to wear them, but he immediately realized that time does not pass in vain , and that people’s personalities and tastes change. Betsy would certainly no longer be wearing that enormous wool sweater, and it was even possible that she had finally opted for tight T-shirts and miniskirts, but he couldn’t picture her that way either. In fact, his memory of her had been so blurred by recent events that he couldn’t picture her at all and was hoping for some kind of surprise. Therefore, he would dress casually and wait to see how their meeting went before choosing a specific style in the future—one that she would find appropriate given the new circumstances. Half an hour before the meeting, Teo was just a ten-minute walk from the church, but he didn’t want to arrive early and give the impression of being reckless. He would arrive at the exact agreed-upon time. If Betsy was already at the church, she, too, would need some time to prepare, to think through the reasons she planned to give for not wanting to see him again; to adopt the right demeanor and show no sign of excitement in order to reinforce her position. He had to arrive right at the moment she was expecting him, not a minute early—only then would he have any chance of having a relaxed conversation, on the agreed-upon terms, without forcing the issue. He wanted to come across as someone who knows how to accept the facts if they’re reasonable. A few minutes ahead of schedule, he spotted the simple working-class neighborhood church shrouded in that strange fog, as if the whole affair—the appointment and his meeting with Betsy—were just a dream. Teo remembered how dreams are sometimes so real in their details that upon waking he wondered where they came from; in what strange world they took place; whether it wasn’t a way of traveling through unknown dimensions of the mind—events that occur simultaneously but are only visible during sleep. Therefore, this could very well be one of those dreams, and upon waking he would once again ask himself the eternal question about the origin of those nonexistent illusions of the mind. But that strange coldness—like a void in some part of his being, without even considering the difference between body and soul, which not even his basic studies in philosophy had allowed him to understand well enough to know which sensations belonged to which— told him that this was part of his waking state, and that the church was of this world—though he could not be sure whether this was the real one or not. For the same reason, Betsy could be a fluke of time; a mundane example of what happiness would be like in the true world, provided that this one was not the real one, of course. Lost in these fantastical musings—the reason for which he himself could not explain, were it not for the overexcitement of the encounter—he found himself standing in front of the church door, which, just like the last time, remained closed. He had convinced himself that Betsy would be waiting for him in front of the church door, because the image of a meeting with the witness to the transcendent—despite its modest appearance—would be the appropriate setting, but she wasn’t there. He walked around the building and knocked again on the door he already knew. Once again, the same priest opened the door, dressed in the same dark corduroy suit and his unbuttoned plaid shirt, and once again, his kindness served as a spiritual balm. He relaxed, made a few mechanical gestures with his arms because he didn’t know what else to do, and before the priest had time to greet him, he beat him to it and asked about Betsy: “Well, here I am! Where is she?” The priest realized that this agitated young man wouldn’t even observe the basic rules of courtesy and would fail to respond to his formal greeting, so he set aside protocol and hurried to give him the information he sought. In fact, Betsy knew that Teo would show up nervous and agitated, which was why she had chosen the most suitable place for the meeting—on neutral ground, without any significant symbols or potential witnesses : in the middle of an open field where the modest parish planned to build a playground, so mothers were already getting used to the idea by taking their children there. “There she is!” the priest replied laconically, pointing through the fog at the figure of a woman bundled up warmly, pushing a stroller through what, in the not-too-distant future, would be a simple playground in a working-class neighborhood—with a merry-go-round, a slide, and two swings, as well as a pile of colorful tubes for the children to give free rein to their natural desires for risk and adventure. Teo exchanged a questioning glance with the priest, but the priest merely shrugged and smile, as if to imply that he wasn’t responsible for the workings of nature, since his work was limited to matters of the soul and not those of the body. “Yes, it’s her—Betsy! Go on, go see her now, she’s waiting for you!” And he politely closed the door so that Teo wouldn’t have a chance to ask him any more awkward questions and would be left alone to grapple with the speculations sparked by that first image of Betsy pushing a baby stroller through the fog. But his mind simply refused to react or come up with any simple explanation to account for the image—such as assuming she’d given birth to a son and that he might be the father, given the dates and the fact that he hadn’t used condoms. And this was the only idea his clouded mind would accept. That’s why, at first, he was overcome by a completely new feeling of joy—the kind every man in the world must feel upon learning he’s a first-time father—because if it were a second child, the joy would surely be different and easy to identify, but this was so new that it took him some time to shake off the emotion that kept him from moving from that spot, still facing the door that the father had closed so that the joy of the potential first-time father could be savored alone and with all its natural intensity. Suddenly he felt like a different person, without childhood memories, without broken wind-up toys, without a mother’s caresses, without shorts or an admiral’s First Communion suit. He was a person who literally expressed himself with the brief exclamation “ father,” and he said it a couple of times, identifying himself with the “she”: “I’m a father! I’m a father!” Then he turned, gazed for a moment at the distant figure—the probable mother of his child—amid the thick fog, and called out to her: “Betsy!”Betsy heard him, turned toward him, but did not do what Teo had expected at all. She simply stopped the stroller and waited for him to approach, but without the slightest sign of surprise, emotion, or joy. She had merely paused her stroll for a moment, but even then she didn’t stop caring for the well-being of the baby dozing in the modest stroller, and as Teo made his way over to her, she simply rocked the stroller so the child wouldn’t wake up.Finally, they were close enough to each other that silence was impossible. He tried to kiss her, but Betsy made no move to let him. Teo, despite his initial intention to stay calm and patiently listen to whatever arguments Betsy might have against him, with the heart of a first-time father on the verge of burst, didn’t know where to start: whether to ask about the baby or about her. Betsy waited for him to make a decision so she could respond to whatever it was. Teo finally decided to ask about her.“How are you, Betsy?”—it wasn’t a great question, but it had to be short so he could ask the second, more important one as soon as possible. Betsy knew this, and her answer was just as brief.“Fine. How about you, Teo?”“Me? Fine, of course —It was obvious, because he had no reason to be feeling bad; Betsy did. Her appearance was heartbreaking compared to the young student with cinnamon-colored skin and lively black eyes he’d met in college. She had aged terribly—not physically, but rather with an indecipherable old age that was only perceptible in her countenance, in her tired and humiliated gaze, the result of some terrible that was impossible to overcome, not even with the restoration of her freedom.She couldn’t quite articulate the next question properly and rehearsed it first in the privacy of her thoughts. The options were at least these two: “Whose child is this?” or the more direct: “Could I be the father of this child?” While she was deciding between one or the other, she approached the stroller with such caution and care that it seemed he feared the child might attack him. For the first time, Betsy’s expression softened, and she gave him a tender but faint smile, while, without saying a word, she carefully pulled back the cover of the stroller so that Teo could see the child’s face. Obviously, given his young age, Teo could see nothing more than a baby like any other—with rosy skin, hairless, with small lips and chubby, rosy cheeks. His heart skipped a beat only when he saw a tiny golden ball in one of the baby’s tiny ears. He didn’t dare touch it, and when he felt he had formed a clear impression of the child, he simply asked:“Is it a girl?”Betsy nodded and resumed her initial expression, devoid of any tenderness. Teo couldn’t wait any longer and asked the question, taken aback by Betsy’s coldness.“Am I her father?”Betsy tried to overcome a moment of poorly concealed anguish, as she was forced to swallow hard to get rid of the lump that was choking her throat and preventing her from answering. She still had to wipe away a couple of thick tears with the back of her coat—tears that streamed uncontrollably down her gaunt cheeks, those of a former convict—and finally answered the question she’d feared most ever since she’d learned that Teo had tracked her down and wanted to see her:“Yes, Teo, she might be your daughter, but she could also be the child of the cop who raped me the night they arrested us!”—and she covered the baby with the blanket again—“I didn’t lie to you… I was on the pill, but with all the chaos in my head, some days… Well, what does it matter now? You know the truth… She was born in Carabanchel… if I’d been free, maybe I would have had an abortion… But, poor child—what fault was it of hers!Teo listened, convinced that he was finally uncovering the essence of that scene, and told himself that it must surely belong to dreams—or more specifically, to nightmares. He didn’t know how to respond because no one had prepared him to share paternity with a heartless cop. At first, he had reacted appropriately, and in less than five minutes he had accepted his paternity along with all its future responsibilities, but the situation had changed so abruptly that all his past weaknesses resurfaced, and he felt unable to face the facts. That’s why he remained silent, staring obsessively at some undefined spot on the sandy ground of the future playground, where the full drama of his misfortune and her despair. Betsy also remained silent, but without any confusion or distress, because she had long since come to terms with the idea of having a daughter with two potential fathers so different from one another; yet she wanted to say goodbye to Teo without having to justify his coldness and detachment.“It’s as if we’ve lost another civil war, but this time without battles, and Franco has won it again and continues to rule us from his tomb in the Valley of the Fallen, well protected by two metric tons of granite.” Teo struggled to listen to Betsy’s political arguments, but in his mind a pitched battle was already unfolding between him and the rival police officer—the same one that had taken place on that happy Saturday of the great demonstration—and he was about to run to save the unfortunate Betsy from the clutches of a history incapable of revolution—. This child was born in a prison, just as all Spaniards are, and now she’ll have to earn her freedom on her own and not through the posthumous grace of a bloodthirsty dictator. This king may know how to manage this conditional freedom we now have, but his successor—from my daughter’s generation—will have to face the demons of the past once again, still unresolved, until all Spaniards, with the sole exception of the dictator’s relatives and some deluded fanatic , condemn him to exile—even after his death. But that can no longer happen in our generation!Teo was already about to shove the cop, but he tried to keep listening to Betsy, without taking his eyes off the patch of dirt on the ground for even a millimeter. Suddenly, he made the risky decision to save Betsy once again from police violence.“I don’t care who the father is—I’ll acknowledge her if you want me to!”But this time the cop couldn’t be knocked down because he was just a ghost from the past—incorporeal and safe from the attacks of a young man in love’s justified rage. “No, Teo, it wouldn’t be fair, and I know you couldn’t handle this burden! Let’s leave things as they are. This girl will have her mother, but her father will remain one of the two Spains! And that’s not something just you and I can fix—it’s up to all Spaniards… But it might already be too late… I’m sorry about your father… For centuries, those fanatical, deluded Spaniards have been killing each other like rabid dogs, and Franco continues to incite them from his granite tomb… and we haven’t been able to shut him up once and for all! CHAPTER XIII The days following his meeting with Betsy felt like a waste to Teo. From the moment he said goodbye to Betsy with a simple parting kiss and one last glance at the baby sleeping in her stroller—without a single mention of the future—the real world had made him disappear, and now he was wandering around, not quite sure where, like a ghost with the rare quality of having a real physical appearance. For the brief span of five minutes, he had felt like a new and hopeful person, with enough strength and courage to take on painful family responsibilities, but he had reverted to the usual weakness of his character, forged within the four walls of a huge, soulless house and a toy whose mechanism had barely sustained him through his long and lonely childhood. At least certain aspects of her family life had returned to relative normalcy. Her mother had regained what little sound judgment she’d ever had—enough, at any rate, to realize the situation she found herself in, completely at the mercy of her sister’s schemes. Her sister decided she should move in with her, not only for safety’s sake—since Doña Isabel remained obsessed with the idea that terrorists would sooner or later target her as well, but because she remained determined to rent out the luxurious apartment in the Salamanca neighborhood to the diplomatic corps—with Teo inside if necessary. But she couldn’t find any suitable candidates. Only one diplomat from a remote African country had shown interest in it, but Doña Virtudes didn’t think he was the right fit, as she doubted there were even diplomats in Africa. Besides, she feared he would turn the apartment into a veritable jungle, with stuffed lion and rhinoceros heads on every wall, elephant tusks on the dressers, shrunken Jíbaro heads hanging from the ceiling—since she couldn’t tell African Blacks from Native Americans—and in the kitchen, in all likelihood, he would set up a stove for the cauldron in which to cook his eccentric meat-based dishes. She wanted a diplomat who seemed familiar to her—preferably one wearing a top hat—from a country she could recognize on a map of Western Europe. She had set her sights on hosting the ambassador from France or Italy; better yet, the Italian one, so she could exchange confidential, firsthand information about the Holy See, because she knew that His Holiness’s own Nuncio would be staying in religious quarters and was not a realistic candidate for the apartment. Returning to Teo, his career as a philosopher had come to a spectacular standstill with no possibility of resuming it due to a lack of interest and concentration. Now he was certain that it was a waste of time to try to understand the world as philosophers saw it, because he now also knew that the world had a simple explanation: “It is what it is, and it’s not worth giving it any more thought.” During this new period of mental absence, he believed that philosophers possessed the rare ability to complicate the simple: the world was shaped by necessity, and when that need was momentarily satisfied, the o leisure, and during that free time there was room for friendship, and with friendship and free time, true progress emerged. Without friendship, everything done during leisure time was barbaric, and no philosophical argument could overturn this simple reality. Peace and progress were the result of friendship wisely combined with free time, once all vital needs had been met. Since Teo was convinced of this simple idea, he abhorred philosophy and all its intellectual nonsense, whose sole purpose was to keep the minds of people without ideas of their own occupied with something other than sex, sports, or envy. For its part, the country was entangled in political disputes to make that conditional freedom tolerable—a freedom directed by Franco from beyond the grave at the Cruz de los Caídos, with a clear view of the miseries of every kind that continued to require in the wake of his brutal advice. There was a young, astute, and relatively modern king, given that he had received his true education abroad; his formal education at home was merely a formality. As for the queen, one could say nothing but discreet praise, because her best quality was precisely her discretion; for despite being a foreigner, she possessed the natural ability not to appear as such. As for the opposition politicians, they had to set aside grand historical ideals, grandiloquent phrases, and quotes from notable figures to make sense of all the confusion. Finally, they managed to agree on what a Spain that would henceforth limp along should look like, since one of its legs had become stuck in its history. They hoped that, in time, it would regain its full mobility, but those those responsible for the impasse knew that limping was just another way of walking, and there was no reason to change. The Spanish deluded themselves into believing they belonged to Europe, not because Charles V of Germany was also Charles I of Spain, but because now the vast majority of them were eager to try Russian caviar, Norwegian smoked salmon, and French Camembert cheese. As for communism, not only was it transformed into an ideology perfectly tamed by natural capitalism, but a few tweaks to its usual rhetoric and the design of the party membership card were all it took for it to be legalized. And nothing special happened. One day, when Te o had lost all hope of rehabilitation and was convinced that he simply wasn’t a person deserving of anything special, he found a letter in the mailbox in a green envelope scribbled on both sides, where the sender’s name was barely legible: “Betsabé González.” His heart stopped for an instant—so brief that it allowed him to remain alive but unable to fathom what use he might still have. He didn’t open it immediately, but after climbing the six flights of the service staircase—where he skipped 32 steps to save time—he rushed into his room, set the letter on the table, placed his old, trusting little monkey nearby so it could hear the contents too; he exchanged a knowing glance of unbridled happiness with the cat, who was bored of dozing with nothing better to do, and, rubbing his hands together to charge them with the electricity and magnetism appropriate to the circumstances, he opened it and read the letter aloud: “Dear Teo, You’ve gotten your way—the little girl is the spitting image of you. Now I’m sure you’re her father, and you can come acknowledge her whenever you want. She’s written something on the envelope—I hope you understand it! After all, , you taught me that friendship binds people—and communities—more strongly than history. Big hugs, Betsy. P.S. I’m thinking about opening a daycare center in the neighborhood, and I figured a man wouldn’t hurt in the business—you know, to fix the usual little glitches.” Teo’s lips were practically splitting from the huge smile of happiness, which he immediately shared with his historic little monkey, to whom he clarified something important: “I knew it, little monkey, I knew it!” And he tossed him into the air with such enthusiasm that when he returned from his space journey, he crashed to the floor. Then twenty years of repression, for some reason still inexplicable, loosened up his old mechanism, and once he regained his balance, he went back to playing the cymbals with the same frivolity and unrestrained energy as when he was new. The old cat must have received a message via transgenerational instinct, because he “remembered” the toy and, following the instructions of his ancestors, perked up, wondering whether or not he should go after it. He decided not to. Teo, practically levitating, looked at the toy and simply exclaimed, “Ah, so that’s why it wasn’t working!” THE END In Berlin, on January 16, 2009, the very day of my 62nd birthday, which is why I’ve decided to consider this novel my birthday present.