He pulled the car under the water tank in As Cancelas. He always ended up stopping there. He got out of the car, his car, and watched how Santiago descends towards the cathedral. In all the stories there are some clouds and that’s how the city was, a bit iridescent to his eyes. Due to the effect of the movements of the air it seemed to him that the sun distinguished San Caetano and Monte Pio with more brightness. That’s the politics I like. The territory of the carpet. He let himself be carried away by that certain reverie that takes possession of the human species when it’s past midday and there’s still time until lunch. He began to calculate budgets with lines of zeros and secretaries with an agenda, a corporate blackberry, and a car in which to permanently occupy the back seat. And saying yes and no with rigor mortis, as if in every decision he was about to declare war… And give the order to kill Bin Laden. Those are decisions. <\/p>
The cell phone rings.
-Tell me, Lita.
-The man from the orchestra called, there seems to be a ruckus.
-But did he say anything specific?
-No. He said you should call him.
-Okay, I’ll call.
-That other guy also called, the journalist.
-Which one? The quiet one or the sparky one?
-From what he was saying, it must be the quiet one.
-\u00bfSo?
-So, he asked if we\u2019re allowed tell him who’s the headliner of the festivities…
-If he were to ask about another body part…
-And also, something about the program of the galician literature festival… and I don’t know what about Facebook.
-Don’t worry about that, if he’s the restless one, he won’t take long to call me. <\/p>
Now San Caetano seems much further away, and Monte Pio disappeared in the distance. He looks again in case the weather clears. The mobile phone rings. <\/p>
-Mayor, how’s it going? The lordship of the <\/em>concello<\/em> was reflected in the indifference between the eyes of the private watchman of San Caetano. He told him who he was, where he came from and where he was going. But there was no way. He gave him the sticker same way as everyone else, he gave it to him in his hand and ‘you can stick it wherever you want, but well in sight’. The fa\u00e7ade of San Caetano is full of chipped pieces; the corridors are full of boxes. He thought about the crisis, he thought about what time it was, he thought about whether everything was too small and, the closer he got to the conselleiro<\/em>‘s office, the more he realized how much better things would be if that door had his name engraved on it. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He pulled the car under the water tank in As Cancelas. He always ended up stopping there. He got out of the car, his car, and watched how Santiago descends towards the cathedral. In all the stories there are some clouds and that’s how the city was, a bit iridescent to his eyes. Due to the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":47272,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-balada-triste-de-moqueta-en","category-books"],"acf":[],"post_template":"narrativa","post_subscription":"no","pretitle":"Cap\u00edtulo 1","content_extract":"He pulled the car under the water tank in As Cancelas. He always ended up stopping there. He got out of the car, his car, and watched how Santiago descends towards the cathedral. In all the stories there are some clouds and that's how the city was, a bit iridescent to his eyes. Due to the...","reading_data":{"word_count":"687","reading_seconds":"164","reading_time":{"minutes":2,"hours":0,"seconds":44},"reading_string":"2'44''","reading_human":"3 minutos"},"announcement":{"finishdate":"","finishdate_text":""},"opinion":{"subject":"","subject_info":[]},"event_info":{"startdate":"","starttime":"","enddate":"","endtime":"","entertainer":null},"interview":{"interviewed":""},"phototext":{"text_author":"","text_photo":""},"video":{"video_source":""},"promotion":{"action":"default","action_data":""},"categories_list":[{"name":"books","id":232,"slug":"books","parent":0,"template":"books"},{"name":"Carpet Blues","id":247,"slug":"balada-triste-de-moqueta-en","parent":232,"template":"default"}],"visible_author":"Camilo Franco","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57048"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231705,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57048\/revisions\/231705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/47272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pisofranco.gal\/en\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Did you talk to the conselleiro<\/em>?
-I’m on my way there right now, I’m five minutes away.
-Hurry up, what we’re asking for is no small thing.
-Yeah, yeah, but everybody’s asking for it.
-Put on an urgency face and tell him that the opposition is very tight around here.
-Tell him that if they leave us alone, this ends in bipartite.
-Do we have that many problems?
-It’s the script to follow…
-But then I’m sure he already knows, and the apology won’t be worth anything…
-He’s coming from outside, no problem.
-I’ll try to impress him…
-Don’t ask him for money for the festivities, but for the galician literature festival programme. Tell him that this year we’ll have as many writers, with names ending in \u2013eiro, as we need. We won’t miss any of them. Then we’ll divert the money for the festivities, and we’ll make a splash by bringing someone great.
-I’m still working on it, without knowing how much money we have, I don’t risk hiring anybody…
-Well, don’t let it go beyond this week, then the good ones will be taken or dead. My daughter doesn\u2019t shut up about Nena Daponte, since she goes to high school, she likes much more the Galician roll. Although, my mother, who she really likes is Albert Hammond. It’s like a fucking thorn, always blaming me. Give it a go and call me later to see how it went. Don’t get messed up in Santiago, you have to be back for the hit. And don’t be shy, you can see how Madrid did. You represent a concello<\/em> with tradition. <\/p>