Trafalgar

The González Family’s Fight for a Better World



Excess profits, that’s what I’d say. And in every sense of the word, because Edessbuss is an amiable world where everyone finds humor and an occasion for fun in everything. One almost—almost—starts to want to stay there to live, but if one maintains a bit of sense, not easy to do after a week of partying, one realizes that amusing oneself for two weeks or a year or three months is all very well, but to spend one’s whole life playing, for one who wasn’t born there, must be as boring as toiling thirty years as an office worker on Ortauconquist or on Earth. Yes, costumes, a shipment of costumes, masks, veils, confetti, streamers, and balloons, the works. I have bought and sold many crazy things in all these years, but until then I had never traveled with boxes of masks and perfume-sprayers. I already knew Edessbuss because I buy the clay from them that I sell on Dosirdoo IX where they make the finest porcelains, china, and ceramics in that whole sector, but I had never stayed more than a day or two, enough for the purchase and the loading. Really nice people, always good humored, easy to make friends with. I have a couple of excellent friends there, The Owner of the Cold Winds and The Toughest Tamer of the Pale, Pale Star. Not counting The Duchess of Bisque or The Splendorous Girl, who are two fantastic people. No, no, those are their names, they’re not titles or nicknames. At twelve years old, each one chooses their definitive name and as they have imagination and a sense of humor and everything is permitted, the results are terrific. And that’s not all. I met the Blue and Glaucous Giant, and Possessed by Women, The Angel Archangel Ultraangel, The Savage Captainess of the Storm Clouds, The Inventor of a New Color Every Day, The SuperFat Empress—anyway, you would not believe. Of course, what happened that time was there was a problem in Flight Control in the port and they asked me to suspend my departure, if I could, while they planned I don’t know what all arrivals, departures, and layovers. I stayed, of course. A week of partying, as I said. Then I learned things had not always been so easy. Edessbuss was an inhospitable world, almost dead. Seriously: it is the only one that revolves around Edess-Pálida, a killer star. It gives off so much energy, it burnt up plants, animals, rivers, and people. For generations and generations, hundreds, thousands of years, the Edessbussianos lived in semi-subterranean hovels, fighting against the heat, the droughts, the plagues, the floods, hunger, until finally, their brains racked to the maximum by so much misfortune, they invented the Roof. No, they call it the Roof but it’s a screen, an anti-energy cover that surrounds the whole world. What the theoretical principle is or how they placed it, that I don’t know. All of us who go to Edessbuss, and there are a lot of us, the majority to have a good time and a few like me to do business, cross it with no problems, we don’t even notice. The energy from Edess-Pálida doesn’t pass, or rather it passes up to a certain point: enough to turn Edessbuss into a garden full of lakes and flowers and birds. And then, and it could hardly be otherwise, for the last five hundred years the Edessbussianos have been getting even for everything that those who lived before the Roof had to go through. Everyone laughs, sings, dances, makes love, plays, makes up games and jokes. And I was the victim of one of those jokes. But I bear them no grudge. First because you can’t, they’re too nice. And two because the result was more than interesting. If I was a sentimental person, and I probably am, I would say it was touching. Yes, I’m getting to that. As I was saying, I stayed a week, in a hotel bungalow on the shores of Lucky Bounce Lake where one had to resign oneself to sleeping fitfully because there was a party every night. Of course, there’s no place on Edessbuss where they’re not having a party every night, so it didn’t matter where I stayed. And nevertheless, they know how to do business, believe me. Between laughter and exaggerations and jokes, but nothing escapes them, it’s a pleasure to see. No, I had already delivered the merchandise, the costumes and all that, and they had paid me and very well—hence my comment about excess profits. Of course they weren’t giving charity but sweetening me up for the next order and then we’d see, but as I knew it and they knew I knew it, we all took advantage without bitterness, they of the costumes and I of the cash, and devoted ourselves to having a good time. The true art of fun is learned on Edessbuss: no one rolls under the table drunk, no one vomits from eating too much, no one has a heart attack while trying to break records in bed. There aren’t fights, no one comes to blows with anyone over a woman because in the end they can have as many as they like. And as the women can have as many men as they like, they’re good-humored and they’re prettier all the time and a forty-year-old easily gets the better of a twenty-year-old and the seventy-year-olds stroll around with the airs of queens of the world and deign, when they’re in the mood, to teach subtleties to the eighteen-year-old guys. But yes, of course they work. And they study and they look through the microscope and they write novels and they pass laws. Like anywhere else. Only the spirit of the thing is different: for them, life is not a tragedy. It was a tragedy, before the Roof. Nor is it a farce; it’s a cheerful comedy that always ends well. A judge can let out a guffaw in the middle of a trial if the prosecutor says something funny, and an atomic physicist who is the dean of a college can meticulously prepare a monster joke for his students, and if the oldest kid took dad’s car out without permission, the old man falls over laughing and puts half a dozen toads in the boy’s bed and hides in the closet to see what happens. I assure you, it’s just a matter of getting used to it. The first day, one doesn’t know which way to turn. On the second, one starts to laugh. On the third, one imagines playing a joke, or invents one to tell, nothing original yet. And on the fourth, one’s a veteran. Go figure what I was after a week. But even so, they made me fall in their trap. That last night, to say good-bye, The Toughest Tamer of the Pale, Pale Star took me to a party at The SuperFat Empress’s place—she has a kind of Babylon with hanging gardens but smaller—and they made me fall like a fool. At midnight, I said I was going to bed, I had an early departure scheduled for the next day. No one tries to convince anyone of anything there and no one contradicts you: courtesy is something else. If one wants to leave, one leaves; if one wants to stay, one stays; and when the host decides the party is over, he says good-bye to everyone and everyone accepts it and no one thinks it’s wrong. I said I was leaving and they crowded around to wish me a good night. A really nice little guy, The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters, asked where I was headed and I said I was going home after stopping at Dosirdoo IX and Jolldana.

“Too bad,” he said, “because Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos is very close and it is a fabulous place for business.”

The others were in agreement—too much in agreement and too loudly, I thought later, when it was too late. But at that moment I didn’t notice, because the name had caught my attention.

“What?” I said. “What is it called?”

“Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos,” they repeated.

“You can sell anything there,” said The Savage Captainess of the Storm Clouds, “and the silver bells they make are the prettiest I’ve heard.”

Silver bells, of course, why not? But the thing tempted me. I asked where it was and the husband of The SuperFat Empress, whose name is Shield of Fire that Roars at Night, went to look for a route guide. They told me they would give me all the details at the port and they asked what I might be carrying to sell. I had the clay, of course, but that was for Dosirdoo IX, and I also had anilines, iron fittings, and plastic pipes. And medicines.

“That’s it,” yelled The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters. “They always need those! Medicines!”

“Vitamins,” someone said.

“Tonics!” The SuperFat Empress clapped her hands. “Tonics, tonics, tonics, tonics!”

“Cough syrup, anti-diarrheals, anorectics, neuroleptics, vasodilators, skin ointments, laxatives, antifungals.” They hollered out every kind of medication they could think of and they laughed, of course, how could they not laugh?

I managed to pull one of them, The Twelfth Knight of the Order of the Checked Doublet, into a corner and ask him what the probabilities were. He swore by his collection of bamboo cats that on Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos I could sell whatever I wanted and above all medicines because they went crazy about medicine and they didn’t haggle. All of which, I am sorry to say, was basically true, although in this case the nuances are important. So The Twelfth Knight of the Order of the Checked Doublet’s collection of bamboo cats must be sitting pretty in its display cabinet. Yes, the next day I went to that world. I slept well that night in spite of the music and the dancing at the hotel, I composed the route at the port, and I left. The Splendorous Girl came to see me off, in her chief nurse’s uniform, along with The SuperFat Empress before she went to the studio; The Toughest Tamer of the Pale, Pale Star, in a hurry because he had a meeting with the directors of the factory; The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters, very imposing as a Police corporal; and others that I don’t remember. The Twelfth Knight of the Order of the Checked Doublet sent a message because he was on call at the hospital. No, thank you, do serve yourself, I never take sugar. Of course it was close, I arrived almost immediately. It’s the fourth of a system of six, the only inhabited one, quite large, and it moves at a normal speed. I started to descend and to signal, looking for a port. No one answered me. And even that didn’t alarm me, see what an idiot? I flew low, still looking for a port, and nothing. It seemed strange, yes, but I didn’t get suspicious: I was still dazzled by the Edessbussianos’ enthusiasm. A little irritated by now, I chose a city, low, not very big but the largest one I found, and I landed in the countryside, as close as I could. When I was getting close to the ground, let’s say two hundred, two hundred fifty meters, what do I find? You will never believe it. An aerostat. A balloon, yes sir, it’s incredible. A balloon uglier than a fat chick in a bikini, painted gray with darker stripes, as if camouflaged. Hey, these guys are at war, I thought, and I tried to remember if I was carrying coagulants, antibiotics, and disinfectants and if anything else might serve in case of trouble. I don’t sell arms, it’s the one place I don’t compromise. Everything else, from livestock on the hoof to diamonds from Quitiloe. Did you ever see a diamond from Quitiloe? My friend, you don’t know what you’re missing. The opposite of ours, the smaller they are, the more expensive. You understand why when they pass you one and you have it in your hand. The smallest one I ever saw measured two millimeters by two millimeters and weighed five and a half kilos. There are some that measure a meter in length and weigh hardly anything. If they’re longer than a meter they use them as mirrors but mounted on the wall because otherwise they float away. No, why would they be at war? I realized that before I descended and I stopped thinking about coagulants. I passed close to the balloon and I saw it had a wicker basket hanging below it and in the basket were three guys with frightened faces who watched and pointed at me. I waved my hand at them and gave them a big smile but they didn’t even answer. Yes, of course. You won’t have any more? Well, thank you. I landed in the middle of the countryside, very close to the city. I made fast in lift-off position, a precaution I always take when I arrive at a place for the first time. I packed a temporary bag, put in papers and documents because one never knows where they’re going to ask for them, I left the clunker, connected the alarms, and I stopped with my satchel in hand in the middle of a field. All of this took me a good while, but I had done things slowly on purpose to give the people of the city sufficient time to approach. Would you believe, no one appeared? I don’t trust that kind of thing. It has happened to me other times, believe me. On Eertament, on Laibonis VI, on Rodalinzes and, unless I’m very much mistaken, on a couple of other worlds as well. Of course, it might not be hostility or even indifference, but rather a norm of good manners, really rather strange for us. On Laibonis VI, for example, where they carefully avoided me for an entire day, it was, incredibly, an expression of interest, deference, and even respect. On the other hand, on Eertament things began that way and ended badly, very badly. So I took a few measures. I don’t use weapons: not only do I not sell them, I don’t use them. But I have a very useful little device that was given to me years ago on Aqüivanida, where there are more animals than people and some of them are dangerous but it is forbidden to kill them, which recharges on its own, adapts to any metabolism, and causes reversible, temporary devastation, long enough so one can get away. I went to get it, I hung it from my wrist, grabbed my satchel, and started to walk toward the city. Did you ever see La Kermesse héroïque? Great movie. I’ve already told the Cinema Club people that I’ll become a member if they promise to show it once a year. Do you remember the first scenes? That’s what the city was like. It’s called Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidaaa. Seriously, it seems like one is never going to learn it, but that’s the least of it. The buildings were crude, stubby, old, ugly. The streets were not paved and there were little stone bridges to cross the irrigation ditches. The animals walked around loose. There was a plaza with a market, and people were dressed in the most outlandish fashion: some looked made to order for the heroic kermesse, others were like troglodytes with skins and everything, I saw two boys in jeans and T-shirts and there were others who looked like the baby brothers of Louis XV. I stopped a guy who had on a leather apron over his pants and an old-fashioned shirt and asked where there was a hotel. There were no hotels. We’ve started badly, I said. An inn? There were no inns. A hostel? There were no hostels. A monastery? Yes, you heard me right; trust me, if you ever go to a godforsaken place in which there are no hotels or boarding houses or anything, ask for the monastery. There were no monasteries.

“But then,” I say to the guy, “where does a traveler stay?”

“He has to ask permission in some house,” he tells me, and he leaves.

I let fly a discreet insult under my breath and kept walking. Around the plaza, no way, too much noise. I turned down one of the streets that opened off the market and walked a block. People looked at me, but they could hardly pretend to ignore me quickly enough. If it hadn’t been because I still thought I could sell something, I’d have gone back to the clunker and left. But you always have to be sure you can’t do anything before you fold—I know what I’m talking about. Then I see a guy in the doorway of a house that is neither better nor worse than the rest and I go over and I tell him they’ve informed me there are no hotels and could he give me lodging. Here, please, smoke one of mine; yes, they’re black. The fellow looked at me with curiosity, but let’s call it a friendly curiosity, and I think he even started to smile at me. But then he got serious and said he would go ask. He went inside and left me on the street. I used the time to look over the whole block and I didn’t see anything new, except a round face in a window of the house next door. The owner of the face looked at me quite openly and, just in case, I did not smile. She was the one who smiled. I didn’t have time to return the compliment because my possible host returned and told me no, it wasn’t authorized. Like that, no look I’m really sorry but. No, he told me no, they didn’t authorize it. I told him I was prepared to pay whatever price he asked and he didn’t even answer and he went back into the house. Normally, I would not have said something so imprudent, but apart from the fact that I had money to spare, I was determined come hell or high water to get into one of those houses and see how these disagreeable people, who flew in balloons and had neither ports nor hotels, managed things. I took two steps to go try my luck somewhere else and right then the window of the house next door opened and someone said hello. Yes, it was the owner of the round face. Thank goodness, I thought, and I also said hello.

“What did my cousin tell you?” she asked.

“Your cousin?” I said. “That man is your cousin?”

“Of course. We’re all cousins on Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos.”

“Well, how nice,” I managed, a little confused.

“What did he tell you?”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“That he can’t put me up.”

She started to laugh. She had perfect teeth and she was quite pretty—granted, not very young—and pleasant. At least she knew how to laugh, not like everyone else there who walked around with funeral faces, and funeral face, I’m telling you, was exactly the right expression.

“Tell me, ma’am,” I go and I ask her, “you wouldn’t have space to put me up?”

“I do,” she said, “and my cousin does, too. He’s just a wimp. Wait and I’ll open the door for you.”

She disappeared from the window and a little while later she opened the door and invited me in. She was between thirty-five and forty years old, not very tall, generous in the body as in the face without being fat. I left the satchel on the ground and introduced myself.

“I am Ribkamatia Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos,” she told me. That left me cold.

“What? Isn’t that the name of this world of yours?”

“Yes,” she said, “and we’re all called that: we’re the Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos family.”

“Look,” I answered, “that’s very complicated for me. How would it be if I abbreviate it to González, which is a very common name in my country?”

She laughed and said she had no problem with that, and she showed me the house. From the outside it was as modest, as unattractive, as the rest. But inside, the carnival continued. The floors were black and white tile. There were lace curtains in the windows; the furniture was solid, dark; simple but comfortable. And there was a lot of wood and a lot of white china and copper everywhere and everything was clean and shining. I liked it. But there was no electric light. No, there wasn’t. Don’t trouble, I’ll serve myself. Excellent coffee, this. Yes, of course it surprised me, but I have seen so many strange things. And one learns not to question until the right moment. The house had three bedrooms, hers with an enormous double bed. I hoped the husband would be as friendly and pleasant as she was but I didn’t need to worry because she told me shortly that she was a widow and lived alone. She offered me another bedroom, it had a bed that was smaller but it was well furnished, a dresser with a mirror, a bedside table, an armchair, a red rug and also lace curtains at the window that opened onto the back garden. I asked her the price and she named such a ridiculous sum that I was embarrassed. And in addition, she asked if I wanted meat or fish for lunch.

“But, ma’am,” I protested, “I thought the price was only for lodging. I planned to eat in a restaurant.”

“There are no restaurants,” she said.

I should have expected that. Where had those cretins on Edessbuss sent me? A world without hotels and without restaurants, without pavement, without electric light, with sad, terrified people who traveled by balloon, come on. Of course, maybe they needed medicines. And also anilines or plastic pipes, we would see. I didn’t say anything and I asked her if I could take a bath. She said of course and indicated a door at the end of the hallway. And she made me her most decided supporter when she added:

“While you bathe, I am going to make you a cup of hot coffee.”

“Without sugar or milk, please,” I told her as I went into the bath.

What a bath, my goodness. Not because it was luxurious or sophisticated: it rather resembled my maternal grandmother’s bath, at the estate in Moreno. It was enormous, with walls and ceiling paneled in strips of polished wood and a white tile floor. The fixtures were also large, very large, of white china, and the bathtub stood on a wooden platform. The faucets were bronze and sparkled like Quitiloe diamonds. There was a window close to the ceiling and white towels with fringes hanging on the hooks. I turned a faucet uncertainly, but soon I had the tub full of hot water and I took the most nostalgic bath of my life. I emerged, a new man, into the corridor that smelled of freshly brewed coffee. I went to the kitchen—the bathroom’s twin—and Ribkamatia González protested because she wanted to serve me in the dining room, but I sat down at the white wooden table and drank the coffee, which was fantastic. I asked if she wouldn’t join me but she said she didn’t drink coffee: women are often funny that way. I took out a cigarette and I must have hesitated a little because she told me it didn’t bother her if I smoked; she didn’t smoke, no one smoked in public on González, but I was her guest and it didn’t bother her. So I smoked and tipped the ashes into a saucer and I talked nonsense, and when I finished the coffee she offered me another, and when I finished the second coffee I started trying to find out what I had to do to sell my merchandise. She didn’t know, but she thought it would be difficult. She thought about it a moment and told me I should go speak to the mayor and she explained where I had to go and asked me when I wanted to have lunch. Very agreeable, being attended to in that fashion, but it seemed to me an imposition and as the morning was ending, I said at whatever time she ate, as I was going to be out for an hour, more or less. She made a face that said she didn’t really believe me, but she said fine and went to wash the cup. I said good-bye and went out. Cousin González was once again in the doorway and he looked at me as he had earlier but I did not greet him. I went to the plaza, located the building belonging to the municipality or whatever it was, went in and said I wanted to see the mayor. They didn’t ask what I wanted or make me wait. Besides, the mayor wasn’t doing anything. He was seated in front of an empty table looking sadly out the window. We greeted each other, I said who I was and he said he was Ebvaltar González, well, not González but Gonzwaledworkamenjkaleidos. I explained that I was a merchant and I wanted a permit to sell, and the guy started to stammer and put up objections. Then I pulled the medicines out of my sleeve—so to speak—and told him I had vitamins, tonics, cough syrups. His sadness ended and panic seized him. No, no, not possible, what did I mean, medicines, I was crazy, you couldn’t sell that there, it wasn’t permitted, good heavens, how could I think of such a thing.

“The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters be damned,” I said, remembering the scene at the home of The SuperFat Empress when I left and realizing, at last, that it had all been a joke on the part of my friends on Edessbuss; and although I was angry, I almost wanted to laugh.

“What did you say?” asked the mayor.

“Nothing, don’t worry, it has nothing to do with you,” I answered. “But tell me, why can’t one sell medicines here? To protect the local pharmaceutical industry?”

“No, no,” he stammered.

“Everyone enjoys good health?”

“No, no,” again.

“Religious reasons?”

“Please sir, I’m going to ask you—don’t be offended, will you?—I’m going to ask you to leave because I have a meeting in five minutes.”

I noticed another thing. How did the mayor know—aside from the fact that the bit about the meeting was nonsense—how did he know about the five minutes if he didn’t have a watch nor were there clocks in the office nor in the whole municipality, nor in the home of Señora Ribkamatia who was in all certainty his cousin as well? How did he know? But I let it pass.

“That’s fine,” I said, “I’m leaving. But I imagine that if I can’t sell medicines, I could sell iron fittings or plastic pipes or anilines.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said, and he pushed me toward the door. “I don’t know, we’d have to see if they authorized us.”

“If who authorized you?” I barked with the door already open and halfway into the corridor. “Aren’t you the mayor here?”

“Yes, of course I am,” the guy said, “tomorrow I’ll give you an answer, come back tomorrow, all right?” and he closed the door in my face.

Of course, I left, what else was I going to do? I walked all over the city, which didn’t take much time, looking at everything and remembering Edessbuss with fury and a little amusement, looking at the women’s long hoopskirts; the men’s clogs, smocks, and short pants; looking at a few who wore ruffs and plumed hats, others in cheap linen tunics and bare feet, looking at those who wore very short skins as their only clothing, all without knowing the reason for such a hodgepodge. They were probably foreigners. No one seemed very happy; not even the tourists, if that’s what they were. I calculated where so many people might fit, because the city was much more populated that it had seemed. I thought there were very few houses for such a quantity of people, but that wasn’t my affair. I wandered a little, concerned about the things that were my affair, because The Crazy Minstrel and The Splendorous Girl and The Empress and The Twelfth Knight had caught me in their snare but I didn’t plan on leaving without having sold something—even though in the end what I did was give something—and giving Ribkamatia time to prepare the meal which, since I hadn’t said anything, who knew if it would be meat or fish. In the middle of that, I came to the plaza and walked among the people who were selling things to see if there was some secret. If there was, I was going to find out: I have been buying and selling for twenty years and I know all the tricks. Almost all. I can assure you there was nothing unusual. They bought and sold as it’s done everywhere, but only there in the market. There were no other shops or businesses. I pretended I wanted to buy a belt, and after haggling for a bit in the best style, I asked the owner of the stall how one went about getting a sales permit.

“The mayor, I don’t know, you’d have to see if he can, I, of course, don’t know, you understand,” and he looked off in another direction.

I bought the belt from him, poor guy, in the end he was a colleague in unfortunate circumstances, and although the leather was shoddy and the buckle was twisted, he was asking peanuts. I paid and I went on walking, and on the other side of the plaza, I chose another stall at which to keep making inquiries. It was run by a girl selling lace, so beautiful. The girl, not the lace. She had chestnut hair tied in a bun at the nape of her neck and the prettiest ears I have ever seen—and look, it’s not easy to find pretty ears, it’s like with knees—and huge chestnut eyes and a spectacular figure evident under the long flowered skirt and very buttoned-up white blouse and the wide velvet belt with whalebone stays that was practically a vest tied with ribbons that crossed in front. I sidled up little by little and started looking at the lace, which interested me not one bit, until I got into a conversation with her and told her I was from elsewhere and what was her name and when I told her my last name she looked straight at me and said her last name was González, of course, and first name Inidiziba. I complimented her name and her eyes, and since I was there, her hands, too, but I couldn’t bring myself to mention the ears, not that I didn’t want to say something, but she didn’t seem inclined to give me an in. Finally, after a lot of feints and a lot of verse, when I was about to say to hell with her, I got her to agree to meet me that night. “What time tonight?” I asked her, and I remembered about the clocks, or rather, the lack of clocks.

“When it’s full night,” she told me, as if that meant anything, “in the garden at my house,” and she pointed out where that was and then she all but swept me out with the broom.

I won’t say no, a good cup of coffee helps to get through anything, even the mess with the González family, and this coffee is running neck and neck with that prepared by Ribkamatia González, I assure you, and that is saying a lot. And how she cooked. From the lace-seller’s stall I went straight to her house, where the table was already set. In the dining room and for me alone. I agreed to the dining room, although I was sure it was never used, but I refused to sit down unless she also sat down to eat with me. It was a splendid meal. Fish with vegetables. Simple, right? Let me tell you, it is like that, with the simple things, that you see the hand of the cook. A complicated dish is deceptive: at bottom there may be nothing more than a good recipe and a lot of patience. But if a baked fish with cooked vegetables is so good you could set it before His Most Serene Majesty the Emperor of China without danger of decapitation or hanging, then the cook is a sage and I tip my hat to her. I ate two helpings, I, who maintain that the best homage one can pay a meal is to leave the table hungry. And for dessert she served a sour cream with black sugar on top for which the Emperor would grant the title of Master of the Great Wall to anyone who gave him the privilege of tasting a mouthful. And I drank I don’t know how many cups of coffee. While she went to wash the dishes, I asked her if she didn’t have a newspaper to hand. She didn’t understand me. A periodical, I said, and nothing. I told her what a newspaper was. As was to be expected, there were no newspapers on González. I deserved it and I said to myself that I must remember, next time I went to Edessbuss, to take a few kilos of bonbons filled with laxatives. It wouldn’t be very subtle but it would correspond precisely to my mood and they, too, were going to deserve it, so there. So I went to take a siesta. I slept until six in the evening: I did have a watch. As I left my room, I heard Ribkamatia González talking with someone, with a man, in the front room, and it seemed to me that she was angry, very angry. I am discreet. Sometimes. I went back into the bedroom, I waited a few minutes, and then I came out again, making a lot of noise but you couldn’t hear voices any longer and she asked me from the kitchen if I wanted a little coffee. What do you think I told her? We sat down beside a window, I to drink coffee and she to sew, and she asked me how the matter of the sales had gone. Of course, during the meal I had been so busy praising the food that I hadn’t given her an account. I told her and I said we would see the next day, at the next meeting with the mayor. She sighed and said her cousin the mayor was a good person but he had no character, that’s why he was mayor. It seemed to me a contradictory observation, but I didn’t argue.

“It’s a real disgrace, Señor Medrano,” she said, “a real disgrace.”

“That your cousin the mayor has no character?” I asked.

“No, no,” she said without taking her eyes off her sewing. “I was speaking in general.”

More than discreet, I think I am opportune. That’s it, opportune. She was quiet for a moment and I didn’t ask any questions because I sensed she was going to keep talking. She made a few stitches, cut the thread with a pair of scissors whose blades were very thin and very long, threaded the needle again and, of course, continued:

“Because, imagine everything one could do here, everything we could already have, because there’s no shortage of capable people, with those kids who sacrifice themselves studying, investigating, inventing and trying things in secret.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about and she assumed I did, and I didn’t ask that time either, not out of discretion but because I felt too peaceful and something was going to start to go badly if I stuck my foot in it.

“Lights,” she said. “Electric lights—even atomic ones—automobiles, airplanes, injections, submarines, telephones, television, hospitals, sewing machines, all of that. And the only thing we can do is learn they exist on other worlds, thanks to what the wayward youth are able to find out and make known in secret.” She looked at me. “They haven’t been in contact with you yet?”

“Who?” I asked, like an idiot.

“The Wayward Youth,” that time I heard it correctly, with capital letters.

She had gotten up to light two oil lamps.

“Ah,” I said, a little unsteady, more even than the lamps’ little flames. “No, no, not yet.”

She went back to her sewing.

“You’ll meet them. Poor people, they do everything they can.”

She sewed a while longer, not speaking, and I didn’t speak either. Afterward, she left the sewing and stood up. It was night, late at night.

“What would you like me to make you for supper?” she asked.

“Look, ma’am,” I said, “leave me something light prepared, because I’m going to go out now and I don’t know what time I’ll be back.”

“Ah,” she said, with a knowing smile.

Afterward I learned she had not been thinking about the girl with the lace or about any girl, but in fact about those very Wayward Youth.

“I’m going to make you a stuffed egg,” she said, and she went to the kitchen. A stuffed egg was taking my request for something light a little too literally, but it wasn’t a hen’s egg or an egg from an animal the size of a chicken, but a plasco egg. A plasco is an oviparous mammal similar to the farfarfa of Pilandeos VII, so imagine the size of that egg: I couldn’t eat even half of it. But of course; oh yes, I’d be pleased if you’d join me. No, gastritis, never. The day I get gastritis I’ll have to park the clunker for good. There are places where you can’t go around choosing your food: on Emeterdelbe for example, either one digests the damned pies, sede pies, felepés pies, estelte pies, resne pies, pies made out of anything you can imagine, always fried in pelende fat, or one starves to death. And on Mitramm you have to have an iron stomach to tolerate the meat of the. I beg your pardon? Yes, I imagine so, I was intrigued, too. So I told her so long and she went to the door to say good-bye, with her cheeks red from the heat of the wood stove. It occurred to me that she must have been a beauty when she was young, not so long ago, and I gave her an approving look and as she was no fool she noticed and she laughed at me. Maybe she also laughed because she liked me looking at her that way. I left. I crossed the plaza in which, although it was already night, there were an enormous number of people who didn’t seem to be doing anything. Everything was dark, save for a torch on a corner here and there. I carried a lantern and, of course, the Aqüivanida brake secured to my wrist. No, I call it the brake because of the effect it produces; they call it an apical molecular recensor, AMR. I arrived at the girl’s house, turned around, hopped over the wall and went into the garden. No one seemed to be there. It was a neglected garden, not like Ribkamatia’s, and I went behind a bush that was in urgent need of the pruning shears and waited. I almost fell asleep standing up. After half an hour, or more, I felt someone grabbing my arm. They must have crept up like a cat because I didn’t hear any footsteps. In my fright I didn’t manage to grab the lantern or the brake. But whoever it was let out a tsk at me: it was the beauty of the lace.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “you step with more care than a fat tightrope walker. I didn’t hear you arrive.”

She squeezed my arm again and went tsk and she led me by feel to a corner with a bench while I thought about how I should best begin, with the sentimental approach or with the clever questioning: it seemed to me best to combine information with pleasure. But it was no use on either front. On the pleasure side I couldn’t, I won’t even say take her to bed, which was what any normal guy would have wanted to do, I couldn’t even touch the little finger of her left hand, because she was sullen, distrustful, a little stupid, and she was afraid. And on the information side, for those same reasons, she didn’t want to tell me anything and she even suggested I was pulling her leg or wanted to make her fall into a trap. All I could find out was that she wouldn’t let me get close or extol my undying love and that she didn’t want to tell me anything because her grandfather, her grandmother, her great-grandfather, and above all her great-great-grandmother had forbidden it.

“Good lord!” I said. “What a long-lived family you have.”

She got mad. She got so mad she even made noise when she got up from the bench and she told me to leave immediately. I couldn’t convince her even by promising to maintain five meters of distance between us. Fine, I thought, to hell with her, her loss. I wasn’t even interested anymore, I wanted a woman but I wouldn’t have gone to bed with that fool for anything in the world. But I was more intrigued by the minute, and on that front, too, I had to go away hungry. The girl left me standing there and ran toward the house, and then I headed for the garden wall. And at that moment I saw we had not been alone: there was a great big woman with a viper’s face, who couldn’t be the great-great-grandmother because she wasn’t that old, close to the place where I had been hidden, and two guys, one old enough to be her grandfather and another, younger one, and the three were watching me with hangman’s eyes. I didn’t wait to find out who they were or what they wanted. I jumped over the wall and left with all the rage in the world. The houses were dark and closed up but the streets and the plaza were full of silent people who came and went or sat on the benches or stood on the corners and looked around. Ribkamatia had left a small oil lamp burning in the hall. I picked it up and went to the kitchen where I attacked the plasco egg which was delicious but was too much for me: I never eat to excess and especially not before going to bed. That might be why I don’t have gastritis. Then there was a noise of steps in the dark corridor and she appeared and said she had been waiting for me to set the table. I thanked her but told her she shouldn’t do so again and we sat down in the kitchen and unstuffed what we could of the stuffed egg. She was dying of curiosity but she didn’t ask me anything and I was in no mood to tell her about the let-down I had suffered. She made me coffee and I drank it and I felt better. I said I was going to bed and she stood up. I picked up the lamp and set off toward the bedroom. I opened the door, I wished her goodnight, and right there I did the best thing I had done in a long time: I lifted the little oil lamp to see her better and caressed her face with my free hand. She gave me a sweet smile. I don’t like adjectives but the smile was sweet, what can I say, sweet and placid. She opened the door to her room and I wasn’t going to be so slow-witted as to go into mine. Yes, I slept with her, in as much as I slept, which was just enough. No lace seller, no girl as splendorous as she might be, no amazon, no big woman bored with her old husband, no adolescent or queen of eight kingdoms or professional or slave or actress or hungry conspirator or anything, not one have I found, I remember no one who knew as well as she what a man wanted in bed—not a macho, a man. From what there was between the two of us those nights, we could have been married for years and years and could have gone to bed together hundreds of times, each one like the first or second time, and everything was always going to go well and there was nothing to worry about. Why is it that I don’t like to talk about her much? It was almost dawn when I fell sound asleep and it seemed to me that not even five minutes had passed but it must have been late because the sun was starting to come through the cracks in the shutters when a noise and a shout woke me up. I sat up in bed and saw a guy standing in the open doorway, his face twisted and contorted with rage. Ribkamatia opened her eyes but she wasn’t frightened: she just looked at him as if to say ugh, here you come to screw things up again while the jerk breathed heavily with his hand on the door handle. She said very calmly:

“And now what is it?”

He insulted her at length but without using a single word the archbishop of Santiago de Compostela couldn’t have used on a Maundy Thursday afternoon. He reminded me of a priest who taught us religion when I was a boy. I was, as you will understand, at a disadvantage: naked, half asleep, in a strange house and a strange bed and without knowing what right the shouter had to come into the bedroom. I didn’t like him calling her filthy sinner and other things of a biblical ilk so I stood up and insulted him but without watching my language, on the contrary. The guy paid no attention to me, it seemed the issue was with her, and so much so that he came close to the bed and made a move to strike her. Oh no, my friend, in front of me, no: if someone wants to hit a girl and the girl is stupid enough to let him, it doesn’t matter to me, but not if I’m around, because then you’ve started something. I grabbed him by the shoulder, I made him turn around, and I landed a punch. He stumbled and came right at me. He was shorter and stockier than I, but if he was mad, I was madder. I landed a couple of good blows and faked with another to the face trying to make him cover so as to hit him in the gut, knock him to the ground and kick him in the head. Yes, I was furious and when I’m furious, I’m no gentleman in the ring. He was furious, too, obviously, but on the theological side, and there’s nothing like theology to sap the effectiveness of your punches, so I looked likely to win. He saw that and snatched up the long scissors that were on the dresser and lunged at me. He was no gentleman in the ring either, I am sorry to say, may he rest in peace. I grabbed him by the wrist, twisted it until it cracked, and took away the scissors. He threw himself on top of me—he didn’t lack courage—and I parried with my right but I had the scissors in that hand. I buried them up to the handle in his chest and the guy fell down. I was stunned. Even more so when I looked at Ribkamatia, thinking I would find her half fainting, pale and covering her mouth with her hand, and I saw she was just fine: irritated, I’d say, impatient, but not scared. I may have killed at some time or another, I’m not saying no and I’m not saying yes, either, but if I believe in anything, I believe in the non possumus. For a second, I shouldered all the sins of all those sentenced to eternal punishment, and the next second, when I looked at the guy dead on the floor, I saw him stand up, almost as if nothing had happened except for the scissors driven in at the level of his heart, and I saw how he yanked them out without leaving a hint of the wound, with no wound—do you understand?—and how he dusted off his shirt and pants and how he put the scissors on the dresser and left, looking backward and muttering things, more insults I think, although I didn’t hear him. The door closed and I sat down on the edge of the bed.

“That imbecile never learns,” Ribkamatia said, and she ran her hand over my head.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“My husband,” she said.

I looked at her, so pretty and fresh, so pretty: “But aren’t you a widow? Isn’t your husband dead?”

“Of course he’s dead,” she said, “and I have already told him a thousand times I’m not a coward and no one’s going to keep ordering me around, not him or anyone.”

“Ribka,” I said to her, feeling suddenly perfectly calm, “I want you to explain to me how a dead man can be alive and come to fight with his widow’s lover.”

“He’s just like all of them,” she said, “he can’t help it, poor thing.”

“All of the dead are alive,” I said.

“They’re dead but it’s as if they were alive,” and she looked at me for a while without saying anything. “Then, you didn’t know?”

“No,” I said. “You thought I knew, but no. Who are the Wayward Youth? What are the dead? Zombies? Vampires? Why is there no electricity, no clocks? Are all of those walking around the streets dead? Why can’t I sell medicines?”

She laughed. She put her arms around me, she made me lie down again next to her and she told me. On González people died just as they do anywhere, but they didn’t stay deceased and quiet in the coffin like the polite departed. There weren’t even coffins. Or niches or pantheons or cemeteries or funeral parlors. What for? The dead got up just a little while after having died and devoted themselves to messing with the living. They died, no joking: their hearts stopped and their blood didn’t circulate and there were no more vital functions, but there they were, in the streets, in the plaza, in the countryside, moving into the family home from time to time or going off who knows where. Only they weren’t different solely physiologically. They were different due to anger or resentment, due to death: they wanted things to continue as they were when they were alive and for that reason they wanted the living to live like the dead. They didn’t allow anything to happen that might alter the life they had known. With their common ancestors always among them, like someone who has a deaf great-aunt living in their attic, it was logical that they all continued being part of the same family, and they were all cousins and they were all named González. Of course, as there were very ancient dead, the monkey faces wrapped up in skins, but there were also more recent dead, the new ones compromised on a few things that in their turn, when they were alive, they had managed to impose against the wishes or the orders of the dead they had had to put up with. That’s why there was running water, for example. But there weren’t doctors or hospitals or medicines, because the dead wanted the living to join the dead as soon as possible. And the less romance there was, the better; fewer marriages, although what romance has to do with marriage is something I haven’t managed to comprehend, unless it’s a risk one has to know how to avoid, but the dead have a very particular idea in that respect: fewer offspring, fewer of the living. In sum, González was on the path to being a world of the dead. I was getting to that: hundreds of thousands of years ago, a comet passed by and the tail grazed González and it seems it liked the neighborhood because it returns every five years. I don’t remember what the comet was called or if it had a name: probably not, because it didn’t have a name the first time it passed. Every five years it renews the phenomenon of the suppression of some of the characteristics of death—rotting decorously, for example, and not appearing again unless it’s at the three-legged table of some charlatan. At least that was the explanation Ribka gave me and that everyone accepted as valid. There doesn’t seem to be another: there must be something in the tail of that comet and I have no interest in finding out what it is. I can’t imagine God the Father decreeing that the dead of González have to keep on screwing over the living for all eternity. The Wayward Youth? The ones who talk back and disobey dad and mom, the rebels, the ones who conspire—and you will recognize that it’s not easy—against the dead. A clandestine organization, but not really, because you can’t do anything entirely hidden from so many dead among whom some were Wayward Youth when they were alive: an organization that made plans, favored study, resistance, research, and curiosity. They flew in balloons—remember?—for coordination and information from city to city, but in secret. Every time the dead found a balloon, they destroyed it. I had caught one they hadn’t managed to land before it got light and it had seemed to me as if it was camouflaged. It was camouflaged. No, of course not, the dead weren’t supermen, they didn’t have any other faculties than those they’d had when alive: they couldn’t prevent people arriving from elsewhere, but they could oblige some of the living, the wimps as Ribka called them, not to give them the time of day, or lodge them, or give them food or provide them with anything. Those who arrived left again as soon as possible. But the Wayward Youth managed to talk with them and have news of what there was on other worlds. Well, the dead threatened the living that they’d kill them if they didn’t obey. It seems, nonetheless, that they couldn’t do it, that a dead person had never killed one of the living, otherwise González would have been peopled with the dead centuries ago. It’s possible they couldn’t. But just in case, the living obeyed. Not all of them: observe Ribka and the Wayward Youth. And the living didn’t want to join the dead, one because nobody likes to die and two because they knew what they would become. You see, the perfect fear. Yes, those strange people in the street were dead and those I met in the lace girl’s garden were dead. The not-so-old woman was the great-great-grandmother who had died at thirty-seven and the oldest old guy was the grandfather who had died at seventy-six. Many of the living let themselves be controlled by the dead, like the mayor and the lace girl and Ribka’s neighbor. But others did not. They fought—so far as they were able, but they fought. And I, who as my friend Jorge says—he’s a poet but a good guy—I am a romantic and my chest throbs achingly at certain things; I, who had spent with Ribka the loveliest night of my life, I entered the bullring to fight, too. I sat up in bed and I said:

“Ribka, we are going to make love again, because I like to make love in the morning and I like to make love and I like it with you, and then we are going to bathe together and drink coffee together and we are going to get ourselves gussied up and we are going to go look for the Wayward Youth, but first we are going to go by the clunker.”

I liked the way she laughed. Is there a bit more coffee? Thank you. This, too, may be an imposition but the occasion requires it, telling these things. When we went out to the street, cousin González was in the doorway of his house and I went up to him, I gave him my hand and I said hello, how are you, nice morning, don’t you think? And he looked at me as if I had gone crazy and Ribka and I walked off together. I don’t only carry merchandise on my trips. I take some of everything—if I tell you, I’ll never finish. I opened the clunker and we went in and started to rummage around. I gave her two clocks, a wristwatch for her to wear and a clock for her home, and I wrapped up a big clock for the municipality because the government, even if it’s municipal, has to provide an example. She wasn’t afraid and she was going to use them, but I told her to put the big one away, she wouldn’t have to keep it hidden very long. I gave her a short, yellow silk dress, very low cut and sleeveless, which I had asked a friend from Sinderastie to buy for me so as to give it to the daughter of a businessman on Dosirdoo IX to whom I owe attentions. I gave her an electric mixer, promising her she would be able to use it. No, I wasn’t sure yet, but it was reasonable to think so and, above all, I wanted to believe it. And I gave her a diamond from Quitiloe. Maybe she has sold it by now as I advised her and has gone on a luxury vacation cruise to Edessbuss and Naijale II and Ossawo. Or maybe she has kept it because I gave it to her. I like both possibilities. Then, loaded down with the packages, we went, in the most roundabout way, to a house on the outskirts of the city, where the Wayward Youth were meeting that day. She was in contact with them. She wasn’t part of the organization, because she was too independent and didn’t accept directives from the dead or from the living, but she knew all the places they met, which, as a precaution, changed every day. From time to time the dead found them, but in general they managed quite well. Good people, a few of them desperate but all of them hardheaded and fighters. Ribka told them about me and it turned out that very morning they had been looking for me in the city. I told them I needed to talk to them, the more of them the better, and that for once not to worry about the dead. They arranged to call all those they could and by midday there was a significant group, it almost looked like a demonstration. I climbed up on a table and said—quickly, because the lookouts told us the dead were already approaching—what had occurred to me. They got the idea right away and soon there was an infernal din. I tried to calm them but it was very difficult and then I thought, what do I care, it’s the first time they’ve been happy. And I hoped it wouldn’t be the last. The dead arrived and started to snoop around and make threats, but the atmosphere had changed. No one paid them much attention except for a few kids who yelled things at them, not exactly compliments. What hope can do, my God. They had become, I won’t say brave because that they had always been, but spirited and even happy. Ribka went home, I kissed her and told her good-bye, and I went to the clunker with a delegation of the Wayward Youth. I took off toward Edessbuss. And there we arrived, in full Carnival celebration. Those who were finishing their work shift in the port, put on their masks and their Zorro or Invincible Buccaneer costumes, grabbed the streamers and the perfume-sprayers and went to dance. It was a hassle trying to locate The Crazy Minstrel of the Still Waters but after traipsing through a dozen parties, we bet on his house and we waited for him there. He arrived with an odalisque and a Hungarian ballerina, very pretty, very heavily made-up, but no comparison to Ribka. Yes, he was surprised to see me, but he received me as friends are received on Edessbuss. Right there I told him I was going to make him pay for the nasty joke about selling medicines on González. To start, he had to put me in contact with the people in charge of the Roof. The poor thing, completely canned, dressed as a robot, didn’t understand much, but I introduced him to the Wayward Youth and told him they needed a few reports. Urgently, I said. We went in. He dressed, he changed, the two girls flopped down to sleep on a sofa and we left. For the Superior Institute of Technology and Environmental Protection. There, in front of a number of very agreeable individuals who were not in costume but who, I’d bet my life on it, had been until midnight at least, we laid out the case of González, which all of them knew, some of them well, others better or worse. And I proposed the solution, trembling—what if they told me it couldn’t be done? But they said yes. They not only said yes but they got excited about it and began to ring bells calling engineers, project designers, calculators, ecologists, and I don’t know who all else and an hour later they were drawing and making calculations like crazy. I won’t take up more of your time: the next day we returned to González, and behind my clunker—the poor thing looked like a rickety guide fish leading three giant sharks—came three heavy cruisers full of technicians, workmen, and building material. On González I went to Ribka’s house and I washed my hands of the affair. I made love with her that morning, that afternoon, and that night, and all the following nights, but after the first night, I had to convince her to take off the wristwatch because my back was covered in scratches. No, the husband didn’t appear. Not because he was afraid of me: the dead of González have no fear or anything; he must have been busy with the other dead trying to prevent the technicians from Edessbuss from doing their work. My friend, you can imagine that if the Edessbussianos have placed a cover over their own world, it’s easy enough for them to extend another around their camps and their men if they don’t want anyone to bother them. And I had the Aqüivanida brake, don’t forget. With the brake I neutralized half a dozen attempts, that would have come to nothing anyway, by the González dead against the González living and from then on the worthy forebears stayed in their place and resigned themselves to being like the dead on other worlds. The brake also worked on the dead for just that reason, the lack of metabolism. A week. Yes, it took them no more than a week to wrap González in an anti-comet tail, not anti-energy, Roof. After the week they left, leaving everything ready, and González sang and danced for the first time in a million years. I left, too. It would be two years before the comet passed again. If the tail didn’t touch González, and it wasn’t going to touch because the Edessbussianos swore that any comet’s tail was a joke next to the energy of Edess-Pálida, the dead were going to die for real and along with those who would die later, they would feed the worms and geraniums like any self-respecting dead person, in nice and orderly cemeteries full of cypress trees and ostentatious plaques and healthy sobbing. Before I lifted off, I saw the first sparkle of the Roof that was already functioning. I imagine it’s still working. I imagine the dead will have gradually disappeared. I imagine Ribka has an electric sewing machine and a twelve-bulb chandelier in the dining room, that she uses the mixer and the watch, the clocks. I imagine the great-great-grandmother is no longer there to guard the virginity of the lace girl. I imagine there are airplanes and aspirin. I imagine that Ribka remembers me. Yes, thank you, I never say no to such good coffee.





Interval with my Aunts

Trafalgar and Josefina

to the memory of my aunts

Paula, Rosario, Elisa

and Carmencita.

and to my aunts Laura, Manena,

Virginia and Pilar.



My Aunt Josefina came to visit me. He who has never met my Aunt Josefina doesn’t know what he’s missing, as Trafalgar Medrano says. Trafalgar also says that she is one of the most beautiful and charming women he has met and that if he had been born in 1893 he would not have married her for anything in the world. My aunt came in, she looked the house over and asked after the children, she wanted to know if I was ever going to decide to move to an apartment downtown, and when I said no, never, she hesitated over whether or not to leave her jacket somewhere and decided to take it with her because there might be a little breeze in the garden later. She’s eighty-four years old; wavy hair the color of steel, a couple of tireless chestnut eyes as bright as they say my criolla great-grandmother’s were, and an enviable figure: if she wanted to, if she went so far as to admit that those coarse and disagreeable things should be used as items of clothing, she could wear Cecilia’s jeans. She said the garden was lovely and that it would look much better when we had the ash trees pruned and the tea was delicious and she loved scones but they turned out better with only one egg.

“I drank a very good tea the other day. Yes, I am going to have a little more but half a cup, that’s good, don’t get carried away. Isn’t it a little strong? Just one little drop of milk. That’s it. And they served me some very good toast, with butter and not that rancid margarine they give you now everywhere, I don’t know how you can like it. In the Burgundy. And I was with a friend of yours.”

“I already know,” I said. “Trafalgar.”

“Yes, the son of Juan José Medrano and poor Merceditas. I don’t understand how she allowed her only son to be given that outlandish name. Well, I always suspected Medrano was a Mason.”

“But Josefina, what does Freemasonry have to do with the Battle of Trafalgar?”

“Ah, I don’t know, sweetie, but you can’t deny that the Masons purposely gave their children names that didn’t appear in the calendar of saints.”

“Doctor Medrano was probably an admirer of Nelson,” I said, pinning all my hopes on Trafalgar’s old man’s interest in the great events of history.

“What I can assure you,” said my Aunt Josefina, “is that Merceditas Herrera was a saint, and so refined and discreet.”

“And Doctor Medrano, what was he like?”

“A great doctor,” she opened another scone and spread orange marmalade on it. “Good-looking and congenial as well. And very cultured.”

There was a quarter-second silence before the last statement: the word cultured is slippery with my Aunt Josefina and one has to step carefully.

“Trafalgar is also good-looking and congenial,” I said, “but I don’t know if he’s cultured. He knows a ton of strange things.”

“It’s true, he’s congenial, very congenial and friendly. And very considerate with an old lady like me. Now, I think good-looking is an exaggeration. His nose is too long, just like poor Merceditas’. And don’t tell me that mustache isn’t a little ridiculous. A man looks much tidier if clean-shaven, thank goodness your sons have gotten over the beard and mustache phase. But I have to admit that the boy is elegant: he had on a dark gray suit, very well cut, and a white shirt and a serious tie, not like some of your extravagant friends who look like. I don’t even know what they look like.”

“Would you like a little more tea?”

“No, no, please, you’ve already made me drink too much, but it was delicious and I have overdone it. That was Thursday or Friday, I’m not sure. I went into the Burgundy because I was fainting with hunger: I was coming from a meeting of the board of directors of the Society of Friends of the Museum, so it was Thursday, of course, because Friday was the engagement party of María Luisa’s daughter, and you know Thursday is Amelia’s afternoon off, and frankly I had no desire to go home and start making tea. There weren’t many people and I sat down far away from the door, where there wouldn’t be a draft, and when they were serving my tea the Medrano boy came in. He came over to say hello, so kind. At first I couldn’t place him and I was about to ask him who he was when I realized he was Merceditas Herrera’s son. It was so unsettling, seeing him standing there beside the table, but although I am old enough to do certain things, you understand that a lady never invites a man, even though he’s so much younger than she is, to sit at her table.”

An “Oh, no?” escaped me.

My Aunt Josefina sighed, I would almost say she blew out air, and great-grandmother’s eyes stopped me cold.

“I do know customs have evolved,” she said, “and in a few cases for the better, and in many others unfortunately for the worse, but there are things that do not change and you should know that.”

I smiled because I love her a lot and because I hope I can get to eighty-four years old with the same confidence she has and learn to control my eyes the way she does although mine aren’t even a tenth as pretty.

“And you let poor Trafalgar go?”

“No. He was very correct and he asked my permission to keep me company if I wasn’t waiting for anyone. I told him to sit down and he ordered coffee. It’s appalling how that boy drinks coffee. I don’t know how he doesn’t ruin his stomach. I haven’t tasted coffee in years.”

She doesn’t smoke either, of course. And she drinks a quarter glass of rosé with every dinner and another quarter glass, only of extra-dry champagne, at Christmas and New Year’s.

“He didn’t tell you if he was going to come by here?”

“No, he didn’t say, but it seems unlikely. He was going, I think the next day, I’m not really sure where, it must be Japan, I imagine, because he said he was going to buy silks. A shame he devotes himself to commerce and didn’t follow his father’s path: it was a disappointment to poor Merceditas. But he’s doing very well, isn’t he?”

“He’s doing fabulously. He has truckloads of dough.”

“I sincerely hope you don’t use that language outside your home. It is unbecoming. Of course, it would be best if you never used it, but that’s evidently hopeless. You’re as stubborn as your father.”

“Yes, my old man, I mean my father, was stubborn, but he was a gentleman.”

“True. I don’t know how he spoke when he was among other men, that doesn’t matter, but he never said anything inappropriate in public.”

“If you heard Trafalgar talk, you’d have an attack.”

“I don’t see why. With me, he was most agreeable. Neither affected nor hoity-toity—no need for that—but very careful.”

“He’s a hypocritical cretin.” That I didn’t say, I just thought it.

“And he has,” said my Aunt Josefina, “a special charm for telling the most outlandish things. What an imagination.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Obviously, maybe it’s not all imagination. It gives you the impression that he is telling the truth, but so embellished that at first glance you could think it was a big lie. I’ll tell you I spent a very entertaining interval. How is it possible that when I arrived home Amelia was already back and was worried at my delay? The poor thing had called Cuca’s house, and Mimi’s and Virginia’s to see if I was there. I had to start in on the phone calls to calm them all down.”

I got serious: I was dying of envy, like when Trafalgar goes and tells things to Fatty Páez or Raúl or Jorge. But I understood, because my Aunt Josefina knows how to do many things well; for example, to listen.

“What did he tell you?”

“Oh, nothing, crazy things about his trips. Of course, he speaks so well that it’s a pleasure, a real pleasure.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Sweetie, how you insist! Besides, I don’t remember too well.”

“Yeah, tell me what you remember.”

“One says ‘yes,’ not ‘yeah.’ You sound like a muleteer, not a lady.”

I ignored her.

“Of course you remember. You catch cold with a constancy worthy of a greater cause and your stomach is a little fragile, but don’t tell me you have arteriosclerosis, because I won’t believe you.”

“God preserve me. Have you seen Raquel lately? A fright. She was at the Peñas’, I don’t know why they take her, and she didn’t recognize me.”

“Josefina, I am going to go crazy with curiosity. Be nice and tell me what Trafalgar told you.”

“Let’s see, wait, I’m not really sure.”

“For certain he told you he had just arrived from somewhere.”

“That’s it. It must be one of those new countries in Africa or Asia, with a very strange name I have never heard before or ever read in the newspaper. What surprised me was that they were so advanced, with so much progress and so well organized, because they always turn savage: look what happened in India when the English left and in the Congo after the Belgians, no? Your friend Medrano told me it was a world—a world, that’s what he said—that was very attractive when one saw it for the first time. Serprabel, now I remember, Serprabel. I think it must be close to India.”

“I doubt it but, anyway, go on.”

“Nevertheless, almost certainly, yes, it must be near India, not only because of the name but because of the castes.”

“What castes?”

“Aren’t there castes in India?”

“Yes, there are, but what does that have to do with it?”

“If you let me tell you, you’re going to find out; weren’t you in such a big hurry? And sit properly, it’s so obvious you are all used to wearing pants. There are no elegant women anymore.”

“Tell me, in Serprabel, are there elegant women?”

“Yes, according to the Medrano boy, there are splendid women, very well dressed and very well bred.”

“It doesn’t surprise me; even if there’s only one, he’ll find her.”

“A shame he never married.”

“Who? Trafalgar?” I laughed for a while.

“I don’t see what’s funny about it. I’m not saying with a foreigner, and from so far away, who may be a very good person, but have different customs, but with someone from his circle. Don’t forget, he comes from a very well-connected family.”

“That one’s going to die an old bachelor. He likes women too much.”

“Hmmmmm,” went my Aunt Josefina.

“Don’t tell me Medrano Senior did, too!” I exclaimed.

“Be discreet, sweetheart, don’t talk so loud. In fact, I can’t confirm anything. A few things were said at the time.”

“I can imagine,” I said. “And Merceditas was a saint. And on Serprabel Trafalgar was looking for romance, just as his father would have been.”

“But how can you think that? He wasn’t looking for romance, as you say. And if he were, he wouldn’t have told me. One can see he is a very polite boy. What he did, or what he says he did, because it was most likely nothing more than a story to entertain me for a while, what he did was to try to help a poor woman, who was very unfortunate for many reasons.”

“Ay,” I said, and once again thought that Trafalgar was a hypocritical cretin.

“Now what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing, go on.”

“Well, it seems that there they maintain—following those eastern religions, no?—a caste system. And there are nine. Let’s see, let me think: lords, priests, warriors, scholars, merchants, artisans, servants, and vagabonds. Oh, no, eight. They’re eight.”

“And everyone has to be in one of the castes.”

“Of course. Don’t tell me it isn’t an advantage.”

“Oh, I don’t know. What does one do if one is an artisan and has the vocation to be a merchant, like Trafalgar? Do they take an exam?”

“Of course not. Everyone lives within the caste to which they belong and they marry people from their own caste.”

“Don’t tell me: and their children are born within that caste and die within that caste and the children of those children and so on forever.”

“Yes. So no one has pretentions and everyone stays in their place and they avoid disorders and revolutions and strikes. I said to Medrano that, paganism aside, it seemed to me an extraordinary system and he agreed with me.”

“Ah, he agreed with you.”

“Of course, he even told me that in thousands of years there had never been any disorder and they had lived in peace.”

“How nice.”

“I know it must sound a little old-fashioned to you, but Medrano says the level of development in everything, color television and airlines and telephones with a view screen and computer centers, is impressive. I’m surprised they don’t advertise more to attract tourism. I myself, if I were inclined to travel at my age, would be very happy to go for a visit. Listen, he says the hotels are extraordinary and the service is perfect, the food is delicious, and there are museums and theaters and places to visit and splendid, just splendid landscapes.”

“I don’t like that caste thing. I wouldn’t go even at gunpoint.”

“Nor I, believe me, I would not enjoy such a long plane trip. But the caste thing is not that important, because anyone can govern.”

“What did you say?”

“That anyone can govern. Above everyone is a kind of king who lives in the center of the capital, because the city is a circle and in the middle is the Palace which is all marble and gold and crystal. Anyway, that’s what your friend says. I don’t doubt that it’s very luxurious, but not that much.”

“And anyone can become king? I mean, everything else is hereditary and that, specifically, is not?”

“That’s what Medrano told me. So you see, if the highest authority can be elected, everything is very democratic. The king is called the Lord of Lords and governs for a period of five years; when it’s over, he can’t be reelected, he goes back home and then the Lords elect another.”

“Wait, wait. The Lords? So then the others don’t vote?”

“Nobody votes, sweetie. The Lords meet every five years and elect a Lord of Lords and look how nice, they almost always, or always, elect him from among the inferior castes, you see?”

“Heck yes, I see. And the Lord of Lords governs everybody?”

“I suppose so, that’s what he’s elected for. Although your friend Medrano says no, he doesn’t govern.”

“I thought so.”

“Oh, sure, if he says it, it’s holy writ.”

“Fine, but what is it he says?”

Another of my Aunt Josefa’s virtues is that she can’t lie: “He says he’s a puppet of the Lords who are the ones who really govern, so as to keep everyone happy with the illusion that they or someone of their caste might become king, but that the Lord of Lords is the ultimate slave, a slave who lives like a king, eats like a king, dresses like a king, but is still a slave.”

And one of her defects consists in believing only what she wants to believe: “You see that can’t be. Surely the Lords form a kind of Council or Chamber or something like that and your friend took one thing for another. Or he probably invented it to spice up the story.”

“Yes, just probably. I warn you, Trafalgar is capable of anything.”

“He also told me, this seems more reasonable to me, that the inferior castes are the more numerous. There is only one Lord of Lords. There are very few Lords, I think he told me there are a hundred. A few more Priests, many more, I think around three hundred. Many more Warriors and even more Scholars, he didn’t tell me how many. Many, many Merchants, Artisans, and Servants, especially Servants. And it seems there are millions of Vagabonds. It must be a very populous country. And anyone of any caste, except the Lord of Lords, of course, can be Owner or Dispossessed.”

“Having money or not having money? Rich and poor, let’s say.”

“More or less: he who has land is an Owner; he who does not is Dispossessed. And within each caste anyone who is an Owner is superior to the Dispossessed.”

“And can one go from being Dispossessed to Owner?”

“Yes, so you already see that it’s not as terrible as you thought. If one puts together enough money, one buys land, which is very expensive, just like everywhere. It seems to be a very rich country.”

“The Vagabonds can buy land, too?”

“No, no. The Vagabonds are vagabonds. They don’t even have houses, I don’t know how people can live like that.”

“I don’t understand. Now tell me what happened to Trafalgar on Serprabel.”

“It’s a little cool, don’t you think?”

“Do you want to go inside?”

“No, but help me put the jacket over my shoulders,” not that my Aunt Josefina needs help to put on her jacket. “That’s it, thank you. According to him, some of everything happened. He went there to sell jewelry and perfumes. He says he didn’t do too well with the perfumes because they have a good chemical industry and flowers, you should see the flowers he described to me, very heavily scented ones from which they make extracts. But as there are no deposits of precious stones, he sold the ones he took very well. Of course, he had a few problems, believe me, because anyone who goes to Serprabel has to become part of a caste. They considered him a merchant and he had to use vehicles for Merchants and go to a hotel for Merchants. But when he learned that there were superior castes with better hotels and more privileges, he protested and said he was also a Scholar and a Warrior. He did the right thing, don’t you think? Of course, since there one can’t belong to more than one caste, they had to hold a kind of audience presided over by one of the Lords who had the strangest name, that I’m really not going to be able to remember, and there he explained his case. Oh, he made me laugh so much telling me how he had disconcerted them and remarking that he was very sorry he couldn’t say he was a Lord, and that he would also have liked to say he was a Priest, which is the second caste. The bad part was he didn’t know anything about the religion and he doesn’t have mystical inclinations. Although I think he was educated in a religious school.”

“That he has no mystical inclinations remains to be seen. So what happened?”

“They accepted that in other places there were other customs and they reached an agreement. He would be a Warrior but one of the lowest, those of the Earth, although an Owner, and with permission to act as a Merchant.”

“What’s that about those of the Earth?”

“Well, each one of the four superior castes has categories. For example, let’s see, how was it, the Lords can be of Light, of Fire, and of Shadow, I think that was the order. The Priests can devote themselves to Communication, Intermediation, or Consolation. The Warriors act in the Air, the Water, or on the Earth. And the Scholars are dedicated to Knowledge, Accumulation, or Teaching. The others are inferior and don’t have categories.”

“What a mess. And each one can also be Owner or Dispossessed and that influences their position?”

“Yes. It’s a little complicated. Medrano told me that a Lord of Light, an Owner, was the highest rank. And a Warrior of Air but Dispossessed was almost equal to a Priest devoted to Consolation but an Owner. Understand?”

“Not really. Anyway, they gave Trafalgar a very passable rank.”

“He was very satisfied. The took him to a very superior hotel and that’s even though he says the Merchants’ hotel was very good, and they set four people to attend him exclusively, aside from the hotel personnel. The fact that he had jewels to sell also must have had some influence, because they are a real luxury. He says a delegation of Merchants went to see him and that although they couldn’t enter the hotel, which was solely for Warriors, they spoke in the park and offered him a very well located shop where he could sell what he had brought. A few wanted to buy one or another piece of jewelry so as to sell it themselves but they were very expensive and the Merchants, although they aren’t exactly poor, aren’t rich, either. Only one of them, who was an Owner, and of a lot of land, might have been able to buy something from him, but Medrano didn’t want to sell him anything; he did well, because why make such a long trip and end up splitting the profits with another? In any event they had to give him the location even though they didn’t end on very friendly terms, because every caste has its laws and among the Merchants one can’t go back after having offered something verbally or any other way, but above all verbally. Another law for all of the castes—which frankly, I don’t know what result it would produce—seems very silly to me, it says no one can repeat to those of his own caste nor to those of other castes something he has overheard a member of another caste say, although they can repeat what members of their own caste have said. Of course this is hard to control, and no one speaks gladly to someone from another caste but only out of obligation, but every so often they catch an offender and the punishments are terrible; anyway, I don’t know if it’s really worth all that.”

“But listen, more than silly, that’s dangerous, because it’s very vague, there aren’t any limits. If you take it literally, no one can talk to anyone from another caste.”

“There’s something of that, as I said. But as the Lords, who are very intelligent and very fair, act as judges, there are no abuses. What is happening is that from caste to caste, the language is becoming more and more different. I forgot to ask Medrano what language they spoke and if he understood it. Would it be some dialect of Hindi? In any case, with a little English one can make oneself understood anywhere in the world.”

“Trafalgar speaks excellent English. I expect he sold the jewelry.”

“To the Lords, of course. The store fronts, the shops, those are public places where anyone can go, except for the Vagabonds who can’t go anywhere, but when a Lord or a number of Lords enter, everyone else has to leave. Those that aren’t Lords, because those that are Lords can stay. In any case, a crowd of people paraded through to see what Medrano had brought.”

“I’d bet a year’s paychecks he sold it all.”

“I don’t know what you were going to live on because he didn’t sell everything. He had a pearl necklace left over.”

“I don’t believe you. No. Impossible. Never.”

“Seriously. Of course it was because of everything that happened and anyway he was the one who decided to leave it, but he didn’t sell it.”

“I don’t understand any of this, but it seems very unusual in Trafalgar.”

“Well, the Lord of Lords governing at that time, and who had been elected by the Lords less than a year before, was a man not at all well-suited to the office. Listen, he had been a Vagabond, how awful.”

“Why? Don’t they elect the inferior castes as king?”

“Yes, of course, but seldom Vagabonds, who are illiterate and don’t know how to eat or how to behave. But Medrano says they had elected him because he had the face and the poise of a king.”

“High-class liars, those Lords.”

“Sweetie, so vulgar.”

“Don’t tell me they aren’t a bunch of liars and something worse, too.”

“I don’t think so, because from what Medrano told me they are irreproachable people. And it seems to me very democratic to elect a Vagabond as king. Even a bit idealistic, like something out of a novel.”

“A cock-and-bull story.”

“The fact is, the poor Lords made a mistake. Of course, an ignorant person, without education—what could you expect?”

“He left them in a bad state.”

“He fell in love, can you believe, with a married woman.”

“A Vagabond?”

“No, I think the Vagabonds don’t even get married. Worse: he fell in love with the wife of a Scholar, and one of the best, the ones devoted to Knowledge and who for that reason was often at court. And Medrano found that out because he heard the Lords discussing what had to be done in the jewelry store he had opened. But as he didn’t know that one can’t repeat what members of a caste that isn’t your own have said, and he was—at least so long as he was there—a Warrior, he mentioned it to a Scholar in conversation. I don’t remember what category he belonged to, but Medrano says he had been looking at the jewels and that he was a very interesting man who knew a great deal about philosophy, mathematics, music, and it was worthwhile listening to him speak. He couldn’t buy anything: only the Lords had picked up a lot of things, because the prices were very high for those of other castes, but he stayed until quite late, and as the two were alone and they had talked about the cutting of stones and of goldsmithing and of music, they started to talk about other things, too, and Medrano praised the country and the city and the other asked if he had seen the gardens at the Palace and they talked about the Lord of Lords and there your friend committed an indiscretion.”

“He mentioned the Lord of Lords’ affair with the woman.”

“He said he had heard the Lords talk about that and he didn’t realize he had said something he should not: he was just surprised when the Scholar became very serious and stopped talking and said good-bye very coldly and left.”

“Trafalgar acts like a know-it-all but he never learns. He always sticks his foot in it.”

“My goodness, what a way to speak.”

“I promise to be more refined, or at least try to, but tell me what happened to him.”

“When you want to you can speak correctly. The thing would be for you to always want to. That day, nothing happened to him. The next day he sold what he had left, only to the Lords, save for a pearl necklace that must have been beautiful, truly beautiful: a very long string of pink pearls all the same size. Natural pearls, as you can imagine. It must have cost a fortune.”

“That was the one he left?”

“Yes, but wait. When he had nothing left but that necklace and was about to sell it to a Lord, the police came in and arrested him.”

“It looks like there are police on Serprabel.”

“Why not? They belong to the Servants caste. And they took him directly to the Palace of the Lord of Lords. There he had to wait, always under guard, with the necklace in his pocket, until they made him enter—shoved him, he says, how unpleasant—enter a courtroom. As repeating things said by someone from another caste is a serious crime, the judge wasn’t just any Lord but the Lord of Lords. Of course, assisted by two Lords. The one who acted as prosecutor was another Lord, who put forward the accusation.”

“And defender? Did he have a defender?”

“No, he had to defend himself. I will say it does not seem fair to me.”

“Not fair at all. A filthy trick, forgive the term.”

“It may be a little strong, but you’re right. They accused him and he defended himself as well as he could. But note, they had to say what it was about, what it was Medrano had repeated. And it was nothing less than the illicit affairs of the very king presiding over the tribunal.”

“Poor guy, my God.”

“That boy really had a bad time.”

“No, I mean the Lord of Lords.”

“He had it coming, and don’t think I don’t feel sorry for him. But a person of quality does not stoop to such things.”

“Oh, no, of course, why don’t you read Shakespeare and Sophocles?”

“That may be all very well for the theater, but in real life it is not suitable. And things got worse when, after the accusation and the defense, the prosecutor detailed Medrano’s crime and the Lord of Lords, who until then had been very much in his role, very serious and dignified and quiet on his throne, stood up and started to speak. It was not the conduct expected of a king, because everyone, and above all the Lords, Medrano explained to me, everyone was so scandalized that they couldn’t do anything. They were frozen with their mouths open, staring at him.”

“And what did he say?”

“A speech.”

“A speech?”

“A parody of a speech. Medrano says he didn’t even know how to speak, he stammered and pronounced the words wrong and repeated phrases.”

“And what did they expect? The Demosthenes of the underworld? But one could understand some of what he said, I imagine.”

“He said—there in front of everybody, because trials are public—he said it was all true, can you believe what poor taste, talking about things that are not only private, but illicit. He said he was in love with that girl and she with him and he didn’t see why they couldn’t love each other and he was going to stop being king and he was going to go away with her and walk naked and barefoot through the fields and eat fruit and drink water from the rivers, what a crazy idea. It must have been so unpleasant for the Lords to see the same king they had elected sniveling and drooling like a fussy child in front of the people he supposedly had to govern. How could it be that no one moved or said anything when the Lord of Lords got down from the throne and took off his shoes which were of an extremely fine leather with gold buckles, and took off the embroidered cloak and the crown and, wearing only in a tunic of white linen, walked over to the exit?”

“And no one did anything?”

“The Lords did something. The Lords reacted and gave the order to the police to seize him and they carried him back to the throne. But what a strange thing, no one obeyed and the Lord of Lords kept walking and left the courtroom and reached the gardens.”

“But, Trafalgar? What was Trafalgar doing that he didn’t take advantage of the chance to escape?”

“He didn’t? Sweetie, it’s as if you didn’t know him well. As soon as the Lord of Lords started to talk and everyone was watching him, Medrano backed up and put himself out of the guards’ reach and when the king left the room and some Warriors and the Lords yelled and ran out, he ran, too.”

“Well done, I like it.”

“But he didn’t go very far.”

“They caught him again?”

“No, luckily not. In the Palace gardens, where there were always a lot of people, there was a big stir when they saw him appear barefoot, wearing only his underclothes. And then, Medrano was able to see it all well, then a very young, very pretty woman embraced him, crying: it was the Scholar’s wife, she of the guilty passions.”

“Oh, Josefina, that’s a phrase out of a serial novel.”

“Is it that way or is it not? A married woman who has a love affair with a man who is not her husband is blameworthy, and don’t tell me no because that I will not accept.”

“We aren’t going to fight over it, especially now when you leave me hanging with everyone in such a foul predicament. Did Trafalgar do anything besides watch?”

“Quite a bit, poor boy, he was very generous. Mistaken, but generous. The Lords and the Warriors and the Scholars—not the Priests, because none of them were there, they lead quieter lives, as is proper—tried to get to the Lord of Lords and that woman, but all the people of the other castes who were in the garden and those who came in from outside or came out of the Palace to see, without knowing very well why—because many of them hadn’t been at the tribunal; just out of rebelliousness or resentment, I imagine—started to defend them. Of course, that turned into a plain of Agramante and there was a terrible fight. The Warriors and the Lords had weapons, but those of the inferior castes destroyed the gardens, such a shame, pulling out stones, taking iron from the benches, chunks of marble and crystal from the fountains, branches, railings from the gazebos, anything with which to attack and give the Lord of Lords and the woman time to escape.”

“And did they escape?”

“They escaped. And your friend Medrano after them. He says his private plane, he doesn’t call it private plane, what does he call it?”

“Clunker.”

“That’s it. He says his private plane wasn’t very far away and he wanted to get to it, very sensible it seems to me, and take off immediately. But meanwhile the Lords and Warriors got organized, they called in soldiers, who I think are from the Warriors caste, too, but are doing their apprenticeship, and they chased the Lord of Lords and the woman. That was when Medrano caught up with them and dragged them with him to the airplane.”

“Thank goodness. You were starting to scare me.”

“Go ahead and get scared, now comes the worst.”

“Oh, no, don’t tell me more.”

“Fine, I won’t tell you more.”

“No, yes, tell me.”

“Which is it?”

“Josefina, no, I promise I wasn’t serious.”

“I know, and anyway I can’t cut the story short now. They had almost reached the plane, with the Lords and Warriors and the Scholars and the soldiers chasing them and behind them all those from the inferior castes who were throwing stones but no longer tried to get close because the Warriors had killed several, they had almost reached it when the Lords realized where they were going and that they were about to escape and they gave the order to the soldiers to fire. They shot, and they killed the Lord of Lords.”

I said nothing. Josefina observed that it was getting dark, and I went inside and turned on the garden lights.

“Medrano,” said my Aunt Josefina, “saw that they had put a bullet through his head and he grabbed the woman and pulled her up into the plane. But she didn’t want to go, now that the Lord of Lords was dead, and she fought so hard that she managed to free herself and she threw herself out of the plane. Medrano tried to follow her and take her up again, but the Warriors and the Lords were already upon him and they kept firing and he had to close the door. They killed her, too. It was a horrible death, Medrano said, but he didn’t explain how and I didn’t ask. He remained locked in, on the ground but ready to take off, and saw they weren’t paying attention to him any longer. In the end, to them he was no more than a foreigner from whom they had bought jewels, who perhaps understood nothing of the country’s customs and so had done things that were not right. They went away and left the bodies. Those of the inferior castes had to be obliged to retreat at bayonet point because they wanted to come close at all costs although they were no longer throwing stones or anything else. And that was when Medrano left the pearl necklace. When he saw that he was alone, he got down from the plane, at great risk, it seems to me, but he was very brave and it’s very moving, he got down from the plane and he put the string of pearls on the woman, on what remained of her, he said. Afterward he climbed back up, locked himself in, washed his hands, lit a cigarette, and lifted off.”

“How awful.”

“Yes. So long as it’s true,” said my Aunt Josefina. “I don’t know what to think. Might it not be nothing more than a fairy tale for an old lady all alone drinking her tea?”

“Trafalgar doesn’t tell fairy tales. And you’re not old, Josefina, come on.”