Death, then, is imminent. Any moment now he will lose consciousness and fall to the ground. Nobody can really survive with such a hole in their side. Indeed, it’s strange he hasn’t yet dropped to the floor. How can he still be alive? How can he still reason? How can the rest of his body function without reacting, as if nothing has happened? He’s just lost one of his indispensable organs and is alive, in the bathroom, and terrified. Perhaps because though it is indispensable, it’s not the most indispensable organ. Let’s be clear: it’s not his heart that has burst. You can be sure if it had been, he’d have died some time ago. It’s obvious there are indispensable organs and ones that aren’t completely so, meaning, in fact, they cease to be indispensable. His liver clearly falls into the category of indispensable organs that aren’t entirely so, and that liver has now become part of the bedroom’s décor. From where he now hears coming the drunken, delirious cries of the woman, who is no longer asking why he’s doing that to her, but where is he: “Where are you? Why did you leave me?”

  He returns to her side. If he has to die, no better way to die than violently. No sooner does he get down to it than she asks endlessly: “Why are you doing this to me?” When he’s had his fill, the heartless man goes to the bathroom, has a lengthy piss, congratulates himself on the optimal state of his kidneys (of which he’s always been proud), washes his face, returns to the bedroom, takes the woman by the scruff of her neck, lifts her up, sits her in a chair, changes the liver-splattered sheets for clean ones, and lies on the bed. A while later, the woman gets up and gropes her way toward the bed because she can’t even open her eyes. She lies next to the man and asks him if he is Frederic.

  Next morning the heartless man wakes up with the clearest of heads. What happened to the hangover he should have? He remembers his liver bursting and doesn’t even have time to imagine it was all a dream because he immediately confirms it wasn’t: he sticks his hand in the hole in his right side. It’s wide, about the size of his palm, and bloody, but not as much as last night. He can easily touch his lower ribs. He wipes his hand on the bedspread and realizes the woman is asleep next to him. He rapes her again. This time she says: “Don’t do that again. Please, don’t.”

  The heartless man showers, dresses, and tells the woman to get dressed. As they go down the stairs, the woman pukes twice. The heartless man, on the other hand, is as fresh as a daisy. He puts her in the car; in case she’s forgotten, he reminds her of the state in which her husband came home the previous night and drops her by a subway entrance. Then he goes into a bookshop and skims through books about liver diseases.

  He gets to his bar earlier than usual. He orders his first drink, afraid it will pour out of the hole. It doesn’t. The hole has healed in a quick but unsightly fashion. By the time his friends arrive, the heartless man has been drinking for hours. He drinks as much as he wants the whole night long and has none of the unpleasant feelings you get whenever you drink way over the odds. And in the morning, no hangover.

  He always drinks as much as he wants, and never feels the slightest negative effects. He eventually concludes that the liver is a kind of alien element installed in human bodies. Contrary to what people say (that alcohol in excess is to blame for liver problems), it is the liver that’s to blame for a drinker’s problems. The only path worth following is to increase alcohol intake to the maximum, ignore the warnings from medical prophets, and wait, longingly, for your liver to burst. A burst liver is simply one more natural, logical step in human development, like the falling out of baby teeth, the first nightly wet dreams, the decalcification of bones, or menopause. What generally happens is that one day, terrified by the advice from medics, people give up, stop drinking, or reduce their intake. That’s where they are mistaken: by drinking less they halt the process toward the desirable bursting of their livers, and live uneasily between their pain and their guilty consciences. The fact that his liver burst is something normal is attested by the way the hole has healed spontaneously, with no issues at all. Quite the opposite to what would have happened if he’d gone to a doctor who’d have extracted his liver in an artificial, surgical operation.

  The heartless man watches his drunken friends drop night after night, one after the other. The day always comes when, worried stiff by their pain, they go to their doctors and follow their advice, to a man. Victims of their own livers, they reduce their alcohol intake. One night, the heartless man advises them to drink much more, more and more, until their livers burst. If they do that, alcohol will never again be a problem. All the doctors know that’s true, but they’ve made a pact to keep it quiet. His friends don’t believe him, they drink a bit more and, totter home, drunk. He never repeats his advice. When they die of cirrhosis or hepatitis because they proved unable to rid themselves of their livers, he takes them a wreath, accompanies their widows to the funeral, and afterward, with the excuse that they need to drown their sorrows, he encourages them to drink to excess.

  MYCOLOGY

  AS DAWN BREAKS, THE MUSHROOM PICKER LEAVES HOME, WITH a stick and a basket. He walks along the road and, later, a path, until he reaches a pine grove. He stops now and then. He uses the stick to move away pine needles and find milk caps. He stoops, picks them, and puts them in his basket. Further on he finds penny buns. He continues walking and, in a clump of holm oaks, finds chanterelles, scarlet elf cups, portobello, and black trumpet mushrooms.

  Once his basket is full, he retraces his steps. Suddenly he sees the rounded, white-flecked scarlet cap of a fly amanita. To ensure nobody picks it, he gives it a kick. A gnome appears in the midst of the dust cloud the mushroom creates in the air when it falls apart, a gnome with a green cap, white beard, and pointed boots with small bells on the toes, who stands half a yard tall.

  “Good day, my good man. I am the lucky gnome who is born from some fly amanitas when they fall apart. You are a fortunate man, a lucky gnome is only found in every one hundred thousand amanitas. Make a wish and I will grant it.”

  The mushroom picker gives him a terrified glance.

  “This only happens in stories.”

  “No,” replies the gnome. “It also happens for real. Come on, make a wish and I’ll grant it.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “But you will. Make a wish and you will see how I’ll grant you whatever you wish, even if it seems huge and quite beyond reach.”

  “How can I ask you for anything if I don’t believe gnomes exist who can grant me whatever I ask for?”

  “Here before you stands a little man with a white beard, green cap, boots with bells on the toes, half a yard tall, and you don’t believe it? Come on, make a wish.”

  He could never have imagined himself in a situation like this. What should he ask for? Wealth? Women? Good health? Happiness? The gnome reads his thoughts.

  “Ask for tangible things. Nothing airy-fairy. If you want wealth, ask for an amount of gold, or a palace, or a company with specific features. If you want women, say which ones in particular. If what you ask for makes you happy, at the end of the day, that’s down to you.”

  The mushroom picker hesitates. Tangible things? A Range Rover? A mansion? A yacht? An airline? Kelly McGillis? Debora Caprioglio? The throne of a country in the Balkans? The gnome frowns impatiently.

  “I can’t wait forever. I didn’t mention it before because I didn’t think you’d take so long, but you have five minutes to decide. You’ve used three already.”

  So he’s only got two left. The mushroom picker begins to worry. He must decide what he wants and must decide straightaway.

  “I want …”

  He said “I want” though he has yet to decide what to ask for, simply so the gnome doesn’t feel exasperated.

  “What do want? Out with it.”

  “It’s madness choosing in a rush like this. When you have an opportunity like this, perhaps once in a lifetime, you need time to decide. You can’t ask for the first thing that comes to mind.”

  “You’ve got a minute and a half.”

  Perhaps, rather than things, it would be better to ask for money: an actual figure. A thousand billion pessetes, for example. He could have everything he wanted with a thousand billion pessetes. But why not say a thousand or a hundred thousand billion? Or a trillion. He can’t decide on any figure because, in fact, in a situation like this, so charged with magic, he thinks it banal, trite, hardly subtle to ask for money.

  “One minute.”

  As time is passing so quickly, he’s unable to think coolly. It’s unfair. What if he asked for power?

  “Thirty-three seconds.”

  The quicker time passes, the harder it is to decide.

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  A trillion then? Or a million trillions? Or a trillion trillions?”

  “Four seconds.”

  He rejects outright the idea of money. An exceptional wish like this should be more sophisticated, more intelligent.

  “Two seconds. Make it.”

  “I want another gnome like you.”

  His time is up. The gnome vanishes into the air and immediately, thud, another gnome appears in exactly the same place, exactly the same as the previous one. For a moment, the mushroom picker wonders whether it is the same gnome or not, but it can’t be, because he repeats the same patter as the other, and if he were the same one, he thinks, he’d spare himself the bother: “Good day, my good man. I am the lucky gnome who is born from some fly amanitas when they fall apart. You are a fortunate man. A lucky gnome is only found in every hundred thousand amanitas. Make a wish and I’ll grant it.”

  The second five minutes to decide what he wants have started to slip by. He knows, that if that’s not enough, he can always ask for a gnome like this one, but that doesn’t lessen his stress.

  THE TOAD

  THE ONLY BLUE ITEM WORN BY THE PRINCE ARE HIS (SKIN-TIGHT) pants, that define his buttocks, his firm, narrow buttocks that make all the girls and pederasts look twice and bite their lower lips when he walks by. He’s also wearing a colorful doublet, a short, red cape, a gray, broad-brimmed hat with a green feather, and knee-length boots over his blue, skin-tight trousers.

  He likes horse riding. He often mounts at dawn, after breakfast, and disappears into the woods that are dense, damp, and coniferous with a low mist. From time to time, in the middle of an esplanade, at the top of a hill, or next to a fir a hundred times taller than himself, the prince likes to rein in his horse, which whinnies, and he begins to ponder.

  What is the prince pondering? He’s pondering what he will do in the future, when he inherits the kingdom, how he will govern, the innovations he will introduce and the woman he will choose to sit by his side on the throne. The throne in that kingdom is a two-seater, upholstered in crimson velvet and very similar to a sofa or a chaise longue. It’s not that he must marry to inherit the kingdom. His grandfather, for example, inherited it as a bachelor, and continued to be a bachelor for the first eight years of his reign until he met a well-balanced, worthy princess, the prince’s grandmother. So he doesn’t have to, but he wants to resolve the issue so he can dedicate himself entirely to governing immediately after his coronation.

  But it’s hard for him to find a woman who is worthy and well-balanced. He rarely goes out. Princes like him, his friends, go out every night, crawling from tavern to tavern and party to party, until the early hours, sometimes not hiding their princely state and sometimes disguised as plebeians. They get bored of meeting princesses and plebs in parties and taverns. At noon every day, after getting up, the princes meet up for an aperitif, red eyes hidden behind shades, heads like lead. They discuss in minute detail the woman or women they did the previous night and how they did them. They always reach the same conclusion: it doesn’t matter whether they are princesses or plebs; they’re all bitches. This concession to egalitarianism is so unusual and is greeted with guffaws by everyone. Except for the prince in blue pants. The prince doesn’t like them frivolously comparing princesses and plebs, or declaring that there isn’t a single woman who isn’t a bitch.

  That’s why he never goes out with the other princes, who, to convince him, say he should go out with them one night. If he agreed, he’d see that things are as they say. He refuses. He doesn’t refuse because he doesn’t believe them. He refuses because he is afraid to accompany them and discover that, in effect, they are right. And he is convinced that, if he doesn’t lose heart, he is going to find the pristine princess he’s been seeking since puberty. Conversely, if he reaches the conclusion that, aristocrats or plebs, they are all the same, he will never find her.

  He has never confessed to anyone how he hopes to find his ideal princess. Because he knows they would laugh at him. He will find her in an enchanted state: in the form of a toad. He is convinced of that. It’s precisely why she will be different from all the others, because she’ll have remained far from the banality and degradation of humans. He’s read that in stories, from a very early age, and, even though the other princes (the same who now meet at noon every day for an aperitif) make fun of those stories, he really believes them. And it is a belief reinforced over the years by a strange, symptomatic circumstance: he has never succeeded in finding a toad. From a very early age he has eagerly sought them out. He knows what they look like from drawings and photographs in natural science books, but he’s never found one.

  Consequently, on the morning when, after galloping for hours, he stops near a pool so his horse can drink and he sees a toad on a mossy rock (a greenish-purple, fat, shiny toad), he dismounts, heart beating a hundred times a minute. Finally he has found a toad, face-to-face, for real. The toad greets him: “Croak.”

  It’s a much more disgusting animal than he had imagined from the drawings and photos in his books. But he doesn’t doubt for an instant that it is the animal he must kiss. It is the first toad he has succeeded in seeing after years of looking, and that’s why he knows it is no ordinary toad, but an enchanted princess, who has not been led astray by mundane life. He ties his horse’s reins to a poplar and advances fearfully. Fear of the disappointment he will feel, even though he’s dead sure, if it turns out that the toad is only a toad and takes a leap into the pool. He kneels down by the rock.

  “Croak,” goes the toad a second time.

  The prince bends over and moves his face forward. The toad is right in front of him. Its belly inflates and deflates, nonstop. Now he can see it so close-up he’s filled with loathing, but he casts that aside immediately and brings his lips nearer to the toad’s mug: “Smack.”

  For less than a thousandth of a second, to a deafening din, the toad changes into a prism of a hundred thousand colors, that multiply their facets infinitely until all the colors and faces transform into a beautiful girl with golden tresses. Topped by a crown that proves her noble lineage. The prince has finally found the woman he has always sought, the one with whom he will share his life and his throne.

  “You finally came,” she says. “If you only knew how long I’ve waited for the prince who was to release me from the spell.”

  “That prince is me. I’ve been looking for you ever since I was a little boy. And I always knew I’d find you.”

  They look into each other’s eyes, and hold hands. It is forever, and they both know.

  “It was as if this moment was never going to come,” she says.

  “Well, now it has.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s great, right?”

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes. What about you?”

  “I am too.”

  The prince looks at his watch. What else can he tell her? What should they talk about? Should he suggest they go straight to his place or will she take it the wrong way? They really are in no hurry. They have their whole lives before them.

  “Well …”

  “Yes.”

  “You see …”

  “So much waiting and, all of a sudden, bang, it’s done.”

  “Yes. It’s done.”

  THE SLEEPING BEAUTY

  THE KNIGHT SEES THE GIRL’S BODY IN THE MIDDLE OF A CLEARING, she’s sleeping on a bed made of oak branches and wrapped in flowers of every color. He quickly dismounts and kneels by her side. He takes her hand. It’s cold. Her face is white, as if she were dead. And her lips are thin and purple. Conscious of his role in the story, the knight kisses her sweetly. The girl immediately opens her eyes, big, dark, almond eyes, and looks at him: with a surprised look that straightaway (when she has weighed up who she is, where she is, why she is there, and who that man by her side must be and who, she imagines, must have kissed her) is tinged with tenderness. Her lips lose their purple hue and, when they’ve recovered the redness of life, they open out into a smile. Her teeth are very beautiful. The knight has no regrets about having to marry her, as tradition stipulates. What’s more, he can already see himself arm in arm with her, sharing everything, having first a boy, then a girl, and finally another boy. They will live a happy life and grow old together.