In the shelter the cots stood in four rows and the rows had their numbers written in marker on the upright, and it was I who had written them, not because anyone had asked me to but because on the second day nobody could find their things any more and one person's things ended up under somebody else's cot, so I took the marker from the desk at the entrance and made the numbers, and from that day people said the woman from fourteen, the boy from thirty-one, and they stopped saying names.

The water shifts were mine to keep. It wasn't a post, it was something I had started doing and that afterwards nobody else wanted to do in my place, and in the morning I went along the rows and said whose turn it was, and to anyone who had washed the day before I said it would be tomorrow, and that person waited, and everyone waited, because if you wait and you see that the others are waiting too, waiting becomes something that can be done.

In the shelter there were two Bastidas families. Mine and the one from twenty-two.

They took us to Fuerte Tiuna by bus early in the morning and the bus was one of those with curtains at the windows, and the curtains were drawn, and someone asked whether they could be opened and the driver said it was better not to, and nobody insisted.

Inside the compound there was a large yard with white plastic chairs set out in rows, and in front of the chairs there was a low stage with the desk, and behind the desk there were the flags, and to the right of the stage there were the cameras on three tripods and a man with headphones who raised his hand when the filming started.

They said a number from the stage. They said that on that day it was a hundred and fifty-one and that altogether it was five hundred and twenty-eight, and they said five hundred and twenty-eight twice, the first time quietly and the second time louder, and people clapped both times.

Five hundred and twenty-eight, I don't know what that comes to. I know that in the shelter where I was the cots numbered a hundred and four, that the shelter in the industrial zone was bigger than ours, and that in three months I have heard a great many shelters named.

The queue for the desk was arranged by surname. I was in the middle, with my bag over my arm, and in front of me a woman took off her shoes because she had been standing for an hour and put them back on when we got near.

At the desk there was a girl in uniform who passed the envelopes to an official and the official read the surname out loud, and when he read Bastidas I stepped forward and he gave me the envelope and looked past my shoulder.

The envelope was one of the brown ones, with the corner slightly bent, and inside there was a single sheet. On the sheet there was the surname, and the surname was mine, and under the surname there was the household number, and the household number was not mine.

I read the line once and then I read it another time, and I wasn't reading it to count, I was reading it to see whether it changed, and it didn't change, so I looked at the girl in uniform who was already taking the next envelope out of the basket, and I looked at the official, and the official wasn't looking at me.

He was looking past my shoulder, towards the queue, and he said the next surname out loud, and as he said it he made a gesture with his hand, the gesture you make to say come forward, and the queue came forward.

Nobody told me to move aside. It's that the queue was moving, and I was in the middle of the queue.

I closed the envelope and put it in my bag, under my wallet, and I put the wallet back on top, and I stepped out of the queue on the wrong side, which is to say not on the side of the stage where the ones who had already received went, but on the side of the exit.

Outside the yard there was sun and there were the buses waiting with their engines running, and one of the drivers was smoking, leaning against the door, and he asked me if I had finished, and I said yes.

The house is in Guarenas and it has two rooms and an iron door with a new lock, and the lock turns twice and the second time it makes a dry sound that can be heard from the street.

The first night I left the kitchen light on. Not out of fear, to see the ceiling. In the shelter the ceiling was a tarpaulin and at night the tarpaulin moved, and here nothing moves.

I never went back to the shelter. They told me my cot was taken away the same day and that they took away the upright with the numbers too, because the rows are three now and the numbers no longer worked out.

They also told me that nobody keeps the water shifts now, and that people go when they go, and that every so often somebody gets angry, and then it passes.

Of the family from twenty-two I have heard nothing more.