But sexual relief didn’t relieve the heat: his body and brain burned, and he understood all had been in vain: there was only one remedy against that specific heat and that was a real woman, not one made from memories, scents recalled, or glossy paper, but a tangible female, able to smash the desperate abandon burning him cell by cell, without recourse to more or less individualist soothing, remedies or dilatory techniques.
Then from his bed he spotted Rufino, the new fighting fish who lived in his goldfish bowl. He’d been his companion for some ten days, ever since he’d gone hunting for a replacement for the old Rufino, who’d greeted the day face up, fins awry, as if searching for a non-existent wind in the pallid deep purple of the death of a fighting fish. Now young Rufino had stopped, as if exhausted by the effort of swimming in a sea of lava; the Count could almost see the drops of sweat as his eyes stared at the glass and he barely moved his tiny fighting piscatorial entrails: then he entered a slow descent, without a struggle, without fluttering a fin, as if defeated definitively, and the Count assumed that descent as his own, a bitter mirror, the reflection of a free fall from which he didn’t want or couldn’t escape, like the much heralded decline of the West or the now inevitable collapse of a flaccid, empty penis. Suicidal inclinations?
The Count lit a cigarette and embarked on another slow, pleasant suicide.
“But what the fuck can it be now!” he said, about to go back into the shower, when the telephone rang.
“It’s me, Conde.”
“Wait a minute, Conde, just a minute, don’t go chasing off. No, I really needed to speak to you in the street, you and me and no bother. And a cigarette for me too while you’re about it. Wait… Look, I don’t know what more they want to find out about you, because they know everything and know nothing, and I reckon they’re throwing stones at all the dummies to see if they get a hit. I’m not kidding, Conde, just listen, man. Fuck, it’s much hotter than yesterday, isn’t it? They wanted chapter and verse on you, on me as well, just so you know, but they’d already got all the answers, you bet they had. It’s incredible, man: they even know how many cigarettes we smoke a day, but I’m not daft and could see they didn’t really have anything to go on. There’s a reason why I’m police, I suppose? They wanted to find out what kind of relationship you have with the Boss, if you were friends or not, the whole of Headquarters knows that, whether I thought the Boss favoured you and if he’d ever covered up for you, that kind of thing. They went on and on, and I don’t know whether it was because of you or Major Rangel. What do you reckon? They’re already investigating him, that you know… Then they asked me if your fight with Lieutenant Fabricio was related to work or personal gripes, what we think about the investigations they’re carrying out, whether I thought you were an alcoholic, why you lived by yourself, just incredible. They also asked me about your informers, and even mentioned Candito’s name, whether you gave him protection so you could do clandestine business and such like, as if nobody did that, huh? And, listen to this, they knew you’d had a relationship with Tamara when you were on her husband’s case. Who did you tell that to, Conde? Well, they know about it, and that you didn’t see each other again afterwards, they know that too. And a thousand stupid little things as well, though nothing important: they asked me why you like going into churches, why you tell people you’d like to live in a house near the sea, if you still think about being a writer and the kind of things you like writing. Well, I just told them you liked writing things that were squalid and moving and so I got them off that kick. But, man, they know everything, you know? The worst fucking thing, Conde, is you suddenly feel like you’re living in a glass bowl, or a test-tube, I don’t know, that they watch you shitting, pissing and picking your nose, and know if you make little balls to throw or stick under a table. That scared me: they’ve got us down to a T, know everything we do and everything we don’t, and are interested in everything. I’m probably peabrained, but I didn’t imagine it was like that. It really makes you scared, Conde, really. No, there were three of them, I don’t know them, a captain and two lieutenants, they said, but they were in field dress and weren’t wearing stripes. In a second-floor office, next to the meeting room. They told me to come in, poured me coffee, and it was all very relaxed, a conversation between friends, inquisitive friends who wanted to find out every silly little thing. And they are vicious when it comes to questioning, you should see how cleverly they take you down a side alley, only to lead you back where they want you, but all as if they were quite uninterested, but I beat them at their own game: first because I know their ploys off by heart and I’m like a doughty lion, as you say, and second I don’t the fuck know what can be of interest to them. Yes, they say it’s necessary work, they’ve uncovered lots of irregularities, lax discipline, rule-breaking, which can’t be allowed, so they’ve been ordered to come and investigate everyone and anyone who’s done wrong will have to assume responsibility. And I can tell you one thing, Conde: they really don’t have anything against you or me, but they’ve got their knives out, doesn’t matter who, so tread carefully the next few days, the heat’s on. If you don’t believe me, well, you know who they told me they’d taken out of Headquarters today? Fatman Contreras… No, they didn’t tell me why and I didn’t stay around to find out, I don’t want to get burnt myself just for the fun of it, like some shit-brain, but if they took him out, it’s because they’ve got something on him, you can bet your butt on it, Conde, you bet they’ve got things on him … Poor Fatman, right?”
“It was Afon,” Pancho and Rabbit almost whispered, when he saw that the two cans of condensed milk he was keeping as his big treat for a cold, hungry night had gone missing. A vicious anger spread over his face, hammered his temples, dried his throat out, but he thought twice before reaching a decision: I’ve got no choice but to get angry. If I let this go, they’ll end up taking the pants off me, and I’m man enough, for fuck’s sake, he thought, then he thought again how he’d lose this argument, black Afon and his weightlifting biceps would skin him alive, and it didn’t make sense to be robbed, and end up split-lipped and black-eyed in front of a disciplinary tribunal, but in that jungle the laws were clearly written on backs of tigers, and the first law admonished that men are men, morning, afternoon and night, and the second said, “Better be dead than humiliated”, and if your food was stolen, and you knew who the thief was and decided to keep quiet rather than complain as you must in such cases (fists first), you took the first step on the road to total ignominy: if today they lifted food from your suitcase, tomorrow it would be your money and three days later you’d be washing the dishes for three or four fellows or, like Bertino, making beds for half the dormitory and saying he’d let them stick their fingers up his arse because they did it for fun and he didn’t have any complexes. Launched into compulsory communal life, cut off from paternal protection and having to defend their own lives and security, students in those camps were forced to protect themselves and show their primary instincts. It was a constant struggle for food, water, the best bed, a clean bath and the easiest work in a round of competition which soon gave way to aggression you could only meet with more of the same. A shout for a shout, a theft for a theft, a blow for a blow, was the third fundamental law of this cruel chemistry, without any scope for relativity. He slammed shut the wooden lid on his violated suitcase, and went out into the yard where Afon was peacefully playing volleyball, his weightlifting arms making some unstoppable hits.
The Count entered the playing area, grabbed the ball that flew by him and, carrying it under his arm, to protests from all the players, walked towards Afon, thinking, my voice mustn’t fail me, for fuck’s sake, and his voice didn’t fail him when he said: “I want my two cans of milk.” Then the players shut up and got ready to watch the spectacle in the making. Afon looked at the spectators and smiled at his fawning public, confidently and scarily. And he rasped: “What the fuck’s got into you, kid?” “You stole my cans of milk, you pansy,” the Count shouted and thought – he always thought everything through – he shouldn’t say anything else and threw the ball straight at black Afon’s mouth and, without thinking, he now threw himself after the ball, at the thief’s shocked face. He managed to strike him twice, on the neck, until one of Afon’s fists connected with one of his cheeks and knocked him to the ground, for what ought to have been the beginning of the end, when a voice called out from the sideline: “Afon, let the kid be and give him his condensed milk…” But, driven by the rage in his blood after receiving the hit to the face, the Count got up and returned to the attack, not thinking of anything or anybody, until four or five players managed to extract him from Afon’s lethal arm-lock, as the voice of Red Candito, hands on waist opposite the thief, said again: “Afon, you will give him his condensed milk back, won’t you?” “Afon was going to kill you, Conde,” Candito laughed, and finished his cup of coffee.