Cardboard bats

At the music school there's an argument that comes back every October in the staff room, next to the coffee machine that is still broken: do we do Halloween or not. Remei, the head, says no, we're a music school, not a sweet shop. The guitar teacher says yes, because the kids turn up in costume anyway and pretending not to see them is worse. This year the guitar won by attrition, on one condition from Remei: no real pumpkins, because last year somebody left one in room four and it still smelled in December.

It was decided we'd do it today, Thursday, because on Friday half the school heads off to their villages for All Saints. And it was decided that each teacher would decorate their room "with whatever they had". When I told my iaia on the phone, she said that round here what we have is All Saints and buñuelos, and the rest is television stuff. Then she asked what the children were going as.

Whatever I had

What I had was two sheets of black card bought last night at the bazaar on Calle de Cádiz, a pair of round-tipped scissors and Marta, who cuts things out better than anyone because as a kid she made the decorations for her falla. We sat on the kitchen floor, the only place the two of us fit, and cut out bats until midnight. Mine looked like unlucky birds. Marta's had ears, teeth and opinions. We made twenty-two. Marta said twenty-two was a serious number of bats, and any fewer and people would think it was an accident.

This afternoon I took them on the bike in a sheet-music folder and stuck fourteen on the classroom door and eight on the wall, around the portrait of Pau Casals that someone hung years ago and nobody dares take down. Casals, with his pipe and his bald head, surrounded by bats, finally looked a bit cheerful.

Costumes with bows

First to arrive was Lucía, nine, as a witch: purple cape, rubber nose with a wart and a pointed hat nearly half a metre tall. She put the violin on her shoulder and the hat hit the scroll. She tried tilting her head and the hat slid off backwards. She tried wearing it sideways, like a pirate. In the end she took it off with enormous dignity, set it on the next music stand and announced: "Today I'm a witch on holiday."

Then came the twins, Hugo and Pau. Hugo was a skeleton. Pau was something his mother said was a vampire and he said was "a bat that turned into a person", or the other way round, it never got cleared up. The skeleton wanted to play with his gloves on, black gloves with the bones painted in white, and I let him, because honestly you could see his fingers beautifully. For the first time all year I could show him where the fourth finger goes by pointing at a bone.

Nil came without a costume. I asked him what he'd come as and he said "as Nil", very seriously. Then, lowering his voice, he confessed that his mother had made him a pumpkin costume and he had no intention of wearing it in front of anyone who played the violin.

The toccata

They wanted the toccata. All of them. The Bach one, the organ one, the one in films when a door creaks open. Hugo sang it with his mouth so well that two mothers leaned in from the corridor. I explained that it's played on an organ with pedals and a great many pipes, and that we were four small violins and one big one. It made no difference.

So I wrote the first notes on the board, A, G, A, and the bit that comes tumbling down after, all on the A string, which is the one they know. The five of us played it, badly and very loudly: the skeleton in his gloves, the witch on holiday with her hat on the stand, the bat-person, and Nil, "as Nil", playing the low part with his concert face on. It sounded exactly like what it was, a bunch of kids pretending to be an organ. Pau laughed so hard he had to sit on the floor.

I remembered Saturday's band rehearsal and the conductor with the beard trimmed by ruler. I stole his line without shame: "Again, and this time listen to each other." It didn't sound better. But Lucía played a little softer so she could hear Hugo, and Hugo, noticing, did the same, and for three bars it sounded like one single thing, small and crooked. Then it ended on a chord you won't find in any harmony book.

Remei walked past the door, looked at the bats, looked at Casals and kept going without a word. I think she was smiling. I wouldn't swear to it.

The one left over

At eight, packing up, there was one bat left in the folder, one of mine, the bird-looking kind. Lucía asked if she could have it. I told her it was the ugliest one. She said that was why, and tucked it inside her hat.

I cycled home in the dark with a bit of sticky tape caught on my sleeve. At a red light on Calle de Sueca I realised one of Marta's bats was stuck to the outside of my violin case, I don't know since when. I left it there. It rode with me all the way back to Russafa, ears and teeth and all, looking back at the cars.