I like going out in the rain. I put on my parka and walk the deserted streets. On rainy nights, we’d be hanging on to the back of the truck, and my colleague Nico used to say: Right now we’re the masters of all this, we can enjoy it more and at a better time of year than those idiots who pay a fortune to come and spend the worst two weeks in August here. I wouldn’t come and spend August here if you paid me; I’d go north, somewhere with green fields and a clean river and a tiny village with about twenty or thirty inhabitants and where you can buy good bread and get the local dairyman to provide you with fresh milk, although nowadays you can’t get any peace and quiet even in those semi-abandoned villages (in summer, all the emigrants come back from Madrid, Bilbao or Barcelona, talking loudly, getting their wallets out in the bar so that you can see how stuffed they are with euros, and legions of tourists come too, looking, like you, for some peace, but completely ruining it for each other), you can’t even buy fresh milk, they won’t sell it to you because it’s not allowed and farmers risk getting slapped by a big fine; so there you are, practically standing next to a cow, and you’re buying cartons of skim milk, enriched with calcium or with added isoflavones or whatever those vitamins are they’re always coming up with. You can see the cows grazing in the fields, but you have to buy the same milk you’d buy here. It makes you feel like running up the hill, crouching down under the cow and sucking on its udder. That would be great. I don’t know what they would accuse you of if they caught you at it, but I’m sure they’d accuse you of something: animal cruelty, non-consensual sex, molesting a mental defective, who knows. But wouldn’t that be great, squeezing and feeling the milk gush straight into your mouth? I used to enjoy drinking my wife’s milk. Did you ever try that? It’s sweeter than cow’s milk. I figure most of us have drunk some of the milk intended for our children. We humans have a tendency to want to eat and drink each other. Haven’t you ever seen that picture of Saturn eating his children? Didn’t you feel like eating your kids when they were just tender little pink piglets? Don’t be so disgusting, I would say. And he’d bellow out: We’re the kings of the streets. And I would think: beyond our kingdom, behind the trashcans and the streetlights and the plants climbing up the railings and fences, are monkey puzzle trees, palm trees, wisteria, hibiscus, swimming pools, covered and uncovered, bubbling jacuzzis, ultra-slim plasma TVs, houses and gardens to which we would never have access, not even to collect the trash. And so I would say to him: The only thing we’re the kings of is the garbage, and not even that. We’re actually the slaves of the garbage, the real queen of the garbage is Esther Koplowitz, who owns the company with all the fat contracts. I wouldn’t mind being employed to tidy the gardens of some of those rich jerks, but no, they’re too mean, instead, they employ Ukrainians or Romanians and pay them ten or twelve euros a day, but once the Ukrainians and Romanians have pruned their roses and trimmed their palm trees, they get even for being swindled by hitting their employers over the head with an iron rod or a hammer or else knifing them, then stealing all the jewelry from the safe along with the latest household appliances. Confessors and judges call it restitution. The rich pretend to be protecting themselves, but in fact they’re drawn to danger, walking on a knife-edge or on the wild side, like in that Lou Reed song Esteban says he’s so fond of, Doo do doo do doo do do do do do doo: they invite the thief into their house just to save a few euros; God or nature or whatever must plant in their genes that overwhelming instinct in favor of obligatory redistribution as a counterbalance to their greed. The rich enjoy stealing and get a small thrill when someone steals from them, a feeling of danger that doubtless confirms them in their desire to keep everything under lock and key, makes them value their possessions even more, hurriedly replacing any stolen goods and hiding them away still more effectively, and thus continuing to accumulate loot. Nature is very wise.