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firework at the statue of the winged virgin on the Panecillo. I didn’t hold out too much hope for this – of all the plans Fabián and I made, hardly any ever came off – and I was far more preoccupied with trying to talk to the daughter of a French flower exporter. A ripe seventeen, with freckles and dark hair wet from the shower, she wore the most ruthless white dress I’d ever seen, and I had spent much of the party discreetly falling in love with her. She’d been fighting off a lecherous old moustache with a ceremonial sword for half an hour, but had now managed to break away, and I was trying to get drunk enough on weak Buck’s Fizz to go over and goose her in the bushes.
    I picked my moment and began to advance down the stone steps, rehearsing my speech for the wedding a fewyears hence (‘we met under the shadow of Pichincha at a garden party’) and wishing I had some spurs with which to pique her interest, when my mother materialised and handed me some cherub of thirteen who had only just arrived in the country and didn’t know anybody.
    ‘This is Eugène,’ she said. ‘He’s French. I said you would show him around, darling. Enjoy the party – are you eating? There are some compelling miniature shepherd’s pies.’
    ‘Salut, Eugène,’ I said. ‘My French isn’t very good, but I know someone we can go and talk to.’
    ‘I am bilingual,’ said Eugène, with an angelic smile.
    ‘Good. You can translate.’
    Fabián watched the approach of the float carrying the Virgin Mary. It reminded him of his mother, which in turn made his head ache. His memories of his father were concrete, which matched the certainty of his demise: statements, opinions and actions. Those of his mother were more elusive, tallying with her fate of disappearance over death. This made it more difficult for him to mourn his mother, which in turn made him feel guilty. In fact, even the realisation that he wasn’t thinking about her made him feel guilty.
    Fabián watched the float as it drew near and tried to position himself where he could only hear music from one of the tourist stalls. Wherever he stood, it seemed, he heard different pan-pipe songs in mid-collision, often with a manic voodoo counterpoint of salsa music. The aroma of guinea pigs on the grill was no longer evocative; it had blended with sour body odours to produce a musky and unpleasant scent. The edges of things began to blur together, like soft pencil-markings under a thumb. A group of policemen pushed the crowd back from the side of the road, and Fabián was caught off balance in the surge. He lost his footing and landed half on the pavement, half in the cobbled gutter, looking stupidly up at thecoloured bunting across the street. The crowds, in agitated protest at this heavy-handed approach, were still being pushed backwards over him. He’d hit his head on the pavement, and it began to throb. The Virgin loomed over him, bobbing on the surface of the crowd, clasping her hands before her and gazing into the distance from within her glass case. Fabián noticed that her complexion seemed faded next to all the gold of the parade, but he knew he should be concentrating more on getting to his feet.
    At this point, the nearest policeman got impatient and a bit panicky. He gave the crowd a bigger shove with his baton, and a tightly packed bunch of people fell backwards as one over the supine Fabián, trampling him beneath them.
    A blade of vivid light tore through his vision, and the last thing he saw before the crowd cut off his line of sight was a new face looking down at him from within the glass box of the Virgin. The waxy lady with her enigmatic smile had disappeared, replaced by his mother, in flesh and warm blood. Joy blazed in her eyes, and the tear on her cheek no longer sat in a dummy’s artificial furrow, but slid tenderly down real skin.
    The astonishment and pleasure he experienced both overrode his panic at being crushed under such a large crowd of