Nil Dalmau’s fourth and final period, the darkest one, the incendiary one, was comprised of a series of videos that he filmed without any intention of ever exhibiting. They were a farewell to art, he wanted to bury his fears in them, bury the shame of the last few years, bury youth itself. Returning to Vidreres was the end of this project — returning to his parents’ house and beginning to work the land. He would reappear like the lake reappeared in winter, gradually, naturally; recovering milieus, recovering family, recovering friends, recovering his own self. And since he couldn’t imagine himself just going straight back into his parents’ house, one Sunday in November he asked them for the workmen’s shack in the fields of Serradell.
“I don’t find any of this amusing anymore,” said his father. “As far as I’m concerned, you can do what you want. If you want to move in there, you can have it by New Year’s.”
His father’s willingness had a lot to do with the ear. Without the flesh tunnel, his father wouldn’t have come up with the money or wouldn’t have wanted to waste it on useless renovations. But to humiliate his son? To punish him? Here you go, failed monster, enjoy.
His mother didn’t understand, or pretended not to.
“Serradell is too isolated,” she said. “The only people who ever go to the fields over there are driving the machines, for sowing or harvesting.”
She thought it was dangerous because that year there’d been violent robberies in remote homes throughout the Baix Empordà, Girona, and La Selva. The thieves were breaking into farmhouses and housing developments while people were home, which was new. They would tie up the owners’ wrists with telephone cords, beat them till they gave up their money and jewels, and wouldn’t stop until they knew where their safe was hidden. Just a few days prior, some burglars had entered the house of a hotel owner in Platja d’Aro. They waited for it to get dark, jumped over a wall, and went through the yard and into the house where they tied up the couple. Since the man was screaming, they stuck a rag in his mouth. The man ended up suffocating. Shortly after that, in a house in Campllong, the intruders splashed two women with diesel oil from the boiler and threatened them with a lit piece of paper. In Santa Cristina, the same robbers, or some others, tied up a retired Brit, put a gun to her head, and played two rounds of Russian roulette. There was joy in these crimes; they had an artistic touch to them. They wore masks over their heads and gloves; the security cameras were useless. They carried knives, shotguns, and pistols, and they were so bold and confident that, in one attack in Llagostera, they made an omelet in the kitchen while the owner of the house was tied up in the dining room. Everyone installed alarms and filled their yards with dogs just like at Can Bou. The police hadn’t caught anyone, and the burglaries continued. A crime expert published an article in the El Punt Avui newspaper warning of a government plot to discredit the Catalan police force now that the regional government was becoming pro-independence.
“Nothing surprises me anymore,” said his father. “Don’t you watch TV, Nil? Here, everyone who can rob, does, from the king to the last patsy. Nothing can be done about it; this is a country of thieves. Look at the mess we’re in. You’re smart to come home. Everything is so rotten that the day things hit the fan, it will all happen at once. They’re making our lives miserable, they’re squeezing us on every side, and now we can’t even sleep peacefully in our own homes. You’re lucky. When you don’t have anything, you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Do you mean that, Lluís?” asked his mother. “Imagine they break into the shack and take him and call us saying that they have him and they’re heading over here. What good would all the alarms in the house do us then?”
“Don’t make me laugh,” said his father. “If anyone breaks into the shack, it’ll be the burglar who gets a nasty surprise.”
His father personally supervised the bricklayers, electricians, plasterers, and painters who fixed up the shack so Nil could work and live there, with a kitchen/dining room, bathroom, fireplace, bedroom, separate workspace, and a small garage. He had the road fixed so he could drive on it with no problems. By Christmas, the renovations were completed.
Nil had been living in the shack for two weeks when the Batlle brothers were killed in that car crash.
The burial was on Monday. Tuesday afternoon, his father showed up at the shack. It was the first time he had come to see Nil. He found his son with the fireplace lit, stretched out on the sofa watching a DVD.
“I’ve made a very generous offer for the Batlle land,” said his father. “But that doesn’t mean a thing. Can Batlle is right next to Can Bou, and Iona Sureda was practically part of their family. If the Suredas play dirty, no matter how much money we offer, it won’t be enough. We have to act fast. There isn’t a moment to lose. I know them, at Can Bou. They have no ethics, they’re poor as church mice, and they’ll want to take advantage of that family’s tragedy. That’s not right and they know it, but we won’t just stand around with our arms folded. That’s why I’ve come to see you. Your mother would be surprised if I went out so late, and I don’t want to upset her, there’s no need, so it’s best if she doesn’t know. You’ll do fine. Throw a chunk of meat filled with fishhooks or pieces of glass near the entrance to Can Bou. When they see a dog dead like that, they’ll understand that this is no free-for-all.”
His father’s frankness caught Nil off guard, but he quickly understood what he was saying. Not upsetting his mother was an excuse. He would have liked to go further, and for a moment — a moment that he would never forget, because it could have changed everything — Nil was about to confess to his father how united they were in this venture, united by a momentous stroke of fate, by the same momentous fate by which you’re born to a certain father in a certain place; he was about to tell him: You see how I never left, you see how you can be proud of me the way I am of you? But he let the moment pass, there was no need — it was out of immature selfishness, him wanting to be himself again — so he kept silent, thinking that a secret was a secret and that it had more strength incubating inside like a seed, and it would be better if his father was the one to make the overture for him to return home. He had come to him for a blood ritual, for a secret between father and son like those in every family. The Batlle lands would become the Dalmaus’ through him. A generational concern. From the Batlle boys to the Dalmau boy. Years from now, he would inherit the fields, but first he would have to earn them. This was the moment. What more could he ask for? He felt very proud of his father and absolved for his attempt to flee; it was as if he were physically embracing his father, as if he carried him inside, as close to him as when he was little and rode on the tractor and his father held his shoulder as they went over the furrows.
When he was alone again, sitting on the sofa beside the fireplace, watching the silent flame gnaw on the trunks, Nil opened a beer and thought how everything was coming together: the years away from Vidreres; his return; the death of the Batlle brothers; the assignment his father had given him; and the series of videos he was filming, his farewell to artistic life. It was all compatible. Nothing was wasted. It all added up. The assignment would be a bridge between the life he was leaving behind and the one he was beginning, tying together what he’d been searching for in those years away from home with the life that awaited him. The assignment was the passport that allowed him to return as an adult to the country of his parents, his grandparents, the dead, all the people buried in the fields. And it would be recorded on video.