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with wood and cattle in Mayarí,’ replied Ernesto. ‘Remember giving orders also means shutting up. His wife will expect you to give orders and to obey them. She’s the really rich one. And there’s something he didn’t tell you. She’s an educated woman. Reads books and the like. Even prefers them to Varela. What was that about a news-stand in Central Park?’
    ‘I don’t know. It just came out like that.’
    He had a day to make up his mind. Antonio Vidal sat on a bench on Prado Avenue. He was wearing his new linen white suit for the first time and now belonged to the people of light. He’d looked at it from different angles, but realised his principal misgiving was this: he’d just arrived and didn’t want to leave Havana. The second newspaper was spread out on his thighs. He started thinking again about the cynical painter Mihailov in Anna Karenina and the girl with the basket of newspapers on her head by the Iron Quay in Coruña Harbour.
    ‘What?’
    The dark boy’s head had eclipsed the sun.
    ‘Can you spare a sheet?’
    ‘What do you want it for?’
    ‘To make a hat.’
    ‘Can you make paper hats?’
    ‘I can’t, but the teacher can,’ said the boy, pointing to a bench further down, where there was a group of schoolchildren accompanied by a young woman who was waving to the boy to come back.
    ‘Is that your teacher?’
    ‘That’s right. She’s the one who makes hats. They’re great, just like boats.’
    ‘Here you go. Take the whole newspaper.’
    From the bench, he watched the teacher make hats until there was no more paper. She folded the sheets in a special way. It was true, they did look more like boats than hats. When the schoolchildren came past, what he saw was a procession of figureheads.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the teacher as she passed.
    Sir? He bowed in reply. And then, without trying to stop it, he heard the voice say, ‘Excuse me, madam! It’s very hot today. You wouldn’t have a spare paper boat, would you?’
    ‘Here,’ she smiled. ‘Take mine.’

The Breadcrumb
    July 1936
    ‘Say Mass for us, Polka!’
    The stone cavities looked like thrones, granite chairs. Francisco Crecente, or Polka, the only one who wasn’t naked, climbed to the highest rock of the hill-fort’s Ara Solis, with a nostalgic sigh spat out the last cherry pip, made the sign of the Cross and mumbled, ‘ In principio erat Verbum. ’
    ‘Can’t hear you!’ protested Terranova. ‘Louder!’
    Polka felt the sun pricking his eyes. He shielded them with his hand and almost glimpsed what he was looking for. Down the slope, next to the stream, clothes were spread out like a happy graft of people on nature. He stretched out his arms and his preacher’s voice rolled down the hillside on the sun’s rays, ‘ Et lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt, etc., etc.’
    The second Sunday in July was full of light. There was no trusting that vertiginous sky, the door of all the storms in the Azores, even in midsummer. But this time the mission had been successful. Polka was pleased and proud. They’d accepted his proposal. It was his village. And today it had the feel of paradise.
    Everything was a gift of the sun and the landscape didn’t seem to want to keep anything back. He was on top of the world. These ruins were the city’s first settlement, a fortified mount, at a safe distance from the sea. Between Ara Solis and Hercules Lighthouse, up on the isthmus, there was a visual axis. Anyone in Polka’s position could experience that geological view. The city had been reborn from the sea, had surrounded the great Atlantic rock and become a palafitte on the sands and mudflats, making up ground on the bay’s belly, with the sensuality of gardens and buildings whose foundations were glass. The sea today was a kind of mirror and Polka thought the second Sunday in July was a true gift and deserved a blessing.
    ‘A divine office, Polka, if you please!’
    Holando had read out the ten