I think what he means is that you were like the leavening that makes the dough rise into bread.’ ‘Yeah. It could be, but I don’t think so. In any case, if it was like that, I didn’t do anything to raise it; and even if I had: remember that I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, who’d just arrived, who was a complete nobody and who was living in a sort of permanent beatified state of shock, to give it a name. On the other hand, what is certain is that Zarco had looked out for himself in his own way for ever, and since arriving in Gerona he’d been gathering around him a group made up mostly of old friends of Tere’s, who she’d grown up with in the prefabs and at Germans Sàbat school. So, when I arrived, the group was already formed and had been doing jobs for months. ‘No, I don’t think I made anything take shape. What is true is that my arrival coincided with the first of the two qualitative leaps the gang made; it wasn’t me who provoked them, but the summer, which changed everything by filling the coast up with tourists and turning it into an irresistible lure.
