Outlaws (7 page)

‘The General looked at Zarco with distrust, but soon followed him, just as Tere, Guille and I did; then his wife followed. For quite a long time the General was examining the stuff, crouched down, with his wife standing beside him: he’d pick something up, describe it, list its defects (many, according to him) and virtues (according to him, few) and then he’d move on to the next. As I watched the scene I understood that the General was listing and describing more for his wife than for himself, and for a moment I thought his wife had trouble with her eyesight or that she was actually blind. When they finished the inventory and valuation, the General and his wife moved a few steps away, exchanged a few inaudible words and soon the man returned, crouched down again beside the Telefunken television set, passed his hand over the screen as if he wanted to get the dust off it, pressed the on-off button a couple of times to no effect and asked: How much do you want? Double, answered Zarco without a thought. Double what?, asked the General. Double what you paid those dupes, answered Zarco. This time it was the General who smiled. Then he placed his hands on his knees, stood up with a groan and looked his wife in the eye; his wife didn’t look at him; she was staring beyond the fences of the yard, as if something in the sky had caught her attention. The General looked at the empty sky and then looked back at Zarco. I’ll give you sixteen thousand, he said. Zarco pretended to think it over for a moment before turning to me. Hey, Gafitas, he said. You’ve been to school: is sixteen thousand double fourteen thousand? I shook my head slightly and Zarco turned back to the General and copied my gesture. You’re crazy, said the General without the smile leaving his face. I’m making you a good offer. It doesn’t seem that good to me, said Zarco. Nobody’s going to pay what you’re asking, insisted the General. We’ll see about that, replied Zarco. He immediately signalled to Guille and the two of them picked up the television while I carried the record player and Tere the speakers, but we hadn’t even started walking when we saw that the General’s wife was waiting for us at the door to the house, as if she wanted to say goodbye or rather as if she wanted to prevent us from leaving. Twenty thousand, the General said then. Carrying the television, Zarco looked at him, looked at his wife, looked at me and asked: Is twenty thousand double fourteen thousand? Before I could answer, the General said: Twenty-three thousand. It’s my final offer. Then Zarco gestured to Guille that they should put the television down and, once they’d done so, went over to the General, held out his hand and said: Twenty-five thousand and there’s no more to be said.

‘Nothing more was said: the General reluctantly accepted the deal and paid us the twenty-five thousand pesetas in thousand-peso notes.’

‘Zarco twisted his arm.’

‘That’s what it seemed like, that’s what I thought that day, but I don’t believe it: what we’d stolen was surely worth a lot more than that; otherwise the General wouldn’t have paid what he paid. He was smart, and his wife was even smarter. They always seemed to give ground, but they never actually did, or at least they never lost out; when I think about it, the very opposite happened to Zarco, and not only with the General and his wife: although he sometimes seemed to win, he always ended up losing. Of course it took me a long time to understand that. The first time I saw him, at the Vilaró arcade, Zarco seemed to me like one of those unpredictable, violent, tough guys who inspire fear because they feel no fear, exactly the opposite of what I was or how I felt then: I felt like a born loser, so he could only be a born winner, a guy who was going to conquer the world; that’s what I think Zarco was to me, and maybe not just for that summer. As I said, it took me a long time to figure out that he was actually a born loser, and when I did figure it out it was too late and the world had already conquered him . . . Anyway. I just remembered a story. It doesn’t have to do directly with Zarco, but indirectly it does. Or at least I feel it has to do with him.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Tere told the story, I don’t remember when or where. In any case it was one of many I heard about the prefabs, something they talked a lot about in Zarco’s gang, as if they were all really proud of having lived there or as if having lived there was the only thing that really united them. It had happened some eight years earlier, before Zarco lived in the prefabs but when the rest of them did, and so, some more and some less, they all remembered it or had heard it told. The story had started the day a man caught his wife in bed with the next-door neighbour; according to Tere’s version, the man was a good man, but the neighbour was an awful brute who’d been making his life impossible for years. And so, when the good man saw that his wife was cheating on him, and who she was cheating with, he freaked out and ended up setting fire to the place next door. The problem was that this happened in the wooden prefabs (housing that, as Tere pointed out, no longer existed), and the flames spread very quickly and the fire ended up devouring thirty-two homes. It was a dramatic story, which had apparently caused the worst disaster in the whole history of the prefabs, but Tere told it as if it were a comical story or we’d all smoked so much hash and drunk so many beers and popped so many pills that we listened to it as if it were a comical story, laughing till tears were streaming down our faces, interrupting her constantly. Anyway, what I remember most clearly isn’t the story itself but what happened after Tere finished telling it. I asked how it had ended for the two protagonists. That’s the best part of the story, interrupted Guille, who never let an opportunity for sarcasm pass him by. In the end the bastard got off and the cheated-on husband owned up. Poor sucker got at least a couple of years in the can. We all laughed again, even harder. It’s what always happens, man, Gordo philosophized, suddenly serious, patting his lacquered shoulder-length hair. The good guys lose and the bad guys win. Don’t be a wanker, Gordo, Zarco leapt in. That’s what happens when the good guys are dickheads and the bad guys are smart. Oh man, Tío then burst in, with an innocence that for a moment I interpreted as a form of irony. Don’t fucking tell me that now you want to be a good guy? Zarco seemed doubtful, seemed to think over his reply or to realize all of a sudden that we were all waiting for his reply and had stopped laughing. Of course, don’t you?, he finally said. But I’d rather be a bad guy than a dickhead. A wave of laughter met Zarco’s reply. And that’s where we left it.’

‘Are you telling me that, as well as a born winner, during that summer you saw Zarco as a good guy turned by circumstances into an arsonist?’

‘No. I’ve just told you a small story that forms part of a larger story; take it however you like, but not before I finish telling the whole story. Remember: facts, not explanations; ask me to tell you things, not interpret them.’

‘OK. Tell me then. You said that the General gave you twenty-five thousand pesetas for what you’d stolen in La Montgoda. That was quite a lot of money back then. What did you do with it?’

‘We spent it immediately. That’s what we always did. Money burned holes in our pockets: one afternoon we’d have twenty-five, thirty, forty thousand pesetas, and the next morning we’d have nothing left. That was normal for us. Of course we all spent the money and not just the ones who’d participated in the theft.’

‘When you say all you mean the whole gang?’

‘Yeah.’

‘That was the norm? Everything they stole got divvied up in equal portions?’

‘More or less. Sometimes we shared out what we earned and other times it went into a sort of kitty. But the money was everybody’s and we spent it between all of us.’

‘What did you spend it on?’

‘Drink, food and smokes. And drugs, naturally.’

‘What drugs did you use?’

‘Hash. Pills too: uppers, downers, stuff like that. Sometimes mescaline. But not cocaine.’

‘Did any of you use heroin?’

‘No. Heroin came in later, same with coke. I don’t remember anyone doing heroin back then in the district.’

‘Not even Zarco?’

‘Not even Zarco.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Totally. The thing about him being addicted to heroin from the age of thirteen or fourteen is a lie. A legend like so many that circulate about him.’

‘Tell me how you got hold of the drugs.’

‘It wasn’t as easy as you might think. During the spring Zarco and the rest of them had been supplied by a couple of dealers who were regulars at La Font, but a little while before I joined the gang the police had made two or three raids and cleaned the dealers out of the district, so, when I showed up, they were in jail or had scarpered. That explains why Zarco and Tere were at the Vilaró arcade when we met; as Tere told me, the guy in the Fred Perry shirt was a dealer: he’d told them to meet him there. And it also explains why we had to go outside the district all summer to sort ourselves out. Luckily the Fred Perry dealer didn’t arrange to meet Zarco at the arcade again (he must have sensibly realized it was not a suitable place for his business dealings); they met in bars in the old quarter: in the Pub Groc, in L’Enderroc, in Freaks. Later, towards the middle of July or the beginning of August, the Fred Perry dealer disappeared and we started frequenting the Flor, a bar with big windows that overlooked Mayor Street in Salt; we had several dealers there from the middle of July or the beginning of August until the middle of September: some guy called Dani, a Rodri, a Gómez, maybe another one or two.’

‘Did they never suggest becoming dealers? It would have solved the supply problem.’

‘But it would have created much worse problems. No. It was never suggested. Not as far as I know.’

‘Everybody took everything?’

‘Yeah. Some were greedier than others, but in general, yeah: we all took everything. Maybe the girls were more sensible, including Tere, but not the rest of them.’

‘You took everything too?’

‘Of course. I wouldn’t have fitted into the gang if I hadn’t. Supposing I eventually did fit in, that is.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘I tried to. Sometimes I think I managed it, but other times I think not; depends on what you understand by fitting in, I suppose. It’s true that, as I’ve told you, after a certain point I went to La Font almost every day, hung out with them and did more or less whatever they were doing. But it’s also true that I never felt entirely like just one more member of the gang: I was and wasn’t, I did and didn’t, I was inside and out, like a witness or onlooker who participated in everything but most of all watched everyone participate. That’s how I think I felt deep down, and I think that’s how they felt about me; the proof is that, aside from Zarco and Tere (and only on exceptional occasions), I barely spoke to anyone on my own, and I wasn’t close to any of them. For all of them I was what I obviously was: a meteorite, a disorientated kid, a posh brat lost among them, the top dog’s protégé, their leader’s whim, someone who didn’t have much to do with them, although they accepted him and could fraternize with him once in a while.

‘But, to get back to the facts, yes, I took everything. At first I had a hard time keeping up with the rest of them, and I had a few bad days, but I soon got used to it.’

‘What other things did you have to do to fit in?’

‘Lots. But, please, don’t misinterpret: I didn’t take drugs to be accepted; I took them because I liked it. Let’s say I started off doing it out of some sort of obligation, or curiosity, and ended up doing it for pleasure, or habit.’

‘Like what happened with the robberies, no?’

‘In a certain sense. With other things.’

‘For example?’

‘For example with hookers.’

‘You went to hookers.’

‘Of course. In the district there was a brothel every couple of steps and we were sixteen, seventeen years old, walking around with a permanent overdose of testosterone, we had money; how could we not go to hookers? Actually, I think we spent most of our money on hookers. Although, to be perfectly honest, it was much harder for me to get used to the hookers than the drugs; I got much more hooked on drugs than hookers. I did like some hookers, but the truth is, especially at first, most of them gave me the creeps. I can tell you about my first visit to a brothel; I remember that night very clearly because something strange happened.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It was at La Vedette, a brothel that was where most of the red-light district brothels were, on Pou Rodó, parallel to La Barca. It was the most expensive place in the neighbourhood, and also the best, though it was still a filthy, dark cave; imagine what the rest were like. It was run by a madam who was also called Vedette, a woman in her fifties with a reputation for ruling her business with unceremonious authority. That day the place was only half full, there wouldn’t have been more than ten or twelve men leaning on the bar or against the walls, drinking or breathing in the atmosphere saturated with smoke, cheap perfume and the smell of sweat, sex and alcohol. The girls swarmed around them, wearing very tight clothes and with faces caked in make-up, and a full-volume rumba shut down the conversations. It must have been right after the robbery in La Montgoda, or at least right after one of the first jobs I was involved in, among other reasons because after a job was when we could afford the luxury of going to La Vedette. The thing is that a few minutes after we got there all my friends had paired off and disappeared, and I suddenly found myself alone at the bar, after several girls had given up on me when they understood I didn’t have the slightest intention of bedding them. At that moment Vedette strolled calmly over from the other side of the room. Hello, handsome, she said. Don’t you like any of my girls? Vedette had bleached blonde hair, big breasts, big bones and hard features, and her powerful proximity was more intimidating than that of her charges, but for that very reason I found it easy to lie. Of course I like them, I answered. Vedette spilled her cleavage over the bar and asked: Well then? I smiled and put my empty beer glass to my lips and averted my gaze as I searched for a reply. Don’t tell me it’s your first time?, she asked. Before I could tell her another lie, the woman let out a terrifying cackle; terrifying until I realized that nobody in the place had heard it. Little angel, she said, exhaling her mentholated breath in my face. If I wasn’t retired I’d deflower you myself. She let me go and added: But if you want I’ll introduce you to the girl you need. She pointed to a place in the shadows. It’s her over there, she continued. Do you want me to call her? Go on, don’t be silly, you’ll see how much you like it. I didn’t see who Vedette was pointing at, but it didn’t matter: the mere idea of shutting myself up in a dark room with one of those big painted women was so revolting that it killed the slightest twinge of desire. Vedette must have sensed this (or maybe I shook my head), because she sighed, defeated, and asked, pointing at my beer: Do you want another?