Read Lost in the City: Tree of Desire and Serafin for Free Online Page A

Angustias.”
    They entered a narrow, dark alley with damp stains on the walls and overflowing garbage cans.
    â€œNo point in looking in them. There’s never anything worth the trouble.”
    They crossed a patio with laundry tubs and clothes hung to dry. A man seated in a rocking chair that creaked showed them two uneven, yellow teeth in greeting.
    â€œIn a little while, right?”
    â€œYes, Jesús,” she said without even turning.
    The man lifted a bottle from the ground and held it up proudly to show her.
    â€œWant some?”
    â€œNot today.”
    â€œAnd those children?”
    â€œThey’re my little friends.”
    â€œYou’re not going to . . .” and he laughed out loud and threw his body back. The rocking chair gave a sharp shriek, like a lament.
    The woman pushed aside the clothes with her broomstick.
    â€œWhat a nuisance. How many times have I told them not to hang clothes here. That’s what the roof is for.”
    The doors were metal, and the small windows had flowered curtains that gave off a dull light.
    At the end of the patio, Angustias stopped in front of a door and looked for the key in the pocket of her dress.
    â€œThis is my humble abode.”
    She opened the door and, before entering, struck a match.
    â€œWe haven’t had electricity for years.”
    Cristina heard the meowing and felt a cramp in her stomach.
    â€œI don’t want to go in,” Joaquín said.
    â€œThey’re cats, Joaquín.”
    But her tone of voice betrayed her. The door to the room looked more like the mouth of a dark cave.
    Angustias had lighted the candle on the table, and it seemed to Cristina that the eyes of the cats were gleaming even more.
    â€œStop that! Stop that!” Angustias said, hitting them with the stick. “You’re all over each other.”
    She threw them some pieces of meat.
    â€œEat, eat . . . you devilish cats.”
    She was stepping on their tails, thrusting her stick in their mouths and grabbing the meat she had just given them, while they meowed furiously all around her, like in a circus act.
    â€œCats from hell . . .”
    She looked at Cristina and, with a smile darkened by the flickering light of the candle, said, “They’re like my children.”
    Joaquín pressed himself against his sister, hanging onto her dress with both hands, and said,. “I want to go.”
    â€œThey’re cats, Joaquín. Don’t you like them as much?”
    â€œThey’re not Lucas,” he said, pointing to them.
    â€œAll cats are alike, Joaquín.”
    â€œSit down,” the woman said, indicating one of the two chairs at the table. “Or you can go to bed now if you want to.”
    Things seemed to float in the twilight—the bed of rusty metal, with a wool spread so torn it looked as if it would come apart; the worm-eaten dresser with a small lace cover on it; a candlestick; and an oval picture of a smiling old woman who was holding her head as if she wanted to come out of the picture.
    â€œThis furniture is the only thing I have left from my mother; all the rest is gone . . . ,” Angustias explained in a sad voice with a tone of farewell, as she sat at the table in front of the candle, which made her expression even more enigmatic. “Look, child, that’s her.”
    Cristina went close to look at the photograph and said, “How beautiful.” She felt a sad tenderness in her stomach. The only thing she had left from her mother. Cristina had nothing left from her mother. And she would never go back home, so she would never have a memento of her mother. She would like to have had something. A rosary, for instance. Her mother had a collection of rosaries which she hung behind the door of her bedroom. At that moment—there in the dimness produced by the candle—she would like to have had something that belonged to her mother, anything, to hold