Rage Read Free Page B

their plans - all endowed
with an astounding triviality, but fundamental to their
relationship - things like meeting up the next day at the
Disco supermarket or spending Saturday night together
in the small hotel down on the Bajo.
    Rosa and Maria made love every Saturday, and spent
all their Sundays together. They would have made love every day if it were down to them, since Rosa was free
to leave the house whenever she wanted, but to tell the
truth they lacked the money. They both earned the
same amount: 700 pesos a month. Two hours in the
hotel cost twenty-five pesos, which means they spent
a hundred pesos a month simply on making love on
Saturday afternoons, and 200 if they stayed on Sundays
too. They went Dutch (first him then the next time her),
but Rosa's monthly outgoings were far less than Maria's,
given that he had to make the daily journey from home
in the Capilla del Senor, a round trip which came to
another 260 pesos per month. So, on sex and travel he
was paying out 310 pesos each month. Had this been
the sum total, they could have lived comfortably on the
remaining 390 pesos, but Maria was also a human being
who required food and cigarettes and (on those rare
occasions when he tried to be a gentleman as well as
a normal person) liked to pay for an occasional beer
or a coffee on their excursions to the city centre, all of
which left him precious little choice beyond restricting
his lovemaking to Saturday afternoons.

    Rosa might have lamented the fact, but it was true that
she didn't live within the same financial constraints as
Maria. Better still, Rosa was in a position to make savings.
Her food was provided, as was a roof over her head, and
she wasn't required to travel anywhere. She didn't even
need to buy clothes - although nor did Maria, if the
truth were told. Buying magazines didn't come into it:
her boss Senor Blinder had a subscription to Selections
from the Reader's Digest, which arrived punctually by post,
and which she opened and read, sometimes even before
he did.
    To Maria, earning exactly the same as Rosa was slightly
worrying, since it seemed to him he was obliged to make considerably greater efforts than she ever did. This was
doubtless so in matters requiring physical strength, less
so in terms of the amount of time he dedicated to his
job. In that sense at least, Rosa worked twice as hard as
he. But time was not taken into account by the purely
physical mentality of Maria, who had no money even to
buy a haircut. So it was that he wore his hair extremely
short above the ears and rather longer down the back of
his neck, not because the cut was in fashion but because
it was one he could do himself in front of a mirror.

    Alongside the developing relationship with Rosa, his
"attitude" problems made him a long series of enemies in
the neighbourhood, some of them occasional or erratic,
others well-established. For a start, the doorman, now
reinforced by Israel, who was the son of the president of
the Owners' Association. Israel looked like a twenty-sixyear-old rugby fan, bulkily built, with the eyes and mouth
of a frog, and a head buried between his shoulders.
Yet he'd never played rugby, had no idea even of the
basic rules - though he always went out dressed in shirts
belonging to any or every team in the world; he sweated
heavily too, which smelled really badly, so he smothered
himself in extremely expensive perfumes which, when
they combined with his personal odours, generated a
unique and almost intolerable aroma, to such a degree
that most people were compelled to hold their noses.
    He always went about dressed in jeans and chamois
moccasins and - it's now perhaps worth mentioning
- he was a Nazi. The doorman had phoned to tell him
about the encounter with Maria because he knew that
Israel loathed foreigners, the more so if they happened
to be poor, and worst of all if they wanted to act sharp
in his neighbourhood. He had said as