Chapter 17

Guillermo, the mayor, was sitting in his office staring morosely at the pictures on the wall. There were three. The largest, ornately framed, was of Guillermo himself, on his inauguration. He was wearing his chain of office and a brand new black suit and was striking a heroic pose. He had had the picture taken in a proper studio and the photographer had artfully coloured it in, so that he posed against a deep red curtain. The flesh tones were a bit peculiar, but otherwise it looked pretty realistic. On either side of it, in much smaller frames and in monochrome, were the previous two incumbents. They were both ordinary men in shabby suits.

So why was it, Guillermo mused, that somehow they looked like real mayors, and he looked like someone pretending to be a mayor?

And it was the same with this bloody desk. He looked down at it in disgust. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, polished oak, skilfully carved, with green Cordovan leather covering the top.

He had had it brought from Benalvista by mule cart. It was so big that they had to take the door off the hinges to get it into the room. He had imagined that it would add grandeur to the office. It didn't. It made the office look smaller and shabbier.

Furthermore, there was so little space left between the desk and the wall that he had to suck in his stomach and squeeze past it in a most undignified manner. Consequently, he was trapped one side or another of the bloody thing whenever anyone came in.

He sighed and glanced out of the window. Rosalba was making her way across the square with a determined expression on her face. For a moment he panicked. His first instinct was to hide under the desk, but he pulled himself together and controlled it. After all, he was a grown man now the most important man in the village not the ragged little boy who used to run barefoot through the streets and who lived in terror of Rosalba.

Of course, he of all people should not have been barefoot. He was, after all, the son of the shoemaker. But, unfortunately, he was not the only son of the shoemaker. He had thirteen brothers and sisters. There was always, it seemed, a new baby or another on the way. And there was no money to feed all those hungry mouths, let alone buy the leather to clothe all those feet. And the other thing was, his father was much better at making children than he was at making shoes. The shoes he made were neither stylish nor comfortable. They pinched and bulged in odd places. Those who could afford to buy shoes usually went to the shoemaker in Sanisido or Benalvista, and all Guillermo's father got was mending work. There was no money in mending.

He remembered once, when he was quite small, hearing shouting coming from the house and, on peeping inside, finding, to his amazement, that it was his mother. His mother hardly ever spoke, let alone shouted. She was a meek little woman who worked like a demon and got on with things without complaint. Yet here she was, holding a chicken by its neck and waving it front of his father.

"Look at it!" she shrieked, "It's nothing but skin and bone. It's too old to lay and it's too skinny for the pot. That's why they gave it to you."

His father said nothing, just looked at her with his gentle smile and waited for her to finish.

"Three days' work," she wailed, "and all that leather. And this," she shook the chicken again, which struggled feebly and flapped its wings, "is all you have to show for it. We could have bought half a dozen plump chickens for the price of the leather alone."

His father gave an eloquent shrug. "You know they have no money, Juanita," he said gently. "How else could they pay me?"

"No money!" screamed his mother. "If they have no money they should not be buying shoes in the first place. Look!" she spun round and pointed at Guillermo. "Your own children go barefoot. You are the shoemaker and your own children go with naked feet, while you give good shoes away for a miserable, good-for-nothing, scrawny chicken."

She punctuated each word with another shake of the chicken, which was beginning to look slightly sick.

"Juanita," his father said, with a note of pleading in his voice, "it is her wedding day. Everyone should have a pair of shoes for her wedding."

"Aaarghh!!" Juanita burst into a storm of weeping and threw herself against her husband's breast.

The chicken, momentarily forgotten, seized its opportunity, made a break for it and headed off at full speed into the square. Guillermo heard his brother and sisters chasing after it in full cry, but he did not join in. He was looking at his feet. It was the first time he had realised that he had no shoes, and that it was somehow a shameful thing.

But the shoes were not as important as the hunger. His childhood memories were dominated by hunger. He was hungry when he woke up in the morning and he was hungry when he went to bed at night. His waking hours were spent scheming how to get more food. There was never enough. Most days they had a thin vegetable gruel or boiled potatoes, sometimes with stale bread. The youngest child went to the baker's every day to beg for yesterday's bread. It was so hard that you had to soak it in the soup before you could eat it, but it was extra food and the days when there was none were hard to bear.

Everybody got their bread from the baker's except Rosalba. Rosalba had a bread oven in the wall of her house and there she baked bread every day. The smell of it baking was a constant agony. Guillermo would try to get out of the house early, before it became unbearable. Rosalba's yard was next to theirs and the smell drifted into the house, filling all the crevices with a delicious, tantalising and unattainable desire. Sometimes he tortured himself, watching over the wall as she took the bread out of the oven and put in on the window ledge to cool.

It was one of those days that it happened. He had no clear memory of it. It seemed that one moment he was leaning on the wall, the next he had sprinted across the yard and was sprinting back, clutching a warm loaf to his chest.

"GUILLERMO GARC?A FERNANDEZ!!!"

He stopped dead in his tracks, utter terror grasping him and turning his limbs to water.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"

He turned round. Rosalba was looming over him, her face a mask of fury. He could not say anything, just held on to the loaf for grim life. As she walked towards him, he felt his bladder go, a warm, wet patch spreading from his crotch and running down his legs.

Rosalba looked down at his wet trousers and sighed. She didn't look angry any more, just weary.

"Oh, keep the bread, Guillermo," she said and turned her back on him and went back into the house.

It was some time before he could move. His limbs seemed to have frozen and refused to obey him, but at last, he turned and walked stiffly out of Rosalba's yard. Then he suddenly broke into a run and headed for the goat-shed. He wanted to hide before any of his brothers or sisters saw what he had. He wanted to eat all the bread himself in private.

But ever after that he lived in fear of Rosalba. She knew he was a thief and she knew that he was a coward who wet himself like a baby. He would never, never forgive her for making him do that.

And then there was Oh God, it still made him go cold just to think of it the dreadful affair of the wild boar.