‘No.’
‘So where do you know her from?’ said the girl, getting impatient.
Rosaura remembered her mother’s words perfectly. She took a deep breath.
‘I’m the daughter of the employee,’ she said.
Her mother had said very clearly: ‘If someone asks, you say you’re the daughter of the employee; that’s all.’ She also told her to add: ‘And proud of it.’ But Rosaura thought that never in her life would she dare say something of the sort.
‘What employee?’ said the girl with the bow. ‘Employee in a shop?’
‘No,’ said Rosaura angrily. ‘My mother doesn’t sell anything in any shop, so there.’
‘So how come she’s an employee?’ said the girl with the bow.
Just then Señora Ines arrived saying shh shh, and asked Rosaura if she wouldn’t mind helping serve the hot-dogs, as she knew the house so much better than the others.
‘See?’ said Rosaura to the girl with the bow, and when no one was looking she kicked her in the shin.
Apart from the girl with the bow, all the others were delightful. The one she liked best was Luciana, with her golden birthday crown; and then the boys. Rosaura won the sack race, and nobody managed to catch her when they played tag. When they split into two teams to play charades, all the boys wanted her for their side. Rosaura felt she had never been so happy in all her life.
But the best was still to come. The best came after Luciana blew out the candles. First the cake. Señora Ines had asked her to help pass the cake around, and Rosaura had enjoyed the task immensely, because everyone called out to her, shouting ‘Me, me!’ Rosaura remembered a story in which there was a queen who had the power of life or death over her subjects. She had always loved that, having the power of life or death. To Luciana and the boys she gave the largest pieces, and to the girl with the bow she gave a slice so thin one could see through it.
After the cake came the magician, tall and bony, with a fine red cape. A true magician, he could untie handkerchiefs by blowing on them and make a chain with links that had no openings. He could guess what cards were pulled out from a pack, and the monkey was his assistant. He called the monkey ‘partner.’ ‘Let’s see here, partner,’ he would say, ‘Turn over a card.’ And, ‘Don’t run away, partner. Time to work now.’
The final trick was wonderful. One of the children had to hold the monkey in his arms, and the magician said he would make him disappear.
‘What, the boy?’ they all shouted.
‘No, the monkey!’ shouted back the magician.
Rosaura thought that this was truly the most amusing party in the whole world.
The magician asked a small fat boy to come and help, but the small fat boy got frightened almost at once and dropped the monkey on the floor. The magician picked him up carefully, whispered something in his ear, and the monkey nodded almost as if he understood.
‘You mustn’t be so unmanly, my friend,’ the magician said to the fat boy.
The magician turned around as if to look for spies.
‘A sissy,’ said the magician. ‘Go sit down.’
Then he stared at all the faces, one by one. Rosaura felt her heart tremble.
‘You, with the Spanish eyes,’ said the magician. And everyone saw that he was pointing at her.
She wasn’t afraid. Neither holding the monkey, nor when the magician made him vanish; not even when, at the end, the magician flung his red cape over Rosaura’s head and uttered a few magic words… and the monkey reappeared, chattering happily, in her arms. The children clapped furiously. And before Rosaura returned to her seat, the magician said, ‘Thank you very much, my little countess.’
She was so pleased with the compliment that a while later, when her mother came to fetch her, that was the first thing she told her.
‘I helped the magician and he said to me, “Thank you very much, my little countess.’”
It was strange because up to then Rosaura had thought that she was angry with her mother. All along Rosaura had imagined that she would say to her, ‘See that the monkey wasn’t a lie?’ But instead she was so thrilled that she told her mother all about the wonderful magician.
Her mother tapped her on the head and said: ‘So now we’re a countess!’
But one could see that she was beaming.
And now they both stood in the entrance, because a moment ago Señora Ines, smiling, had said, ‘Please wait here a second.’
Her mother suddenly seemed worried.
‘What is it?’ she asked Rosaura.
‘What is what?’ said Rosaura. ‘It’s nothing; she just wants to get the presents for those who are leaving, see?’
She pointed at the fat boy and at a girl with pigtails who were also waiting there, next to their mothers. And she explained about the presents. She knew, because she had been watching those who left before her. When one of the girls was about to leave, Señora Ines would give her a bracelet. When a boy left, Señora Ines gave him a yo-yo. Rosaura preferred the yo-yo because it sparkled, but she didn’t mention that to her mother. Her mother might have said: ‘So why don’t you ask for one, you blockhead?’ That’s what her mother was like. Rosaura didn’t feel like explaining that she’d be horribly ashamed to be the odd one out. Instead she said, ‘I was the best-behaved at the party.’
And she said no more because Señora Ines came out into the hall with two bags, one pink and one blue.
First she went up to the fat boy, gave him a yo-yo out of the blue bag, and the fat boy left with his mother. Then she went up to the girl and gave her a bracelet out of the pink bag, and the girl with the pigtails left as well.
Finally she came up to Rosaura and her mother. She had a big smile on her face; Rosaura liked that. Señora Ines looked down at her, looked up at her mother, then said something that made Rosaura proud.
‘What a marvellous daughter you have, Herminia.’
For an instant, Rosaura thought that she’d give her two presents: the bracelet and the yo-yo. Señora Ines bent down as if about to look for something. Rosaura leaned forward, stretching out her arm. But she never completed the movement.
Señora Ines didn’t look in the pink bag. Nor did she look in the blue bag. Instead she rummaged in her purse. In her hand appeared two bills.
‘You really and truly earned this,’ she said handing them over. ‘Thank you for all your help, my pet.’
Rosaura felt her arms stiffen, stick close to her body, and then she noticed her mother’s hand on her shoulder. Instinctively she pressed herself against her mother’s body. That was all. Except her eyes. Rosaura’s eyes had a cold, clear look that fixed itself on Señora Ines’ face.
Señora Ines, motionless, stood there with her hand outstretched. As if she didn’t dare draw it back. As if the slightest change might shatter an infinitely delicate balance.
THEY HAD SEEN THE BURNING BUSH
They undertake the almost infinite adventure. They fly over seven valleys, or seas; the name of the penultimate is Vertigo; the last, Annihilation.
‘That’s the way it is,’ Néstor Parini had said. ‘Life’s like that.’
The observation was for Irma (she still had black hair in those days and he used to call her his Negra) but on that occasion she paid no attention to the words; it was his eyes that held her. They were like the eyes of a man possessed.
Nine years later, those eyes were also what Anadelia liked best about her father, although she didn’t exactly mind that he was a boxer, either. She had seen boxers on the television and been taken once to the place where they train, but that wasn’t the reason why: in fact it had frightened her, the way they hit each other, and the faces they pulled. Mom had explained that Dad didn’t have anything against the other man: boxing is like a game, she said. Anadelia didn’t believe her, but she still liked thinking that she had touched his gloves and knowing that some Saturday nights he was on the radio and that if she really listened she might pick up the odd word from the bedroom, another formidable left hook, this is no longer a fight, my friends, and would be able to infer that all this was being said about her father, although it was much better before when she hadn’t had to infer anything because she hadn’t had to listen to the radio from her bed in the other room.