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preserves. My final memory was of the four triumphant sisters lugging the saddle home, almost tripping each other up as they cradled its cumbersome weight.
    Catarina makes things ripen into a story, I’m thinking, as I pass through the square today. And she’s an eldest child too, by the looks of her. Just like me.
    Nearing San Vicente, my home barrio, I find myself walking along the high southern wall of the Mercedarian convento. Broken glass shines formidably along the top row of bricks. On the other side is a convento orchard. Youthful chatter in the trees wafts over the wall. Children are involved in a gardening enterprise. I stand back from the road and strain my neck to get a better look. A child in a white cassock is perched high up a tree. He’s picking apricots which he passes down to an outstretched hand. I can only see the arm of the lower boy. Early for apricots, I think, but this tree is one of those African varieties that has two summer flowerings.
    I return to the road and keep walking. If my master’s prediction is correct, the Inquisitor Zamorana is about to send a spy inside these walls. I taste the unclean water in mymouth again. Will the convento superior, Father Rastro, and the courtesan, Paula Sánchez, sense themselves being watched and feel mistrusted? Will they even do something to implicate themselves?
    I might pay a visit to the Mercedarian convento tomorrow. I have a good enough reason to do so. A young boy I sketched last year is living among the friars. (His confinement in the convento is something I’ve blamed myself for.) When I started drawing the boy, Luis, I didn’t realise that he was a Morisco. One of Pacheco’s friends was looking at my drawing and he recognised Luis as one of them. Shortly after this happened, Luis and his family were detained by the authorities. His mother and sister were deported.
    As I get closer to Pacheco’s, my first contact with Luis comes floating back, like a huge soap bubble preserved from the suds of the past.
    ‘I want you to sit for me.’
    Luis, who looks about eleven, seats himself in front of me. I’d been watching him peddling oranges in the laneway outside my master’s house.
    ‘I mean I would like to draw you,’ I explain.
    Luis stares uncomprehendingly at me.
    ‘I want you to pose laughing, and hold that pose. Can you do that?’
    ‘I’m not for sale,’ Luis says, standing up defensively.
    ‘What? Oh, no. Not for sale,’ I agree.
    Luis is still looking at the door, but eventually he does as I ask. He tries to laugh naturally. He manages to hold a laugh stiffly on his face.
    I make the drawing and put it aside.
    ‘I want you to cry this time. Can you do that?’
    ‘I never cry. Only when I burnt my arm.’
    Luis draws my attention to a bubbly purple scar that runs the length of his forearm.
    ‘That’s a nasty scar,’ I say in sympathy. Then I reach over and pick an onion from the midst of my kitchen tableau, and set about slicing the dark skin from the surface with a blade. I hand the onion to Luis who guesses what I mean him to do with it. He holds the peeled bulb up to his eyes. He’s crying now, and I’m drawing faster than normal, the red pencil dancing in my hands.
    Luis is mean, happy and dreamy in succession.
    ‘This is a solemn face, Luis. Drop your jaw. Copy me!’ I make faces at Luis and Luis makes faces back. This part he seems to enjoy.
    At the end of two weeks he asks if he can take the drawings away with him. I explain that they belong to my master. I tell Luis not to worry, because Pacheco has promised the drawings won’t be sold.
    ‘Mama says it’s bad luck to leave mirrors of yourself behind,’ Luis complains. He reaches for the money that I’ve left on the table for him, picks up his hat and satchel full of oranges and walks towards the door. Then he turns around and pokes out his tongue before rushing from the room.

CHAPTER THREE
Paula Learns the Tricks of the Ladder Trade
    The first step to freedom,