Jaume Cabré - Winter Journey

"Look. I hit her and she's still moving."

Zorka, badly wounded, turned her face to the sky, to let her soul escape more easily, and breathed wearily. She felt no pain because she'd cried all her tears long ago. Then she looked at the soldier's face, widened her eyes and extended her hand. The words she said were understood only by the stones because they were accompanied by a bubble of blood made thick and dark by suffering. And she thought, Poor child, he's lost another tooth, they're not taking care of him. The soldier was amused by the dark bubble, and, still laughing, he put the barrel of the rifle to Zorka's forehead. She was shuddering desperately, not from fear but from the desire to make herself understood in spite of the bubble of blood. The shot burst her skull and the soldier howled, triumphant, happy,

"She finally stopped moving! Finally!"

And with his sleeve he wiped the drool that trailed from his mouth and went, fatherless, soulless and stupidly smiling, to where the gang was.

1(2)

here were ten people on the elevator and he wasn't the only one carrying flowers. On the second floor some kind of security guard got on after winking at a very pretty nurse. The three people with bouquets got off on the fourth floor. As if he knew the clinic by heart, he headed down the corridor towards room 439. A woman wearing a coif and carrying a tray full of things he couldn't identify came out of the room next door. When he got to the door he was looking for, he paused for a few seconds, wiped away the sweat that beaded his upper lip whenever he was nervous, breathed out hard, and knocked discreetly three times. The voice saying "Come in" was muffled, with a note of curiosity. It seemed to him there was also a little hopefulness in that "Come in." He went in, a little formal, holding out the roses as if they were a calling card. All of a sudden he saw her there, sitting on a sofa in the ancient posture of delighted exhaustion typical of new mothers. She had obviously just nursed the baby, who was now lying in the crib. He closed the door without making a sound and turned to the woman, who hadn't moved from the sofa and was looking right at him, noticing the sweat that shone on his upper lip. Now her voice sounded cracked: "Who are you?"

The man, with a polite smile, leaned over the woman to offer her the flowers. And instinctively she took them and moved as if to smell them. That's why she didn't see the black eye of the silencer on the pistol that appeared among the roses. The bullet went in through her open mouth; there was nothing to hear but a gentle, almost sweet poc! The woman leaned back softly on the sofa, as if her exhaustion were infinite, as well as ancient. Not a whimper. Two delicately dropped the flowers onto the woman's lap. Then he looked towards the crib, shook his head, wiped the sweat off his lip with the hand holding the pistol and looked at the newborn, who was trying out his thumb. Delicately, almost lovingly, he brought the barrel up against the base of its skull. The pistol went poc!.

It wasn't until he got to the airport in Le Bourget and had smoked half a pack of Gitanes that he managed to get his heart to start working normally. And that was just the beginning.

11(1)

One had spent the flight from Paris looking straight ahead, as if genuinely interested in the folding tray on the back of the seat ahead of him. And he didn't look even once at the scenery out the window. He refused the dinner and the drink without looking the stewardess in the eye, as if he didn't want to lose his focus for even a moment. As if he wanted to do everything in his power to be in the right place at the right time with the cigarette and the whisky after work. He looked only twice at the reddish head of the man he'd been told to eliminate. Okay to kill. He was called Zero and he was very easy to follow because of the bright color of his hair. Now that he was looking at him for the second time, on the other side of the aisle, a few seats ahead, he realized that Zero wasn't hiding the briefcase attached to his wrist by a kind of sturdy-looking handcuff. He was reading France Soir and didn't feel One's glance pass over the back of his neck.

Five seats back, Two was watching One look at something ahead of him. He'd found it odd that Three had ordered him to follow One and wait; he could have finished him off in the bathroom in the airport, once his heart had started to beat normally. He leaned back; he followed orders and he'd do One in Barcelona just like they'd told him to. It was easier to obey, not ask questions, and bide his time. Natalie would be happy; as soon as he finished work he'd go back to Paris and invite her out for a great dinner. The most irritating thing was having to spend hours on planes that didn't allow smoking. He considered it insulting but was going to have to get used to it. In fact, he was already used to working like this, always being a Two in pursuit of a One. He was One once; he'd felt bad about it, really. Well, the way he felt about what happened at the clinic. But, work is work. Anyway, the thing that he… What?

"Would you like more coffee, or a soft drink, or…?"

"A whisky."

The stewardess blocked his view of One and for a few seconds he panicked. But he smiled and forced himself to relax: how could he escape? Besides, according to the complicated rules of Three's game, One had no idea who Two was. Hey, he didn't know that Two existed any more than human beings are aware of death like a worm inside them.

"Two is the death of One," he said, imprudently, out loud.

"Excuse me?" The stewardess was handing him the glass of whisky.

"No, no, 1 was…" And he made a vague gesture that meant it didn't matter. The stewardess continued on her way, and Two could see that One was still looking ahead of him, as if at another passenger.

Zero, who didn't know that's what he was called, made a vague gesture to refuse the coffee, or soft drink, or… Although the handcuff that attached him to the briefcase bothered him a little, he was absolutely faithful to the procedure he'd followed on the eighty-two previous trips. He was pretending to be a perfumier carrying formulas and samples from one branch to another so that, if he had to, he could justify taking the briefcase with him everywhere. In fact, it contained, aside from four innocent papers designed to distract any customs officials who might be curious about the contents, the notebook he'd just stolen from Three, showing the bank statements for the past five years that he'd done collection for the business, and condemning Three and all of his family to death. Because even just the first five pages of that bankbook were enough to paper him over for life.

Of course Zero was afraid. Very afraid. Because his hours were numbered: make the payment, turn the book over to the police in Barcelona, with the delayed-access system to cover his tracks, call the clinic to tell her to do what she had to do, and meet her after the eight-hour flight to Rio. Meet them. Because the three that's a crowd was what had made them, him and the woman, decide that Zero had to change his life. His wife didn't know that Zero was called Zero, of course. Or that she was called Double Zero and their son Little Zero. We are always ignorant of the plans of the gods. Very afraid, was Zero: but things had to turn out according to their very careful plans. He'd turned down what the stewardess offered because the pressure of the situation had upset his stomach.

111(o)

in the hotel dining room, Two fell in love with a table for one next to the window. He found it very strange that One, who didn't have to stay in that hotel, should be eating supper there. That's his problem, he thought. He just had to follow orders. It was irritating, but he settled down to sharing a dining room with his victim and lit a cigarette so he could hide behind the smoke. Maybe it was to avoid unpleasant thoughts that he imprudently ordered an 1864 from the maitre d' and a very rare steak to go with it. The maitre d' raised his eyebrows because it had been two years since someone had ordered a whole bottle. No doubt because One noticed the bottle ordered by the man sitting by the window, he ordered one too, and the maitre d', happy as a clam, said to the headwaiter that life is full of surprises. Yes, it certainly is. Especially if Three has planned them that way.