To tell you the truth, the boys of my age didn’t interest me much. Besides, they were somewhat afraid of me. I’d beaten them at everything except in competitions to see who could pee farthest in the wind. Like all girls of my age, whether they admit it or not, I preferred older boys, especially the ones who fit into the category defined by all mothers as “the unsuitable ones.” I didn’t know how to doll myself up or look my best, at least at first, but soon I learned to tell when boys liked me. Most of them turned out to be the complete opposite of books: they were simple and could be read instantly. I suppose I never was what is known as a good girl. I’m not going to lie to myself. Who wants to be a good girl voluntarily? Not me. I would corner the boys I liked in a doorway and instruct them to kiss me. Since a lot of them were paralyzed with fear or didn’t even know how to begin, I would kiss them. My exploits reached the parish priest’s ears, and he deemed it necessary to perform an immediate act of exorcism, for these were clear signs of demonic possession. My stepmother had a nervous breakdown caused by the shame I’d put her through. It lasted a month. After that episode she declared that I would end up at least as a cabaret artist, or go straight to the “gutter,” her favorite expression. “And then nobody will want you, you little tart.” My father, who was at his wit’s end as to what to do with me, began making arrangements to send me to a strict religious boarding school, but my reputation preceded me, and as soon as they realized who I was, they refused to admit me for fear I might contaminate the other boarders. I write all this without embarrassment because I think that if I committed a sin at all during my teenage years, it was simply that of being too innocent. I broke a heart or two, but never with malice, and then I still believed that nobody would ever break mine.

My stepmother, who had declared a special devotion for Our Lady of Lourdes, never lost hope. She prayed to her constantly, begging that one day I would settle down, or that a tram would run me over and I’d be out of the way once and for all. My salvation, suggested the parish priest, had to come about by channeling my troubled instincts in the Roman Catholic way. An urgent plan was put together for me to become engaged, whether I liked it or not, to Vicentet, whose parents owned the patisserie at the entrance to Calle Flassaders, and who, according to my parents, was a good match. Vicentet had a soul as soft as powdered sugar; he was as tender and supple as the sponge cakes his mother made. I could have eaten him up in half a morning, and the poor guy knew it, but our respective families thought that our union would be a way of killing two birds with one stone—setting up the “boy,” and putting that little tart Isabella back on the straight and narrow.