8My grandfather began to hate me. When my father’s transfers stopped arriving, he no longer bothered to hide his feelings towards me. ‘You’ll settle down in Alberto’s house one day,’ he told my mother, ‘and I don’t want that boy staying here.’ But Aida stepped in. ‘I’ll look after him,’ she said, silencing my grandfather.
When the money stopped coming it had a big effect on Mendoza, although he still had a faint hope that the war would soon end and the monthly transfers would resume. But deep down he doubted this would ever happen.
‘I hope he doesn’t go missing in the war,’ he said, addressing no one in particular, while my mother rapped her knuckles on the wooden part of the sofa for good luck.
‘Or the war doesn’t drive him crazy,’ Mendoza added.
It was an implicit admission on the pa
