‘In the end I just phoned Tere. After phoning the factory in Cassà and being told she was no longer employed there, I found her at home. As I told you before, Tere and I talked on the phone every once in a while, but it was usually she who called me rather than me calling her, so, without giving her time to be surprised by my call, I told her what they’d told me at the factory in Cassà. Why didn’t you tell me? I asked. Because you didn’t ask, she answered. Have you found a new job? I asked. No, she answered. I asked her what she was planning to do; nothing, she answered. I’ve got a few months of dole coming to me, she explained. Maybe I’ll go on holiday; or maybe I’ll stay home and study: I’ve got exams next month. Tere fell silent; now it was she who asked: Has something happened? I told her what had happened. Congratulations, Gafitas, she said. Mission accomplished. I didn’t notice any enthusiasm in her voice, and I wondered if she was really glad that all this was over. Thanks, I said, without daring to ask her; instead of that I asked: Do you know where he is? Zarco? she asked: for a while now she’d gone back to calling him that, not Antonio. Isn’t he at work? No, I answered. Not at the prison either. Then I have no idea where he is, said Tere.
‘I believed her. That night I went to look for Zarco at the prison. Shortly before nine I asked through the intercom by the entrance if he’d arrived; they told me he hadn’t and I went back to wait for him in the car. I was there for a while, and I’d already decided that Zarco wasn’t coming back and I might as well leave when I saw him get out of a clapped-out Renault parked in front of the yard. Hey, Antonio! I called him, climbing out of my car. He turned towards me and waited on the sidewalk, right beside the prison gate. At first my presence seemed to annoy him — What are you doing here, Counsellor? he asked when he recognized me — but as soon as I gave him the news his expression relaxed, he took a deep breath, opened his arms wide and said: Come here, Gafitas. He hugged me. He smelled intensely of alcohol and tobacco. Well, he said as we finished hugging; I looked in his eyes: they were red. When do I get out? I don’t know, I replied. Tomorrow they announce the news, so pretty soon, I suppose. Then I hastened to warn him: But the problem is not when you’re going to get out but what you’re going to do when you’re out. During my wait I’d loaded up with arguments, and now I reproached him for not having gone to work for the last two days and asked him what he was going to live on if he lost that job and told him I knew it had been a long time since he saw María and asked him where he was going to live if not with María. Zarco didn’t let me continue. Take it easy, man, he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. I just found out I’m a free man. Save the lectures for another day; let me enjoy it for now, eh? And don’t worry about me, for fuck’s sake, I’m a big boy. For a moment that drunken laid-back attitude irritated me. I’m not worried, I replied. I just want you to understand that this hasn’t ended and it’ll all go to hell if you don’t live a normal life from now on. With all the work we’ve put in. . I understand, Zarco interrupted me again. Fuck, how am I not going to understand? The way you go on about it. He took his hand off my shoulder and gave me a pat on the cheek; then he pointed at the building where he slept, on the other side of the prison fence, on the far side of the inadequately lit yard, and added: Well, Gafitas, it’s damn late: if I don’t get in there right now I’ll be left without a pardon. Zarco had already called through on the intercom and they’d opened the gate to the yard when I suggested: Tomorrow we could celebrate the news with a drink at the Royal. I clarified: When you get off work. I added: I bet Tere would join us too if you invited her. She’s lost her job. The news didn’t seem to make much of an impression on Zarco, and I thought maybe he already knew; or that he was so absorbed in his own stuff that he’d barely heard. Tomorrow? he asked, almost without turning back to me. Tomorrow we’ll have to hold a press conference and all that, no? Well, maybe I’ll call you and we’ll talk about it.
‘He didn’t call, we didn’t talk about it, we didn’t celebrate the pardon. The press conference, however, was held. It was two days later, in the prison itself, and it was the Director-General of Correctional Institutions who called it. I didn’t attend the event because no one asked me to; neither María nor Tere attended either, not even the superintendent, at least according to the reports of it I read the next day in the papers. They all included a photo of Zarco and the director-general, both smiling and both with their index and middle fingers raised in a victory sign; they all reproduced the director-general’s statement, according to which Zarco’s liberty represented “a triumph for Antonio Gamallo, a triumph for our prison system and a triumph for our democracy”, and a few words from Zarco thanking all those people “who’d done their bit, however small, to make this moment possible”; they all highlighted María’s absence, and all related this fact to the rumours of the couple’s separation that had been circulating lately.
‘That very day Zarco disappeared from the media and didn’t show up again until four or five months had passed. Just as I’d suspected (or desired), during that time I no longer saw him. But I still received news of him. Thanks to my former client from Vidreres I found out that, once he’d regained his freedom, Zarco had not set foot in the carton factory again. A little while later María made some casual or apparently casual statements to a reporter on a television programme in which she confirmed that she and Zarco were living apart and hadn’t seen each other since months before the pardon was granted, and in which she also insinuated that, almost from the start, their relationship had just been staged. These words unleashed a storm of gossip, conjecture and demands for explanations among the tabloid and romance journalists that María fed with silences and rudeness, which filled many minutes of television and whole pages of magazines for several weeks and which I interpreted as the swansong of the media soap opera starring María and Zarco.
‘The exact opposite of what my incurable optimism had predicted ended up happening with Tere. For the first few weeks things stayed more or less the same as they’d been up till then: she phoned me every once in a while and I waited for the opportunity to take a step forward, as if I were afraid to rush things or feared that if I didn’t get it right the first time, I wouldn’t get a second chance. But after a month and a half Tere stopped calling me, and then I made up my mind; I started calling her, started pressuring her: I suggested we see each other, that we go out for lunch or dinner, that she come over for lunch or dinner, that we give it another try; I assured her I was ready to accept her conditions and that this time there would be no ties, no mess, no commitments, no demands. Tere responded to my suggestions with excuses and to my complaints by saying I was right, especially when I repeated that I’d been waiting for months and was tired. You should try something else, Gafitas, she suggested more than once. I don’t have anything else to try, I answered, almost infuriated. I already know what I want. The one who doesn’t seem to know what she wants is you. The last conversation we had was not awkward but sad, or that’s how I remember it. Resigned to reality, I didn’t beg and we didn’t argue, but, maybe because I sensed that this was farewell, I asked her about Zarco, something I hadn’t done for a while. Tere answered vaguely, told me she hadn’t seen him and all she knew was that he was living in Barcelona and earning a living working in the car-repair garage of a former cellmate. That’s what she said, and for some reason I thought she was lying and that she was giving me the brush-off again; I also thought that she was telling me without saying so that it was no longer any of my business because my work with Zarco had finished. When I hung up the telephone I remembered Zarco’s words in La Creueta: end of story, debt settled, you can go now.