Outlaws (41 page)

‘Sometimes, not many times, Tere and I would meet on our own. For this I would have to invent some important matter to do with Zarco, which was not at all easy. I remember one Saturday I’d met her at midday in a bar in the Sant Agustí Plaza and, after we finished our coffee and dealt with my bullshit, I accompanied her to the farmers’ market they have every weekend on the boardwalk between La Devesa and the banks of the Ter; and I remember while Tere was doing her shopping I thought I might lay a trap for her and suggest crossing the river over to the ground where years before the prefabs had stood. Have you ever been back?, I asked. No, she said. It doesn’t look anything like it used to, I told her, and then went on to describe the immaculate park of freshly mown lawns, with brand-new wooden benches and swings and slides that had replaced the lines of miserable barrack huts crisscrossed by streams of pestilential water swarming with flies where she had lived, until I noticed she was looking at me strangely. And if it doesn’t look anything like it used to what do I want to see it for?, she asked curtly. That’s how Tere was then: invulnerable to the lures of nostalgia, reluctant to talk more than necessary about the past we shared. Even so, one of those Saturdays we met to talk about Zarco she suggested a café in Santa Eugènia, and when I got there I found her with a large woman who greeted me with a big kiss. Don’t you know who I am?, she asked. I had trouble recognizing her: it was Lina. She was still just as blonde as she had been in La Font days, but she’d put on twenty-five or thirty kilos, looked very much worse for wear and shouted when she talked. She didn’t say a word about Gordo, but told me she’d married a Gambian, that she lived in Salt too, that she worked in a hair salon and had three kids. It was an odd encounter. Tere and Lina had never completely lost touch although it had been a while since they’d seen each other, and at some point Lina started talking about Tío, who apart from us was the only member of Zarco’s gang still alive: it seems she’d bumped into him by chance not long before, at the Trueta hospital, and she told us he was getting around in his wheelchair and she’d been really happy to see him (and him to see her); finally she suggested the three of us go visit him in Germans Sàbat, where he still lived with his mother. Tere and I agreed to her suggestion, and we arranged to meet the following week at the same time and in the same place to go together to Tío’s house. But the following Saturday I didn’t show up to meet them; days later I found out that Tere hadn’t shown up either.

‘More or less around the middle of October I stopped seeing Tere and Jordi, not for any reason; Tere simply stopped calling me and I was starting to get the impression that, after the novelty of the first few months, my company was starting to be annoying and they’d rather be alone. The fact is I didn’t see Tere again for almost three months. This time it was by chance. That afternoon I’d gone to La Bisbal to visit a client, at dusk I was returning to Gerona and as I drove into the city by Pont Major I recognized Tere in a group of women and children waiting for a bus at the stop closest to the prison, sheltering from the cold under a little roof. It was Sunday, the last Sunday of the year. I stopped the car, waved to Tere, offered to give her a lift home. Tere accepted, got in beside me and, as soon as we pulled away from the bus stop, told me that Zarco was in very bad shape, that both Friday and Saturday he’d had a fever and that morning they’d diagnosed him with pneumonia. A bit surprised, I said I’d seen Zarco on Wednesday and he hadn’t said anything and I hadn’t noticed anything either; I asked: Did you see him? Tere said no, but she’d been able to speak to the senior supervisor. They were thinking of taking him to hospital, she said. Which hospital?, I asked. I don’t know, she answered. I took my eyes off Pedret Avenue for a moment and looked at her. Don’t worry, I said. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the superintendent. And I added: I’m sure it’s nothing. The conjecture filled the car like an unavoidable lie as we approached the city, which at that hour, covered in Christmas lights, sparkled in the distance. To dispel the silence I asked after Jordi. Tere told me distractedly that she hadn’t been seeing him for a while; I waited for an explanation, some comment, but neither was forthcoming, and I didn’t want to keep asking.

‘Tere’s house was on the outskirts of Salt, near the overpass and the highway to Bescanó, in a tower block planted in the middle of a dirty site covered with rubble and weeds. I stopped in front of the building and again promised Tere that I’d talk to the prison superintendent the next day; Tere nodded, asked me to please do that and said goodbye, but as she stepped out of the car she seemed to hesitate. Outside the darkness was almost total; the silence too, except for the growl of the traffic coming from the highway. Without turning back towards me, Tere asked: Do you want to come up?

‘It was the first time she’d ever invited me into her home. We went up a stairway with scaly walls lit by fluorescent tubes, and on the way up we crossed paths with two Middle Eastern women with their hair covered by scarves. When we went inside her apartment Tere ushered me into a tiny dining room, turned on the gas heater and offered me tea or camomile tea. I said I’d have camomile. While Tere made the tea I noted the underprivileged order that reigned in the room: there was nothing but a table with two chairs, an imitation-leather armchair, a sideboard, a small CD player, a portable television and the heater; there were also three open doors leading off the dining room: behind one of them was the kitchen where Tere was bustling, behind the other two I glimpsed or imagined a bathroom and bedroom even smaller and icier than the room I was in. Distracted by that inventory of misery, without realizing it I lost the joy I’d felt at the news that Tere had split up with Jordi, and felt overwhelmed with sorrow at Tere’s life in that lonely outlying flat, sorrow at the news about Zarco’s health, sorrow of the season and Sunday night sorrow.

‘That night Tere and I slept together again. First thing the next morning, instead of going to the office, I went to the prison. At the entrance I was told I couldn’t see Zarco because he’d been admitted to the infirmary. Then I tried to see the superintendent and, after being kept waiting for several minutes, went into his office. I asked him straight out how Zarco was doing. By way of reply the superintendent dug a sheet of paper out of the mess of papers on his desk and handed it to me. And what does this mean? I asked, waving the paper around after I read it. It means that, according to the doctor, Gamallo probably won’t come out of this one, the superintendent answered. Can’t they do anything else? I asked. Aren’t they going to take him to hospital? The superintendent made a gesture of indifference or discouragement. If you want we’ll take him, he answered. But the doctor advises against it. Gamallo isn’t well enough to be moved, and we’re taking good care of him here. Can I go in and see him?, I asked, handing him back the paper. I’m sorry, said the superintendent. No visitors are allowed in the infirmary. But I repeat you shouldn’t worry. Gamallo is well attended. Besides, you know doctors: they always say things are worse than they are. Who knows if this one might not be wrong.

‘When I left the prison I called Tere and told her what the superintendent had told me, but she made no comment.

‘The three days that followed were very strange; in fact, I remember them as the happiest days of my life, and at the same time the most melancholy. Tere and I were barely apart. She had a week of holidays, and I took the time off. First I suggested we go away somewhere, but she wouldn’t; then I suggested she come and stay at my place, but she wouldn’t agree to that either; finally it was me who ended up going to stay at her place, arriving with a bag full of clothes and another full of part of my collection of CDs of ’70s and ’80s music. It was like a honeymoon. We didn’t leave home except to eat at L’Espelma, a restaurant in Salt, and we spent morning, noon and night in bed, listening to my CDs, watching movies on TV and making love without the enthusiasm of the first times, but with a care and tenderness that I’d never known. Like a honeymoon, as I said, except a honeymoon troubled by bad omens: in those happy days I had an intuition more than once of how it was all going to end, and that’s why they were also melancholy days.

‘The fact of the matter is that first thing in the morning on New Year’s Day the prison service supervisor woke me up to tell me that Zarco had died in the early hours. From that moment on confusion takes over from the strangeness in my memory, to such an extent that the following hours and days have the texture of a dream for me, or rather a nightmare. I don’t remember, for example, how I told Tere the news. I don’t remember how she took it, either; I don’t remember the two of us at the prison, taking charge of the body or of Zarco’s things, although I know we went to the prison and took charge of the body and of Zarco’s things, of all the paperwork of the death. The funeral was held on the second day of the year. Inevitably, the newspapers repeated that it was a media event and a manifestation of popular mourning, but my impression is that, for once, the cliché did not entirely betray the reality. Over the last years the country seemed to have forgotten Zarco, or only seemed to remember him every once in a while as a guilty husband and increasingly distant secondary and declining character in the gossip magazines; now, the massive crowd at his funeral demonstrated that it wasn’t the case, that the people had not forgotten him.

‘Zarco’s relatives, friends and acquaintances immediately showed up at the wake. Tons of them showed up. I had never seen a single one of them, I didn’t know if any of them had ever visited him at the prison or had anything to do with him over the last few years; Tere, however, seemed to know them all, at least she treated them as if she knew them. The wake was in Salt, in the Salt chapel of rest. As I said before Tere and I had at first shared responsibility for the formalities and paperwork, but she soon turned into a sort of mistress of ceremonies, I think unintentionally. Shortly after we arrived at the chapel building she introduced me to a relatively young woman, still good-looking, with big blue eyes and big blonde hair, and told me it was her aunt, Zarco’s mother; then she introduced me to other relatives of Zarco’s, including one of his younger brothers (an albino who bore not the slightest physical resemblance to Zarco). I didn’t manage to exchange anything more than the typical expressions of condolence with any of them, I don’t know whether because Tere always introduced me simply as Zarco’s lawyer. Some of them were Gypsies or looked like Gypsies, but none expressed outwardly any signs of pain over Zarco’s death, except for his mother, who sighed every once in a while or cried out for her dead son.

‘By mid-afternoon the chapel was full of busybodies and journalists on the hunt for quotes. I avoided them as best I could. By then I’d already lost my place, I did nothing but wander aimlessly between one big crowd of strangers and another and I had the impression that, rather than helping Tere, I was annoying her. I talked to her and we agreed that it would be best if I left and she stayed with the family. That night I called her, I suggested we have dinner just the two of us. She said she couldn’t, that she was still with people, that she’d be finished late and that I should call her the next day. I called her the next morning, very early; she had her mobile disconnected and, although I tried again and again, it was futile. When I finally managed to get through to her it was almost one. She seemed nervous, she told me she’d argued with someone, maybe with Zarco’s mother, she told me about preparations for the funeral; I asked her where she was, but all she answered was that I shouldn’t worry and we’d see each other that afternoon. Then she hung up. I was worried, and a minute later I called her back. I got an engaged signal.

‘The funeral was held in Vilarroja. There, at four in the afternoon, a huge crowd packed the church and its grounds. I had to make my way through those present, escorted by Cortés and Gubau, who had wanted to come with me. After looking around the church for a while I found Tere in the middle of a circle of mourners. I hugged her. We talked. She seemed to have recovered her serenity, but she also seemed tired, perhaps uncomfortable with the role that had fallen to her or been assigned to her, impatient to get all that over with as soon as possible. When the priest appeared in the vestibule, we separated: Tere sat in the front row, beside Zarco’s mother; I stood at the back near the door. The ceremony was brief. While the priest was speaking I looked around the church and saw Jordi, Tere’s former boyfriend, behind me; I also saw Lina on the end of an aisle, holding onto a wheelchair where, unmistakable, very pale and crying, Tío sprawled, fatter than thirty years earlier but with the same vaguely childlike air he had back then. Once the ceremony was over, the crowd didn’t want to disperse and accompanied the family and the hearse to the cemetery, a few kilometres from the church. It was the most motley funeral cortège: there were mink coats beside rags, bicycles beside Mercedes, elderly people and children, relatives mixed in with journalists, criminals mixed in with cops, Gypsies mixed in with non-Gypsies, people from the neighbourhood, people from the city, people from other cities. I was with my two partners and with Jordi – who was walking his bike and told me he hadn’t been able to say hello to Tere – all of us quite distant from the hearse, back where the cortège was starting to thin out; a cortège that, as people had joined along the way, soon filled the cemetery, which made Cortés, Gubau, Jordi and I decide not to go in but stay by the gate, waiting. That was why we didn’t manage to witness either the burial or an incident that some newspapers picked up the next day and has to do with María Vela, who it seems had attended the burial (although I didn’t see her at the funeral or at the cemetery). Various versions of the incident circulated. The most often repeated claims that, after the ceremony, María had approached Tere, who had returned her greeting; everything would have ended there and there wouldn’t have been any incident had not a photographer caught the scene and had Tere not seen him do so; but the fact is she saw him and asked for the memory card from the camera and, when the photographer refused, she grabbed the camera and smashed it on the ground and stamped on it.