Free Lost Luggage by Jordi Puntí

dismantled and packed up a second-floor apartment in Carrer d’Aragó and set it up again in Avinguda del General Mola. The whole thing without an elevator, hauling up the bulkiest pieces with a pulley and lugging the rest up a narrow, twisting service stairway, as dark as the catacombs, with the hysterical lady of the house following us everywhere to make sure we didn’t break anything and screeching at us, ‘If anything is missing, you oafs, you’ll be paying for it out of your own pocket.’ Even so, I liked it. I slowly got used to it and learned to see the funny side. It’s also true that going into other people’s houses, diving into Barcelona streets I never knew existed, and then riding around the city in the DKV or the truck (with a windshield like a panoramic lookout) was something new for me, and it made up for the effort, the hard sweats, the bruises, the scratches, the complaints of the uniformed concierges, and the yelling of Senyor Casellas.”
    Although he was shattered, Bundó’s face was a picture of contentmentwhen he slept after the day’s labors. In their shared bedroom Gabriel watched him enviously and couldn’t resist waking him up to moan about his troubles. Day after day, the House of Charity press took on the dimensions of a huge foreboding cave, as black as the forge of hell. It sounded as if he was describing being tortured by the Cheka. With heavy eyelids and emerging from the sponginess of sleep, Bundó listened, trying to cheer him up by making him see that his job as a furniture mover wasn’t a piece of cake either. To make his case and impress his friend, he displayed the rope-burn slashes gouged into the palms of his hands from all the lifting and lowering of pieces of furniture. Secretly, however, he poured balm on his wounds by recalling the day he’d been given a two-peseta tip. Then, he’d drift back to sleep with a sucker’s smile on his face once again as his placid little snores marked the rhythms of his dreams.
    After he’d been working for La Ibérica for four months, during a moving job that the boss deemed to be of “the utmost importance,” Bundó witnessed at close quarters an accident that would turn out to be providential. Providential for him, for our father, and, when all’s said and done, for all of us. A new provincial secretary of the interior had been appointed by Franco and was moving to Barcelona from Segovia. Among the objects he’d decided to bring from his home was a massive, medieval-looking wood and cast-iron desk, which was to take pride of place in his office.
    â€œThis is an heirloom that has been in my family for centuries. Although it is cumbersome to move, it would pain me to leave it behind at this crucial point in my political career. Take great care with it, please,” the government representative had solemnly announced to the three movers from Barcelona and two lads from the property who’d been told to help.
    Carried by ten arms, the desk made its exit through the monumental doorway of the Segovia mansion, and docilely submitted to being eased into the truck, but, once in Barcelona, as four men unloaded it, it started bucking like a wild animal and, with a twist and a flip, shot out of their hands. The result of the disaster was—inthis order of importance, according to Senyor Casellas—one split desk leg, a crack that would be very difficult to repair, and the broken—in fact, smashed—right foot of one of the La Ibérica workmen.
    The bones of Bundó’s injured workmate, who was on the point of retiring, had seen too much wear and tear, and the insurance company doctors advised him not to carry any more weight and to get on with claiming his invalidity pension. Senyor Casellas spent a whole week, until the crack in the desk was fixed, bemoaning his bad luck in a lachrymose singsong dirge, so gratingly shrill that it set the