‘I was right. At the beginning of La Barca Bridge just at the entrance to the city and already with La Devesa in sight, a big truck loaded with gas cylinders was heading straight for us; Gordo tried to miss it by yanking the steering wheel, lost control of the car and we flipped over and started rolling across the tarmac. What happened after that is difficult to tell. Although I’ve tried to reconstruct the sequence of events many times, I’m not entirely sure I’ve been able to; I have been able to reconstruct some links of the sequences: enough, I think, to have an approximate idea of what happened.
‘They’re six links that are six images or six groups of images. The first link is formed by the image of myself lying facedown on the crushed roof of the car, dazed and feeling around for my glasses and finding them intact, hearing meanwhile a sharp buzzing in my head and hearing Jou groaning and cursing and hearing Zarco shout that Gordo was unconscious and that we had to get the fuck out of the car. The second link is formed by the image of myself trying to crawl out of the twisted metal of the car through one of the back windows as I see how thirty or forty metres away a car brakes and two plain clothes cops get out and run towards us. The third link is not formed of one image but two: the image of Zarco yanking me out through the window and the image of both of us running across La Barca Bridge behind Jou, who’s a few metres ahead of us and who, out of instinct or because Zarco shouted it, at the end of the bridge turns off up Pedret and heads for the district. The fourth link is not formed of two images but rather a sort of chain of images: first Zarco and I get to the end of the bridge and run towards La Devesa in the hope of giving the police the slip there, then Zarco trips on the uneven slope that goes down to the park and hits the ground, then I stop short and run back and grab Zarco’s arm and he grabs me and for a few seconds we try to keep going like that, stumbling, Zarco running on his hurt leg and me dragging him; finally Zarco falls down again or throws himself on the ground while shoving me away and saying in a low, hoarse, panting voice: Run, Gafitas! And there’s the fifth link, the penultimate image of the sequence: lit by the midday sun that shines through the crowns of the plane trees of La Devesa, Zarco is still kneeling on the ground and I am still standing at his side while the two cops are about to reach the slope into the park and catch us. The final image is predictable; it’s also a double image: on the one hand it’s a diaphanous image, the image of myself running through La Devesa leaving Zarco behind; on the other hand it is a blurry image, half-seen as I turn around to see if they’re following me: the image of Zarco tangled up in a jumble of arms and legs, struggling with the two cops.
‘That’s where the six links end, and that’s all I remember.’
‘So you abandoned Zarco.’
‘What was I going to do? What would you have done? He couldn’t save himself; I couldn’t save him: sacrificing myself would have been stupid, it would have done no good. So I decided to save myself. It’s what Zarco would have done; that’s why he told me to run, to go. And maybe that’s why he fought with the police (or that’s why I’ve always thought he fought with them): to give me time to get away, so I could save myself.
‘That’s what I did. I ran through the empty park like a flash, passed the football pitch, the rifle range and the model-plane runway and ended up taking shelter in a grove of poplars stuck in between the Ter and the Güell, between the sports pavilion and the municipal dump. Dazed, I stayed in that hiding place for a while, trying to get over my fear, the pain of my wounded arm and the buzzing in my head. Although the buzzing soon stopped, the wound wouldn’t stop bleeding and the fear rushed back when the police helicopter flew low over the grove a couple of times, but I managed to think with sufficient clarity to understand that I should get out of there immediately and that I only had one safe place to go.
‘Making sure no one saw me, I left the poplar grove, got to Caterina Albert and went home.
‘When I got there everything happened very fast. When I went in, my whole family was eating. My mother and my sister cried out to high heaven when they saw my T-shirt soaked in blood; my father reacted differently; without a word he took me to the bathroom and, while I explained to all of them that I’d fallen off a motorcycle, he examined my wound. Once he’d examined it, my father asked my mother and sister to leave the bathroom. This is not from a fall, he said coldly when they left, pointing at my arm. Go on, tell me what happened. I tried to insist on my lie, but my father interrupted me. Look, Ignacio, he said. I don’t know what mess you’ve got into, but if you want me to help you, you have to tell me the truth. Without affection, he added: If you don’t want me to help you, you can leave. I understood he meant it, that he was right and that, no matter how badly he reacted to the truth, it would be a thousand times worse if the police arrested me; besides, by then I was coming down hard off the adrenaline and was so scared it was as if I’d injected myself in one single shot with complete awareness of the danger I’d exposed myself to in my forays of the past months.
‘I agreed. As best I could I told my father the truth. His reaction calmed me down a little, almost disconcerted me: he didn’t yell at me, didn’t get furious, he didn’t even seem surprised; he just asked me a few very specific questions. When I thought he’d finished I asked: What are we going to do? He didn’t even take a second or two to think. Go to the police station, he answered. A chill made my legs go weak. You’re going to give me up? I asked. Yes, he answered. You said you’d help me, I said. That’s the best thing I can do to help you, he said. Dad, please, I begged. My father pointed at my wound and said: Wash that off and let’s get going. Then he left the bathroom and, while my mother came back in and washed the wound with the help of my sister, I heard him speaking on the phone. He spoke for quite a while, but I didn’t know what about or with whom, because the telephone was in the front hall and my mother and my sister were harassing me with questions; they were also trying to comfort me, because I’d started to cry.