‘Beautifully. Forgive me, Governor. I hadn’t eaten beef for so long that the protein must have gone straight to my head. It won’t happen again.’
The governor resumed his smile and continued as if nothing had happened.
‘In particular, I’m interested in finding out whether he’s ever mentioned a cemetery of forgotten books, or dead books, or something along those lines. Think carefully before you answer. Has Martín ever talked to you about such a place?’
Fermín shook his head.
‘I swear, sir, I’ve never in my life heard Señor Martín, or anyone else, mention that place …’
The governor winked at him.
‘I believe you. And that’s why I know that if he does mention it, you’ll tell me. And if he doesn’t, you’ll bring up the subject and find out where it is.’
Fermín nodded repeatedly.
‘And one more thing. If Martín talks to you about a job I’ve asked him to do for me, convince him that in his own best interests, and in particular those of a certain young lady he holds in very high esteem, as well as the husband and child of the latter, he’d better get cracking and write his best work.’
‘Do you mean Señora Isabella?’ Fermín asked.
‘Ah, I see he’s mentioned her to you … You should see her,’ said the governor while he wiped his glasses with a handkerchief. ‘Young, really young, with that firm schoolgirl flesh … You don’t know how often she’s been sitting here, right where you are now, pleading for that poor wretch Martín. I won’t tell you what she’s offered me because I’m a gentleman but, between you and me, the devotion this girl feels for Martín is very telling. If I had to make a bet, I’d say that kid, Daniel, isn’t her husband’s but Martín’s. He might have abysmal taste when it comes to literature but an exquisite eye for sluts.’
The governor stopped when he noticed that the prisoner was giving him an impenetrable look which he didn’t appreciate.
‘What are you staring at?’ he challenged him.
He banged the table with his knuckles and instantly the door behind Fermín opened. The two guards grabbed him by his arms, hauling him up from his chair until his feet were dangling in the air.
‘Remember what I’ve told you,’ said the governor. ‘In four weeks’ time I want you in that chair again. If you bring me results, I can assure you your stay here will change for the better. If not, I’ll book you into the basement cell with Fumero and his toys. Are we clear?’
‘Crystal.’
Then, with a bored expression, the governor signalled to his men to take the prisoner away and downed his glass of brandy, sick and tired of having to talk to those uncultured yokels, day in, day out.
10
Barcelona, 1957
‘Daniel, you’ve gone pale,’ murmured Fermín, rousing me from my trance.
The dining room in Can Lluís, the streets we had walked down to get there, had all disappeared. All I could see before me was that office in Montjuïc Castle and the face of that man talking about my mother with words and insinuations that seared my very soul. At the same time, something cold and sharp moved inside me, an anger I had never known before. For a split second what I most yearned for in the world was to have that son-of-a-bitch before me so I could wring his neck and watch him until the veins in his eyes burst.
‘Daniel …’
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. When I opened them again I was back in Can Lluís, and Fermín Romero de Torres was looking at me, completely vanquished.
‘Forgive me, Daniel,’ he said.
My mouth was dry. I poured myself a glass of water and drank it down, waiting for words to come to my lips.
‘There’s nothing to forgive, Fermín. Nothing of what you’ve told me is your fault.’
‘For a start, it’s my fault for having to tell you,’ he said, in such a soft voice it was barely audible.
I saw him lower his eyes, as if he didn’t dare look me in the face. He seemed so overcome with pain from remembering that episode and having to reveal the truth to me that I felt ashamed of my own bitterness.
‘Fermín, look at me.’
Fermín managed to look at me out of the corner of his eye and I smiled at him.
‘I want you to know that I’m grateful to you for having told me the truth and that I understand why you preferred not to tell me anything about this years ago.’
Fermín nodded weakly but something in his eyes made me realise that my words were no comfort to him at all. On the contrary. We sat in silence for a few moments.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ I asked at last.
Fermín nodded.
‘And what follows is worse?’
Fermín nodded again.
‘Much worse.’
I looked away and smiled at Professor Alburquerque, who was now leaving, not without raising a hand in farewell.
‘Well then, why don’t we ask for another bottle of water and you tell me the rest?’
‘Better if it’s wine,’ Fermín considered. ‘The strong stuff.’
11
Barcelona, 1940
A week after the meeting between Fermín and the prison governor, a couple of individuals nobody in the cell block had ever set eyes on before – though they reeked of the political branch from a mile off – handcuffed Salgado and took him away without saying a word.
‘Bebo, do you know where they’re taking him?’ asked Number 19.
The jailer shook his head, but the look in his eyes suggested that he’d heard something and preferred not to discuss the matter. With nothing else to talk about, Salgado’s absence immediately became a subject for debate and speculation among the prisoners, who came up with all sorts of theories.
‘That guy was a mole, put in here by the Nacionales to get information out of us with that yarn about having been locked up because he was a trade unionist.’
‘Sure, that’s why they pulled two fingers off him and goodness knows what else, to make it all sound more convincing.’
‘I bet he’s dining in the Amaya with his pals as we speak, stuffing himself with hake Basque-style, and laughing at us all.’
‘What I think is that he’s confessed whatever it was they wanted him to confess and they’ve chucked him ten kilometres out at sea with a stone tied round his neck.’
‘He did look like a spook. Thank God I didn’t open my mouth. The lot of you will be in a stew.’
‘You never know, we might even be sent off to jail.’
For lack of other amusements, the discussions rumbled on until, two days later, the same men who had taken him away brought him back. The first thing all the inmates noticed was that Salgado couldn’t stand up and was being dragged along like a bundle. The second thing was that he was as pale as a corpse and drenched in cold sweat. The prisoner had returned half naked and covered in a brownish scab that looked like a mixture of dry blood and excrement. They dropped him on the cell floor as if he were a sack of manure and left without saying a word.
Fermín took him in his arms and laid him down on the bunk. He started to wash him slowly with a few shreds of cloth he tore off his own shirt and a bit of water Bebo brought him on the quiet. Salgado was conscious and breathed with difficulty, but his eyes shone with an inner fire. Where, two days earlier, he’d had a left hand, he now had a throbbing stump of purplish flesh cauterised with tar. While Fermín cleaned his face, Salgado smiled at him with his few remaining teeth.
‘Why don’t you tell those butchers once and for all what they want to know, Salgado? It’s only money. I don’t know how much you’ve hidden, but it’s not worth this.’
‘Like hell!’ he muttered with what little breath he had left. ‘That money is mine.’
‘It belongs to all those you murdered and robbed, if you don’t mind the observation.’
‘I didn’t rob anyone. They’d robbed the people before that. And if I executed them it was to deliver the justice the people were demanding.’
??
?Sure. Thank God you came along, the Mediterranean Robin Hood, to right all wrongs and avenge the plight of the common folk.’
‘That money is my future,’ spat Salgado.
With the damp cloth, Fermín wiped Salgado’s cold forehead, lined with scratches.
‘One mustn’t dream of one’s future; one must earn it. And you have no future, Salgado. Neither you, nor a country that keeps producing beasts like you and the governor, and then looks the other way. Between us all we’ve destroyed the future and all that awaits us is shit like the shit you’re dripping with now and that I’m sick of cleaning off you.’
Salgado emitted a sort of rasping whimper, which Fermín took to be laughter.
‘Keep your sermons to yourself, Fermín. Don’t pretend you’re a hero now.’
‘No, there are enough heroes. What I am is a coward. Exactly that,’ said Fermín. ‘But at least I know it and admit it.’
Fermín went on cleaning him as best he could, silently, and then covered him with the piece of blanket they shared – teeming with nits and stinking of urine. He sat next to the thief until Salgado closed his eyes and fell into a sleep from which Fermín didn’t think he was ever going to wake.
‘Tell me he’s already dead,’ came Number 15’s voice.
‘Bets accepted,’ Number 17 added. ‘A cigarette that he’ll kick the bucket.’
‘Go to sleep, or to hell, all of you,’ said Fermín.
He curled up at the other end of the cell and tried to nod off, but soon realised he wasn’t going to sleep that night. After a while he stuck his head between the bars and let his arms hang over the metal shaft fixed across them. On the other side of the corridor, from the shadows of the cell opposite his, two eyes, gleaming in the light of a cigarette, were watching him.
‘You haven’t told me what Valls wanted you for the other day,’ said Martín.
‘You can imagine.’
‘Any request out of the ordinary?’
‘He wants me to worm out of you something about a cemetery of books, or something like that.’
‘Interesting,’ said Martín.
‘Fascinating.’
‘Did he tell you why he was interested in the subject?’
‘Quite frankly, Señor Martín, our relationship isn’t that close. The governor merely threatens me with mutilation of various sorts unless I carry out his orders within four weeks and I merely say “yes, sir”.’
‘Don’t worry, Fermín. In four weeks’ time you’ll be out of here.’
‘Oh, sure, on a beach in the Caribbean, with two well-fed mulatto girls massaging my feet no less.’
‘Have faith.’
Fermín let out a despondent sigh. The cards of his future were being dealt out among lunatics, thugs and dying men.
12
That Sunday, after the speech in the yard, the governor cast Fermín a questioning look, rounding it off with a smile that turned his stomach. As soon as the guards allowed the prisoners to fall out, Fermín edged over towards Martín.
‘Brilliant speech,’ Martín remarked.
‘Historic. Every time that man speaks, the history of Western thought undergoes a Copernican revolution.’
‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Fermín. It goes against your natural tenderness.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘I’m on my way. Cigarette?’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘They say it helps you die faster.’
‘Bring it on then.’
He didn’t manage to get beyond the first puff. Martín took the cigarette from his fingers and gave him a few pats on the back while Fermín seemed to be coughing up even the memories of his first communion.
‘I don’t know how you can swallow that. It tastes of singed dogs.’
‘It’s the best you can get here. Apparently they’re made from cigarette stubs picked up in the corridors of the Monumental bullring.’
‘The bouquet suggests it’s more likely from the urinals.’
‘Take a deep breath, Fermín. Feeling better?’
Fermín nodded.
‘Are you going to tell me something about that cemetery so that I have a bit of offal to throw at the head swine? It doesn’t have to be true. Any nonsense you can come up with will do.’
Martín smiled as he exhaled the fetid smoke through his teeth.
‘How’s your cellmate, Salgado, the defender of the poor?’
‘Here’s a story for you. I thought I’d reached a certain age and had seen it all in this circus of a world. But, early this morning, when it looked like Salgado had given up the ghost, I hear him get up and walk over to my bunk like a vampire.’
‘He does have something of the vampire,’ agreed Martín.
‘Anyway, he comes over and stands there staring at me. I pretend to be asleep and when Salgado takes the bait, I see him scurry off to a corner and with the only hand he has left he starts to poke around in what medical science refers to as the rectum or final section of the large intestine,’ Fermín continued.
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard it. Good old Salgado, still convalescing from his most recent session of medieval amputation, decides to celebrate being back on his feet by exploring that long-underrated area of human anatomy where Mother Nature has decreed the sun doesn’t shine. I can’t believe my eyes and don’t even dare breathe. A minute goes by and Salgado looks as if he has two or three fingers, all the ones he has left, stuck in there in search of the philosopher’s stone or some very deep piles. All of which is accompanied by a low, hushed moaning which I’m not going to bother to reproduce.’
‘I’m dumbfounded,’ said Martín.
‘Then brace yourself for the grand finale. After a minute or two of prospective digging, he lets out a Saint John of the Cross-type sigh and the miracle happens. When he removes his fingers from anal territory he pulls out something shiny that even from the corner where I’m lying I can certify is no standard faecal arrangement, pardon my French.’
‘So what was it, then?’
‘A key. Not a spanner, just one of those small keys, the sort used for briefcases or a locker in the gym.’
‘What then?’
‘Then he takes the key, polishes it with a bit of spit – because I imagine it must have smelled of roses – and then goes over to the wall where, after making sure I’m still asleep, a fact that I confirm through finely rendered snores, like those of a Saint Bernard puppy, he proceeds to hide the key by inserting it in a crack between stones which he then covers with filth and, I dare say, some collateral resulting from his explorations in his nether parts.’
For a while Martín and Fermín looked at one another without speaking.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Fermín.
Martín nodded.
‘How much do you reckon the old crap shooter must have hidden in his little nest of greed?’ asked Fermín.
‘Enough to believe that it’s worth his while to lose fingers, hands, part of his testicular mass and God knows what else to keep its whereabouts secret,’ Martín guessed.
‘And what do I do now? Before I let a snake like the governor snatch Salgado’s little treasure – to fund hardback editions of his collected works and buy himself a seat in the Royal Academy of Language – I’d rather swallow that key, or, if necessary, even introduce it into the ignoble part of my own digestive tract.’
‘Don’t do anything for the time being,’ Martín advised. ‘Make sure the key is still there and await my instructions. I’m putting the finishing touches to your escape.’
‘No offence, Señor Martín, since I’m extremely grateful for your counsel and moral support, but you’re getting me to put my head and some other esteemed appendages on the block with this idea of yours, and considering the general consensus that you’re as mad as a hatter, it troubles me to think I’m placing my life in your hands.’
‘None taken, but, if you don’t trust a novelist, who are you going to trust??
??
Fermín watched Martín walk off down the yard wrapped in his portable cloud of cigarette-stub smoke.
‘Holy mother of God,’ he murmured to the wind.
13
The macabre betting syndicate organised by Number 17 continued to thrive for a few more days during which Salgado sometimes looked as if he were about to expire and then, just as suddenly, would get up, drag himself to the bars of the cell and declaim at the top of his voice the stanza: ‘You-fucking-bastards-you’re-not-getting-a-penny-out-of-me-you-fucking-sons-of-bitches’ and variations on the theme, until he screamed himself hoarse and collapsed exhausted on the floor, from where Fermín had to lift him and take him back to the bed.
‘Is old Cockroach succumbing, Fermín?’ asked Number 17 every time he heard him slump to the floor.
Fermín no longer bothered giving medical updates on his cellmate. If it happened, they’d soon see the canvas sack passing by.
‘Look here, Salgado, if you’re going to die, do so once and for all, and if you plan to live, I beg you to do it silently because I’m fed up to the back teeth with your foaming-at-the-mouth recitals,’ Fermín told him, tucking him up with a piece of dirty canvas. In Bebo’s absence, he’d managed to obtain it from one of the jailers after winning him over with a foolproof strategy for seducing young girls – by overcoming their resistance with carefully measured doses of whipped cream and sponge fingers.
‘Don’t give me that charitable crap. I know what you’re up to. You’re no better than this pack of vultures willing to bet their underpants that I’m going to croak,’ Salgado replied. He seemed ready to keep up his foul mood to the very end.
‘I’m not one to argue with a man in his death throes but I’m letting you know that I haven’t bet a single real in this gambling den, and if I ever wanted to give myself over to vice it wouldn’t be betting on the life of a human being. Although you’re as much a human being as I’m a glow-worm,’ Fermín pronounced.
‘Don’t think for a minute that all that talk of yours is going to distract me,’ Salgado snapped back maliciously. ‘I know perfectly well what you and your bosom friend Martín are plotting with all that Count of Monte Cristo business.’