The Barcelona Brothers (27 page)

“Any news about backup?”

“A squad car’s on the way. They’ve already left. They’ll be however long it takes to get from here to there.”

Pep gestures to the locksmith, indicating that he shouldn’t go so fast, but the job’s almost finished. With great difficulty, he holds the door in place to keep it from falling off its hinges. Alex is going to make one more try, maybe his last.

The silence snaps like a bone. Tiffany screams, calling out for help. Pep thinks about his mother, about his boyfriend, about the dinner he’s been invited to this very night. A silly melody runs through his head, adding a soundtrack to his excited state, caused in equal parts by fear and by the necessity to act. Allawi retreats farther when the locksmith backs away from the door, aware that the last hinge is liable to give way any second now. Pep pushes Alex against the railing, takes his
pistol out of his holster, and tenses his entire body. Alex stares at the officer’s prominent jaw and intense eyes, which are fixed on the door that’s about to come down. Jamelia screams her sister’s name, and the sound of her voice enters from the street, passes through the front door, and climbs the stairs.

Alex knows he’s failed. As has happened so many other times, he’s seeing the whole thing from outside. He hasn’t been able to get his brother out of that apartment. He’s been three steps behind ever since the early morning, in Salva’s bar. He could have stopped Epi at that moment, and he didn’t do it. He could have been shrewder about figuring out Epi’s hiding place. He could have hesitated less, during a shorter period of time. He could have done more for Epi. He could have listened to him more and not humiliated him so much by pointing out everything he did badly or did at the wrong time or simply didn’t manage to do. He could have gone after Papa when he went away. He could have stayed with his mother when she became ugly and dirty, when she was dying.

His head fills up with images. Of the two of them going with their father to buy picture cards in the Mercat de Sant Antoni, or that time at school when Epi got his face split open while defending Alex, or that other time when he didn’t and remained hidden in the darkened classroom, waiting for the fight to be over. He remembers the promises he made to his mother regarding his little brother, and he remembers her, young and pretty, coming to pick them up at school or drying their hair with a pink towel that smelled like soap. He remembers laughing fit to die at the movies the four of them would
see together on Saturday nights. The one about the bumbling police detective, and the one about the mountain lion that escapes and no one can find. When Alex learned to ride a bicycle, Epi and the other kids from the street, who were theoretically holding him upright on the saddle, ran ahead and showed him their hands in an uncontrollable expression of joy. That same day, his parents hung wallpaper on the walls of their home. Alex remembers long rolls of paper on the dining room table, cans of glue, thick brushes that seemed to click their tongues every time they were applied to the back of the wallpaper.

What can he do with all that? Here he’s got a guy with a pistol, and in there he’s got his brother and Tiffany, alive or dead, he doesn’t know, not in either case. He can try to stop the policeman and go in first himself. He can do that. Or at least try. He sees the locksmith give the policeman an unequivocal nod, move away from the door, and go down three or four stairs, obliging Allawi to go down a few more himself.

A good push is all the door needs to make it fall. And at this point, Alex decides to be a man of action and, though many years too late, confront Helio. More clumsily than adroitly, he shoves Pep against the wall and slams into the door, breaking its remaining hinge and precipitating everything, as the valiant Hector—the best of men, according to his father—would have done, had he been there when it all came down.

A FEW MINUTES BEFORE ALEX’S SURGE THROUGH THE
door, Epi crossed the room in Tiffany’s direction. As he did so, she thought without much conviction that he was going to escort her out of the apartment. But she also feared that he was coming toward her with the single objective of killing her, of ending it all. Epi wasn’t carrying anything in his hands, so if he wanted to take her life, he was going to have to strangle her. She tried to read something in Epi’s face, but in vain. He avoided her eyes. Obviously, he was playing with her. He’d kept her standing there, fulfilling her part of the deal, and now he was making it clear to her that it hadn’t sufficed, that the performance had bored him.

Epi was drunk with the power bestowed on him by his conviction that he’d become unpredictable and intimidating. It can’t be said that he was following a preconceived plan, because he’d always been very bad at that sort of thing. It had
simply, suddenly happened. Like a flash, as though inspired, he knew what to do next. Everything, except for that, remained in darkness. Persons, objects, words. It was like one of the games on his computer. You found the object that allowed you to open the door, ascend to a higher level, trigger mass destruction all around you.

A few seconds earlier, he’d understood how the huge ruckus he’d caused ought to end. He couldn’t bring the most important day of his life to a close by simply offering a few apologies. Or by opening the door and letting Alex and everyone else fix the mess in their way. No, this day had to end with something that would galvanize its memory forever and project an image many, many years into the future. He was going to renounce life, having children, making money. And in return, the world should miss him. Afterward, if it wanted to, the universe could begin again, reset the pieces, adapt to the new order of things, but from now on, nothing would be the same in the lives of those who knew him.

It was so bizarre for such an object—a practically new climbing rope—to be there, in that apartment, that it absolutely had to mean something.

As Epi walks back and forth, Tiffany watches in terror.
He’s got some idea in his head, that’s for sure
, she thinks. When he passes close to her, he keeps his eyes averted. The girl gets up to go and hide in the bedroom. Epi doesn’t stop her. She figures that if she disappears from his immediate field of vision, maybe he’ll forget about her. But barely a few seconds later, he enters the bedroom behind her. He’s holding that climbing
rope in his hands. Tiffany looks into his eyes again. This time they meet hers. They’re not black holes. They don’t say anything bad. To her surprise, Epi throws her one end of the rope. It lands on the bed beside her.

“Come and help me.”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“Tie the rope around the feet of the wardrobe. Come on, hurry up.”

Tiffany senses that Epi’s plan is to let himself down from one of the windows. The relief of knowing she’s not going to be a murder victim activates her. She picks up the end of the rope and tries to help him, but not very competently. Nevertheless, the two of them pass the rope around the wardrobe’s four wooden feet, and Epi ties a triple knot.

“Are we going to escape, Epi? Is that what we’re going to do?”

He doesn’t answer. He could, but today he’s discovered, among other things, that thoughts and desires, as well as dreams, are stillborn as soon as they’re formed in words. He prefers to keep Tiffany’s attention fixed on each and every one of his movements, like a rare and precious possession to take along to the next world. He leaves the bedroom, intent on performing his new chores. He moves quickly and efficiently. His first thought is to open the window, but when he sees the cop keeping watch in the street, he decides to invert the order of his actions. Back in the bedroom, he knots the end of the rope around his neck, the closest thing to a tie he’ll ever wear in his life. He looks at Tiffany, and although he no longer knows
what it is that he feels for her, he figures he ought to tell her good-bye.

“You can leave after I jump.”

In a certain way, Epi expects something from Tiffany. Some words, some final gift. Something he can take with him. And the girl’s tempted to cooperate. What he said has surprised her. Her first impulse is to dissuade him, but something stops her. The wish that he’d kill himself is immediately stronger than any desire she may have to find another solution for this impasse. Let him jump and break his neck; nothing but good can come of it. Tiffany’s silence irritates Epi more and more with each passing second. There she is, standing in a corner, her face soiled with tears and sweat, dust and panic, far, very far from the panther that paraded her elegant silhouette through the streets and bars of the barrio, and far from the naked body Epi used to imagine as a big jar filled with warm oil, with perfume, with future children, with never-ending, never-cloying pleasure. Now she’s ridiculous, with the elastic clothes she wears to please men badly wrinkled and covered with stains.
When we’re afraid
, Epi thinks,
we all look pretty much the same
.

“You’re still afraid, aren’t you?”

She doesn’t say anything. She limits herself to gazing at him steadily and sternly. She’s getting used to the idea that she’s facing a man condemned to death. Tiffany visualizes the moment when he’ll jump through the window and the rope will tauten, when he’ll drop down the front of the building and his neck will break like a rotten branch. He’ll get a hard-on,
too.
At least, that’s what the urban legend says
, the girl thinks. The whole barrio will see, raised in homage to the woman for whose sake he killed another and then himself, his erect dick, like a proud banner of unrequited love. The war will have ended. He’ll have lost it, and his carcass will provide her with food and drink and make her stronger than she’s ever been until now.

“If you’d only been true to me, just a little true …”

“You don’t understand.”

“I sure don’t, Tiffany. I’m going without understanding a thing. That may be why I’m killing myself. Because I don’t want to know if you loved me or not. Or if you were fooling me the entire time. I’m going so I won’t know the truth.”

Epi doesn’t notice his tears, which well up and course down his cheeks. Tiffany looks at him and finds his crying contagious without knowing the reason why. It’s not compassion. It’s not sorrow. Her tears aren’t for Tanveer, and not for Epi, either. Maybe they’re for herself.

Maybe they’re for nothing. Weeping for the sake of weeping. Falling in with the mood of the company. Tears like big drops of paint. Like tears in animated cartoons. Epi interprets them as signs of love. And because of them, if the girl asks him not to jump, he won’t. He’s already demonstrated that he’s a man, that he’s capable of anything. But she remains silent.

“I’ll be the last thing you think of tonight before you fall asleep … Do you remember telling me that?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you’ll have other guys after I’m gone …”

“No, no …”

“Yes, yes, don’t lie, not now … It doesn’t matter anymore, but when you’re with them, ask them what they’d be capable of doing for you … How much does a person have to love someone to do all this? To kill for you, to kill himself for you. Who’s going to love you more than me?”

“Nobody, nobody … I …”

“You … what?”

It’s true. Nobody will ever love her so much. This certainty suddenly causes her to become again the cruel, all-trumping queen; all at once, she has recovered her power. She’ll do the deciding.

“Epi, you’re not going to do it, and you know it.”

He recognizes the change. Her words are strong again, and they weaken him. He should have kept his mouth shut. He shouldn’t have tried to extract a final caress, a last assurance from her. Tiffany doesn’t look scared anymore. She’s picked up the leash and she’s rubbing his nose in his shit. What an idiot. He let her do it to him again.

“You won’t do it because you don’t want to do it. Because you’ve never even thought about killing yourself. You just wanted to scare me, didn’t you? Scaring a woman and a child. Quite an accomplishment. All right, that’s done. Big fucking deal, and you’re a real man. Now you can go back home, Epito.”

Tiffany’s words and their fearlessness surprise them both. Epi knows he must regain the initiative as quickly as possible and—if there’s still time—snatch the power back from the woman’s hands. What he wouldn’t give to have kept the gym
bag. He could slip his hand into it and feel the wooden handle. He could pull the hammer out and wave it in front of this little bitch’s eyes and turn her back into a frightened child.

He clenches his fist as though he’s clutching the hammer. He pretends to feel its weight, its consistency. He goes at the girl with his face contorted, his arm raised, and violence in each of his gestures and sounds. Tiffany screams. She screams with all her strength, simultaneously crouching down and covering her head with her hands. One of the wardrobe doors opens, and Epi sees his reflection in the mirror inside the door. His image is sharp and clear: he doesn’t have to die yet. Whatever he may do, he won’t die. He’ll close his eyes and slice off Medusa’s head. He’ll put Pandora back in her goddamned box. He’ll tear out Tiffany’s heart and eat it.

He deals a furious blow to the wardrobe door, which rebounds and strikes him in the back. He feels ridiculous. How did he do it this morning? Fast, that’s how. His tensed arm had only to attack that head with force, and his own hurt would disappear. His pain would be over; his wound would stop bleeding. Or so he thought. But maybe the evidence indicates things won’t turn out that way. Maybe ghosts stick around more stubbornly than the living themselves. Departed fathers, the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, of Daniel in the lions’ den, of the lepers’ cave where Job sat down—all these are much more real than a constantly ill mother who died one day, or friends who grow up and get married and go away, or brothers you can’t find a moment’s time to tell why you love or loathe them. Perhaps it was only his hatred for Tanveer that
sustained him in the hope of a better life, whereas now, in reality, the mortal blow has only brought him to a different, sadder place. He no longer has enough faith in this enormous planet to fill his guts, his breast, his brain and persuade him to go on. Epi lowers his arm and opens his hand, and the imaginary hammer he was holding in that hand disappears when he opens it, like part of some macabre magic trick.