Losing his job took Álvaro completely by surprise, well, what’s happened to me took me by surprise too — or didn’t it? He believed the workshop was as inevitable as the skin on your bones, he never took any interest in invoices, account books or bank balances, and would look at me mockingly whenever I complained to him about any problems or difficulties, whenever I found myself getting in a tangle over estimates and having to do all kinds of juggling to make sure credits coincided with debits and didn’t leave me in the red. Doing the sums right or wrong, earning money or losing it. I’ve made far too many mistakes drawing up estimates for customers since my father stopped doing it, and I’ve lost too much money as well, and that’s what really justified all the time I spent going over and over the figures, adding, subtracting, and multiplying, the calculations growing ever more complicated; and then there were all those sheets of paper with hand-drawn diagrams, lines in pencil and ballpoint, with numbers scribbled above and below. Customer’s name: F. Delmar. Chipboard 6: 14" wide x 26' long. 2: 16" wide x 8' high. Work, like family, is a burden you have to put up with, what else can you do, you just take it for granted, it’s the Biblical curse in which, since there’s no way out, you try to find a few advantages: you tell yourself that it’s always going to be like this, it’s the law of life, this monotonous existence, especially if you’ve spent thirty or more years in the same job, shut up for eight or ten hours a day in the workshop, five days a week. It’s a real treat going out in the van with Joaquín and Ahmed or with Julio, to do a job or make a delivery, something that needs to be assembled on the spot, a piece of furniture, a closet, some shelves. Sometimes, you even find excuses to do just that, I certainly did. It never even occurs to you to think that things aren’t eternal, that they could change from one day to the next. It would never occur to you that your particular hell might mean being excluded from Yahweh’s curse — in a place outside the pages of that notebook full of orders, far from the invoice book, the machines and the tools, a modern-day reversal of the old Biblical curse: In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt not eat thy daily bread, an unexpected, diabolical twist. You discover the irritating calm of mornings with no alarm clock going off, the day like a meadow stretching out toward the horizon, limitless time, an unbounded landscape, no flocks graze in that infinite space, not a building to be seen, not even the silhouette of a tree. Just you walking in the void. Hell is a derelict warehouse, a silent hangar filled only with a terrible emptiness. In the end, the divine curse of earning our daily bread by the sweat of our brow seems almost agreeable, the sound of alarm clocks, water gushing out of faucets or showers, the bubbling of the coffee pot, the hustle and bustle of morning traffic, the murmur of conversations at the bar in the café where you usually have your coffee and croissant, the voices of the other men in the warehouse, the discussions between colleagues, the buzz of machinery, the sandwich and the small glass of beer halfway through the morning. Álvaro: he arrives at the workshop at eight o’clock, has a coffee break at half past nine; a glass of wine or an aperitif at half past one, then home, where, at two o’clock on the dot, his wife will have lunch ready on the table: a plate of rice, another of salad, some pickles, and beside them, a piece of cheese and the basket of fruit; a quick doze in the armchair as the local TV news begins, then a stroll back to the workshop — good for the digestion — followed by the usual afternoon sloth when movements inevitably grow slower, and then, a few glasses of wine at the bar with friends (although Álvaro always drank alone, out of sheer misanthropy according to some, and out of cheapness according to others), then supper, sofa, TV and bed. Now what? He just can’t get up the energy. No more smile of satisfaction when he sees that an order is going out on time and that the goods have been delivered in an impeccable state. True, there’s no reason why a worker should have an overall vision of a business, that’s what people call having a business mentality, a perspective or outlook much more likely to belong to those who own the business or who — if we’re talking about larger enterprises — work as directors or managers. The obligations of a worker end once the goods are packed up and loaded onto the truck, which is standing there, the front door open, waiting for the driver, and with the back doors closed. A bit boring maybe, but it has the advantage that you’re free as soon as the clock strikes quitting-time. He never showed the slightest sympathy or understanding, which I would have appreciated on occasion, and he even seemed annoyed if I asked for it. If, over coffee in the Café Dunasol, I spoke to him about invoices, delivery receipts or monies due, he would just look the other way and change the subject. I can see him now examining the knots in the wood: he follows every vein, detects any weak spots, touching the wood with expert fingers, his tool-like hands detecting whether or not the timber has been well seasoned: his hands are larger than mine, his fingers nimbler, stronger and more gnarled, they have a certain instrumental quality that mine do not, even though I’ve been in the trade all my life. My hands are softer somehow: although they’re full of calluses, my fingers are fleshier, just as my body is, always on the brink of obesity, while his, when he was a young man, was as flexible as a reed (and inside him lurks the same turbid opacity as the lagoon where the reeds grow) and now his body has taken on the hardness and irregularity of certain particularly knotty tree trunks, an old olive tree or a carob tree. He’s entirely focused on his work, oblivious to everything happening around him, above or below, indifferent to the vicissitudes of the business. “Business” is a dirty word these days; a century ago, it signified action and progress, but now it’s a synonym of other words heavy with negative energy: exploitation, egotism, wastefulness. He was surprised when, instead of retiring and leaving him in charge of the workshop with an increase in wages, which would have proved most advantageous when it came to his pension, I remained where I was, behind the carved desk in the little glazed room upstairs that we call the office, which oversees the whole workshop — I can follow Álvaro’s every move, watch him using the lathe, the saw, the plane. Indeed, going against my father’s principle (we don’t live by exploiting other people, but from our own work), I took on Jorge, another carpenter, whom Álvaro thought had come to compete for his position, along with three assistants to help us out, especially with driving the truck and delivering the items of furniture that were easiest to assemble on site, mostly those being installed in the apartments in Pedrós’s developments, our developments. I want to increase my own income as well, and I’ve gotten involved in a really major deal, more work for all of us and more pay for you (all right, it wasn’t just more pay he was hoping to get as boss of the workshop, but at least I raised his wages, which wasn’t to be sniffed at): dealing with the small jobs, the odd jobs, but, above all, working constantly on the doors and other carpentry work for Pedrós’s properties, we’ll have to work overtime, you’ll get well paid (I didn’t tell him that I’d gone into partnership with Pedrós on the apartments he was building, the block that was almost ready for the owners to move in, plus the two other developments he had just begun, one of which was still only at the stage of laying the foundations, I had become a guarantor for his loan by using my plot of land up on the mountain as collateral, and a co-borrower on the loan we took out in order to do the work,