Rage Read Free Page A

him.
    "Well, well: I'd never have known."
    "Known what?"
    "Doesn't matter, let it drop. If you've got a temper,
we'll let it go."
    "Are you being insolent with me? Don't you realize
that I could throw you out right now if I felt like it?"
    Jose Maria nodded his head in silence, without taking
his eyes off the man for an instant. For his part, the
foreman held his gaze without relinquishing his grip.
Worse still: the pressure on Jose Maria's arm grew as the
two stared at each other, chiming with the increasing
imminence of a physical reaction on Jose Maria's side.
    The foreman was certain the young lad was ready to
attack him at any moment: he imagined him grabbing
the joist beneath which they stood with both hands then
swinging up to throttle him with his legs. He had seen
him do just that a few weeks earlier, when Jose Maria
was joking about with a mate of his, and he'd been impressed by his agility. Jose Maria spat sideways and
said:

    "Let's get back to work, we're wasting daylight..."
    The foreman was reluctantly obliged to let him go.
    Jose Maria went off to get changed. The weather
remained heavy and this mood was echoed by the
attitude of those who had been closely watching the
scene, and even of all those who had only recently
come on site. As soon as they got to work they knew
something was up. Nobody said anything as they moved
around slowly, staring down at the ground, blinking
less than normal.
    `Just see what an umbrella can do," muttered one in
a low voice.
    "Nothing to do with the umbrella, everything to do
with the joke," responded another. "You need to know
who you're dealing with. That Maria is just as dangerous
with or without the umbrella."
    Everyone called him Maria, just like that. It was
something that occurred naturally, and which Jose
Maria didn't seem to mind about one way or the other.
In actual fact he couldn't have cared less. Even Rosa
began to call him Maria. There was something in his
viscerally taut body, together with the length of his
eyelashes, which almost automatically ruled out the
possibility of his simply being called Jose. You only
needed to see him to realize that his agility was a truly
exceptional gift, and, this being clear, this threat of
danger meant that people called him "Maria" with
caution, as if, despite his willingness to be called by that
name, they were still wary of causing offence.
    It made the foreman's blood freeze to have Maria
outstaring him, despite his naturally sanguine nature.
Only now the episode was over and done with did it begin to make his blood boil. Such sudden changes in
temperature had prevented him from being properly
aware of how dangerous Maria was. The same thing as
happened with the doorman. If the two men had paid
a little more attention, they wouldn't have tangled with
him. Maria had done nothing to them; it was they who
had picked on him. No doubt a warning signal following
some kind of natural law becomes activated, prompting
the spider, even before becoming hungry, to trap its
little flies, but there was no proper reason to count Rosa
in among their number.

    It had happened without the foreman and the doorman noticing, and it was what so blinded Rosa: she
was a dutiful and even-tempered girl, her head filled
with endless dreams. Maria's dangerous edge, which
Rosa chose to put down to his "character" (as when
she called him "pig-headed" or "stubborn"), made
him her ideal foil, the complementary and hitherto
missing piece in her make-up. She felt charmed to be
in his company. She thought herself protected, and was
under the impression that the two of them together
could conquer the world. It was an image so far outside
reality, she never noticed the time passing when they
were together.
    Maria would stop by and see her daily at six thirty in
the evening, at the end of his day's work. They met at
the tradesmen's entrance to the mansion, and between
one kiss and the next they laid