Machine Translated by Google

Machine Translated by Google

The book
They are shoe shiners, newspaper sellers, car washers, grave cleaners, ragpickers…
Children left behind in a country where the poorest can only survive. To survive,
Saturnino attempts to do so. In the street, he struggles since the disappearance of his
parents, to earn a few coins, to protect Luzia his little sister, to remember the words
and songs that their mother hummed. One day, Saturnino meets an unusual old man
who claims to be a conductor. He invites street urchins to come to his house. Does
music have the power to erase fear and loneliness?

Maestro was born out of a newspaper article: “It was about a Bolivian conductor
who had managed the feat of putting together an orchestra with street kids. During
the February 2003 riots in La Paz, the music school buildings caught fire and the
children saved the instruments and welcomed their teacher by playing…”

The author
Xavier-Laurent Petit was born in 1956. After studying philosophy, he became a teacher
and then a school director. But above all, he has two passions: reading and travelling.
Over time, one fed the other and vice versa.
As soon as the opportunity arises, he takes his children to discover somewhat rare
regions. “I like to travel as a reader,” he says. And it is probably for this reason that
his novels take us so far.
He signed nine of them including Fils de guerre, crowned by the National Assembly
in 2000.

To go further with this book

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Xavier-Laurent Petit

Master!

Medium pocket
leisure school 11,
rue de Sèvres, Paris 6th
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To Freddy Céspedes,
first violin of the La Paz Symphony Orchestra.

But also to Manon and his transverse flute, to

Matthis and his drums, to
Raphaël and his guitars, to
Aurélien and his bass,
to Fred and his
saxes, to Patrick and his
percussion, as well as to Jean and his future violin.

Thanks to Clément (and his cello) for his advice.

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My shoe shine box, a blanket and Luzia. That's all I had left.
And I held on to it.

The other cover, Luzia had been bitten a few days earlier but I couldn't
blame her, she was too small to notice.
Since then, I had worked hard, but I still only needed two or three hundred
centavos to buy him a new one. In the meantime, we managed as best
we could with the one we had left because, even if the days were
scorching, the nights remained freezing because of the altitude.
In the evening, I spread boxes on the ground, just to insulate us from
the cold. Luzia snuggled up to me and I told her stories of wolves,
brigands and princesses. I was trying to remember the ones Mom used
to tell us when we lived in Llallagua. Most of the time I got tangled up and
ended up getting it all mixed up, but Luzia was nice. She pretended not
to notice and fell asleep before I got completely confused. I lay down next
to her, covering us with the blanket, we hugged each other and Azula,
the cat she had found at the market, joined us purring, her stomach full
of little ones. she was soon to have. During the night, Luzia pulled the
blanket to her and the cold woke me up long before daybreak.

“You just have to kick his ass,” Patte-Folle advised me. She does not
won't start again.
But Patte-Folle had no little sister.
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Every morning, I began by looking towards the Cordilera because

that here everything depended on the sky.

Some days it was so overcast it wasn't even worth getting up for. But
when the weather was good, tourists rode up to the Rio del Oro market
to spend their brand new dollars and centavos.
When I opened one eye that day, the sky was a stunning blue. A good
day ahead!
Luzia helped me roll up our blanket in the boxes before

hide in a hole in the wall that I carefully filled with bricks. Better to take
precautions...
It had been nearly three weeks since Patte-Folle and Patte-Folle had
unearthed this old abandoned checkpoint along the runways of the
airport, and no one had yet dislodged us. It looked like a miracle, but no
one could say how long it would last either. Anything could happen. The
airport security services, a descent of “macacos”, or simply a gang larger
than ours… Which wasn't difficult. Since Vargas and Oscar had
disappeared, there were only three of us, Patte-Folle, Luzia and me. But
counting Patte Folle's twisted legs and Luzia's seven years, it was more
like two and a half. Or two. We had learned to be discreet.

As for Vargas and Oscar, we did not know what had become of them.
Here, no one cared about one or two more or less trollers.
Everyone knew that macacos weren't very fond of
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pilluelos1 in our genre. Vargas and Oscar weren't the first to disappear without a trace, and
they wouldn't be the last.
We waited for them for six days at the corner of calle 2 San Isidoro, our usual meeting
place, before we made up our minds. On the seventh day, it was decided that they were
dead, and for ten centavos we bought them each a candle at the cathedral. We owed them
that. Madpaw wanted to say a prayer but he couldn't remember any. So we just stood there
looking at all those little flames that were shining like gold and breathing in the incense fumes.

In an end-of-the-world din, the American Airlines Boeing landed a few meters from us.
The nose gear touched down and a plume of smoke billowed from its tires as if they were
about to catch fire. It landed at the same time every day and served as our clock. If you
wanted to have a chance of finding a good place in the market, you had to leave when it
landed.

I followed him with my eyes until he was just a black speck at the end of the trail. I loved
airplanes, and at night when we came back, I could sit for hours watching them land and
take off. Ears torn, I felt the earth shake under my buttocks and I followed their fires until
they disappeared into the sky.

"Saturnino!" called Luzia.

She was right, there was no need to hang around. The tourists were soon to turn up and
we had no time to lose. She gave a last caress to Azula's round belly. Patte-Folle had
already taken the lead. We hurried to catch up with him while Luzia hummed.

Three men in black on the way

Quickly hide behind your hand

If you sleep, they won't see

anything But if you go out, it will be the end.

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- You have nothing else to sing?

She shook her head, picking up louder.

Three men in black on the way

Quickly hide behind your hand...

She knew lots of other similar tunes but this one was her favorite. She would serine it from
morning to evening. I couldn't hear it anymore without shivering.

Those three men in black reminded me too much of macacos,

parents and to everything that had happened in Llallagua three years earlier.

1 “Street kids”.
2 “Street”.
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I sat down in my usual corner, at the corner of calle San Isidoro, and
I took out my equipment, my brushes, my rags, my shoe polish… Patte-
Folle went a little further away while Luzia went to get postcards from
Gondalfo, who left her two centavos for each card sold.
Around us, the market was already teeming. The peasant women had
descended from the villages of the Cordilera well before dawn to get the
best seats and they had unpacked their wares on old blankets. A few
eggs, turnips, two or three measures of beans or quinua, peppers... The
coffee and bee merchants walked around tinkling their cups. The criers
bawled at the top of their voices and, for ten centavos, the old Guaman
recited prayers in place of those who had no time or who had forgotten
them.
When Vargas and Oscar disappeared, I asked him to say a beautiful
prayer for them. Something good. It was his job and he did it better than
anyone. Back home in Llallagua, the parents were always bickering about
the prayers. Dad said it was nothing but bullshit and Mom replied that it
couldn't hurt anyway. Me, I didn't have too many ideas on the question,
but Oscar and Vargas were dead and for the dead even dad went to
church.
As I handed him the coins, old Guaman grabbed my hand to read the
lines that crossed in the palm of my palm. I felt his filthy fingernail on my
skin. He stared at me with his gray gaze, it scared the crap out of me and
I ran away without waiting for his plea. I didn't care too much about the
future.
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I was still waiting for my first customer when the market crowd suddenly
parted. They were three to patrol. Three militiamen in fatigues, their
thumbs sunk in their belts, batons and guns close at hand. Here, everyone
called them macacos. And even if we had nothing to reproach ourselves
with, it was better to avoid them. When they took the direction of calle
San Isidoro, I immediately looked elsewhere. I didn't know a single person
who didn't look away from their metallic glasses. They all wore a patch of
President Alfredo Ayanas on the back of their collar.

And just looking at that bastard, I wanted to kill him.

1 Hot corn drink.

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-I can I sit?
The girl who just spoke to me was so beautiful that the answer stuck
stuck in my throat. I was too dazzled to utter a single word.
She was a thousand times more beautiful than all the girls in my dreams. A
thousand times more beautiful than all the actresses in bathing suits that we watched
in the days of American soap operas on the TVs in the shops of the Plaza Mayor when
the security guards were in good spirits.
She was my first client and a day that started like that could only end
well.
She sat down and put her feet on my shoe shine
box. Her pink leather moccasins alone must have been worth ten times
the price of all the shoes I had shined since the beginning of the month. I
cursed thinking I didn't have pink shoe polish. It wasn't really the most
requested color by my usual customers, but I gave it a try.
Dusting with a toothbrush down to the smallest corners, luxury colorless
shoe polish, spread in small touches, a first polishing with a woolen cloth,
followed by a light coat of polishing cream mowed down the day before in
a downtown store. And to finish on a high note, a final touch of shine with
an extra-thin nylon stocking.
Specialist work.
I took all my time because such beauty was a treasure
I wanted to remember until the end of my days.
While rubbing and polishing the leather of her moccasins, I threw her
occasional discreet glances and she smiled at me, revealing her
impeccably white teeth aligned side by side like pearls. Real
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tourist teeth. Damn it ! I almost had the tremors to shine the shoes of such
a woman! At her house, over there, there must surely have been teeth
whiteners, just as there were shoe shiners here…
But back home, in the Rio del Oro district, no one had enough money to
worry about that kind of detail. It could well grow in all directions, blacken,
rot, fall… We had other fish to fry.
I looked at her but I was still careful. Her guy was some sort of athletic,
clean-shaven, well-fed pinkish giant who kept photographing her from
every angle. Quite the kind of fool to get upset if he saw that I was studying
his fiancee a little too closely.
By dint of polishing them, the moccasins of my princess with beautiful
teeth looked like two mirrors. Nothing to say, it was a great job! I would
have fine-tuned a little more, but the big, sturdy pink one was starting to
get impatient. Princess absolutely wanted him to take one last picture of
me with her. When she put her hand on my shoulder, I thought my heart
was going to stop. I closed my eyes inhaling her scent. Heaven itself
couldn't smell so good.
I didn't even look at the few coins Big Stupid slipped into the palm of my
hand. My Princess walked away, I thought only of the blondness of her
hair, the color of her skin, her perfume...
I was still dazed when I finally opened my hand. Twenty centavos! This
concha de su madre had paid me only twenty centavos while his backpack
was full of dollars! A miserable salary for a real professional job!

Not even enough to pay Luzia a bowl of mote1 at fat Anita's for her
lunch. And even less enough to complete my kitty to buy him a blanket.

I took my cutter blade out of the hiding place I kept for it, on the side of
my shoe shine box, and I asked Patte-Folle to watch my equipment.
I had a score to settle, it was only going to take a few moments.
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I felt a bit sorry for Princess. But a job is a job and

I couldn't let this pass...

1 Corn boiled in water.

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I picked up Luzia on the way and we went looking for Princess and
of Big Strong. With us, everyone is small and dark and, even in the middle of
the market, in the midst of shouting, tingling and jostling, nothing is easier
than to spot a pink giant accompanied by a beautiful blonde...

They were both in front of a cloth merchant, Princess leaning over the
motley wool swatches while the other moron took photo after photo.

It was not the first time that I had to pay myself and Luzia knew her role.
She snuck in next to them and waited for Princess to straighten up to offer her
her postcards. No one can resist Luzia's smile. Princess turned to her and the
pink giant obviously wanted to take her picture. I took a look around me.

No macaco in sight. It was time. I slipped behind him.

Two seconds was enough. Two well-placed punches. One for each of the
straps of his backpack. All that remained was to grab the bag and disappear
into the crowd of the market. By the time Big Stout understood what was
happening to him, Luzia would have scampered off and the trick would be played.
But the giant was overtrained. A real hero! He didn't even give me time to
give my second swipe. His hand relaxed like a spring, he grabbed my wrist
and twisted my arm screaming in pain. He was a thousand times stronger
than me.
His face a stone's throw from mine, he spluttered me loads of
incomprehensible stuff. Eyes drowned in tears, I clenched my teeth not to
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shout. I didn't want to give him that pleasure. For half a second, my gaze met that of Luzia,
terrified. I had time to wave him off.
It was the rule, she knew it.
Around us, people moved away. It was the rule too. Do not intervene. Never. If I had
managed to snatch Big Strong's bag, no one would have stepped aside to allow him to catch
me in the middle of the crowd. But this time I had lost. I hoped with all my might that Luzia
would find Madpaw.

Big Strong was still twisting my arm pushing me in front of him and I didn't understand
where he was coming from. Now that he had me, all he had to do was beat me up, give me a
homemade beatdown. It was fair game. But he had another idea in mind. He pushed me in
the middle of the crowd, thousands of stars swirled before my eyes so much this pig hurt me.
Next to him, Princess was begging him to let me go, but

he didn't want to know anything.

I only understood what he was looking for when I saw the black caps of the militiamen.
Panic overwhelmed me, like the day I lost my footing while bathing in the Rio de Cochacamba.
He couldn't do that! He was a foreigner and he didn't know what macacos were capable of.
Me, I knew it. Everyone here knew it. I struggled, I screamed, cried like a child, but the more
I begged him, the more the pink giant twisted my arm, on the verge of breaking it like a twig.
I ended up being silent, choking with pain, my face smeared with snot and tears.

The three macacos approached. Luzia's song was running around in my head.

Three men in black on the way

Quickly hide behind your hand...

"A problem, senor?"

- No ! I screamed. No problem ! I will pay it back. Buy him a new bag! It is a mistake ! I did
not want !…
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One of them slapped me hard enough to unscrew my head.

Big Strong showed them his bag with the clear mark of the cutter on the cut strap,
he explained to them in English what had happened. The others shook their heads
like puppets but I was sure that these morons didn't understand a single word. With
each of their gestures, the crest with the head of President Ayanas trembled as if he
were alive. I looked up at my Princess, who looked away.

Shit, Princess! Say something ! Do something ! Born

don't leave me!
There was a whole crowd around us. People had stopped to watch. They all knew
what awaited me if I remained in the hands of the militiamen, but no one made the
slightest gesture. Nobody said anything.
With the macacos, we had no choice.
Big Strong finally loosened his grip, one of the militiamen put his hand on my
shoulder and I jumped up as if he had given me an electric shock. I caught a glimpse
of myself in the mirror of his dark glasses.
"I'll pay it back, señor sargento!" I whined. Buy him a brand new bag. Give him back
the twenty centavos! All…
“You're a dirty little thief,” the sergeant said.
- Not a thief! No ! I'm working ! But he only paid me twenty
centavos! Twenty centavos for that!
With my free arm, I pointed to Princess' moccasins.
– It's not enough, you understand?… Not enough!
He grabbed me by the hair and shook my head harder and harder.
- It's already a thousand times too much for a brat like you. What I understand
above all is that the señor is doing you the honor of making you work and that you are
stealing it.
He unhooked the pair of handcuffs hanging from his belt. My legs went limp. If the
macacos took me on board, what would become of me
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Lucia? She was still very young! Barely seven years old, and I knew life here!

I fell to my knees in the dust.

- I'm sorry, señor sargento. Pardon ! I will never do it again! It's sworn! Sworn!

The militiaman smiled with all his blackish teeth.

- And why would I believe a little bastard like you?
“Because it's the truth, señor sargento. The real truth of the Virgin Mary!…
Because without me, my little sister won't be able to make it!
Because…
He signaled to the other two to take me on board. The handcuffs closed
around my wrists. They picked me up, each taking me under one arm. I was
crying, the snot was dripping down my chin. I could barely put one foot in front
of the other, in front of us people moved away in silence.

The pink giant remained frozen on the spot as if he was only beginning to
understand what he had just done. Princess had disappeared. I saw Patte-
Folle's scared face in the middle of the onlookers, I closed my eyes. I hurt
everywhere, I thought only of Luzia. I hadn't even had time to buy him a blanket.

Nothing could be worse than falling into the hands of macacos. “If you know
what a macaco is going to do, you know more than him. The proverb dated
from the time when President Ayanas had taken power and my father had
repeated it to me dozens of times.
– Forgive me, gentlemen, suddenly came a deep voice, but I am
convinced that there is an easier way to resolve this situation.
I opened my eyes and reminded myself that I needed to breathe.
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Except on the TVs in the Plaza Mayor, I had never seen anyone dressed
like the old man who stood in the way of the macacos. His tie, his jacket, his hat, the
white hair that was escaping from it… Nothing stuck with the people here. He looked
like something out of a movie, but not just because of his costume. Businessmen in
ties, I knew some. Every day, I went out of the office to shine the shoes of those
who worked in the banks on Avenida Nacional. They were all made on the same
model with their gray suits and their perfumes which, at the end of the day, smelled
of sweat. But the old man had nothing to do with the bankers. From head to toe, he
was different.

The sergeant looked at him, laughing.

"A simpler way," he repeated. Just that ! And which do you see?
- Would you see...
- Eh ?
– Would you see! Which would you see... That's more correct.
“Oh yeah…” said the sergeant. More correct… Don't be too clever anyway! You
have a nice suit and you come from I don't know where, but find out.
Everyone here will tell you that it is better not to be too finicky with us.
The old man nodded, smiling.

Again, people crowded around us. Nobody came back from the aplomb with
which this guy treated the macacos.
- Come on ! Get out now! Enough wasted time!
The sergeant took a step forward but the old man didn't move. In the crowd,
some started laughing. That was bad! Bad for the old.
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Bad for me too. The macacos weren't going to endure long being ridiculed in
public by an old eccentric. One of them put his hand on his truncheon. But the
old man shook his head.
– I don't think Alfredo would like it very much…
“Alfredo?” growled the sergeant. Who is that?
“But…Alfredo,” repeated the old man, obviously.
And he designated the crest of President Alfredo Ayanas pinned on the lapel
from the sergeant's
collar. - What does that mean ? That you know the...
- That you know !
The sergeant glared at him.
– Do you know the president?
The old man's smile widened.
- Of course. We had dinner together just last night.
I widened my eyes. The macaco was waddling from one foot to the other,
unable to decide if the old man was telling him nonsense. Around us, we would
have heard a pin drop. To believe that the whole market had gathered here to
listen to what was happening there.
“Don't give up, sergeant,” one of the militiamen scolded. It's crap, all that.
The old man knows the president like I am the Emperor of China.
He doesn't care about us!

The old man took a cell phone out of his jacket. At the time, especially in the
neighborhood, it was rather rare! He tapped a few keys and handed it to the
sergeant.
- Hold ! You can find out for yourself in a few moments. You are on the
President's direct line...
The sergeant blushed and returned the phone to him as if it came from him
slide a wriggling viper between the hands. He was sweating profusely.
- What the hell is this bullshit? he muttered, throwing a blow
look at others.
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For the first time, the old man looked at me. He had a little pout like
to tell me, "Don't worry. Everything is fine. »
For a moment, no one moved. My heart was pounding like it was going to
explode.
- Untie the brat! ordered the sergeant to one of the militiamen.
He wiped his forehead.
- And you, get the hell out of me! he bellowed to everyone watching.

But no one moved. As I rubbed my wrists, the old man held out his hand to the
sergeant. A very supple hand, all white, incredibly clean for the people here who
always have dirt, grime and grease up to their elbows. A type hand that had never
worked. By the side, the sergeant's fists looked like big caterpillars

hairy.

“Thank you, Sergeant. You will not regret your decision. And then between us, it
must be admitted, twenty centavos, it's a bit of theft, isn't it?...

The sergeant didn't answer, he waved to the macacos who

accompanied him.
- Come on, let's go, you guys! And you, he said, threatening me with his hand,
tell yourself that you won't always have the same luck. As of today, it's like I
permanently have a picture of you pinned here!

He patted his head.

The old man watched them walk away in the middle of the crowd and put a hand
on my shoulder.
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I had to thank the old man. That I find something to say… Without

him, I was heading for disaster! But nothing came out but tears. I was shaking all over.
He handed me a white, cloth handkerchief.
- Hold. Wipe yourself!

I gave it back to him full of grime and tears and snot, he smiled.
- No no. Keep it ! I give it to you…
His sentence remained in suspense, as if he was waiting for something.
– Saturnino. My name is Saturnino, but everyone calls me Saturn.
“Well, I give it to you, Saturnino.
He bought a cone of salteñas1 which he handed to me.
- Go ahead, eat everything.

The story of the old man and the sargento had gone around the market in a flash and
people were giving us puzzled looks. I was starting to feel uncomfortable. Something
was wrong. What would a friend of the president dressed as a tall gentleman be doing
in the area? And why would he take it into his head to pull a street kid like me out of the
macacos?... It didn't hold water. On the one hand, the old man was too clean and too
well dressed to hang around here. On the other hand, he was too polite, too refined and
too generous to be a friend of the president.

I was stuffing myself with salteñas, he was looking at me and I still didn't have it
thanked. I swallowed and took a deep breath.
- Thank you, senor. I mean, for the salteñas… And for the handkerchief… And for
earlier too. Without you, I...
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The words were tangled in my head. I couldn't see what more I could say. I
suddenly had an enlightenment.
– I could shine your shoes… For free, I mean. You polish them until the
end of your… uh… well… for your whole life without paying a single centavo.
Just come see me. I am almost always at the corner of calle San Isidoro.

“But that's an excellent idea, Saturnino! I accept with pleasure.

Excellent idea… With pleasure… The old man used words that I had
almost forgotten. Words that never came to my mouth.
I finished the cornet de salteñas, we were walking side by side towards Calle
San Isidoro and the old man's silence was getting on my nerves. Now that I had
thanked him, I didn't understand why he was standing there, staring at me.
– Do you want to start right away?
He glanced at his shoes.
“Well, a little cleanup wouldn't hurt them.
My crate had not moved from place to place. Patte-Folle saw to it. He was
also watching over Luzia who had taken refuge next to him, her face red with
tears. When she saw me, she rushed towards me, screaming my name. We
stayed tight against each other for a moment.
- It's over, Lucia. No more crying now. I am here…
“She's your little sister?” asked the old man.
I nodded without letting go of Luzia.

- Damage ! She's a little too young. Though…

A shiver ran down my spine. I glanced at Madpaw to see if he had heard
the same thing as me. For some time, there had been more and more bastards
who attacked children, girls and boys, for filthy tampering that I didn't even
dare to imagine. The cazadores, the hunters… One day, one of them even
offered to accompany me. He hugged me, smiling as if we had known each
other for a long time, but just in his eyes I understood
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and I had scampered off. Here, everyone knew that some tourists only came
just for that.
I looked at the old man from below. He had none of those cazadores who sometimes
prowled the square, and yet…. Again, I wondered who this guy was. What exactly did he
want? Why had he helped me?
What did he expect in return?
If he touched any of Luzia's hair, I would gut it.
I quickly sent my sister away to sell her postcards, the old man sat down on my box and
I took care of his shoes, but my heart wasn't in it. Damage ! She's a little too young.
Although ... I tried to repeat to myself that I had surely heard wrong, that it had to be
something else, nothing helped.

I had barely finished when he handed me a hundred-centavo note.

This time it was too much. Too much money. Too much. Especially for free work! And
then I didn't want to receive anything from him anymore. He had saved me from macacos
and I was shining his shoes for him until the end of his days. The market seemed fair to me
and I asked for nothing more.
– No, senor. I can not accept. I told you, it's free. For
thank you...

“Don't worry about that, Saturnino. It's good work, and it deserves pay.

He slipped the note into my hand.

“I've been thinking about something,” he continued. Do you… But first, where do you live?

I hesitated. I owed this guy a lot, but he was really starting to get in the way. Not to
mention that, if he had been from here, he should have known that pilluelos like me didn't
live anywhere. I remained vague.
– In the corner of the airport.
- It's not very close, tell me.
I shrugged.
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– I still come every day.

- And you can read?

He got on my nerves with his questions. I did not see where he

wanted to come.
- I manage. Before I went to school.
– Before what?
I did not answer.
He didn't insist and scribbled a few words on a small card.
- Do you know where this address is?

Calle del Rosario, 32… It was in the neighborhood of the old ayuntamiento2.
– Come tomorrow, Saturnino. When you can... After work. I'm there all day. Of
course, you can bring your little sister. Your friends too...
The one I saw earlier, and others, if you like.
I looked at him, blinking. I didn't like the idea of coming to his house at all. I
didn't understand all that was hidden under there. Or rather, I felt like I understood
too well…
The old man got up, ruffling my hair.

- See you tomorrow. Whenever you want, but I really want you to come. And if
we finish too late, I'll drive you home!
Finish what?...
But he was already walking away.

I glanced at his map. A real gentleman's card, with a name printed in relief.
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1 Hot pies, meat or vegetable.

2 “City Hall”.
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AT barely at night, the cold fell like a stone. Since we found this old
abandoned checkpoint, we felt more safe than sleeping outside in boxes,
but there was no question of making a fire, the guys from the airport would
have us immediately spotted. Azula rubbed herself against Luzia, wrapped
up to her nose in the blanket I had just bought her, and Patte-Folle took a
shriveled American cigarette out of his pocket and broke the filter.

"We're in no danger," he said. We are three and he is old. And then you have to take
advantage of it, he looks full of money.
- Exactly ! I don't see why a rich old man would care
suddenly to us!

“You are always afraid of everything.

I shrugged.
– I'm not afraid, but I'm thinking of Luzia. You can not understand.
Patte-Folle passed me his cigarette, the acrid taste of the tobacco stung my throat.
For hours, we had only talked about the old man and his invitation. Patte-
Folle wanted to give it a shot but I couldn't forget the old man's curious
phrase.
The metal door had been bent and, through the half-opening, the track
could be seen. In the distance, the lights of an airplane lined up. An
Aerolineas Argentina McDonnell. I knew all the schedules, flight numbers
and aircraft types by heart.
The air vibrated in the din of the reactors. The pilot put the throttle on full
throttle. The plane picked up speed and its headlights approached at a speed
Machine Translated by Google

terrifying. The earth shook and the roar of the engines pinned us to the spot. Luzia
pressed against me, her mouth wide open.
Every time a plane took off, she screamed with all her might to try to drown out the
noise of the engines, but the jet engines always had the last word. The McDonnell
swooped down on us with an end-of-the-world roar, so huge that for the first few
days we thought we were dying every time we took off.
He was close to crushing us when he looked up, right in front of us. Its lights rose in
the night and it veered to the left wing before disappearing over the Cordilera.

My ears still ringing, I offered to tell Luzia a wolf story, but she shook her head as
she hugged Azula.

"When will she have them, her little ones?"

– Soon, I think.
- Tomorrow ?
- Maybe…

I didn't know, but in a few days Azula had become really huge. I stroked her belly,
it was weird to think there were kittens inside. Luzia started humming one of the
lullabies
which mum used to put us to sleep with when we were kids...

Yo shouts a palomo
para mi recreo,
me paso llorando
cuando no lo veo1…

Mom knew astronomical amounts of it and must have sung this one to us a billion
times. What was amazing was that Luzia remembered the lyrics as if she had heard
them the day before. I listened to him sing, my head filled with images from before,
from the time when, with the parents, we lived in Llallagua.
Machine Translated by Google

Dad at the wheel of his loader… A huge machine, with gigantic wheels. A
kind of monster from prehistoric times that suddenly carried towards the
crushers skips of more than one hundred tons of ore. Dad used to tell anyone
who would listen that one tire on his loader truck was worth ten years of his
salary, and he was as proud of it as if he'd owned it. I thought about Mom,
too. It's evening. It's been a while since nightfall, the door creaks and Mum
finally comes back from her work in front of the sorters, her hands and face
gray with dust. She quickly washes herself in the zinc basin, hugs us and her
muscles are as hard as a man's...

All of this suddenly seemed so far away that I wondered if I had

not invented all our life before.
I had to think of something else.
“Se volo y se fue2…” murmured Luzia.
And she suddenly fell asleep. Azula was humming like an engine and
Madpaw was already humming. I nudged him to shut him up and walked out.
The runway lights were flickering and the sky was speckled with stars.

One lucky day…

That's what I thought that morning when I saw Princess. But I still couldn't
figure out if I was right. In a way, it was because of her that I had almost been
taken away by the macacos. A dirty trick! On the other hand, it was thanks
to her that I had met the old man, and thanks to the old man that I was here
instead of rotting in the cells of the militia.
There remained this strange invitation. And there, I was not sure of anything…
The runway lights went out. There would be no more planes tonight.
I was about to go home when I saw a shooting star. Fiuuuut… A simple
streak of light. Half a second. And it was already over...
"To be happy, make a wish!" That's what Mom always said. But one
evening, dad told me that in reality a shooting star only weighs
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a few grams. No more than that.

And a few grams to be happy was not a lot.
When I lay down next to Luzia, I knew that the next day I would go to
the appointment.

1 “I bred a pigeon / for my pleasure, / and I am left crying / when I

do not see it. »
2 “He took his flight and fled. »
Machine Translated by Google

Calle del Rosario. Just behind the old ayuntamiento…

We never set foot there. Besides, apart from a few losers, more
no one was going there.

It was the desert. All the old hovels before had been razed when the
President decided that the new business district would rise here. This lousy
corner was going to be transformed into an ultra-modern banking district,
bristling with concrete buildings and glass towers like in Manhattan. He
had promised. But the building sites had stopped one after the other and
nothing had been finished. Everywhere there were only sections of walls,
ruins, rubble, heaps of cement and rusty pieces of scrap metal.
Nobody was able to say if it was the remains of the old constructions or the
beginning of the new ones. It was said that the president had filled his pockets
so full that there was not a penny left for the works.
32, calle del Rosario was one of the few buildings still standing. A large
leprous building with windows protected by bars and which seemed as
deserted and abandoned as the rest of the sector. The late afternoon heat
was overwhelming. Flies buzzed and big gray lizards weaved between the
stones. The few guys hanging around were glancing down at us. Most of them
dealt in bazoca1, and we weren't part of their usual clientele.

Patte-Folle hobbled over to me.

"Are you sure it's there?"
I looked again at the address the old man had written.
“There's something written above the door,” Patte-Folle remarked.
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He had never set foot in a school, Luzia had not had the
time and I was the only one who knew how to read.

– Escuela Municipal de Música2.

- What next ! No question that I go in there, me!
But Luzia had already approached. Her ear pressed against the door, she
put a finger to her lips and motioned for us to join her.

1 Cocaine waste.
2 Municipal School of Music.
Machine Translated by Google

10

We heard music… A strange thing. which had nothing to do with

what the radios played or what the street musicians could play.
Low sounds, which buzzed around us and echoed to the pit of the belly, as
if the music managed to slip inside
our bodies.
I had never heard anything like it. Neither Patte-Folle nor Luzia. Nor
anyone, surely...
The big door creaked as Luzia ventured to open it. A hallway sank into
darkness, it stank of mustiness and dust. At the far end, a trickle of light
filtered through a half-open door. The music was coming from there.

"Let's get out," Patte-Folle murmured. That's not normal music.

But Luzia walked to the end of the corridor.
“She's crazy, your sister. We get away, I tell you. It's freaking me out...
He spun as fast as he could on his twisted legs, I joined Luzia on tiptoe.
The music enveloped us. It seemed to come out of the walls, the tiles, the
ceiling, everywhere at the same time… Like something alive.

We listened without seeing anything, lurking in the shadows. The hairs

on my arms stood on end as Luzia decided to take a step forward. She
froze in the light. And when I approached in my turn, my heart beat like a
drum. I was shivering. I had no idea what was going to happen
pass.
Machine Translated by Google

Sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, his eyes half-closed, the old
man clutched an instrument that I had never seen. A kind of violin, but so big
that he had to squeeze it between his thighs.
The fingers of his left hand ran along the neck, his bow slipped on the
strings… The whole room resounded with his music. I was vibrating from
head to toe. Luzia clung to my shoulder. Two or
three times the old man looked up at us, unsurprisingly, with an almost
invisible smile. He knew we were there, but he continued to play as if he
didn't see us.
He ended on a very long and very serious note, which seemed to move
away from us, to go infinitely far. He looked at us smiling, without saying
anything. The silence was filled with music. We didn't dare move. It wasn't
until he bowed that Luzia started clapping.
There was more applause behind my back. Patte-Folle had joined us.
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11

– Shit, Patte-Folle muttered after a while, it's really

beautiful what you play… I have shivers everywhere.
I expected the old man to say, "What you're playing...is more
okay,” but he just nodded.

– This is very old music. It's been more than two hundred and fifty years
that it was written by a certain Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach...
"Over two hundred and fifty years!" So, it's really old music! But it's still
beautiful… And what's it called, a big violin like yours?

– A cello. Come closer, and put your ear here.

Patte-Folle leaned his head against the instrument. The old man picked up his
bow and played a long, very low note. Welded to the body, eyes half-closed, Patte-
Folle waited for it to go out completely.
– Ouaaahhh… Can you start again?
Luzia approached with no mouse, in turn she put her ear against the wood. The
old man motioned for me to join her and he started to play again while the three
of us remained glued to his instrument like leeches.
His music went through my body. It throbbed, rose, fell, vibrated… I felt like I
was part of what he was playing, living inside his cello.

When the old man stopped, Luzia was crying.

He took a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. He must have had
a whole stock.
“It's okay,” smiled Luzia, gasping. It's because I'm happy… I'm crying because
I'm so happy!
Machine Translated by Google

“It's not normal,” Patte-Folle said.

He turned to the old man.
- Me too. Inside, it gives me a strange mixture. As if I wanted to laugh and
cry at the same time. You wouldn't have something more… how to put it?…
It's beautiful, what you played. Really beautiful, even, but too sad… Don't you
have something funnier?
– More fun…
The old man frowned.
- Come.
Our stories of the day before were forgotten. We followed him without
hesitation to a small room whose walls disappeared behind shelves of records.
It was everywhere ! Hundreds and hundreds of discs! I had no idea there
could be so many around the world. And the chain to listen to them was even
bigger than those you saw in the windows of the Gigante, the largest store in
the Plaza Mayor. There, they cost tens of thousands of centavos!

“You must be awfully rich after all,” Patte-Folle remarked.

The old man didn't notice, he was rummaging through the records. He
pulled one out, I glanced at the cover as he installed it. The photo of a huge
orchestra. Violins, cellos, trumpets, flutes… and lots of instruments that I
didn't know. Behind their desks, dozens of musicians looked up at an
impeccably dressed man, a drumstick in his hand, as if they were just waiting
for a gesture from him to play. The man with the stick was the old man. A few
years younger, but there was no doubt. His name was written in large letters.

Romero Villandes
Vienna New Year's Concert

I had no idea what that meant. The old man sent me a

wink.
Machine Translated by Google

12

It started with a drum roll, and suddenly the whole orchestra

got into it. All the musicians at once! They were playing something unimaginable, a
huge piece of merriment that everyone could bite into like a cake. Just listening to it, I
wanted to gallop, jump, dance, shout... At times, on the record, people clapped their
hands, Patte-Folle got into it, too... Luzia spun around. I had never heard anything so
catchy. The piece ended with thunderous applause. The old man looked at us smiling
and I imagined him the day of the recording, very dignified, in front of his orchestra,
with exactly the same smile. Glad the others are happy.

Patte-Folle quivered with excitement.

– No, but what a foot, this thing! I can not believe it. And it is you who have
invented this music?
- No. Me, I'm just the conductor. What you listened to is called Radetsky's March, it
was Johann Strauss who "invented" it, as you say, an Austrian musician.

– Johann Strauss… Is he a friend of yours? Do you know him?… Because

I would really like to shake his hand.
– It won't be easy… He's been dead for quite a while. But by
against…

The old man seemed to reflect.

– On the other hand, he continued, maybe you could manage to play his music, one
day. You could try, you three, and others too who would like to...
Machine Translated by Google

We looked at him like he was crazy. The old man's face creased into a sort of
creased smile. Her eyes were two tiny slits. He looked like a Chinese.

“But we don't know,” I whispered. We don't know how to play all these
instruments, us.
- Unless I tell you...
Patte-Folle devoured him with her eyes.
– Do you really think we could play Machinsky's March?
– Radetsky. And why not?... Not right away, of course, you have to train first,
learn... But with a little patience and work, I'm sure you'll get there. And that you can
also play lots of other things.
Happy music, other sadder ones...
– Will it be as good as on your record?
– On the record, I am conducting the orchestra. There's no reason it shouldn't be
so good.
- And for the instruments? What are we going to do?… We don't have any.
“I'll take care of it,” said the old man. But three musicians is not enough. I need
more. Others who want to try.
– We are only three.
“It's already a start,” said the old man. So there is Saturnino, Luzia… And you are…

– Crazy Paw.
– But your real name?…

– My real name is Patte-Folle. The other…

Patte-Folle hesitated, he looked at me with a bewildered air.
- Shit ! It's true that before I had another name… I don't remember!

He was close to crying.

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13

- Saturn! Hey, Saturn!

Patte-Folle was shaking my shoulder. It was still dark.

- Less strong ! You will wake her up.

I pulled the blanket over Luzia's shoulders and Azula curled up against her.

– Hey, Saturn, I can't sleep… I forgot again.

– Forgot what?… Your name?
- I don't care about my name! But what we listened to at the old man's was
what, already?… Whose march…
- And you wake me up for that!
– This is important, Saturn. I don't know why, but I swear it's
important ! And the worst thing is that I also forgot the tune.
I was smart, but I was like Patte-Folle. I had fallen asleep playing the cello and it
seemed to me that since then I had only dreamed of the old man and his music.
The name, I couldn't remember. It was an unpronounceable thing. On the other
hand, the air had accompanied me all night, I whistled the beginning.

- Yeah ! exclaimed Patte-Folle. Yeah ! That's it ! You're great !

We started to sing. Luzia opened one eye looking at us with a
dazed.
- What are you doing ?
"Nothing," Madpaw muttered. Come on, Saturn, let's talk about it all
out.
The first plane of the day, an old Antonov with propellers from the interior lines,
would not be long in coming. Track beacons lit up
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exactly when we were leaving. We guessed in the distance the dark mass of

the Cordillera. A thin clear line outlined the darkness of the sky, and on the grass, billions of
dewdrops twinkled like stars.
“Look,” Madpaw laughed. It is for us. To welcome the two famous musicians, Saturne and
Patte-Folle.
He bowed to salute facing the Cordilera as the old man had done and took half a cigarette
out of his pocket.
– Maybe one day we'll make a record, too. With people clapping at the end… Do you
think it's possible?
He handed me his cigarette butt. We were both humming the Marche de Machin Chose.
We started to sing louder when the roar of the Antonov broke through the night. And louder
and louder as he approached.
When it landed in front of us, we were screaming like crazy trying to drown out the noise of
the engines.

I laughed to tears. I winked at Patte-Folle who also had tears in his eyes. But it took me a
while to realize that he was crying for real. For the time I had known him, I believe it was the
first time.

- What's wrong ?
He shrugged, looking away.
– But when we make the record, Saturn, what name am I going to put on the cover?

- We should know. Five minutes ago, you said you didn't care, about this
name story!

“I may have said it, but it's not true! Since last night, I've been looking.
You, Luzia, the old... Everyone has a name. A real name. Not some bullshit like Patte-Folle.
Me, it's been so long since anyone called me by my real name that I forgot.

– But still, do you know what your parents called you?

Patte-Folle forced himself to laugh.
Machine Translated by Google

“The only time I saw my mother was the day I was born. I don't remember very
well… My paws must have scared him. That's probably why she left forgetting me.
She didn't even take the time to give me a name. The name I had was given to me
later.
I do not know who…
With a flick, he threw his cigarette butt which fell back into the grass like a tiny
shooting star.
“I'm sure she's really beautiful, my mother,” Patte-Folle went on. Sometimes I
think it might be someone who lives there, very close to me, someone I meet every
day at the market… Only, we don't recognize each other. Maybe I've already
talked to him. Do you believe it's possible?

The Antonov came to the end of the runway and turned around. We are back
sheltered. It was better that no one saw us around.
- And you, how was your mother?
The plane was coming up the runway. He was too loud for me to answer.
Machine Translated by Google

14

The old man was not satisfied with us three.

The next day, there were about ten of us hanging around the Escuela
Municipal de Música. Girls, boys, just our kind...
Pilluelos, shoe shiners, newspaper sellers, criers, car washers, grave cleaners,
ragpickers… We all knew each other more or less, but most of the time we
avoided each other. It was hard enough to take care of yourself to not have to
take care of others. To each his corner, to each his street, to each his job. It
was the rule.
The only one we knew a little about was Tartamudo1. He sent us from
great signs as if we were the best friends in the world.
– Yvvvyou too, vvvyou…
With him, it was better to cut short.
– Yep, we also come for the music.
Tartamudo's specialty was contraband cigarettes. Americans who crossed
the Cordilera on the back of a mule, along paths so dizzying that the customs
officers were scared to death just at the thought of setting foot there. During
the day, Tartamudo sold them individually in the market, and in the evening
he went to bars. It was no secret and it wouldn't take much for the macacos
to take him on board. Most of the time they just threatened him with fines so
huge he would have spent ages paying them, so Tartamudo would open his
bag for them and they would help themselves by whole packets from his
stockpile.
I wondered how he got here. Had the old man come between him and the
macacos by replaying the cell phone's little comedy? But
Machine Translated by Google

with Tartamudo, it was better to avoid questions. Each time, it was for hours.

From the top of the stairs, the old man waved to us.
“Ah, Saturnino, Luzia…” he said with his Chinese smile. Approach!
Nobody moved.
- Come closer, my friends! Approach! repeated the old man.
Some have drifted off. It was so weird, this well-dressed old guy who called us
“my friends”… We were only six or seven to risk it. To pass in front of the old man
without even daring to look at him.
Instruments were neatly lined up in the room the night before.
Flutes, violins, cellos, a trumpet...
Suddenly, I no longer really knew what I was doing there, in front of these
instruments which were worth more than I could ever earn in my whole life... Since
Llallagua, I had learned to manage on my own and I didn't understand not what the
old man expected of us. I didn't understand why he was suddenly interested in a
band of pilluelos instead of continuing to lead the beautiful orchestra on the record
cover.
He put his hand on the shoulders of a guy and a girl in their twenties
of years who were beside him.
– Juan and Anasofia will help you choose. They have been my students for so long
long that now I almost consider them my children.
Anasofia was not as beautiful as my Princess. Some will even say that she was
not beautiful at all. But as soon as she smiled, I understood that she was a thousand
times more attractive, a thousand times more sparkling, a thousand times more…
To talk about that, you would need words that I don't know. Maybe even words that
don't exist. But with her, I was ready to learn to play all the instruments on earth.

- Come closer, my friends, repeated the old man again.

Luzia was the first. With her fingertips, she started fiddling with a
flute. She tried to blow into it. Anasofia took another flute.
Machine Translated by Google

- Like this, look...

A cascade of notes sprung from his flute, dizzying. Luzia smiled, but when
she tried, in turn, blowing with all her might, nothing was
came.

- Slower. Breathe much more gently...

She showed Luzia how to place her hands. I had spent the night dreaming
of the cello and the day remembering its deep and soft sounds, I had imagined
myself with this big instrument tight against me...
But just at the thought of Anasofia's hands on mine, I was ready to decide on
the flute.
- There... Go now.
Again, Luzia tried.
Nothing.

She started again maybe twenty times without getting the slightest sound.
Each time, Anasofia imperceptibly changed the position of the flute against the
lips of Luzia who was sniffling, tears of rage at the corner of her eyes.
Nobody said anything, nobody moved. Luzia had her back to us and all eyes
were on her. All you could see was her hair and her arms that were just long
enough to reach the tip of the flute.
- This time, you'll get there. I am sure of it.
I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood on my
language. I wanted her to succeed.
Luzia put her lips to the mouthpiece and a sound came out. A rickety little
note, all quivering, like a chick coming out of the egg, but a real flute note.

“Well there you go,” Anasofia said simply.

Luzia looked at me, her eyes wide with happiness.

1 “The Stutterer”.
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15

Almost all chose the flute or the violin. The first took refuge in
upstairs with Anasofia, the others followed Juan who was running from one to the
other, demonstrating how to hold a bow and how to wedge the instrument under the
chin without dropping it.
Only three of us were still hesitating, Patte-Folle, Tartamudo and me.
I had a hard time deciding between the hands of Anasofia and the memory of my

night dreams. In the end, I chose the cello. I was the only one and I liked having
the old man all to myself.
We started right away. He sat next to me to better guide my arm. As the bow
slid down the low string, I vibrated from head to toe. I almost had tears in my eyes.
I wasn't sure why, but the sound of the cello reminded me of Llallagua.

- Your turn now…

He encouraged me with his gaze. I put down the bow exactly as he had shown
me, the string rumbled, and I listened to the silence return, stunned to have
succeeded.
– Your first note, Saturnino. The most important. If you like it, you will like the
millions of others who will follow. It's like a river. Nothing can stop a spring that
comes out of the earth.
The old man sometimes had sentences that no one understood.
Around us, the Escuela was gradually filling with strange noises, hissing,
squealing, high-pitched squeaking and scraping of strings that sounded like the
meowing of furious cats.
Machine Translated by Google

Patte-Folle finally fell in love with the only trumpet that the old man had brought. He
started blowing into it along with a pot-bellied little boy who I saw tumbling out, startled
and dripping with sweat. Wiping his brow, he apologized a thousand times to the old man
for arriving so late, and Patte-Folle immediately called him Chanchito.

“Keep going, Saturnino,” the old man said as soon as the paunchy little boy left.
You have to manage to play each of the strings without touching the others...
The door opened again, a boy came in lugging a cello around like a mover and glared
at me. I stopped in the middle of my note. We looked at each other like dogs.

– What are you doing here? he growled.

His nose was crooked, placed like a potato in the middle of his face, with
one hell of a bump in the middle, and that was my handiwork.

Two or three times already, Zacarias had tried to extort Luzia by stealing the money
from the postcards she sold to tourists. This wretch only attacked the little ones. He had
been wrong to attack Luzia. I hit where it hurt the most, he came out with a broken nose,
yelling like a pig, pissing blood into the dust. And I was ready to smash him piece by
piece if he did it again.

- Hey, Saturn! I'm talking to you. What are you doing here ?
I played deaf. If he wasn't able to figure out what I was doing on his own, it was better
for him to go back to his petty dealings.
- I see that you know each other, said the old man, all smiles outside.
I concentrated on my cello. I was trying to get a decent sound out of my G string and
it wasn't won. The other ropes were so close that I always grabbed two at a time.

Zacarias sat down and the old man went behind him to show him how to hold the bow.
He used the same words as with me, showed him the same gestures.

I didn't like having to share the old man.

Machine Translated by Google

1 "The little pig".

Machine Translated by Google

16

It had been dark for a long time when we left the Escuela. The humidity that
coming down from the Cordilera caught us.
"And I'm counting on you tomorrow!" called the old man, watching us leave.
When you want. There will always be someone to lend you an instrument and
help you.
- Even at night ? Madpaw asked from a distance.

The old man was no more than a small dark figure on the steps of
l'Escuela, but I guessed her smile.
- And why not ?…
We moved away. The only one I hadn't seen was Tartamudo,
no one knew where he had gone.
– Anyway, laughed Patte-Folle, if he stutters so much with a trumpet
that in life, we are not close to hearing it.
A crashing sound silenced him. A man passed a few meters from us running
as if he had the devil on his heels. He was panting. He us
gave a startled look and rushed into an alley. Almost immediately, the howls of a
siren tore through the night, the blue flashes of a flashing light pierced the
darkness and a car zoomed past behind the old ayuntamiento. One of those big
Chevrolet 4x4s in which the macacos criss-crossed the city. They scuttled to the
alley and rushed out, guns drawn. Stuck in the shadows, we didn't dare to move.

We didn't see anything, just heard screams, a muffled gunshot… Luzia clung to
my arm. The macacos reappeared dragging the moaning man. They threw him in
their 4x4 and drove off with a screech of
Machine Translated by Google

tires. Lying along a palisade, a guy was watching them with glazed eyes, a
bag of glue in his hand. He started laughing to himself, his shoulders
shaking with tremors.
After the few hours spent with the old man, I had the impression of
plunging back into a terrifying world. We spun. We had to go back if we
wanted to get to the market in time tomorrow.
Cars were speeding along the road to the airport. Their headlights
dazzled us and they brushed past us so closely that each time we felt
sucked in like dust. But I hardly paid attention to it. I was trying to forget
what we had just seen, I only wanted to think about that moment spent at
the Escuela. I had managed to make the four strings of my cello sound
separately. Do, sol, re, la… On a notebook, the old man had shown me the
notes, perched on their lines. I didn't understand anything about it, but I
liked it.
Patte-Folle caught up with me, swaying. He had to wiggle so much to
move forward that it always looked like he was going to break into several
pieces.
- Hey, Saturn! For our record… I talked to Chanchito about it, you know,
the fat guy who shows me for the trumpet. He looked a bit surprised, but
I'm sure he likes the idea.
He took a few steps in silence.
– Just, what bothers me about the cover is that I still don't know what my
name is.
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17

We were almost at the airport when a big black Chevy drove up.
emerged in front of us, all headlights extinguished.
We didn't have time to run. Not even time to think about it, the beam of a torch
dazzled us. We froze in place, I raised my hand to shield my eyes, but a voice
cracked like a whip.
- Don't move, you!
The guy was shining his torch right in our face, he was detailing us one by one.
Me first, then Luzia and Patte-Folle. The light has come back to me.
- Well ! But who is that?… An old acquaintance!
It was the voice of the sargento the other day. Just hearing it made me
drenched in sweat. I let go of Luzia's hand, so she could slip away if things went
wrong.
– So, ladronito1, have you lost your guardian angel?
I didn't answer anything.
– My word, you have also lost your tongue!
– No, señor sargento…
My voice skidded to high pitches.
– Señor Villandes, I just saw him… We're leaving his house. We made… We
made music.
- Music ! See me that!
The others chuckled. The sergeant approached.
– You see, ladronito, I didn't really like what happened the other day… And
then I don't like little shits like you either. There are too many in this country. Too
much. It's messy, don't you think? But
Machine Translated by Google

what I like even less is being prevented from doing my job on the pretext
that they know the president. That's not right, as your guardian angel
would say. The authority of a militia sergeant is respectable.
He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke right in my face. I was frozen with
fear. Behind me, Luzia clung to my clothes. In the shadows, I could hear
Madpaw's choppy breathing. The sergeant took a step towards me, he
reeked of beer.
– Hey, when I do the count, there are things I don't like
when i meet you...
He pulled his gun from his pocket and held it prominently in the light of
his torch. Luzia let out a scream.
“Don't worry about anything, honey. It's not for you.
He patted her hair and Luzia jumped back. He was fiddling with his gun,
two fingers from my face.
– You see, in this country, there are a few of us who say to ourselves
that the air would be cleaner and the landscape more beautiful without the
rags, the lousy people and the pilluelos like you. You stink of filth and piss
off decent people, begging in the streets like you do. It wouldn't take much,
you know... If I put a silencer there, for example... And poof! No one would
notice anything, hear anything. We'll meet you tomorrow. Or maybe never.
Settlement of accounts between small keystrokes. Case closed and good
riddance!
I was chattering my teeth. I thought back to Vargas and Oscar. That's
how they ended up, I was sure. They had come across a patrol of macacos
who wanted to have fun after having emptied a few beers. Or they had
annoyed them without even realizing it… Anything was possible, and guys
like the sergeant were capable of anything. I also thought about dad.
For him too, things might have happened the same way, on this little road
lost near San Angelo. No one will ever know.
Machine Translated by Google

He cocked his gun with a snap and aimed it at me. A wave of humid heat trickled down my
legs. I pissed in my pants. The sergeant smiled. His torch lit up the dark stain that spread
across the filthy fabric as the others laughed.

He brushed the barrel of his gun against my cheek.

– You see… It would be simple. But you know why I won't do anything to you?
I shook my head.

“To scare you, ladronito. Simply fear. For you to piss

freaking out like you just did!

He put away his weapon and the three macacos moved away towards the Chevrolet while
rolling mechanics.
“But I haven't forgotten you, my friend. We have a small account
settle, both. Not true ?

1 "Little Thief".
Machine Translated by Google

18

I spent the night dying of fear. I listened to the slightest footsteps, I

I listened for the smallest rustles, the rumble of cars passing over there,
on the road to the airport. I expected to see the sergeant appear at any
moment, his weapon pointed at me.
I was so at the end of my tether that I screamed when the first bursts of
the Mensajero1 shook the roof of our shelter. I stood petrified for a long
time, dripping with sweat and shivering from head to toe before realizing
that it was just the wind that had rushed under the metal sheets.
To scare you, ladronito. Just scared… the sergeant had said.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. He was an expert.
Every year, at the same time, the Mensajero rose abruptly. It blew in
strong gusts which shook the houses, terrified the dogs and kicked up the
dust from the paths. Coming from the ocean, huge masses of black clouds
invaded the sky, they announced the beginning of the rainy season which
was going to transform the country into a sponge for weeks.

Seven days after the

Mensajero Water will always fall.

M'man was a veritable mine of stories, tales, songs and proverbs. I

believe she knew one for each day of the year. I had almost forgotten
them all but I remembered this one.
Outside, the wind raged. Within minutes, the air became sticky, laden
with cold dampness that oozed along the walls. The roof sheets rattled
and the grass hissed like grass snakes, but despite
Machine Translated by Google

all the noise, I was the only one awake. I stuck a cigarette butt in Madpaw's
pocket and rolled myself up in my blanket, shivering.
I hated the Mensajero. He only brought back bad memories
since, three years earlier, he had woken me in the middle of the night.
I had just turned eleven and Luzia was still a four-year-old flea. At the time,
we lived in Llallagua, in the two-room huts built for the workers near the tin
mines which perforated the whole corner like a gigantic anthill.

All the miners had been on strike for three weeks. Not only in Llallagua, but
throughout the country. From the first days, entire brigades of macacos had
taken up position in front of the mine, hundreds of helmeted men, armed with
truncheons and grenade launcher rifles.
It was rumored that they also had firearms and that they were only waiting for
an order from President Ayanas to charge and crush the strikers. Dad was one
of the first to block their way. At the wheel of his huge loader truck, he advanced
to the front ranks of the brigades and forced them back to the applause and the
wild cries of those of the mine who watched the spectacle. He immediately
became one of the leaders of the
movement.
The Mensajero rose in the days that followed. In Llallagua, we were used to
the dust of the mine, but when the wind blew, it became unbearable, even for
those who had lived there for years. We ate the dust, we breathed it, from
morning to night, we lived in its reddish fog, it was everywhere...

Since the beginning of the strike, almost every day, the miners armed with
pickaxes and iron bars clashed with the macacos who replied with truncheons
and tear gas canisters. Their cries mingled with the howls of the wind. Neither
of them were angels and it hit hard. So hard that on the fifth day of wind we
picked up dead on both sides and the president finally sent a negotiator to
discuss a
Machine Translated by Google

agreement with the strikers. The first meeting was scheduled two days later
in San Angelo, a neutral location about 50 miles from the mine.
A bus would pick up the miners' representatives and dad would be part of the
journey.
The night before, the Mensajero redoubled its violence. His gusts shook
our barracks as if he had decided to put an end to the human race once and
for all. They rushed screaming between the boards and woke me up in the
middle of the night. It was two or three in the morning and the light in the next
room was still on. It was so unusual that I crept to the door. The parents were
discussing among themselves in low voices. I couldn't hear everything
because of the wind but I understood that mom was begging dad not to go to
this meeting. It was a crude ruse to neutralize the ringleaders, she said. They
were all going to be arrested. Or worse.
“It's a trap, Stepano! Do not go ! I could still hear Mom's gravelly voice.

“They can't do that, Martha,” Dad said, “way too many of us.

The rainy season started that morning when he boarded the bus with other
union leaders. It was raining heavily and the wind was blowing so hard that
the rain seemed horizontal.

Seven days after the

Mensajero Water will always fall.

The bus started and dad waved at me through the window but I didn't pay
too much attention because the friends had just captured a frog and we were
looking for a second one to fight between them as they sometimes did in the
mating season.
The next day, a guy in a dark suit came to tell Mom and the others that the
rains had caused a mudslide on the road to San Angelo. The car had been
dragged away. The bodies of dad and the other miners were buried under
tons and tons of rock and dirt, at the bottom
Machine Translated by Google

from a ravine so deep that it was unthinkable to get them out one day.
There were no survivors and President Ayanas offered his condolences to the
families.
On the crest stapled to the man's jacket, President Ayanas' face grimaced
and wiggled like a puppet with every move he made. I only looked at that, unable
to detach myself from it.
Nothing else was known, but no one could believe in this accident. For some,
the road had been mined by the passage of trade unionists; for others, the
direction of the bus had been tampered with. Some even maintained that there
had never been an accident. That dad and the others were imprisoned in one of
those camps where Ayanas locked up opponents and from which you never came back.
No one had seen these camps and no one knew exactly where they were
located, but many claimed they were on the side of the border, lost somewhere
in the highlands. Where the cold shriveles men and where the wind wears them
down until there is nothing left.
On the day of Dad's funeral, all the coffins were empty. In the pouring rain,
gasoline was sprinkled over the wreaths the President had sent. It was Mum
who struck the match and they burned despite the downpour.

The miners' union hired a lawyer who died a few days later in a road accident,
crushed by a truck that was never found. There, everyone understood. We'll
never know the truth about what happened the day Dad and the others died on
the narrow road in the canyon of San Angelo.

Work resumed at the mine two days after the accident, under the supervision
of the macacos. M'man, who until then had worked sorting the ore, was given a
new position in the deafening din of the crushers.
She was now working in the midst of even more suffocating dust than before on
machines so dangerous that not a week went by without an accident...
Machine Translated by Google

I crushed my tiny piece of cigarette butt on the ground. A gust more violent than the
others shook our shelter and I shivered when I heard the wind howl like a fox. Patte-Folle
straightened up suddenly. He looked around him, looking a little bewildered, saw me and
started laughing.
– I dreamed that I was playing the trumpet and Chanchito was amazed at my progress.
But it's the wind...
The gusts rushed against the door, on the verge of shattering it.

“The rains are going to start soon,” Patte-Folle resumed in a low voice. So much the
better.

I looked at him without understanding. Tourists were like birds, they flew at the start of
the bad season, I didn't understand what was so good about losing most of our livelihood
and dying of cold in the rain.

Madpaw smiled.

- What I mean is that we will have much more time to go to the Escuela.

1 “Messenger”.
Machine Translated by Google

19

In a single day, the Mensajero swept the last tourists who still lingered there from the

market.
When we arrived the next morning, it was almost deserted, drowned in whirlwinds
of dust. The wind was blowing endlessly and, at the slightest gust, the old newspapers
and plastic bags fluttered about like great ramshackle birds of prey. Most merchants
didn't even bother to set up. Only fat Anita remained, selling her bowls of mote
whatever the weather, and the peasant women of the Cordilera, lined up in front of
their wares like stones along the walls.

Our best customers were gone. We settled down on the Curso Bajo, opposite the
Avenida Nacional, to watch for the bankers crossing the avenue, half bent over,
struggling against the wind.
“Shoes, señor! They will be like new!
But most did not even answer, they rushed headlong to their offices. At the end of
the afternoon, when the last of them went back in the opposite direction and we were
sure we wouldn't win a centavo, we went to the Escuela.

Along the way, we were approached by a glassy-eyed junkie who

offered dope.
- Bazoka! You're looking for bazoca!
He could barely stand and was chuckling with all his rotten teeth. He could not
not guess that we had a thousand times better in mind.
Amidst the ruins of the old quarter, the great building of the Escuela was lit up like
a boat and resounded with a cacophony that plunged Patte-
Machine Translated by Google

Crazy in incredible excitement. He hopped like a spring and nearly sprawled

with every step because of his twisted legs.
- Shit ! No, but I'm dreaming! Do you hear that, Saturn? You hear ?
Chanchito was waiting for Patte-Folle and Luzia joined Anasofia at the first
stage. I saw Tartamudo when I was going to find the old man.
“Hey Tarta! SO ? What are you playing after all?
– T'occ, t'occ, you busy!
And he rushed into one of the rooms in the Escuela without even looking at
me.
The old man greeted me with his Chinese smile. Zacarias was already there,
hidden behind his big boxer nose. I sat across from him, he pretended not to
notice me, and the lesson began.
The old man passed behind us and, without ever getting upset, showed us
how to get out of the sounds that moved us to the bottom of our hearts. We
toiled away on our cellos for almost two hours. I had blisters on my fingertips.
But now, nothing mattered more than this music that I had never heard.

- We'll stop there for today, finally decided the old man.
I reminded him that I owed him a lifetime of polished shoes.
- You know that, just for that, I would be able to finish centenarian!
He sat on a bench and I polished the leather of his shoes while he
was humming something, beating time.
That evening, when we got home, Azula was nowhere to be found. As if she
had run away.
With tears in her eyes, Luzia looked for her and called her in vain, until she
finally unearthed her, holed up in a hole in the wall. A pinkish jumble of tiny paws
and wet snouts wiggled gently under its belly.
She had given us three little ones that Patte-Folle stared at for an insane amount
of time without saying a word.
Outside, the wind howled like a pack.
Machine Translated by Google

20

On the seventh day, the old man decided to teach us our first real
piece.

“A minuet,” he told us. It only plays on a few notes, but it's a charming little
piece.
A charming little room... The "maestro", as he was sometimes called
Anasofia, really came from another planet!
I had no idea what a minuet could be and Zac not much more. The old man
first played it in front of us while, outside, the Mensajero was unleashed. Drafts
roared under the doors and the Escuela creaked as if it was about to collapse,
but with Zac we only listened to the old man's cello.

And we went to the minuet. Everyone in their corner, Zac on one side, me on
the other. Note after note. The old man hummed, placed our fingers on the
string, showed us… He opened photocopied sheet music under our noses and
followed with his finger these dozens of small white and black marbles that
skipped from one line to another. We understood absolutely nothing about it, but
we played anyway. We planted ourselves, we started again, we planted
ourselves again and we started again. My back was stewed and my fingertips
were planed from pressing down on the strings, but I was ready to wear them to the bone.
The next day, the old man suggested we play together. With Zac, we
looked at each other without a word.

– Just the start of the minuet for…

The old man's sentence flew away in a yelp of the wind.
Machine Translated by Google

– It's very simple, he resumed, I count to four and, at four, you start well
together, like that…
He showed us how to start at "four" and raised his arms.
- Are you ready ? Two three four…
It was not easy to leave together. And by the way, that jerk Zac has
started too late.
“Three, four… repeated the old man.
It screwed up from the first note.
– No… You left too soon again, Saturnino.
I looked at him outraged. He must not have put on his good
ears, because it was Zac who was late again. I was sure of it.
From crashes to mess, we finally got there. Just the few notes at the start, but
it was suddenly so beautiful that we immediately stopped, unable to go any further.

- Shit ! Zac said. That's wonderful !

We were beginning to talk like the old man, to resume his expressions.
It was more than magnificent, but the old man didn't let us down.
- Two three four…
We glued ourselves back together, concentrating on our instruments. The old
man hummed at the same time as we played. Sometimes we got confused from
the beginning, often because of Zac, despite what the old man said, but as soon
as we managed to start almost together, the magic returned, we nibbled on a few
more notes and we started again. I hurt all over and my fingertips were on fire, but
I would have given anything to get there.
I only looked up when the old man decided that we would resume the next day.
The room was full of people. Anasofia, Luzia, Juan, Patte-Folle, Chanchito,
Tartamudo, and others… They were all there, listening to us.
Machine Translated by Google

21

In the early morning, the rain began to drum so suddenly on the sheets
from our shed that I jumped. The drops crackled like volleys of pebbles. In a few
moments, the grayness invaded everything. The Cordilera dissolved into an
impenetrable fog. We lived in the clouds.

Seven days after the Mensajero

Water will always fall.

The rainy season was starting exactly as m'man said in Llallagua.

The American Airlines Boeing showed up at the usual time. The sound of its
engines barely drowned out the din of the rain and you could hear it circling above
the runway, waiting for a patch of cloud to land. But when its big headlights finally
pierced the fog, a few meters above the ground, it was already almost at the end
of the runway and heading straight for us.
Right on the foothills of the Cordilera. The pilot overshot. The nose of the Boeing
straightened up, the din of its engines tore our eardrums, its wheels grazed the
roof of our shelter and the plane disappeared under the downpour, swallowed by
the clouds.
– Hijo de puta! hollered Patte-Folle. I understand why no one wants this cabin!

He tried to light half a soggy cigarette and ended up giving up

shrugging the shoulders.
“Too wet,” he growled.
But his hand was shaking so badly that his cigarette butt fell on the soaked
cement.
Machine Translated by Google

– Not a shoeshine time, that… Anyway, there won't be anyone at the market.

We looked at each other.

- Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

– Yup!… It wouldn't do any good to settle down. Time wasted. Do you have something to
eat?
I had enough money for Luzia and me, and Patte-Folle laughingly took forty centavos out
of his pocket. We were going to treat ourselves to a day of
vacation.

We packed our blankets in a big blue tarp that I had mowed on a construction site in
anticipation of the rainy season, Azula carried her little ones there one by one for shelter and
we spun in the pouring rain towards de l'Escuela while Luzia hummed.

Three men in black on the way

Quickly hide behind your hand...
Machine Translated by Google

22

We arrived soaked to the skin, Patte-Folle had added to the nursery rhyme
of Luzia a last verse that we bawled at the top of our voices without caring that
we were heard. The pattering of the rain covered our voices.

That stupid sargento

stank like macaco when
the old man said out loud that
he was a big bastard.

- But you are completely crazy! Look what state you are in!
Anasofia stared at us with a devastated air and Patte-Folle was writhing with laughter.
We were streaming like mops as we waded through the puddles that formed at
our feet.
She stripped Luzia from head to toe and dried her in a large towel before
swaddling her in a sweater ten times too big that came down to her ankles. She
also wanted us to change, but Patte Folle swore that, while he was alive, he
would never undress in front of a girl.
Anasofia rolled her eyes.
– Anyway, no question of touching the instruments as long as you are soaked!

She came back with an armful of pants, shirts and T-shirts.

Nothing but worn old clothes from Juan and Señor Villandes, she told us. I
found pants and a shirt. I had never worn anything so beautiful.

"They're all millionaires in there," Pawpaw whispered to me,

squirming to put on an old tracksuit from Juan.
Machine Translated by Google

A real jog, it had been his dream for a long time. With his toad legs, he couldn't
play soccer in the street with the others, or run, or anything, but he would have
given anything for a jog. The pants were a thousand times too long and were
hanging all over the place, but he didn't care. He rolled it up just enough not to
break his face and showed me the big white letters printed on the front.

“Hey, Saturn, what's written there?

– Indiana University. It's an American thing.
- Class ! When we make the record, I'll put it up for the picture. It will be good,
right?
He sat down on the stairs and started rubbing his

trumpet like a madman, until there is no longer the slightest fingerprint on the metal.

“Look at that, Saturn. Looks like gold...

He pulled her away from him by making her twinkle in the light.
– I never imagined having something so beautiful in my hands…
Zac wasn't there. I played alone for a while but what I was doing was so ugly
that I finally gave up. When the old man arrived, at the beginning of the afternoon,
my morale was down.
“I forgot everything,” I growled, not even looking at him.
- You haven't forgotten anything at all! It's just because it's raining, the wood
has worked.
He tuned my instrument before sitting across from me with his.

We resumed the minuet. He showed me the notes, the position of the fingers, that
of the bow, I repeated until he nodded and we resumed at the beginning.
I didn't stop until my fingertips felt like
tomato pulp.
– You are progressing, Saturnino. You progress. At this rate you will soon pass
me.
Machine Translated by Google

Outside, the rain was crashing on the roof and drowning the old quarter in a terrible
boiling.
- I wanted you…

I stopped biting my lip. I had never addressed the old man directly.

- What did you want ?

– I wanted to ask you… The president, is it true that you know him?

The old man's face creased into a sort of grimace.

– So-so… It's an old story.
“But the phone number you called the other day in front of the sargento, was it really his?

He pulled out his cell phone—a millionaire thing, Madpaw would have said—and fiddled
with a few keys before handing it to me. "Ayanas," I deciphered on the blue screen. Just
below was a phone number. The direct number of the president!

“And… is he going to answer me?

The old man shook his head.

- No. But if you want to call her, just press the little button
green.

I put my finger on the button. I had Ayanas at my fingertips. I was shaking, it seemed so
easy. Just press there… I hesitated half a second. I never took my eyes off the black
numbers, I embedded them deep in my memory so as not to forget them. The old man let
me do it. I gave him back his cell phone.

He picked up his cello and started playing as if I wasn't there, but he stopped after a while.

"And what would you tell him, the president?"

"Nothing," I lied. It was just to know.
Machine Translated by Google

From the look he gave me, I understood that the old man didn't believe a word of it,
but he didn't add anything.
Saying out loud what you thought of the president was exactly the kind of thing you
should never do. You never knew who you might bump into. It was rumored that the
macacos were able to hear what was whispered even in the bed of the lovers and that
all the telephones in the country were tapped.

In the next room, someone was playing a funny instrument. I had never heard of
anything like it and I had no idea what it could be.
Machine Translated by Google

23

The old man was still looking at me. Muted, I heard the rain and, lower
again, the oddly sweet, high-pitched sound of this instrument.
So I started talking about what had happened in Llallagua three years earlier. It
was the first time I unpacked my story. Of course, those of the mine knew her, but
with the old man it was not the same. I was pretty sure he had never set foot in a
mine. The words came by themselves. I explained to him, the work there, the
miners, the strike, Dad's loader truck, the San Angelo canyon… He listened to me,
his cello tight against him.

I stopped when the lawyer died.

- After that ? he asked.
– Then we were left alone, Luzia and I, with Mum.
The rain was pounding against the windows. The old man was waiting for me to speak.

– For months, she worked at the grinders. Over there, they were called the
ogresses… It was one of the most tiring posts, because of the noise and the dust.
But above all one of the most dangerous. There were accidents all the time. Had
to be careful every second. Crushers do not distinguish between an arm and a
piece of ore. It wasn't a job for Mom. Ever since dad disappeared, she was too
nervous for that. Two or three times she asked to change. She must have felt it
was going to end badly, but she was the wife of a trade unionist, the strike had
lasted for weeks and had cost the mining companies millions. The management
never accepted...
Machine Translated by Google

The rain fell as if it would never end and the old man listened to me without
moving, his eyelids narrowed. I reviewed everything that happened that day.
Every detail. Each second.
– I was at school when it happened. It was hot enough to melt the stones,
but we still had to close the windows because of the dust. It was everywhere,
encrusting itself between the pages of our notebooks, slipping under our
clothes, and even between our teeth. We lived in its perpetual fog… When I
saw the silhouette of the capataz1 emerging from all this filth, I immediately
understood that it was for m'man. He entered the classroom twisting his cap
between his fingers, he avoided my gaze. "Saturn… Can I talk to you?" I got
up like an automaton. The others looked at me. They already knew… Me too,
I knew. Everyone knew.

1 “Foreman”.
Machine Translated by Google

24

I always heard the strange sound of this instrument, in the next room.
– The day I call the president, I will tell him what happened
in Llallagua… It's all his fault.
"I understand," said the old man.
His voice was shaking. I could barely see his gaze, drowned in the middle of a jumble
of wrinkles.

I suddenly thought he was lying to me. He couldn't understand. It was impossible.

Nobody could understand, especially not a guy who was dining alone with the president.

Anger suddenly overwhelmed me. I rushed down the hallway

calling out :

- It's not true ! You do not understand anything ! Nothing at all ! Otherwise you wouldn't
be that bastard's friend! Why are you having dinner with him?
Why do you have his personal phone? Eh ! For what ?
“Wait, Saturnino! Come back !
But I was already on the stairs. I ran down the front steps four by four and rushed out
into the street, in the pouring rain. I couldn't stop crying. The rain mixed with the tears that
trickled down my cheeks. Even the day Mom died, I hadn't cried so much.

The old man came out onto the porch.

- Get out ! I yelled at him. I do not want to see you anymore !
But he didn't seem to hear me. He waded through the puddles in his nice polished
shoes, handed me one of his white handkerchiefs and stood
Machine Translated by Google

next to me without saying a word, in my shirt in the rain, waiting for me to calm
down.
– I know the president, Saturnino, it's true. He is a childhood friend, perhaps
the oldest of my friends. We lived side by side, in the same street, and every
day we went to school together. We followed each other in college, and then
in high school. We were in love with the same girl.
It's so far away, all that… Who would still agree to be his friend?
“But you still had dinner with him.
“I haven't set foot in this country for more than ten years, Saturnino. For ten
years, I gave concerts all over the world, except here. I was too ashamed of
what was going on there. Too ashamed of what Alfredo was doing. I finally
came back without really knowing why. I don't think I could bear to live so far
away. I had to do something. As soon as Alfredo learned of my return, he
insisted on inviting me. He spouted great hollow sentences at me… Never
have I attended such a sad dinner. An old exiled musician facing an old corrupt
president. We had nothing to say to each other.
The old man was streaming in the rain. Messy hair, her bow at the
hand, he looked like a scarecrow.
I started laughing as I cried. Both together. I couldn't make up my mind.

– I look funny, smiled the old man, is that what amuses you?
In turn, he began to laugh, a laugh that shook him so much that he had to
sit down on the steps of the Escuela, his buttocks on the soaked stone.

A black Macaco pick-up truck passed in the street. He was rolling slowly,
almost at walking pace, kicking up large sheaves of mud on each side. Behind
the windows, we could make out the militiamen who were watching us, hidden
behind their dark glasses despite the deluge that tumbled from the
clouds.
Machine Translated by Google

– These morons, laughed the old man between two hiccups, they… they
ask what is happening to us. They haven't laughed for centuries.
We exchanged a look before leaving with a fit of laughter. We writhed like whales.
I had a stomach ache, I didn't even know why we were laughing anymore and I felt
light as a bubble. We returned arm in arm, soaked to the skin.

- THANKS…

The old man wiped his face with the back of his sleeve.
- Thank you for what?
- Thank you for not being his friend anymore.

“It's more complicated than that, Saturnino. Much more complicated...

Coming back up the stairs, he was so out of breath it almost worried me. We
stopped while he caught his breath, leaning against the railing of the stairs.

– And the girl you were both in love with, who did she choose?
- Me of course…
The old man started laughing again, but almost silently, shaking his head.

– Mary. Her name was Maria… We saw each other in secret from her parents.
Again, very close, I heard the strange sound of the instrument earlier. Something
very sweet. Not a violin, nor a flute… Nothing that I knew.

- What is this ?
The old man didn't understand.
– The instrument we hear, what is it?
- Come see…
We climbed the last stairs and he opened a door. Tartamudo was standing next
to a small, shriveled lady who put her hand on his stomach.

"Here, scumbag!" You take it here, your air. By the belly, is that understood?
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Tartamudo took a long breath before starting to sing in one voice

sharp as that of a woman.

Adonde vas juguerillo

con esabreviado vuelo
anda y llevale un suspiro a
la imagen de mi dueño1

It gave me a funny pinch in my stomach to hear such a voice coming out

from the throat of that clumsy Tartamudo. I was almost embarrassed.
The little lady froze when she saw the old man dripping with rain.
“My God,” she yelped, Señor Villandes, “but what happened to you?
Tartamudo turned to me, a smile from ear to ear.
– You have you have you lived, Sssaaturne. Whenever I chchchaante, jjjje ne
bégbégbégaye more.

1 “Where are you going, goldfinch, / from this hasty flight? / Will bring a sigh / to
the image of my master.
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25

We were more than sixty pilluelos to frequent the Escuela. There were the
relentless, like us, and others who only came once or twice a week, but some
days there were so many people that all the halls were packed. We sat where
we could, in the corridors or on the stairs. Music was coming from everywhere. It
fiddled, it trumpeted and it fluted in every corner. Anasofia and Juan were there
from morning till night, everywhere at once. They gave lessons, advised some,
encouraged others, tuned the instruments... Patte-Folle blew his trumpet with the
little fat man and Tartamudo was now singing in broad daylight in the company
of the little lady who pressed his stomach in the air. yelling…

The first time he dared to sing in front of us, everyone laughed.

– Only guys whose balls have been cut off have a voice
like that ! yelped Madpaw, taking on a falsetto voice.
But he didn't take long to close it, and so did we.
Tartamudo's voice was so strange, so disturbing and it soared so high that it
almost worried us. How could a dealer in contraband cigarettes hide such an
angelic voice? How could that clumsy Tartamudo become so light? There were
mysteries there that no one understood.

The old man usually turned up in the middle of the afternoon, always
impeccably dressed despite the downpours that drowned the streets.
No one really knew where he lived, but the taxi that dropped him off every
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day in front of the Escuela had nothing to do with the rusty, half-beaten carcasses that
criss-crossed the neighborhood.
I took care of his shoes first. He then walked around
the Escuela and said hello to everyone before meeting up with Zac and me.
- Three four…
Now that our minuet was almost ready, he had taken it into his head to teach us a
new piece, an Italian thing written by a certain Vivaldi, a guy born centuries earlier on
an earthquake day, the old. We spent hours, welded to our cellos, our fingertips hard
as horn from playing. We repeated the same passages over and over again, listening
for the old man's nods. We played until we were exhausted and then took refuge in
what he called the “music room”, the small room where he kept all his records. He
explained to us how the chain worked and let us go when we wanted, it was always
open.

– It's crazy, Zac was surprised. Before, the chain would not have remained in place
for five minutes. Not even thirty seconds. I would have stolen everything quickly and sold
everything. Well, I don't even think about it...
Such a change almost worried him.
Most of the time, we found Patte-Folle already installed in the music room, but he
barely noticed that we were entering. From our first meeting with the old man, he fell in
love with Radetsky's March and all his free time now spent listening to it on repeat,
dozens of times in a row, without ever getting tired.

- Shit ! Patte-Folle, shouted Zac, change a little!

But the last chord barely played, Patte-Folle pressed the remote control and put
back the same track he was listening to once more, his eyes closed, as if nothing in the
world no longer mattered.
And it was true.
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The music, there was more than that that interested us. more than that which
mattered. So much so that I almost forgot the sargento's threats.
But he was always there, playing with me like a cat with a mouse. To appear
when I least thought of it.
Our last meeting was a few days ago.
We had barely left the Escuela when a car suddenly slowed down near us. It
wasn't one of Macaco's usual Chevrolets, yet I knew right away who I was dealing
with. Despite the night and the windscreen wipers spraying sprays of water on
both sides, I recognized the face of the sargento staring at me, hidden behind his
metallic glasses. My legs have become like cotton wool.

To scare you, ladronito. Just scared...

He just chuckled and pretended to shoot me several times through the dripping
windows. At the same time, his lips went "Pop!" like those of a kid playing. Nothing
more happened. Only the rain, the gun of the sargento, his sneer and his metallic
glasses despite the darkness.

I came to think to myself that it was probably a little frosty. Patte-Folle, him,
was dying of fear.

“Someday that bastard will take you down for real, Saturn.
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26

It was raining so much that Luzia stayed up there, sheltered with Azula and her little ones,

while with Patte-Folle we hung around on the Avenida Nacional side in the hope of cleaning
the muddy shoes of the bankers, but most of them slipped away under their umbrellas
without even noticing us.
Just across Curso Bajo, Avenida was the heart of the wealthy neighborhood and raggedy
like us had no place there. As soon as the macacos showed up, you had to run, a sport for
which Patte-Folle was not cut out, and just to see him waddling in the rain on his accordion
legs, there was enough to cry. Or burst out laughing, I could never decide.

But there, it was raining too much for the macacos to risk their uniforms outside. Too
many, too, to find customers. We took shelter under a door and Patte-Folle rolled a cigarette
with remnants of spongy tobacco.

Just above our heads, the roof tiles crackled. The water rushed down the slopes of the
Cordilera, depositing a layer of mud in the streets in which the buses stuck like large trapped
insects. The only thing that didn't fall from the sky was the centavos.

The Rio del Oro market was a little more deserted each morning, as if there was nothing
left to sell. I could barely find enough to buy us two bowls of mote a day, and Luzia hadn't
sold a postcard for weeks.

– Why don't we try the central station? proposed Patte-Folle.

I looked at him as if he had gone mad.
“We're going to get our ass kicked, that's for sure.
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– Do you have the chips? he let out in a cloud of smoke.

I did not answer.
The station was always teeming with people. Travelers passing through,
peasants who came for formalities, businessmen, professors from the nearby
university… We couldn't find better, that was for sure. But it was risky, too. It wasn't
our neighborhood and the El Zancuda1 gang that was locking down the area
wasn't going to be intimidated by a cripple, a kid and a pilluelo.

“We’re going to get our ass kicked,” laughed Madpaw, handing me his
butt end. But we can always come and see.
We had barely arrived when a tall, lanky guy approached, a guy with a skinny
neck and whose little eyes twirled around like those who sniff bazoca. Without
having ever seen it, I knew it was El Zancuda. They were four or five escorting him
like real watchdogs.
“I think you guys are at the wrong address,” he said.
The watchdogs chuckled as if he had just told the best joke of the year. They
held us so close that I could feel their breathing on my neck. I pulled Patte-Folle by
the sleeve. It was a real madness to have come! Everyone knew the rule, we had
no more our place here than on the Avenida and there was perhaps still time to
slip away. But Patte-Folle couldn't resist the urge to show off.

- Deceived ! he exclaimed. But not at all ! We are looking for a sheltered corner
and, precisely, this one seems not bad to me. Look at ! There is space everywhere!
Here, there... there... and again there... and...

He bounced like a spring on his toad legs. One of the kind

d'El Zancuda caught it on the fly.
- Shut up, twisted one!
And with a punch in the stomach, he sent Patte-Folle valdinguer.
His head hit the ground with a funny noise and he stayed on the ground, writhing
in pain trying to catch his breath. The others don't have me
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didn't even give time to turn around. The blows began to rain down. For a
while I tried to give back as much as I took.
I was taller than most and knew how to punch but there were too many of
them. I tried to protect myself as best I could but a kick sawed through me in
pain. I fell…
When I opened my eyes again, I was outside, curled up in the rain, my
head in Madpaw's lap, who was shaking me and calling me, pale as a sheet.
Travelers coming out of the station carefully avoided us and continued on
their way, casting suspicious glances at us.
Something warm flowed between my lips. With my fingertips, I have
slowly explored the long bloody gash across my face.
– Shit, Saturn, Patte-Folle murmured with a pathetic smile, you're not
funny! I thought you were dead for good!

“If you have any problems, Saturnino, you know you can count on me.
The old man didn't say anything more when he saw me arrive the next
day, dented like a tin can in which a whole football team would have kicked.

I did not answer. I came here for the music, and the rest I tried to forget
when I walked in. He stood looking outside for a moment, his forehead glued
to the rain-streaked windows before continuing.
– It's curious, but it seems to me that before, the rainy season was
shorter… Or maybe it rained less…
I opened the sheet music. Even if I still didn't understand much about it,
the old man wanted us to see him. For a few days, we had been working on
a new piece that I found beautiful as anything, but rather difficult. A “sonatina”,
he told us.
Machine Translated by Google

I adjusted the cello between my legs and started playing. I was going
slow but I remembered the notes well and felt each one resonate along
my body.
– You must not have many customers these days,
suddenly asked the old man.

Never before had he talked to me about anything other than music while
I was playing. My fingers immediately slipped and the sonatina turned into
a disaster.
“Excuse me, Saturnino,” said the old man. I'm just an old fool.
Start again.
That's what I love about music, you can start over thousands of times
as if it were new.

1 “The wader”.
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27

-I can you ask something?

Patte-Folle took me by the arm to lead me towards the music room.
I was good for a Radetsky March.
– But you ever get tired of listening to this stuff?
“You can't understand, Saturn. You can not…
He handed me the pocket.
– I would like you to tell me again the name of the guy who invented this music.
I forgot what the old man told me.
I had trouble deciphering. Johann Strauss was a difficult name...
“Johann Strauss…” Patte-Folle repeated, his eyes lost in space.
That's probably it, Johann Strauss...
He looked at me, a small smile on his lips.
“You know, I think that's my real name, the one they gave me when I was
birth…
- Which name ?
– Well… Johann Strauss, of course!
I screwed my index finger to my temple. It pissed him off.
- Shit ! You really don't understand anything! You may think there is only one
Saturnino in the world! Only one Luzia! Only one Zacarias!… So why wouldn't there
be two of us called Johann Strauss?
He and I ! Hey, why?
"But you don't know, Madpaw!" No one remembers your true
name, not even you! You said it again the other day.
“The other day, maybe, but today I remember. It's certain.
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He handed over a dose of Radetsky which he listened to with his eyes closed, before
show me her chest.
– You see, when I listen to this walk, I feel good, there, deep inside
me, that my name is Johann Strauss. It is not possible otherwise.
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28

I wasn't quite sure, but it seemed to me that it was the birthday of

Lucia.
I stole a can of Coke from Gondolfo's while his back was turned and I struggled
like hell to buy him a cone of salteñas from fat Anita. Luzia downed the Coke until
the last drop while I settled for a bowl of mote, squinting at her.

You just have to kick his ass, Patte-Folle would certainly have advised me
if he had seen me. But Patte-Folle had no little sister.
“There's going to be a surprise this afternoon,” Luzia said, licking her fingers.

- A suprise ?
– Yes… At the Escuela. Anita told me.
I waited to know more, but Luzia laughed putting a finger on her
blocked.
She was right. When we arrived at the Escuela, nothing was as usual.

The benches were installed in a semi-circle in the entrance hall, Juan was
dressed as a gentleman, Chanchito was sweating like an ox, strangled by a collar
that seemed hard like a piece of cardboard, as for Anasofia, she was wearing a
dress long, black and slinky, which attracted the gaze of all the boys.
But the top of the top was the arrival of the old man in a white shirt and bow tie,
strapped in an extra black jacket that came down to behind his knees like in the
old days. On our side, we were a good twenty, the most advanced of the students
of the Escuela. Our filthy pants,
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our torn jackets and our mess of hair made a curious contrast with the class of the old
man.
Anasofia, Juan and the fat Chanchito helped us tune the instruments before seating
us. The cellos on one side, the violins on the other, and the flutes behind with the
trumpet of Patte-Folle.
Standing on a small platform, the old man tapped the edge of his desk
with a stick, like on the record cover. Everyone is silent.
– Saturnino, Zacarias… The minuet, please.
- In front of everybody ! Zac bellowed. We're going to crash!
The old man looked at him in such a way that Zac locked him up.
- Three four…
We left together, and more! We arrived together! I exchanged a glance with Zac,
he was just as scarlet, out of breath and sticky with sweat as me. The others wanted
to applaud, but the old man didn't give them time.

“Good,” he said. We start again with the violins.

– With the violins! Zac grumbled. It will never work. They don't
don't even know the minuet!
The old man gave him another look, and Zac looped it back.
- Three four…
We only lasted a few bars, but when the old man tapped his desk to signal us to
stop because it was turning into an impossible cacophony, we all looked at each other,
flabbergasted. The violins and the cellos didn't play exactly the same thing, they were
even very different, and yet the mixture of the two was really “charming”, as the old
man would have said.

- We take back !
We started again. And started again… The flutes got into it. Anasofia, Juan and
the Chanchito were struggling like devils, they were giving advice, counting the
measures by clapping their hands, but despite
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everything we had a terrible time finding our way around. We waded through a marmalade of
noises, clinging to our instruments like shipwrecked people. And all this mess only got worse
with the arrival of Madpaw's trumpet. Red as a rooster, the veins in his neck swollen to make
them explode, he was blowing like a man possessed despite the big signs addressed to him
by Chanchito. I no longer heard the slightest note of what I was playing. The old man stopped
everything by tapping the end of his wand.

– Less strong, Patte-Folle! Much less strong. You have to listen to others!
Patte-Folle then stood up like a spring.

“It's over, Patte-Folle, sir. Don't call me that anymore. I have

found my real name. It's Johann Strauss.

The old man looked at him, rather surprised.

– Johann Strauss… Are you sure?
Madpaw nodded.

– Yup. It's the name they gave me when I was born. But I got away
only remembered the other day.
And he seemed so sure of himself that maybe it was true. Maybe his real name was Johann
Strauss! Just, it wasn't going to be easy to remember a name like that. The old man cracked
his Chinese smile.
– Well, Pa… Johann Strauss. I will try to remember that. We resume... and
don't forget to play less loudly.
I immediately lost control. I didn't know where I was anymore, and I wasn't the only one. I
squinted at Zac who was wading. The violins creaked, creaked, jammed, and Patte-Folle,
standing on his toad's feet, did anything, but as loud as possible! We were all adrift. I had
never heard anything so crappy! The minuet turned into a

furious cat fight and I told myself that we would not succeed. Shoe shiners were not born to
play the cello, nor newspaper sellers to blow flutes. The most incredible thing is that despite
all this catastrophic mess, the old man didn't get angry. He us
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constantly asked to start over, sometimes all together, sometimes a few instruments
at a time. He was waving at us, tapping his desk, putting his finger to his mouth...

“Pause,” he announced after a moment.

He looked at us.
- Have you had enough? Do you want us to stop?
No one moved and we started the minuet again. Anasofia and Juan were
everywhere at once, sometimes playing with us while training us, sometimes
advising us. As for Chanchito, he devoted all his energy to trying to channel
Madpaw. We screwed up, we caught up as best we could, we hung on...

“That's enough for today,” the old man finally said. We

will start again tomorrow.

Night had long since fallen. No one had seen the time pass
and my fingers were in compote. He looked up from his desk.
- I am very proud of you. It will soon sound like real music. I promise you that we
will succeed in making a real orchestra.
At the sound of his voice, I understood that he was not talking. He was really
proud of us.
“Sir,” someone said, “you forgot to say hello.
The old man bowed. We applauded him endlessly, all standing. When silence
finally returned, he waved his hand at us and clapped back. Him alone for all of us.

- Shit ! Zac sniffled. I never thought I would be applauded one day.

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29

“Forty centavos,” fat Anita said, handing me a bowl of mote.

smoking.

- Forty ! But yesterday it was thirty.

"And tomorrow it might be fifty, muchacho!" That's how it is, and there's
nothing to discuss. Everyone is in the same boat. What do you want me to do
about it? There is nothing left in this country. Only water, mud and penniless
starving people.
- But…
- There is no "but ". Either you pay for what I sell you or you don't
don't pay and I keep the goods for someone richer than you.
It had been almost a month since the old man had assembled the orchestra
for the first time. Outside, the rain never stopped falling, but every evening,
we found ourselves in full force. None of us would have missed a single
rehearsal, and now that the minuet was almost ready, we were tackling what
the old man called "little pieces." A sonatina and a rondo. Stuff written
centuries ago by two guys whose names he had announced to us with greedy
faces, Handel and Mozart… But they had been dead for so long that, apart
from the “maestro”, no one had ever heard of them. It had also been a month
since the rains should have
stopped. Never in living memory has a rainy season lasted so long. Even
the old folks couldn't remember seeing so much water tumbling down without
giving us a day's rest. Apart from Anita and a few rare merchants who were
selling off their moldy stocks
of corn or beans, there was hardly anything left at the Rio del
Machine Translated by Google

Gold. And the little there was costing more every day.
It had been weeks since the peasant women had come down. It was said that up
there, in the valleys of the Cordilera, the mudslides had swept away everything,
houses, men and animals. There was nothing left and the survivors were eating roots.

“Then you make up your mind, muchacho! called big Anita.

I searched the bottom of my pockets, but I already knew what I was going there
find.

“I only have thirty centavos,” I whispered.

That's all I had managed to win since the day before. Luzia looked at me with wide
eyes.
– So much the worse for you!
Fat Anita shrugged. She took the bowl from my hands,
took out a tiny spoonful and handed me the rest.

- It's okay for today! But there will be no next time. And
Don't forget to bring me the bowl or I'll cook your sister!
Luzia gave her a beaming smile and Anita pocketed the thirty
centavos.

We shared the bowl, squatting in the shelter of a door. Seated a little further away,
Patte-Folle was trying to smoke an old, mushy cigarette butt. He had spent the morning
rummaging through the garbage cans of the fine buildings on Avenida Nacional, avoiding
the overly conscientious macacos and security guards, but the catch had been meager.
When I offered to dip into my bowl, he shook his head.
– No… It's bad for my figure.
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30

Never had the Rio del Oro market borne its name so badly. Even at price
gold, the mote served by fat Anita reeked of mold and the flour for the
empanadas was gray as stone. Some said that the rains had so swept
away everything in their fury that there was not a single cultivable field left,
only water and rocks, everywhere... But fat Anita added in a low voice that
it was not lost on everyone.
- I tell you, me, she whispered, go for a walk near the barracks of the
macacos, or even - she still lowered her voice - in the cellars of the
presidential palace. And you will see if they are empty!
But there was even closer...
Over there, on the other side of the Curso Bajo, the department stores
of the Plaza Mayor were full of fruit, and tomatoes, and potatoes, and
papayas, and everything you wanted. It was enough to follow the windows
to notice it even if the security guards followed us with a dirty eye and
blocked our passage as soon as we pretended to enter. For its part, the
district of the old ayuntamiento was full of stones, bricks and rubble. It was
his only wealth and he had only to bend down...
Just to bend down.
Who picked up the first stone? The idea was perhaps floating in the air,
unless it fell on us with the rain… I don't know but one thing is certain, we
didn't give each other the word. Zac, Tartamudo, Patte-Folle, Raul, the
beautiful Martha who made her kisses pay the same price as Guaman's
prayers, almost everyone in the orchestra, and others too... We all started
to fill our pockets of stones and bricks. We were one
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fifty maybe, or sixty… or more. Hard to say. Pilluelos for the most part, and
some had come from neighborhoods where you never set foot. As if they
sensed what was coming.
I left Luzia at the Escuela, telling her we'd meet later. Deep in my
pockets, I felt the stones grating my thighs. Patte-Folle was waiting for me
outside, so laden with bricks that he must have weighed ten kilos more.

"You shouldn't go, Madpaw. If it goes wrong, you never

run fast enough to get out of there.
– Call me just one more time like that and I'll crush you with bricks!

I laughed.
"But you still shouldn't..."
- Take care of your butt!
In the pouring rain, we crossed the Curso Bajo in very small groups
of two or three.
“It's gonna be hot,” Tartamudo whispered to me, sneaking up next to me.

The Plaza Mayor's Gigante was the biggest and most attractive store in
the area. We approached it like wolves, hiding behind the cars, slipping
between the big flotas1 of the bus station which were smoking in the rain.
It was raining so much… The guards didn't notice anything.

The first stone that flew shattered a window of clothes without them
even understanding what was happening. It was the signal. In a second,
an avalanche of bricks, bolts, pieces of cinder block and scrap metal
descended on the windows of the Gigante. It flew everywhere, it crackled
like hail, it fell so hard that the guards spun to take shelter. I threw my
ammunition one by one, methodically, getting a little closer with each one.
I aimed and my stones arrived exactly where I had decided.
Machine Translated by Google

As if I was directing them just by thought. I felt incredibly strong, almost

invincible. The storefronts cracked, cracked and cracked like gunshots, and
ended up exploding in a doomsday crash. We greeted each new showcase
knocked down by the howls of animals. And, at that game, Patte-Folle screamed
ten times louder than the others.

We all charged at the same time, trampling on the billions of pieces of glass
that creaked under our feet. The vigils were going to resume, the macacos were
not going to be long and we only had a few minutes in front of us.
When the alarms began to yelp in every corner, I was already hard at work,
grabbing everything that came to hand, whether it was edible or not. My arms
were so full of them that I tied up the sleeves of my T-shirt to make a bag and
put my loot in it. The customers were screaming, they watched us slip between
the shelves with frightened faces, some were holed up against the walls, as if
we were going to murder them. Patte Folle climbed to the top of a fruit display,
smeared a ripe tomato on his face and started tossing the fruit all over the place.

directions by hopping on its spring-loaded legs.

- Yaouououh! Grab it, guys! Go for it ! It's free today!
Offered by the house!
The alarms tore our ears, the guards chased us shouting contradictory orders,
outside the cars honked in an unimaginable mess! And we who were screaming!
In the middle of all this mess, I suddenly heard a panicked voice.

- Grates ! Gotta get away! They're closing the gates!

The large protective shutters that protected the windows at night slowly
lowered. If we let ourselves be trapped there, the macacos would just have to
pick us off one by one. We were going to rock! That's when I lost sight of Patte-
Folle. In the stampede that followed, I still took the time to grab a few chocolate
bars and slipped under the
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gates at the last moment, when I had just enough room left to sneak in
and get my bag through.
The sirens of the first macaco cars suddenly mingled with the
Gigante alarms.

1 Coaches that provide connections from one city to another.

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31

I was barely outside when the macacos popped up everywhere, they were blocking the

streets with their big 4x4s and sprang out of them wearing helmets, their protective
masks lowered, the shield in one hand, the truncheon in the other...
I didn't wait for Patte-Folle. I spun straight ahead, towards the Curso Bajo, as fast
as I could. They were already chasing us, the first tear gas canisters burst a few
steps from me. Their smoke immediately burned my eyes, it tore my throat, burned
my lungs... I felt like I was suffocating, I was coughing like a seal, looking for a bit of
fresh air, but I had to run. Above all, don't stop me!

Some dropped their loot to get away faster, but me, even if it was madness, I
wanted to keep everything, show it to Luzia. The first macacos were close by, I could
hear their footsteps, the orders they were shouting, and the truncheons that fell here
and there, but I hadn't risked so much to come back empty-handed. I was running, I
was running… And suddenly, a few steps away from me, through the haze of
grenades grating at my eyes, I recognized Madpaw's wobbly gait. How had he
managed to find himself in front of me? But I didn't stop. I just yelled at him:

– Go for it, Madpaw! Faster !

“Strauss, you moron! John Strauss!
I rode a few more meters before I heard a scream. I glanced over my shoulder,
one of the macacos raised his truncheon above Patte-Folle who, curled up on the
ground like an animal, was waiting for the blow. This guy seemed huge to me, the
mask he wore to protect himself from the fumes made him look like a terrifying
mutant. I watched,
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paralyzed. The truncheon fell once again on Patte-Folle and the macaco brandished it again
above him. I held back a retching.

Luzia's refrain was running through my head.

Three men in black on the way

Quickly hide behind your hand

If you sleep, they won't see

anything But if you go out, it will be the end.

A siren pierced the fog, a little higher, and a large riot bus of the militia came to block the
passage towards the Curso Bajo. I was trapped. Panic. I realized that if that bastard Macaco
looked up for a tenth of a second, I was finished. Like Patte-Folle!

I remembered the dead end. Two steps away. An alley so narrow that, without knowing it,
you could walk past it ten times without even noticing it. Just before rushing into it, I turned
my head towards Patte-Folle.
He was still on the ground, in the rain, he didn't move. The macaco lifted his mask for half a
second to wipe his face, and through the mist of tear gas and my tears, I recognized the
sargento.
He lowered his mask, I stepped back to the bottom of the dead end and, stashed behind
a pile of half-rotten boxes, I waited. I was dying of fear, my eyes reddened by the fumes, my
breathing hoarse. I tried to hold back my cough, my blood throbbing like an animal in my
neck. When the shadow of the sargento loomed over the dead end, I felt my heartbeat stop,
as if I was suddenly emptying myself of everything I had inside. I held my breath. I did not
move, terrified, paralyzed with fear. I just guessed his shadow, a few meters from me. If he
advanced only three or four steps, I was lost. He just took a quick look, it was too dark for him
to see me, he disappeared and started after the others.

And I stayed there, holed up like a rabbit behind my boxes, my heart racing, waiting. I was
crying. Not just because of the grenades. On the
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plaza, the din was staggering. Screams, howls, knocks, gallops, orders,
endless sirens, the roar of engines and the dull beat of the rain pattering
on the sidewalks.
I still didn't move, soaked to the core, my head full of horrors, my ears
ringing. The terrifying vision of Madpaw shriveled on the ground with the
other madman's truncheon brandished above him swirled before my eyes.

I don't know how long I haven't dared to make the slightest gesture.
Patte-Folle was very close, a stone's throw from me. Maybe dead. And I had done
nothing.
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32

The screams have died down and the heavy rain of the early afternoon has
transformed into a sort of hazy drizzle. I risked a look outside.
The plaza was deserted. Completely deserted. Not the slightest shadow, not the
slightest movement and it was hardly if, from time to time, a car went up the Curso
Bajo at full speed. The macacos themselves seemed to have dissolved in the rain.
The floor was strewn with rocks, bricks, broken windshields, paper bags rustling in
the wind, and discarded clothes. The air was still thick with the acid stench of tear
gas canisters. The shops had closed their curtains as soon as the looting began, the
offices had emptied in a hurry and, a little higher up, a car turned over on its roof
fumed, spreading a sickening smell of burnt rubber.

After all the craziness of the afternoon, there was something terrifying about such
calm.
I crawled to where I last saw Madpaw.
– Madpaw! I whispered. Madpaw!…
I saw a shape that moved weakly, leaning against a wall.
– Madpaw!

He moved his head a little, half-opened his eyes.

"Shit," he whispered so quietly I could barely hear him, "you're not there."
will never happen!
He winced as he caught his breath.
– Strauss… My name is Johann Strauss.
“I thought that bastard killed you.
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- It's possible. I don't know.

- Will you be able to walk? Wait, I'll help you.
I thought he was going to faint when I took him under his arms to straighten him up.

He leaned against the wall, his breath ragged, his eyes closed. -
How are you ?
– In the hair… Saturn… in great shape.
We ventured outside, hobbling, hobbling, Patte-Folle clung to me so tightly that I
almost had to carry him. We stopped constantly. He bent down to the floor and tried to
catch his breath, as if something was preventing him from breathing properly. He
touched his chest.
– There… it rumbles… like an engine.
- Do not speak ! Do not speak !

We left for a few steps. I didn't want to let go of my loot, which was still wrapped in
my T-shirt, and Madpaw for his part clung to a small muddy pocket.

We stopped again.

– What is this thing?

Eyes half-closed, he took a deep breath as he handed it to me.
- Don't know.
I watched it laughing.
– A pair of stockings! You stole a pair of stockings from them!
– Cool!… Just… what I wanted… to offer… – To Anasofia?

He nodded and his attempt at a smile turned into a grimace.

A car of macacos passed throwing flashes of revolving lights on the facades. We made
ourselves more still than stones. They headed towards Avenida Nacional and we
continued towards Escuela. A few steps, a pause. A few steps, a pause… And, each
time, Patte-Folle moaned in pain.
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Never had the city been so calm. We are alone and Patte-Folle is alive.

I repeated this sentence to myself while walking, like a kind of refrain.

We are alone and Patte-Folle is alive...

Luzia threw herself into my arms when she saw me arrive. Her eyes were as red as me,
but not from the tear gas canisters. The others had told him that we had probably been
trapped in the store when the gates had closed. But I had plenty of chocolate in my T-shirt
and that was pretty good news. The last time we ate it was in Llallagua.

Aside from Ruiz, one of the violinists no one had seen again, Patte-Folle was the only
one to have taken a serious hit. As soon as he arrived, he wedged himself into a corner, his
back to the wall, pale as death, his breath hoarse. I couldn't leave him like this but he
wouldn't let anyone near me. Not even Anasofia.

– It's nothing… Just that bastard… who hit a little… hard.

- Do you want me to look?
Anasofia tried to take off his shirt, but Madpaw pushed his hand away.

- Leave alone. I have a gift for you.

- In my opinion ?

He nodded.
– Saturn… Give it to him!

I handed Anasofia the shapeless, muddy package that contained the stockings.

- Stockings?

She looked at him without understanding.

– So that… you are… beautiful like my mother… with your black dress… You
know… like the other day.
Anasofia kissed him on the cheeks, whispering thank you. Madpaw
was smiling, but he looked like he was in a lot of pain.
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“As soon as he gets here, the maestro will call a doctor for you.
Patte-Folle shook his head.

– No… It will… recover.

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33

– Aaaaaaaaaah so I punched him in the face. See to this

mmmoment…

Tartamudo was endless but no one was listening.

We were silent, still reeling from what we had dared to do. We couldn't get over
having taken so many risks, having had the guts to go all the way, having defied the
macacos… At the same time, we were dying of fear.
Installed next to me, a piece of chocolate in hand, Luzia contemplated my loot. I
had done the math. With each a bar a day, we had enough to last twenty-six days!

"And Patte-Folle too?"

I blushed and Luzia went back to sucking on her chocolate bar smiling
to the angels.

Still leaning against the wall, his eyes half-closed, Patte-Folle did not move, he
seemed to listen to everything that was said. From time to time, he grimaced, but
nothing more. I had never seen him so quiet.
Same thing for the Escuela. She who was still immersed in a bewildering cacophony
seemed perfectly silent for the first time. Not the slightest instrument, not the smallest
sound of flute, no scraping of the bow… Only whispers and murmurs.

Outside, through the rain streaming down the windows, you could see here and
there flashes of flashing lights. Immediately after the riots, the macacos had settled at
the main crossroads. They were cordoning off the neighborhood and Juan was saying
that if they weren't moving for the moment, it was only because of the old man.
Everyone knew he was a friend of the president. But nothing was enough
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for them to tumble down… An order from the president. Maybe not even that much. The
macacos knew where to find us anyway.
The old man was our shield. Except no one had seen him all day. Several times,
Juan and Anasofia had tried to reach him, and each time they had come across his
answering machine without leaving a single message.
Order from the “maestro” who knew he was being wiretapped. And, for his part, the old
man had given no sign of life. It was the first time since the beginning of the Escuela.
"Not crazy," Zac scolded. He walked away.
Anasofia looked offended. It's true that it didn't look like the old man's manners, to let
us go like that, but after all, whether we like it or not, he was a friend of the president...
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34

The old man only arrived after dark, so impeccably dressed and
smiling as if nothing had happened. Three guys were with him, laden like mules
with big boxes. He preceded them up the stairs, signaling to Juan that he was
coming down right away. For a moment, we heard him opening doors and giving
orders.
– You will put two here, three there…
The guys made several round trips, always loaded with boxes that they came
down empty. They had barely left when the old man walked over to his desk and
looked at us with a look of surprise.
– But… You haven't taken out your instruments yet?
The day's events seemed to have slipped over him like water from a duck's
feathers. We settled into an incredible hubbub. Patte-Folle was still huddled in
his corner, but it seemed to me that his breathing was less hoarse, that he had
less trouble breathing. The old man approached him. He said a few words to her
while we agreed and Patte-Folle shook his head.

As soon as we were ready, the old man patted the edge of his desk.
- Two three four…
It only took me a few moments to get back into the music.
The fingerings, the position of my hand, of the bow, counting the measures…
those were the only important things. Everything else has disappeared. And it
must be recognized that without Patte-Folle who could not conceive of playing
other than fortissimo, as the old man said, the rehearsal was much easier than
usual. We succeeded in linking the minuet, the sonatina and the rondo without
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too many hiccups. Eyes half-closed, the old man nodded when we managed to
get out of a more difficult passage and Patte-Folle, huddled in his corner, listened
to us with a smile.
Everything was almost as usual.
The old man, however, cut the rehearsal short, he leaned on the desk with both
hands, leaned forward and looked deep into our eyes, a tiny smile on the corner
of his lips.
– You probably know better than I what happened at the beginning of the
afternoon… The militiamen that I came across on my way here seemed to me a
little… exasperated. Fatigue, no doubt. Still, it seems wiser to me that you stay
here, at least for this night, you'll be safer there than outside… I've had your rooms
prepared and a small snack awaits you in the entrance.

We looked at each other, not sure we understood. Prepare rooms, small

snack… The old man had really strange ways of speaking. "Does that mean we're
going
to sleep here, sir?"
The old man nodded, smiling.

- Come, I'll show you.

We followed him up the stairs, including Patte-Folle whom I helped to climb.
“Of course, it's a bit sketchy,” said the old man, pushing open the door of a first
small room, just under the eaves.
Summary, it was like a snack, no one knew what that meant, but all those
words appealed to the old man. He opened other doors, repeating to us “Choose,
choose…”, but we remained nailed to the thresholds of the rooms, not daring to
take a step. In each of them, there were mattresses, blankets, a window, and
even a real door that closed!
- I'm sorry, repeated the old man from time to time, but I have nothing
best to offer you...
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There he was, almost apologizing. He didn't realize he was offering us a real

palace! Despite his lungs making a funny noise, Patte Folle immediately seemed
to recover, he came back laughing from his exploration at the end of the corridor.

– Hey, Saturn… there are even toilets!

It was paradise.
“Toilets, Mr. Strauss,” smiled the old man. It's more correct.
Monsieur Strauss! Patte-Folle would have wept with happiness. He lay down on
one of the mattresses with something on his lips that hesitated between a smile
and a grimace of pain.
– I'm going to stay here… Saturn… Sleep a bit… And tomorrow… it'll be fine.

- You don't want to eat something?

But he shook his head and turned to the wall.
Downstairs, Anasofia and Juan had already opened the box that contained the
“little snack”. It was full of fruit, donuts, stuffed peppers, salteñas and bottles of
Coke… On the sly, I glanced at the old man. Sitting on a step, he watched us stuff
ourselves with a smile, he seemed to disappear among the wrinkles. I still didn't
understand anything about it. Everything this guy did for us was absolutely
incomprehensible but I was sure I had never met anyone so nice.

Luzia approached me.

– But for Azula, she whispered to me, how are we going to do it?
“I'll go get her tomorrow, when it's light. Tonight, with the macacos that
lying around everywhere, it's too risky.
- No ! Not tomorrow ! Must go now! If we leave her all alone,
she will be scared...
– But it's a cat, Luzia, she's used to it.
– It's not a cat, it's Azula, she has babies and she's not used to it.
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You just have to kick his ass, Patte-Folle would surely have advised me...
But he didn't have a little sister.
I promised him to go. After all, I knew paths that none of the macacos suspected.
But I barely had time to open the door ajar when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Better not go out tonight, Saturnino,” said the old man.

– I’m just going to get Luzia’s cat and I’ll be back…
- Then I'll come with you!
I had never been in a taxi before! The driver knew his stuff and avoided the
crossroads held by the macacos, just as I would have done on foot. The old man
didn't say a word until the airport. The rain was still pouring down when the taxi pulled
up on the roadside and the old man insisted on accompanying me to our shelter.
Following me, he slipped through the hole in the fence and, while I stuffed Azula and
her young into a box, he examined our den by the light of a flashlight. The sodden
floor, the walls that oozed with humidity, the wind that slipped under the rusty sheets,
the bent door...

He jumped when he heard a nearby rumble and I laughed.

- Do not be afraid, maestro! It's nothing but the last plane of the evening, a
McDonnell from Aerolineas Argentina. I've known them all for a long time.

The roar became deafening, the old man covered his ears, everything started
shaking around us and the plane took off almost before our eyes. I watched it rise,
turn on the wing...
- It's beautiful, isn't it?
“It's terrible,” replied the old man. For a musician, it's terrible...
Take the blankets too, Saturnino, I don't think you'll come back here.

Luzia was already asleep when I entered the room.

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One by one, Azula took her babies in her mouth and placed them at her feet,
she curled up on top of them and did not move, purring while her babies suckled.
Patte-Folle had not moved from his position.
Still facing the wall, he moaned softly with a kind of hoarse growl every time he
inhaled.
I called him two or three times, but maybe he was sleeping.
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35

I woke up with a start.

The day was breaking, a greyish light was filtering through the little window
and the rain was pattering on the tiles, just above our heads, as if this deluge
would never end again. Something was wrong. I pulled the blanket over me.
Maybe it was because of the room, I wasn't used to sleeping here… But
there was something else.
One of the kittens let out a tiny meow, I saw him climbing up Madpaw with
all his little claws, and suddenly I realized that I couldn't hear Madpaw
anymore! I no longer heard that old seal breathing that had worried me so
much the night before! Maybe it was nothing.
Just that he was getting better...

“Crazy Paw,” I tried in a low voice.

He was not moving. Not even a tiny bit. The kitten came up to his shoulder
and put a paw on his cheek. Patte-Folle didn't even flinch.

I felt like I was suddenly draining all my blood, my ears

began to buzz like beehives.

– Madpaw! I shouted. Madpaw! Shit ! Answer!

The kitten was now planted on its face, two paws on the cheeks,
one on the nose and the last on the forehead. Luzia was sleeping.

I approached with chattering teeth.

– Madpaw… Hey…

I put my hand on his shoulder. She was stiff, freezing…

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36

“Internal bleeding,” said the doctor called by the old man.

Outside, Patte-Folle only had bruises, big bruises, but who
weren't scary. He was dead inside, without anyone seeing anything.
The others were all in the hallway, Luzia had taken refuge in Anasofia's arms
and the kittens continued to chase each other with somersaults across the room.
Me, I don't know what I had done with my tears, I couldn't cry. I remained dry and
empty like a dead snail shell. I stared at Madpaw, unable to take my eyes off him.

The doctor laid him down, his hands on his chest, his eyes closed, and it took
him a moment to realize that with his twisted legs he would never achieve anything
good. And like that, in his "Indiana University" jogging, Patte Folle was almost
handsome. I thought that for the record, it was over…
The old man was great. He took care of everything, like he was the grandfather
of Patte-Folle. Maybe even better.

On the day of the funeral, I didn't see a macaco in the streets. To wonder where
they had gone! Just such a huge crowd that I couldn't understand where all these
people could come from. Usually, no one came for the burials of pilluelos. It was
settled on the run, a quick prayer, the mass grave, a shovelful of earth and we
didn't talk about it anymore. But there, there were hundreds of us in the rain,
wading through a strange silence as thick as mud.

The procession set off. There were four of us carrying the coffin, Chanchito
crying all he knew, Tartamudo, Zac and me. Above, we placed a huge radio-
cassette, Tartamudo pressed the button and we accompanied Patte-Folle to the
cemetery with Radetsky's March that we
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came back as soon as we got to the end. No one had ever followed a funeral with
such catchy music, Patte-Folle would have loved it.
Behind, the old man followed, holding Luzia by the hand. All the others came
behind, Anasofia, the beautiful Martha, all those from the orchestra and those
hundreds of people who accompanied us without anyone really knowing why. I
thought back to what Madpaw had said. Maybe his mother was there, among all
these people… When we arrived at the cemetery, I tried to recognize her but it
wasn't easy.
The old man had really made it big. A plaque engraved on a
beautiful stone was waiting for Patte-Folle:

Johann Strauss, trumpeter

Nothing more.
He even summoned a priest who assured us that Patte-Folle wasn't really dead.
Exactly the kind of sentence that, in Llallagua, would have pissed Dad off, but which
would have made Mum say that life wasn't like an alarm clock that you suddenly
forgot to wind up. I didn't quite understand all that stuff, because I had seen Madpaw,
and he was really dead. More dead than him, it was not possible! But the priest's
words still had something reassuring about them. It was hard to get there

to regain.

At the same time as the coffin, we lowered the radio-cassette which continued to
pass Radetsky's March on a loop, so that Patte-Folle does not find himself alone
too quickly.
The people following us then threw flowers into the pit. Where did they get them
from? Here, there was nothing left but mud and rain and it had been weeks since
we had seen a single flower! Those who didn't have any threw away small colored
papers instead. Fat Anita threw down her flower and hugged me to her huge chest
until I was choking.
And under the flowers and the papers you could still hear Radetsky's March.
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It was only when I got back to the Escuela that I cried.

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37

Santa Maria, Madre de Dios

ruaga pos nosostros peccadores
ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte1…

That very afternoon I went to see old Guaman.

Kneeling on the dripping steps of the cathedral forecourt, his face uplifted, he
muttered prayer after prayer as the tin can next to him filled with five or ten
centavo coins. There were hundreds of people coming to ask him to pray that the
deluge that had been drowning the country for weeks would finally stop. They lit
large white candles that shone night and day under the cathedral porch, kissed
the feet of the statue of San Paolo, then, on their knees in the pouring rain, joined
Guaman to accompany him in low voices.

Benedita you are

between todas mueres1…

I waited for Guaman to finish a prayer to approach me.

– How much do you want? he asked without looking at me.
He counted one by one the tiny coins that filled his box.
- I'm not here for the rain.
"Then you're the only one!"

He stared at me for a moment. A gray look, a little veiled, which seemed to see
well beyond people.
“You've been here before, haven't you?
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I had the impression that he was able to dive deep into my thoughts, the
impression that he knew much more about me than I would ever know.

– Yes… A long time ago, for friends who had disappeared.

- I remember. So what do you want?
– I would like to know if… if you could say prayers to ask for the
someone's death.
I let out the last words under my breath and Guaman's gaze sharpened.
Around us, the kneeling people continued to pray in a kind of hum, but the rain
turned a deaf ear. It was still falling, with the same stubborn rustle, as if it had
decided to engulf us all and drown up to the peaks of the Cordilera.

“I can only pray for the good of men, muchacho. The rest is
the Devil's business.

A few heads turned when we heard him say the word “Diablo”.

“But that death will do everyone good, Guaman. I'm sure.

I showed him the few pieces I had left. He nodded in
holding his box out to me. They fell there with the sound of iron.
“I would like you to pray for…
He put his hand over my mouth.
- Hush! I do not want to know anything. I'm just going to pray for a death that
will do good. Some deaths deliver, and others chain, some are sweet like fruits
and others bitter like herbs. It's not for me to judge. File now! And take care of
yourself!
And without waiting, his eyes raised to the sky, he immediately plunged back into his
prayers.

Dio te salve, Maria,

llena eres de gracia…
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In turn, I knelt in the rain next to Guaman. I had never done that. No
one had ever taught me the words he spoke, I said nothing, but I listened
to others and I really put a lot of good will into it.

It was the first prayer intended for the death of the sargento.

1 Hail Mary Prayer in Spanish.

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38

The old man knew very well what I was going to do when he agreed to lend me
his telephone.
– The green key, there…
- Yes I know.
I took refuge in our “room”. Downstairs, the others were already tuning their
instruments for rehearsal. Despite the death of Patte-Folle, the old man had decided
not to change anything in the rhythm of the Escuela. I remembered the president's
number exactly.
Three, four rings. Then a voice: “Diga?

I swallowed my saliva, I was shaking all my muscles.

– Señor presidente… Patte-Folle is dead.
I heard a breath on the other end, then it hung up and I called back…

The same voice, annoyed:

– Diga?
"Crazypaw is dead," I repeated.
“You stole Romero's phone, didn't you?
How could he have guessed that I was using the old man's phone? I do not
I didn't understand but it didn't matter.
- No, I didn't steal it. He lent it to me.
The voice let out a small laugh.
– Lent! Really… Poor Romero is incorrigible!
Machine Translated by Google

“Patte-Folle is dead,” I repeated again. He was my friend. He died at

because of you!

"I don't understand anything you're telling me.

– The macacos killed him.
– So if it's the macacos, as you say, it's not me! But maybe he was one of those
little looters from the other day.
The voice had suddenly become soft, as if he was actually making a
effort to understand.
- And you, what's your name ?
I hesitated.
– Saturnino.
– You know, Saturnino, Romero and I, for years, we were like the fingers of the
hand. Nothing could separate us. Throughout our youth, we dreamed of what we
were going to do great in this country. So there. We chose different directions and
nothing happened as we had imagined. Nothing… And yet, between the two of us,
we could have done something good, really good… We don't always choose.

He hung up. I had spoken to him neither of the parents nor of Llallagua. Downstairs,
the others were settling in for rehearsal.
I returned the old man's phone. With the tip of his wand he tapped on
his desk and cleared his throat.
– I would like to dedicate our rehearsal tonight to Johann Strauss.
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39

As abruptly as it had started, the rainy season ended, two

days after Patte-Folle's burial.
When I awoke, the peaks of the Cordilera loomed on the horizon, white with
snow, and two tiny black specks crisscrossed the sky. Hunting eagles, dad
taught me.
The ground and the stones smoked in the sun, plunging the streets into a
warm, bluish mist. The city was drying up like a dog coming out of water.
Despite big Anita and a few others who persisted in setting up shop there
every day, the Rio del Oro market was still just as empty and the customers
still just as rare. Since the looting of the Gigante in the Plaza Mayor, the
macacos had increased their surveillance all along the Curso Bajo, and it had
become almost impossible to go to work on the other side, towards the
Avenida Nacional or the plaza. Some said that the tourists would soon return
and that all this would soon be just a bad memory.
Nevertheless, without the generosity of the old man who, almost every
evening, showed up with an overflowing crate of fruit, empenadas and donuts,
I don't know how we would have gotten out of it.
In the streets, the air was so thick, so saturated with the humidity
accumulated by weeks and weeks of rain that it weighed tons and stuck to our
every move. The minibuses themselves dragged along at a walking pace and
the flotas which usually criss-crossed the main thoroughfares, honking their
horns all the time, seemed to be swimming in the mist like enormous whales.
The city seemed to be moving in slow motion. The people of the neighborhood
were wandering about, idle. They seemed to be waiting for something that never came.
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not. They seemed to be hanging on I don't know what event that was going to deliver
them from all this heaviness.
Only the old man noticed nothing. He arrived as usual, towards the middle of
the afternoon, dressed in an impeccable white jacket and a panama with which
he greeted us as soon as he arrived. He wiped his forehead and lips with one of
his white handkerchiefs and smiled at us.
– How heavy, isn't it?… I had forgotten all that!
He sat in the shade of the walls of the Escuela and hummed while I took care
of his shoes. And when Zac arrived, the old man would give us
our course.
Despite the half-closed shutters, the heat sticky like honey and the Escuela
looked more than ever like a beehive buzzing with music. In the late afternoon,
when darkness fell, the toads and frogs all awoke together, as if on cue, and
within seconds the deafening din of their croaking and whistling engulfed the
streets. It only stopped at dawn, with the first rays of day.

The evening brought no freshness and we came out of rehearsals drenched in

sweat, but the old man was not giving up.
Every day the full orchestra rehearsed, and in the evening most
of us now stayed at the Escuela to sleep.
It had become our refuge and we had never known such security.
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40

That night, when we were settling in for rehearsal with our

instruments, the old man's telephone rang. It had been ten days since Madpaw
had been buried, and the town was still bathed in that moist, vaporous atmosphere
which, each year, followed the rainy season.
Just from the old man's face, I immediately understood that he regretted having
answered. He turned away to speak in a low voice.
– It's just that we're not quite ready yet… Good… Do
However you want.

Outside, the toads chattered and answered each other in an infernal hubbub,
but we hardly noticed them anymore. The old man returned to his desk, a curious
smile on his face.
“We're going to have visitors,” he announced just loud enough to be heard.
But everything will be fine, I'm sure.
He didn't add anything and we started the sonatina but, for the first time since
he was conducting the orchestra, I found him absent, preoccupied with something
other than the music. We were attacking the second reprise of the sonatina when
we heard the roar of engines. Cars stopped in front of the Escuela, just by the
noise, there must have been a dozen of them, maybe more.

"I believe this is our visitor already, don't you—"

The old man hasn't finished his sentence. About twenty macacos suddenly
tumbled out, armed to the teeth and, without a word, posted themselves all
around the room and on the stairs. They snooped everywhere and seemed on
the lookout like guard dogs. Outside, shouts and orders
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flashed, one could make out the halo of the headlights of the military vehicles parked
along the Escuela. The old man wouldn't have been there, we would all have been
scared to death, but he waved his hand at us not to move, not to be afraid.
A voice yelled an order, heels clicked and the door opened. A man in a dark suit ran
straight up to the old man and hugged him at
choke him. The man in gray finally separated from the old man and turned to us. I
held back a cry as I recognized him.
– So like that, Romero, here are your lascars…
President Ayanas stared at us one by one. His lively little gaze, deep in the sockets,
jumped from one to the other, came back, spun further, observed… He examined our
clothes which had survived the rainy season, our filthy fingernails and our disheveled
hair. He paused a little too long on Anasofia, and I looked away when his gaze landed
on me. Older, he looked exactly like the portrait the macacos displayed on their collar,
but I was dumbfounded to see someone so small, wrinkled and gray. In my idea, a
president had to be bigger than that.

Much bigger.
– And you manage to get something out of this band of pilluelos? he asked the old
man with a half-smile.
- And you ? replied the old man, pointing to the macacos who stood guard,
entrenched behind their absurd dark glasses. What do you get out of these?

The president's smile widened.

“Sit there,” the old man said, pointing to an old, rickety chair.
Apart from music, I have nothing better to offer you. we will play you
our minuet.
He tapped the desk with the tip of his wand but I didn't react, my head was
elsewhere. On the side of this shitty little president who had done us so much harm.

– Saturnino, the old man reminded me, what are you dreaming about?
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Immediately, Ayanas gaze fixed on me. He finally knew who had called him a
few days before. I gave him a furtive glance which he caught in midair and he
gave me a quiet little applause. I didn't understand why.

“Two, three, four… counted the old man.

Fortunately, we had rehearsed, and rehearsed, so rehearsed that I got away
with it without too many disasters, because just to feel the president's eyes
resting on me like blades, I was incapable of thinking about anything it would be.

The final minuet chord fell and Ayanas applauded us. THE
macacos have not moved.
“Amazing, Romero! You have achieved something quite amazing
with these kids.
"They alone have achieved something astonishing," replied the old man.
shaking his head. I was only the revealer...
“You will die of your modesty, Romero.
The president approached me. Her little eyes stared at me from the depths of
their sockets, without any malevolence, without any gentleness either. He was
watching me exactly as if I had been an insect or a plant. I was shaking like a
leaf.
"So here's the Saturnino calling me," he whispered.
He brushed my cheek, and when he sat up again, I wanted to wipe the trace
of his finger on my skin.
“The sonatina,” announced the old man.
We hadn't yet reached the middle of the piece when the first cries rang out.
They came from outside, very confused at first, then like a kind of noise that
rose, grew, amplified… Imperturbable, the old man continued to direct us,
Ayanas did not move an eyelash. As if nothing was happening. I was finding it
increasingly difficult to concentrate, and I was not the
Machine Translated by Google

alone… Outside, the cries became clearer. On the one hand, some shouted the name
of the president and, in echo, others replied immediately with: “Resignation! »
Ayanas, resign! Ayanas, resign! Ayanas, resign!
How many could they be to yell so loudly? We arrived at the end of the sonatina a
bit in shambles. The old man didn't say anything, didn't move, the macacos were
getting more and more nervous and Ayanas clapped their hands.
Ayanas, resign! Ayanas, resign!
– I imagine, he said to the old man, that you too must have been booed
during certain performances…
- I don't remember that, no...
Their eyes met.
Ayanas, resign! Ayanas, resign!
The screams were now very close.
“A simple gesture of bad humor,” Ayanas resumed. It is not the first time.
They know I'm here but don't worry, my men will sort this out. So keep going!

“No,” said the old man, pointing at us. I can't ask them to
play in this noise.
Something slammed against the wall. A stone maybe. A second shock
followed, then the sound of breaking glass and, almost immediately, the
crackle of an automatic weapon. Outside, the screams abruptly ceased. For
half a second, we only heard the obsessive croaking of toads… And then the
cries started again, louder, even more violent. Ayanas, killer! Ayanas, killer!
Outside, we could make out vague torchlight. We stood there, frozen, our
instruments in hand. The old man still didn't move. My gaze met that of the
president. Papa, M'man, Patte Folle, Oscar, Vargas, and so many others… I
wanted to yell “murderer” with the others. I did not dare. A macaco officer
suddenly opened the door, rushed to the president and whispered a few words
to him.
“I think we're going to have to shorten this little concert,” Ayanas said.
Machine Translated by Google

A new gust slammed into the night. Within seconds, the men of the President's
Guard surrounded him and headed for the door, their weapons outstretched straight
ahead.
– Come on, Romero! ordered Ayanas. Come with me ! These madmen won't
save your life!
But the old man shook his head.
“They're after you, Alfredo…
Outside the weapons crackled. Ayanas, killer! Ayanas, killer! The large door of
the Escuela vibrated under the blows of the demonstrators who tried to enter and
the macacos who pushed them back. The detonations multiplied, followed by cries,
new bursts and new explosions...
And always this slogan that came back: Ayanas, assassin! Ayanas, killer!
- Romero, for God's sake! Come ! You're going to get ripped off!
But the old man no longer cared about the president.
– Protect the instruments! Quickly ! In the music room! And run behind!

At a sign from the president, four macacos rushed at him and dragged him away
along with Ayanas. As they both disappeared down the small hallway that led to the
back of the building, the large door to the Escuela creaked and protesters rushed
inside, screaming.

I grabbed Luzia's hand.

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41

We holed up in a corner of the stairs. Around us people were

like crazy, they went wild, looted everything, ransacked, tore down doors,
broke our benches, threw our straw mattresses down the stairs… Ayanas,
assassin! Ayanas, killer! Zac and Juan yelled at them to stop, that the old
man had nothing to do with it, that here, it was just music school, our school!
That Ayanas had fled! But no one paid attention to them.
A macaco passed two steps from me, a weapon in the hand, it was the
sargento. A gigantic guy suddenly appeared in front of him and, even
before the sargento made the slightest gesture, he gave him such a blow
that he collapsed in one block, without a cry. The guy kept kicking him
while he was down. The sargento no longer moved. As the man bent down
to pick up his gun, our eyes met.
- So what, my boy! Do you think he deserves better than that?
He aimed the gun at the sargento, still on the ground. I closed my eyes
waiting for the detonation, but nothing happened. When I looked again,
the man was gone and the sargento was at my feet, motionless.
A toothless little man I had often seen in the market arrived
with a can of gasoline.

- Let me pass ! he yelled, let me pass!

He spilled his essence on a bunch of doors and threw one of the torches
over them. Juan rushed forward, but the flames rose suddenly, roaring,
while the others clapped and shouted. Almost everywhere, others imitated
him. These madmen were setting fire to the Escuela. I did not understand
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not why. I didn't understand… Juan was crying, his face a few centimeters from the
flames.
A new cry suddenly dominated the others: “He is no longer there! At the Palace !
At the Palace ! Within seconds the Escuela emptied. Like a huge wave, the crowd
flowed back outside, towards the Plaza Mayor and the President's Palace.

The flames rose here and there, they were already licking the walls, slipping
along the stairs, the smoke swirled…
- Instruments ! Juan shouted. We must save the instruments!
When we rushed to the music room, we could already see nothing. The smoke
was everywhere, hot, suffocating, unbreathable. It invaded the corridors and,
second after second, encircled us a little more in its opaque fog.

We did not back down. The music room had been ransacked, looted, the old
man's records were on the floor, trampled on, broken, and his chain was in pieces.
Some had tried to set fire to the instruments. Several bore the traces of the flames
and others had been trampled on. Juan grabbed the first violin that fell to his hand,
he passed it to Zac, who passed it to Anasofia…

- Faster ! Faster !
We made the chain to save our instruments. Everyone was coughing. I tied my t-
shirt over my mouth, Luzia did the same, but despite everything, I felt my lungs
shrink little by little. The smoke was getting thicker and thicker. There were only a
few instruments left when we had to give up. It was too risky, too late.

– You have to go, Luzia! I yelled. Not stay there!

I grabbed her by the hand and we ran for the exit, hunched over at ground level
trying to find some air. We jostled in the corridors invaded by smoke. Despite the
flames which, in places, projected gigantic splinters, I had the impression of running
in complete darkness. I did not know
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more where I was. Luzia clung to me with all her might. We finally found
the stairs. We stumbled against overturned benches and violin cases
abandoned there, we got up, trampling on them and we set off again.
Luzia's hand was hooked to mine, I don't know how we managed to stay
together.
I don't know how we got out either. We ran for a while, still straight
ahead, not knowing where we were or where we were going.
All around, the others were also fleeing. Some were crying. Others
remained rooted to the spot, doubled over with endless fits of coughing.
I didn't stop until I felt we were finally clear of the flames and smoke. I
was panting like a dog, my throat and lungs torn from the heat, my mouth
dry as a stone. Collapsed against me, Luzia throbbed with the moans of a
wounded beast.
We no longer had the strength to speak or move, we were just trying to
catch our breath. Over there, on the side of the Escuela, the flames sprang
up everywhere. Fanned by the warm breeze that swept the valley, they
twisted in all directions and climbed the facade. The stones themselves
seemed to catch fire like twigs.
When I finally looked around me, I realized that we had taken refuge on
the steps of the old ayuntamiento.
The others joined us little by little, their eyes reddened by the smoke,
their hands burned and their faces black with the ashes which flew
everywhere like flakes. Leaning against the stones, they coughed endlessly.
The heat was unbearable. The breath of the fire was drying us to the spot
and, carried by the wind, thousands of cinders fluttered around us, but,
now that we were out of danger, no one moved. I still held Luzia's hand
tight in mine. Anasofia and Juan were the last to emerge from the blaze.
With half-burnt hair, they dropped down the steps, staring at the Escuela in
a daze, as if it were impossible to believe what was happening before their
eyes. Over there, on the side of
Machine Translated by Google

Curso Bajo, clashes still raged between protesters and macacos. We heard
the cries, we guessed other fires, gusts crackled and lightning ripped through
the night.
A series of nearby explosions suddenly shook the hot air. The windows of
the Escuela were exploding in the heat. They shattered one by one, into
thousands of tiny pieces of glass that shot out in all directions and crashed
into the dust of the ground, a few feet from
We.

The flames burst in, roaring through the openings, higher and higher, more
and more violent. In a few seconds, they reached the roof. The Escuela was
no more than a furnace, red as hell. And when, in turn, the tiles exploded,
they crackled with the same dry snaps as the strings of firecrackers that
were lit on Independence Day.

If Madpaw had been there, I'm sure he would have jumped like a spring in
all directions, but I felt empty, exhausted, as if my heart was about to melt in
all this heat. I turned to the others. I searched among the dark, sweaty faces
around me. All of them had the same absent look, their eyes fixed on the fire
that was ravaging our Escuela.

In a din of the end of the world, the roof collapsed in one block. A huge
shower of orange sparks shot out of the furnace, igniting the sky up to the
stars. The flames rose to attack the night. And the Escuela crumbled piece
by piece, wall after wall, devoured by fire.
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42

The toads were silent, day broke, there was nothing left of the Escuela.

Charred rubble, collapsed walls blackened by flames, tangles of charred beams, still
smoking, and all over the floor the thousands of shards of glass from the panes that had
exploded in the heat.
A sickening smell of smoke and soot had invaded the whole neighborhood. At the slightest
breath, the sparks were reignited. Fanned by the wind, they spread here and there and
finished burning the last debris.
A few meters from the smoking ruins, shapeless heaps of instruments and cases eaten
away by the flames piled up on the floor, covered by this impalpable gray dust which floated
in the air. Everything we had been able to save from the fire was there.

We contemplated the disaster without a word, dazed, paralyzed with amazement.

On the other side of the ayuntamiento, at the edge of the old quarter, people were
gathering, more and more of them every moment. Some had undoubtedly been part of the
rioters of the night, but with the day, the madness of yesterday had settled down. They
approached step by step, as though magnetized by the charred carcass of the Escuela.
They came to find us in the middle of the

last clouds of gray smoke swept by the wind. The silence was unreal. We couldn't hear a
sound, not a slogan, only the sound of their footsteps in the dust and, just above our heads,
the shrill cries of the couple of eagles hunting.

“Look,” Luzia suddenly whispered.

Coming out of I don't know what hiding place, Azula joined us, followed by her three
little ones in single file. Luzia hugged them tightly, rocking them.
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Tartamudo got up so quietly that I didn't notice it at first. He took a few steps towards
the Escuela, black with filth and half-burnt hair. A long bloody gash crossed his face.
He perched on a wall still smoking and closed his eyes, as if to refuse to see all this
shitty desolation that surrounded us. He took a deep breath and I thought I heard the
little lady's voice shriveled up like a dried apricot yelling at him. “Here, mulehead! You
take it here, your air.

By the belly, is that understood? »

The eagles themselves stopped crying when he started to sing.

Other non amo

que dolce pace

altro non amo
che libertá1

Nobody understood the lyrics, we didn't even know what language he was singing
in, maybe it didn't even mean anything and he was making up all this gibberish, but it
was so beautiful that we didn't care. . Tartamudo's angelic voice floated through the
smoking rubble, gliding high with the eagles, high above the ruins, and taking us
thousands of miles away. Dumbfounded by the purity of the voice coming out of this big
clumsy body, people approached without the slightest noise. They froze a few feet
away from Tartamudo, staring at that tall, blackened, bloody claw who sang like an
inhabitant of Heaven.

He was still singing when Luzia walked over to the pile of instruments.
With a thousand precautions, as if they were even more precious now that they had
been saved from the fire, she lifted the charred cases one by one.
We joined her without making a sound. As Luzia took out the instruments, her hands
were stretched out.
Some recovered a violin black with soot, others a twisted flute, a
bow…

“Look, Saturn,” Luzia whispered. My flute...

Machine Translated by Google

It was still in its case, intact.

Non v'af idi il sereno calma di sorte ha la tempesto in seno2, Tartamudo
was now singing. And we, without a sound, we released what was left of
our instruments.
The neck of a cello stuck out. It was Zac's. The volute had burned, one
of the strings had snapped, but the rest seemed not to have suffered too
much. Nearby, mine had taken a serious heat stroke, the body was
punctured.
When Tartamudo fell silent, we had almost all found our instruments.
Most were in a bad state, but we still tried to tinker with them with the
means at hand. Zac picked up some old string that he tried to put on his
cello. Anasofia was trying to fit mismatched pieces of flutes, Juan was
fiddling with a violin with the point of his penknife, and others were
replacing lost or burnt pegs with simple bits of wood. But no one dared to
play yet.

1 “I love nothing / but sweet peace, / I desire nothing / but

freedom. »

2 “Beware, when fate seems peaceful, it hides a storm within. »

Machine Translated by Google

43

- Hey, over there, look!

We lifted our heads. Emerging from a puddle of gray smoke, a silhouette
came to meet us. Impossible not to recognize it!
Anasofia rushed over. The old man seemed exhausted, his face gray, his suit
stained with black streaks. We were still fighting in the city center, there was shooting
from everywhere and there were barricades all over the streets. He had come on foot.
His gaze first wandered over the smoking rubble of the Escuela, as if he didn't
see us. And then he finally looked at us, one by one. Us, filthy, black with soot,
burnt and skinned everywhere, and our instruments charred, punctured and
repaired in a hurry. A vague smile appeared on his lips.

- And…. Everybody is here ? he asked worriedly.

One by one, he circled the faces. Everybody was there. He split
with his Chinese smile.
- So in the end, it's not that bad...
All eyes remained on him.
A girl began to tune what was left of her violin. The others have imitated her
in a fairground hubbub. Juan and Anasofia began to
running from one to the other, tightening a string here, replacing a tiny flute
spring there. We settled in as best we could, sitting on the steps of the old
council.
Tartamudo helped the old man up a wall, I rushed over to him and rubbed
his ash-covered shoes with the edge of my T-shirt. It wasn't a good job, of
course, but a promise is a promise.
Machine Translated by Google

He tapped the edge of the wall with a piece of rusty rebar picked up from the
floor. Very high, the two eagles let out a cry. The wind unraveled great slivers
of greyish smoke, the heat sticky, but all that mattered was this old man with his
piece of scrap metal in his hand.
– We are going to resume the sonatina, Mozart… Are you ready?… Three,
four…
The people of the neighborhood came even closer to listen to this music they
had never heard.
There, the Escuela was finishing burning and we were giving our first public
concert.
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44

Three years later, when we had just given a concert of what

the journalists called “the orchestra of the pilluelos”, the old man collapsed,
victim of a heart attack.
For a few more months, Juan and Anasofia tried to take up the torch,
but the old man was irreplaceable.
With Luzia, we went back to Llallagua. I managed to get her to make up
for lost time, and the only college in the area accepted her without a
problem, a college of sisters, which would certainly have delighted Mom
and infuriated Dad. I was old enough to be hired at the mine.
I never saw any of the orchestra musicians again, never heard again
talk about them, except once, years later, and completely by chance. At
the time, Ayanas was long dead, the militias had been disbanded, and
the new president seemed like an honest person. It was November, or
December maybe, and the miners' union had paid for me to travel to the
capital to attend a meeting at the ministry.
It was the first time that I set foot in town from the orchestra.
A lot of things had changed and the neighborhood of the old ayuntamiento
was once again under construction. I couldn't even find the location of the
Escuela, which had been razed after the fire. I took the time to make a
detour to the tomb of Patte-Folle.
I expected to find it dirty, cluttered with moss, or even not to find it at
all, but no! Quite the contrary. The stone that the old man had had
engraved was bare, scraped, washed, and a small tin can from which a
few fresh flowers were emerging sat enthroned in front. I looked around
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me, the cemetery was empty, nobody to inform me. Who could maintain the
tomb of Patte-Folle? The clock was ticking, I had to leave, and even today I
have no explanation for this mystery.
It was at the end of the afternoon, when I was coming out of the union
meeting, that I saw the poster. I probably stopped there because of the name
“Vivaldi” which reminded me so much of the old man. Another name was
written below, “Vasco Ascellar – countertenor”. This name meant nothing to
me, but I immediately recognized the face. The concert took place the same
evening. At six hundred centavos instead, it wasn't cheap, but the banks
weren't closed yet and I dipped into the reserve I was keeping for Luzia.
With my filthy fists and my big miner's boots, I didn't really feel comfortable
entering the room. My neighbors were squinting at me wondering what a guy
like me was doing listening to Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus. I was wondering that
too and I almost took to my heels.

And then it started.

Tartamudo was even thicker and more massive than before, but her voice
was all the more surprising, airy, incredibly light… I closed my eyes to devote
myself only to her. And when my stupid neighbor leaned over to his wife to
whisper to her: “Look, he's fallen asleep”, I didn't even move to correct him.
Dark moron! Of course I wasn't asleep. It was even quite the opposite, I
never felt such keen attention as during this hour of concert.

The last note died out and Tartamudo greeted with thunder

applause which flared up again as soon as he pretended to leave the stage.

As soon as I was able to free myself from the crowd that was coming out,
I ran backstage, but a guy blocked my way.
“The exit is on the other side, sir.
– I just want to see Tartamudo, he's a friend of mine.
Machine Translated by Google

The guy looked at me strangely. Of course, no one here knew

from Tartamudo, but I had forgotten his "real" name.
The door opened ajar. I saw him.
- Tarta!
He turned around, a little surprised, approached...
- Saturn! If I expected that!
– I saw you on the poster, so I said to myself that… It was beautiful, you know!…
Really beautiful !

- THANKS. And you, how are you?

– Not bad, yes… I was wondering if…

A woman called him, giving me a puzzled look.
- I'm coming ! threw Tartamudo at him. Excuse me, but I have to... My plane leaves
very early tomorrow.
I nodded.
– Your plane… Yes, I understand. Good luck Tarta!
He gave me a small wave.
- Hello, Saturn!
The door closed. It was only then that I realized Tartamudo no longer stuttered.

The last train for Llallagua was leaving in fifteen minutes, I still had a chance.
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From the same author at the school of leisure

MEDIUM collection

Itawapa
The dream catcher

Be safe
Rose Andersen's eyes
The man in the garden
Miee

sons of war
the oasis

Marie Curie

Charlemagne

NEW collection

My foolish little heart

Hush collection!

My stupid little heart read by

Alice Butaud
Machine Translated by Google

© 2005, l'école des loisirs, Paris, for the paper edition

© 2013, l'école des loisirs, Paris, for the digital edition
Law no. 49.956 of July 16, 1949 on publications
intended for young people: April 2005

ISBN 978-2-211-21339-4

The ePub format was prepared by Isako www.isako.com from the paper edition of the same book.