‘We are going to read the Minutes.’
So that there would be nothing lacking in this aforementioned club, there was a Book of Minutes where all the associates’ projects were entered, and there was also a stamp, a rectangular stamp that Enrique had made out of a cork and which displayed the emotive spectacle of a heart pierced by three daggers.
The Minutes were kept by each of us in turn; the end of each set of Minutes was signed; each new topic was given its stamp.
The Minutes contained such things as the following:
Lucio’s Proposal — In the future in order to rob without needing locksmith’s tools, we should make wax models of the keys of all the houses we visit.
Enrique’s Proposal — We should also make a plan of each house where we get the keys from. These plans will be kept secret with the documents of the Order and must be sure to mention all peculiarities of the building for the greater convenience of the person who will be sent to operate there.
General Agreement of the Order — Associate Enrique is hereby named the Club’s official forger and draughtsman.
Silvio’s Proposal — To introduce nitro-glycerine into a fortified zone, take an egg, empty it of the yolk and the white and inject the explosive using a syringe.
If the acids in the nitro-glycerine destroy the eggshell, make it a sheath out of gun cotton. Nobody will suspect that the harmless-looking sheath hides an explosive charge.
Enrique’s Proposal — The Club should have a library of scientific works in order for its associates to be certain that they are robbing and killing according to the most modern industrial procedures. Also, after being a member of the Club for three months, each associate will be obliged to own a Browning pistol, a pair of rubber gloves and 100 grams of chloroform. The Club’s official chemist will be Associate Silvio.
Lucio’s Proposal — All bullets should be poisoned with prussic acid and its toxic power should be tested by shooting a dog’s tail off with a single shot. The dog has to die in ten minutes.
‘Che, Silvio.’
‘What?’ Enrique said.
‘I was just thinking. We should organise clubs in every town in the Republic.’
‘No, the important thing,’ I interrupted, ‘is to practise for what we’re doing tomorrow. There’s no point concerning ourselves with trifles now.’
Lucio pulled up a bundle of dirty clothes that he was using as an ottoman. I continued:
‘Training as thieves has one key advantage: it makes you cold-blooded, which is the most important thing for the job. Also, experiencing danger makes you prudent.’
Enrique said:
‘Let’s cut all this speechifying and get down to something interesting. Here in the alley behind the butcher’s shop — the wall of Irzubeta’s house gave onto this alley — there’s a gringo who parks his car every night and then goes off to sleep in a room he rents in one of those big old houses in Zamudio Street. What about it Silvio, if we make his magneto and his horn… disappear?’
‘You know that’s a serious job?’
‘There’s no danger, che. We jump over the wall. The butcher sleeps like the dead. Yeah, we’ll have to wear gloves, I guess.’
‘And the dog?’
‘And why should I care? I’m friends with the dog.’
‘I just think he’s going to go off on one.’
‘What do you think, Silvio?’
‘And don’t forget that we’ll make more than a hundred for the magneto.’
‘It’s a good job, but slippery.’
‘Lucio, are you up for it?’
‘Trying to strong-arm me?… sure… I’ll put on my old trousers so I don’t rip my Sunday best…’
‘And you, Silvio?’
‘I’ll get out as soon as the old lady’s asleep.’
‘When should we meet up?’
‘Look, che, Enrique. I don’t like the job.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t like it. They’re going to suspect us. The alley… The dog that didn’t bark in the night-time… if we can get there so easily we’re bound to leave traces… I don’t like it. You know I’m up for anything, but I don’t like it. It’s too close and the pigs are too nosy.’
‘Well we won’t do it then.’
We smiled as if we had just escaped from danger.
And so we lived days of unparalleled emotion, enjoying the money we had made from our robberies, money that had a special value for us and even seemed to speak to us in its own lively idiom.
The banknotes with their coloured pictures seemed to us to be the most meaningful, the nickel coins jangled merrily as we juggled them in our palms. Yes, money that we acquired through our scams seemed much more worthy and subtle, seemed to have some kind of maximum value, seemed to whisper in our ears with smiling praise and enticing mischief. It wasn’t the vile and odious money that is hated because it needs to be earned by hard work, but rather it was supple money, a silver sphere with two goblin legs and a dwarfish beard, jocular money, dancing money whose smell, like good wine, intoxicated us.
Our eyes were untroubled; I would dare say that our foreheads were haloed with a nimbus of pride and daring. Pride in knowing that if our actions had become public we would have been taken before a judge.
Sitting round a café table, we sometimes spoke about this:
‘What would you do with the Judge in the Criminal Court?’
‘I,’ Enrique replied, ‘I would speak to him about Darwin and Le Dantec.’ (Enrique was an atheist.)
‘And you, Silvio?’
‘I wouldn’t tell them anything, even if they cut my throat.’
‘And what about the rubber?’
We would look at each other in fright. We were terrified of the ‘rubber’, that truncheon that left no visible marks on its victim’s flesh; the rubber truncheon that is used to punish the bodies of thieves in the Police Department when they are slow in confessing their crimes.
With scarcely repressed rage, I replied:
‘They will never break me. They’ll have to kill me first.’
Whenever one of us would say this word, kill, the nerves in our faces would quiver, our eyes would remain fixed and open, looking at an illusory and distant scene of butchery, and our nostrils would flare as we breathed in the smell of gunpowder and blood.
‘That’s why we need to poison the bullets,’ Lucio insisted.
‘And make bombs,’ I continued. ‘No mercy. We have to blow them up, terrorize the fuzz. When their guard is down, bullets… send bombs to the judges through the post.’
This was how we spoke around the café table, solemn and enjoying our impunity before all other people, all the people who did not know that we were thieves, and a delicious fear gripped our hearts as we thought about the way in which these unknown girls who were passing by would look at us if they only knew that we, so young and so well-dressed, were thieves… Thieves!
A few days later, I met with Enrique and Lucio in a café at midnight to finalise the details of a robbery we were planning to commit.
Choosing the most solitary corner, we sat down at a table next to the window.
A thin rain tapped on the glass as the orchestra unleashed the dying climax of a jailhouse tango.
‘Are you sure, Lucio, that there are no guards?’
‘Positive. It’s holiday time and everyone’s gone away.’
We were discussing nothing less than taking down a school library.
Enrique, thoughtful, supported his cheek with one hand. The peak of his cap shaded his eyes.