Ghosts Read Online Free PDF

embarrassed, and gathered it all up as best he could. He dropped the
little loaves of bread, and various other things. By the time he got back to the
site, the truck had gone, and they were waiting for him with the fire alight
under the grill. His uncle and another builder, an Argentinean named Aníbal
Fuentes, or Aníbal Soto (curiously, he was known by both names), who were the
designated grillers, tossed the meat onto the grill, a rectangular piece of
completely black wire mesh. What’s that? Viñas asked him, pointing at the bottle
of bleach. It’s for Auntie Elisa, Abel replied, I’ll just take it up to her.
They asked him to get some things while he was there, glasses and so on. He
disappeared up the stairs. Since the architect had left, Viñas decided to close
up the wooden fence, and put the chain on, but not the lock. Now, at last, they
could have their lunch in peace.
    It’s strange that they hadn’t bought any wine, isn’t it? Especially
since some of the men were committed wine-drinkers. But there were two
reasons why the builder’s young butler hadn’t even thought of buying any: first,
they didn’t drink wine at lunchtime as a rule, except occasionally on a
Saturday, when as well as knocking off early they had something to celebrate,
like a birthday. The second reason was that Raúl Viñas bought all the wine
himself at a store in the neighborhood, where they had a special bottling
system, and recycled the bottles over and over, which worked out to be very
practical and cheap. He had already laid in provisions for that day, and for the
next day as well. It was an extra special occasion: for a start, they were
stopping work early, so they could drink their fill if they wanted to. Afterward
they would be going to their respective homes to get ready for the party that
night, a big family do. There was also something to celebrate, of course,
because it was the end of the year. Overall it had been a memorable year, a year
of work and relative prosperity; they couldn’t complain about that. It could
even have been called a year of happiness, although not straight away; they
would have to wait some time for that to become apparent, in retrospect. It
wasn’t over yet: there were ten hours left, to be precise. So Raúl Viñas was
keeping fourteen bottles of red wine cool, with a system he had invented, or
rather discovered, himself. It consisted of resolutely approaching a ghost and
inserting a bottle into his thorax, where it remained, supernaturally balanced.
When he went back for it, say two hours later, it was cold. There were two
things he hadn’t noticed, however. The first was that, during the cooling
process, the wine came out of the bottles and flowed like lymph all through the
bodies of the ghosts. The second was that this distillation transmuted ordinary
cheap wine, fermented in cement vats, into an exquisite, matured cabernet
sauvignon, which not even captains of industry could afford to drink every day.
But an undiscriminating drinker like Viñas, who chilled his red wine in summer
just because of the heat, wasn’t going to notice the change. Besides, he was
accustomed to the wonderful wines of his country, so it seemed perfectly natural
to him. And, indeed, what could be more natural than to drink the best wines,
always and only the best?
    When Abel Reyes reached the top floor (curiously, climbing the stairs
never seemed to cost him any effort: he let his mind wander, and before he knew
it, he was there) he found his uncle’s children in the middle of their lunch.
The caretaker’s apartment had been minimally fitted out, ahead of the rest of
the building, to make it livable for Viñas and his family. But not much had been
done, just the bare minimum. No tiles on the floor, no plaster on the ceiling,
or paint on the walls; no fittings in the bathroom, or glass in the windows. But
there was running water (although it hadn’t been running for long), and
electricity from a precariously rigged-up