Xiaoshu and New Year

New Year's Eve and New Year's Day mark a brief interruption in Manolo's investigation: after weeks of poring over judicial records and Allied police reports, he joins the narrator and Meg in welcoming 1947 at Meg's apartment. The celebration offers a moment of shared release, but the search resumes almost immediately, its lack of results still pressing on them.

A Pause in the Investigation

The sequence begins with a Christmas Eve dinner at María Aránzazu's home. A week later, Meg forgoes the embassy cocktail party because she wants the three of them to go to Puerta del Sol to eat the grapes traditionally associated with the New Year's countdown. They then return to her apartment and greet 1947 with what the narrator describes as a monumental drinking bout.

The Search Resumes

The festivities are one of only two exceptions to Manolo's work between December 20, 1946, and January 14, 1947. The other is the Christmas Eve dinner. Apart from these occasions and the resulting New Year's hangover, he spends the period reading court records and Allied police reports from Germany, looking for Spanish members of the SS. The contrast is sharp: a public celebration and a night of drunkenness occupy little space in a stretch otherwise defined by paper, persistence, and disappointment.

Significance

The holiday does not resolve the investigation or change its direction. It briefly brings the narrator and Meg into Manolo's labor, but the records yield almost nothing: after the celebration, they return to the search and find only two Spanish names, both Mauthausen prisoners who had served as witnesses. The New Year therefore functions less as a fresh beginning than as a short respite before the same discouraging work continues.