And you pounce unscrupulously on the person who didn’t have time to cross the road when he saw you: just give me whatever you can, you know I wouldn’t ask if things weren’t really tight, and I’ve always paid back any money you’ve lent me before, it’s just that now… The victim feels nervously in his pocket as if he had a knife in his back. He does. I’m holding the knife. Sorry, I can’t, I haven’t got anything on me, it’s just that… And I know what he means: this is a kind of mugging, but I pretend not to understand. The man produces a crumpled five-euro note and holds it out to me. That’s all I have, he says and quickly moves off, as if any further contact might infect him with the leprosy of poverty. He leaves without waiting for my proffered thank you, thanks a lot. He doesn’t stop to listen when I say that I fully intend to pay back those five euros. Thank you, I say more loudly, I’ll pay you back as soon as I can, and he, from a safe distance away, explains: Look, I’m broke too. I really haven’t any more to give you, we’re all getting by on the skin of our teeth. Then he averts his face, turns beet red: he feels more ashamed than I do, and I, on the other hand, feel not the slightest gratitude — bastard, I think, even though the man was under no obligation to give me that crumpled note. Bastard, I say again under my breath, and I say it because he’s alive, because he can afford to give me that surplus bill, because he doubtless has more bills, whether many or few, in the wallet he hurriedly put back in his pocket (he covered it with his hand, so that I couldn’t see how much was in it), not to mention the money he’ll have at home, and what he certainly has in the bank. The rotten bastard, I think to myself. But, Julio, where is the feeling that priests, teachers and all good parents call gratitude and which they taught you when you were a child? No, I feel no gratitude at all. I don’t feel it in myself, and I don’t think it’s out there in the world either. I never thought I would ever experience something like this — no one told us, no one prepared us for this. Now I miss what I probably didn’t appreciate enough at the time: the chilly mornings with the gradually lifting mist: it would float like a piece of cloth among the trees, above the streams, above the river, the sickly smell of rock roses, the after-taste of aniseed on your tongue as you advance through the scrub, the dry cold that cleanses your mouth, lungs, nose. I’ve taken part in retraining courses for the long-term unemployed, for people who have exhausted the family assistance, courses that, instead of actually teaching you something, are intended to be incentives to take your mind off this particular stretch of the journey as you blunder on into the black space of that non-future, and they’re an expression of profound pessimism: they teach you how to write a CV and how to sell yourself to people taking on staff; or how to optimize the use of your cell phone when it comes to asking for work (that’s what they say, optimize); how to save on public transportation when you go out and about delivering your CV to different companies, and how to make the best use of your time by drawing up your route beforehand; they even explain — plumbing the very depths of despondency — how to have a balanced diet based on the food they give you at food banks, the little packet of pasta or rice or chickpeas, the tin of passata, the sugar, and how to use those few ingredients to prepare a varied and imaginative menu. A healthy Mediterranean diet. I looked for work in other local carpentry businesses, saying that I’ve already worked in a carpentry workshop, but are you a trained carpenter, they ask me, and I explain that I’ve spent the last few months working with Esteban, but illegally, because I’m not getting unemployment benefits any more, only family assistance, but how can anyone live on 425 euros? How exactly did you help Esteban, in what way, they ask, did you draw plans, did you use a saw, a plane, a lathe, a milling cutter, a drill, a sander, do you know how to put together a miter joint, or a tongue-and-groove joint or how to use dowels? Did Esteban actually let you use any of the tools? Or work the machines? No, he didn’t, did he? You were just the driver, you used to help that Moroccan guy load and unload, you delivered the tools Esteban asked you to bring him and sometimes you didn’t even know what they were called and you’d bring him the wrong ones, and then he’d shout at you and call you an idiot. Everyone knows everything in a village. So why are you trying to pull the wool over my eyes — you’re not a carpenter. Anyone could do what you did. You were just Esteban’s errand boy. Yes, everyone knows everything here. It’s a village. But at least ask him if he had any complaints about me, if I was a good worker. Oh, I’m sure you were, but if I needed to take on anyone new, it would be a qualified carpenter. I’ve got plenty of people to load and unload. And he’s right, there was no need to tell him all that stuff about unemployment benefits and family assistance — everyone in Olba knows that I asked Esteban to take me on illegally because I was still getting unemployment benefits and didn’t want to lose it, because on the wages he was offering, I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage or the car loan, and then I stopped getting unemployment benefits and now all I have is the family allowance, and how, with only those 425 euros and the 600 euros my wife earns, how am I supposed to pay the mortgage, pay for the children’s books and clothes, the electricity and water and gas bills and the gas, at least I managed to pay off the car, because, otherwise, they would have impounded it, and if I go elsewhere and say I’ve been employed in a carpentry workshop for the last few months, I haven’t even got a reference to prove it, and it wouldn’t be any good anyway, because they know, everyone I speak to knows, because here in Olba, we all know each other, like I say, it’s a village, but they think I deserve what’s happened to me, because I chose to work illegally, and they don’t realize that the reason I had done that was because what Esteban was paying me wasn’t enough to survive on, but people are naturally envious, and they’d say to me: you’re getting paid twice, as if I was earning millions, they get a kick out of seeing you down and out and they don’t like it if you try to lift your head and, instead, they push you under again, give you a shove so that you fall back into the pond you were only just crawling out of.