suchtay atay long-tay timetay.” At a subsequent visit, inspired by history’s first Tour de France, Don Veremundo had bought a bicycle and Robinsón had become an avid cyclist, because when he rode a bicycle no one noticed his limp. Over a couple of days, he taught Pablo to ride, as well as Angela—though hidden from her parents and the parish priest, who had condemned all indecent women who would put a bicycle seat between their legs. The last time the inspector and his son arrived in Béjar astride Lucero, in February 1904, Angela’s breasts had grown, and so had Robinsón’s mustache, though he was in no hurry to shave it, preoccupied as he was with becoming a vegetarian, a fashion that was timidly starting to catch on in Spain.
“I don’t want to eat animals anymore,” he explained to his friends. “Did you know that there have been people who didn’t eat animals throughout history? Pythagoras, for example. And Jesus Christ himself! But my parents force me to eat it. They say I’m growing and I’ll end up scrawny if I don’t eat meat. One of these days I’m going to get away from here, and then they’ll see, mark my words.”
“I’ve heard,” Angela interjects, “that there are places where people eat human flesh.”
“That’s called cannibalism,” said Pablo, playing the know-it-all. “Not long ago, an English ship wrecked on an island in the South Pacific, and the cannibals killed the whole crew and ate them with potatoes. So if you’re gonna become a vegetarian, Robin, I think I’ll become a cannibal.”
“Laugh all you want,” said Robinsón, whose facial hair was on its way to being worthy of his nickname, “but I read in Blanco y Negro that meat isn’t good for your heart.”
“What do I care, since I don’t have one …” Pablo replied, and all three laughed at their shared secret.
“But do animals have feelings?” Angela asked, intrigued by the topic.
“Of course they do!” replied Robinsón. “Humans are descended from frogs! Do you know that a fish in a fishbowl can die of sadness if it’s forced to live alone? But all you have to do is set a mirror next to the bowl, and it will be happy—”
“No way!” said Angela and Pablo in unison.
“I swear it’s true!” Robinsón protested.
When Pablo left Béjar on Lucero’s back for the final time, he had just turned fourteen, and the old mule was suffering beneath the load, which was growing heavier every day. Julián had already warned that sooner or later they would have to put an end to this itinerant life and settle down in Salamanca with Mother and little Julia, and find Pablo a job that would help contribute to the family’s expenses, because tough times were ahead. In nearby Valladolid there had just been an altercation between the Civil Guard and a group of women who were protesting to demand “bread and work,” which ended with the forces of order firing on the crowd, resulting in several women injured, two dead, and an increase in the proletarian resentment against the Benemérito Instituto.
But things took an unexpected turn for the Martíns when, on the road from Béjar to Ciudad Rodrigo, they were caught unprepared by a terrible storm. The sky suddenly darkened, and the purple clouds fiercely discharged all their ammunition, with terrible timing—just as Pablo and Julián were crossing a desolate scree field, without even a measly tree for shelter. The inspector kicked the old mule, but Lucero just brayed indolently. Soon, they thought they saw a distant light, and they made their way toward it, abandoning the main road. However, the surging waters of a creek cut off their way. Julián tried to look for somewhere to cross it, but the storm doubled down its forces and he could barely see farther than twenty or thirty yards.
“Hold on tight,” he said to his son, and he whipped Lucero to prod him across the current.
The mule resisted at first, with prophetic stubbornness, but he finally gave in to the whip’s insistence. The creek was rising by the second, and at the deepest point the water reached Lucero’s crop. A lightning bolt lit up the sky and struck quite nearby, to judge by the swiftness and volume of the thunder. The frightened old mule tried to rear up, lost his balance, and the torrent swept him away, taking Pablo and Julián along with him.
“To the bank! Get to the bank!” shouted the inspector, but his son’s leg had gotten stuck in one of the stirrups and the current was taking him downstream with the mule. Julián reached the far bank just in time to see Pablo’s terrorized face lit up by a flash of lightning as the water swallowed him. The father ran alongside the torrent, hoping to see his son’s head emerge again, while the sky went on wringing itself like an inexhaustible sponge, and Lucero brayed and kicked, trying to resist the force of the deluge. Suddenly, the stirrups came loose from the animal’s body and, after a few moments of uncertainty, Pablo managed to come to the surface.
“Over here!” shouted Julián, stepping back into the deluge and stretching his hand toward his son. As Pablo reached the riverbank, the old mule ran out of strength and was swept away forever. Father and son collapsed in an embrace beneath the rain, bodies still tight with fear, and bid farewell to that companion who had traveled with them to every village in Salamanca.
“We came this far, Lucero,” Julián mused as he watched the mule disappear from sight. And they carried on toward the distant light.
The rains lasted a whole week and caused flooding in much of the country. Some towns were literally submerged beneath the waters, many harvests were lost, several boats sank in the Cantábrico, and the press called the storm a “horrendous national tragedy.” By the time the storm had abated, Julián had already rented a tubercular little shanty on an anemic back alley of Salamanca (to use the sickly adjectival style that Miguel de Unamuno used to describe the urban complexion of the city), where the whole family would soon settle in. He sent Pablo to Baracaldo, and during the Easter vacation they made the move. Of course, he would have to continue traveling from town to town, inspecting schools all over the province, but at least he would have his loved ones nearby and a home to return to from time to time, as well as the two months of the year that he had to spend in the provincial capital in order to inspect the more than fifty schools in the city and its outskirts. He was also thinking toward the future, sure that, with the new trend in automobiles, any day now he wouldn’t need the mule to get from town to town. And he wasn’t all that wrong.
Pablo was the one who had the hardest time adapting to the situation. They had been eight years of itinerancy, eight years of continuous pilgrimage, eight years of wandering from place to place. Not just any phase, it was a phase of formation, in which the child discovers the world and turns into a person. The adventure on the Castilian Plateau had not cured the boy’s anosmia, of course, but it had caused him to grow up like a nomad, and now the sedentary life caught him off guard. Of course, he did enjoy the daily company of his mother and little sister Julia, the familial warmth and the comforts of a decent home, but his happiness was bittersweet, because deep down he missed the travel and freedom of life on the road. Also, Béjar now seemed very far away, although the actual distance was only seventy kilometers. And Béjar meant Robinsón. And Robinsón meant Angela, and her big brown eyes. But there was no time for lamentations: within a few days of moving to Salamanca, Pablo found a job at the newspaper El Castellano, which at that time was directed by the blind poet Cándido Rodríguez Pinilla. His job: errand boy. His hours: from three in the afternoon to midnight, seven days a week. His salary: one peseta per day, plus a hot meal. But before starting work, he asked his father for money for a train ticket to Béjar to say goodbye to his friends.
He arrived at the station at midmorning and crossed the city at a full sprint, climbing the steep grades toward Calle Flamencos. At the door to the inn he encountered Don Veremundo, enjoying the spring Sunday and calmly smoking a cigar.
“Well, who do we have here?” muttered Robinsón’s father. “And what about Don Julián? He didn’t come with you?”
“No, sir, this time I came alone,” Pablo responded, panting from exertion.
“I say, little man,” he smiled and blew a smoke ring, “you going to stay a few days?”
“No, I’m headed back to Salamanca this afternoon. We have