the meantime, in one village after another, the tailors, seamstresses, and milliners who were my father’s customers doted on me. I was a serious, quiet girl, and I had proper manners in the company of adults. I sat with good posture and pulled the hem of my simple cotton dress down so that it covered my knees. When the summer heat was most intense, I gave up my knee-high socks and leather shoes and wore cool espadrilles.
“During the day, I sat beside Father and watched him take orders for his lines of fabrics, sewing threads, knitting yarns, and buttons. I would wait quite still, growing sleepy with boredom during one visit after another, happy eventually to perform a song for the customer. Then Father would celebrate the day’s business with a few brandies at the nearest café.
“One night I remember taking Father’s hand, or rather wrapping mine around two of his sausage-like fingers, and steering his drunken weaving away from the bumps and potholes that seemed to wait in ambush for him. I was relieved that the road led to the Hostal de l’Hort. It was a two-story white stuccoed farmhouse topped by pots of geraniums in a row along the roofline. A door of heavy bolted planks opened onto a main room with two long, rough-hewn tables lined by slat-backed chairs with seats of woven straw. The inn was packed with fairgoers. Like Father, they were mostly peddlers from Barcelona and Valencia, and even from as far as Marseilles, but also petty delinquents, engaging in gambling and thievery.
“We had stayed up late at the hostal, which offered the traveler cramped rooms but hearty boiled dinners, or thick omelets of potatoes and onion, and always large servings of blood sausage and cured ham. That night, a group of travelers had gathered at the inn to eat and drink and prey on one another over card games.
“Father was having a successful trip. Closing a sale made him feel loved and respected. Whenever Father gambled and won, he was certain it was the result of the secret pacts he made with higher powers: Let me win tonight, and I will feed three beggars tomorrow.
“That night, however, he was losing to a glum, dark man at the opposite end of the table. The gambler’s name was Pep Saval. He had arrived at the inn late and had taken a solitary seat in front of a reheated bowl of escudella, slurping spoonfuls of the oily broth brimming with potatoes and carrots and gristly chunks of beef.
“From the moment Pep Saval joined the game, he drew the best hands. But even while winning, his face, weathered to a dark shiny bronze and topped with slicked-back hair, was without expression. Poised massively between his shoulders, his head seemed out of proportion to his torso. His large pink ears wore, like some fleshy pendant, fat lobes tufted with spikes of black hair. He wrapped his hands around the cards and held them close to his mouth as if to conjure the winning suits with every moist breath.
“Father had ordered another pitcher of wine. Other players had dropped out but had kept their places to watch with ill-disguised fascination my father’s plunge into insolvency. It was past midnight and I had long since fallen asleep on a bench close to the kitchen. The innkeeper kept whispering in Father’s ear that he should settle the price of the room and the night’s refreshments.
“I was jarred by Father’s shouting. ‘Not yet, mesonero. We must give luck a chance to turn.’
“ ‘That is the truth,’ the other man agreed. ‘Here is a usually fortunate man going through a brief eclipse of his star. No matter how much he loses, my friend here has been blessed with enduring riches.’
“ ‘I have?’ Father lifted his bloodshot gaze.
“ ‘In the human realm, if not the material,’ the stranger clarified.
“ ‘Yes, yes, naturalmente, ’ he stammered.
“The stranger slapped his winning cards down on the table. Father looked wan with disbelief. He started to shove the pile of coins toward the winner when he felt the other’s hand pushing the money back.
“ ‘It’s over for me.’ Father forced a sickly smile.
“ ‘To leave while you’re behind seems an imprudent thing. In the course of a game one will both win and lose. You owe it to yourself to continue playing. Then, when you are in a winning position, leave the table and take your money to bed.’
“ ‘I have no money left.’
“ ‘Perhaps, my friend, there is a way to settle this wager with a currency sweeter than mere pesetas.’ Pep Saval nodded toward me. ‘It is said that your girl has an extraordinary voice.’
“‘ Ven aquí, nena,’ Father called me.
“I looked up from under a wool blanket. ‘Sí, papá?’
He pulled me to the table and laid the blanket over my shoulders.
“ ‘And what is your name?’ Pep Saval asked.
“ ‘Mercè Casals.’ I did the small curtsy that so charmed strangers.
“ ‘This gentleman would like to hear you sing,’ said Father.
“I was accustomed to performing on the spur of the moment. That night, I sang “El Noi de la Mare.” Pep Saval closed his eyes; the beginnings of a smile danced at the corners of his mouth. After the scattered applause had died down, he slapped several coins on the table. ‘There must be twenty pesetas there. I will gladly bet them against one more song from your girl.’ He scribbled some numbers on a scrap of paper and pushed it along with the pencil toward my father, who read it with series of unhappy nods, signed his name under the column of figures, and placed the paper over the coins at the center of the table.”
The Señora was quiet for several moments. After the initial rush of memories, she seemed to have grown suddenly shy. Lockwood broke the silence. “Ah! Your name on an IOU. Your first professional contract, Señora.”
“Poor Father. He was so drunk that night.” She shook her head sadly.
“You realized what was going on, of course.”
“Nothing was going on as far as I could see. Father often had me sing for people.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“It scared me to go to bed alone in a strange room. I was jealous of missing out on the excitement.”
“Daddy’s little girl.”
“I was nine. Whose little girl was I supposed to be?”
“Certainly not Pep Saval’s.”
“Not yet, Scribbler.”
“Not that night? Not the next day?”
“I mean that I’m not talking about Pep Saval yet. Ask me about him some other time.”
In the afternoons the Señora tired. She would lean her head against the back of her chair and allow her eyelids to drop. She seemed to be gazing inward, as if a film were rolling past, bearing with it the images of those years. An occasional sigh signaled her gradual retreat from the moment. Her eyes closed at last, the lids quivering now and then as if in reaction to a voice or face that had triggered some memory, quick and sudden like the prick of a needle, over before she realized it.
Perla was left holding the plate of cottage cheese and apple slices that were her afternoon snack. “You’ve let her fall asleep,”
