CHAPTER LVIII: WITHOUT STRIDENCY

   I will enter the story without stridency, without false modesty or false pride; I will enter the plot when it is necessary to respect a certain chronological order. Now is the time to reveal myself. I don't know if at this point the reader, if it is I have some readers will have been able to recognize me. I have walked through these pages still shamelessly, because I was not seen, but I've been like my star, dim and not very recognizable but at the end "as I don't want my writing to be apocryphal, I have overcome the temptation of anonymity and it will be signed."

   Once upon a time there was the Rage family. It is very possible that their lineage dated back to the middle ages, but the brightness of their stained glass was only perceived in the 19th century. Ambitious and cold, the Rage made their name noticed in the lineages that embellished old Europe. They were doing great with shipping companies and they were anchored in many harbours. Until Philip Rage was matched with the younger daughter of the Fitzgerald, Alice. Love was never a ghost haunting his fiefs and it was a mere commercial agreement. The Rage and the Fitzgerald wanted to join their capitals and Philip Rage and Alice Fitzgerald sailed in the same stream of fortune. Shipyards and large buildings, origin of the Rage fortune, matched well, and Alice was a mere embellishment that did not spoil the aesthetics of the Rage-Fitzgerald lounge. Because of her, he remained in Hazington; a city which he illuminated with his efforts and with prudent but accurate steps he went from shipbuilding to building avenues and even a homeless shelter. And steel tempted him. It was not Philip Rage who founded the Thuban Star, as many people think. He only contributed with his money to enhance the company founded by his friend Norman Wrathfall. In that time he made so much for the city that he convinced authorities to turn Halbrook Bridge into Rage Bridge. His fortune had increased so much that he was tempted to the world of banking and went with his wife some time to the Capital. But rumors of being imprisoned by some shady business made him do a disappearing act and return to Hazington, where he had a new temptation: politics. He was the mayor several years until finally he retired and when he believed he was going to get old peacefully an unplanned business bill came to him: death. Time has passed since then, but I am talking about Philip Rage again, as I did at the beginning, because I'm talking about my great-grandfather. Although I was born when he was already dead. And if he had been alive, he would not have noticed my existence, and with him the word great-grandfather is not more than a word of sixteen letters.

   Sixteen children Alice and Philip had and almost all of them were placed on the starting point of the great goals. Just Carol and Frederick were somewhat disobedient, wanting to do something for the others. In the case of Frederick even creating an association to rehabilitate drug addicts. But by contrast other children were their father’s pride, as his second son was. William Rage never had to waste his time in planning his future. The capital they gave him was used to make a name in the hospitality sector and half of Hazington belonged to him. His businesses were always successful and only closed, after many years, Millbridge hotel and restaurant The Sword. And when he was very young he wanted to follow his father in hunting a fortune. And he put his eyes in the Rivers family, who at that time controlled banking and glittered in perfumed tinsel in Downhills. The Rivers had two single daughters and this good man wanted to marry the older of the two, Olivia.

   He only considered her the heir to a fortune and he was aloof and negligent with her. That’s why he kept on searching in other beds. And he liked hunting dominant women and submissive men, while he hardly used his wife to have a child and continue the lineage. She became pregnant but he never knew his daughter. But he knew he had a daughter in the street and therefore he tempted only men beggars, not to fall into incest. And unknowingly he tried to ruin his two sons-in-law, who however fled from prostitution. A bad man my grandfather William, although again with him the word grandfather is just an eleven-letter word. He does not even know I am alive. My grandmother always named him to me as "the wolf".

   When Olivia left him, he could have felt even relieved if it weren't because he could lose the Rivers’ support. But he matched Mary Falk, a dominant woman with a median income who dominated him as he desired even though they had the agreement that they could sleep with other people and he continued looking for other men and other women for his mere carnal delight as love never came into his business and didn’t care his wife slept with others. He disguised his good name with acts of charity and support of the Basilica and negotiated with the priests his spiritual salvation. When Olivia gave him the divorce he married Mary and they had a son called Bartholomew.

   Bartholomew Rage was always known as Bart. He had inherited the worst of the Rage, the Fitzgerald and the Falk and was always a root which, in his cruelty, never fed the sap of his tree which never grew. The brother, a seven-letter word, of my mother Lucy, the neighbor and comrade of the dark months of my father Luke. He had started killing lizards, torturing cats and one day he was arrested for a murder committed years earlier. Gareth Gains’ body was found under an elm tree of Knights Hill. Police had spent years investigating until at last they got Bart Rage to break down and confess. It was the same day as Luke’s motif by Verôme. Gareth had heard how Luke spoke of his evil intentions with Miguel and John, but never arrived with the bald men to the fight on the Hill. In the meantime Gareth and Bart were having a drink in Bart’s flat in Knightsbridge Street. Something he told him that Bart didn’t like at all, and he madly stabbed him. And his cruelty was present later, because before burying him, he decapitated him. His cruel road continued and he always believed that there were human beings who did not deserve living. And he could never admit that Luke had fought with the beggars against the bald men. This affront he never forgot and for years he was thinking of revenge until one day he gave Luke a beating that cost him a kidney. It was thus as unknowingly he damaged one of his sister’s husbands. What could he have done had he known his former neighbor also had a husband?

   Bartholomew Rage’s arrest was carried out in a discreet way, but some comments were in the newspapers. His father William had a hard time trying to avoid the questions they often asked him. Bart was his only son and he could never recover from that blow. William Rage aged in a single year. The wolf had his hopes in his wolf cub and suddenly he lost his litter.

   Olivia Rivers created herself anew when she managed her daughter to be born and from the earth she managed to give her some creative clay and she would never again be Mrs. Rage. She must grant a divorce to William because he threatened to take Lucy away from her in the courts if she didn’t. And she soon learned to manage without him. From Maureen Merton to Brenda McDawn, until the fate of her bitter days made her know Madeleine Oakes, with whom she spent her entire life. And the Horror of her existence was masterful Wisdom which she poured undaunted in the streams of her daughter with her two loves. And the blood Rivers continued with his two grandchildren, always sheltered in her tenderness, learning from her to be reconstructed if life takes you to know its worst face. Often transmitting us tales of beauty and teaching us to read with her which she devoured, at the door of her tent, if she wasn’t annoyed by the southwestern wind or the northern wind, some moments when she went crazy and we entered inside where we warmly continued to know the evolution of other travelers, sometimes more real than your own blood.

   So many years far from her brother, my uncle Gerald, until finally they spent nearly 20 years again together with real flames of affection and they were no longer afraid of a new frosty road. Educated for ambition or hunting by my great-grandfather Gerald Rivers I, and by the impertinence that God only understands you if you follow the lines set by His so-called Church that he was told by his mother, my great-grandmother Linda, he could only go his way stumbling; he could only learn making mistakes, and hard schools were for him the prison and the exile he lived in for many years in his sister’s heart. But he had a second chance in his nephews, whom he always understood and accompanied on their bright or dark paths. Brother and sister also lived in the memory of their always remembered sister Kirsten, whom I will return later.

   Used to not being rocked by her biological father, Lucy, my mother, never wanted to be Lucy Rage, or years later Lucy Prancitt or Lucy Siddeley. It is not easy for people to understand that she has spent her life on the street, but even if I wrote two novels I could find no words to express her beauty and her courage, how she has always decoded the book of life inhabiting a quagmire of sterile appearance, and she has taken out some juice from the mud in her house not only to find her happiness but to give it. Always rocked by Father Earth it is normal that in the years in which she told her children some tales she often thought of cavern spirits or all kinds of tenants of its cavities. The youngest one to find her motif by Verôme, placed in her chosen room, she would meet the two men with whom she would plant herself again in her aromatic garden of fertile days and nights of fog or stars. And still working at Amanda’s, where she has already earned a reputation and she is preferred by many customers, she is certain that which was her earthen cradle would also be one day the last clothes covering her.

    There are several rivers which have flowed into this stream, and to its riverbed contributed the waters of the Prancitt. Paul Prancitt gave some other drops. A sensible man since his childhood, he was soon called to the path of faith, and he believed there would be forever his world. Somewhat timid, but never doubting what his path was determined in advance by Providence, he ended up being the parish priest of St Mark, a humble but always crowded temple, as the religion that it represented. There he could have spent safely the rest of his days, but all life plans can be altered by an accident. And one day there on the nave on the right, when the temple did not have any parishioners yet at that time, he was shaken when he saw Mary becoming alive and looking at herself, until he discovered that he was looking at Margaret Pennington. She was walking down the temple lost in thought with the sculptures because she had inherited from James Pennington, a master craftsman still making stained glass windows, his taste for filigree. Perhaps one day, as my great-grandfather James, she would like to devote herself to sculpting or giving shape to beauty. Meanwhile Paul Prancitt’s heart began to be moulded and he started to talk to her. And fate fell on both. A few months later he realized that divinity would be always in him but that he was weaker than mundane things. A difficult decision was to leave his ministry but he was now Margaret’s, as long as his heart could resist.

   They already had two children when a wind took Margaret to the celestial path that he had abandoned and then came the years of his loss of faith. He was unable to understand the divine plan. And his children could not help him.

    Nothing could make his younger son, my uncle James Prancitt, too young to find inside a support for his father. An insecure child, he soon found his way in geography and when his brother became a beggar, as well as taking out a deep respect for his decisions, he began to feel troubled with hunger in the world and he chose the path of an NGO, with which he flew to El Salvador and his heart stayed there forever. And beyond the sea he would take root with Rosa de Lima Yucuaiquín and so much have always been one for the other that they have never had a child and have not made up their minds to give us some cousins. His brother-in-law Jairo has got used to coming to this country every year and has grown fond of his nephew and niece.

   The story of his elder son Luke Prancitt, my father, had a hard beginning, because he was meant to know the impurities before finding the stained-glass or redemption with which my family began. After his mother’s death, he began to find himself empty and was on pilgrimage in search of a faith without being able to support his father, who paradoxically also sought that faith after having drunk from it for years. And how many times a faith leads to bigotry. His first road was accidental. His old friend from childhood Brian Philisey was his worst influence. He was introduced to a few colleagues during a football match and they spoke to him about hatred for different people and so my father was savoring those bitter sources which could have sealed his fate. Six months he was in that mud until his motif by Verôme reached him. So often what is essential gets dressed as an accident. Two beggar men who were kissing were the origin of his awakening. Who could have told him that in his darkest moment he would end up finding himself and in Knights Hill he would become the seventh beggar? The fear for having been on the verge of becoming a murderer never left him, but it was good to bring his children up in the road of tolerance and understanding. And when that November night he got rid of his clothes he also got rid of the bald men. They never got rid of their intransigent clothes, but life made them travel along different paths: Gareth Gains was dead. Bartholomew Rage came into prison when Sebastian Fraser had come out of it. Having been imprisoned for the murder of his wife, it would be very difficult to find a new partner. Not so for Brian Philisey or Bill Dempsey, who ended up marrying two older women somewhat credulous. They were presumably always fanatic, but life would return them some hair, just enough so they were never again a danger for anyone.

   Love was not yet a word that would have become a reality but my mother and my father Luke assumed each other just when they met. It was a November 18 which was becoming a hazy night, because from the nebulae stars are born and the constellation of Leo began that night with the union of Denebola and Algieba. Together they devised the birth of Regulus and that area of the Zodiac would begin to have its first timid lights. And so much they shaped the word love that they would get exquisite pottery and in March the constellation already begun started to glow in the first passion of my parents. But who would have told them that they were awaiting my father Nike to release more brightness, Zosma on the east.

    It also flooded me the Siddeley River, a highborn family which even continued its lineage in the new world. Arrogant and of an angry tendency, they passed through the centuries covering old Europe with wool and finally they mixed in all kinds of businesses. What they never planned was love, that unnecessary Casanova. But my great-grandfather Thomas Martin didn't think it would sick his businesses to fall in love with Deborah Carter and both of them walked together with no loss. And they had my grandfather Martin Washington, whom they perhaps bequeathed the pathology of love, which came to seal his fate. He had his life very well planned, but he did not know he was going to meet Alma Sheringham, my grandmother, a young troubadour somewhat ethereal, full of energy and health. But hardly could they enjoy life together for ten months, the months of her pregnancy. Alma died giving birth to my father and the young Martin Washington could not stand it and ended up killing himself. Requiem for my grandparents Siddeley. Love again was a bandit who wounds with his small arrows and my father Nike, who was the fruit of that rogue, lived his childhood with his grandparents.

   Nicholas Martin he was christened, until my also grandmother Maudie, then her maid, called him first by the name by which he was later known by everybody. Educated to live comfortably without having to toil, he surprised everyone by choosing something the Siddeley had never had to do for centuries: work. But his Polaris began to mark him the north, first in the Thuban, before doing so Zosma in the ecliptic. There he loved John; he dated Anne-Marie and began to poison himself with toxic concoctions of fire and helplessness. But from those infected flames he would be taken away one day by a bite, from a snake as the instrument of the universe to be rectified.

   Bitten in his body before he was bitten in his soul, he had to live 11 days with seven beggars, something unforeseen in his orderly life. But as the days passed, he started to love them in earth and blood, in the light of a flash that made him discover that the only important point was that which he had not looked at yet, the shudder of loving without ambitions, of being loved by those who made him discover that there were more things in life than gold. And in those eleven days he fell in love and finally discovered that he could love in another direction. And he saw that feeling was good.

   He decided to stay, but later he understood that it was better to retrace his steps on that resolution. He thought that he would harm the one he loved and with a lot of pain he went into exile. In exile he was maturing a fruity platter to distribute them in October when he reappeared in his homeland, after a stay in a restaurant to eat no more than Luke’s heart. And in his October 4 Nike walked the streets with my father and fell in love with my mother. And he settled in their hearts and in their land until Regulus called him dad and he saw he was in love with The Daughter of the Sun, and he resumed the path of despair.

   It was then that my father Luke was transformed into the image of true love. He rescued his mate from the darkness of his lacerated heart and took him to the Cave of Beggar Sally, the place the universe chose to become a nebula for the explosion that originated the constellation of Leo in my family, where Luke was a storyteller and invented a new way to make love with words and with tenderness, letting Nike first expel his demons to slowly allow his fruitful love to be perceived. It is impossible to describe how much my male parents loved each other and how with the tale of the Beggar of the Golden Cradle they devoured each other tender and of passion appealing, there half-buried in the darkness of the mystery cave, listening to the river and the wind, dispossessed and orphans of heat and food. In the cradle of the stars two new seeds were sown of two new shudders, and three they had to be parents for the star Regulus and my father Luke became a giant contributing with his mental intention to the conception of Elased so five stars they were from then on. And the word would still take much to become flesh, but their hearts allowed their blood to be seen.

   And that was how I came to life. The redemption and the love of my parents made the universe move and from the passion of three I was conceived and my hesitant words cannot express how much I love my father Luke, how he turned into a statue of supreme love looking at himself in the eyes of my mother and my father Nike to shape the clay that made me. And his lines of uttered love he transmitted to Dad Nike, who poured them to my grandparents Protch and also recited to Lucy. And how could I not live loving literature when my mother moved me before I was born narrating me Luke’s gospel when I was still germinating in her womb.

   That despair of a writer which has been dominating me some time after Dad Nike told me his story in the bonfires. I hardly had to plead him so he told me again the origin of my family. It was more difficult with Dad Luke, who blushed when that way he exposed his heart to me but whom I also coaxed to tell me again that story he told for the first time in the Cave of Beggar Sally. Both my parents often rocked me with that modesty, but neither of them knew shame and I refuse to know it. It was after the death of Mistress Oakes and I cried remembering her the months when Antares was not in the sky, but her stellar presence is presumed and puts a ceiling to the narrative mansion of my parents. But I found despair when arrived at my motif by Verôme years later I wanted to give life to my parents, their fellow mates, their friends, my brother, my grandparents, and every traveller who has crossed them in their path in life. And it is not enough to transmit them; I want to bequeath them a patina of beauty to their sculptures. Why have I wanted them to appear to be legendary? They are my parents, but they can also be symbols, lights that illuminate all who come after them as they have already lit those who knew them. And so many times Nigel Matts has compared them with mythological heroes, gods or goddesses, with golden athletes, senators, plebeians and slaves and I spent hours in his lap, hearing him search for symbols for them or star ornaments. Because with him I also learned them. He saw my birth, he was there when I gave the first kiss to life, and he has accompanied me always with a smile knowing I was his daughter-in-law. But about Nigel I have to tell much more.

   I was born inheriting the name of my aunt Kirsten. My grandmother Olivia tells me that I also have the beauty of her features and plenty of her intelligence and charisma, but she is my grandmother and what she tells me is therefore understandable. I am blood of her blood and I have the name of her beloved sister, so what can she say? My aunt loved to take care of her garden, of the burning and scented roses in Hunter’s Arrows; I prefer to take care of trees, of leaves and roots, of the water irrigating them. She was also delighted with painting and she painted many pictures, including some unfinished ones now hanging in the walls of my Uncle Gerald’s house; I've preferred painting words, portraying emotions, feelings, paths, temptations, errors, loves... If something I have from you, Aunt Kirsten, thank you for whatever thing I have from you in my blood. I would have liked to meet you. Perhaps in another life...

   He does not like now, being more than thirty, to be called little king. But he likes Regulus. Just the same as I am known as Elased or Empress and so I will be known all my life. But in his kind look the light of his star will always be visible and he will perpetually be a small monarch for his retinue of acquaintances in life, his court of aristocrats of his Round Table, his justice dealt for his enthusiastic people whom he illuminates with his rays. It is hard to recall any fights that my brother and I might have had in life, but the mischief from when we were infants. In recent years, and as we were getting older, we have only had the affection in which we have been educated, the freedom and the beauty with which we have been dressed, and a great tenderness to be understood and to know at all times what it was that we needed. Always lucid, in the end he got a degree in mathematics and teaches at the University, South of Evendale. But he often tells me he still has to find his true path.

    Blood which has to be poured in blood, the blood, useful for any vital organ and however, oft it turns purple, decays and does not benefit your limbs. Blood which does not feed your veins, the blood, which does not accompany your heartbeats. There are bloods which provide nothing, as my family Rage, but there must be other nutrients that have not come through the arteries and however help you to grow. And nobody will deny that they are my cells my father Luke, my great-grandmother Madeleine or my grandparents Protch.

   My grandparents Protch... My grandfather Herbert, what with stories and games, always told his grandchildren that he had had a second life thanks to the coming one day of my father Nike. He also told us his version of the words of that beggar who had started his road to flow into two grandchildren he has loved so much. But he remembered that he had lived almost all his life loving my grandmother Maude. And if ever they had any fights, my brother and I never saw them and spent our childhood from the palace to Deanforest with two grandparents more real than blood. With them the word is more than just a twelve-letter word. And my tough Grandma Maudie, with how much love she has straightened us, what vitamins she has given us in our small depressions. And she has spent her time coming from Inverness two or three times a year to see her grandchildren and Paul and I have often been with her in this city. She continues living with her cousin Selma Dickinson and both of them, nearly a century old, intend to have a record of life. Hardly the two sons of Selma’s come to care for them, but both are capable of living their time together, accompanied and not bothering anyone, taking out from life the value they have always had: strength.

   Explosions begin in the most unexpected places and our big bang originated in a cathedral. It is impossible my great-grandmother could have had a better cradle, in a blanket of song and prayers which she gave to all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, because all those of us who came after her and have met her have been her family. After years in a home, she became the first goddess of estrangement and although always the owner of Shade, splendid beams of polished light she has always had for all her children, and she was a powerful light bulb for my grandmother Olivia, always her girl, and illuminated her as long as she was by her side and guided her in her future steps. I just met you five years, my dear great-grandmother, but your energy has to accompany me as long as I live. How you made me distinguish the different paths of life. Yours really started with Joe Scully and you still loved him years after his death. And you always gave everything you had to his son, who was not yours, but whom you loved even more than if he had been.

   Bruce Scully was always "the rich beggar". He knew the city and the possibilities of every street, every house and every tenant, whose name he remembered. Still strong enough to feed his fellow mates, having recovered from the threats of a prophecy and having seen the light, self-confident and enlightening all. My brother and I have spent our childhood walking on the roads between the lake and the mountains, always accompanied by goodies and presents that he suddenly discovered with a smile, walking the paths with the cane of his unwavering affection.

   Miguel McDawn and John Richmonds were always the twins Castor and Pollux. Their previous lives could have been dissimilar, perhaps, but once they met, although it was never an easy road, together they went through the same vicissitudes. Miguel spoke to us often that he had sometimes shown misunderstanding to my parents. It is the best of him: he can easily acknowledge the moments he has been wrong. But always telling us that he would not have with us the same sin. He has the virtue of inventing a tale of everyday detail and thus, when my brother and I punctured the only ball we have had, he thought of a tale in which some children ended up kicking a planet. His twin Pollux, by his side, intensifies the light of galaxies for him and for all, and despite the crisis they’ve had he knows that with him he has found his road forever. He embraces with his luminosity the hearts of my three parents and has been on numerous occasions the confident of their circumstances.

   The ninth beggar was Richard Protch, although he thought that he was only half a beggar because he sometimes slept in his flat in St Alban's Road. But thus it was for five years, when Sarah finally returned with him. Stuart Grainger was an intelligent, respectful and understanding gentleman but he had his Achilles’ heel and at the end it was also, of course, ambition. He knew that the two children of Sarah were owners of a great fortune and he tried to convince her that something she could get from the money her children had, and of course also him. And from boredom Sarah came to lack of affection and almost abhorrence. She never lost her friendship with Richard and they resumed their former life with renewed love. But he could not get rid of his fellow mates now. He spent evenings and mornings with Sarah but in the afternoons he used to beg, and after talking awhile with them every evening at the bonfire, he returned to St Alban's Road with his wife.

  Anne-Marie Jones, née Beaulière, was always bitten by the despair of loving men who loved men and went to the street. But her heart was calmed one day when she met Brandon and of his love she was sure. She walked peacefully along a path of prosperity still presiding over the Thuban Star and always placing it among the top companies in the country. She had the support of John and Nike, who often advised her. From her great loyalty to her friends, she came out with a respect that she was spreading on everybody, always loving a lot the children of the Three, whom she gave affection and advice. She became a close friend of the family and when we were fifteen my father Luke finally decided to tell us the hitherto secret donation of a kidney, but asked us not to overwhelm her with thanks. Since then my brother and I talk about her as our dear aunt Anne-Marie and every week she and Brandon come to visit the outskirt.

   Samuel Weissmann spent his last years somewhat sickly, but always smiling and satisfied. He came to this country a couple of times a year and had energy enough till year 50. One morning a murmur on the Thuban was becoming persistent, until his daughter Joan phoned and she reported that her father had just died of an illness, but she gave no more details. The funeral would be in his country and his friends were unable to attend, or to that of Susan Weissmann, his wife, which was only two months later. In addition to Anne-Marie, who still needed her as an assistant, his daughter Joan was always loved by Richard, Luke and Nike. They supported her constantly and they knew that forever they would have someone with the surname Weissmann in their hearts.

   It is the turn now to talk a little about the younger generation, of those who are more or less my age. And only a few months younger, my boyfriend Peter Matts. We started dating when we were two years old, as in a game, and we have lived our lives considering we were a couple. We have never had the slightest argument. He is kind and sincere, often talkative and cheerful and he has always boasted of loving a little lion star that is cuddled in his enclosure of a ram. We have always lived together every experience in life and there has only been an objection. For us it has not been important that necessary thing in so many couples: love. If there have been other women who have hurt him, I don't know. But it is possible that the greatest damage has come to him from me. And if one day bitterness takes you to blame me for something, I'm sorry, Peter. Maybe life has made us walk together, but we must not conclude our journey together. And your father is watching us from a short distance, trying to figure out what has happened to us.

   Armand Protch knew his true path away from the ambition curtains that hid from him the view into the courtyard of prosperity. He never allowed himself to be blinded by laurels and found his true path in lending his hands to those whom they were necessary regardless they ended up being wounded. In El Salvador he was for two months every year but he has not yet found his bed. He has not discovered yet a girl to accompany him. Well, or a boy. I have no suspicion that he likes men, but it should not be taken for granted that a man should look for a woman.

   Crystelle Protch has always been my best friend. Since we were girls she has shared with me confidences and games. I didn't talk to her about men since all my life I have been engaged to Peter, but advised her in her scarce love affairs. In all men she found something objectionable, and the word that defines her is common sense. She even joked with me telling me for God’s sake to take some of her most famous and vain prudence away from her. And even when she inherited a lot of money, she knew how to be prudent and focus on what she had always wanted to become. She studied Pediatrics and became the reputed Dr. Protch. And maybe she lost her senses when she fell in love with a bartender from the hospital, the same job that his father had before becoming a beggar, named Tristan Grover. Boyfriend and girlfriend they were for a short time, since she had been hit in her heart by the arrows of Cupid, and they got married on year 57, and today she continues working in the hospital, being now the reputed Dr. Grover.

   To sketch at least all the characters of this novel I've been advised by the common sense of my beloved Nigel Matts, my "father-in-law". He was there when I was born and all my life I have been his son’s girlfriend, and he has always loved me with a special affection and has constantly been beside me with his support since when I was twenty-nine, the same age with which my father Nike decided to go to the street, an age of the great decisions in my family, I was reached by my motif by Verôme and I decided to tell the lives of my loved ones. It is impossible to describe how much I appreciate him and how he has instructed me in stars, symbols or mythology, never tired, always with his discreet advice and the approval I got from him at every chapter I gave him. He has known them all and not always as a mere spectator. And with us he could not achieve the impossible, to recover his beloved Shirley, but he has left in each the clean drops of his affectionate heart.

   Years have passed with their slow appearance but always too fast and now I have to stop on the year 59, important for me because it was when I started writing, and of which I still have to tell some bitter situations or hopes. But before that I must tell an incident at the end of the year 55. Everyone was breathing calmly and accompanied resting in the bonfires when Anne-Marie came with the troubled face and sat down to dinner with everyone. She had always spoken fondly of Barcelona since it was in this city where she had fallen in love. And she read any piece of news that named it. She had read in a newspaper that three brat boys had burned in an ATM a woman beggar. It didn’t matter the excuse they had that previously she had teased them. They threw on her body a bottle of solvent and then a lit cigarette which exploded. Everyone became suddenly silent and slowly they began to cry, perhaps a better homage than a prayer for her soul. At the beginning of the new century the world continues its work of decomposition and some generations show shamelessly their crap and there are no tears which can return their lost common sense. They left the bonfire shaken and without knowing which words to use. The cruelty of the world, barbarous and inexplicable, one day could affect them. My grandmother Olivia looked at the stars, kissed the night and when they could still hear her she said: "Requiem for María Rosario Endrinal Petit." Let this chapter be dedicated to her, requiem. But let it continue shaken, because still there are things to tell, my moved voice.