But It’s Mine

One evening over dinner, Víctor laid a hardback notebook open between the plates. He’d bought it in Valdoria.

“Right. We need to get going on the titles.” He counted with his pen. “We’ve got nine recorded. And they’re really good, yeah? But the first thing they’re going to ask me is what it is. And I can’t say ‘well, it’s a girl who sings whatever comes out’.”

“It is a girl who sings whatever comes out.”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Well, you can’t say that.”

Axel heard the whole thing from the doorway, keeping out of it. It went on for an hour.

“We’ve got three hours in the studio. If you change the song every time, we’ll lose the whole morning and won’t get a single one done.”

“Then we record whatever comes out.”

“And what if it’s no good?” He turned a page. “The third one needs recording again, because at minute two you go off somewhere else.”

“Well, that’s where I went.”

“Yeah, but what you had before was better.”

As he searched for a page with the pen between his teeth, Víctor added quite calmly:

“And the bench one, you do it exactly like on Thursday. Here, like this. And that’s it.”

He tapped the paper twice.

Eva stared at the notebook, stuck on that “here, like this”. She got up for water and spent four minutes on the step, the empty jug between her hands, looking up at the sky.

Axel already had the tarp in his arms to cover the roof slope.

“Leave it, man,” said Eva as she came in. “It’s not going to rain today. The moon says so.”

Axel left the tarp on the step.

At four it began to rain. By morning there were a couple of inches of water in the kitchen, and the two sheets of chipboard they’d bought to make a cupboard had swollen at the edges. It cost them ninety euros and another day’s work, because nobody goes up on a wet roof, not even the cat, as Úrsula put it.

Eva didn’t say sorry. She wrote something in her notebook, under her line, and started bailing with the pan.

Two days later, while the three of them were eating in the kitchen, Wamba crossed the table in front of the dish of potatoes. He had his hands behind his back and was taking all the time in the world. At the edge he stopped to examine Víctor’s glass.

Axel stopped chewing.

Víctor, who was forty centimetres away and looking straight at the spot where Axel could see a creature a handspan tall standing with his hands behind his back, kept on talking about a festival. To Víctor, there was only a glass.

He picked up the glass, with Wamba right in front of it, and drank.

Eva, on the other hand, had her eyes fixed on Víctor’s face.

Wamba waited for him to put the glass down. Then he went off by way of the hearth, and as he passed the sugar plate he didn’t look at it.

On Monday, Víctor came out with it.

“We’re off on Wednesday. We need to be there before the audition.”

“We?” said Eva.

“Well, yeah.”

On Tuesday night, Axel could hear them talking on the step while he washed up. Víctor did nearly all the talking, with Eva putting in an occasional “yeah”, until he heard her say:

“No.”

And louder:

“Víctor, no.”

Axel came out with the tea towel in his hand.

He found them in the middle of the street beside the car, the passenger door open. Víctor had left his bag on Eva’s seat. She was still holding the broom she’d brought out to sweep the step.

“What do you mean, no?” Víctor was saying.

“I mean I’m not going.”

“But it’s all…”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do? Stay here?”

“Yes.”

Víctor rubbed his hand over his face and laughed, just with his mouth.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay. So you’re staying. With the roof bloke.”

“That’s got nothing to…”

“Yes it has, Eva.” He put his hands up. “I’ve spent a month and a half in a hotel with eleven rooms, in a village of twenty-six people, eating lentils in a kitchen with no electricity. Do you know what that’s like?”

“Nobody asked you to…”

“I know. Nobody asked me for anything. Do you know what I’m offering you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like it. We couldn’t get you out of that booth. You spent the whole journey back singing what you wanted to try next.”

“Because I wanted to try it. I still do.”

“Then come.”

Eva shook her head.

“And what if they pull this place down on the thirtieth?” He pointed at the order on the door. “The man with the folder showed me the plans, Eva. He doesn’t care that you hauled the slates up yourself.”

“I know that, Víctor.”

“Then make your bloody mind up!” He was shouting now. “You have to get your music out there, you have to rehearse, you have to get on the phone! It’s not enough for it to be good and then you sit there hoping someone comes looking for you!”

Inside they heard Kika get up.

“And in ten years you’ll still be here,” he said, quieter, “with the same four little songs nobody’s heard, singing them to the old tripe woman.”

Eva didn’t move.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Eva looked him in the face:

“But it’s mine.”

Víctor looked at her for three long seconds.

“Okay.”

He stood there with his hand on the open door.

“The audition’s still on. Thursday the twenty-fifth. It’s paid for, and it’s going to stay paid for whether you go or not. So don’t do me the favour of staying away.”

He shut the passenger door with the bag inside and walked round the car. Before he got in he stopped with his hand on the roof and looked at Axel, who was still on the step with the tea towel in his hand.

“And you didn’t say anything either, did you?”

He got into the car and drove downhill far too fast. The underside scraped on the stones at the bend, and the engine noise faded down the street.

Eva stood in the middle of the street with the broom. Then she carried on sweeping, the other way, like Trini had said.

At eleven, in the hammocks, she said in the dark:

“He’s left the mic.”

“I saw.”

It was on the table, with the case shut.

“Well, tomorrow you take it down to Trini and get her to send it back.”

“Okay.”

And after a while:

“Axel.”

“What?”

“Thank God you were here.”

Axel looked at the beam his father had cut. Eva was a metre and a half away in the dark, and he couldn’t see her face. All he had to do was start talking. He stayed silent.

In the morning he found the sugar plate empty. Nobody had touched it since the night of the birthday.