I

We requested an audience with the governor and he gave us one. We hadn’t come armed, so it wasn’t very difficult to get through the checkpoints in the lobby, and on the second floor, or even outside the door of his office, a sizable room with ceilings twelve feet high at least, by my calculations. The doors and tables were made of a dark and ancient wood, a little the worse for wear, and in the remaining furniture, the clots of black varnish really stood out.

         We sat ourselves down in front of his desk, in a semicircle with a variable radius, filling his field of vision. An armed guard was stationed outside his door; of this we were certain. It’s possible one of us had been recognized, the guy from good stock, as they say, which we were counting on as our letter of introduction. The governor was pushing fifty, but in any case, the push was a soft one, and it was clear he still savored the perks of his post, as well as the prestige and status that went along with it.

         One of us spoke first. What I mean is, the governor didn’t initiate the conversation, by trotting out some readymade phrase. For a long while after we had pulled together the chairs that lay scattered about the office and taken a seat no one said a word, then suddenly a voice was saying:

         “Mr. Governor, what do you say to resigning and handing everything over to us?”

         He didn’t seem to react, not apart from leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest, and he looked us over, one by one. At the same time, the two doors on either side of the room opened with martial synchronicity and three men appeared from the left and right and placed themselves behind us, as though awaiting their next order. Next, I say, because the governor, pushing some hidden button, and very discreetly, had issued the first already, in the form of the silent alarm. So we said nothing, and the six or seven of us just sat there, observing the governor, with six or seven men behind us, ready to bash in our skulls at the least sign of violence.

         Our guy spoke again:

         “Mr. Governor, gather your things and go. Please step down, if you would be so kind.”

         Nothing happened. Then, a moment later, the governor said:

         “Am I to understand that you have the authority to dismiss me?”

         “We do,” someone said, with real conviction. “You’re dismissed, my friend.”

         We found ourselves in the kind of long, tense parenthetical any seasoned film director would have seized upon to milk the interpretative powers of his actors for all their worth. For anyone in the governor’s role it would have been an excellent time to convey via a tic of nervous sweat, or even a pregnant glance, that trickiest of talents, his efforts to keep himself under control and process information as rapidly as the situation demanded. And the governor, I must say, rose to the challenge completely, maybe because he understood the importance of the role, dragging out the silence, as one would only expect, so that any director with a bit of experience would have been able to include inserts and underscore the mounting tension with close-ups of certain details: open jackets, rolled up sleeves, trembling hands, phony cold stares—all of this, everything, juxtaposed with our distended appearance, even though we were all on the alert against any possible attack of insufferable boredom. The rhythm typical to all important posts, that so very coveted ritual delay.

         Finally, very lightly, almost imperceptibly, the governor gave a nod, and the men withdrew.  

         It took him little more than an hour to gather up his things, and on his way out he wondered if we might do him the courtesy of sending him anything of his we happened to come across. As he left we didn’t even bother getting up to shake his hand or congratulate him on the supremely civilized fashion with which he acquiesced to his destitution (on the part of nobody). Now we stood before an enormous window about eight feet in height, with thick curtains made of purple leather, and I don’t think any one of us had an interest in anything other than dozing off or just basking in the diffuse sunlight filtering in from the outside, where city life was carrying on as usual, as if nothing had changed; because nothing had, nothing vital.

         We got ourselves comfortable and ordered some breakfast. None of us had eaten a thing all morning, apart from scalding hot coffee with a bit of foam on top, not at all worth counting. In less than half an hour, we were feasting on buttery toast and croissants and marmalade and juice and the creamiest coffees (with our choice of milk, steamed or cold) and assorted pastries and a box of cigars, which one of us had ordered with a great deal of intent.

         Once we had had our breakfast and the breakfast had settled, now two or three hours since we first arrived at the statehouse, we called together all the personnel to inform them they were being relieved of their posts, or that they were being let go, I don’t remember exactly how we phrased it. The main thing is that everyone present got the gist and, to little comment and no apparent protest, they withdrew from our sight, and then they went off to collect whatever they had to collect and left. An hour later, more or less, there was no one left in the statehouse, with the exception of, like I said, the six or seven of us.

         What we did next was lock up the windows and doors and the main door with a key, which somebody took care of hiding at once where no one would stumble upon it. Wait, what am I saying? We were not even ten steps away from the statehouse steps when we were approached by a man, very demure in his demeanor, and clearly quite uncertain as to the most appropriate way to address us. We had just turned onto the tree-lined boulevard out in front of the statehouse, and we had taken a seat on a couple of benches, most of us with our hands buried deep in our pockets. The man continued to stand there, staring more at the dusty ground than up at us, as though we all weren’t also dust, in the end. Did we have any idea what was going to happen to him and his family with no salary? We didn’t have too much of an idea, not that it was difficult to imagine. (Domestic violence, alcoholism, unemployment, food short on vitamins and protein, even drugs, crime, and prostitution.) Might it be possible for us to look the other way, if he and his family were to take up in a room or two in the statehouse? Possibly, but only on the condition that they were joined by other families, lots of them, as many as the space might reasonably accommodate, and no special treatment for anyone. Yes, that would be alright, but we might return at any time to check that everything was in order. Should the mood strike us, of course. The man grinned at the dust when we handed over the key, and he left in high spirits, rushing off in the direction of another one of the people we had let go or relieved of duty just a few minutes before. I think we all felt as happy as could be after our good deed, but I think we also wondered how that man could be so sure that nobody would retake the statehouse in the capacity of governor.

         We stood up and stared at each other, and then some of us stared up at the sky, and we sighed with our hands in the pockets of our coats, and kicked a bit at the ground of the boulevard. Then someone started to walk in the direction of the city center, even though we were practically already in the city center. Now I remember how many of us there were. There were seven. Yes, six or seven, I’m sure of it.

         We passed by a telephone booth and one of us stepped inside to make a call. I remember him saying, I’m going to call my mother, so she doesn’t worry. The phone swallowed his money, and he couldn’t place the call. We loitered around the booth, unfocused and a little out of it, unsure what to do. Just in front of the booth, there was a laundromat. It occurred to us it might not be as cold in there as it was out here, so we went in and sat down on a couple of wooden benches with names and sketches drawn all over them. A girl in a smock with painted black nails came over and asked what she could do for us, and somebody said, “Nothing, thanks.” So she went back to her spot behind the register and continued to watch us, and I think she even said something to another woman who totally had the look of the owner, and she could have been telling her how we had come into the laundromat to escape the cold, and that we hadn’t brought any clothes to wash. The woman listened and eyed us with a tactful scowl of passive resistance. Then somebody took off his socks, and at that moment we all started to take off our socks, tossing them into a laundry basket. The girl with the black nails collected the basket with our six or seven pair of socks and gave one of us the ticket. The one who took the ticket offered her a cigarette, which she accepted, and as he handed it over they exchanged a few words, and she relaxed and even smiled a couple of times. Then she started to move smoothly about the laundromat, and quite confidently.

         Now we were starting to get a little hot and it was obvious we wanted to leave, although we still had another half an hour, give or take, until our socks were washed and dry. The guy with the ticket called to the girl with the black nails and asked her what time the laundromat closed. I seem to remember him also asking her if she wanted to join us on a stroll when she got off work. “Yes,” she said, a bit surprised, but Yes is what she said, since the one making the proposition idea was a good-looking guy, with the kind of a look that could put a girl like this laundry girl with the black nails at ease.

         We went out into the street and not ten minutes later we were already complaining about the cold climbing up our legs, so we started walking around and without trying very hard we stumbled across a store that sold socks. We all went into the store together and each of us picked out a pair of very thick socks—wool socks for some, linen socks for others, and for still others, socks made with a blend of linen, acrylic, and other materials I couldn’t quite identify. At the register those six or seven pairs of socks came to a total of about two or three thousand, but combined we could only scrape together a thousand, not that we didn’t have any more. I guess it just seemed that six or seven hundred was more than fair. The woman seemed ready to pitch a fit, until one of our guys, the one who really stood out for his charisma, and also his extremely positive outlook on life, pulled the woman aside and had a few very quiet words. The whole matter was resolved in less than two minutes. (I remember the woman’s hair being very coiffed, as though by a salon, with streaks of blond and an obvious abundance of hairspray, but I especially remember the great effort she had gone to, winding her hair up in that bun, to show off the pinkness of her ears, which could have been a sign of a vibrant and enjoyable sex life.) We put the socks on right there and left without a problem. On our way out, the guy who had been trying to make a call even asked if he might be able to use her phone, and she replied with a charming smile. I seem to remember him calling his mother more than a few times, but either she didn’t pick up or he couldn’t get through, so we left.

         There were still at least three or four hours to kill until we had to head back to the laundromat to pick up the girl with the nails and our old socks, so we thought we might venture outside the city for a breath of fresh air. We stopped a car—what I mean is, we stood in the middle of the road, and when the driver in the Fiat inquired, somewhat annoyed, what the meaning of this was, with several other cars lined up behind him, somebody asked where he was headed, and the driver said that that was his business and that he was in a rush; so our smooth-talker asked him to get out of the driver’s seat, saying it wouldn’t bother us in the least to drop him off somewhere before we took our spin around the outskirts. Still not entirely convinced, the man nevertheless moved into the passenger’s seat. Two of us squeezed in beside him, and three more in the back seat, and one or two in the trunk, which was very big and quite roomy once we got rid of the shelf, and then everything was hunky dory. When he saw how truly civilized we were, he began to show signs of calming down, and before long he was just another member of the gang, completely at ease, telling the guy behind the wheel all the car’s little quirks, wasting no opportunity to talk the car up like it was something top of the line, because it was a pricey model from a great brand, and it had never given him the least bit of trouble, and on top of that, he’d really babied the thing from the moment he’d got it five years ago, and it had great mileage and more than enough horsepower to do ninety uphill without guzzling too much gas, even when you punched the throttle. The guy at the wheel, and everybody else listening to the panegyric, assured the owner we would take good care of his car, and treat it like it was our own, maybe even better.

         A short while later we had dropped the owner of the car at his house, and were now cruising down the highway heading north-northwest, with the sea to our left, enjoying the views out over the water from the higher sections of the road. The little car zipped right along, and when we hit a straight stretch, the guy at the wheel tried gunning it to ninety, and he got there, with six or seven people on board and everything, and with none of that groaning engines make when they’re strained, or on the verge of overheating, nothing like that at all; that car handled like a dream; it drove smooth and steady, very safe and reliable, and the guy driving even began to beat his thumb against the wheel like it was a tambourine. And actually, as we were going over a bridge, right where the part over the land meets with the part in the air, the car’s front wheels swiveled like we were about to go into what they call a rollover, and which normally ends in complete disaster, but crisis averted. Just the right touch, the holy law of equilibrium, and everything was back under control.

         We had been speeding along down the highway in such high spirits that we hadn’t said a word in nearly half an hour, until we passed by a sign for a rest area with a place to eat. The guy behind the wheel didn’t even ask—it was like he could read our minds, because nobody objected to the pit stop. When we got to the gas station, the guy behind the wheel stayed behind to top off the tank while the rest of made for the diner-café, which really resembled one of those restaurants you find in airports, with the same pretensions to being international and cosmopolitan. I couldn’t have been the only one to notice the way that more than a few of the staff were acting as though they were migrant hospitality workers in some central European country, an impression which probably had a lot do with the accents they were trying to put on, which anyone could tell were fake just by the short phrases they needed to serve the customers. Truth be told, I don’t think any of us would have been surprised to find out that most of them came from the towns surrounding the rest area.

         When our driver came in, we sat ourselves down around a rather large table, with enough space left over to fit at least ten people more. The menus were on the table, and a woman with a bandana tied around her head, with green and white stripes, the same colors on her uniform, and also here and there in the restaurant’s décor, waited to jot down our order. The food looked fine, and everybody ordered whatever they happened to find most appetizing, without complaints. But when we got to the drinks, it turned out that we all wanted a different kind of wine, that none of us were content to order just half a bottle, so that’s how we ended up with six or seven whole bottles, seven-fifty milliliters a piece, one from every one of our towns, which made things pricier, but we didn’t mind a bit.

         I then noticed, and I couldn’t have been the only one, a woman in a gas attendant’s uniform coming our way with a great deal of rage she looked very intent on doling out.

She planted herself right in front of the guy who really knew how to drive, and said, “Sir, you left without paying for your gas.” To which our guy replied, very coolly, “Right, I just filled up a few minutes ago.”

         “No, no, no—Yes, you filled up, there’s no doubt about that, but you owe me three-thousand seven-hundred and seven pesetas. Unless you thought I was just giving my gas away for free.”

         “Miss, how are you going to give it away if it isn’t yours?”

         “Oh, it’s not mine, is it?”

         “Well, it might not be mine, but it’s not yours either.”

         “If this is all just a misunderstanding, that’s fine, but—”

         “Then if it’s fine, we’re good,” said our guy, jumping on the opportunity.

         “What do you mean, we’re good? You have to pay me!”

         “We’re very sorry, but gas just isn’t in our budget,” somebody said, trying to lend a hand to the guy who really knew how to drive, not that he was in need of a crutch, given that wagging tongue of his.

         “You’re kidding me! At least, I assume you’ve got to be.”

         We gave each other looks of thinly veiled cynicism, and a few of us even shook our heads at the attendant.

         Then, her temper now worse than when she walked in, the attendant turned around and left for reinforcements, or moral support, we imagined, or maybe even a combination of the two.

         They brought out our lunch and this put all our minor aggravations very far out of our minds. They served good meat and fish there. The cooking wasn’t what you would call world class, but even so it got a passing grade from all of us, with the one possible exception of the guy who came from the good family, whose palette had been spoiled by all his fine dining. In any case, the meal (really, I should call it a snack) went down nicely. And before we knew it, between the meal and the table talk, and then the coffee and liqueur, and the cigar that one of us ordered with gusto, the time had just flown by.

         I half remember this fat man with a beard and a serious voice, and a jittery woman with a very made up face, sitting a few tables over and speaking a Galician unusually faithful to the official standard. Words like olfaction, cloakroom, shall, and affinity, as well as other stylistic rarities which they pronounced with professional precision. Through my accidental eavesdropping I came to the conclusion that they were dubbers, or voice actors, and that they lived in one of the cities to the north and were engaged in a discussion—critical, it seemed, to making good travel time on their work trips—over the most fitting angle of approach into the great urban center to the south where the dubbing company with which they normally worked had its offices. I thought it stood to reason that their differing accounts of the preferable routes for entering and leaving this chaotic city would have drawn to a close in the time between the entrée and the table talk after; but no, following a minute or two of silence, and a bit of staring off into the depths of the nearby river, they resumed the discussion, being irked, I’d swear, to agree on a variable solution to this problem they found so critical.

         At a certain point we all remembered the date with the girl from the laundromat, so we decided to bring our pleasant table talk to a close. Since we were already obliged to pay those abusive tolls so as not to get the car’s owner into trouble, we all deduced, without a single word of discussion, that the food might be included in this price as well; what I mean is, we had a feeling it wasn’t a deal offered by the rest area diner-café, but this was hardly a reason not to find it a fair one, which is exactly what he impressed upon them, our guy with the great talent for speaking in times of conflict and confusion, first to the waitress, and then, as if that wasn’t enough, to the manager, who, I’ve got to say, ended up getting rather worked up (or “tense”—maybe “tense” is a better word). The guy with the gift of the gab during times like these explained to him how the toll was a bit too steep, and how the pavement was littered with patchy cracks, and how even the shape of the road wasn’t really right for a highway, and then he mentioned a few more of the defects we had all had in mind—the more hazardous sections, the narrow shoulders going around the curves, the deep grooves left all over the place and for hundreds of feet by the big rigs and heavy machinery, and so on—and when I say all of us, I don’t mean just the six or seven of us, but all the diner-café’s customers, too, who were kind enough, by the way, not to butt in at all on our debate over the cost of the food and the price of the road with regard to its condition.

         One of the customers did take advantage of the occasion to describe an experience he had had on the road a little while back. Due to roadwork, traffic had been redirected into a temporary lane for quite a few days. But very soon after, with the asphalt barely even dry, they reopened the lanes on the original trajectory. It wasn’t until he got home that he noticed that his undercarriage and almost the whole right side of his car had been splattered with tar (spattered, he said).

         “So the other day I went to lodge a complaint at their office and they handed me a form to fill out with all my information and a description of the problem in writing. The form was called I suggest… but these weren’t exactly suggestions I had in mind. About a month later I get this letter from the Department of Transportation providing me with the name, the address, and the telephone number of the company in charge of the construction repairs for that section of the road, so that I could file a complaint. In other words, the DoT doesn’t assume responsibility for damages incurred by the companies it assigns in its own jurisdiction.”

         The anecdote was interrupted many times over by the manager, of course, whom we begged just as many times over to remain calm so the people could speak.

         It should go without saying that the case of the guy with the tarred up car was put to convenient use by the guy presently in charge of defending the group’s position.

         “What happened to this gentleman, two or three months ago,” the manager tried to say, “or what might happen to him tomorrow with some other roadwork, isn’t relevant right now. We’re talking about how you came in here and ate and sat down and ordered food. And how we served you in the proper manner. Was the food not to your liking?”

         “Nah, come on,” we said. “The food was great. This has nothing to do with that, not really.”

         “Then there’s nothing more to discuss. Here’s the check, and that’s that.”

         “No, that’s not that.”

         “What do you mean, that’s not that?” said the manager, seething now and beginning to get red with fury. “I’m just a worker here.”

         “You’re not the manager?”

         “Huh? Yes, I’m the manager. But I’m a worker, too. Who’s going to pay me for all this?! Because the DoT sure isn’t.”

         “What do you mean, they don’t pay you? The DoT owns this place.”

         “There’s nothing more to discuss. End of discussion. Are you going to pay me?”

         “Us? Of course not.”

         Hearing our reply the manager got so worked up and violent that he started to flail around, reaching his hands up over his head like he was dancing the muiñeira, and he even threatened to call the police. “I see no problem with that,” said our man, “if you think it might get things moving.” He probably understood that we had to leave the place right that moment, since we had our date and we were running late as it was. The manager didn’t know what to say, so he just stood there, face purple with rage, explaining everything to the police over the phone while we got into the car. Some people just can’t control their temper, that’s what it is.

         It goes without saying that the situation with the manager had reached fever pitch by the time the gas station attendant got back, now in the company of a somewhat expansive man. She tried to get involved, and even the little fellow of hers there gestured like he wanted to interject with an objection or two, but it was all for nothing because one of us snapped them back to attention real quick with little more than a sharp glance, breathing very calmly through his nose, just for effect, fail-safe strategies both in moments of nascent hostility.

We got to the house of the car owner, whose name turned out to be Edelmiro, and we told him everything that had happened, just in case the manager had taken down his license plate and there might be some sort of complication. What I mean is, we got to the guy’s house and we rang the intercom, and instead of coming down and just grabbing the keys from us because we were in a rush, Edelmiro pressed us to come on up, so we could meet his wife. The guy who had the date with the laundry girl asked for a phone book and went looking for the phone number to the laundromat, and he actually managed to reach the girl and give her Edelmiro’s address and he told her to head on over in a taxi, but I think the taxi thing was the girl’s idea. The guy who wanted to call his mother tried to reach her one more time, although he had already made one attempt while our other man was looking up the number for the laundromat. He called home again, as I said, and this time the phone was answered by some little twelve- or thirteen-year-old brother of his, who wanted to know where he was, so he said he was at the house of a friend who had this really awesome, really powerful car, and I could have sworn that while Edelmiro was chatting with everybody else he was listening in on the conversation, and it didn’t upset him one bit to hear things like that said about his car. It turned out that the mother of the guy calling his mother wasn’t home, but he calmed down when his brother told him she wasn’t at all worried, because she knew already he needed his “independence,” and that she had made peace with that, the little brother was saying, and that she had accepted her son was a little out there, but he was more than capable of living by the beat of his own drum. That’s what he told us, at least, and I don’t know how his little brother actually talked, much less his mother. While the guy worried about his mother had been chatting with his brother, the rest of us were telling Edelmiro and his wife what had happened to us in the restaurant back at the rest area, and to be honest Edelmiro started wringing his hands, and if I’m not mistaken, a trickle of sweat even started to drip down his forehead. He had a very wide and prominent one, with the kind of tan you could only get at that time of year from a tanning bed. His wife didn’t seem as worried. In fact, she was too busy getting us drinks which she handed out happily and generously and which we all, without exception, accepted on the spot, picking whichever glass we found most enticing. Accordingly the little coffee table in the living room, from which we had removed a white crochet tablecloth, was soon filled with various bottles, including the inevitable bottle of cherry liqueur. I have to say, we made ourselves pretty comfortable, mostly because we took it for granted that Edelmiro wasn’t going to make a big stink about the incident in the restaurant back at the rest area, but also because even though the guy that had been trying to call his mother hadn’t spoken to his mother, he’d at least spoken to his brother, and everything with them seemed to be okay; and also because the laundry girl would be arriving in her taxi any minute now to join our little gathering, as spontaneous as it was enjoyable, intimate too, given the conspiratorial air we all felt, all of us intent on convincing Edelmiro there wasn’t any problem that a little calmness and patience wouldn’t fix, and regardless, he could count on each and every one of us in whatever might arise as a result of the incident—which, to some extent, we had provoked—for instance, in any ensuing hostility that might possibly affect him or his wife or any of his friends or relatives. On this we were, of course, quite clear.

         We were still tiptoeing around the topic of the restaurant at the rest area and the car’s license plate and the possibility of the police arriving at any moment when the intercom buzzed. Edelmiro leapt off the couch and all of us, or practically all of us, stood up as well to persuade him it was inadvisable for him to open. His wife offered to do it instead, and it turned out to be the laundry girl, and then she came on up, and finding us all there, rallying behind Edelmiro, she didn’t really know what to do, so the guy who had been chatting with her earlier just took her by the hand and gave her a kiss on the cheek and pulled her down beside him for a coffee, which Edelmiro’s wife had just brought out, and which was probably still hot. Then, while the rest of us continued to speculate about the car, the laundry girl’s new best friend gave her the recap in a very quiet voice, such that there were at least two streams of conversation being produced in the room, the one belonging to the five or six of us and Edelmiro and his wife, and the one coming from the laundry girl and her new best friend, although she barely interrupted his tale to ask for clarifications, so it was kind of like when you’re watching television and so-and-so is speaking in English and you can hear the voice of the dubber speaking over him in the language of the country where the program is being broadcast, because here, too, the dual streams of conversation were discussing the same thing. Another call came over the intercom from the door downstairs, and so over again went Edelmiro’s wife, whose name might have been Elvira, but I don’t really think so, because I’d be surprised if Edelmiro was really his name and Elvira really hers, considering how the ends of the names were so alike, iro for him and ira for her. But let’s suppose her name really was Elvira—she went to get the door, and standing right there was a whole contingent of police officers who, as we soon discovered, indisputably, weren’t the local police, but the other one. Barely saying a word we decided that Edelmiro was better off sticking upstairs with his wife, given how visibly shaken he was, while we went out together, being his friends after all, to serve as intermediaries with the cops, and to try to keep things from spiraling out of control.

         The cops, quite formal at first, asked if any of us was Edelmiro Etcetera and we told them we weren’t, and then they asked if Edelmiro Etcetera was home, and we told them he was. The guy doing the talking for us seemed to think telling the truth was our best bet, because it would put them on their guard if they sensed we were lying, and there is nothing worse than negotiating a truce with people who don’t trust you at the time, especially when they’re cops.

         “Edelmiro is extremely concerned about what happened at the restaurant,” our guy said, “and although we understand it’s not our job, we happened to be passing by when the misunderstanding came about, and we can assure you that if there’s one thing Edelmiro does not want it’s to have problems with the manager of a business operated by the Department of Transportation, although we weren’t entirely sure”—and here he started to spin off, the guy who was doing the talking—“that the restaurant was even part of the Department of Transportation.”

         “Wait just a minute. If none of you is family—”

         “We’re friends.”

         “Then you had better step aside. We have a warrant for the arrest of Edelmiro (Etcetera).”

         “So this doesn’t have anything to do with what happened at the restaurant?”

         “We don’t know anything about that. What we have is a warrant for—”

         “Yeah, yeah, you already said that part. What for?”

         “That’s it! I want to see some identification,” said the pushy one, with an expression on his face that seemed to say he was well acquainted with the concept of authority.

         We stood there, all a bit speechless, unsure what to do. Then the pushy one really flew off the handle and just started screaming. “Put your hands on top of the car and separate your legs!” He said, hand flying to his holster and then to his crotch, or maybe it was the other way around. And we followed his orders, without any sort of comment, mostly to keep the situation at our friend’s house from getting even worse.

         So there we were with these two little guys patting us down and studying our six or seven IDs one by one. We got the impression that they were just trying to make sure none of us was Edelmiro Etcetera. Then Mr. Pushy allowed the accumulating air of oppression to dissipate, ordering us to go, but with such hostility and contempt and bitter resentment.

         We called up the laundry girl over the intercom and told her to get down here lickety-split, and while the cops went up to make their arrest, we got in their car, this great little cruiser with tons of space and keys in the ignition, and we took off, but not before saying goodbye to Edelmiro and his wife over the intercom, which one of us did for all of us, and he also took this opportunity to ask Edelmiro’s wife to inform the cops that we were borrowing their car only because we couldn’t all fit in one taxi, being seven or eight, counting the laundry girl.

         We moseyed around the outskirts of the city, with the laundry girl seated beside the guy she was friendliest with, and our designated driver at the wheel, handling that cruiser as gently as a newborn’s cradle. To be honest nobody knew what to do or where to go. Someone asked where our socks were and the laundry girl showed us the bag, which she hadn’t let out of her sight, not for a single second. The matter of our socks was thereby resolved. Somebody wondered what might have become of the people who had asked our permission to occupy the statehouse, and the laundry girl chimed in again, saying there was a rumor going around that a dozen families had installed themselves in the offices, and apparently they were all incredibly pleased, even thrilled, because the building was old and quite well conserved, and because of the high ceilings and solid wood furniture and that heating system which just couldn’t be beat; and so, this situation seemed under control, too. So we kept driving around the edges of the city in no particular direction when a voice came on over the internal radio to inform all available units that a bunch of hoodlums had robbed cruiser number such and such, which happened to be the number of the cruiser we were in, and as if that weren’t enough, they were calling it a theft, as if we hadn’t let them know beforehand that we were borrowing the car because it was our only means of transport. We found it incredible that the story could have become so twisted and all in a matter of fifteen or twenty minutes. Well, we really didn’t feel like hiding from the police on account of something so insignificant, so we parked the car just inside the city, and continued on foot toward the center, as we had already reached a consensus that the best thing to do was head to the movies and see something decent, or any old thing, really.

         We got to the little theater and looked over the movie listings outside, which we didn’t really find too appetizing in all honesty, but since we felt like sitting down and not talking about any of things that had happened in the course of this day, at last we decided to go in and see the option we found least repulsive.

         The hitch we ran into this time had to do with the usher there who tried to stop us from going in because apparently we were supposed to pass by the ticket booth first to buy the seven or eight tickets, and then one of us said that we were just trying to have a nice and relaxing sit (in one of those seats like a boa constrictor) and take in a flick which, in any case, they were going to be screening whether we were in there or not, and so really our presence was just adding to the ambience of the theater, and in any case, it was half-price ticket day today, so they could surely make an exception. In the end the usher let us through, but on the one condition that we stuck to the first row of seats for at least the first fifteen minutes. So then we entered and bought some popcorn and went in to the theater and sat down to stiffen up our legs (fifth row, obviously), but the movie was so bad that almost all of us made the most of it and took a long, hard snooze. When the movie had finished, the laundry girl and our friend of hers—the only ones who had stayed awake the entire time—said that the movie was sort of okay, as long as you had the patience to follow along without losing focus for the first half hour, which was the least difficult part. Their only complaints were about the effect it had on your eyesight, since you had to keep your eyes glued to the same image for ninety minutes that wouldn’t stop shaking and wasn’t very clearly focused to boot, so as we were leaving we asked the usher to commend us to the projectionist to whom we patiently reiterated how shaky and unfocused the image had been, to which he offered just a litany of excuses, about the copies, about the sizing of the sprocket holes, about focal depth, and about other no doubt highly technical details, which we honestly didn’t pay much attention to, so we told him we would let it slide just this once, but that in future they should take good care not to show defective copies or employ machines that were old or in bad shape, because consumers have rights, being paying customers and all. Well, the usher heard this last part, and he came over and said that this was the last straw, that we had actually had the nerve to complain after getting in for free, and then somebody said that it wasn’t just for our sake that we were complaining, but also for that of our fellow man, paying customer or no, since the company that owned the theater had an obligation to offer screenings in decent conditions, a thing which the usher did eventually acknowledge, adding, however, that it wasn’t exactly reasonable of us either to insist on the complaint when the paying customers hadn’t said a thing, which is when somebody retorted that if people were to save their complaints for wars then it stood to reason we would never stop having wars, and at this the usher backed off, saying not another word, and then we walked out and now, two hours after abandoning the cruiser, we were back to square one, having nothing to do and nowhere to go, and then the laundry girl said it was getting late and that she’d better take off, so we told her we’d walk her home and she said we really didn’t have to, since she lived so close, just three or four blocks away, but we insisted on accompanying her and so accompany her is what we did. The laundry girl and the guy who liked her walked ahead, quietly chatting, and more and more intimately, while the other five or six of us followed behind with our hands in the pockets of coats and parkas, saying practically nothing, although at one point somebody did wonder out loud what might have become of Edelmiro, and then we remembered we had his number, and we even tried to give him a call at the next phone booth we passed, but the machine swallowed the coins, so we couldn’t get in touch after all.

         We arrived at the tiny apartment in the big, shoddy building where the laundry girl lived, and she asked if we wanted to come on up for a drink, and we all said yes, given this preference of ours for always remaining unanimous.

         The laundry girl’s apartment wasn’t exactly what you’d call spacious. It had a sparse living room with the kitchen inside the living room, separated by a counter, and a rather small bathroom and two bedrooms, one smaller than the other, but both pretty small regardless. She didn’t have many things to drink. She had coffee liqueur her mother had made, and she had gin, but there was nothing to mix with the gin, so some of us had coffee, and others the coffee liqueur, and still others the gin, straight up. From there we tried ringing up Edelmiro once more, and somebody actually picked up, but the guy using the phone didn’t want to identify himself, because apparently the person on the other end wasn’t Edelmiro or his wife, and he had a funny feeling that it was one of the cops, so we figured they must still be working on the premises to make the arrest, and then somebody said we could totally head over there and intercede on our friends’ behalf. He remarked on how generous Edelmiro and his wife had been to us by loaning us the car and welcoming us into their house, until finally we all trudged back out into the cold—except for the laundry girl and her guy of ours, who preferred to stay behind in the apartment—with the intent of securing a means of transport and heading on over to Edelmiro’s to cut a deal with the police, as we were all in agreement that Edelmiro had put up with far too much today already to have to spend the night behind bars on top of it.

         After a lot of foot-dragging we finally got to the spot where we’d left the cruiser, but when we went to open the doors, it was locked, with the keys inside, which is how we’d left it. For a second it crossed my mind, and I couldn’t have been the only one, that this was all a setup, although if that were the case then the police would have acted already, and actually way over there, on the other side of the car, where the street tapered off into a little path running through a vacant lot with blackberry bushes and a smelly little spring, which could be crossed to reach another street, which petered out near some dilapidated warehouses—nobody was waiting over there to get the drop on us.

         We pushed on in the direction of Edelmiro’s, a bit glum, but really hoping, I’m sure we were all thinking it, to stay the night.

         The lights were on in Edelmiro’s and the door down below was propped open with the welcome mat. We entered, mounting the stairs quietly, but still noisily enough for Edelmiro to hear somebody coming. The door leading into the apartment had been left open, too, and the lights were on all down the hall and in the kitchen and even in the living room, but we couldn’t hear anybody breathing or talking or sleeping, and we started to wander in and out of the bedrooms, calling for Edelmiro, but nobody answered, not him, not his wife, not even the cops. So we locked the doors, flicked off the lights, and divvied up the beds and couches, which was no big deal at all, since there were only five or six of us and the house had three twin beds, one double or king, and a couple of sofas. Like I said, we were so exhausted, we just turned off the lights and laid down without saying too much. Somebody went to the effort of calling up the laundry girl’s, so she might let her man of ours know there was nothing to worry about, but the truth is, I’m not completely sure he got them on the line, or that he even had the laundry girl’s phone number. But I’d say the five or six of us that crashed at Edelmiro’s all slept like rocks, that it was an incredible rest, and exactly, I think, what we needed.

         So we slept and there were no surprises the entire night, the phone didn’t ring, and I doubt that anybody even had time to wonder what had happened here, in this house which was now hosting us for the second time in one day, or where poor Edelmiro and his poor wife had ended up.

II

In the morning we met in the kitchen for breakfast, poking around in the fridge as we gradually assembled, and just in general acting like we had been living in that house for weeks—I got the impression I wasn’t the only one to think so. The telephone rang and it was the guy who had spent the night at the laundry girl’s place—let’s call him the laundry guy—and we agreed to meet him in the center, so we could make plans or just see where the wind might take us. We left Edelmiro and Elvira a thank you note for the night we spent in their house and for breakfast, and then we wished them all the best, hoping that nothing unfortunate had befallen them or their family or their friends, and then we locked up the house and took off for the center. We passed by the cruiser, except the car wasn’t there, or something, I don’t really remember, or maybe it was there, but it was missing all its wheels and also its windshield and battery and spare tire.

         We found the laundry guy in such a tired and happy state, and groggy, too, sleepier than the rest of us, even though we were the ones who had spent the night walking around and sleeping, and this guy, he hadn’t walked or slept. We asked what had happened to the laundry girl and he said, which we really could have predicted, that she had gone to work, although she had been a bit late leaving the house, late but happy. The laundry guy had brought the bag with all our clean old socks, so we found a bench and changed socks, so we yet again had a whole bag of sweaty socks. Then we popped by the laundromat and left them with the laundry guy’s girl so she could wash them for us again.

         The six or seven of us were back on the sidewalk with our hands in our pockets, with nothing to do with ourselves or with all our time. Many possibilities were suggested, but we were still without a concrete plan of action, not even one for bumming around. We all agreed, without having to say it, that to do something it was absolutely necessary to have a plan, but we also agreed we would survive even without one. We weren’t hungry, and it wasn’t as cold as it was the day before, and everything seemed to be cruising along in its usual rhythm, which is to say, the one most inclined toward disaster.

         One of us said, “There’s offices over there. Maybe we could go exploring.” And so we went. One guy said his dad worked in an office, but that’s all he said. The building had an actual doorman, who watched us mount the stairs leading up to the mezzanine where the offices were, and although he did stare after us, he didn’t ask where we were going. The offices had their doors wide open and more than a few had signs saying to come right in without knocking, or something along those lines, so we picked a door at random, and quietly walked in. There was a reception counter, but the person in charge of the receiving wasn’t at it, so we walked into the area with the cubicles, all full of workers, men and women, all very busy, and nobody asked us what we wanted or what we were doing there, or if we even wanted anything, so we were able to observe without being too observed ourselves, and we went over here and then we went over there, listening to all sorts of private phone conversations. Eventually somebody asked one of us who he was and what he wanted, and as if by instinct we began to gather there around the person who was asking all the questions, this badly shaven man with very sunken eyes and dark bags underneath. One of us said we didn’t need anything, that we were just seeing what it was like to work in an office, which made him laugh, and then he invited us into his office, and asked, “Are you doing some kind of project with the university?” And I don’t remember what happened next exactly, but one of us said yes while the rest of us said nothing at all, although one of us did answer no; but the man didn’t seem to care one way or the other; he just took out a cigarette, and started to smoke with the demeanor of someone who was taking a break in his work, and relaxing, and then he took this as an opportunity to launch into quite a little diatribe.

         “As you can all well imagine, the work here isn’t too stressful, but it is exhausting. It’s exhausting because you’re always doing the same thing—but maybe you’re thinking, Routine and repetition are a part of every job, which is true, it is like that in almost every job, but in administrative work and others like it, the routine wears on you. It wears on you so much that you don’t even know if today is today or yesterday or tomorrow. By the way, what day is today?”

         “Tuesday,” someone said, although he didn’t seem too sure.

         “Tuesday. There, you see what I’m saying? If you were to ask me what I did this weekend I would have to make a serious effort to remember. Maybe that’s because I didn’t do anything too different from what I do here, because I have an office at home too, or something like it—and you’re probably thinking, He’s one of those guys who brings his work home with him, to which I would say, Yes, I certainly am one of those guys who brings his work home with him, but let the record show that I don’t do it because I’m inefficient with my time here, but because, when I’m at home and I want to be left alone, I just tell my wife that I’m swamped with work, and then I shut myself up in my office, because nobody bothers me there. Do you guys smoke?” And three or four of us took cigarettes, and then he lit them all, and we all smoked as he continued to talk about his routine at the office and at home. One of us asked if he had any kids, and he said he did, he had three, but they were somewhat older now and he didn’t really know much about their lives—okay, he knew that two were in college and that the other one had started up some business that wasn’t going too badly. “But other than that,” confessed the office worker, “if I tell you the truth, I hardly know my kids at all, and I think they know me even less.”

         The telephone rang, and he took the call, and when he saw that we were getting up to go, he gestured at us to wait, but after speaking a minute he covered the receiver, and said he would really love to keep talking with us, but he was really swamped right now, so we said goodbye and left to go poke around the rest of the office.

         This very young and very striking woman with glasses and a pencil skirt stopped to watch us as we scooted by her, although she didn’t even dare say a word, and then we realized she was talking to someone about us, saying there were actually six or seven people snooping around the cubicles; but somebody was bound to notice us sooner or later. Finally one of the office workers, possibly a supervisor with various roles, came up to us, and asked who we were looking for, and we said, “No one in particular,” and then he went on to ask what we wanted, and we told him, “Nothing in particular,” and then, now a bit curious, he asked, “So what are you doing here?” and we said, “Just having a look around, getting a feel for the cubicles, taking in the sights,” which is more or less what we said. The man knew the other employees were watching his every movement, and some of them might have been people he managed, and we understood that he wasn’t looking to start anything, and that he just felt obliged to respond with a certain level of authority, but then he said that unless we were looking for something he would kindly request that we take our leave, and we just looked at each other, and all of us agreed this still wasn’t much of a reason for us to leave, so somebody said, “We’re not in any hurry to go right this minute, if that’s alright with you,” to which the supervisor quickly replied that it wasn’t, that people were there to work, and that we couldn’t just go marching in and out of cubicles, and then his look got incredibly tense, defiant, and then he grilled each and every one of us. “Relax”, we said, “we’ll go in a minute,” and then he laid off a little, and had a few words with the young office worker in the pencil skirt, and everybody on that spacious floor with all the cubicles picked their heads up from their work, and just waited for something to happen, we had no idea what, since leaving right this minute wasn’t, of course, an option we were even considering. So we resumed our little stroll, more interested now in establishing dialogues, amiably asking people at random what their work was, something nobody found very amusing, because they didn’t want to become our collaborators, and in doing so challenge the company, at least, I’m assuming it was something like this that was going on in their heads, and no one even dared to speak to us, and the situation was getting more and more awkward and difficult, so we decided to go, and we went, and nothing else happened in that depressing office.

         A little more than a half an hour had gone by, we had seen inside the office building, and we were once again on the sidewalk, uncertain what to do with our morning. Someone proposed going for a walk by the statehouse, but the idea wasn’t very well received. We tossed it out, and started to walk with no clear end in sight, or preset plan.

         Somewhere along the way we ran into some red- and white-striped cordon tape crisscrossing the street and stretching off to the side, and soon we were able to figure out that it extended around the first floor of many buildings, too, obstructing traffic in a manner most deliberate. As though we had just been handed an order, a push, we swung one leg over, then the other, keeping our hands in our pockets, although it wasn’t really as cold as the day before, hopped over the red and white tape, and entered the sectioned off area, and I think we were all curious to find out the reason for such a restriction right in the center of the city. Truth be told, there was hardly anybody walking around inside the tape, or any car passing either. We continued on up the middle of the street, maybe with a bit more pep in our step, until we came to the first floor of an enormous building still under construction, where we stumbled upon loads of people and machines and this device on rails, which turned out to be the staging for shooting what in film they call a tracking shot, and so it seemed these people were filming a movie.

         We approached with great interest, because this seemed to all of us, without anybody having to say it, a good way to pass a little time, since everyone knows that filming a movie involves many people working continuously for whole days and nights. An image came to mind from who knows what movie of this one scene where rows of soldiers are trudging through the snow toward the camera, the very same figures who, right as they exit the battlefield, can be seen breaking off and bolting with all that heavy winter gear to the back again so that they can then pass one more time in front of the camera, as though they weren’t the same soldiers at all, on account of the director’s low budget, naturally, since all that snow and the rushing of the soldiers prevented the viewer from catching on to the fact that the soldiers kept repeating after the first dozen. This was the first thing I thought of when I saw the cameras and all the people bundled up and at work on filming a scene meant for an urban setting on a day just like the one we were presently having, cold, but not too sunny.

         When we got to the area with the film crew—some were operating microphones, while others just looked on in silence, although they all seemed to be involved in the shoot—nobody asked us what we were doing there, because of how absorbed they were in the work. Filming had just been cut short, because something hadn’t gone quite right, and so we got to see the crew reset from zero to start again. When everything was just about ready, a man pulled out a clapperboard and sang out loud and clear the name or number of the scene and what take it was. Right in the middle of the street was the lid to a sewer, and a very athletic-looking man and woman emerged from it after sliding off the lid with very minimal effort, and they got to their feet and began to creep forward, hunching low to the ground. The man, who was broad and handsome, kept eyeing the roof of some building, where every couple of seconds there came a shattering sound, which was meant to simulate gunshots and ricocheting bullets. The woman, who also gave off the appearance of being rather pretty, was running along a few steps behind him, doing her best to put on the brave face of someone who is accustomed to violent surroundings. They pressed themselves up against the walls of the building where the shots were coming from, and then, gathering up their courage, they fired a few shots around the edge of a doorframe, and having met no resistance, went in. This was the whole scene, and there was no dialogue. The shattering sounds weren’t very realistic, to be honest, but we figured they would be modified at some point down the road by the sound engineer. The camera operators began to break down the rails for the tracking shot, and the whole crew leapt into motion. As people worked or talked and scattered we continued to poke around the equipment until we realized nothing else was going to happen here, and then we regrouped. In any case, after all the time it had taken them to prep everything for filming the final take, nearly two hours had passed since our arrival on the set, time which we considered very well spent, especially when you compared it to our experience in the cubicles.

         There were some bars very close to the set, and we went into one packed to the gills with technicians from the movie. We ordered six or seven local white wines they serve in those ceramic bowls, and we started to drink and talk, except the conversations the movie people were having kept mixing in with the ones we were having, to the point of overpowering them, so then we just stopped talking, and devoted our attention to listening, maintaining, of course, a courteous distance, even when we were laughing and celebrating some especially funny comment or other. They gave off a very friendly, talkative vibe, although one of them didn’t seem to be very pleased with our gestures of marginal and passive participation. Then at a certain point he turned to us and asked whether we didn’t have anything better to do. The people he was with were just as surprised by the outburst as we were, and so, to avoid trouble and a discussion that wouldn’t have gone anywhere, not with someone so antisocial, we looked off in the direction of the bar, and went back to staring at those bowls of white wine which are almost never not half empty, except now that the moment had passed the movie people were back to joking so loudly that we could hear absolutely everything, and so we started to join in again on the jibes and wisecracks, very discreetly, in silence. But then the same random guy from before came on over, and asked us, very rudely, why we didn’t just stick those snouts of ours in our bowls and quit bothering them, a thing which one of us felt it necessary to respond to, saying that we had at no point done anything that could possibly be a nuisance, except to a person inclined to making up nuisances. What happened next happened very fast. This awful man got all in his face, and said, “If you were a real man, you’d say that to me outside,” but then our guy just turned back around, so then, without any warning, the cameraman took the bowl from his hand and smashed it over his head, and our guy crumpled to the ground, blood pouring out of his head, and now, really in a state, we started to scream and spread out, closing ranks around our fallen friend. In all honesty the people the aggressor was with hardly even tried to intervene, and so he was the sole recipient of our blows, which by all accounts weren’t exactly few, or unjustifiable for that matter, as self-defense, and deterrence. We got our guy out of there and took him to the ER. On the way he was already starting to show signs of improvement, and we were all a bit relieved. We asked how he was feeling, and he asked for a smoke, so we gave him a cigarette, which he smoked, and kept on cracking jokes the whole time to the point that some of us started to wonder whether he might not have been more injured than he had seemed at first glance.

         All five or six of us were sitting in the waiting room waiting for them to stitch up our guy’s wounded head when a girl came in with a boy whose hand had been all bandaged up. They smoked in the waiting room with total calm in spite of all the signs prohibiting smoking. They seemed a little shaken up, the girl especially, maybe on account of whatever had happened to her friend’s hand, or maybe he was her boyfriend, which was totally possible. They were talking a little about this and a little about that, and none of us said a word, replaying in our heads, no doubt, all the recent events. But then the two kids started talking about this group of people who had attacked a cameraman from the movie that was being filmed in the city center. “Real monsters,” swore the girl. “The poor guy was just out having a few drinks with his coworkers on the film crew when these animals, at least a dozen, came barging on in, yelling and shoving and telling people to shut up. At first nobody in the bar reacted to the hell-raisers’ hostile behavior, of course, but then they really started to get unpleasant, insulting one guy, and stealing wine from another, and they even started manhandling the girls, until this cameraman had just had enough, and so he tried to pull them aside, and have a polite word. He’d hardly even opened his mouth to protest before a wine bowl came smashing into his teeth, and then once they had him on the ground, bleeding all over, they gave him such a beating, he was knocked out and sent to the hospital. I think I heard somebody say they sent him here, actually.”

         “People like that shouldn’t be out on the loose,” said the boy.

         “And that’s not all,” she went on. “I heard that before they beat up the cameraman, they went wandering into an office building in the city center. They really fucking trashed a few of the offices after they didn’t find any money, and I think they even assaulted an employee who tried to kick them out. There’s just no living with people like that. Either you get rid of them, or they get rid of you.”

         “Yeah,” said the boy with the bandaged fingers. “I mean, I don’t know if you’re exaggerating just a little, but even if half of that is true, I’d be watching my back walking down the street.”

         “You just don’t know who might be out there. People like that do whatever they feel like, and they don’t even care, they really don’t. Like right now there’s nobody in charge up at the statehouse…”

         “Wait, really? I hadn’t heard.”

         “Yep. The building was abandoned, and people are saying it’s full of squatters now.”

         “That’s so bizarre.”

         “But it’s totally what happened. There’s a whole bunch of families living there.”

         “Hell, how is it that I never know what’s going on in my own city?”

         Somebody must have called them to come pick up the X-rays of the boy’s hand, because the conversation abruptly stopped, and they left the room. Our guy walked in a few minutes later, now with his head all stitched up, shaven in the place with the gash, and with a separate bandage covering up the eight stitches where, if that very knowledgeable girl’s story was true, they must have really given it to the face of the cameraman we had apparently left unconscious in the bar.

         The injured guy had settled down now, and he was not only telling jokes but also chain-smoking cigarette after cigarette, barely even opening his mouth. The six or seven of us hit the street in a line, a bit sulky, until we were once again in the center, making a beeline for the laundromat. Our friend the laundry girl asked us what had happened to the guy with the bandage on his head, and once we told her the story, it couldn’t have been just me who noticed the relative happiness she felt to see that her man of ours was in one piece, even though she kept on telling the injured guy how sorry she was, because it was obvious that neither he nor the rest of us had done anything to warrant a barroom brawl like that. Thanks to the heat of the laundromat, and more than that, the warmth and sympathy of our laundry girl, we were all starting to feel a bit better, and even the injured guy made a crack which we all celebrated in an exaggerated fashion so as to confirm that, after the unfortunate incident, everything was back to normal. We thought long and hard out loud, killing time until the laundry girl tidied up to go. We wanted to do something to make up for everything, and just finish out the day; to go searching for all our problems and conflicts so that this way all our problems and conflicts would know to avoid us; we wanted to rid our mouths of the bad taste the cameraman had been so kind as to leave there—that is, if the cameraman really had been the instigator, if the girl from the waiting room hadn’t in fact been entirely right in her unusual account.

         When the laundry girl had finished up work for the day, we split up into groups of two and three, and arm in arm, very tightly knit, we strolled out into the street, boisterously talking about the grand ole time the seven or eight of us might be able to have together in a tapas bar, sipping a bit of Rioja out of those simple glasses with the short stems and thick rims, nibbling on snacks, an entire array of inimitable tapas, little reminders of experiences that have been idealized by the not so ravaging passage of time, which can be so tender and ruthless.

         We stepped inside a pub with yellowish lights of the sort that has an open kitchen, very close to the counter, and with a crowded atmosphere, in which the overpowering scents of fat and sizzling garlic intermingled with the smoke coming off the clientele’s cigarettes. We pulled a few tables together and were served at once. We ordered lots of different tapas and the aforementioned modest little Rioja, and some of the tapas ended up being better than others, and some of us enjoyed the light dinner more than others, but nothing could bother us now, or interfere with the increasing harmony of everyone in the group, not including the laundry girl, who couldn’t hold her wine, or the injured guy, whom we restricted to a single glass, and we struck a general tone of relative euphoria, which stood in such marked contrast to our collective mood of the last few hours.

Text © Xosé Cid Cabido

Translation © Scott Shanahan