‘You didn’t talk any more?’
‘No. Zarco didn’t push it and I was desperate to change the subject.’
‘And you were thinking that Tere wasn’t Zarco’s girlfriend.’
‘I thought she was and wasn’t, I told you already. Anyway, I don’t know. . I think that at some point I had a sense that this friendly conversation might be a trap, that it might actually be a scheme of Zarco’s, a way of testing me or an attempt to make me talk; ultimately, that it might be his way of telling me that Tere was his and that I should keep my distance. I don’t know, it was just a feeling, but a very vivid feeling, and I did not feel comfortable. It’s even possible that later I began to think that Zarco had been looking for an opportunity like that for a while to bring up the subject of Tere and the night on Montgó beach, and I might have also thought that, deep down, what Zarco wanted was for me to leave the gang so I’d get away from Tere.’
‘Did he tell you to leave the gang?’
‘Yes. That same day, just before we left the lighthouse. I, to stop talking about Tere, had started talking about that afternoon’s thwarted heist, and then we were silent for a while smoking and listening to the wind rattling the iron and glass of the lighthouse cupola, watching Tere approach the abandoned building and wander around it and disappear behind it, and the sun beginning to sink into the sea and the boat to disappear off to the left of the horizon, and at some point Zarco asked what we were talking about and I said that afternoon’s thwarted heist and he said: No, before. I said I didn’t remember although I remembered perfectly well and then, to my relief, I heard him say: Oh yeah, the story of Quílez.
‘And then he told me about Quílez, a long story that he later left out of his memoir and never told in any of the interviews he gave or any of the ones I’ve read, something which I at least found rather shocking because, as you know, Zarco told the journalists everything. What he told me is that the story had happened on his first day in prison, in the Modelo in Barcelona, at the time it would have been more or less a year before. He told me that afternoon, when he came out to the main courtyard at exercise time, he met two friends of his brother Juan José who’d been locked up in the prison for months (though not in the same cell block as him) and started talking to them. He told me the yard was full of prisoners calmly talking and walking and playing football. He said the calm shattered when the crowd seemed to stop all of a sudden while a circular wall of men formed in the middle of the yard, and in the middle of that wall was a blond, corpulent man, and in the blink of an eye another man, this one pale and very thin, hurled himself on him and, with a homemade stiletto fashioned from a mattress spring, with a single slash, opened his chest and then ripped out his heart and held it up in his hand, fresh and gushing blood in the afternoon sun. And he told me that as he displayed his trophy the murderer let out a long rejoicing shriek. He also told me that it all happened so fast that, before falling down dead, the victim didn’t even have time to shout in horror or for help. And he told me how the prison guards evacuated the yard and left the heartless corpse sprawled on the ground, and that he didn’t ask anyone anything but soon knew that the murderer’s name was Quílez and the murdered man was a guy reputed to be a snitch who’d arrived at the Modelo that very day, just like he had, except that he’d been transferred from another prison. And finally he told me — and when he told me this, I thought his voice trembled — that night, after the guards locked up Quílez in solitary confinement, his name was chanted in a righteous murmur that travelled through the cell blocks of the Modelo like a prayer or a triumphal lullaby.
‘When Zarco finished telling me the story of Quílez we sat in silence. After a few seconds he stood up and stretched and took a few steps away from the lighthouse towards the cliff, stuck his hands in his pockets and stood there for a while in front of the darkened sea and sky. Then, all of a sudden, he turned back towards me and spoke with an irritated look on his face. Look, Gafitas, I’m going to tell you, he began. You do whatever the fuck you feel like, but at least don’t say that I didn’t tell you. After a pause he went on: If it’s up to me, you can stay with us. You turned out to be tougher and more of a son of a bitch than you look like, so there’s no problem there. Do what you want. Now, he added, if you want my advice, drop it. He took his right hand out of his pocket and cut the air with a horizontal slash, much more violent than his words. Drop this, he repeated. Don’t come back to La Font or the district. Get lost, man. Forget the gang. Go back to your family, go back to school, go back to your life. There’s no more to this, don’t you see? You’ve already seen all there is to see. Sooner or later we’ll get caught, just like they caught Guille and the others. And then we’re fucked: if you’re unlucky you end up dead like Guille or in a wheelchair like Tío; and if you’re lucky you end up in the slammer, like Chino or Drácula. Although for a guy like you I don’t know which would be worse. I spent a few months in the slammer, but the slammer’ll crush you, it’ll be the end of you. That’s another reason you’re not like us. Besides, we don’t have a choice, this is the only life we have, but you have another one. Don’t be a dickhead, Gafitas: drop it.
‘That’s more or less what he said to me. I didn’t answer, in part because I had nothing to answer and in part, as I told you before, the conversation about Tere had made me uneasy, but especially because at that moment Tere showed up at the lighthouse with the news that the abandoned building was a Civil Guard post and the suggestion that we should check it out. It was almost dark by then. Zarco pointed the long, dirty fingernail of his index finger at me and said as if he hadn’t heard Tere’s suggestion: Think about it, Gafitas. I stood up. Tere looked at me; then she looked at Zarco. What does Gafitas have to think about? she asked. Zarco patted her on the ass and answered: Nothing. We went back to the Mehari and drove away.’