‘We had ended up at Cap de Creus. None of us knew it, of course, but that was where Zarco and I had that conversation I was telling you about. We passed in front of an abandoned hut, climbed up to the headland and I parked the Mehari by the lighthouse, a rectangular building with a tower rising out of it with a cupola of iron and glass, topped by a weathervane. When we stopped we realized that Tere and Gordo had fallen asleep. We didn’t wake them up, and Zarco and I got out of the car and started walking along the esplanade in front of the lighthouse until the esplanade ran out and in front of us was nothing but a precipice that descended to a labyrinth of coves and inlets and, beyond them, a sea that stretched to the horizon, wavy and open and a little bit shadowed already by the beginning of twilight. Both of us stood there, our faces to the wind. Zarco murmured: Fuck, it looks like the end of the world. I didn’t say anything. After a while Zarco turned around, walked away from the cliff, went and sat down against the wall of the lighthouse and started rolling a joint out of the wind. I walked away from the cliff too, sat down beside Zarco, lit the joint when he’d finished rolling it.
‘That’s where the conversation started up. I don’t remember how long it lasted. I remember that when we started talking the sun was starting to set, staining the surface of the sea a pale red, and that on the right a boat appeared on the horizon sailing parallel to the coast, and when we left, the boat was about to disappear on the left of the horizon and the sun had sunk into the now dark water; I also remember how the conversation got started. We’d been sitting there for a while not talking when I asked Zarco what he was thinking of doing when summer was over; I’d asked the question most of all to escape from the uncomfortable silence, and it sounded a little incongruous, a little out of place, so Zarco brushed it off saying he’d do the same as always, and half-heartedly asked what I’d do. As well as half-hearted, my answer was innocuous — I said I’d do the same as always too — but it seemed to arouse Zarco’s curiosity. And what do you mean by that? he asked. That you’re going back to school? It means I’ll do the same as this summer, I answered. I don’t plan to go back to school. Zarco nodded as if he approved of the answer and took a pensive toke. I stopped going to school when I was seven, he said. Well, maybe eight. Doesn’t matter: it was a pain. You don’t like it either? No, I said. I used to like it, but not any more. What happened? asked Zarco. At that moment I hesitated. I told you before that I’d never mentioned Batista in front of Zarco and the rest; now, for a second, I thought I might; the next moment I discarded the idea: I felt that Zarco wouldn’t be able to understand, that telling him about my previous year’s ordeal would be to relive it, relive the humiliation and lose the self-respect I’d gained over the summer and force Zarco to lose respect for me. Then, with a blend of amazement and joy, I thought how, although the ordeal had happened just a couple of months ago, it was now as though it had happened centuries ago. Then I said: Nothing. I just stopped liking it and that was it.
‘Zarco kept smoking. The wind whipped around the lighthouse and blew our hair about and we had to smoke carefully, so a gust wouldn’t blow the end off the joint; in front of us the sky and the sea were an identical, immense blue. And your folks? asked Zarco. What about my folks? I asked. What are your folks going to say if you don’t go back to school? asked Zarco. They can say what they like, I answered. Whatever they say it’s over. I’m not going back. Zarco took another toke, handed me the joint and asked me to tell him about my family; without taking my eyes off the sea and sky and the boat that seemed suspended between the two, I told him about my father, my mother, my sister. Then I asked him the same question (and not just because he’d asked me: I told you before that I’d barely heard him talk about his family). Zarco laughed. I looked at him: like me he had his head leaning back against the lighthouse wall and his hair tangled by the wind; a bit of saliva had dried in the corner of his mouth. What family? he asked. I never knew my father, my stepfather got killed years ago, my brothers are in jail, my mother’s too busy just trying to get by. You call that a family? I didn’t answer. I turned back towards the sea, finishing off the joint, and, when I stubbed it out on the ground, Zarco started rolling another.
‘When he finished rolling it he passed it to me and I lit it. What I don’t understand is what the fuck you’re going to do if you don’t go back to school, said Zarco, picking up the conversation again. The same as you guys. Zarco curled his lip in a way I didn’t know how to interpret, passed me the joint and turned back to look at the sea and the sky, still immense, less and less blue, both turning towards a reddish darkness. Fuck, he said. I took a drag on the joint and asked: What’s up? Nothing, said Zarco. What’s up? I repeated. Can’t I do the same as you guys? Sure, said Zarco. I don’t know if I was satisfied by his answer, but I turned back towards the sea and sky as well and had another toke; after a few seconds, Zarco changed his mind: Actually you can’t, he said. Why not? I asked. Because you’re not like us, he answered. We stared at each other: that was the argument I’d used with him, at the beginning of the summer, to refuse to rob the Vilaró arcade (and then again with Tere to refuse to break into a house in La Montgoda). For a moment I thought Zarco remembered and he was turning the tables on me; then I thought he didn’t remember. I smiled. Don’t tell me you’re going to give me a sermon? I asked. In reply, he just smiled back. We kept quiet. I smoked in silence. And I said: Why aren’t I like you guys? And he said: Because you’re not. And I said: I do the same things you guys do. And he said: Almost the same, yeah. But you’re not like us. And I insisted: Why not? And he explained: Because you go to school and we don’t. Because you have a family and we don’t. Because you’re scared and we’re not. And I asked: You guys aren’t scared? And he answered: Yeah, but we’re not scared the same way you are. You think about the fear, and we don’t. You have things to lose, and we don’t. That’s the difference. I made a sceptical face, but didn’t push it. I smoked. I passed him the joint. For a while we kept staring at the sea and the sky and listening to the howling wind. Zarco took two or three more tokes, put out the joint and then went on: Do you know what happened to Chino the day he went into the Modelo prison? He paused; then said: He was raped. Three sons of bitches gave it to him up the ass. He told his mother and his mother told Tere. Funny, eh? He paused again. Oh, by the way, he added, did I ever tell you the story of Quílez? It happened the first day I was in the nick.
‘I was waiting for him to tell me the story of Quílez when I heard him say: Look at her. I turned around: it was Tere, who’d just come around the corner of the lighthouse and was walking towards us. I conked out, she said when she came up beside us, crouching down. And Gordo? I asked. Out for the count, she answered. Zarco rolled and lit a joint and passed it to Tere, who smoked for a while before passing it to me. Then Tere stood up and walked over to the cliff and stayed there, facing the sea, her hair whipping around like crazy in the wind and her silhouette standing out against a cloudless, darkening sky and choppy, darkening sea. That was the moment Zarco started talking to me about Tere. First he asked if I liked Tere; I pretended he was asking what he wasn’t asking and quickly said of course. Then Zarco said that’s not what he meant and I, knowing what he meant, asked him what he meant and he answered that he meant would I like to shag her. Since I’d guessed the question, I didn’t have to improvise the answer. No, I lied. Then why did you shag her? asked Zarco. I froze. Just at that instant, as if she’d caught a snippet of our conversation (impossible, because she was too far away and the howling wind and the noise of the iron and glass rattling in the lighthouse cupola drowned out the words), Tere turned around and opened her arms wide in a gesture of admiration or incredulity for the sky and sea behind her. I passed the joint to Zarco, who held my gaze for a second with a neutral look in his eyes; the dried saliva had disappeared from the corner of his mouth. What did you think? he asked. That I didn’t know? I didn’t answer, and we both looked back at Tere: shielding her eyes with her hand from the sun’s last rays of the evening, at that moment Tere was looking towards an abandoned building a hundred metres or so to our right, on the same headland. Who told you? I asked. She did, he answered. It was only once, I lied again; I specified: The night we went to the Marocco. Are you sure? he asked. Yes, I answered, thinking about the washrooms at the Vilaró arcade. Yeah, said Zarco. And he passed me the joint. I took it, smoked and watched how Tere pointed to the empty building and shouted something and started walking, jumping from one rock to the next and holding her bag against her body, towards where she’d been pointing. So it was just once, said Zarco. Yeah, I said. What’s the matter? he asked without irony. Didn’t you like it? Of course I liked it, I answered, and immediately regretted the reply. So? he asked. I reflected. I took several drags on the joint. I said: I don’t know. Ask her. I passed the joint to Zarco and that was it.’