“What do you want?” the old man finally shouted from behind the door.
“I’m Nil Dalmau, I’ve come for the tables! We have an appointment!”
The old man approached the glass, shaking his head.
“You must have talked to my son-in-law!”
Nil was used to these roles. “The truck’s coming now!” he said.
It seemed that the old man was calming down, but he shook his head again. “Where’s the truck?” he shouted.
“I said it’s on its way! Can you show me the tables?”
“Haven’t you seen the photos?”
“Hey!” shouted Nil. “Do you want to sell the tables or not?”
The old man hesitated for a moment, and then shook his head yet again.
“Are you saying you had me come all the way here for nothing?” asked Nil.
Just then the truck arrived. Miqui stopped in the middle of the parking lot and, without turning off the engine, hopped down from the cab and came over to shake Nil’s hand.
“Should I bring the truck closer?” he said.
“Wait, there’s a problem,” said Nil, pointing with his chin to the old man behind the door. “He doesn’t want to open up.”
“He doesn’t want to open up?” Miqui went over to the door to talk to the old man. “Good morning! What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We just changed our minds.”
“What’s that?”
Nil also approached the door. He had ten fifty-euro bills fanned out in his hand.
“Do you think we’d bring you the money if we were planning anything bad?” he said.
The old man hesitated again. His hand was already on the knob, but he stopped, lowered his head, approached the glass, and said:
“I can’t. We’ve got coffeemakers in here, refrigerators, machinery. . I can’t risk it, it’s all we have. The faucet factory closed down, we used to get the workers in for lunch every day. But there’s no cash register, no safe. My son-in-law left me here alone. I can’t open up. He would never forgive me. Come back later today, he’ll be here, he’s usually here, but this morning they called and he had to go to the bank. . The bank calls the shots, it’s not his fault. Come back this afternoon, please, let’s do it that way. I’m sure he’ll give you a discount.”
“Open up,” demanded Miqui. “We’re good people, for fuck’s sake!”
They could have broken the glass door with one kick. The old man was starting to sweat. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.
“Come back this afternoon, please,” he said. “Leave, or I’ll call the police.”
“You know what?” burst out Miqui. “You’re fucking with us. Don’t call the police, because if you call the police, I’m going to come back some day and do something that’ll make you and your son-in-law never want to fuck with anybody again. Who do you think you are? Screw you and your fear! I’ve had it with old people who think they’re the kings of the world! I have a job, I make an honest living, you hear me? Do you know what it costs, just in gas, to get here in my truck? You think I’m loaded or something? You think I have nothing better to do with my time? Have a little respect, goddamn it. No one fucks with me, you got that? Open the fucking door right now, or I’ll break the glass and come in myself to get the tables. Put down that phone!”
The old man started to dial, and Nil grabbed Miqui by the arm. He didn’t know whether his threats were serious or not. He pulled him away from the door, signaling to the old man to calm down.
“Don’t call, please,” said Nil, and he came back over to the door, making sure to turn his face to show his good ear. “We’ll come back later when your son-in-law is here. I’m interested in the tables. We’ll come back this afternoon when your son-in-law is here, no problem.”
The old man looked up from the cell phone and said, yes, they needed the money, but as he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief his eyes widened like saucers and the cell phone dropped to the floor. The trucker was pointing a shotgun at them from the door of his truck.
As Miqui approached the door with the barrel raised, it became clear that he was threatening the old man. But Nil didn’t take that for granted at first. Nearly anyone who had to choose between shooting a frightened old man and a freak like him wouldn’t hesitate. His tunnel was provocative, being different was provocative, and even more so outside of Barcelona. Leaving the herd made you stronger, but it provoked other people: strength is as effective a provocation as weakness. Now that the starred independentist flags were the majority, their presence incited the other flags. But it was misleading — difference, when exposed, lost strength. Any form of expression weakened it. Maybe he would pay the price for wanting to speak with his body — without words or gestures, with physical, permanent, and solitary actions — for having been foolish enough to turn inward. What was he looking for by playing the artist, to turn inward until there was nothing left? And the end would be his disappearance? Ending up flat out with a bullet in his chest at the door of a closed restaurant in Bescanó? And the earring, the fires, what were they? Signs leading to him?
In less than a second he could be lying beside the two boys killed in the accident. In less than a second he could have more in common with the Batlle brothers than with any sucker who was still breathing. The old man in that restaurant, the grasshoppers and worms he collected, the guy with the shotgun, the bitch locked in the shack, the family in the balloon, Iona Sureda, his father, the fucking poplar plantations would have more in common with each other than with him. The land they’d left behind had more life in it than the two boys. Even as he was crushing it, the wingless, legless beetle’s life was worth infinitely more than all the human and nonhuman lives that had been snuffed out since the universe began. Supposedly, he was involved in a gambit to become an heir, to embody a succession — he’d had a stroke of luck. But now that land might be used to bury him. Damn immortal land. What would happen to the fields? Who would inherit them? That desertion, that lack of an owner — that was death.
He wanted some steel tables, and he had needed someone to transport them. On Tuesday, he was at the club with Iona, and this Miqui showed up like a godsend, giving him a business card. Like a godsend. Now he might blow him away by squeezing his finger half a centimeter. His mother had been right. The shack was a bad idea. Without the shack he wouldn’t have come back to Vidreres, without the shack he wouldn’t have thought about setting up a workspace, he wouldn’t have needed the tables, and a nut wouldn’t be aiming a shotgun at him. In the four years away from home, the year and a half surrounded by weirdos, he’d never seen anything like this. Ah, but then he had been among his people! And now, where was he? In no-man’s-land, neither here nor there. There was nothing he could do: death always comes without warning, that’s the only way it can catch you, always by accident; even for the terminally ill death has to be a surprise, it catches you by surprise or it doesn’t get you. Tell that to the animals he collected in the mornings or that he picked up at the pound, tell that to the bitch he had in his shack, or to the Batlle brothers. He was about to enter that world shared by people, animals, and plants, where life was the same for everyone: zero. Where did this Miqui person come from? Why was he carrying a shotgun? Had he been looking for Nil? Was he part of one of the groups of thieves who had the remote homes so frightened, who made their owners check the windows, doors, and blinds, who made the whole family hush if the littlest brother thought he heard some slight sound, maybe some footsteps, something falling to the floor — I heard it perfectly, said the boy, and I’m scared — so the family kept still, waiting in silence, with their eyes wide and their fingers crossed, to see if someone really had broken into the house. . With that same attention, with that microscopic precision, with his ears pricked up, with the vibration of his metal tunnel in the surrounding flesh he would hear the click of the trigger that would release the hammer and expel the bullet. That’s how death approaches, by surprise, always uncertainly, never sure.