a gun license. Legal possession. It was my cousin who persuaded me to take out a license, he wanted me to go hunting with him at some game reserve he’s a member of in La Mancha, near Badajoz, near Luciana and Arroba de los Montes (no, you won’t know where they are, they’re tiny villages, barely visible on the map), and at the time I could afford it, I could afford to go on little trips like that, just head off with my rifle to shoot a few partridges, the odd hare, a wild boar even. Sometimes we went hunting for boar and deer on an estate you could have spent three or four days roaming and still not have seen it all. I used to like coming back in his van, smelling of mud, grass and damp hair, of animal blood and our own sweat, smelling of wild boar during the whole journey on cold, clear winter days or on misty, drizzly days, the smell of bitter coffee, brandy, or coffee with a dash of rum (we always used to make three or four stops en route); sometimes, too, we’d come back stinking of whores, because we’d call in at a cathouse along the way, near Albacete, then, when you got home, you’d take off your shoes, take what you’d caught out of your game bag, and have a good long shower so that your wife wouldn’t smell the whore’s lipstick and make-up on your neck or between your legs, or that really penetrating cologne they always wear, never taking account of the fact that most of us have wives, and that a wife can smell a whore at fifty paces. What more could you ask for? Well, Esteban has taken me with him to the marsh now and then: come on, Julio, we’ll spend the morning there, have lunch, and with a bit of luck, we’ll bring back an eel or a duck, but it’s not the same, the marsh is so confined, and muddy and smelly, whereas out in the open, with fields disappearing off into the distance, one hill after another, you can breathe freely. We could manage then. I could cope. We never imagined the shit we’d be in now, when you don’t know who to borrow money from next, and it’s so embarrassing walking around and seeing the look of alarm on the face of any acquaintance when he sees you coming and crosses the road pretending he hasn’t seen you, because he’s sure you’re going to touch him for a loan the way you did a couple of weeks before. It really gets to you, spending all day plotting, going over and over things in your head, wondering how you’re going to get by on your 400 euros of family assistance and the 600 euros your wife earns, and doing endless calculations that never work out, always more debits than credits, however you juggle the figures, how are you going to pay for the books and the other things for the kids’ school, which went up to 700 euros this year, then there’s the new uniform, because last year’s is too small and, besides, it’s worn out, shoes, car insurance, mortgage, municipal taxes, it all feeds into the same nightmare, a nightmare you never suspected when things were going well, but which, as soon as everything goes pear-shaped, becomes your sole preoccupation: how to fill the fridge. It’s only when you’ve lost everything that you realize you have to eat every day, isn’t that ridiculous? Of course you have to eat. Everyone knows that. When conditions are normal, you don’t even notice, but when you haven’t so much as a euro in your pocket, it becomes your one great obsession: you have to eat every single day . You have to put food on the table, and the children have to take their little carton of juice to school as well as a sandwich filled with mortadella or with tuna, out of that small round metal tin containing just a few scraps, barely enough; and this isn’t just today, it’s every day, because every day they have to have their afternoon snack and every day they have to eat supper. And the little one has to have her diaper changed every morning. I go to bed and dream that I’m drowning, then sit bolt upright, scrabbling for air and screaming. My
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