Mary Álvarez

            As I was one of the best students in the classroom (it is not pedantry, not a lie either), but my handwriting was impossible, I was attending obligingly in the afternoon at the school to practise calligraphy.

            My mother tried to correct my calligraphy teaching me how she wrote. And of course, what I knew best was her signature: Mary Álvarez. Well, it turns out I saw her signing checks sometimes and she always signed them with her peculiar style (with some inclination to the left) Mary Álvarez.

            I do not adore gold, richnesses or social advantages, but always I wanted to get some pleasures, like everybody, I needed money. I was fourteen and a student and I had no job. In an oversight I took advantage of, I took my mother’s check book and filled in one: 500 (pesetas). It would be 3 € nowadays, although in fact it would mean 100 € today more or less. And my mother’s signature that so well I knew, Mary Álvarez.

            A friend of mine went to get it cash and they paid it to him. I spent the money having a good time with my friends, going to the movies, playing billiards, inserting coins in the juke-box to listen to hit songs and having food in the bars. When I run out of money I took advantage again of an oversight to sign up another check of same amount, 500 pesetas. And I spent it all in going to the movies, in the poolroom playing billiards and inserting coins in the juke-box to listen to hit songs and having food in the bars with my friends.

            My mother came home very angry one day. In the bank they had told her the checks of 500 pesetas have been paid to a blond boy of about fourteen. I did not say anything, I shut up, but when my father came home my mother told him. My father got very angry and as he only suspected of my brother Arturo or of me, he slapped Arturo twice on his face. Then, before such an injustice, I said to my father it had been I, so that he didn’t slap Arturo again. My parents put me in the street and told me to sleep wherever I could.

            At that hour, 10 at night, there were not any friends in the street, and I only held a friendship with a waiter who used to serve us food and drinks in one of the bars. I went to the bar where he worked in and told him my parents had put me in the street. I was waiting in the bar for him from 10 p.m. to 1.30 a.m., when he was free. He lived very near also and was doing the military service. We went to his place. He stank of fish so much it knocked you down. We lied on the only bed there was in his flat. I could not sleep of how strong his stink of fish was. I couldn’t sleep; I had a bad night, a very bad one.

            At 6 a.m. in the morning José, the waiter, woke me up. I got up and saw how he put his soldier’s uniform on. We came out into the street; I was going home to beg my parents to forgive me and he to the barracks. Before saying each other goodbye I told him they were not going to let him go into the barracks although he wore a uniform because he stank of fish.

            On coming into my house, after ringing up the bell and my parents opened up the door to me, I knelt down with my arms in the sign of the cross and swore I would never again falsify a check imitating my mother’s signature and began to weep. My parents forgave me and asked me some questions. I told them who was the boy who had been paid the checks because they wanted to know, but I made them promise they would not say anything to him. I came to an agreement with them to go on studying and to work at the same time to pay for my whims.

            What a night I have spent! I said later. They asked me where I had spent the night and I told them: Smelling of fish. Yes, true , my God, how you do smell of fish!