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rewarded with
hundred-peseta coins. The relationship between Carmen and the girl seemed to be
based on a strange pact of loyalty rather than friendship. Sometimes they seemed
to be mother and daughter, or grandmother and granddaughter, sometimes they were
more like statues accidentally set down side by side. The girl, who went by the
name of Caridad, smuggled the old lady in every night under El Carajillo’s
indulgent gaze. They shared a tent next to the pétanque ground, and were both in
the habit of going to bed late and sleeping in. It wasn’t hard to pick out their
tent from a distance: all around it, like the turrets of a miserable fortress,
were little foot-high pyramids of rubbish, or rather of sundry used and useless
objects which they hadn’t quite thrown away. To be honest, it’s a miracle that
we weren’t continually flooded with complaints. Maybe Caridad’s neighbors didn’t
think it was worth it, since they were just passing through, or maybe they had
given up. In reception there was a list of clients who were behind in their
payments; Caridad was at the top of it (with two months’ due) and according to
the Peruvian she would soon be asked to leave. Wouldn’t it be better to offer
her a job? That’s what the receptionists thought, but it was Bobadilla’s
decision, and apparently he was scared of her. According to the Peruvian, you
could often tell she was carrying a knife. I didn’t want to believe him but was
haunted, in spite of my skepticism, by an evocative image: Caridad wandering
through the town (which I hardly knew, since I rarely left the campground), with
a kitchen knife under her tee-shirt, lost in blurry-eyed contemplation of
something that nobody else could make out. The knife had a history, as I later
discovered. Caridad had come to Stella Maris with a boyfriend, before the
beginning of the season. They spent the first days looking for work. It was a
month of record rains, according to El Carajillo (I was in Barcelona at the time
and I vaguely remember the sound of the rain beating against the window of my
room), and that was when Caridad started coughing and looking ill. She and her
boyfriend had no money and basically lived on yogurt and fruit. Sometimes they
got drunk on beer and spent the whole day cooped up in their tent, whining and
whispering sweet nothings. Then they found work washing dishes in the kitchen of
a bar on the Paseo Marítimo, but two weeks later Caridad came back to the
campground in the middle of the day, and never went back to work. Soon after
that the fights began. One night they chased each other down to the reeds. El
Carajillo heard something and left the office and walked around the swimming
pool to see what was going on. He found Caridad lying in a heap, covered in
scratches and hardly breathing. She wasn’t dead, as he thought at first; her
eyes were open and she was looking at the grass and the sandy ground. It took
her a while to realize that someone was trying to help her. Sometimes cries came
from their tent, and it was hard to tell for sure if they were cries of pain or
joy. The boy was pale and always wore long-sleeved shirts. He had a motorbike,
on which they had arrived at the campground, but after that they hardly used it.
Caridad liked walking, walking aimlessly, or remaining absolutely still; and
maybe he preferred not to spend money on gas. Both of them were under twenty and
they both had a look of utter hopelessness about them. One night Caridad turned
up on the terrace with a knife, alone; the next morning her friend left Stella
Maris and didn’t come back. Or that was the most popular version of the
story—the one Bobadilla heard when he came in the afternoon to cast an eye over
the accounts and give them his blessing. Caridad didn’t spend much time at the
campground. One night El Carajillo saw her come in with Carmen but didn’t say
anything. The following night he said he would turn a blind eye, on one
condition: that the old woman