Free Lost Luggage by Jordi Puntí Page A

workers’ teeth on edge. When the storm had passed, Bundó went to see him and in a barely audible voice asked whether he’d thought about a replacement for the injured man. A replacement? No, not yet. Then Bundó began singing Gabriel’s praises, waxing lyrical about his physical makeup, which was all sinew, and his willingness to work. He was a Hercules. If necessary, he could ask the nuns for references.
    â€œGood heavens, anyone would think he was your girlfriend,” Casellas replied with a sneer in his voice. “All right, let him come and see me one of these days.”
    A week later, making the most of having a Monday off from the press, Gabriel asked Sister Elvira for permission to go and see Senyor Casellas. Bundó had more than once described his employer’s grotesque appearance, sparing no details or snide observations, but at that first face-to-face interview at which he was very nervous, Gabriel had the impression that he was looking at a dummy from some sideshow at a fair. Senyor Casellas was short and fat. His pendulous jowls met in a double chin, which divided like two rolls of fat on a baby’s belly, and the skin of his fleshy cheeks shone as if he’d just demolished a very oily roast dinner. His voice, too high-pitched, didn’t match the bloated body. Now that he could actually see the man, Gabriel realized that Bundó could imitate him with comic brilliance. When he spoke, he smirked without being aware of it, and waved his hands around, pointing and gesturing with fingers as short and thick as sausages.When he was silent, listening to somebody, he had a strange tic that involved moving his top lip up and down, then clenching it in his teeth as if about to start munching on it. Trying to hide this, perhaps, he’d cultivated a pencil moustache of the kind favored by the regime. Since his status as a businessman required some mark of authority—and somebody must have pointed this out because it wouldn’t have come naturally to him—he’d taken two further steps toward establishing himself as a tyrannical boss and, at the same time, appearing utterly ridiculous: One was his choice of suit, made to measure by the Santaclara tailoring establishment, with which he always wore a bluish shirt—not the official blue, but hinting at it—and secondly, although he was from a Catalan family, he addressed everyone at work in Spanish.
    Gabriel knocked at the door of Senyor Casellas’s office and heard the jarring voice telling him to come in. He entered.
    â€œHello, I’m Gabriel Delacruz. I’ve come from Llars Mundet. Bundó . . .”
    â€œHello, hello . . .” Casellas cut him short, looked him up and down. “You’re a bit on the runty side, aren’t you? How much do you weigh?”
    â€œSeventy kilos, Señor Casellas.”
    â€œThat’s not true, you’re skinnier than that. I’m telling you. Go back and weigh yourself. Don’t the sisters feed you? Tell them to give you more to eat if you want to work here. Especially spinach. It’s got a lot of iron. And lentils. And meat. You’ve got to eat more meat. You’ve got to eat the same as Bundó, who’s built like a bull.”
    Gabriel nodded. He was all too aware that neither he nor Bundó had tasted a veal steak or stew, let alone a beefsteak, for months, probably since the day when a rake-thin woman with the face of a scavenger bird, Doña Carmen Polo de Franco, had come to visit the House of Charity. All of the children had been made to put on their best clothes and parade in the courtyard before the local authorities, and the choir of the Female Section had sung the “Salve Regina.”
    â€œDo you really want to work as a furniture mover? It’s a very hard, demanding life . . .”
    â€œYes, Señor Casellas.” Bundó had recommended that Gabriel should call him Señor